Chaos Attraction

New Year's Parties

2023-01-01, 11:21 p.m.

New Year's Eve show went very well, all things considered, no major flubups on my end, albeit I did make one joke when Steve was fixing lights remotely that freaked him out, and I apologized for that. He was perhaps already on edge because he came in and thought the light cues had changed and he'd have to change them all, but after a reboot, that seemed to fix it. Also Omar was late because of a fallen tree somewhere on his route, but he made it.

Looks like all but 8 people who bought tickets showed up, possibly because of the weather. Various areas were having blackouts, Loretta's place is STILL blacked out this morning as I type (Dawn said if it's still off by 11, she'll just go get her). Who knows. That's doing pretty well for pandemic flakeouts around here. My house kept power, the theater kept power.

I saw a few people I knew there-- one of my castmates from Coney Island Christmas who was there (Gail, had to point out who I was between the mask and my hair color), and a few others from the Winters elf show, Paul and Carlos were there. I met a few people's boyfriends/girlfriends. I was behind Emily (in the show) and her boyfriend Austin in the food line and Austin reminded me a LOT of Hugo, except Hugo being dyed blonde. I said they needed to meet and made sure they did--turns out they'd already met at intermission, lol. (Morgan on this: "Teddy bear boyfriends of the ADHD girls of DTMC.") I also hung out with Taylor's girlfriend Krista afterwards, she said she'd be afraid to act but was interested in set stuff, if she ever wants to come along.

Oh yeah, I found out what the "smoke" was! Morgan said it was the "waterproof paint" the landlord bought to cover up the leak by the window :P

Quotes from the comms:

James:
"'I'm going to the bathroom real quick, let me know if the theater explodes in a fire."
(In case of blackout) "Hope you like Cabaret in the dark."
"I don't mean to be rude, but this is the last time I'm doing this show this year."
(To the question in a song, "what would you do?") "Be in the bathroom while the theater explodes."

Steve:
(As the tinsel curtains start shedding, tangling one girl up a bit onstage) "Damn set designer! Who designed these curtains?!"
Steve had to pee during the show and asked James to pee for him. Then he proceeded to forget to do it during intermission. Me: "You had intermission, Steve, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe get a Stadium Pal."

Afterwards, there was a long line for food--apparently the caterers were new and insisted on serving people themselves and that took awhile. The meat and potatoes were tasty enough, I skip the beans and they were about out of salad halfway through...oh well. The shortbread cookies were great, though. I brought my food up to the lighting table and tried out my new HEPA filter--I had it on during the show and nobody heard/noticed it, which was great, and I felt less guilty taking the mask off to eat.

Afterwards there was mostly people just hanging out, not a major amount of dancing except for those of us (me, Stacy, Taylor in particular) who were really into it. I played soccer with a crumpled plastic bottle with Hugo and Krista for awhile. People loved my dress and hat, so that was awesome. Champagne was toasted with at midnight, things wound up around 1 a.m. It was great to get to know a few more people in the cast up close and person, particularly Taylor as I talked to him about his costume changes (eleven!), how he also wished he had different hair/mustaches every time he played a different sailor, and how he always does different silly things during the Meeskite song (he playacts the narrator of the song as an ugly guy) and throwing around Sally's luggage. Fun guy. Didn't talk to Chris or Kelvin a lot, but they seem quite nice as well. Got pictures taken with people, hung out with Stacy and Monica a bit.

I had an excellent time, thank you!


Dammit, I missed Holidailes by like a MINUTE. First year I didn't get them all in, dammit. I got home right at closing, apparently. I knew I should have posted super early, but I was all "no, the last party I'm going to is like 20 minutes away, I'll be home before 9. Anyway: I had intended to go to two parties, didn't, got home around 9 :P

So.... yeah.... was at Scott's the entire time....sigh.

I enjoyed the party. I was about the second-ish to get there, after his best friend Lewis and his wife Rachel that live about 3 minutes away. The route the GPS gave me was VERY out in the country, long road of fire-damaged trees (I wonder how bad it was right after) and the like, and it was one of those VERY country drives, and eventually I made it up the hill. I found this confusing since he'd said he wasn't that far off from town itself, and the GPS had me drive basically all the way to the back of the 'ville exits to even start this route.

New house is huuuuuuuuge. (Apparently not as huge as our other castmates' with the geeky basement, but they made sure it was all one floor this time.) Huuuuuuge "great room," huge tall Christmas tree, huge dining room table with four other leaves they didn't even have out, huge office that they all can share because it's a huge desk (even will have the sewing room), huge outdoor porch with fire pit and television and mini-kitchen and pull down screens, huge high doors (like they're a tall family but not THAT tall!), walk-in closets, very spacious. Like thinking of my apartment at home, crammed to the brim, tiny tiny closets, made me want to cry. But I'll never be able to afford anywhere with a walk-in closet, so. Everyone was very duly impressed. It's also very empty-ish, which seemed a bit odd (like I know they moved in recently-ish, but this was like model house level of "doesn't look like people live in it" and that is a foreign concept to me, who comes from cluttercore), but they said they were getting more shelves and were going to put things like the books into the house instead of where they were currently stashed in the bar.

