Well, I had a bad cold towards the end of last week, and I took Friday off from work (and slept for most of it, which was glorious). But I was better by Saturday (sleeping late Saturday as well), and Saturday night I went to see plumtreeblossom and many other wonderful people at the closing night of Much Ado About Nothing at Theatre@First. The performance was great (as opening night had been), and a lovely bonus was bumping into minerva42 and getting to catch up a bit. (See my earlier post for more about the performance.)

Afterwards, I helped strike, which was lots of fun but took longer than I had expected (given the extremely minimal set) because Theatre@First needed to clear everything out of the prop closet so the church could do some remodelling. I enjoy doing stuff like that where I can just look around and find some mindless task that somebody else will have to do if I don’t do it. I think I wouldn’t enjoy it nearly as much if I were one of the people trying to keep track of all the tasks, mindless and difficult, and making sure they all get done efficiently in the proper order by the proper people.

And after strike, I joined plumtreeblossom at the wonderful cast party at heliopsis’ house. It was a great party with yummy food and munchies and delightful people. Did I mention it was at heliopsis’ house? It was at heliopsis’ house. This is of note because ① heliopsis is a total sweetheart and ② a gracious and welcoming host who ③ throws a kickass party and his house is gorgeous and just perfectly laid out for that sort of party. (I understand that surrealestate sold it to him. Way to go, surrealestate! You need to sell houses to more people whose parties I go to!) He’s also ④ a spectacular cook, by the way.

At some point during the party, heliopsis put on the Kenneth Branagh version of Much Ado (which I had watched with plumtreeblossom a few weeks ago) and we all sat around and watched and compared performances. We had to stay through plumtreeblossom’s lines, of course, but she and I were pretty tired by this point, and by the time we said our goodbyes and made our way to her place (just a few blocks away) and got ready for bed it was something like 3:00am. Whee!

We slept late (for plumtreeblossom, not really for me), and Sunday morning we hustled out of the house and got on the road to try to find the Gideon Freudmann concert in Vermont. Now, I had spaced on the fact that we were doing that until Saturday afternoon (I blame several days of a cold), and had scrambled to find and print out directions when I was leaving for the show Saturday night, and, long story short, I was not clear on the directions, I did not have my GPS with me, and I knew we were cutting it close on the timing even if everything went perfectly. Only everything didn’t go perfectly; the Google Maps directions I had printed out had some turns (or forks) onto streets which did not have street signs, and in at least one case probably looked more like a long driveway than a street (unless I really wasn’t in even approximately the right place to start with). So anyway, there was much driving back and forth trying to figure out where our turn was, and after about 40min of this I decided even if we got back on track the concert would be mostly over by the time we got there, so we turned around and looked for food.

We drove around for a while in White River Junction looking in vain for something that was both more upscale than a slice of pizza and open at 7pm on a Sunday, but plumtreeblossom found a Chinese buffet just as we were getting back on the highway, and we had a very satisfying meal there.

Only after the meal I got on the wrong highway. And I didn’t notice I was on 91 instead of [EDIT: 89] until we were almost to Northampton, which added at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half to our return trip. plumtreeblossom was very sweet about it, but remember that we’d been up till 3:00am the previous night — she was very tired and wanted to be home in bed. I felt bad about that. But most of the drive was delightful and sunny and I got to spend almost the entire day with my hand on her knee, so as far as I am concerned it was a win.

On Wednesday there was another in the nifty new series of monthly davis_square gatherings that anomie666 has been organizing. I got to see surrealestate, which is always delightful, and meet some nice new people, but plumtreeblossom couldn’t make it due to rehearsal. But I did get to see her afterwards, so we had a nice little mini-date in the middle of the week.

I think it was Thursday that cathijosephine and I went out for Mexican food and margaritas in Quincy, and we had a great time and got to do some catching up.

Friday I (and cathijosephine) went to see plumtreeblossom and lots and lots of our other friends in Theatre@First’s performance of Much Ado About Nothing. It was great! I later heard somebody who’s been watching Theatre@First’s performances since they started say that this was their best performance, and I can believe it. It was done more-or-less in the round, with no stage (so the actors or at or just below the level of the audience), and with a very very minimal set and costuming. When plumtreeblossom described it to me before I saw it I confess I was a bit dubious, but wow, it really worked. All the performances were fine, most of them were good, and some of them were really good. The play flowed well, the comedic timing was good, the blocking was great (and funny), the lines were clear and delivered in a way that made the Elizabethan language very easy to follow, and I just had a great time, and so did the rest of the audience. I’m looking forward to going back on [EDIT:] closing night on Saturday, and if you get a chance (those of you who are local) and you like Shakespeare’s comedies, you should try to see one of their remaining performances.

After the show I had another lovely date with my favourite character actor. (plumtreeblossom played one of the watchmen, in drag, and did a great job! She didn’t have many lines, but she had some pretty awesome body language. I also have to mention that I had a hard time believing the person playing one of the bad guys was actually dietrich, and I kept looking at the program and trying to figure out what other character that could be!) We had a great time and stayed up far, far too late.

Sunday morning we went out for yummy brunch at Johnny D’s with a bunch of the cast and crew — yummy but slow; they were very crowded — and had a delightful time. I walked back to the church where plumtreeblossom had her call for the Sunday matinée, and as a delightful bonus bumped into docorion and mud_puppy, whom I hadn’t seen in far too long.

I had a not as productive as planned but still pretty good Sunday evening (got some laundry done, at least).

Today after work I went over to see cathijosephine and bring her some snacks, because she wasn’t feeling well. Got to overhear half of a phone call with the delightful and dearly missed ragingamazon, and got lots of kitty snuggles with Chickenfinger, who has turned into the sweetest little mellow kitty. (Poor dear used to live with two huge and playful dogs, and it’s taken her a while to recover.)

And now I’m at home and I get to go to sleep. Yay!