Yesterday

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I was hoping to spend a lot of time in the car today writing; after all, we had over 5 hours of driving. I did in fact write during some of it, it just wasn’t my blog. Sorry, folks.

The only other exciting thing about the show yesterday is that the video randomly quit. I closed the dowser, so at least it went black on stage, and then I handed my headset to the local electrician standing behind me, as Kyle kept looking back at us, not knowing what was going on, and ran backstage to fix video. This, my friends, is why we, from time to time, play musical jobs.

Also, during load in, we had a problem with the flags. The theater we were in is the home of the world’s longest-running Passion play. In fact, the theater space was built just for it. So, on stage left, where the fly rail is, there is a doorway cut into it, meaning about 8 batons don’t fly all the way in (no one is sure why they didn’t make them double-purchase.) These also happened to be the batons we were going to use for flags. In our show, the up stage flags fly almost all of the way to the deck, so we were good two feet short. One of the locals, Knute, suggested hanging those flags from tie line, rather than just zip ties. Seeing no other option, we made it work. I zip-tied on the other flags (while standing on top of the projector box) as he learned and mastered the fine art of tying taught-line hitches (thanks, Dale.) Then he and I rode the box across the stage one last time as Sarah was our eyes to let us know whether or not they were level. All those years of freaking art hangs is paying off!

Today, my hotel phone rang at 7 a.m. I stumbled out of consciousness and couldn’t figure out what was making such a noise! Once I figured it out, I couldn’t find the phone and really didn’t want to talk to anyone calling at that hour. But I did get up to pee, and crashed back into bed. After 9, Sarah came in to take things out to the van and said I looked dead and like I hadn’t moved in hours, and went and got me breakfast. I got up shortly later, knowing missing breakfast would be bad, and met her in the restaurant. The rest of the day was spent riding in the car, sleeping, and reading, plus a little writing. I’m hoping to finish this book tomorrow!

We had dinner with the kids, and they were super excited to play in snow again. Did I mention it’s cold here? Kyle thought it would be a good idea to set our thermometer in the car to Celsius, so we all feel worse about how cold it is. It’s in the 20s Fahrenheit. Dinner was good- it seems like we haven’t seen the kids in ages! Then back to the hotel for reading and chilling out.

Dana had the quote-of-the-day today. At lunch, as I was refilling our waters again, she said, “You guys drink water by the truckload!”

Sarah just finished a book I’m probably going to read someday. She said, “You’ll like this book. He writes like you like to read- with lots of parenthetical statements.” My response: So he writes like I like to write? Thanks, you guys, for putting up with all my bunny trails and sidenotes!

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