taz_39 | Entries tagged with ringling bros circus

I got up at 7am to have breakfast and be presentable for my friend Curtis's masterclass.

Curtis was our saxophonist on Tootsie, and he is now teaching some college-level courses in Jersey City. The class was via Zoom, and the topic was P.T. Barnum. I don't know a lot about good ol' PT myself, but Curtis wanted me to share what it was like to be a circus musician in modern times, and perhaps compare and contrast how that may have differed from the early years of the American circus.

As I have discussed these topics in exhaustive detail on Quora, plus lived it for five years, it was easy to describe what our schedules were like; what living on the train was like; the pros and cons; the drama and hierarchies of circus life; the animal treatment; and pretty much anything you could think of, really. It felt like I blabbered quite a bit, but Curtis was well pleased afterward and thanked me profusely. And this time there were more questions from students, really good questions about how I maintained mental health, what the modern circus hierarchy was like, how US animal law pertained to the circus, etc. I was happy to answer any questions (looove talking about my circus days!) and also provided a bunch of relevant links afterward, since in the moment it is difficult to provide references and details.

The whole thing seemed to go well. Afterward I took a little break, then walked to Inheritance for an early lunch. Inheritance is a local juice bar, juicing is not my thing but they had a lot of fun vegan menu items like a sweet potato grilled cheese and a beet Reuben sandwich!

Today I went with their Harmony Harvest bowl: wild rice, carrots, shredded lettuce, cucumber slices, pickled radish (Didn't see these anywhere tho), roasted beets, pomegranate seeds (mixed with the beets), miso tempeh, orange sauce, poppy seeds, cilantro.

It was healthy and filling, lots of different textures, and the orange sauce was a sweet contrast to all the savory things going on. The miso tempeh was especially good; I've never had tempeh because you have to grill/sear it and I only have my Itaki steamer handy on tour. I loved the texture of it.

After such a nice meal I decided to walk the two miles to Gathering Place, a popular local playground for kids AND adults. Tell me, what kid would NOT want to play in a space like this?

Short video of the "River Giants" section (CLICK HERE to watch)

There was a school group there while I was walking through, so lots of kids screaming and chasing each other and doing kid-things. I skirted around the main castle and explored some of the smaller areas, many of which highlight different types of play. There was a sandbox-type playground, with lots of built-in shovels and buckets; and a little "town" section so kids could play at being a gas station attendant or a grocery cashier, etc etc. There were a variety of swings that looked a lot like amusement park rides, and there was a whole water play area that was closed for the winter, but looked fantastic, with lots of waterfalls and interactive fill-and-dump water-powered spinners and wheels and such. I sent a lot of pictures to my sisters with kids so they could be jealous.

One area was especially for playing with sound. There was an echo tube, with ends located on opposite sides of the yard so kids could sort of "telephone" each other through it...and a huge xylophone-like structure that sounded like a wind chime when struck. There was also this mirror maze (not enclosed which is probably best for everyone) (CLICK HERE to watch)

Almost everything was large enough for adults to enjoy too! I could have easily gone through the big castle structure and also many of the smaller play areas. The walkways between play areas are meticulously kept and designed much like garden paths, so even if you just wanted to stroll like I was doing you'd have a lovely experience.

There was a big boathouse with kayaks and paddle boats hanging from it, closed for the season but with manmade "beaches" and seating areas and fire pits all around it. I could easily imagine families having wonderful summers here, paddling around the small pond and enjoying picnic lunches before running off to play in the playground. And in the center of it all, this beautiful building housing a cultural/activity center, cafe, huge outdoor fireplace, koi ponds, gelato stand...and probably more that I didn't see. But look at it.

What a beautiful place, here in Tulsa. Upon further research, it was finished in 2018 and there are still two more phases of construction to come. Very awesome!

When I had covered a lot of ground and felt fulfilled, I Ubered back downtown (hey, two mile walk + two miles exploring the park = four miles already) and went to Rose Rock Microcreamery. I was the only one there--is 50°F still too cold for ice cream?--and after consulting with the cashier, decided on midnight chocolate + honey cashew.

Both were amazing. The chocolate was fudgy and rich, so dense that it had a "chew" to it, which I loved.
The honey cashew was a limited time flavor that the cashier recommended (there were four limited flavors and I asked which he liked best) and after he gave me a sample I had to agree, it was damn good. The ice cream was mostly honey-flavored I think, but there were these swirls of crispy, crunchy, and chewy cashews and maybe crushed brittle running through the scoop. I felt like a miner following a vein of gold :D

( Tedious Details + Jameson Update )

The rest of the day was very chill, I had a blazing headache (probably from the wild temp swings here; it went from 75 to 35 and now it's 55) so just took it easy with tea and Motrin until showtime. The show went well, I played better than yesterday. Eliza had a little snafu and was late for an entrance on stage, so Mrs. Pierce had to cover for her with an improvised line. It was hilarious for us, I wonder if the audience had any clue that something was wrong.

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Saturday I was up at 7am because a room across the hall was having a party(!)
Like...I wanted to be mad...but if you're starting your party at 7am, isn't that kind of the way to do it for an all-day bash? Lol.

And since I was up anyway I did a load of laundry. Again, because of the one-nighters coming up. I don't want to be scrambling/fighting sixty other people for the only washer/dryer. So thank you, party people, for getting me up early enough to do that :p

Then breakfast and a tax appointment (oh joy) and working on upcoming Foodie Finds.
Then our afternoon matinee. Someone in Company Management brought in a huge 4,000 piece puzzle and put it in the green room, and there is a frantic effort to finish it before the weekend is over. We made good progress, if you ask me!

The show went well. At the top of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," when Eliza is surrounded by a mob because she's been given a large handful of coins by Professor Higgins, one of the coins escaped someone's hands, flew down into the pit, and PIIINNNG-ED really loudly as it hit directly behind my chair! The MD looked at me and mouthed, "Are you OK?" and I was, the coin didn't hit me, but they are quite big so it would have stung to be hit by one! I only heard it hit once and then silence, so knew it must have flown into the big blackout curtain behind me. At intermission I scrounged around and quickly found it. Pretty sure this is a replica coin modeled after a real one, but it's made of solid metal so it's hefty. After taking these photos I gave it back to the Props department.

Between shows I made a simple dinner, then the evening show went well, nothing to report except that Michael (Assistant MD/Keys) conducted and did a great job.

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Sunday I woke a bit early so I could go for a walk (it was mid-60s and sunny) as we'll be on a bus all day tomorrow, literally ALL DAY. On the way back I picked up a rosemary biscuit from a cafe to add to my travel foods.

The first show went well, and afterward Joel (trumpet) Elen (cello) Victoria (flute) and I walked to Yokozuna for sushi!
Someone should've taken a group picture...or maybe not, maybe that would have made others jealous :p
It was Happy Hour so sushi rolls were a few dollars off, but the heart wants what the heart wants.

"Meesh Mash" sushi salad: marinated ahi tuna, salmon, and yellowtail chunks on a bed of sushi rice, seaweed salad, cucumber, and squid salad, topped with masago (fish eggs), sesame, and crispy garlic. It was so good and fresh! There is something about fish, especially salmon--the B vitamins or Omega 3's I guess--that makes me feel full in such a GOOD way after eating it. This was a delicious and satisfying last meal in Tulsa. We talked about everything from cost of living to orchestral auditions to whether or not we had coasters for our cups growing up. It was a good hang.

There was a bit of time to go back to the hotel and pack some more and shower, then the last show.

Do you think we finished that 4,000 piece puzzle?

We did :) Here are Michael and ??? with the last piece.

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Tomorrow is an all-day bus ride to Des Moines, which is only partway to our destination, Wausau WI.
I hope it'll be generally boring. I hope we make our estimated arrival time, which is early enough to at least go for a walk after an entire day on a bus.

Thursday, I could hear cars making that "swish" sound through rain, and knew it would be an indoor kind of day.

View from hotel:

It rained on and off all day, and was about 15 degrees cooler than it had been all week.
And anyway, I didn't want to spend any more money on outings and food here.
Many more cities coming up, and some expensive trips back and forth to Orlando.

So I slummed around and watched misc anime and shows, ate my food, did a little research for Christmas presents, that sort of thing. I even had a little nap! Wow.

Then it was time for the show, which went just fine, nothing to report. We've had good crowds all week too.

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Friday was my stepmom's birthday so we chatted a bit via text, and I ate breakfast and goofed off for a while before heading out to see if I could find some circus memories. For whatever reason I never took photos of the actual city while we were here with the circus...perhaps because we didn't have a lot of time to explore (some show schedules were like that.) But now I certainly do have the time.

On the was was Vosen's Bread Paradise, and with a name like that you just gotta stop in.

They had beautiful pastries on display which I didn't photograph because the glare on the glass was something else, but some of their treats were on the shelves including these house-baked stollen!! I wanted one so badly!!

They also had shelves of German and European imports: candies, chocolates, advent calendars, cookies, pastas, canned goods, teas, and loads more.

After a lot of indecisiveness because I suddenly wanted to buy Christmas presents for my entire family RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW, I managed to walk out with nothing more than a pretzel; a kipferl roll; a bag of herbed sweets; a digestif; a marzipan pig for Jameson; and pistachio Mozart bar for Jameson.

Here are the herb candies, which according to the ingredients seem to be sage, liquorice, plantain (not the banana), gentian, fennel, peppermint, anise, claret (grape), and marshmallow root-flavored. Whether they actually taste good or not, I couldn't resist how beautiful they looked.

The kipferl bread, which looks like it ought to be some sort of Xena Warrior Princess weapon!

Kipferl (also know by like eighteen other names) is plain yeast bread dough rolled into a crescent. It's an extremely common roll found in almost every country in Europe. Despite the fact that it's plain bread, not enriched or laminated, because of it's shape the kipferl is believed to be the possible inspiration for the croissant. I bought it because it looks cool; it tastes like literal plain white bread lol.

I've packed the digestif already but it's a tiny bottle of Underberg, stock image below. I had never heard of it but was fascinated by the thought of an herbal liquor--88 proof at that!--that can be sold in the US (and in Salt Lake City of all places!) without a liquor license! My plan is to bring it home and split it with Jameson (just wanting to try it, not necessarily reap the benefits of downing the full shot)

Well that was fun! Continuing on, I reached Union Pacific Depot, once a train station and now a shopping mall.

I remember it well because it's directly across from the Delta arena where we performed the circus each day:

The train yard is about 1.5 miles away from here, plus actually getting into the yard (I remember it took a while because it's a big yard and our train was buried deeply in there.) I started walking toward the yard, remembering. We visited Salt Lake while Jameson and I had just started dating, and we would walk to and from the yard together. I remember the route well, and even recall that there was an "easier" way into this yard a few blocks before the main entrance but we weren't allowed to take it because it was across active light rail tracks...and of course we'd still sneak across to save 10 minutes of walking :p I knew I wouldn't be able to get anywhere near the train yard today for pure safety reasons, plus it was a longer walk than I wanted to take today, so I stopped partway at the Utah Opera building (I remember walking past it daily and seeing people with music folios coming and going.)

Ultimately this was a walk to nowhere. But any time it's possible, I like to try and revisit these routes--these archived maps in my head--that lead to my home and my place in the world, that no longer exists. Physically coming to these places and retracing my steps from my past circus life is a way of honoring, remembering, and even mourning that which has come and gone and will never come again. These small pilgrimages are my way of showing that the path home is engraved forever on my heart.

So far I have been able to do this here, and in Kansas City, Providence, and Lexington, and sort-of in Hartford too.

Sappy trip down Memory Lane complete, I hoofed it to Harmon's for a cheap hot bar lunch and some boiled eggs for the weekend (out of proteins too) before dumping it all back at the hotel.

At which point our French horn player announced that she's got covid.
Gotta say...she is having a ROUGH start to this tour year between her earlier medical issue and now this.
She'll be out of the show for five days, fortunately that's only 4-5 shows potentially missed since it's over a travel weekend.
Our music coordinator somehow found a sub for the weekend, so she was there for our show, and we all showed up sporting masks and hand sanitizer. The show went well, the sub sightread beautifully (some mistakes but this is a VERY tough show for horn, she did AMAZING!)

