goofball on a train

I slept poorly, as I always do before a travel day. Anticipation and anxiety.

Woke at 4:25am, managed to slap on some clothing and brush my teeth and grab my suitcase before the cab got here (he is always 10 minutes early, which I love.) We drove to the airport chatting almost the whole way; this guy has been picking me up on these early morning rides for nearly three years now! I was sorry to tell him that this would be my last ride for a while.

The first flight was just fine, the second was slightly delayed but otherwise normal. As the pilot pointed out features within the Cascade mountain range, I couldn't see jack from my aisle seat and felt annoyed with myself for not thinking to get a window for the second flight. BUT, my stomach had been upset all day, so the aisle was probably the better choice. Stupid body! Eight hours on planes today.

I split an Uber with Elen (cello) and Michael (clarinet) and we made good time to the hotel. It's a recently remodeled Best Western and the rooms are ideal for tour life. Moderately spacious; plenty of counter space; a larger-than-usual fridge; a big sink with food service-grade hot water; a microwave. I'll take all of that over ginchy decor or vintage charm any day!


I dropped everything and went to a local co-op right next to the hotel.


It was rather small and I was a bit disappointed not to find many local products. But they have a nice hot bar and serve a $5 dinner on Thursdays, which info I was quick to share with my peers.

From there I walked to the next-nearest local grocery called My Fresh Basket. To get to it you have to cross a bridge over Spokane Falls. I was not prepared for how big, how fast-moving, how awe-inspiring this waterfall would be. You could hear the roar of the rushing water from blocks away. It was amazing. Watching TONS of water rushing so violently down made me feel small indeed.
(CLICK HERE for video 1)
(CLICK HERE for video 2)

We are here for a week and I will DEFINITELY be taking more footage, but this was my first time seeing it and I was awestruck.

My Fresh Basket was lovely, and much more what I had in mind for finding interesting and local products! I tried not to go TOO insane here because there are a lot of co-ops between now and the end of tour, but I did take home these gems:


- DOMA coffee: A sample-sized 1/4 pound since it's sold in bulk, I just wanted to try it. A lovely medium roast.
- Ladder Coffee Original Black: another local coffee, canned. Sometimes I like to get a canned coffee for bus rides.
- Heart Water Pink Himalayan Salt: I thought this would taste like, idk, Pocari Sweat or something, but it was just..."soft" water. Like it tasted very neutral. Pretty good, but I can probably make it at home.
- WET Hydration Orange Mango Ginger Turmeric: A hydration booster (so kinda like Gatorade) but with zero calories because it's sweetened with monkfruit. This tasted pretty good! I would definitely try their other flavors.
- Laurel Tree Rosemary Garlic Hazelnuts: I didn't know that hazelnuts were a big Pacific Northwest thing, but apparently they are because there were bags of them everywhere in all kinds of flavors. This was the most unique flavor that I found, and hazelnuts are my favorite so looking forward to trying these :)
- Fage Greek Yogurt Stracciatella: Not local, but I've never seen these "Creamy Dreamy" dessert flavors from Fage before and had to check it out! Will get to this in the 2nd half of the week I'm sure.
- Tillamook Oregon Marionberry yogurt: Tillamook sells marionberry and huckleberry yogurts and ice cream ONLY in this part of the country; I have never seen it for sale on the east coast. A locally-exclusive flavor that I wanted to try!

And I got my usual groceries too (fruit, veggies, plain yogurt, protein, etc.)
Back at the hotel I felt VERY tired, but managed to stay awake and also not eat dinner until 4:30 Pacific Time.
Unpacked, got settled in, and did go to bed around 8pm because that's 11pm Eastern Time and at that point I'd been up for like 19 hours, and I had to get up at 6am tomorrow for court reporting training.

But damn, what a lovely first afternoon in Spokane! I hope the rest of the week is just as good.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was awake early, mainly due to the time zone changes but also because I had Digital Court Reporting training at 10am ET, 7am PT. It went pretty well...mostly it was just walking me through where to upload audio files and how to document things. I still need to learn how to use their dictation software, and how to notarize things, and how to use the audio equipment...I'm nervous about all of this, but also, how hard can it be? The job sounds like something I can do, let's just put it that way, and although I'm bound to make mistakes at first if I am conscientious and take notes I should get better over time. We will see what happens but for now I'm optimistic.

After that I had free hotel breakfast, which wasn't as good as I'd hoped (few protein options) but getting free food at all is very nice. I tried to relax for most of the morning because my guts were still upset over something. I don't feel nauseous or anything, just, uh, "overactive"? So it could be nerves, or that I ate something that didn't sit well.

My caramels arrived around noon! Excellent, because then I could bring them to the theatre for opening night in Spokane!


We are in this convention center theatre, which has 2,609 seats. Pretty cool!
It's a modern and new theatre, and the only bummer so far is having to climb three flights of stairs to reach the Green Room (which is where I stashed the caramels for everyone to have easy access.)


The stairwell does have open ports to the backstage area though, which is SUPER COOL.
I'm not supposed to be sharing these so PLEASE don't reshare them, leave them here. Thank you.
Points of interest: to the right you can see a lot of ropes for the fly rigging system. To the left you can see wigs lined up in front of chairs for the actors (a lot of costume changes happen directly backstage.) And of course setpieces and our road cases and all that. Reminder that all photos can be opened full-size in a new tab for easier viewing.



The pit was a normal pit. Our MD is still out because he's got a nasty cold and didn't want to be coughing/sneezing/blowing his nose throughout the show while also trying to conduct, so took a sick day and our assistant MD Michael led our sound check and later the show. The show was very well attended, and the audience was awesome! Lots of cheers, laughter, and applause. It's going to be a good week if that's what we're starting off with!

Also, the caramels got RAVE reviews :) So many people stopped me in the hall to exclaim over them, and three different people said they were the best caramels they'd ever had. High praise! I'm seriously considering entering them in a State Fair competition or something (but I'd have to be actually AROUND for that to happen haha.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday turned out to be very productive.

( CLICK HERE for Foodie Adventures )

After all of that I still had stuff to do, like research for court reporting and a few applications to touring companies and of course typing up this whole blog post. Jameson had his first physical therapy for his hand; it seemed to go well, and they gave him some sort of medical tape to try and help hold his inflammed vein/tendon in position while he plays(?) He has a gig on Saturday so I guess we'll find out how well that works.

And before I knew it it was time for the show.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I decided to post this before the evening show, so hopefully it goes well haha.
Today was long and fun, and tomorrow I have an early, busy morning of court reporting things. After that I want to do some more exploring downtown (the falls and some thrift stores, a break from foodie adventures.)

I felt lowkey lousy on Monday, likely due to stress and having pinched some nerve somewhere while carving pumpkins. The joys of getting old I suppose, hunching over a big gourd with your arm in the air for two hours is no longer a thing you can do without consequences.

I got up early because I wanted to take a trip to the Millenia Mall area, which is about a 30 minute drive.

My main reason for going was to get Jameson an early birthday present, a bottle of Parce rum (he likes it a lot, mainly because the Cubs endorse it but it IS pretty good.) I also saw a mid-sized bottle of Skrewball peanut butter whiskey so got that too (our local stores have either a really big bottle or the tiny single-shot bottles and nothing in between)

Side-quest 2: getting a foam cone from a craft store. You know, the green ones that you are supposed to stick flowers into or stick into vases or whatever. They make a great packing material for trombone bells, to protect them during shipping or transit. You just stuff one in the bell, ideally wrapped in a thin cloth or something. Got that at Hobby Lobby and enjoyed looking around a bit and listening to their Christian music (howevermuch I may roll my eyes, it does make me nostalgic for childhood and home) then moved on to Target for oatmeal and a black towel for the pit. Got the oatmeal but small black hand towels were freaking $13 so screw that.

Then to a Dollar Tree hoping to find cheap flip flops for hotel rooms (success) and a stiff-sided tote bag for my mutes (fail.) What's frustrating is that I HAD all of these things, but was not offered a tour after Tootsie ended so assumed I wasn't going back out, and left a lot of useful stuff in our last hotel room with a "FREE PLEASE TAKE" sign on it. At least it was cheap stuff.

Anyway, final side-quest was a trip to The Container Store. I've never been to one but was really hopeful to find a good food box. You can get rectangular Sterilite containers at Target or Walmart, but I've had two of those shatter in my luggage because the plastic is brittle/cheap and the lids don't latch well either. Plus I hate that they have tapered sides, with the tops wider than the base, that makes them really annoying to pack. There were soooo many containers of the almost-right size. I finally found what I wanted in the food section: a 6-quart container that was more square than rectangle, made of a thick and less rigid plastic (good for taking hits and shocks inside luggage) and with a lid that latches on four sides instead of two.

The only thing that I did not find today was the stiff tote bag and the black towel.
Back home, unpacked everything and showed Jameson the liquor so he'd know to enjoy it, then tried out the new food box.
It's great! Plenty of room for all of my stuff, and the shape is much more convenient. I hope it survives well.

