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Sunday night was Halloween Horror Nights with our friends Paul and Alanie.
Alanie had made us each a bracelet!
This "friendship bracelet" trend has been (re)popularized by Taylor Swift recently.
Jameson's was Stranger Things themed and said "Hellfire Club."
Here is mine:
We had dinner at Cowfish first, because they're always delicious.
It's like a burger-sushi fusion place, they have "burgushi" rolls which are sushi rolls but with misc cuts of beef, and then they have one "sushi burger" that's seared ahi tuna sandwiched between some rice-and-nori "buns". It's very delicious but kinda difficult to eat, which explains why they only have one (they used to have many sushi burgers.)
The other three got bento boxes,
but I wanted to try their house-made veggie burger.
It was good, but kind of dry and I was disappointed that it was heavily rice-based. Rice is not a vegetable, and there are plenty of veggies and seeds and legumes that can give a nice meat-like texture and more nutrients. Still glad I tried it.
From there it was time for spooky fun!
We started with the themed/copyrighted houses, which this year are Stranger Things and The Last of Us.
Both houses were excellent, but I liked the Last of Us house more because the costumes were just incredible, very accurate to the game. Staging in both houses was great, it felt like you were really in the sets of the two shows/games.
After a break for drinks we slammed through several more houses, only having to wait in line for between 20-40 minutes thanks to Alanie's disability pass which allowed us to use the fast pass lanes. (I don't know Alanie well and have no idea what her disability is and did not ask.) We were all VERY grateful because the park was absolutely packed, and most of the wait times were close to 1.5 hours.
Waiting in line for the circus-themed house, which was a big favorite with all of us.
Jameson and I yapped a lot about the circus because Alanie asked some questions that got us rolling about life on the train, life with the animals, crazy circus stories that we both had, etc. It was fun but I felt like we might have talked their ears off a bit.
One of the haunted houses had a "Yeti" theme that was really cool; the temperature was extra cold in that house to mimic a northern woodland, and they even used pine scent! Plus there were scares coming not only from drop doors and scarers, but also a few yeti arms reaching down from the ceiling or from below a wooden deck that we crossed at one point. It was really well done. There was one scarer in there in a huge bear costume, and for whatever reason they had to shuttle this particular scarer in and out of the house directly through the line queue. There was absolutely no way to hide this 12-foot-tall bear, so whoever was in the costume made the most of it, waving and jumping up and down and hyping up the crowd. It was pretty funny. Everyone started chanting "Bear, bear, bear!" for this random bear scarer :)
The scare zones were unfortunately lacking this year, and we all noticed and commented on it.
There was no cohesive theme at all; zodiac signs were projected onto buildings and onto the ground, and there were these aliens walking around with zodiac symbols on them, but like...so what? There was nothing scary about it. There was no apparent storyline, nothing about an invasion or what the zodiac had to do with aliens. One of the stages had a sort of 60s-70s vibe about it, so maybe Age of Aquarius? But it wasn't clear and ultimately made no sense at all. I felt bad for the scarers, but they were out there doing their best anyway.
Before leaving (around midnight) we visited one of the cooler gift shops; I forget what it's called but it's got kind of a H.G. Wells, film noir, comic book thing going on inside. None of us bought anything but it was fun to look.
We had a great time and it was another lovely night out.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday was lame. I was up at 6:30 after very little sleep so I could shower and do some work.
Therapy in the afternoon was at least somewhat good.
( Therapy Stuff )
I made shrimp po'boys for dinner, and learned that I've been doing the butter sauce wrong which is why it's been washing all of the marinade off of the shrimp. They were still very good, though.
In the evening we watched The Voice because our friend Deejay Young is a competitor! He is AMAZING. I got to play in the pit for a local production of "Ain't Misbehavin'" where he was one of the leads, and every night while listening to him sing I thought, "What is he DOING here?" He very much deserved to be discovered long before he actually was. After that he was quickly scooped up by the national tour of Hamilton, and has been a star ever since.
Hear for yourself (CLICK HERE)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, another early morning.
Partway through my workday I finally heard back from My Fair Lady's music coordinator, and now it's time to find a sub trombonist. And now everyone that I recruited a month ago is no longer available. Surprise surprise! I'm annoyed. I probably shouldn't have garnered interest so "early". So I had to spend part of my workday looking for subs AGAIN plus reaching out to see if anyone I'd asked initially was still available.