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Saturday I woke up to a barrage of texts, one from Jameson to say he may not be able to pick me up from the airport, one from our cellist who had some recommendations for foodie finds in Madison, and a notification from Delta about checking in for my flight. OK, everybody, jeez :p

I told Jameson it was no big deal and we'd just wing it and see when I landed vs when he'd be available tomorrow.
I added our cellist to Foodie Finds and asked her to share her recs in the group, or said I'd add some to my recommendation sheet depending on how far away they are (we have a busy schedule in Madison and I suspect people won't have time to travel far from downtown.)
And I checked in for my flight, and reserved a taxi instead of an Uber because I don't trust Uber to show up at 4am.

All of that done, I got to get out of bed haha.
A covid test before breakfast because I had a lot of postnasal drip and my eyes feel very itchy (neither of which are really covid symptoms but you never know) and it came back negative.

Our first show of the day at 2pm, which went all right considering we've got a sub.
Between shows, back to the hotel to eat my leftovers and pack as much as I could since I have to fly to Orlando tomorrow.
Bringing some heavier items to the theatre to store in the band box so I don't have to fly them home (my black boots, MFL sweater, food scale, umbrella, etc.)
And the evening show at 8pm.

There was a wall tag to sign...my first one for this tour.

The show went well, though I felt distracted and tired already just thinking about what lies ahead for me the next 36 hours (very little sleep, that's what.) Afterward I packed up as quickly as I could, bringing the trombone to my hotel room. I packed all of my stuff and weighed my luggage (48 pounds that's cutting it close!) and tried to fall asleep as fast as I could!

I probably won’t have time to post about the 36-hour Disney whirlwind while it’s happening, so let’s end this post here :)

Random things that I forgot to mention from last week:

There was a restaurant down the street that made an entire TOOTSIE-themed menu! How cool is that!
A few people tried some dishes and said they were delicious.

I also uploaded a recording that I made of myself playing some circus music.
This is part of my portfolio that I send out when auditioning and such, but I felt it might be interesting for people to kind of visualize how the cuts, vamps, and jumps in the music work according to what's happening on the arena floor, and in each act. So I added little captions explaining what's happening or who's performing (and why they are awesome)

CLICK HERE to watch

And then a little sad news: I've decided to let go of my nursing home data entry job for the remainder of the tour.
There are two reasons.

Reason One is that for the entire two weeks in Cincinnati I was unable to do my work for more than a few minutes at a time. I spent HOURS on the phone with tech support every day for the first EIGHT DAYS of our stay, wiping my caches and running virus/malware/disk scans, reinstalling VPN and support software, and fighting with the hotel front desk to the point where an engineer had to come up and see for himself that internet truly was not working in my room, even for him, and then I ended up switching rooms at 1am which gave me a poor connection but STILL did not resolve the core issue.

Reason Two was that according to hotel staff I was the only one experiencing this issue, and after one of the many scans and updates things did sort-of go back to normal, which tells me that in addition to the poor internet I could have had a virus or something that compromised the information on my machine. I'm talking about a nursing home resident personal information. That is NOT OK. I have done everything that I can to protect the sensitive data that I work with as I travel, but the bottom line is that every week (and sometimes every few days) we are in a different city at a hotel with a different IP address and different security protocols, and ultimately ALWAYS on a public network.

This whole ordeal was incredibly stressful, demeaning, and ultimately did not resolve the problem, so I got no work done for two weeks. This is not the first time that this has happened, just the longest period of it. It's not fair to the employer, and it's become way too much stress for me to struggle with on top of travel and looking for full time post-tour work.

I've sent a letter asking to either be "put on hold" until June if for some reason they still want to keep me on, or if not, to consider it my two weeks notice and big thanks for letting me work with them this far. I feel sad, it's not how I wanted this to end, but we will see what happens.

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On Monday we had an uneventful travel day, which is the best kind of travel day!

We got to the hotel as scheduled. This hotel is one of those "artsy" ones with a "theme", which is "art", and so the "entryway" is an "art gallery". Lol.

In addition to paintings on the wall, there was a functional piece of art involving little doors that you could open to reveal misc abstract artistic statements (I suppose?). I've seen other folks playing with it and will take my turn with it eventually :)

Each floor of the hotel also has color-themed rooms, which is kinda cool.
The colors are red, yellow, green, and blue.
It looks like one of us is staying in rooms of every color except blue (or the blue room ppl ain't sharing haha)

The blue image is stock from the hotel's website.

The red room is the room I initially had, but unfortunately there was food in the fridge and something nasty in the trash, so I was quickly relocated to a smaller room that, ironically, has exactly the same layout as the room I had in Cincinnati. Once again there is limited counter space, so I'll be using the ironing board as a table. The ironing board is NOT red, if you were wondering ;)

After getting settled in I walked to the nearest grocery which was called Fresh Thyme Market.
Located in an old foundry near a college, I figured it had to be some hipster co-op or something.

But once I saw the logo I knew exactly what this was.

Does it look familiar to you? When we were in Grand Rapids earlier this year, there was a grocery called Bridge Street Market.
Which turned out to be a Meijer in disguise as a hipster co-op:

That's right, Fresh Thyme is another disguised Meijer.
So I was not surprised to see Meijer-branded products on the shelves.
It was a bit pricey, but the quality was good and they had a mix of everyday products and unique local finds.
I got some interesting things to try which I'll detail later.

Back at the hotel I unpacked and spent the rest of the night resting.

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Tuesday, I woke up too early because Central Time.
I used a laundry service because I am feeling flustered and stressed this week, and really wanted to use today for cooking and job applications. Once the laundry was sent off I fired up the Itaki and made the dried herb and tomato risotto that I'd picked up at Jungle Jim's, cooking it with chicken broth and cracked black pepper. It turned out fantastic, creamy and delicious despite the lack of cheese.

Then I did two tilapia filets, which cooked up perfectly in just 15 minutes and were flaky and tasty with the risotto and some green beans.

Then it was job applications for a while, and chores like finding a dry cleaners nearby for my coat, working on Foodie Finds for upcoming cities, trying to find a PCP back in Florida, and making plans with my friend Elliana for Wednesday.

The Fabulous Fox here in STL is right next to our hotel, so it was a short walk to get backstage.
This theatre is amazing.

(stock image)

These photos don't do it justice...there is so much going on. So much filigree, decor, history, etc.
Not to mention every square inch of the backstage is covered in signatures and wall tags from both famous and unknown bands, shows, and artists.

We are getting a tour of the entire theatre next Thursday, so I'm going to hold off on more pictures until then.
I'm very excited to learn more about this historic and incredibly beautiful theatre!

And, I'm going to be recording some portfolio materials here.
The sound isn't "the best" for that sort of thing, it's a big gaping space that feels kind of like playing in a barn.
But the timing seems right.

Anyway, our opening night show went well I think. Good crowd, and it was good to get used to the space.

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Wednesday, adventures with my friend Elliana!

Here she is:

(photo from NPR)

Elliana is circus-born; that is, she was one of those children literally born into the circus, on the road, and made her stage premiere before the age of three, riding into the ring on the back of an elephant. When I worked for Ringling, she was a Human Cannonball (that should tell you something about her bravery levels!) and now she's a circus arts instructor for several facilities here in St. Louis.

She expressed interest in having a foodie adventure together, so off we went to The Foundry Bakery!

( CLICK HERE for Foodie Adventures )

Thus ended our foodie adventure! We hugged and parted ways for now.

Back at the hotel I put my exciting food finds away and gave the duck a try. It was salty and sweet, the skin was not as crunchy as I expected but the flavor was amazing and I can see why duck cooked this way is so prized. I'll definitely enjoy eating this for the rest of the week!
I tried to look up nutrition info for my other food items as well, and think I got some pretty good estimates so I can do my calorie counting.

At the theatre, Elliana came to say hello at the edge of the pit :)

We had a good show. It was our 400th! A company photo was taken which hasn't been shared yet, I'll put it up in the next post.

Paul (our drummer) helped me to set up some recording equipment, so I messed around with that throughout the show and will be interested to see how my footage and audio came out.

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It's Thursday morning, and I just finished a podcast interview with Heidi Herriott for her "Animal Tales" podcast.
She interviews animal specialists, or just people like me with experience alongside animals, to try and get different perspectives on animal care, welfare, husbandry, etc. The interview was fun and engaging, so hopefully it will be a helpful addition to her content.

I got up very early for that, so now I'm going to take a look at my footage from last night and make notes on any changes for the next recording. Then I hope to check out a nearby Goodwill, pick up a jug of water and some oatmeal from the grocery, and enjoy some of my tasty Asian treats for lunch and dinner!

The plan for Friday is to eat at Fountain on Locust before watching Elliana perform at City Museum.
Saturday and Sunday, no plans because they're two show days.
Monday is a Golden Day, so I'd like to visit the art museum and adjacent park, then have lunch in Little Italy/The Hill.

Last week, I posted all about Jungle Jim's because it took up SO MUCH. Time, media, and words, lol.

But other things happened too!

I met up with my boss Brett again on Wednesday, he took me to Pappadeaux for lunch because I'd never been.

We had alligator bites for the appetizer, and they were really good! Best alligator bites I've ever had actually.

We both had fish for our mains, Cajun catfish with shrimp etouffee for him and tilapia with hazelnuts for me.
It was very good, the fish was perfect. I only wish they'd chopped up the hazelnuts, it was weird chasing whole hazelnuts around the plate.

As we ate we talked. About lots of things.
How we're doing. Misc health issues that we've noticed as we've gotten older, and lowering tolerances to things like alcohol and dairy and fatty foods. Other circus people and how they're currently doing. Circus family who have passed away, and memories that we had of them. Our plans for the future.

It was great. Brett is someone that I consider a true friend...someone who was there for a very important part of my life, and who guided me through a lot of that, and continues to support me today despite all of my shortcomings. He and his family are precious to me, and getting to spend time with him today was a true joy and a memory that I'll cherish :)

After lunch Brett said, "Let's go to Jungle Jim's!!"
I laughed helplessly and said yes, of course!

We parked at Rhino. Inside we poked through alcohol, but Brett doesn't drink any more and I drink very little so it was mostly just window shopping. I went back to the cookware section and found a silicone grippy thing that I'd wanted and hadn't gotten, it'll help me pick up my hot Itaki containers instead of using my sleeve or a paper towel. Brett found a promising-looking low-carb bread, and I discovered a powdered egg white mix to supplement my protein intake. We dug through the European candies looking for Polish "birds milk" chocolates but didn't find them.

Overall I hardly bought anything, but enjoyed having a second chance to look at the aisles and ask myself if there was anything I'd forgotten on the first trip. Nope! All good.

From there we went to Brett's house just a few minutes away.
Brett gave me a Ziploc full of beef jerky that he'd made himself, insisting that I try a piece to make sure I'd like it.
You guys, it's REALLY good! It's very dry and almost crispy, which is how I personally believe homemade jerky should be. When I was little I used to go to the Bloomsburg Fair specifically for the homemade jerky sold under the bleacher seats, and it was just like this, super dry and peppery and just fantastic. Good freaking job, Brettastic!!

He also gave me a big jar of honey that had fallen off his Amazon truck and he'd been allowed to keep.
I'll be sharing that with the production office as they keep honey on hand for tea, so the whole company can enjoy it :)

Brett brought me back to the hotel and we hugged goodbye. I'll miss him, but it was wonderful to see him again!

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Shows have been going well. Soto (MD) is back on the bandstand, and I'm sure it won't be long before we all get notes on how we're playing (a good and normal thing...always strive to improve!).

The cast took a day trip to the zoo and got to see the hippos, I don't know if they were able to interact but they did get to watch a feeding so that was cool! I also saw from their pictures that more mammals were out, including lions and giraffes and such. Everyone seemed to have a great experience.

There were also other carpools to Jungle Jim's, so I'm seeing lots of international snacks around the production office and in dressing rooms. Oh, and company management got us some local ice cream from Graeter's! I couldn't partake because I was already having a bad lactose reaction (too much dairy overall this week but especially the black raspberry milk) but it looked delicious and was very nice of them to do that for us.