New container on left, old one on right. Believe it or not they are nearly the same size, just different shapes.


I ate lunch and went back to re-packing, weighing my luggage again because it somehow got overweight from adding misc food items and trying to add my pea coat back in. By the time I was done my luggage was how I wanted it but I had a blazing tension headache...and I'd forgotten about therapy!! Luckily I was only a few minutes late.

This was my last therapy session, and it ended "not with a bang but a whimper."
The therapist reached me from some very public place with a lot of noise in the background, it was clear that neither of us really had time or attention for this today, but he knew it was likely my last session so wanted to reach out and wish me luck, see how I was feeling, etc. Right at that moment I was feeling like my head was gonna crack like an egg, but I ignored it and thanked him for everything, and promised to reconnect if I rejoined BetterHelp in the future. He really was an excellent therapist, and I learned a great deal that I think will be helpful. I canceled my BetterHelp subscription right after our session.

In the evening after Jameson left for rehearsal, I had a glass of cheap wine and decided to go for a walk even though the sun was nearly down. I don't usually walk this late...it was nice despite being SO hot and humid. The streets were empty and quiet; every time I stepped on a fallen acorn the snap of the breaking shell echoed and bounced off the houses.


Along the way I found this toad. He was absolutely horrified by me so I didn't hold him hostage long.


I took a shorter route than usual because it was quite dark, and because I had mostly wanted to think, not exercise.

Somehow this tour snuck up on me. Like, part of me never accepted that it was really happening. It took months and months to finalize that I was actually signed on, and then all of the Disney Candlelight stuff, and then data entry day after day, neverending...it never felt real this time. And so a part of me is upset and frantic when it shouldn't be, like as though this is all happening too fast. Well it's not. I have everything that I need, and if I don't I can just buy it, and there are people to help me and guide me once I'm there, and I know the music as well as I can. I am as prepared as I can be, and the only thing left is to go Do The Thing.

Just as I was getting back to the house I noticed a streak of reddish light in the sky.
A rocket launch.


Back home, typing this up and doing my last load of laundry. God I'll miss having regular access to a washer and dryer.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday, Jameson's overnight Disney rehearsal went until nearly 2:30am, so we both slept in as hard as we could.
I was still up at 8:30am, but didn't eat breakfast until nearly an hour later. Coffee was enough.

Drove to Dollar General and Lo! They had the stiff-sided totes! The exact same pattern that I had previously, even. Score.
I also popped into Publix for my Travel Bagel and Travel Apple because they may save my ass if there's no time to grab lunch. Back home, REALLY packing this time. Everything into the suitcase and weighed. 48 pounds, which isn't great but not terrible considering I usually travel with two suitcases.

Then I practiced one last time, going over trouble spots, and wiped down and packed up my trombone, taping the outer latches shut. Only the middle latch locks so I made sure to do that. The trombone case is so much larger this time that I assume it has to be checked, which I don't like but it can't be helped. The one good thing in all this is I'll get to walk through the airport with just my backpack. What a dream!


The rest of the day seemed to fly by. I didn't do a lot...I felt distracted. Perhaps worked on Foodie Finds a bit, and watched anime, and didn't dust the bookshelf like I'd said I would.

We had no trick-or-treaters...sadly this is a vacation rental area, so people take their kids elsewhere knowing the majority of houses here won't be occupied at this time of year.

We watched the finale of The Fall of the House of Usher. It was such a good series, I'd definitely watch it again.
And then suddenly it was time for bed.

Am I ready? Sheesh. I don't know.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Not surprisingly, I slept pretty poorly.
I was up at 5:45 to get dressed and make a cup of coffee, and have some time to myself.
Jameson got up at 7 and got me to the airport, where we hugged goodbye. I hate that part.

Security was way faster than usual, so I had time to eat a small breakfast before the first flight.
The flight was on time but the layover in DFW was so short that I had to run to the next terminal, and was one of the last people on the plane. Not many people going to Boise, though, so there was plenty of room on the plane and we all got to move around a bit. And both flights were very smooth and comfortable.

And my trombone made it safely! Yay! Glad I invested in a good case :)
It looks like the TSA may have done a little inspection of it, too. I've never gotten a sticker like this before.
Wonder if they were disappointed to find a boring trombone in there.


I Ubered to the hotel, and was surprised to arrive right when the tour bus pulled up with the cast!
They bussed over from Logan, Utah where rehearsals have been going on for the past several weeks. 
It was strange to be a part of this tour, yet not know anyone. But on the way to our rooms I got to introduce myself to a few people, and that was nice. Tomorrow we're supposed to have a company dinner, and maybe I can make some connections there.

I texted the MD to see if the band had any work to do. Nope!
So it was off to the grocery! Not just any grocery: Boise Co-op!


It was within easy walking distance, and the weather was lovely, dry and chilly and fall-like.
Ah, I've been craving this!

The co-op was great. Expensive, but that's kinda the thing: whether you shop at Walmart or a co-op, you get what you pay for.


Celery root! It was the size of a dodge ball!


What the heck are kiwi berries? I'd never heard of them before so had to get 'em.
Turns out they're just a mini variety of kiwi that you can eat whole. Yum!


I got some beautiful-looking bok choy and some maple roasted squash, and all of my usual tour groceries, and a bunch of local goodies to try!


I haven't tried anything but the bread so far. It was DELICIOUS.
Chewy, crunchy crust. Super-fluff interior. Pieces of rosemary evenly distributed throughout the dough. Wonderful!
And we have toasters in our rooms too. I sense some yummy herb turkey melts in my future.


I spent the rest of the night unpacking and remembering how tour life goes.
By the time 9pm rolled around I felt exhausted, but tried to stay up as late as I could.
Gotta adjust fast to that time change.

------------------------------------------------------------

And so it begins.

Tomorrow the band has rehearsal for most of the day, then we have the full company dinner.
I'm nervous, but hopeful.

I am such a total wreck lately.
But this being a public post, I'll spare you. If you have ever had health anxiety you'll know what I mean; if not, just be glad you don't have to deal with it because it's scary, feels terrible, and is exhausting.

Work was also weirdly frustrating. I spent nearly an hour working on a complex profile with a lot of information scattered throughout pages of what was basically someone's entire life story. We're SUPPOSED to be processing formal intake forms with fields like Name, Birthdate, Religion, etc., but this was, like, a typed word document, with paragraphs. A literary work!

I carefully found all of the important info, filled out their profile, saved my work....and it didn't save.
I had saved once earlier thank god, so didn't lose everything...but lost more than half of the work. I tried clearing cookies and doing it again, and still couldn't save. Tried logging in and out, tried saving in three different browsers...nothing worked. So I sent an error ticket and informed my supervisor so she wouldn't raise her eybrows at the insane amount of time I spent on that profile today.

Then later on I ran into a duplicated profile and couldn't find a way to delete the duplicate. Someone in another department was able to help me out, but today must have been my day for running into weird stuff at work.

Because I was in a general state of high anxiety I was working more slowly than usual, so maybe that's why I ended up an hour short by the end of the day. Jameson and I had dinner, then he worked on homework and I completed my missing hour. I also got some tour paperwork including a contact sheet. The French hornist for the show found me and friended me first...a French horn! Yay!! We chatted a bit, and I found out that most of the musicians in the pit are female! How exciting! A big change of pace for me!

The instrumentation is MD/Keyboard, Concertmaster/Violin, Cello, Reed 1, Reed 2, Trumpet, French Horn, Trombone, Bass, and Drums.
Still ten musicians, but one keyboard instead of two, violin and cello instead of guitar and Key 2, and the horn replacing a trumpet.

I'm grateful that they have a trombone...and I can tell you that the ONLY reason they have a trombone is because of "Get Me To The Church On Time":



--------------------------------------------------------------------

I woke up at 3am again last night due to tension/anxiety, but was able to remind myself that it was definitely just anxiety, I've been through this before, and nothing is actually wrong. I talked to myself in the way Jameson used to talk to me, when he was in a better mindspace. And in the way my mom used to talk to me, when she was alive. Sometimes, you're the only one available to give two f*cks about yourself, and about your emotional state. And in those times, talking to yourself, like a parakeet professing love to a mirror, is better than the alternative.

So I woke up a few hours later around 8:30, breakfast, watched anime, swept the pool deck, which only took 20-30 minutes but by the time I was done my clothes were soaked with sweat. Lunch, to the grocery for ingredients, home to practice trombone and clean the bathrooms.

Dinner was supposed to be HelloFresh but I forgot that it was a crock pot recipe, and realized too late to start it.
So we had takeout Greek, watched an episode of Forged in Fire, then Jameson went out with some friends and I vacuumed and read and listened to quiet music and watched anime.

I went outside to put a tote bag back in my car, and saw this snail climbing our garage door.


-----------------------------------------------------------------

I guess I'll be waking up at 3am every night in a panic now. Great.
Woke BACK up around 9, breakfast, worked on Foodie Finds.

