Who the heck do I think I am?

The first installment of "All Things Considered"'s kids' book club was yesterday:

The Graveyard Book.

Although as usual, either no one asked or they didn't ask Gaiman to answer the important questions. Like "WHAT IS SILAS? WHERE DOES HE GO?"

But that's okay. And then I found this:

Mouse Circus

Which I'm sure anyone who reads his blog regularly (yes, etakyma, I'm looking at you) knows already. So I'm behind the curve. Sue me. Wicked cool.


Okay. Updates. Oy. So much has happened in the last month. Mockingbird is over. Bell, Book, and Candle will be over tonight. Of course it's supposed to snow and we're supposed to strike.... We'll see how that goes. My neck got all twingey again last night and it hurts to turn my head to the left again. ARGH.

In the next week, I have a class on Tuesday morning, I'm leaving early on Wednesday for an appointment, I have an orientation session all day Thursday, and then on Friday I'm heading to Rochester for the weekend because after that, rehearsals for Big start in earnest and I won't have time until January. Somewhere in there I have to get my passenger-side front tire looked at because I had to fill it with air about a week ago. No road trip with a bum tire, thank you!

The reason I'm going to Rochester is not a particularly happy one. ( It's time to kick Mom's move to assisted living into high gear. )

So, it's been a bit...hectic. Fraught. Tense. Those things. But it's okay.

I'm not going to audition for any more theatre through the winter - at least not until we have a better sense of timing - so that I am free to travel back and forth to Rochester on weekends and ferry stuff away one car-load at a time. The good news is that there should be no reason Mom can't go to the house over the winter as well, to move some of her items that she wants, or if I came in on a Friday we could go on Saturday and spend the day going through several boxes, then bring what we're keeping back to her new place. The bad thing is that it'll be more expensive than we'd hoped because it's more on the order of assisted living than just living someplace on one level. But insurance will pick up some, the sale of the house will bring in some funds (not a lot), and my earning shot up with the new job *just* in time to be able to help.

And as I put it to her, it's happening while she's still able to be fully in control (or at least mostly in control) of what's happening. She can make the decisions, she can still enjoy high activity and in fact may be more healthy as a result. It's just hard to face the reality of leaving her house after 37 years.

Then again, the maple tree's gone. So really? Not all that much point to staying anymore. :)

The first three performances are in the bag. It's come together to be a great show; I'm scoring points with the director (yay) and with a couple exceptions I really enjoy the cast. (And almost everyone is agreed on the exceptions.)

My cold cleared up (mostly) by opening night and completely by yesterday. And it's stopped raining!

On the downside, OMG I had insomnia on Saturday night. By 5 AM I gave UP on lying in bed not sleeping and decided to turn on the TV and hopefully go to sleep to a movie (which is a fallback for me when all else fails). Unfortunately, I chose a movie I like that I hadn't seen in a long, long time (The Sixth Sense) and got completely engrossed and didn't fall asleep the whole time.

So at 7 when it was over, I tried the process again, only this time in the living room, in my chair, with my afghans, and an older movie, one I've seen much more often and don't need to "watch" to know what's on the screen (Labyrinth). I listened from the beginning through about the point where Sara was talking to the worm and then was out. I did wake up enough to hear the end of "As the World Falls Down" and a bit of the conversation with the trash lady, and a bit of the battle for the goblin city (since that part gets loud), but that was it. Next time I woke up the movie had ended and was back on the DVD menu. I tried to repeat the process with The Last Unicorn but was less successful. I heard every scene almost up until they got to King Haggard's castle, and woke again only about 20 minutes later, when they were tricking the skeleton (Rene Auberjenois!) into telling them how to find the Red Bull. By that time I had to get up, anyway, to make breakfast and wake up enough to go to the theatre for the Sunday matinee.

Sunday night, thankfully, I got to bed around 9. Not to repeat the night before, I turned on HBO since they were showing Apollo 13 (another film I know by heart), set the "Sleep" function on the TV, and don't remember it turning itself off. Woke up at 8:30, yay.

Meanwhile, my face is still very chapped from the makeup and makeup removal process. Ouch. No matter how mild the moisturizer I use, the shit burns like acid when I put it on. It's better than not using anything, but yeeps. Ouch.

I got my census, filled it out, took it and two bills to the post office, returned my OCLC library loan book to the library and picked up Massachusetts tax forms. I also signed up for information about working for the census. I figured out that I'm "earning" about $14/hour on Unemployment, so if they're paying nearly $20 that's better. The question is can I go back on Unemployment after the census work is over? Will I have to? Oy. I dunno.

Waltham had a LOT of flooding - in fact, nearly everywhere I had to go today I had to take detours to avoid flooded areas. Concord, too. Pain in the butt, especially at 3:30 when school traffic and the detours combined to slow everything down to a crawl. And man, are other drivers ever STUPID in the rain. I'm kinda glad I don't have to go out tomorrow unless I really want to. Give the ground some time to clear itself up.

