the campaign to reduce the amount of stuff continues to fail

[acroyear]

long weekend.  damn long.  exhausting.  both nights in the hotel I had every intention of relaxing to a little music and catching up on my usual scienceblogs reading (which i print up from the office usually to take to lunch).  as with last week, both nites i'm *gone* within seconds of hitting the pillow, shostakovich be damned.

bullets are, of course, a blur after all that.

• unless it involves an airplane, i (well, "we") simply will never be on time for anything, ever.
• insoles in sandlar boots are critical.  they're good in every other way except for cushioning which after last week, my feet decided was essential.  next week my catskills should come back out of hibernation.
• faireraven was getting the creeping crud and between that, the mud, and lack of sleep, we ended up not doing the "pipes" dance all weekend (at least, i think so?  did we do it sunday?).  no worries.
• on the other hand, no coffee.  bah.  and i had a whole new honey jar ready and everything.
  
• we actually got to see a show!  London Broil on the Market.
• did finally get coffee as that booth FINALLY got power (one of the last to do so that day).
  
• ernesto saturday.  wet, windy, cold.  i didn't mind so much myself (though having change of garb for pub sing remains a great idea).  did what we could at 2:30 by the info booth, but a decent set (mostly the high-speed stuff) following up the Rogues @ the Dragon.  normally (and certainly in years' past) an impossible gig, but with the support of an ex-cast member and some very silly friends of his that i've seen every year at least once for 3 years now, we held something together pretty well.  dinner with large group of regulars and guests like vicky-mead coming up from NC was fun, though service was, as always, utterly inconsistent (we got ours within minutes while others ordering before took three times as long?  sheesh...).  hthottie if you're ever feeling like you're learning a little TOO much of what goes on back stage or the last N years worth of this madness some of us live in, just let us know. ;-)
• hey, lets make up for a rainy day by setting a new record sunday!
• Cercamon are back!  yaaay!
• lines lines lines lines lines.
  
  With the power fluctuations, the credit card machines were unreliable, so the lines were horrendous as people had to wait for every credit card to get called in, going all the way across the gate area into the gravel.  several of us did on-the-spot entertainment bits to keep everyone amused and hopefully dedicated to having a good time once all that was over.  I put in about 15 minutes worth of pied-piper whistle-playing to the little ones (including Baby-Stupina!) before heading back in.
  
• dedicated audience at the 2:30 set!  we had two kids just bouncing everywhere in one of our nicer sets that actually got noticed by Britney and Tim (as opposed to the "filling in time" types of sets we end up having just as someone in mgmt walks by, always making us nervous as we never get our "real" show noticed.
• hey, we got to see another show!  this time, the Chess Match.  my only gripe?  Culpepper (while a nice guy in character and IRL) was a little over-used (what, 4 fights?) and I'd rather have seen Nymblewyke as that "grog" character have another go.
  
• decent 4:30, again lots of kids but few sticking around.
• i'm still trying to find my feet around the changed pub sing atmosphere in my corner.  with the migration of the table campers, "new" people tend now to be in the front benches (which I do accept was the desired goal of the new seating), leaving me with mostly regulars at my end, and while Rugby/Dixon may laugh at how the entire concept of the Pub Sing is telling the same dumb jokes to the same people, I still miss my old "role" in greeting new people.
• my pub sing "joke" of the day - "I was in the mood for tea, so I went to this nice place by the globe and asked for Tetleys.  This is the worst bloody tea in the world.  I had to have another one just to be sure!"
  
• sunday dinner with friends at a new (to us) latin-american place (I wouldn't call the food strictly mexican).  decent, and i know the others liked it, but expensive and not really my style.
• sunday's total was (from an overheard conversation) somewhere around 12,600.
• creeping crud monday: faireraven 's headcold kept getting worse so she bagged out of morning dance.  This had the annoying side effect of having the cast dance around the maypole go for 1 2/3s times longer than it should have.  i won't go into "why" on a public forum, if you don't mind.
• i eat well during the Shakespeare.  cheese, peanuts, crackers, ham sandwiches (next time, i'll remember mustard), ice tea...last week was london broil slices (no, not the jugglers).
• decent 2:30 and 4:30 sets with quite a few TLF'ers (my former group) stopping by at various times.
• Pub sing random funny line for me - patron asks me to toast Steve Irwin (yeah, I'd read about it in the morning), and nice and aptly says "to someone who died doing what he loved, and would that we all could go that way", to which i dejectely reply "oh god, I'm going to die in this pub!"  yeah, it got a laugh. :)
  
• too much crap...i kept bringing stuff in in bits and pieces (often just 'cause of how late we were) so it took 4 trips back and forth to the car to get it all accounted for.  bleh.
• decent "usual" dinner - service at our usual sunday (monday this weekend only) spot has been much improved over last year's...

this week, practice, man practice, as next weekend i'm playing the low-whistle aire for Midsummers as Justin (Tim O'Kane's Hooligan partner) is out.

Shoganai!

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

the audience-right wall's somewhat empty now with the smaller crowds of early september, but i know it won't stay that way as the big weekends approach. plus, again that up close and its kinda redundant to the efforts of those already on stage. i liked giving that sort of "support from all sides" approach, only now my "corner" generally isn't the type of patron that needs that. i still get a few newbies on the rock wall and in the center section so i'm starting to re-focus over there, but its hard to break an 8 year "tradition" ;-)