Jameson wanted to go for a walk with me, so we went and it was humid and disgusting and made us wish for fall, real fall.
But I am always happier when he joins me for walks.

I made an appointment for the blood draw I was supposed to have months ago, and I will try not to cancel it. Even if I panic and pass out and whatever, I need to get it done or I will lose my pcp. After lunch I remembered to start the crock pot meal. I practiced trombone, watched a little Wheel of Time, and helped my stepmom with some stuff she's working on for her house.

Close to dinnertime I got a surprise call from my aunt, who has been fighting bronchitis.
We talked about our concerns and health issues and worries. She is pretty much the only relative who actually checks on me, and vice versa, so we are very glad to have each other to confide in.

I was describing my absolute terror of going for this blood draw, and she asked, "Can you pinpoint exactly what it is you're afraid of?" I opened my mouth to answer, and realized...there really isn't anything. I'm afraid of the sensation of the needle going in, and of fluid flowing out of me. I'm afraid of the embarrassment and awful sensation of passing out. I'm afraid of being brushed off and treated like my concerns or fears don't matter by the nurse. And I said that out loud. And my aunt didn't question it. But it made me think, is that stuff worth being afraid of? Saying them out loud made those fears smaller and more insignificant. And immediately made me feel better about the whole thing. I decompressed a little, right then and there.

So, in addition to relaxation exercises and therapy, I'll start incorporating saying the fear out loud; pinpointing what exactly it is about the situation/activity that makes me so afraid and uptight, and voicing that. Maybe that will help me to add another dollop of logic to these panic situations.

I was finally able to have a good night's sleep too.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I got up early to do my data entry job, but remember how I couldn't save my work earlier in the week?
Well now it's a sitewide issue impacting the entire company. I've started a plague, ya'll.

Since there was no way to do any work, and certainly no one will be addressing this over a holiday weekend, I got to enjoy another day off. I went for a walk, and it was hot and disgusting but there was also a pleasant breeze.

Want to come with me?

( Go on a Walk )

Back home I got cleaned up and had lunch, then started on the dough for homemade breadsticks.
It's a very easy basic dough. While it was proofing I got the bolognese going. It'll simmer all day until dinnertime.


By the time I was done with the sauce and cleaning up the dough was ready to be shaped.
I'm not good at shaping.


But they still turned out fine. Brushed them with butter and garlic powder, and put a pizza seasoning blend on half of 'em.


They were surprisingly light and fluffy, flavorful and delicious with the marinara.
Jameson said they were better than Olive Garden's! I don't know about that, but they were definitely comparable.


The rest of the night was chill. We heard jets going by overhead and found out that it's a flyover for a football game at nearby Camping World Stadium.


----------------------------------------------------------------

When you read this it'll be Monday, and I guess Labor Day.
Since no one will be in the office to fix our company-wide error, I assume I'll have another unscheduled day off.
Jameson has a special-event Disney gig next week, so he'll be gone quite a lot, so this is actually good timing: I'll be more inclined to put in more hours when he's not around to spend time with. But we will see; it all depends on this error getting fixed.

My only other plans are to work, have my blood draw on Thursday, and maybe make something from Baking Yesteryear.

Monday, being the 3rd, I noticed that many of my friends had to work.

Well, Independence Day is only one day after all. Lame, but there it is.

I felt "ok" after breakfast--this is only my second day on the Prilosec and it can take four days to fully work--just had a little bit of cramping/burning when I ate raspberries, and after finishing my coffee (which I made weaker than usual and sipped slowly and carefully.) We will see how things are by Wednesday, and that will determine whether I'm doing a $$$$ CT scan.

After breakfast I decided to bake a loaf of bread.
I picked a SUPER simple recipe with only six ingredients and no Tangzhong method: flour, sugar, salt, water, butter, yeast.
Throw it all in a bowl and mix, then knead.

Let rise, bake. Voila, "a bread".


Turns out, I didn't have enough bread flour so had to use majority wheat flour.
As a result the loaf is a bit dense, but the crumb is nice and even. It also blew out the side a little bit, but that's ok.
The texture is more crumbly too because of the lower protein in wheat flour + no Tangzhong.
All of this was pretty much expected. It baked up nice and it's edible so it's a good first loaf after essentially two years of no baking.

And no matter how bread turns out, the house smells FANTASTIC afterward :)

Practiced some trombone but didn't take myself too seriously with it.
In the evening Jameson and I watched Evil Dead Rise. Jameson likes "hokey" horror but I'm not really into it other than to make snide comments about the usual tropes (car won't start, victims suddenly forget how to run away, etc). It was fun to watch, though, and there were some cute references to other great horror films.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Today is the 4th of July! Independence Day!

I don't care!

Not surprisingly, we are not feeling very patriotic. I'm sitting here with a mildly burning stomach knowing that if it doesn't magically resolve itself by tomorrow I'll have to get a costly out-of-pocket CT scan. OR I could ignore it and hope it isn't or doesn't become something serious. Because there is no ACTUAL HEALTH CARE for someone like me.

I'm wondering how much of these physical symptoms are being caused by pure anxiety and nerves.

Anyway, I am no longer incapacitated by my stomach cramping up, but I do still feel uncomfortable burning after breakfast, after dinner, and sometimes in the middle of the day too. The clinician said to schedule the CT "on Wednesday if you don't see improvement". I mean, there's SOME improvement?

We spent the 4th playing video games, reading books, swimming in the pool, talking, and making the Chicago dog baked potatoes with sweet corn. Well, I did that last bit anyway. They were tasty! It's just a baked potato with a Sabrett dog (or whatever you want to use), lettuce and tomato, pickles, sport peppers, celery salt, onion, and a honey mustard dressing. You can also add whatever condiments you want of course.


The sweet corn required the least effort and was soooooo good. It's been a long time since either of us have had it, and I don't know about Jameson but for me it brought nostalgia and was a good "memory food" for the 4th. And interestingly, none of this hurt my stomach at all.

At night our neighborhood erupted with fireworks. Someone was setting them off in the middle of the street outside our house, so I went out to watch a bit and applaud (applause = "I'm not here to be a bitchy Karen and call the cops"). We went to bed early because we both have long days tomorrow.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

(Blah blah disclaimer, this is all my own thought and opinion and does not reflect the views of Disney or any of it's affiliates, etc etc)

We were both up at 6am on Wednesday, Jameson to load in at the Dr. Phillips Center for Spamalot, and me to go to Disney Traditions!

I drove out to Disney University, which is just a big office building used for all sorts of training. There were a lot of people filing in, and everyone was greeted with Disney smiles. I felt bewildered by all the courtesy; I started to queue and then was called directly over (when was the last time a customer service person didn't scream, "I CAN HELP THE NEXT GUEST", but instead made eye contact and said, "Come over here and I'll get you started!" For me it's been a LONG time.)

I was whisked through sign-in, given a promotional bag for Disney's credit union, and found myself swept up in a little creek of humanity into a cafeteria, which is where we all waited to be called for our training sessions. It was quite noisy in there, mostly because a large group of African folks were being gathered and receiving instruction/doing call-and-response with a Disney castmember speaking an African language. I suspect they're part of Disney's Cultural Representative Program.

Soon enough we were called. My training group was huge, something like 60-70 people.
We sat at round tables and got bombarded with all sorts of information, all centered around Disney's "Five Keys": Safety, Courtesy, Inclusion, Show, and Efficiency. Inclusion is a new "key", and a much needed one for every employer out there, frankly.

As you might expect, we can't go into detail about what training is like and couldn't take pictures or anything like that.
I'll just say that it was a full 8-hour day, we covered a lot of information and our trainers were awesome. Both were from Pennsylvania so I was biased toward them anyway :p At one point we got to hop on a bus and visit Main Street, Magic Kingdom, and Tomorrowland, but it was ridiculously hot (heat index on the pavement was around 115°F!) and a storm was moving in so we were probably only out there for 30-40 minutes. Of special note is the fact that the "Disney Look"--Disney's dress code--has been loosened. You can now have visible arm tattoos, beards, longer hair, and some more costume flexibility. This is probably partially the result of COVID, and partially the result of Inclusion. Now people who have tattoos, or who look a certain way for a specific reason, may be able to apply to work, whereas before they could have been sort of passively excluded by the dress code requirements.

At the end of training, in rather dramatic and ceremonial fashion, we were presented with our name tags, followed shortly by our Castmember ID badges. Several people got emotional when receiving theirs; lots of people in this world dream of working for Disney, but it can be VERY difficult to actually get a job there in any department. I am proof of that. I've been applying to work for Disney, in every capacity from Custodial to Corporate, for twenty years.

And here it is. Proof that I am employed by Disney.


Even though I’m just a substitute musician, being a Disney employee is a goal I’ve had since I started playing the trombone.

Some people got here much faster, or advanced higher.
I got here in my own time, and I got here at all.