Um. That's about it. Tomorrow I will get to the taxes and some Fleur business and oh, yes, laundry.

My days are so exciting.

Magistrate let me off. He was a little swotty, but he waived the ticket.

No charge, no ticket, no surcharge on the insurance.

Got to work by 10:15.

Yay!


In other news, I have proven to myself beyond shadow of doubt that although I like root beer, it does not like me.

I've suspected it for a while, and have avoided root beer accordingly. However, tonight I had some. Note to self: don't do that again.


Other things to update: Saturday was my father's birthday. Friday, he called me at work. He asked a question (I don't remember what it was). I answered it. I also answered a question he'd asked over email the day before. "And?" he says. "What?" "Isn't there something you want to say to me today?" I look around. "Dad. Your birthday is tomorrow."

He reminded me that he has trouble remembering the days (ostensibly because he's retired, but I he had trouble before then!). I told him I thought it was just that he's forgot when his birthday is. Hee.

Because they're friggin' cool, that's why.

Drove to Boston from Rochester through a bunch of rain bands, and on three occasions saw rainbows. But saying it like that is like saying, "We saw a plane fly," when you're talking about having been at Kitty Hawk.

So the first rainbow was a pretty standard affair. Off to one side, not a full arc, but pretty sharply defined. And I thought, "Well, that's cool."

The second one was as I was coming around Albany, just before turning off for the bypass to the Pike. I saw it to my left, then saw the mirror-image of the double rainbow around it... then realized that I could see the *complete* arcs of *both* rainbows off to my left. Two absolutely perfectly described half-circles of light, with a partial third *inside* the main, sharpest image. As I turned south and then east again, approaching the Castleton-on-Hudson bridge, the angle shifted and it was a PERFECT picture: The left-hand "bottom" of the main rainbow's arc appeared to be rising from the north vanishing point of the Hudson River. The right-hand "bottom" of the arc, I kid you not, came down *right on* the Castleton-on-Hudson bridge, and the right-hand "bottom" of the double rainbow arc (the mirror-image one), appeared to "hit" the train trestle which is just down-river from the bridge. So as I was driving, it looked like I was literally driving *into* the end of the rainbow.

Talk about your Kodak moments. Five minutes later it was gone.

But about ten minutes after that, I saw a piece of another rainbow. Sure enough, in another 10 minutes, the road curved, the clouds parted just enough, and there was another *perfectly described* parabolic arc of double rainbow. Sweet. And this time, when the road shifted, the left-hand "bottom" was on the left-hand side of the road, while the right-hand "bottom" was on the right-hand side of the road. So this time, I was driving "under" the arc of the rainbow itself.

Wow. Then it started raining buckets. And when I got home I found that my trunk had leaked and my cloak and some sewing were soaked. Lovely. I hope it was a one-time deal. But, yeah. Six rainbows, four of them perfect, in one day.


Now, the bad news is that Saturday night I got tagged for speeding. Yeah, five minutes to midnight on the last day of the month, and I have out-of-state plates. Thanks, I needed that. Not. I blame Sondheim, as I was listening to "Epiphany" from Sweeney Todd and like a dummy wasn't using the cruise control. I completely zoned out and didn't see the trooper lying in wait. Grrrrr. He kicked it down, though, to a lesser charge, I think largely because when he told me my speed I (quite honestly) balked. (I believe the exact phrase was, "Whoa. Really?! You're kidding. Yikes.")

Nothing to do but pay the sucker, though. I called the clerk's office for the town where it happened (20 minutes from my mother's house!) this afternoon and learned that it's a 2-point "non-speeding" violation (because the officer kicked it down to a lesser charge) and a fine of most likely between $100 and $150, plus the court fee of $55. So roughly $200, but hopefully no more than that (as it's a first time ticket). Add that to the insurance surcharge I'm *STILL* fighting (no court date yet!) from Pennsic. This kind of thing just HAS to stop happening! O Gods, why do you like to fuck with me so? Did you *know* that my mother was going to pay me her share of the cell phone bill for the quarter? 'Cause I didn't.

I cancelled my Amazon order to prepare for paying the stupid ticket. Law of averages: it had to happen sooner or later. But yeesh. It's more a pain in the tuchus than anything else. Except that I worry that this now will somehow make me an easier target. Ever play Monopoly and feel like once you've rolled three doubles and gone to jail once, it happens more often after that? Yeah. That's my fear. Like there's a sign on my car now that says: "It'll be a repeat offense now!"

At least I'm now flying, not driving, to Crown. But ye gods, honestly. You'd think y'all didn't want me to come out to AEthelmearc for events! You've had some fun, but now, seriously? It's time to let Gwen off the hook for a while.

At least for Ealdormere this weekend I've got plenty of time both ways, no need to push it. I'll have to remember to tell my right foot that. Repeatedly.