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On Thursday I had a slow morning, and spent most of that typing up the massive blog post for Jungle Jim's.
After that I got a few supplemental groceries, just some Greek yogurt and fruit, and had lunch before taking myself on an adventure across the river to Kentucky!

The view of Cincinnati was nice.

It was a balmy 60F and partly sunny. My excessively shiny shoes flashed in the sun as I walked, and brought me joy :D

( CLICK HERE to Explore KY )

All in all it was a 4-mile walk plus the mile to the theatre that night, so I had good cardio today.

While waiting for the elevator I was staring blankly out the 9th floor window, and was startled to notice some beehives on the roof.

These are a collaboration between the hotel and Fifty West Brewing Company.
They use honey from the hives, and lavender from the rooftop garden, to create a beer called "NP Buzz".
I don't drink beer, but maybe I'll have to try it before we leave!
The show went well, nothing to report. Supposedly there was a "Cincinnati trombonist of note" in the audience, but I heard about this secondhand and post-show so there was nothing that I could do about it.

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Friday I woke to a dreary rainy day. It's good that I got a walk in yesterday!

I decided to try out some more of my unique international foods today.

- Evergreen Coconut Milk Drink, Banana flavor: this was very good! Creamy banana coconut beverage with little cubes of coconut jelly. However the label clearly says "NON-DAIRY" but the ingredients list SODIUM CASIENATE which is from milk!! So if you are vegan this is still not for you.

- Wild Boar Jerky: tasty! This was real whole strips of feral pig. Was it good, yes. Was it worth how much real feral pig costs? Not really!

- Empire Spruce Soda: Blech. Tasted just like pine sap. Worse than that, it was nearly flat, not bubbly at all. Glad to try it but not for me.

- Granadilla Pulp: it's just passionfruit pulp, so it was delicious :)

- Vedshakti Toothpaste: Not bad! The color of the toothpaste reminded me of red clay. Sort of a "brick" color.

The overwhelming flavor was of clove, which was fine with me. It was a little sweet I guess, but mostly herbs and clove.
There may have even been a little spiciness to it, but there are loads of herbs and even fruit extracts in here that I have NO clue what they are, so I don't know which would have caused the spicy aftertaste.

Not sure if this is true for everyone, but for me clove causes a mild and temporary numbing sensation of my tongue and throat.
This is why I sometimes carry clove candies, because it helps me out with motion sickness.
Anyway, it's a nice toothpaste and I'll use up the tube. Now I'd like to try the herbal one as well!

Before lunch I got a little bored, so walked a mile to OTR Bagel Bar to get my Travel Bagel for Monday.
They have weird flavors like Fruity Pebbles and Flamin' Hot Cheeto bagels.
They were out of Fruity Pebbles so I got graham cracker instead.

On the walk back I asked Jameson to check on my plants, especially the vanilla orchid as I wanted to know how the flower bud is developing.
( CLICK HERE for Plant Excitement! )

I rode a "My banana tree finally fruited!" high for the rest of the day, and breezed through the evening show on a cloud haha.
It was St. Paddy's Day too, so downtown was rowdy and festive. That was nice to see.

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Saturday, I got up early to walk to Sleepy Bee for breakfast with my trombone buddy Phil and his brother.

Phil and I attended the PA Governor's School for the Arts back when that was a thing.
That summer was magical; it was one of the defining moments of my musicianship.
I learned a lot, made new friends, and improved my musical abilities a great deal.
I haven't seen Phil since that time...good lord, that's over 20 years ago!

Anyway, we chatted about our doings and enjoyed a tasty, healthy breakfast.
They both had some form of fluffy, delicious pancake.
I had avocado toast on multigrain with a poached egg, pickled raisins, arugula, evoo, and walnut dukkah.
It was very flavorful, healthy, and a perfect portion size.

I couldn't help showing off my banana and vanilla orchid pics. Luckily Phil's brother gardens so he "got it" as far as my excitement levels haha. We swapped plant stories and pointers, and Phil said they were planning to visit Jungle Jim's after we ate based on my recent pictures and posts. I gave some small advice regarding that trip ("Get a map right away!" and "Expect to spend more than you expect!").

It was great to see these two and share a meal together, and I'm excited that they'll be at the show later this afternoon!

From there I went back to the hotel and relaxed and did some job hunting before our first show.

The show went well. I was a little distracted with thoughts about this tour ending, but still played my best.
The walk back to the hotel was rough, it is back below 30F and very windy.

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Sunday, I decided to do Sleepy Bee Cafe again because I didn't really have enough random leftovers lying around to make three whole meals. This time I went with their "Queen City Bee" sandwich: vegan goetta, sliced green apple, arugula, over easy egg, and "nectar sauce" (sweet and tangy aioli) on a milk bun.

Sooooo good. Look at that lovely yolk.

Goetta is similar to scrapple. They're both a greyish "meat mush" made from carcass scraps boiled for a long time and then blended with some sort of binder and spices. Scrapple is made with pork carcass and cornmeal or flour, while goetta is usually a mix of pork and beef and uses oats for a binder.

The end result is very fatty and not very good for you, which is why I chose the vegan version, made with cremini mushrooms.
It was crunchy, chewy, nutty, and flavorful. Far superior to goetta and scrapple IMO!

The rest of the two-show day was very normal.
Our final two shows in Cinci went well and were well attended.

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This two week stay in Cincinnati has been wonderful and memorable.

I am so grateful beyond words that I got to be here...to visit my circus home, to interact with elephants, to share circus memories and foodie finds with friends new and old. It really was amazing, and a highlight of my time with Tootsie the Musical.

This tour ends in June, but these wonderful memories will stay with me forever.

And when I woke up this morning, facebook reminded me that six years ago today, the circus train pulled out of Cincinnati for the last time on a rainy Monday. What an appropriate coincidence.

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

It's Monday morning and I'm typing this up before we head out to St. Louis.

We'll be here for two weeks as well, so that'll be really nice.
There's a lot to look forward to...museums and restaurants of course, and some local friends...and playing shows for people ready to enjoy themselves and have a good laugh!

**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

**Long post due to adventures**

Monday in Paducah. Since I don't have to load in, I had the morning and afternoon to myself.
I spent most of it figuring out food things for today and the first few days in Cincinnati, which are going to be a whirlwind.

When that was done I walked to Panera for an egg white sandwich for lunch, then over to the mall to look for sneakers and get a salad from Chick-fil-a for dinner (there is no time to cook).

My black sneakers got ruined when we did the pepper picking event in West Palm Beach...or rather, they already had a big chunk out of the sole and then stepping on rotten peppers and broken glass pretty much finished them.

I was going to get black ones again until I saw THESE.

And nobody wants them (because they're iridescent I assume) so they were on clearance for $35!
HECK YES

I can't wear them for work but that's ok. At that price they just need to get me through the rest of this tour while looking fabulous.

The theatre in Paducah was ok, a little cramped but we were only there for one night after all.
We played our show and people seemed to enjoy it so, yay.

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

Tuesday morning and seven hours on a bus to get to Cinci.

We stopped partway at a mall.
I had poked around on Google Maps and noticed a Whole Paycheck next to the mall, but didn't have high hopes that there'd be enough time to hit it. I posted about it to our group chat on the off chance that we'd have time. Behold, the bus parked just across the street from it! A large contingent of us ignored the mall entirely and went straight for the groceries. I was glad because it saved me having to make an Instacart order (otherwise I'd have no groceries for a day and a half, no time to get them).

We got to the Cinci hotel just about two hours before sound check.
It's a big Deco hotel downtown, supposedly haunted.
I swear, Art Deco design must be the number one qualifier for declaring a place haunted!

My room is small and has little counter space, but I'll make do with the ironing board as a table.
It's not ideal, especially for a two week stay, but can't be helped.
Also, this fridge froze one of my yogurts again!!! WTF!!
(also why only one of them every time?? Frozen solid and the others are fine. So weird. It must be some sort of karmic toll I'm paying.)

Anyway, our opening show went just fine though we were all tired, especially crew.

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

Wednesday I woke up early due to excitement, because after months of planning, today is the day that I finally get to visit my home, RBBX 41406, car 39 (or 38 depending on when you joined.)

I lived on this train car for five straight years. When I say it was my home, I mean it.

( CLICK HERE for Circus Things )

And then my former boss and circus Bandmaster, Brett, picked me up for lunch.

We went to a BBQ place that I found called Just Q'in. It was pretty good!
Not the best we've had, we both agreed, but definitely legit. The crust on that brisket, omg.

Of course we chatted and tried to get caught up. Brett's been working as an Amazon driver and says he enjoys it.
He says that people often question him about whether he's REALLY fulfilled doing that work, after doing something amazing like the circus. He says yes, because he had his adventure and is content with it. I can understand that. After the circus closing followed by the pandemic, I thought I'd never tour again. This tour right now is bonus adventures, an undeserved and unexpected gift.

I told Brett what I've often said to Jameson: "If I have to scrub toilets for the rest of my days, it's worth it, because I got to spend five years with the circus." And I mean that. If the cost of my time with Ringling is a lifetime of low pay and tedium, so be it. It was absolutely worth it.

After our meal I asked Brett to take me to Findlay Market so I could check it out, and of course he could walk around with me.
There was a lot to see but my phone was dying so I didn't take a lot of pics...I do plan to go back so don't worry :p

I got some real homemade yogurt from a Mediterranean grocery, and also a tiny marzipan rabbit.
The yogurt is fantastic, super smooth and delicious even plain. But I'll have to eat a lactaid with every serving.

Bunny may be too cute to eat.

Other goodies like rose water and ambrosia candies, bundles of dried herbs, and tempting salt blends.

We saw lots of tempting meats and breads, but I held back because I'm going to Jungle Jim's on Monday and because I have a lot of eating out plans ahead. I got a little turkey seitan from an all-Vegan deli and called it a day. Brett dropped me off at the hotel and we parted ways, for now.

In the room I charged my phone and spent the next hour responding to comments on my circus-related posts and images.
It was great to see lots of enthusiasm, especially on a post I'd made the night before regarding Ringling's animal care (I felt the need to say something about it since a "friend" had confronted me about it, as I wrote in last week's post.) In fact, my statements on Ringling's animal care were shared more than THIRTY TIMES, mostly by veterinarians and animal handlers who work in zoos, on farms, with domestic pet breeders, etc. I am glad that what I had to say had an impact, and I hope it's mostly a positive impact.
The post is HERE if you'd like to read it.

I walked over to the theatre around showtime.
It was cold in the pit so that kept me awake even though I was super drained from all the excitement today.

Tomorrow should be pretty chill, just getting up early to hit some bakeries (yes plural) and then not much else planned.

In closing, I got to see my ridiculous and AWESOME iridescent sneaks in full sun for the first time today!
Best $35 I've ever spent.

Thursday morning, I made myself an extra cup of coffee because I felt it was needed!

I discovered that my flight back to tour is on SUNDAY, not Monday, so this layoff feels way too short now :(

There's still so much to do...mainly, making all those dang caramels.
I got started right after breakfast, but had a scary moment when I poured the cream too fast AND it was still too cold, so the sugar seized. I was afraid it might change the texture of the caramel, but kept going because heavy cream is $4 a pint right now and what if it turned out all right?

The texture did seem normal once it was setting, but we will see when it is cut.

I immediately did the second batch after washing dishes from the first.
It would have been nice to just do a larger batch in a bigger pot, but the new pot would need to conduct heat evenly and this did not seem like the time to test whether our ancient soup pot from Target was up to the task.
So, wash the dishes and do it all over again.

They look identical side by side. And hopefully they are.

Then lunch, data entry, writing two letters, and a little more packing.

I cracked open my box of circus memorabilia...
( CLICK HERE for circus memories )

We went for a walk in the late afternoon, talking about Jameson's upcoming musical projects.
Things in the entertainment world are really starting to get momentum now, and he'll be busy with music directing, programming, teaching, and performing all the way through the end of May. Not to mention his own studies as he continues his masters program.
I'm happy that he's got so many projects, but hope he doesn't overextend himself.