If I do get called to perform for Candlelight this Christmas, I will do my very best.
But whether I do or not, either way I am thrilled to have gotten this far.

After training I gathered my things and drove downtown to the Dr. Phillips Center, where Encore was loading in with Spamalot.
I was late, but the orchestra hadn't even tuned yet so it was all good.
Tootsie performed at the Dr. Phil last year. It felt odd to be in the pit again, with six or seven times the number of people crammed down there, and me on the opposite side. And I walked backstage and knew exactly where to go, and saw my name on the wall with the Tootsie tag. How strange.

The pit:


Sound check was fine but it was SO loud down there, by the time we got out I had a blazing headache.
Then I made a very poor choice and chugged half of a protein shake with my dose of Omeprazole for the night, and immediately had stomach cramps and nausea. To be clear, this was likely not from the shake itself, but from slamming it into an empty stomach with a medication that impedes digestion. The headache (which quickly became a painful and nausea-inducing migraine) also did not help. Which meant I spent the rest of my night on the floor with my eyes closed while Jameson watched The Office, then we went to bed early.

------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday, I got up early because I had another Disney training session.
I was happy to realize within the first few bites of breakfast that my stomach was not going to give me any trouble, but it did feel a little raw so I consciously made myself eat more slowly than usual (I DO tend to gulp down food at times and will need to work on unlearning that behavior.) Eating slowly, my stomach actually felt a lot better and I was able to finish a whole cup of coffee, which I haven't been able to do all week.

Packed a little nonperishable lunch and headed out around 9am.
This one was safety and PPE-based, and it was about four hours of safety and informational videos.

When that was over I had just about an hour at home to pack myself a dinner and take a breather before we had to head downtown for sound check and rehearsal. We were supposed to do a full run at 8pm, but for whatever reason Production dragged their feet so hard that we didn't even start until 9:30. The whole day was a lot of sitting around for me, between Disney PPE training and rehearsal.

By the time we got home and in bed it was 12:30. My stomach had been fine for the entire day, even after scarfing down my dinner at rehearsal without thinking.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Friday, we both woke up slightly later than usual.
I felt fairly normal after eating breakfast, just a slight acidic feeling.

I've gone ahead and scheduled a CT scan for Tuesday, and a GI consultation for the following Tuesday.
Turns out the CT scan is only between $200-$300, which is a price I'm willing to pay out of pocket to make sure this isn't something serious.

Reminder that my mom discovered she had stage IV pancreatic cancer at the age of 42, and she was dead four months later.
I'm 39, and pancreatic cancer is NOT easy to catch. Even if this stomach-acid-thing is something minor or unrelated, this whole experience is an excuse to have a look in the abdominal area for ANYTHING unusual. So I'll take it.

Anyway, I decided to take a walk before lunch because it was 90°F with a heat index of 95°F, and while that's awfully uncomfortable it's probably the best we're going to see all week. On my walk I saw a Cooper's hawk, a turtle in a pond, and a white ibis who let me get very close because he was intent on hunting lizards in the newly-cut grass.

The rest of the day was calm and quiet until it was time for rehearsal.
It was a dress rehearsal with press and a small audience, so we wore our concert blacks.
Once again, everything was late late late so we didn't start the dress run until 9pm (it was supposed to start at 8pm).
I felt bad for the audience, but this is also typical of Encore so I think the late start wasn't totally unexpected.

We didn't get home until 1am, and my stomach was a bit of a wreck mainly because it was empty, but still nowhere near as bad as it was earlier in the week.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Saturday morning, nice and rainy and dreary.
Despite it being the rainy season it's been pretty dry in this area, we really do need the rain, and the overcast skies are a blessed break from the sun and awful heat we've had all week.

After breakfast I went to the radiology place to get my contrast for the CT, then to the store for Prilosec and groceries.
Lunch, and a lot of nothing. It stayed overcast and a "cool" 90°F, and I found that soothing to the innermost parts of my soul.

We drove to the theatre for opening night, hours early in order to "run some things".
Once again Production was considered themselves to be the priority and trumped all of the time, so we verbally went over transitions and got to play through a few rough spots, but that was it before we had bow rehearsals for the actors and a group photo to take and finally the audience was let into the theatre.

I was surprised at how many people actually showed up. It was nearly a full house, even the balcony was partially sold!
Backstage, we had a cute gift of piles of candy along with a message from Clay (Director):


I played to the best of my ability in the cramped pit...the main obstacles that I have are 1) I CANNOT find good posture when we're packed in like sardines, and that makes is uncomfortable to play my instrument, 2) the cymbals are literally one inch from my left ear so I have to put notes in my book to put in an earplug at certain points in the show, which distracts from actually playing music, and 3) we are so cramped that it is difficult to reach my mutes when I need to, so I'm having to skip a lot of mute changes.

But no one in the audience knows about any of this, and they laughed and cheered and seemed to have a wonderful time (playing comedy shows is the BEST!) After the show I followed Jameson to the lobby so he could greet his friends, and as a result I overheard many people wishing the show were running for a full week, not just two days. I totally agree. The props and scene work are amazing, and everyone has been working so hard, only for it to end after two performances. Doesn't seem right.

Some pictures, for context (most are courtesy Encore):




A pic of Jameson and I with one of his friends post-show (I love her cute skirt!)


Jameson was down about his performance, and the overall fact that he doesn't take joy from working on these shows any more. Part of that is his own mindset (negativity and self-depreciation currently), but the other part is that he gets very little public recognition for the FOUR MONTHS of work that he's poured into this production. Clay's name is on the program as the director, Clay gets a great deal of credit and attention...and I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it, too. But it was Jameson, not Clay, who rehearsed the choir, rehearsed the orchestra, worked through cues and cuts and samples and tracking, for months and months, because Clay had to work (and yes Jameson was working full time while doing all of this as well.) As Jameson puts it, it's disappointing and disheartening. I would add "demeaning", to have to stand on the sidelines after putting in all of that work hoping for any kind of recognition, while Clay receives basically all of the media accolades. Clay is Jameson's good friend, and I wish for once that he'd remember to defer a large chunk of the credit to Jameson, not just verbally backstage but also in PUBLIC and in MEDIA STATEMENTS. But it's too late for that on this show, and this isn't the first time it's happened either.

I don't know. I just hate to see the person that I love disheartened, when he should be proud. Brushed aside, when he should be lifted up for all of the work that he's done. It seems very not right to me. And it put a big damper on the evening for both of us.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday, we are back to scalding hot temps and full sun out there.
I am typing this up and arguing with myself about going for a walk. I SHOULD, but it's gonna be SO GROSS.

(She did not, in fact, go for a walk.)

I repotted a plant that I've been meaning to repot, and read Saga comics, and goofed off online.

When it was time for the show, we went.
It went well, though the audience was a bit smaller and personally I thought there were more mistakes than the previous night (this is what a lot of musicians call "the second show phenomenon".) Overall I thought it went really well, once again it was a good crowd and after the show there were many friends to greet in the audience. This time it was more people that I actually knew, so we had some good conversations and I really felt welcomed back to Orlando :)

It was "load out", so I waited while Jameson packed up his things and then we hauled it to the parking garage.
There will probably be a cast party but a date hasn't been announced yet.

And, that's it! Spamalot is done.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Now it's Monday, and I'm nervous, so my tummy hurts again.
Tomorrow I have the CT scan. Any medical procedure pretty much makes me nervous.
But it'll be good to get some answers.

I'm hoping for "You need to work on being less anxious" or "See that? That's an ulcer."

The bus ride to Madison was wonderfully short and uneventful.

And the hotel is lovely! They had all of our rooms ready for us!
After throwing our luggage into our rooms Katie (physical therapist) and I walked to Madison Sourdough.
This was my plan and Katie wanted in on it: eat lunch at the bakery, visit an adjacent vintage toy shop, walk to the local co-op for groceries.


It was close to closing time for the bakery, but they still had some lovely cakes out and a few loaves of bread left on the wall.
( CLICK HERE for Bakery and Toy Store )
After that it was just a few blocks to the co-op.


It was very nice! Very well stocked, I found almost all of my groceries there.



In addition, of course, had to get some locally-made items!
That last pic above is of a brand of jerky I'd never seen before.
It turned out to be locally made, and not only that, low in sodium and sugar, low in fat, and in interesting and unique flavors!
My fomo kicked in and I got one of each flavor, excluding only the Italiano Chicken (because it contained dairy) and the Original Beef (to be fair to the excluded chicken lol)

The haul:


- Yodelay rhubarb yogurt
- Madison Sourdough pepita polenta loaf (I split this with Katie)
- Fig and black tea jam from Quince & Apple Co.
- Simply Snackin' jerky in the following flavors: chicken cherry BBQ, teriyaki chicken pineapple, black bean chili with bell peppers, apple & cherry beef, cranberry blueberry beef, and teriyaki pineapple beef.
- Silver Creek venison jerky sausages
- Bountiful Bean "Tasty Tofu" (firm soy and herb marinated tofu)
- Enroot herbal tea (this was the only thing not local)
- The co-op's own cold brew coffee
- Deli roast beef from Usinger's

Excited to try all of it, but especially that jerky!
I won't be trying the jam or most of the jerky until I get home.