In the evening I made "summer spaghetti" which is wheat spaghetti, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, and a bunch of herbs roasted in a pan and drizzled with balsamic vinegar, finished with some red pepper flakes and basil and ricotta cheese. It was pretty good.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday turned out to be a madhouse for both of us.
I had been working for several hours and Jameson had just gotten started with his work when his boss very suddenly got fired. Nobody did anything wrong, but something like SIXTEEN administrators at his school were let go in Florida. We knew that his workplace had been having issues, but to suddenly fire people like that--with no warning and no one to take over their work--YIKES.
Jameson had to spend most of his day wondering if he'd be next. Fortunately (since he didn't get the promotion he wanted!) he will not be let go. Not this time, anyway. Who wants to work for a company that culls people like that?
So now he knows it's not only a dead end job, but also an employer that is willing to throw their employees out on their asses with no notice whatsoever. Yeah, no. He may not need to look for a job right this minute, but today was definitely a catalyst for whatever happens next year.
On my end, I was trying to do my work but also had planned to make breadsticks for dinner so had to prep the dough, then I kept getting resumes and video samples from potential substitute trombonists all day that I had to vet and forward, which cut into my work hours. Then I got an email from Maestra (an all-female musicians org) because I had offered to be a moderator for them two months ago and they suddenly decided they wanted to take me up on it (not a word for two months, I had to assume they'd chosen someone else.) And THEN My Fair Lady production sent out a bunch of emails that prompted me to quickly do a write-up for Megan's Foodie Finds because in two weeks cast goes into rehearsal and in one week we have orientation, where I had hoped to mention the group.
Then I realized I'd forgotten to thaw the chicken for dinner, so in the middle of making the breadsticks I had to run to Publix. Then I was in such a rush that I undercooked some of the chicken (it also may have been partly frozen from the store), it wasn't the end of the world but it's super embarrassing to me, I am HORRIFIED by the possibility of giving someone food poisoning. At least we caught it so hopefully we won't get sick.
I'm supposed to be doing work right now to make up for all of the time I lost today, but this blog posts tomorrow and I gotta get this all out before I crash from exhaustion today (because I've barely gotten any sleep the last several nights.)
Things will be ok but damn, when it rains it pours.
It feels like everyone suddenly realized October is about to be here and started freaking out.
Half of the stuff that got pressed on me today was stuff I had ready a month or more ago, except no one was ready for ME. Go figure.
Alanie had made us each a bracelet!
This "friendship bracelet" trend has been (re)popularized by Taylor Swift recently.
Jameson's was Stranger Things themed and said "Hellfire Club."
Here is mine:
We had dinner at Cowfish first, because they're always delicious.
It's like a burger-sushi fusion place, they have "burgushi" rolls which are sushi rolls but with misc cuts of beef, and then they have one "sushi burger" that's seared ahi tuna sandwiched between some rice-and-nori "buns". It's very delicious but kinda difficult to eat, which explains why they only have one (they used to have many sushi burgers.)
The other three got bento boxes,
but I wanted to try their house-made veggie burger.
It was good, but kind of dry and I was disappointed that it was heavily rice-based. Rice is not a vegetable, and there are plenty of veggies and seeds and legumes that can give a nice meat-like texture and more nutrients. Still glad I tried it.
From there it was time for spooky fun!
We started with the themed/copyrighted houses, which this year are Stranger Things and The Last of Us.
Both houses were excellent, but I liked the Last of Us house more because the costumes were just incredible, very accurate to the game. Staging in both houses was great, it felt like you were really in the sets of the two shows/games.
After a break for drinks we slammed through several more houses, only having to wait in line for between 20-40 minutes thanks to Alanie's disability pass which allowed us to use the fast pass lanes. (I don't know Alanie well and have no idea what her disability is and did not ask.) We were all VERY grateful because the park was absolutely packed, and most of the wait times were close to 1.5 hours.
Waiting in line for the circus-themed house, which was a big favorite with all of us.
Jameson and I yapped a lot about the circus because Alanie asked some questions that got us rolling about life on the train, life with the animals, crazy circus stories that we both had, etc. It was fun but I felt like we might have talked their ears off a bit.
One of the haunted houses had a "Yeti" theme that was really cool; the temperature was extra cold in that house to mimic a northern woodland, and they even used pine scent! Plus there were scares coming not only from drop doors and scarers, but also a few yeti arms reaching down from the ceiling or from below a wooden deck that we crossed at one point. It was really well done. There was one scarer in there in a huge bear costume, and for whatever reason they had to shuttle this particular scarer in and out of the house directly through the line queue. There was absolutely no way to hide this 12-foot-tall bear, so whoever was in the costume made the most of it, waving and jumping up and down and hyping up the crowd. It was pretty funny. Everyone started chanting "Bear, bear, bear!" for this random bear scarer :)
The scare zones were unfortunately lacking this year, and we all noticed and commented on it.