Back at the house we got cleaned up and made our last Hello Fresh kit together.
Cheddar-stuffed meatloaf with potato wedges and carrots.
Jameson formed the meatloaf while I washed and cut veggies.
I roasted the potatoes while he fried some onions for the topping.
It turned out great, though I only ate half because high calories.

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

Friday! Already.

Before breakfast I drove to Publix for strawberries and graham crackers for the overnight oats.
That gave me an excuse to stop at Wawa and get a hazelnut coffee :)

Back home and after breakfast, put together the strawberry cheesecake overnight oats.
It's pretty much the same recipe as the chocolate peanut butter; I'm just using a strawberry banana Core Power, cream cheese instead of peanut butter, and strawberries instead of chocolate shell. I also added a little lemon juice because some other recipes had it, and I do think it helps convey the "tang" that cheesecake has.

Tomorrow before serving I'll do a graham cracker crumble on top with sliced strawberries. Yum!

Then it was time to chop up my two big blocks of caramel.
Luckily I still had some precut wax paper wraps, so that saved me time with prep work.
First I cut the blocks into nine squares, then each square is cut into twelve.
I'll divide the pieces into snack ziplocs, each bag getting six pieces.

We have some vegans on our tour, and some people who don't like sweets, so I expect to have a little extra.
Those I'll give to the Cincinnati Dinner Train people.

When that was done, lunch, then I drove Jameson to his eye appointment because we expected them to dilate his eyes but they didn't, so we enjoyed each others' company and picked up his dry cleaning on the way home :)

The rest of the night was spent at our friend Lea's house, celebrating her husband Simon's birthday!
He's 50!

We left around 11 when it started getting rowdy.
I have a lot to do tomorrow, or it seems that way anyway.

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

Saturday.

The strawberry cheesecake overnight oats were very good.
I topped them with crumbled graham crackers and fresh strawberries.

Next time I would incorporate some Greek yogurt for more richness, and a little strawberry jam in the topping.

While Jameson was at the gym I fertilized my bananas, went to the tailor to get my pants, did a load of laundry, and packed.
When Jameson got back I had a tax appointment over the phone and found out that I'd owe (not surprising, I did a lot of 1099 work this year) but it IS more than I expected because one of my W2s is for NY and even though I only spent three weeks or so working there, they want to charge me essentially as though I worked there the whole year.

My preparer didn't feel this was fair and neither did I, so he's looking into it.

After that, a very disappointing conversation with someone that I thought was a friend, but who used my post about circus memories (the photos above) to soapbox about his opinions on animal cruelty.

Did not once ask me how the animals were actually treated.
Did not ask how they are now, or WHERE they are now.
Used my comments section to repost the same old PETA propaganda videos and photos...because CLEARLY, having been a circus employee for five years, I would NEVER have seen any of THAT before.

I was angry and hurt, as usual (this happens a LOT). But ultimately, it's just disappointing.
It's disappointing that people really think that poorly of me.
People genuinely seem to think that I would work for a company for five years just standing around watching elephants get bashed over the head.

If you think so little of me--and if you can't be bothered to ask one single question about what being in the circus was REALLY like before throwing accusations around--then we are NOT friends.

Five years of my life. Those animals were, and continue to be, an important part of my circus family.
And if you think that edited YouTube videos, or unfounded PETA accusations, are going to overwrite the things that I experienced firsthand, you're out of your freaking mind. I will ALWAYS defend the professional, compassionate, and skilled vet techs who worked with Ringling's animals. They are good human beings who prioritize animal WELFARE over animal ideology. It was a privilege to see their work, and to interact with these animals.

Aaaanyway. I was in a bit of a sour mood as Jameson and I drove to Clermont.
But the weather was so nice, and the downtown area was so cute and fun, so I couldn't be ornery for long!

We found The Snack Plug, a little shop that had international and unique candy and chips and such.
We picked out some things and took our haul to a park bench to sample.

Three seafood flavored chips: spicy crayfish, garlic oyster, and prawn cocktail.
We liked spicy crayfish the best, and prawn cocktail the least (it was very tomato-forward).
The giant Skittles were good! The texture is a little different than normal Skittles but the flavor was the same, only BIGGER :p
Jameson got a strawberries n' cream Dr. Pepper which was very good.
My Peeps Pepsi was just meh.

We wandered some more and found loads of bakeries, crafts, a record store, thrift stores...really nice shops, and we had fun window shopping. For dinner we eventually settled on Pepe's Cantina because we were feeling nostalgic for Agave in Hartford (more circus memories).
They did tableside guac which was amazing, and we each got a fancy drink.

I had octopus al pastor tacos and they were phenomenal.
The flavor was great, and the octopus was tender, not rubbery at all. So good!

We walked off our meal outside, enjoying the lakeside views.

This one taken at a scenic overlook platform.

Soon it was time to drive back home so I could finish packing.
In the morning Jameson will take me to the airport.
I'm sad to leave so soon, especially with a longer run ahead on tour.
But, I'm trying to appreciate all of this. Because in June it'll be over.

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Sunday. We woke up early, loaded up the car, and Jameson took me to the airport.

I squeezed him extra hard, because it'll be three months before I see him again.
It doesn't get easier. But I'm glad we have the type of relationship that can withstand this.

Bought some eggs and coffee to go with wheat bread and blueberries that I'd brought from home.
The first flight was a layover in Ft. Lauderdale, but they had people continuing on to Nashville stay on the plane.
I've never gotten to do that before...it's wasn't anything special really, just got to choose a better seat.

In Nashville I missed our first company shuttle, so had to kill time at the airport for about an hour.
Then it was a two hour bus ride to the hotel in Paducah.
I was feeling antsy, so walked around the mall area and then to Walmart for a few food items.

Tomorrow is our first show after the layoff.
I unpacked and took it easy for the rest of the night, chatting with some people that I'll be spending time with in Cinci.

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

A nice chill morning...literally, it was chilly!

The wintry mix had continued overnight and didn't seem to want to let up; it was rainy and misty, damp and cold and dreary outside.

I did data entry and then for some inexplicable reason went down an internet rabbit hole of "decoden".
Perhaps because my phone battery is starting to die, and I know it'll need replacing sooner than later, and looking at stupid accessories for Future Phone was entertaining.

Anyway, after that I bundled up and started walking to my lunch plans.
I didn't bundle up ENOUGH, apparently, because halfway there I felt chilly and my toes were going numb.
Still, it was a nice walk, and I was wearing my stegosaurus had which was making people smile as they passed me :)

The Bushnell where we are performing this week.
Those are our trucks outside, and one of those octagonal windows on the top floor is the band dressing room.

The front of the theatre, with banners for Tootsie and Hadestown (one of these shows has an AMAZING trombonist)

Eventually I got to The Kitchen, an unassuming little brick building with a grey awning.

It was a small cafe with five-ish tables and a LOT of people coming in and out for takeout orders or sitting down to eat.
Must be good food in here!

I had come here because the menu appealed to me, but upon entering I saw this sign near the door:

So eating here is for a good local cause, too. Yay!

I got the vegan wrap: smoked tempeh, roasted sweet potatoes, shaved Brussels sprouts, carrots, arugula, cranberries, and butternut hummus on a wheat wrap. It was indeed very good, flavorful and full of textures, fresh and healthy.

I hadn't planned on coffee but bought a small decaf just because I was so cold from the walk, and my hands needed warming.
Was very tempted by the baked goods, but exercised self control this time.

Walked all the way back, and immediately made hot tea and dove under the covers with my computer to warm up and do some more work. A while ago someone here on LJ suggested that I sign up with Prolific, and I did, and was recently accepted to it. So I tried to do my first survey with them, but the site didn't like my ISP so there went that plan.

Later on, the commute to the theatre.
Some fun random things from backstage for you:

Apparently people have been sitting on, lying on, or otherwise touching this bed, which is a stage prop and shouldn't be touched or used.
Someone made creative Kuzco signage to keep people off the prop :)

Missie (Head of Wardrobe) brought this unripe coconut with her all the way from West Palm Beach, and for whatever reason today was the day to crack it open. I was invited to watch.

Very little water, and no edible pulp. It smelled like a pumpkin. The water tasted neutral actually, like plain water.

Faces of disappointment:

The shattered remains of the disappointing coconut:

The show went well, Kyle (trumpet) was making a recording for personal use and our Music Boss Andrea was in the audience so we were all on our best behavior. We will probably get some notes tomorrow on how our performance went.

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Friday, a nice long day.

I woke up at the usual time and spent way too much time looking at iPhone cases and new iPhones.
I thought it would be fun to check on Jameson's location, wherever his ship might be out at sea.

He texted to say it's a sea/travel day, so he probably won't have much signal.

Then data entry and lunch.
Then Paul (drums) said he was going to Whole Paycheck again so I asked him to grab me a yogurt to replace the one that froze, and he kindly obliged. After that I bundled up and walked across the river again. It was sunny but there was a strong wind and it was barely above 30F even without that, so again I found myself not wanting to be out and about.
I decided to look for supplemental foods, and then go back to the hotel for the day.

Oftentimes when it gets down to the weekend, I start getting to the last of my groceries, and that's when I need to supplement with random food items or eating out. I started with a convenience store and didn't find anything useful, but I did find an interesting coffee/cocoa seltzer to try.

Next was Four Dads for pizza by the slice because I'm just slightly short of carbs and fats for Sunday.
There are many pizza joints here in Hartford, but the slices from Four Dads looked the best online.
They had margherita drizzled with balsamic and a bit of pesto, I got two of those.
And when I said, "You don't have to heat it up, I'm not eating it yet," the big dude with the handlebar mustache holding the pizza peel looked at me as though I was insane for ever suggesting cold pizza and said, "Oh I DO have to heat it up and I WILL." Alrighty then! :p

From there, a quest to find a single bagel for the travel day on Monday.
I know it sounds stupid, but when you travel as much as I do you learn a few things.
And one thing I've learned, that has saved my ass multiple times, is that a bagel is extremely cheap, travels well, lasts for days, and can settle your stomach when nothing else will.

In other words, The Bagel is to me what a towel is to travelers in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Back at the hotel, I finally got caught up on The Last of Us and started my Foodie Finds for St. Louis.
That's also a two week city so I'm redoing it to be two pages.

The evening show went well, noting especially special happened.
I found myself feeling mopey because there are only about four months left of tour.
And this could be the last time I get to do this.

Wondering what lies ahead. Another great adventure? Or another span of years at an hourly job barely scraping by?
Wondering leads to worrying, speculation, and feeling bad for not being "better".
A better musician, a better-qualified worker, a better girlfriend. Such cheery thoughts.

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

Saturday I was up at the usual time and managed to get a load of laundry in (Jameson and I are both getting home at the same time and I want him to not have to worry about his laundry).

While that was happening, oatmeal in the Itaki and a little halfhearted job hunting, cold-emailing and friending on LinkedIn.

Both shows went fine.
It was cold and snowy...I'm trying to appreciate the snow, since soon it will be spring.

Between shows, dinner and working on my St. Louis Foodie Finds.
STL and Cincinnati are such very different cities.
For the Cinci sheet, we are downtown and there are loads of restaurants within 1/4-1/2 mile.
In STL we're also downtown, but the city is so spread out that you have to go at least two miles for most of what you want.

Anyway, Saturday = uneventful.

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Sunday, I woke up early for no reason and used the time to eat breakfast, do some data entry, and pack before our shows.

The first show went well.
Robert Horn, who is the playwright and producer who wrote Tootsie, was in the audience and came down to the pit to say hello. He's a super busy dude, but somehow he always manages to get out to see us at least twice a year.

Between shows, back to the hotel to pack more and shower and eat dinner.
I ate the "pouch beef" from Whole Paycheck, and it was pretty good. Bland, but it would be an easy thing to drop some BBQ sauce in there and stir it around and have a quick tasty meal. I'll keep an eye out for it in the future.

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Monday and it's the usual routine of breakfast, final packing, data entry, and posting this post.

Jameson got home yesterday at some point and is hopefully resting up before I come busting in tonight.
I have a direct flight, and am hoping to get home by 4pm or so.