Back at the hotel I put groceries away and unpacked until dinnertime, then treated myself to dessert for dinner at Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream! It's a Wisconsin-local chain serving premium ice cream make with local dairy.

They have a LOT of flavors to choose from!
I had wanted to try Burnt Butterscotch and Black Licorice, but they didn't have either of those in stock today.
So instead it was Carrot Cake and Zanzibar Chocolate.


The Zanzibar Chocolate was SO rich and fudgey. It's made with three types of cocoa, and has won several awards.
It was incredibly good, like eating creamy cold fudge.


The flavors in the Carrot Cake were just amazing.
Wonderful spices, cream cheese, walnuts, classic carrot cake flavors.


Both flavors were super smooth, no ice crystals to be found. Definitely premium dairy!
I strolled around a bit to digest my treat, and picked up a few things at another grocery that the co-op hadn't had.
This is a college town, and there are lots of cute shops everywhere, plus we are right next to the capitol building.
Looking forward to exploring here!

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday, I opted to actually sit down and "air trombone" through Spamalot because I haven't put enough work into it yet.
It was unusually cold and dreary, so a good day to do work and save energy for sunnier days later in the week.

At sound check there was nothing new, except our drummer is remoted (in a separate room because there's not enough space in the pit) so he was answering questions by a sort of "hit the drum once for no, twice for yes" system that had us cackling. On one hand it's probably fun for him to have his own space for a week; on the other, he doesn't have anyone to interact with during the show and can't see what's going on except through the conductor cam.

This theatre is pretty, the ceiling makes it look like you're under waves of water.


We had a decent and enthusiastic crowd.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday I was awake around 7:30, which is good because that'll be 8:30 EST and I need to keep my body forward-adjusted so I can hit the ground running when tour is over in 12 days.

Twelve days! That's all that's left. Crazy.

I scheduled a laundry service because the nearest laundromats did not look promising, but after waiting past the agreed-upon time and then texting person twice over the next hour to ask if they were still coming this morning, I gave up and decided to do it myself.

Before that, though, I walked to a small farmers market down the street.
Didn't get anything, but enjoyed looking at the lovely breads, cheeses, vegetables, and wares.

Grabbed my laundry and walked to the least-scuzzy-looking laundromat. It was better than anticipated, but I ended up having to run the washer twice because the person before me had used powdered detergent and gobs of it were stuck to my BLACK concert clothing. Sigh. Hopefully this is my last time at a laundromat for a while.


When the dryer was finished I called ahead to Himal Chuli to place an order of "momocha", dumplings, for pickup.
Himal Chuli was the very first Nepali restaurant in the US! It's super small, there are I think five tables inside and 4-5 outside, which is why I got food to go. Back at the hotel, the momocha:


Four were vegetarian, filled with peanut paste, veggies, spices, and herbs.
The other four were chicken/turkey with onion, herbs, and a spicy hot sauce of some kind.
The insides:


The red sauce was a chilled tomato coriander herb gazpacho that was very refreshing and wonderful.
About half of it was left over, so I will enjoy it with other foods as the week goes on.

I was tired from tromping all around, so just practiced Spamalot and worked on Foodie Finds and chatted with some friends online and watched anime for the rest of the afternoon.

The evening show went pretty well, but there were some tongue-tied leads on stage tonight, not sure what that was about.

----------------------------------------------------------

Tomorrow I don't have anything specific planned, but might go thrifting or tour the Capitol building.
Friday I want to get pel'meni dumplings, and maybe walk around the local lake.

Monday the travel day.

1.5 hours to ATL, then fighting through the luggage and security process, then a nonstop to Dallas again.
At least from there it was a shortish bus ride to Fort Worth!

We're in an Aloft hotel. It's relatively clean and has working fixtures, = no complaints!

Across the street from the hotel is a newish bakery called 3rd Street Market.
I popped over to see if they had any bread left (it's rare for a bakery to be open on a Monday!)
They did have bread, and the owner was incredibly nice.
Got excited when I said I was there with a tour, even more excited when I was taking pictures of his shop to share in the Foodie Finds group.

And ended up giving me a half-loaf of bread for free! Wow!

I didn't buy anything else there that day, but will be back for either more bread or a sandwich before the week is out.

For groceries I decided to Uber to Central Market, because this would be my last chance to see one on this tour.
And BOY am I glad I did!

( CLICK HERE for Central Market )
The rest of the day, unpacking and winding down.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday after breakfast I visited Doc's Records, a huge vintage and vinyl store.


It was a warehouse packed to the gills with vinyl of all sizes, rare and new, and CDs, cassettes, VHS, Blu-Ray, box sets, and collectibles.


There were also vintage clothing racks from different providers lining the outside edges of the store.


I enjoyed looking around, though Jameson would have appreciated this a lot more than me!
Sadly, none of the items on his list were physically IN the store.
This place uses a distributor for a lot of their listed items. So I ended up walking out and ordering on my phone instead.
Kind of negates the fun of physically sifting through rare vinyl to find your prize. But, that's 2023.

That done, I poked around in a nearby Target before walking 2 miles back to the hotel in the Texas heat.
A shower and a rest before showtime.

We are playing Bass Performance Hall. I have walked past this hall many times while with the circus, but have never been inside before.
The hall is flanked by two giant 48-foot-tall angels carved of limestone.


Inside you can see the "wings" of the angels in the rotunda set in the ceiling, framing a blue sky peppered with fluffy clouds.
(For some reason the phone camera turned the whole thing blue, it's actually only the sky portions that are blue...weird)


The hall is about 25 years old, and is a beautiful modern space.
Once again I find myself with my very own dressing room.
This one is a little odd, though!


The oddest part is this pair of shoes at the corner of the desk. Why are they here? Whose are they?


One of our crew says those shoes have been there "forever".
Well...I'm not going to touch them, then!

Before sound check I had a meeting with Company Management regarding pit temperatures, which recently have been uncomfortably cold. As the "band rep" it's my job to bring whole-band issues like this. They're going to try and get us some space heaters and a regular supply of hand/foot warmers. I think that's all we can realistically ask for; every venue is different and pretty much no pit anywhere has its own thermostat. Mostly, I very much appreciated being heard by our CM ladies. It means a lot to know that someone cares, and is willing to listen seriously, whether the issue can be addressed at the end of the day or not.

Our show went well, we had an enthusiastic audience that made me look forward to the rest of the week playing this lovely hall :)

-------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday I had a normal morning.
For lunch I Ubered out to Rise in east Fort Worth to try French souffle for the first time!

Rise is a French-style cafe specializing in souffles. Check out their Instagram...drool-worthy!
The restaurant is in a snooty-booty shopping plaza where I definitely can't afford anything :p

Inside it was dimly lit, but with cute decor.


Painted rocks lined the windowsills, shelves, and booths. 


The snooty-booty set menu and "global" wine list.


Had I been here with Jameson, we probably would have gotten a full meal.
Since it was just me, I only wanted to try a souffle.
There were so many flavors to choose from!
Savory options like crawfish, or mushroom, escargot, or cauliflower brie.
Sweet options like strawberry, pecan praline, grand marnier, or apricot.

I went with classic chocolate, figuring that's a good first-timer flavor.
The souffles have to be made fresh and take a while, so while I waited I was given a small warm loaf of bread (it was very good).

After what seemed like no time at all my piping hot souffle appeared!


You are supposed to poke a hole in the center and pour the sauce in. Here we go:
(CLICK HERE to Watch)

Oh my goodness. It was so good.
The texture was like a fluffy, light, "bready marshmallow" if you can imagine that.
Or, like, if a meringue and a bread pudding had a baby.
Souffles are mostly egg-based, so despite how big it looks it was not heavy or overly filling yet still managed to be indulgent and decadent. I took my time and savored each bite, describing it all to Jameson because I wished he could be there with me.

It was very very good, and I'm glad I got to try it!
The only thing I would have done differently in retrospect is perhaps get a fruit-flavored one with chocolate sauce.
The chocolate-on-chocolate was fabulous, but it WAS kind of one-note, and I could have done with some tartness along the way.
Well, maybe there will be a next time! But for today, it was so nice :)

Back downtown I had wanted to go window shopping/exploring, but it was raining steadily so I opted to stay in.
Oh, I did pop back over to 3rd Street Market because Kathy (actress who plays Rita now and is a former Ringmaster) informed me that my Ringling friend Roger (former clown) works there!! I grabbed my umbrella and ran out to find him!

Success!