There was no cohesive theme at all; zodiac signs were projected onto buildings and onto the ground, and there were these aliens walking around with zodiac symbols on them, but like...so what? There was nothing scary about it. There was no apparent storyline, nothing about an invasion or what the zodiac had to do with aliens. One of the stages had a sort of 60s-70s vibe about it, so maybe Age of Aquarius? But it wasn't clear and ultimately made no sense at all. I felt bad for the scarers, but they were out there doing their best anyway.
Before leaving (around midnight) we visited one of the cooler gift shops; I forget what it's called but it's got kind of a H.G. Wells, film noir, comic book thing going on inside. None of us bought anything but it was fun to look.
We had a great time and it was another lovely night out.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday was lame. I was up at 6:30 after very little sleep so I could shower and do some work.
Therapy in the afternoon was at least somewhat good.
( Therapy Stuff )
I made shrimp po'boys for dinner, and learned that I've been doing the butter sauce wrong which is why it's been washing all of the marinade off of the shrimp. They were still very good, though.
In the evening we watched The Voice because our friend Deejay Young is a competitor! He is AMAZING. I got to play in the pit for a local production of "Ain't Misbehavin'" where he was one of the leads, and every night while listening to him sing I thought, "What is he DOING here?" He very much deserved to be discovered long before he actually was. After that he was quickly scooped up by the national tour of Hamilton, and has been a star ever since.
Hear for yourself (CLICK HERE)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, another early morning.
Partway through my workday I finally heard back from My Fair Lady's music coordinator, and now it's time to find a sub trombonist. And now everyone that I recruited a month ago is no longer available. Surprise surprise! I'm annoyed. I probably shouldn't have garnered interest so "early". So I had to spend part of my workday looking for subs AGAIN plus reaching out to see if anyone I'd asked initially was still available.
In the evening I made "summer spaghetti" which is wheat spaghetti, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, and a bunch of herbs roasted in a pan and drizzled with balsamic vinegar, finished with some red pepper flakes and basil and ricotta cheese. It was pretty good.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday turned out to be a madhouse for both of us.
I had been working for several hours and Jameson had just gotten started with his work when his boss very suddenly got fired. Nobody did anything wrong, but something like SIXTEEN administrators at his school were let go in Florida. We knew that his workplace had been having issues, but to suddenly fire people like that--with no warning and no one to take over their work--YIKES.
Jameson had to spend most of his day wondering if he'd be next. Fortunately (since he didn't get the promotion he wanted!) he will not be let go. Not this time, anyway. Who wants to work for a company that culls people like that?
So now he knows it's not only a dead end job, but also an employer that is willing to throw their employees out on their asses with no notice whatsoever. Yeah, no. He may not need to look for a job right this minute, but today was definitely a catalyst for whatever happens next year.
On my end, I was trying to do my work but also had planned to make breadsticks for dinner so had to prep the dough, then I kept getting resumes and video samples from potential substitute trombonists all day that I had to vet and forward, which cut into my work hours. Then I got an email from Maestra (an all-female musicians org) because I had offered to be a moderator for them two months ago and they suddenly decided they wanted to take me up on it (not a word for two months, I had to assume they'd chosen someone else.) And THEN My Fair Lady production sent out a bunch of emails that prompted me to quickly do a write-up for Megan's Foodie Finds because in two weeks cast goes into rehearsal and in one week we have orientation, where I had hoped to mention the group.
Then I realized I'd forgotten to thaw the chicken for dinner, so in the middle of making the breadsticks I had to run to Publix. Then I was in such a rush that I undercooked some of the chicken (it also may have been partly frozen from the store), it wasn't the end of the world but it's super embarrassing to me, I am HORRIFIED by the possibility of giving someone food poisoning. At least we caught it so hopefully we won't get sick.
I'm supposed to be doing work right now to make up for all of the time I lost today, but this blog posts tomorrow and I gotta get this all out before I crash from exhaustion today (because I've barely gotten any sleep the last several nights.)
Things will be ok but damn, when it rains it pours.
It feels like everyone suddenly realized October is about to be here and started freaking out.
Half of the stuff that got pressed on me today was stuff I had ready a month or more ago, except no one was ready for ME. Go figure.