Plans for the week-long layoff include

- two batches of caramels for the cast and some Cinci friends
- much cleaning, per usual
- getting Jameson to try overnight oats (we will do PB-cup flavor)
- repacking/rotating clothing and things in my luggage
- getting pants hemmed
- minor gardening
- letters to pen pals and grandparents
- hopefully some time to chill out

After the layoff, it's a rushed day in Paducah KY followed by TWO WEEKS in Cincinnati!

In closing, some wisdom from Miss Piggy.

**Long Post.**

TL;DR TikTok

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Thursday was a sunny, cool day, so I knew I'd want a walk :)

I did my data entry for an hour with the hotel window as far open as possible since we don't have climate control.
Eventually it got down to 72F, perfect!

After data entry and breakfast I got dressed and went to an urban market because I needed an avocado, and also because they have EVERY flavor of the "tepache" that I love! I've never seen all of the flavors in one place before.

I picked a new one to try, then strolled over to the hockey arena because that's where the Ringling Bros. Red Unit had their very last performance. In fact, the circus and I came to Providence several times (2013, 2015, 2017/the final performance).

I found the empty lot where we had been allowed to park our cars on our last day.
It was just an empty lot, but I could visualize my Corolla, packed to the roof with all of my belongings in the minutes before I had to drive away forever. It was hurtful, but I'm glad I went and had a look.

I walked around the arena looking for the cemented elephant footprint that had been taken to memorialize the elephants leaving the show in 2016. I found it in a very prominent place, right in front of the arena.

The plaque and footprint.

I cleared the leaves out before going on my way.

Still feeling kind of like a little floatyghost, this time wearing my Tootsie jacket, which bears a striking resemblance to my Ringling crew jacket.
Gigs will come and go, but that was not a gig. It was a life.

( Read more... )

We had great crowds again!
And Brittany, Joanna, and Jenna joined forces to paint a beautiful wall tag for our show backstage!
I am upset with myself because I took a picture, along with a picture of the front of the theater, and accidentally deleted them from my phone after posting that TikTok.

So here is a picture of the wall tag stolen from Jenna:

And here is the front of the Providence Performing Arts Center, stolen from Bill:

After the last show we packed up as usual. Off to bed for tired little me.

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It's Monday and I'm having a nice slow morning.
The bus doesn't get here until 11:30, then we have about five hours of driving with one planned rest stop before reaching the next hotel in Utica, NY around dinnertime. My plan then is to get a few groceries and partially unpack since we're only there for two days.

My Year In 2021:

- Grew 33 types of plants in my garden.

- Baked 24 types of bread.

- Made lots of new meals and foods including shrimp and grits, Scotch eggs, gnocchi from scratch, salmon cakes, collard greens, banana pudding, and the best lemon bars

- My first-ever attempt at macarons was a moderate success.

- Ate frog legs, butterbeer, "yakiniku", beef on weck, pavlova, muffuletta, turtle soup, and white sapote for the first time.

- Transferred to another steno school, then quit steno school in October.

- Watched Biden's inauguration.

- Sold my bass trombone.

- Raised eight monarch butterflies from eggs, and watched them all fly away

- Got cross-trained to be a Supervisor and Training Assistant at CapTel.

- Got Employee of the Month at CapTel.

- Experienced working from home 1-2x per week.

- Interviewed for, was offered, and declined a position in HR at CapTel.

- Got vaccinated in April and on May the 4th!

- Got a booster shot over Thanksgiving.

- Got covid tested over 30 times, both PCR and rapid tests.

- Got my first leather jacket.

- Feld Entertainment announced that Ringling Bros Circus would resume in 2023.

- Played in VR on the Oculus (and it was amazing!)

- Had a tire blow out on the highway.

- Visited my parents in June, which was the last time I would see my Dad.

- Found out that my grandfather was a radar technician in the Army Air Force (AAF).

- One of my sisters had her first baby!!

- Got invited to go on tour with Tootsie the Musical.

- Jameson got kidney stones.

- Jameson directed a production of Head Over Heels.

- Jameson directed a production of RENT.

- Celebrated eight years with my Jameson!!

- Went to Universal's Haunted Horror Nights for the first time.

- Parents contracted covid.

- Dad passed away of covid-related complications.

- Helped plan a funeral for the first time.

- Signed the wall at the Dr. Phillips Center after performing there.

- Started a TikTok.

- First full-time work as a musician since before the pandemic started.

- Met lots of amazing people on tour and in life

These are just some of the things that I experienced for better or worse.
A sample of 1/37th of my time on earth so far.
All I can say is, yes there were certain things that made this a terrible year.
But there were other things that were good, and should be appreciated.

(Also, can you see why I choose not to have kids?? Could I have done ANY of the good stuff if I'd had children??)

For 2022, in addtion to doing my best to "just get through it", I will try to keep my chin up for myself and the people around me.
I'll try to be less negative, and more empathetic.
But I AM still going to be pretty selfish.
Because life is very, very short.

I mean, I haven't even tried BLACK sapote yet.

Quick note that I am changing some things about my blog.

The last two times I went out on tour I experienced a surge in viewership, so this is preparing a little for that.

As much as I love the little elephant layout I've used for years, it is not mobile compatible, and this new theme is. Plus it's a bit cleaner to look at.

I've changed my tags to make sorting and finding entries from the circus, the cruise ship, and the musical a bit more distinct. Because tags like "opening day" could apply to any of these performance types, and I don't want there to be confusion. I will probably also reduce the overall number of tags...a lot of them are just for my own convenience.

I've added a sticky post with links to my other social pages, as well as an "about me" copy/paste of my LJ profile bio. This is meant as a convenience for people who've not been following me and may not be familiar with LJ.

When I start posting specifically about Tour Stuff, my posts may become a little less personal and a little more PC. You may also see a disclaimer at the top of some posts, like "These are my own thoughts and views, not my employer's, blah blah", so that I'm not creating problems for my tour managers.

I will continue to post more personal thoughts and things, as this blog is still my "diary". But those posts will almost always be friends-locked.

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More weird days at work.

I spent my days poaching captionists to monitor from the Absent Supervisor list, or trolling those who fell behind in their captioning by 120 seconds or more. I captioned as well sometimes, and I did other tasks like walking the floor to check on people and cleaning some cubicles and such.

To fill the lulls between monitors I started a spreadsheet of things around each theater and/or hotel on the tour that I might like to check out.

Some of the things that I like to map out in advance are grocery stores, bakeries, museums/aquariums/points of interest, restaurants, thrift stores, antique stores, and Asian/international groceries.

Many of these cities I've been to before, and looking at the maps and seeing all the old hangs is pretty nostalgic.
Especially beloved cities like Kansas City, MO; Greenville, SC; or Baltimore, MD.

One thing about living and traveling with the circus was that even though we spent some time in the fancy downtown areas, the majority of our time was spent on the train, which was nearly always parked in some noisy dirty industrial area on literally the wrong side of the tracks.

(view of Atlanta from our "home" for the week while performing in the city.)

So we'd do these extravagant shows, and eat out at the fancy restaurants around the arenas, buying expensive drinks and strolling or Uber-ing around town, seeing the sights. But each night we walked or rode the company bus back to our home, the train. And the further we got from downtown, the darker it would get. Until there were no more street lights...until the smooth paved streets gave way to potholes, and gave way again to gravel and dust and rusted rail ties and broken glass.

(an underpass at the train yard in Hartford CT.)

And we stepped over rotting trash and dead animals, and passed quietly by homeless encampments or solo hobos sleeping under the overpasses. And we half-listened as a car backfired in the ghetto (that WAS a car backfiring, right?) and kept a wary eye on the stray dogs wandering the train yard, as we tramped together in the dark, through the dust and rust and stones, and climbed onto our grey-silver train, and felt at home.

(walking back together after a show)

This time will be different.

I loved the circus and everything about it. But I must admit, as romantic as the idea of living on a 1950s passenger train is, there were times when it was Big-Time Inconvenient (not to mention unsafe by nature of the environment.)
Because I spent a solid five years touring this way, and because it was such a huge part of my life, I think I've conditioned myself to think that
"Touring" = "The lifestyle I had with the circus".

And I am finally realizing that that is not true at all.

Looking at where we'll be staying on this tour, nearly all of the hotels are within walking distance of each theater we play.

When that finally sank in, I felt a wave of emotion.
Good God! What a blessing!!!

You guys may never know what it's like to walk miles and miles to get from a train yard to a grocery store, buy all of your groceries for an entire week, and then have to CARRY THEM FOR MILES to get them back home. In the blistering summer heat in Houston, in the cutting cold of a Long Island ice storm.

(no I was not kidding about the Long Island ice storm. There are inches of ice under that top layer of snow.)

I have fought through FEET of snow to get groceries two miles away, and carried them two miles back.
Pretty much any time the train was parked less than two miles from the nearest grocery was cause for celebration.

You guys, on this tour I will be able to walk BLOCKS to get groceries.

I won't have to lug my food and necessities over rocks or through cut fences.
I will be able to buy them and carry them back, maybe not even sweating! Like a regular human being!
Oh my god!

I don't know if I've effectively described what a big deal this realization was to me. But it was a BIG deal.

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And it's the weekend. For me anyway.

Woke up late Wednesday, which was nice. For once I wasn't making bread so didn't have to be up by 9 to ensure it'd be done before steno class at 5:30. Had some nice coffee and breakfast and did a little gardening. The passion fruits are starting to drop from the vine, and I'm collecting them and waiting for them to finish ripening.

I've cut some of the smaller ones open and they're empty. Kinda suspected that might be the case when some of the fruits never got any bigger. I just hope the larger ones have some pulp. If not, I'll probably just buy some at the store and make a thing with them. It's been really dry so far this summer and, not being a farmer, I'm really unclear about how much water and when to apply nutrients and such. So if they're ALL empty, well, I'm failing at everything this month so why not one more thing.

In the pollinator garden, I finally got to work moving sand from one part of the swampy area to the part where my plants are. My plants are on a slope, and this makes erosion and water run-off a problem. But this isn't my property and I'm not supposed to be gardening here, so I try not to get too crazy. I moved several buckets until I felt it was as good as it was going to get (it'll never be level without some serious excavation), then put down a layer of topsoil that I hope will help retain moisture and provide more nutrients. While I was out there I planted the Joe Pye weed as it's gotten fairly big, and should probably get used to its permanent home. Assuming it doesn't die in this dry hot weather lately.

The milkweed is coming back really well from being eaten, I'm especially impressed with the giant milkweed. Can't wait to see it really fill out.

In the afternoon I went to the dentist, about 45 minutes away because I became a patient there while we lived closer to downtown. Dude is a really good dentist so I've hesitated to go somewhere else. Got some extra-fluoride toothpaste this time because lately I've had more sensitivity on one side.

On the way home I got groceries, but forgot saurkraut and will have to go back again tomorrow.
I measured the ingredients for "MaryAnn's Slow Rye", a recipe from a facebook bread group I'm in. It's a NY deli-style rye that has an overnight rise and calls for a "bread sponge", which is kind of like a preferment I guess. These are techniques and grain types that I'm unfamiliar with, so I'm pretty nervous about it. But for some reason the idea of making my own rye for reuben sandwiches has been swirling in my brain, so this week I'm going to deviate from my lesson book (gasp) and try this recipe on my own. At least I should be able to make the bread first thing in the morning, so if it sucks I'll have time to go buy real rye before dinner.

Steno class was ok, I could have done better but I wasn't terrible.
Afterward I started the bread sponge which was easy enough, then mixed the dough, which was a little weird and sticky but seemed to turn out ok (rye flour just happens to be stickier than AP flour). I'm super torn about leaving the dough to rise at room temperature as instructed, because "room temperature" here is between 75-80 degrees and if I get a six hour rise I'll have to punch this stupid dough down at 4:30 in the morning. argh.

After some stressed indecision I decided to put the dough in the fridge for a few hours before bed, then take it out to sit on the counter for the rest of the night. Maybe it'll keep colder a bit longer and delay the rise. At least I can check on it when I get up to pee?