I met Roger at the start of my circus life, in 2012.
He was an excellent clown and a great travel companion.
Since then a lot has happened for all of us.
For example, Roger has gotten married and has kids, and now lives here and works at this beautiful bakery!
We chatted for a bit but since Roger was still on the clock I let him go after a short time, then picked out a few items because how rude would it be to come in here TWICE and STILL not buy anything! I got some pho-flavored beef jerky and a bottle of local pressed juice.
It was so cool to find Roger here, and working in this great bakery! I'm actually a little jealous of that!

Back at the hotel I finalized some plans with friends, including Jessi and Adria who will be kidnapping me on Thursday for the Fort Worth Zoo, and the Everharts who are friends of my grandmother's and who'd like to share a meal with me.

I went to the theatre just a little early to get rush tickets for Jessi and her friend Mel to see the show.
We didn't get much time to talk, but that's ok, I'll see Jessi tomorrow.

The show went well.
The band mascot, David Hasselsloth, did a great job hyping us up for a great performance!

(photos by Andrew Sotomayor and possibly others)

Tomorrow (Thursday) Jessi is bringing me to the zoo where I'll get to meet her enrichment animals!
The second half of the day will be with Adria, to meet A BABY ELEPHANT and also her own pet kittens!

What an early travel day!

4am - wake up, coffee, finish packing

4:30am - load luggage onto the bus

5am - leave hotel and arrive at airport

7am-9:30am - flight to Atlanta, breakfast

10am-noon - flight to Schenectady

We got to the hotel by 1, and amazingly the rooms were ready for us!
Clean and with a largeish fridge and a microwave :)

I walked to CVS hoping for leftover Easter candy but this one didn't have any.
Then decided to walk to Niskayuna Co-op since it was a lovely sunny day, 60 degrees.

A big change from cold and windy 35-degree St. Louis, where it had still been snowing; and hot humid 92-degree Fort Myers which we just left. Spring has just arrived in upstate New York, and there are buds on the trees and beautiful little purple and yellow ground flowers blooming all over the place. Robins hopping about for worms, the smell of fresh thawing earth...all of those things. It was a 3-mile walk to the co-op but it was enjoyable and felt like no time at all.

( CLICK HERE for Co-op Adventures )
The rest of my night was spent unpacking and going to bed around 10:30pm because it had been a LONG day.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday we woke up to a rather nasty surprise: our payroll company somehow deducted thousands of dollars from ALL of our accounts last night. Not fun at all. For me, I have actually had something like this happen before so it did not impact me greatly. But some people experienced overdraft fees, negative balances, or have nothing at all in their bank accounts until this is resolved. Really, really not good.

Since there wasn't really anything that I could do about any of it, I went about my morning as usual with breakfast and typing up this post before heading over to Perreca's Bakery for a hot fresh loaf of Italian bread.


Perreca's has been in business for over 100 years, baking bread and sandwiches and pizzas in their self-built coal oven.
Even though it's a random Tuesday, fresh loaves of bread were sitting in the window for purchase.


There were both large and small loaves, I got a small one.
They had other goods as well like pasta, sauces, olive oil, pizzelle, cookies, paninis, and deli meats.


I noticed some cannolis in the pastry case. Yep, can't leave without one of those!


Back at the hotel there was nothing new with our money situation, so around lunchtime I went back out to The Whistling Kettle, which mostly sells teas online but also has three physical locations that you can visit, and this is one of them.

They sell over 100 types of tea and in sample sizes, which I love because it helps me to discover what I like :)
I skipped the black teas for now and went with a white tea from China and a green tea from Japan, and one of their top-selling flavored rooibos teas. Excited to try them out!


For lunch I got a "sconewich": toasted herb scone with roasted tomato, onion, garlic, zucchini, eggplant, and squash, topped with pesto and goat cheese. I got it to go and when I got home, cooked an egg white souffle in the microwave and added that for protein.


It was incredibly good! I think the veggies had been marinated because they were a bit tangy, and coupled with the rich goat cheese and fluffy egg white and savory-yet-sweet scone, this was a very good flavor combination. I would love to try making something like this at home!

The cannoli from Perreca's was also fantastic. The nutmeg in the shell, and the creamy rich filling...so amazing and delicious :)

Sound check, and the theatre is adjacent to the hotel which is a great treat.
Walking over is so nice!

The theatre is pretty, kind of a Gothic style going on inside.
This was my view from the pit, which is really deep so it was kinda hard to get a good shot but you get the idea.


And backstage there were lots of little treasures. The building is very old; there are brass doorknobs and mail slots and opaque antique glass panels on all of the dressing room doors. I'm also constantly finding weird little mementos around every corner from shows past, including this strange display in a stairwell.


It seems to be made up of scraps and figurines meant to represent specific shows. Pretty cool.

And my dressing room table is a wall tag! There are several of these scattered around the building.
I got the Monty Python one!






Anyway, sound check was fine.
I brought some lemon cookies from Perreca's to share with the guys.
The pit is one of those that's on a mechanical platform that can be raised or lowered, so unfortunately it's quite wobbly, if one of us sneezes we all feel it haha. It's a bit annoying but I'm trying to pretend I'm on a cruise ship, since that also had unexpected and annoying motions when one was trying to perform.

The show went well, we had a great responsive audience.
And it looks like our money was returned to our bank accounts, which is "nice" considering it shouldn't have been stolen in the first place. I'm going to wait for the full explanation, but once all the facts are out about what happened I'll probably incorporate preventative measures.

---------------------------------------------------

Wednesday, I had nothing planned.

Did laundry in the morning, had breakfast, gave my trombone a bath in the afternoon.
Tried to nap and failed.

My friend Kriste came to the show along with a friend. I haven't seen her for almost ten years!
She seems to be doing well though we didn't get much time to talk unfortunately.
We had abysmal luck with dinner, first going to a place that was frankly too pricey for all of us, then the fire alarm went off minutes after we sat down and the staff could not turn it off so we left, finding ourselves in a much more chill cafe where we were able to get some sandwiches and scarf them down.

Regardless, I found the whole thing amusing, and hopefully they did too. What can ya do!


The show went well, the ladies had great seats so a good time was had by all!

--------------------------------------------------

It's Thursday and we have two shows. I'm making plans to spend Saturday morning with Kriste, but recent events might be interfering with that, we will see how it all plays out. We are all waiting for an explanation on why money was withdrawn from our banks at the start of the week. But I trust that answers will be forthcoming, I know that the company is working very hard to make things right.

I probably won't do much other than the shows today, but tomorrow I'd like to walk to the Schenectady Central Park Rose Garden.

**Long post, more adventures**
**DreamWidth is garbage for embedding video, so view this post on LiveJournal for the best experience**

I woke up before my alarm on Thursday. Bakery time.

Walked a mile to Moxy bakery and was disappointed to see two sad cookies in the pastry case.
The cashier explained that they were "behind" and would have the croissants out at some point later.

So instead I walked to Brown Bear Bakery, which has been around for a long time and is very popular with the locals.

Now THAT'S what I got up early for.



Choosing just one thing was freaking difficult, but I ended up with the everything bagel croissant.


It was crispy, like a super crisp crunch on the outside that sent seeds flying everywhere haha.
But it was so delicious, and chewy nearest the herbed cream cheese filling (which was amazing and perfect)


On the same block was Allez Bakery. It might seem counterintuitive to have two bakeries side by side like that, but Brown Bear caters to individuals and walk-ins while Allez supplies rustic breads to many Cincinnati restaurants as their main business, so they're not really competing.

Still, their pastry case was ALSO epic.


I had to get the orange blossom cranberry scone with candied orange and pistachios. I mean look at it.


I haven't tried it yet, that's for tomorrow.
I asked the cashier which bread was her fave, and she said the rye because it's so flavorful.


She specifically recommended the marble rye because "There is NO good pumpernickel in this city and that rye is the closest you're gonna get!" Good enough for me! They also serve sandwiches on their breads in the afternoon, so I made plans to go back later.

Back at the hotel I unpacked and had the croissant for breakfast and a small sample piece of the rye.
It was extremely good. Malty and chewy and indeed very flavorful.


Then some computer work and emails.
Then heck yes I walked back to Allez for a sandwich.
I'm sure y'all think that I should be 500lbs by now, but let me remind that

A) We're here for two weeks this time so I've refrigerated half the bread and it'll last the entire two weeks
B) I am cutting the two pastries (scone, croissant) in half and eating half at a time over the course of four days
C) If the sandwich is large I'll also eat half of that at a time

The sandwich WAS also large. It wasn't very photogenic so no pics, but it was a jambon-beurre with yellow Swiss added and herbed butter on a big hunk of baguette. The bread was still the star of the show. Half for lunch and half for dinner.

I tried to do some data entry but the company has just rolled out a new version that is not working quite right (not unusual for new tech I think) and they had everyone doing a sort of inventory to see what info had transferred where. It was kinda chaos, so I backed off and will try again later.

