Puzzled

Well, last night was the opening night for my third to last show of the season, Nickel and Dimed. I managed to avert the seemingly regular cockup of the aftershow party. I'd heard last weekend that there was a shooting at the place it was to be held. What I didn't hear until Wed. was that the party was therefore moved to another place. Where, I didn't know. Of course, I heard nothing of it from any of the organizers of it. So I sent out an email, Thurs, the day before, saying that I'd heard it was cancelled, and did people want to gather at the brewery for good beer? One of the three people replied and gave me the name of the new place. It was at a nice place, a little upscale for my tastes, a draw of Guiness was $5. Not extreme, but all I could afford since I'd not been to the bank that day. The odd, puzzling, thing was my feelings about being there in the first place. While we were in the restaurant chatting it was nice. After a while, though, most of the people went into the bar proper to hear the band playing. I don't dance. I don't karaoke. I had no more money to drink. It was too loud to chat. I was bored. I started to wonder why I feel the need to go to these shindigs. It was mildly entertaining to sit and watch the drunken dancers and other mating rituals, but all in all, not a great time. Am I turning into just a boring stuffy old partypooper? If I had been able to drink more, and if she'd asked me (a LONG shot in and of itself), would I have dropped my inhibitions enough to dance with S? It probably would have taken quite a bit of drink for me to get that loose. I did have a bit of a Karmic revelation, in a goes-around-comes-around sort of way. S was disturbed that E was off in the corner with three of her college age friends. I asked S if it bothered her, and she said, only being left out of it, not being included. "You know what I mean?" she asked. Did I ever. Now I'm debating an email to her telling her it'll pass; but it comes down to her having to deal with it in her own mind.

Yesterday was, all in all, a very eventfull day. A trip into Chicago to look at props for Tommy (they were supposed to have pinball machines, which I would need to hook up, or modify, thus my inclusion in the excursion). They had no pinball machines, strike that, they had no useable pinball machines; they had one antique wooden non electric one, looking like it came out of a penny -arcade on some boardwalk. Boss bought us lunch at a thai place in Oak Park. Really nice. I haven't had real thai in quite a while. I had a yellow curry, and S had a red curry. both were equally good, though hers would have been really spicy after a whole plate of it, mine was just right, tongue numbness at the end of the meal. We got back to town just in time for a production meeting. Met the choreographer and one of the video guys. Not much else substantive decided that affects me, other than Boss and I have to meet soon to discuss staging so I can start finalizing plans for my lights (as if I've started yet. No I can't put it off too long, I want to get it done early to do some pre-programming. It'll be a huge show for me.) So here are some pix of our trip into the prop warehouse in chicago. An AMAZING place. anything and everything. Lets see, the pix are of the drive in. Dreary Chicago day. Off and on Sneet (that hard snow that is almost sleet, yet not quite hail), no, I was not driving. A general shot of one floor of this place. There are at least two floors, all like this. One shot of some of the stuffed animals they have. One of S and Boss figuring up a total next to the pile of cigar boxes. Just LOTS of lots of stuff. I could spend days there just looking. A most entertaining waste of time.