I DID check on it when I got up to pee around 4am, and it seemed to be rising steadily but slowly. As long as it wasn't overflowing the bowl, that's all I really cared about. Thinking about it disrupted my sleep, though, so I was up at 7:30 to go look at it. It seemed to have doubled in size to me, so I scooped it onto the counter and flattened it, adding the caraway seeds and folding them in one, two, three times. The dough was a little stiff after three folds so I let it sit for 15 minutes, then came back and finished shaping it, setting it on a greased sheet tray with some cornmeal on the bottom. There it did it's final rise for about two hours while I made and ate breakfast and did some small chores. It seemed to me like it had doubled, so after a quick egg wash and scoring into the oven it went.

Apparently I put it in too early, though, because it split along the side of the loaf and also had some dense spots inside. This happens when you "underproof" bread, or don't allow enough time for the yeast to aerate and/or don't have a good gluten structure. Fortunately I did have a good structure, it's just that I put it in the oven too early. Still need to work on being patient I guess.

Here's where it split on the side.

The crumb. you can see the dense parts near the corner and bottom.

Right when I took the bread out of the oven, Jameson had some free time, so we decided to hit the gym.
This is my first actual workout since December 2019. Isn't that insane??
I took it easy, just doing 30 minutes on the elliptical at level one. Hopefully I can go one more time this week before the weekend, and then go each weekend day. Three days a week is ideal for me right now. It felt good to work up a sweat, even though I still hate exercising lol. Once I get going, it feels good.

Back home I was still irritated about the results of my bake, so I went to the store for sauerkraut and to look at the mass-produced rye bread because I didn't want to serve Jameson some dense crappy bread that I had messed up. But I was somewhat surprised to see that the half-loaves of rye sold in the Publix bakery had many of the same features as my bread...they weren't blown out the side, but they had a more dense crumb near the bottom. Even the prepackaged Arnold's brand really didn't look all that different from what I made. It's been a while since I had rye, so I guess my expectations were incorrect for how it's supposed to turn out. So then I said screw it, we're eating mine tonight.

Back home I sliced up the bread and set aside the best-looking slices for our sandwiches. Then I threw together the ingredients for my favorite granola as I haven't made any in a while, got that going, and pre-made my breakfast eggs and overnight oats with yogurt for the week. I also marinated some thin-sliced chicken breast and cooked it in the grill pan, figuring it'll go well with the rye for lunches. Good nutrition is 99% of the reason I was able to stay healthy during the pandemic, and I will ride that train for as long as I can afford to.

At some point during the day someone posted this in one of my circus-related facebook groups:

So this is actually happening. They're actually going to restart Ringling.

But, it's crushing. Because according to my friend who works in wardrobe on Feld shows, it'll probably be a small show, similar to the size of their Marvel Live production. No chance of a live band. I doubt they'd have animals either. This gentleman they've hired seems to have some experience with Cirque du Soleil.

Jameson thinks they're going to make a "kid-Cirque", in other words a more kid-centric version of what Cirque has already put out there. I think he's probably right; I just don't see what else could possibly be done that would be a) not what Ringling was, b) not what Cirque is, or c) not already being done in other small circuses. I reached out to the new Director just to introduce myself and express interest in what Feld's got planned, and he responded very kindly, but I do not expect more than that. Outside of being a musician I have a few administrative and creative skills that I could apply, but I very much doubt there will be anything for me on this new show. I just don't have the specific skills sets that they are likely to be looking for. This makes me incredibly sad, but there's nothing I can do about it but wait and see what will happen.

Anyway, around dinnertime I made the reubens for us. It really did feel special to use my very own homemade bread, and that cheered me up a bit. I layered each slice with homemade thousand island dressing, sauerkraut, thinly-sliced low sodium turkey, and shredded Swiss cheese. I cracked some fresh pepper into the sauerkraut and added a little fresh dill, then onto the grill pan they went. They turned out delicious, the bread crisped up so nicely and I honestly would never have known the bread wasn't storebought if I hadn't made it myself. Served with celery and carrot sticks and dip, and watermelon cubes. Kind of a lunch-ish dinner.

After cleaning up from that I packed my lunch and got things ready for work, then practiced steno while Jameson did his final D&D session with his friends for a while. With his show coming up, he won't have time to play again until after June or maybe even until after the summer.

I cut open three more passion fruits. All empty.
I think they are all just empty. Sad, and disappointing. There wasn't enough water. I screwed it up.

Well...this week, Jameson has more rehearsals so I'll be on my own most nights.
On Sunday I have my little charity concert.
Somewhere in there I hope to make time for the gym.
Other than that it's more of the same. Work, steno, eat, sleep. Wonder what I ought to be doing instead of this treadmill-like life path I'm on.

A watched pot never boils.
A Mario ghost doesn't chase you until you run.
And many more analogies.

A few days ago, Jameson exclaimed next to me in bed, and I was like, what happened?

Feld had listed a position for a Casting Director for Ringling Bros.

I quickly checked the other Ringling sites--you know, the ones that I wrote about like a week ago when Feld removed all traces of Ringling things from its site--and lo and behold, everything is back again.

How weird. So much for letting dead things stay dead.
I'm sad, because I can't even feel a stirring of excitement in my heart.
All of this same stuff was up before the pandemic too, and nothing came of it.
Not only that, what kind of circus will it be? No train, no animals, probably no live music.
And likely, no place for me.

That's my greatest fear. That the circus will be revived, a tour will be planned...and I'll be left behind.
I think that would really, actually break my heart.

Well, I'm not concerned abou it now. There's nothing to do but wait and see what happens.
But I wanted to correct my previous "lay-it-to-rest" post at least.

On a whim, I checked the Feld Entertainment page today.
All circus-related stuff has been taken down.
The ringling.com website still exists, but anything about auditions or "coming soon" has been removed, and all links on the site reroute to Feld.

This is the first time that I've seen Ringling totally removed from the Feld site.

I'm sad.
But it's also good, because it has felt like a much less comedic version of Weekend at Bernie's.
It's dead, for f*ck's sake. Let it rest.
Before covid, there was a chance of reanimating the circus corpse. Now we'll never see it again.

It feels like something that died years ago can finally be put to rest, as it should have been the first time, as it deserves. As all of us deserve.

I'm glad for that, but sad for the little part of my soul that dies along with it.
Like the part that died with my mother, like the part that died with my love of music.

I really hope reincarnation is a thing. Because there truly is nothing else left for me to do here but water my plants and wait.

Oh let's see.

Jameson and I finished our 2000-piece doughnut puzzle!
We've got good teamwork :)

On Sunday I gave myself a PTO extra day off. Sunday is a great day to do this because my week is pretty much 2 days working - 1 day off - 2 days working - 2 days off. Breaks up the week nicely.

But ironically, right at 5:30am which is normally about the time I get up for work, all the smoke detectors in the house went off!!
Scared the daylights out of us. We though it was the motion sensor at first since that occasionally beeps. And it was 5:30am so we weren't thinking clearly. But after a minute we figured out it was the smoke detectors, which are all apparently on the same circus and will scream an ungodly chorus together should one of their batteries die. Good lord! So at 5:30am Jameson went around replacing batteries while I stared at each alarm to see if the light on it was red or green. Bleeeeh.

Well after that, I still got more sleep than I would have on a workday. Woke up significantly later and had breakfast, and went out to check on my new pollinator garden. I was a little freaked out that the plants looked wilted again...I mean come on I know it's hot here, but all of these plants are supposed to be able to handle FL summer, and I just spent $$$ on them and significant physical effort preparing the ground for them, so they had better not die!! At least not all of them!! I watered them a little but tried not to get too crazy as I've read that some hot weather plants will wilt on purpose, and it's not necessarily a sign of doom.

Anyway, back inside I worked on two fun food projects: mojito popsicles, and oatmeal sandwich cookies!

Both turned out pretty well. The popsicles were easy to make, although the recipe I used had way too much lime juice if you ask me. Also the popsicles keep overflowing their molds and I can't tell if it's because of the booze, or the tonic water, or me overfilling them (although there is a fill line). Whatever, it's a pain to keep having to clean their drippings. Next time maybe I'll fill them less or not use tonic. All that aside they do taste good! I used mint from my garden to make the mint simple syrup :)

The sandwich cookies were MUCH more successful. They're meant to be kind of a Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie knockoff, but as you can see they don't look very similar. If I wanted to make a true knockoff I think next time I'd use fine-ground oats or maybe even oat flour, and also incorporate molasses into the cookie to achieve the chewiness and color. Anyway the homemade version is absolutely delicious. Just plain oatmeal cookies with some homemade buttercream sandwiched in between. I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

In the evening we teamed up with two of our most awesome circus buddies, Applesauce and Shrek (nicknames obviously) to play Overcooked 2 together! We achieved this by joining a game together, then holding a Zoom meeting while we played so we could all scream at each other. It was great fun!

( Read more... )

Nothing new to report.

Still doing my steno at work. It's great because I'm really retaining the material from being able to practice throughout the day.
I can now spell maybe 60% of words in the English language, and take realistic guesses at the other 40.
It seems just yesterday I was learning the shorthand alphabet!
But next will be speedbuilding, and that will be HARD. I'll probably complain, just to warn you.

I finally got my insurance card from work and decided to set up an actual PCP.
Holy hell. You guys, I have not had a PCP since I was a child.
Even in the circus with the best healthcare available in the US, I couldn't have a PCP because we were in a different city each week. If I needed an exam or a medication, I had to rely on clinics wherever we happened to be. Of course with excellent insurance it was never hard to find somewhere to go, but still. It means that I had a pap smear in Ohio and TB shots in Indiana and bloodwork in Rhode Island. It means that I was never able to gather all of my medical records in one place (if I had planned better maybe it would have been possible, idk).

But now! I can give this a shot! I mean who knows what happens in the future. But for now I can at least try to see the same doctor!
I dug around online and ended up going with a large hospital/care chain in this area, and found a doctor with a lot of excellent patient reviews and awards to his name. Why not shoot for the moon, right? My copay is ridiculous so I may as well get my money's worth, or something.

On Wednesday I had a FaceTime appointment with my new doctor. I had sent all of the paperwork and photos of ID cards and such via email and an app, which was cool. The appointment was just like a regular doctor visit...it started late lol. I was checked in and waited in FaceTime, and eventually the doctor showed up and we chatted a bit. He couldn't take my blood pressure or temperature or any of those things, although I have a scale and thermometer in the house so I was a little surprised he didn't ask for those things, but maybe there's too much room for error. Anyway, we made a plan to get me up to date on various exams and to get some bloodwork going once everything is "back to normal", or back to a point where we could meet in person.

After that I did a few small chores like laundry and spraying neem oil on the pool deck to deter spiders.
My tomato and basil plants are not looking great, I feel sad and helpless about it but after doing a bunch of research and seeing others' plants, I realize that this is just how it is. A lot of plants just can't survive a Florida summer. Daytime highs have been above 90 and they've been in full sun. I moved them to the shade but I'm not sure it'll matter, they're annuals and it may just be time for them to go. I'm going to leave them alone except for watering and pest control, and see what happens.

Meanwhile my other plants are doing fairly well. The vanilla and passion vine love this weather.
The watermelon seedlings look healthy and happy to be here.

In the afternoon we had lunch and worked on our giant 2000-piece doughnut puzzle. We are making amazing progress!
Jameson did the edges while I sorted pieces by color/pattern. He has the attention span to really focus on each doughnut, while I'm more scatterbrained and end up filling in holes and connecting parts. That's why we're a great puzzle team! :)

Then I started a simple bolognese for dinner, and while it simmered we went for a walk.

On our walks we talk about various things. I like to hear what Jameson's found interesting online this week, and the issues he encounters through his online teaching. I know he wants to branch out to other types of online teaching and projects, but this whole situation makes it impossible to plan really. Shanghai Disney will be opening soon, so that's a good sign for the Orlando park as well depending on how things go for them. And then Jameson might have work with them again. We shall see.

Back home we cleaned up and had dinner while watching Community. Jameson played Animal Crossing while I shopped for underwear online. I don't normally buy clothes online because it can be a pain to find things that fit, and I hate having to send things back. But who knows when I'd be able to try lingerie on again!! I really need bras, and I've been trying sooooo hard to hold out, but all of my bras are at least a year old and many are 3 or more :/ so the underwire and padding and all that are getting weird. Anyway I did order some underwear but no bras yet, didn't get up the courage.