Our show went well, nothing specifically stood out that I recall (writing a day later it's always tough to remember).
When I got back to the hotel I didn't have internet, and that's been happening every day which has made it really hard to do my remote work and also just function online. After multiple calls to the tech support number that the front desk had given me I finally went downstairs at midnight, and happened to find their engineer there too.

He came up to my room to troubleshoot and immediately his own equipment stopped working too.
Ghost in the machine, apparently!
So the only solution that they had for me was to change rooms. ugh.

I packed everything up and put all the furniture back (when you're staying somewhere for two weeks there can be a lot of rearranging) and transferred everything--food, clothing, luggage, cooking equipment, toiletries, water, etc---to the new room. Which was absolutely half the size of the previous room :(

But hey, the internet worked.
I finished rearranging and unpacking around 2am.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Friday, a trip to the Cincinnati Zoo!

I was operating on like four hours of sleep, but excitement and coffee helped to keep me motivated.
I took an Uber to the zoo entrance and waited outside, keeping far away from the mobs of screaming children running around the parking lot.

Soon my friend Val came to get me. Val has been a zookeeper for 37 years!

( CLICK HERE for Elephants )

From then on I got to explore the rest of the Cincinnati Zoo.
It was around 40F but the windchill must have put it close to 35 or 30F, because I found it very difficult to keep warm and had to keep ducking into buildings to warm up. Most of the mammals were indoors due to the crummy weather, but I did still get to see a lot and spent probably 2.5 hours enjoying the animals and insects.

Everyone is obsessed with the Cinci Zoo's hippos, so I had a look.
They ARE very cute, and very active! CLICK HERE for video

The baby is Fritz, and the larger one is Bibi.
Fiona was off to the left showing off for her audience while I captured this cute playful moment.

The wild dog pack was out and running around, nipping at each other.
They went back in shortly after this video, though. CLICK HERE to watch

Red ibis. I came into the bird area to get warm, but it was also humid in there so when I stepped back outside I felt even colder :p CLICK HERE to watch

Ostriches and other African savanna birds.


Sadly for me that was pretty much it for "creatures spending time outdoors". But I could hardly blame them!

I spent the rest of my zoo time in the Insect House and Reptile house, which were very interesting and enjoyable.
There were naked mole rats, a big orchid spider eating a fly, and way too many cockroaches for comfort :D

(If you don't like BUGS or SNAKES here's your cue to scroll past!)
.
.
.
Close-up of a tarantula.


There are two HUGE bugs in this habitat, can you see them both?


The face of a stick bug.


Cookies n' cream booplesnoot.


I was starting to get hungry, so made my way to the gift shop.
I was surprised that little of the merchandise had to do with the elephants...everything is hippos, hippos, hippos everywhere you look.
I found the ONE keychain with an elephant and bought it, for the memories and to support the zoo.

---------------------------------------------------------------

From there I took an Uber to Drunken Bento. I felt frozen from my fingertips to my toes, and nothing sounded better than a piping hot, crackling bowl of dolsot bibimbap after this wonderful zoo adventure!

"Dolsot" means "stone pot".
Bibimbap is a Korean dish of steamed and pickled veggies, seasoned meat, and rice topped with a fried egg.
So, dolsot bibimbap is bibimbap served in a heated stone bowl.

Turn up your volume and CLICK HERE to hear the rice crackling!

My bibimbap had tofu, carrots, soybean sprouts, shiitake mushrooms, zucchini, and spinach, topped with a fried egg.
You're supposed to mix all of these things together in the bowl with some gochujang and sesame oil.


This is the golden-brown, crunchy rice from the bottom and sides of the bowl.
The absolute best part of dolsot bibimbap!!


They also gave me a small dish of traditional Korean sides: kimchi, a slice of steamed egg roll, and fish cakes.


Everything was incredible, all the textures and fresh veggies and spices and seasonings combining to form the absolutely perfect meal for a cold day. I ate half and saved the rest for later, then Ubered back to the hotel to rest before the show.

Our show went well, though a lot of the male cast are out due to injury or illness or LOA so it felt like we were all a bit hesitant.
These things happen, and we still put on a great show :)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Saturday I was thrilled to catch up on sleep a bit before typing this massive post out. Phew!

We had two shows, and three male cast members out.
The rest of the cast covered so well. I admire how hard they all work...but I hope they get a break on this upcoming Golden Day!!

Sunday was another two show day, and Josh's last day as our MD.
Next week we will have our other MD, Soto, back.
They're both awesome people and musicians :)
I'm excited to have Soto back, but will miss Josh, who was a friend before we both joined Tootsie.

The coolest photo of Josh that I could find.


Both shows went well. I was distracted with excitement for visiting Jungle Jim's tomorrow, and also didn't go to the bar with everyone after the show to bid Josh farewell. I hate bars, I hate being around drunk people, I hate being right next to people I want to get to know but not being able to hear them over the racket in a bar. So I hugged Josh goodbye in the pit and said, "See you down the road!", traditional circus parting words that imply parting is brief and we will meet again.

Then back to the hotel to sleep, because tomorrow is an early, exciting day.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Looking back on this post...wowzers.

Visiting the circus train, finding amazing bakeries and restaurants, visiting the zoo, performing shows, and having to switch hotel rooms in the middle of the night made this an action-packed week for me.

Week two in Cincinnati should be slightly less crazy, but there's still a lot of fun ahead!

- Spending the day at Jungle Jim's International Grocery!
- Visiting with my boss Brett one more time
- Having lunch with a trombonist buddy of mine
- Laundry, shows, sending souvenirs home for family and such!

I'm so glad to have made wonderful memories in this city <3

Big goals for this week!
Not really.

1 - luggage tetris, i.e. swapping out clothes, packing Christmas candy and medications, storing the electric skillet
2 - ship jars of "sunshine jam" to family and friends
3 - make caramels for tour crew
4 - clean old food out of the fridge and cupboard, either by eating it or throwing it away
5 - general cleaning
6 - take unused things to thrift store
7 - attend a UNCSA alumni "town hall" on Thursday

Then Jameson's dad shows up on Thursday, so at some point I'll want to make air fryer wings for us (it's insane how much these guys LOVE air fried wings) and possibly offer to cook dinner one night too. And I'm sure they'll want to eat out at least once.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I barely slept and was up early on Sunday. Excited, anxious? All of that.

Rode the bus to the airport and had no issues checking my bags and doing all the usual things.
This airport in Arkansas is small, but modern and nice.

Some art that you can use to pose and take selfies:


A cookie dough vending machine (I feel like our ancestors ought to be proud of us for stuff like this):


I ate my random prepackaged things and some boiled eggs and chatted with Brandon, our bassist who also lives near Orlando and was booked on the same flight. Both flights went smoothly, and the second flight was right at sunset giving us a very beautiful sky gradient, more beautiful than I could capture.


Jameson was waiting for me in Orlando, and my luggage was already on the belt too.
We chatted on the way home and picked up Panda Express for dinner.
He seemed tired, but he has a lot going on...teaching full time, and studying to get his masters, and starting rehearsals with a local theatre group, and prepping for a cruise in February for a friend's birthday. Plus his dad will be here in a few days, and here I am too.

At home we ate and watched The Circle, and I opened my mail and unpacked a little.
One of my packages was a bar of Scottish tablet, which Jameson had seen online and it's fairly cheap so I'd ordered us a bar.
It's slightly caramelized condensed milk with sugar, and has a texture like grainy fudge, but it's also very smooth and practically evaporates in your mouth. I won't be able to eat much of it due to the condensed milk, but I expect Jameson's dad will be able to do his part on it while he's here.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday, I slept horribly again.
I think it was just because I had so much that I wanted to do today, and every time I woke up my brain was like "!!!" about it. Sigh.

Since I hadn't gotten groceries the night before I went to Publix.
My ABS lights came on and stayed on, just great. Another thing to try and deal with this week, and more money out the window.
I probably damaged the ABS backsliding down that mountain in PA over Christmas.

Got my usual groceries and also some beer to make the lavender orange beer bread mix that Jameson's mom had given me two Christmases ago (remember, I'm trying to clear out the cupboard). Back home I mixed up the batter, but I must have overmixed it because the bread didn't rise much and it was VERY gummy.


On top of that and as usual with flower-flavored things, it was a little too "soapy" for both of us.
I ate a piece, but ultimately it just wasn't good, so into the trash it went. What a waste of a beer.

I cleaned the kitchen, then got to work sorting my luggage. It was pretty easy since I'd listed what I wanted to do ahead of time. Packed myself more tea and more Christmas candy, threw in a half-used bag of rice from the cupboard and some spices that are almost empty, and even remembered to sharpen my traveling kitchen knife. Took the electric skillet out and stored it in the closet.

To complete the repacking process I started a load of laundry so I can pack all of my clothes.
For lunch I was careful to eat things that had been sitting around for a while like some random frozen sausages and veggies, granola left over from Christmas, stuff like that. After lunch, packaged up some jars of "sunshine jam" to send to my mom, my sister, and Don as thanks for all the nice things he'd sent us. I wrote a little letter to go with each one, and added a bottle of my mom's sandalwood perfume to my sister's box (I've had it long enough, she deserves to enjoy it too).