Speaking of courage, random sidenote. My sister Kate is an OR nurse and she is amazing.
Around this time last year she was recognized by her hospital as "Nurse of the Month", and they took this beautiful picture of her.
She has recently dealt with her first Covid patients (she lives in a small town) and I can't tell you how worried and proud this makes me.
I admire her so much.

On Thursday I slept in and had a good breakfast, then actually got to enjoy goofing off online. I feel like every "weekend" I've always got some chore to do or meal to cook or homework or whatever, anything to keep me from just sitting still for once. But this week my chores are pretty minimal. It's nice. I watched a new anime and looked into the possibility of getting some flowers since my garden has become so bare. Jameson had an online class to teach, and while he did that I joined a Ringling alums video chat.

It was pretty amazing! Around 50 people showed up. It was great to see everyone. Lots of people have unfortunately lost their jobs, but at minimum it was great to see everyone alive and well. Circus kids have grown up. People have facial hair. People have lost weight or gained weight or had kids or added pets to their families. It just made me so happy to see even a fraction of our little family back together.

I've said it many times and will say it again: the circus was more than just a show.
It was a culture, a lifestyle. A town. A living thing.
We've all "moved on" with our lives. But in a lot of ways, we haven't. The number of people who said they miss the circus life, or they have the urge to be on the road again...well, I wasn't surprised. I think Jameson and I both feel that way too a lot of times.

When someone dies, you miss seeing them, hearing their voice. Their little mannerisms. The things you used to do together. How they smelled or felt or laughed.
This is the same. All those same things, we miss about the circus. Seeing our family, hearing the animals or the preshow music or the scraping of the rails. The little things like the last show dance, or playing cards in Pie Car. All the cities we saw together, the favorite restaurants and bars where we'd hang during load out. The smell of the horses (or even the tigers) and how each train car had a unique, not always unpleasant, scent. We remember it, and we miss it.

Although a lot of us are still sad about all these things coming to an end, we still love it and we still care about each other. The proof of that is how many people showed up tonight, even if only for a moment to say "I'm here and I miss you all".

Anyway. Tomorrow it's back to work as usual.
Everyone please stay safe and healthy.

Since I have a little time on this, my day off, thought I would address a recent update to the Feld Entertainment site that has a lot of former circus people shook:

I stopped checking the Feld site a long time ago, mostly because they never seemed to update the site.
But it looks like there's been a pretty recent update, which includes this link on the Careers --> Auditions page.

Was I shocked and excited to see this, yes. All sorts of things ran through my head, a barrage of memories, scents, sensations, moments. It all flowed through my head in an instant. Followed quickly by a rush of hope. Followed just as quickly by the logical part of my brain grabbing that hope, throttling it, and cramming it into a bottle.

Let me explain why I'm not very hopeful (or shouldn't be).
And then let me describe how this really feels. Which might be weird for you, but if it bothers you, I say don't read it.

Reasons not to get your hopes up:

There will be no train. Freight rail travel costs went up 200% right before the circus closed. The cost of the train was a major reason why the circus closed. If this show opens again as a tour, it will be a truck tour.

There will be few/no animals. Last I knew, Feld had sold most of its young elephants to zoos for breeding or sent them to a Florida animal sanctuary. The elephants remaining at the Center for Elephant Conservation owned by the Felds are the older ladies who were retired from showbiz even before the circus closed. And again, the elephants and the controversy surrounding them was a big reason for the circus's closure.

There will likely not be a live band. It is fair to assume that a renewed Ringling show operating as a truck tour, without animals, would be a LOT smaller. The Gold Unit was the smallest Ringling show with one ring and a 6-piece band. Most one-ring circuses in the US only have a few musicians: 1-2 on keys, a drummer, a conductor who maybe also plays trumpet, and someone to run Ableton software and electronic cues if the musicians can't do it. I don't expect a trombone spot, it would be an unneeded expense.

Many former circus folk will not come back. Most of us have worked very hard to move on with our lives. I know that the clowns have been discussing whether or not they'd return upon seeing this audition page, and it seems that a lot of them might not. People have families, and new jobs that offer a lot more stability than a Feld show that may-or-may-not survive. People have to look out for themselves. I think we've all had our hearts broken once, and many would rather not go through that again.

Which brings me to how this really feels. Which you may or may not want to hear, but I want to get off my chest.

On the phone with a friend last night, I tried to describe what this feels like.
The closest I could come to describing it was, "It feels like pulling a dead body out and parading it around, saying "Look, it's still alive! Aren't you happy?""

I mean, that's the PC version of what I'm feeling. But it goes deeper than that.
If it upsets you to think about dead relatives, you may want to stop reading now.

After my mother died, I had lots of dreams about her.
Some of them were nice, dreams of spending time with her when she was healthy.
Others were a horror. Nightmares of reliving her suffering over and over and being helpless to stop it.
And others were just messed up.

I remember one where my mother came out of the grave, dirty and stiff and her skin just wrong, her looking at me and saying she's here and OK now, maybe I could help her get cleaned up? Let's go back to the house. Maybe you can help me find a job, Meggie. I'm better now, see? And all I saw was the tag still tied to her toe, with her name and height and weight and date of her death.

In the dream, I was supposed to be glad. The person I loved was there in front of me. Everything was going to be ok. "Isn't this what you wanted?" whispered my brain.

But it wasn't ok. Because dead people don't come back. It was wrong, bad, sickening, and pitiful in the worst possible way. And it hurt almost more than when she died in the first place, to see her like that even in a stupid messed-up dream. Alive, but not. Desperate to fit back into a place where she no longer belonged.

That's what this feels like right now. It feels like watching a corpse desperately trying to stand up and rejoin the living.
"Look, I'm OK now."

Hmmm. I'm not convinced.

Now that said, putting my weirdo feelings aside, I know nothing about what's planned and any feelings I'm having about just seeing an audition announcement page are pretty inconsequential.

I've heard speculation, everything from "the old Ringling" to a Gold show version to a Hugh Jackman limited edition tour. Some people even suggested it might be some kind of movie production.
I don't know what this link means, or what it will lead to. I have no idea what's planned for the brand or any potential shows.
I DO know that anything called "Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey" is NOT going to be the same show that died in 2017.
Whatever it is, it cannot be the same. So what will it be?
Would it be something that I would want to participate in?
Would there even be any non-musical work that I could do for Feld? Would they even want me? (Especially if anyone at corporate reads this post? Yikes.)
What would have to happen for me to drop everything and go with Ringling again?

So many questions and no answers just yet.
A part of me would love to be "back" with Ringling, wishes for nothing more.
The realistic part of me knows that what once was can never be again, and therefore I shouldn't get my hopes up.
But I wanted to digest it, and get some of this out in the open. It was helpful.
So thanks for listening.

Whatever we think or feel about this, let's just all wait and see what happens.

I had my last two Evita shows, and they were fun.

Although there was some awkwardness with the contracting for this show, I'm very glad I ended up doing it because I got to meet some really great human beings. Josh, who had to step up to the plate at the last minute to music direct AND play keys, was amazing all around. Sam was, well, a trumpet player, so that says everything doesn't it? ;P Ciara is the goofy friend I didn't know I needed. And the rest of you...well what can I say. Y'all crazy. And I love it :)

So that was that, and Clayton (the actual trombonist for this show) paid me my bread, and all was well with the world.
Who knows when I'll get to perform again. Christmas? 2020? We'll see.

Jameson is working hard. He doesn't have a single night off this week. He does get to sleep in, but his evenings are not his own.
Lately he's been thinking over a lot of things, which I think everyone has to do at some point, but I can't help but worry that he's OK.
Everyone's battles are their own and I don't want to get pushy or interfere, so I'm just trying to be here for whatever life brings him and whatever decisions he makes. Lord knows he's already done this for me over the past two years.

Anyway, the weather this week was surprisingly fall-like. It was rainy and a little windy, and while it was still over 80 degrees it was at least cooler than it's been all summer. Wednesday was the 18-year anniversary of my mom's death, so I found the weather comforting and appropriate. Sometimes her anniversary passes and I feel the same as I always do. Other times I really "feel it". I don't get to choose when I feel sad or not, it just happens. This time I felt it...but it's good to have those feelings, and it's good to remember.

To help mitigate those feelings, I took a trip to an asian grocery and bought some ingredients to make simmered kabocha.
I had been worried about being able to find a kabocha pumpkin, but they were immediately apparent in the produce aisle, a big mound of them stacked next to the turnips and sweet potatoes and such. Screaming "pick me, pick me!"

My asian cooking experience is essentially stir fry, and as someone with actual asian blood I'm starting to think that's kinda pitiful.
Thinking about my mom this week, I wanted to try making a traditional Japanese dish in a traditional Japanese way.
Even if it's just a side dish. Even if it's just basically boiling a pumpkin.

And even though my Obaa-chan despised pumpkins. I can hear her soul rising up to tisk and curse and be horrified :P

I found this site that's entirely traditional Japanese cooking for beginners, called Just One Cookbook, and used their recipe for simmered kabocha.

Following the recipe, I used bonito flakes to make a broth and then chopped the kabocha and lined the bottom of a pot with the pieces. I mixed sake, sugar, salt, and soy sauce together and it all went in the pot with the pumpkin. I then made a sort of DIY "drop lid" since I hadn't been able to find one at the asian grocery. Drop lids are supposed to help temperature distribute evenly and reduce large bubbles from boiling.

As you can see, the pumpkin looked pretty lovely when it was finished. Unfortunately I do think I overcooked it, because the texture was somewhat crumbly. Still, the flavor is interesting and I won't throw it out. Pumpkin is pretty good for you! And it was fun cooking something in the nimono style. I learned something new :)

If you clicked on the nimono recipe link above, you might have noticed that it only calls for half a kabocha pumpkin. What to do with the other half?

While working for Princess Cruises at the beginning of the year, there was one night in the crew mess where roasted pumpkin was served. It was so delicious, I immediately noted it down as something to try making at home! And lo and behold, when I look back on that pumpkin's appearance, I realize that it was definitely a roasted kabocha!

So I took the other half of the kabocha, this time slicing it thin and laying it out on a sheet pan.

Having never done this before, I wasn't sure of the seasoning so did one quarter pumpkin sweet with cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar, and the other savory with salt and pepper. They went in the oven just like you'd roast vegetables or french fries or whatever. Now these, I liked! Jameson enjoyed them as well. he preferred the sweet seasoning, I liked the savory. They had a texture more like sweet potato fries.

This was a fun little experiment and didn't take a lot of time or effort on my part. The pumpkin was only a dollar, and I had almost all of the seasonings and equipment at home. The only thing I needed to buy extra was the sake (and I ain't complaining!)
Sidenote: The plate that I put the pumpkin on belonged to my Obaachan. Love you Grandma :)

In addition to the pumpkin adventure, I made two pretty simple meals this week.
The first was salmon with a teriyaki glaze. I let it marinate in the glaze and cooked it in the sous vide for about 30 minutes. The rice was precooked, the salad took two seconds to throw together. Easy peasy.

The second was a Harvest Chicken Skillet recipe from Well Plated. This one was prep-heavy, but after everything was chopped you pretty much just threw it in the skillet and waited. I chose this recipe because it had a lot of interesting ingredients--chicken, bacon, brussels sprouts, sweet potato, and Granny Smith apples--and each serving is under 500 calories!

Plus, let's be real. I'm jonesing for fall real bad. Maybe if I do enough fall junk it'll BE fall. Yeah?

Nah.

Anyway. Harvest chicken skillet. You chop all the ingredients. You cook the chicken with salt and pepper. You render some bacon fat and use that to cook the veggies. Add the apples and spices last, then throw the meat back in to integrate. Jameson described it as a "Thanksgiving skillet" and I think he's not wrong.

After dinner Jameson had to get to his gig. Busy man. I feel bad that I'm not working just as much. But that's why we're a team. I do other things that he doesn't have time for. And eventually, I'll be working more too. Guaranteed!!

Tomorrow is Saturday. I've got work, and Jameson will have another gig at night. After work I get to grab dinner with a circus friend...and at a place where another circus friend works as a chef!! Pretty excited about that!

Let's see. On Saturday I went to work, and it was fine. On the drive home I made sure to stop for gas as many stations are out because of the hurricane frenzy. Even though they're saying it may not hit us directly any more.

Back at home, the dishwasher had been installed! Yay!!! I'm still bummed that once again, we find ourselves having to hire a third party (happened with the dryer, and also with the dishwasher in the apartment) which is more expensive. But hey, at least now we've got all of our new appliances! They look beautiful and are working great so far. I'm very grateful to have the money saved to be able to get these things.

Jameson wasn't feeling great that evening, so we just stayed home and relaxed.

Sunday, more of the same. Dorian is rocketing along at 3MPH soooo...whatever I guess!
CapTel will be open (pretty sure they're required to be as their services could be lifesaving) but Music & Arts will be closed on Tuesday in anticipation of stormy conditions. We'll see what happens. In the meantime I picked up some pizza on the way home, we ate it, and chilled. It's nice to have a little time to chill lately.

Monday, more CapTel for me and more chill time for Jameson. Dorian still wasn't here yet, so my day at work was rather slow; they overscheduled thinking people might call out. After work we got a few things at Target and had dinner, then I had planned to chill but my stomach had other ideas. Something I ate.

Tuesday and Wednesday, not much to report. This was when Dorian was supposed to either come ashore or not, and it ended up being "not". So we got a little rain, a windy day, and about 50% of all businesses and schools closed. Oh, and suspended tolls, that was nice! Lol. It was nice to have time to relax in the evenings. I did some cleaning and watched Jameson play video games.

Thursday was supposed to be a day off, but my schedule got shifted around due to the hurricane. Before work I did a little of my online course, then went out to enjoy the pool with Jameson. It seems like lately we're never home at the same time, so it was really nice to enjoy the pool together :)

After that, work was work, I did it and came home.
The next morning we got to enjoy breakfast at Keke's with LaRena, a former Ringling clown who currently works with Feld Entertainment in a production capacity. She was in town for a vacation that she'd been planning for months...and then Dorian came and ruined it :( But at the very least we got to enjoy a meal together, and get caught up a little over stuffed French toast and giant pancakes, and that was wonderful. She seems to be doing really well. I'm still amazed every day at how all of us former circus people are getting by.

There's a heaviness in my heart as I type that, because this week we lost Ian, one of our Pie Car chefs. He died unexpectedly in a car crash that's still under investigation. Everyone, please be careful. Please. I don't know what else can be said or done...it can happen to any of us at any time.

After a great morning with LaRena, we went back home where Jameson practiced some audition materials and I worked on my online course, then headed out to work. I forgot my phone -_- so the day went a little slowly, but I was able to help some customers and also practice some materials for my course, which was nice. At night I came home and finished the coursework and headed to bed.

Today is Saturday and I'm about to head out to CapTel. I'm finishing the final Harry Potter book and am starting Deathstalker, so pretty excited about that (at CapTel you're allowed to read a book between calls). I know this is middle school material but it's ideal for my work situation, where interruptions are frequent. Tonight after work Jameson and I are going to see Shin Lim!

Without getting into too much detail, I done f***ed up.

As mentioned in the previous post, Jameson and his realtor have been having a crazy amount of trouble selling Jameson's condo.
Well, one morning we got the news that our HOA was dicking the deal even further in a variety of ways. Mostly by being corrupt and unorganized.

This information seemed to have a serious impact on the ability to sell the condo.
Feeling helpless and frustrated, I made a very poor choice. Even though I am in no way involved in any part of this process, I was so angry and upset that I got on facebook and sent a very nasty message to Jameson's realtor. The worst part is, I didn't even tell Jameson I was doing that.

So Jameson had to hear about it when his realtor called to warn him that if I continued to behave inappropriately toward him, they would not be able to move forward.

As you can imagine, Jameson was livid. I'm not sure I have ever been more embarrassed or ashamed in my life.
I'm supposed to be a rock for him. I'm supposed to be a support to lean on, a light to keep negativity away, someone who lifts up my partner. And instead I was the opposite of all of those things. I was supposed to be the one constant in all of this, and instead I was just another thorn in his side.

Anyway, I had already done it and could not take it back. It seemed like things were moving forward anyway, although at great cost to Jameson financially and emotionally. I didn't know if I could be forgiven, that was some pretty serious damage I've dealt to our relationship, and this isn't the first time it's been me who's been the weak link. But all I could do is keep trying. All I could do is try to be a better person. I wished so badly that I could undo the damage I caused. I want so badly to be the type of person that others can rely on. But clearly, I'm not there yet. And I don't know how much patience there will be in the world for me to become that person. I can't expect others to tolerate my failings or wait for me to be a better human. But at the same time, genuine change often doesn't come as fast as we'd like. So I don't know where that leaves me, us.

I made a mistake. Moving on.

We moved back into the condo on Tuesday. On Tuesday night I got to attend the wedding of two awesome circus clowns, Dean and Taylor. Jameson couldn't come because he had to work, but I made sure to give his regards to all of our friends :) It was great to see so many circus people again and see how everyone is doing!

Circus-themed wedding decor:

They set up a little "SugarFest" station where you could load up on junk foods!

Of course it's not a circus wedding without circus acts! There was a hoop performance that was really spectacular, followed by an acrobat who balanced on stacked chairs and then made a touching wedding speech from his perch.

A few close circus friends asked about Jameson's house situation. I answered as best I could without going into too much detail, although I did spill the whole story for Dustin and Brandon, two clowns who seemed sincerely concerned. I am extremely grateful that they took the time to talk with me, actually, because they've had a lot of the same hurdles as our relationship is facing (having to do with one partner not being as strong as the other in a variety of ways/situations). They listened and offered advice and encouragement, then suggested a few books that I might like to read to help address some of my personal shortcomings. I am so, so grateful for circus family. For people who can see all of the horrible things about me, and still hug me, encourage me, and give me a chance to change. I dont' deserve it, I never have, and I am so grateful for the grace and patience of others.

Back to the wedding, the whole thing was just really wonderful. For the cake cutting, Dean and Taylor pied each other, hilarious!

(photo courtesy Dean & Taylor)

Then for their first dance, they did a juggling act! It was so cool and so "them" :)

(photo courtesy Dean & Taylor)

Everything was perfect. Many circus attendees commented that it felt like a "real circus party", and questioned whether a venue had even been necessary, because even on the street or in a barn we would have had just as much of a great time. Because all we needed for that, was each other.

I really wished that Jameson could have been there, but he did get to go out with the Disney crowd the very next night and blow off some steam. I think both of us needed that a lot, just a chance to loosen up with friends and not think about things for a while. Thank god for entertainment, yo.

On Thursday Jameson had to go to the office, and as of this writing we are supposed to move into the house on Friday. Don't ask me how, I'm not asking and have pretty much forfeited any right to the details at this point. But yes, supposedly this is still actually happening. So I stayed home and re-packed, gave everything a quick wipe-down, and generally made sure we'd be prepared for movers to come in the very next day.

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

You guys. It happened!

Last Friday, the movers came. We STILL did not know if we'd actually be moving into the house! The person buying Jameson's condo came for one last walk-through while the movers loaded up the truck, then she went to go sign papers. It was weird to see the apartment get more and more empty.

Finally, everything was packed up. Jameson signed his papers, and then he and the movers had to wait until we'd be allowed in the new house, hopefully around 3pm. Meanwhile I got to work dusting and vacuuming and cleaning the condo as best I could for the new owners. It was strange to be the only one there. I did the best that I could, and locked the door behind me for the last time. Goodbye Holden Heights.

Then I drove over to the new house. Jameson and the movers were there already, moving everything to the garage.

Soon the movers were finished, and Jameson and I were left standing around. We waited and waited. There was still a possibility that we'd be getting a hotel for the night if the money didn't go through. It started to rain.

Then...a knock on the door!
It was the realtor!
The house belonged to Jameson! It was all over!
YAAAAAAAY!!!

In the midst of our excitement, I got the opportunity to apologize to the realtor for my behavior. He was very gracious and forgiving, and I was extremely grateful. While I was delivering my apology, I felt Jameson come up behind me and gently rub my back. I can't tell you how this made me feel, after spending the past week terrified that I'd ruined everything.

I'm still going to be staying off social media for the most part, because that should never have happened. But I think now that it's all over and we have moved together, we can start fresh.

And then...what a beautiful house!!!

We spent the whole week unpacking, setting up utilities, and making plans for making a home.
Every day I've been going to work, running to Home Depot or Target or Lowes, and running home to work on the house.
It's actually kind of fun, something to look forward to every day!

On Wednesday Jameson's dad came to visit, watching Jameson's show at Epcot and then having pizza with me in the evening.
We found a great brick oven pizza place very close to the house! It's been really hard to find good pizza in Orlando. Yay!

We gave him a house tour of course, and he loved it! He also gave us some awesome artwork for the new home. We can't wait to start decorating! Thanks Mr. Boyce!

On Thursday we got a Nest thermostat and Ring doorbell, and someone came to hook up our cable and internet services. It was nice to finally have internet in the house!

In the evening we headed over to Hollywood Studios for a very special cast-exclusive event: a preview of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge!!!
Jameson was allowed to bring one guest, and he brought me!!!
You guys...it was incredible. Like, I didn't even feel like we were at Disney at all. It was completely immersive, from the castmember costumes to the food to the landscaping and rides. Even the bathrooms were themed! When we saw employees moving dumpsters, chairs, or other equipment, it was all made to look like Star Wars cargo materials!! Insane!

We didn't get into the Cantina because there was a huge line (and we could only sign up for certain events), but we did get to pilot the Millennium Falcon Smuggler's Run ride! I get motion sickness and have particular trouble with simulators, but I was OK as long as I focused on my task in the ride. There are two pilots, two gunners, and two engineers for each compartment. I was a gunner, so I did a buttload of shooting haha. I did my best to watch the main screens where the action was taking place, but could not look at it for more than a few seconds. I would say if you are sickness-prone, just be prepared to miss a lot of the immersive element. But you can still participate! Which I really appreciated :)

It was just such a fun experience. Here are a few of my favorite things that I got to see! For those unfamiliar with Instagram, you can hover your mouse a little to the right over each image and an arrow should come up, click it to see more pics and video!

https://instagram.com/p/B07W8GCA_Fs

https://instagram.com/p/B07Z0KWgMd6

The green drink in that one video was supposed to be "milk" from Bubo Wumba Family Farms, haha. It's a smoothie-type drink made with coconut and rice milks. Jameson got a blue one that tasted sort of like cotton candy and was spiked with rum. Mine was green and citrus flavored, with tequila. Not everyone will like these because they are not very sweet and they're pretty thick, but I was glad to try them!

On Friday there was a lot going on. I had someone coming over to power wash the pool patio, and another gentleman to install our new washer and dryer. Unfortunately it rained partway through they day (because Florida) so the patio did not get finished, and then when the new dryer didn't work we had to hire an electrician to find the problem (a bad outlet). While I was glad to get some things done, I was a little put out by having to reschedule the deck sealing...now it will happen on a day I'm not around, and Jameson will have to handle it. It was supposed to be a present from me, so it irritated me that I couldn't get it done hassle-free for him. But as Jameson so aptly put it, "Life doesn't work that way." Ain't that the truth!!

So along with all of that craziness, we had a nice day. I tested out the new washer and dryer, they're great! Jameson played some video games for the first time in like a month, and we watched Food Network together while eating dinner. Jameson installed a Ring doorbell so now we can scream at anyone trying to break in or steal packages. And we also cleaned the bathrooms and unpacked a bit more. In the evening Jameson had a gig. All in all a good, productive day :)

Saturday it was back to work for both of us. I took some excess moving trash to the dump and picked up a few things for the house, then went to work, then came home, ate dinner, cleaned up a little, and had a little Me Time. In a few days I start my second job, and while it won't take up all of my time it will certainly take more. So I want to enjoy my free time when it rolls around!

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taz_39

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goofball on a train

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