As Jameson worked on his classwork, I went through the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen, looking for tools and dishes that we no longer use. I gathered up misc knives and bread pans and some Ball jars with bail lids that I'll never use. I went through my clothes as well, and ended up with a pretty sizeable bag for the thrift store. I'll go tomorrow after shipping the jam.

Around dinnertime Jameson had to leave for rehearsal, so I had a repeat of lunch and then a partial slice of frozen cheesecake for dessert.
Then I vacuumed, and cleaned both bathrooms (but not the shower, UGH  someone else come clean that haha).
I'd meant to dust but was feeling pretty tired, so just showered and took the recycling out and called it a night.

If you're keeping track, that's a pretty good start on my to-do list for this layoff.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday, I did manage to finally get a full 7-8 hours of sleep. Yay!

Decided to get fancy and make syphon coffee.
I only have some very stale French roast, but brewing this way enhances the flavor of literally anything.

(Watch video of syphon coffee HERE)

After breakfast, some data entry, and then gathering up the packages of jam and a bag for the thrift store.
Shipped the jam off to my stepmom, sister, and Don.
Dropped the bag at the thrift store.

Stopped at Target for eggs and some veggies, and ended up finding some other nice things like new flavors of De La Calle's tepache! You can't even get the new flavors on their site yet!

Also, as an 80s kid this pump tube of sparkly kid's toothpaste reached out and grabbed me with the nostalgic packaging.
I brought it home...I mean why not? It looks and smells just like I remember from when I was little. So crazy!

(photo from Crest)

Later on I did brush my teeth with it, and I swear I was flung back in time.
Tastes exactly the same as it did when I was little. Dark blue and sparkly.
By the end of the tube I'll be sick of it, but for now I'm glad for the fun nostalgia.

(photo from Flickr, to show color)

I decided to make the caramels before having my car looked at.
It came out lovely like always, I hope the crew will enjoy it!

At the car place they were too busy to look at my car in a reasonable time frame, so I made an appointment to bring it in on Friday.

Back home I went for a walk around the neighborhood while Jameson gamed, then we ordered Bento for dinner.

It was a nice chill evening. My sister Kayle has had her baby, by the way (not sure if I mentioned that). The baby's name is Melrose.
Here she is with her older brother Drexel and older sister Elliotte.


------------------------------------------------------------------

It's Thursday morning. Jameson's dad gets in this afternoon.
Before that I will cut up and package the caramel, then dust and make sure everything is ready in the guest bedroom.

I've pretty much completed my to-do list for this layoff, yay!
All that's left is my alumni meeting, taking care of my car, and using that last Meyer lemon for something.
If we don't cook some meal with it, I'll probably end up making lemon blueberry muffins or a lemon gummy candy recipe that I found.

So Monday after breakfast and data entry I went to the grocery for a few small things.

Back home for lunch and to pack and prep for work.

Took pictures of things that I'd like to sell: my GoPro Hero 4 and accessories, a nice trombone mute that I've never used, that Trtl neck pillow that wasn't for me. But upon researching, the only thing that seems to be of any value is the trombone mute.

I tried to do more data entry in the afternoon, but the site was down.
I kept checking back every 30-40 minutes, but gave up after the 4th attempt.
Read my book, scrubbed the shower, started some letters, watched some anime.
Packed breakfast and lunch, laid out clothing for work.

Somewhere in there one of my two remaining pins showed up, the custom Ringling logo.


When Jameson left for rehearsal I ironed some shirts, vacuumed, took the vacuum canister outside to spray a clog out of it with a compressed air canister, chatted with the neighbors, and watered my bananas a little since it didn't rain yesterday or today (because I opened my fat mouth and said "iT rAiNs EvErY dAy ThIs TiMe Of YeAr!").

Finished my letters, checked and found the data entry job is back up and running, but I was in a mood so left it alone.

I'm in a mood lately because A) I am still sad about my impromptu audition results, and B) I haven't gotten anything further from Tootsie.
Yes they still have PLENTY of time to get things to me, but I'm one of those people who neeeeeeeds information in advance.
For example, I've only had one covid booster and that was almost a year ago.
If I need another before tour starts I'd like to schedule it.

And other questions plague me like flies: what time/day is my flight to Rochester? What hotel are we staying in (because I want to ship some things to myself and also want to know if we have a fridge)? What does our route look like? How much flying vs busing? Have there been any changes to the script and music? When do we get the contact list?

I don't expect answers to all of these before rehearsal starts...but I kinda DO expect answers to MOST of them.

And most of all, I want to revise my Megan's Foodie Finds based on our hotel locations.

But, nothing I can do except try to be patient.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday I got up very early for work only to find that my first hearing is already cancelled.
So I guess I'll be going in three hours early "for fun".

Whatever. By my estimation I only have between 10-13 days of discount court reporting left anyway before tour starts.

The day went well. Most cases showed up and were normal and were on time.
I did have one weird case where we couldn't reach the claimant and for some reason the judge had me "testify" on the record that several attempts were made to reach the claimant. So I did that, but was confused about how to handle the case. I should have asked someone. It turned out that I was supposed to still mark it as a cancellation. Later in the evening, at home, I had to go back and redo all of my paperwork.
More free work! These people are certainly getting the better end of this deal!

Not only that, I also got a note from the data entry job that I had things to correct on a resident I added weeks ago.
Thank god I had saved the audio files and it only took me a few minutes to make the changes.
I feel like a screw-up today because of all the corrections, but both jobs have assured me that I'm doing "great" and that this is "normal".

On the way home I stopped at Whole Paycheck for ingredients and for sushi for dinner.
At home we ate the sushi and I made my corrections, then we both moped around.
We are both in unsatisfying places in our work. We are both frustrated and annoyed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday. Someone bought my trombone mute already for $50. I'll try to ship it off before Friday.

I made another attempt at my own honey wheat bread recipe, this time with seeds.
Made the Tangzhong and while it cooled I ate breakfast.
Then into the mixer went wheat flour, bread flour, egg, molasses (was feeling dark flavor today), yeast, milk, the tangzhong, and salt.
Mixed until it was starting to pull away from the sides of the bowl, then added my seeds.

Before the rise, cute little brown seeded dough ball.


After the rise, big fluffy brown seeded dough ball.


A little bit of rolling out and shaping with my hands.
As I made the final loaf shape the top of the loaf stuck to the counter a bit, and I wasn't willing to redo it, so already I know it won't be smooth and perfect on top. But that's ok. As long as I know the cause; that's what bugs me, when the finished loaf looks weird and I don't know why.


Into the Pullman loaf pan, and I oiled it thoroughly so it wouldn't stick like last time.



I think it turned out great. I love how deep brown the crust got.
And actually I don't mind the split in the top either, it's kinda cute.

The seeds were well distributed, there was no sinking to the bottom or gaping holes or anything like that.
But I do want to get a tighter crumb for my end result. Something closer to the crumb you get in commercial bread.


One way to do this would be to reduce the moisture in the loaf.
I had raised the liquid ratio as part of incorporating a tanzhong roux, and I could try bringing that back down a few grams.

Another way would be to do a single rise, but I kind of don't want to swing that way for the sake of the person whose recipe I'm using as a base.
And a third way is simply to handle the dough differently.
When I roll it out for final shaping I could try to squeeze more air bubbles out of it.
There are also some people who suggest making a "third rise" by interrupting the second rise halfway through, punching the dough down, and letting it rise again for the other half of the time. I don't like that idea very much.

I'll probably reduce the liquids a bit + try to really knock lots of air bubbles out before shaping it.
Overall though, this was a very successful attempt.
I really like the flavor of the seeds in there, and will be happy to add them for future loaves.

As my loaf cooled we went for our 2.5 mile neighborhood walk.
When we got back I sliced it up and put it away, then made us macaroni and cheese, Omaha Steaks hot dogs, and fruit salad for dinner.
I was mostly using up old pasta, and the hot dogs that have been in our freezer for over a year.

After dinner we finally ate the apple dumpling I'd brought with me from PA.
With ice cream of course.

-------------------------------------------------

Thursday. An early morning to get to discount court reporting.

The first case was not until 10, three cases were unrepresented, and one was a video hearing, so I did not have very high hopes for a productive day. However I did get my final pre-tour enamel pin, so that cheered me up. A cute flytrap.


And as it turned out, I got to have four of the six cases, only two were cancelled. Not bad.

Now Jameson is at rehearsal, and I'm making a to-do list for the next several days.
The main thing is that I need to start my tour prep.
Tomorrow I'll give notice at discount court reporting.
I'll start practicing trombone a little each day, and packing a little at a time.
Scheduling a haircut, prepping a box to ship to myself (mostly mutes)
There's still data entry work, and cooking meals, and cleaning.
And I have the lofty goal of making a banana cheesecake before I leave as well.