For the record, I didn't see any of the stuff I've given him in there over the years, other than the three books I got him after the fire--those were some of the few books I saw around the house. The ornament I gave him wasn't on the tree, his bedroom was totally bare except for like, the nightstand book, etc. To which I was all "hmmmmm," in my head, more on this later.

But seriously, they like, need to throw more parties in that place, the outside patio area is especially set up for that. His mom said something about throwing one quarterly. I note that this was a mixed crowd--some of Scott's invites, some of his parents' (mostly people from the craft store, including one lady I used to be in a knitting group with pre-pandemic--she didn't remember me, but glad she's alive! I haven't seen ANYONE in that group), the neighbors who have moved back in got fliers in the mailbox, etc. As for Scott's invites, it was me, Lewis and Rachel, who I hung out with for the first hour and a half or so (nice people), and then Cameron, who was probably in for 45 minutes or so. All three of them left for the same reason of "have to go take down the decorations," which seemed kind of weird to me until others pointed out to me meant that uh, they probably need to do that with outdoor ones before it pours again. Okay, good point. Laurel was supposed to go (I got the feeling that Scott, like I, suspected flakitude) and of course, that happened--supposedly because her power was still out even in the afternoon. I would have just left home if it was me (I note Loretta eventually went to Dawn's until her power went back on, sounds like they had a pleasant day), mind you!

Lewis and Rachel were fun to hang out with, I'd certainly do that again. I was amused at all the talk of Lewis's guitars--as he was listing off the "essential" ones he'd kept, I said to Rachel sotto voce, "My guess is fifteen," and she was all, "that's pretty close." I think the total was about twelve, and "do basses count?" was debatable. We were amused at the geeky guitar talk. She and I both gave Scott a brief lecture on how sizing really doesn't matter--he got a jacket for Christmas he was going on about "first time I fit in a medium, but they make them big," I was all "there's only a half inch more fabric between sizes!" and she said, "It doesn't matter as long as it's on!" Hah. I also found out Lewis is allergic to peanuts (Scott said he called the peanut-butter-celery "logs of death") and he moved away from that table because of the smell. I said, "did you bond with Scott over allergies?" and no, not really....Rachel said going to dinner with them at the same time is interesting because they have to ask what's in it, and I said "yeah, last time I went to dinner with Scott we went to the hospital...."

Cameron apparently found out about the party at the last minute and came in long enough to get the tour (half done by Scott, who then got distracted by other people, the other half done by his mom) and uh, give Scott his Christmas present (cat sculpture from Egypt), and was all "would have given you yours but didn't know you were here" to me (fair). Then Scott whips out his for us and I'm all "oh fuuuuuuuuuck," said to Cameron, "uh, you know how my holidays have gone," because I wrote her at the start of the week, she said she understood. He got her a sheep yarn...object thing? and me extremely funny socks (and a farting Christmas card, I have to send to Kelly) and gift certificates again, albeit he forgot to sort them and left two in her card and none in mine and then felt bad about it. I suggested she can just mail it to me, that's fine--also he said it was on my record at the store.

So yeah, we have that issue now....more on that later. I asked Cameron about her Egypt trip and she enjoyed it--said her roommate was an extrovert but they got along/gave each other space, liked how a tour handled all of the hard shit about traveling, and she did not get sick. Said she hardly bought anything though because there wasn't much to buy except crap from China and the salespeople were pushy. Disappointing. (I note since she said "no yarn" there, I looked for some Egypt-y yarn on Etsy and just ordered it .) She also said last night was a mess because they took the train to the Bay Area to visit relatives, the train HIT A TREE, they were 3 hours late, and then they got to my town, got off the train, and the car was dead, and it took till 1 a.m. to get someone to jump it.

(On a related note, Ashley seems to have had similar difficulty getting back from the bar last night, though more like "out of gas, can't find a station with power" rather than tree landing. Meanwhile, I just heard from Jamie and her power was out all day and now power is on but no Internet. "I have discovered today that AT&T's website is less helpful than PG&E's. By a lot.")

I note that his mom also that Scott could throw his own separate party for his friends if he wanted to to me and Cameron. I looked at her and said, "What do you think the odds of that are?" and she said, "Slim to none." (Probably especially given the flake rate of late....but then again, they did do a very last minute invite.)

After awhile, most people left at the proper time, so it was just the family, me, and the lady from my old knitting group (now at the store's knitting group, guess she lives out here now), watching the 49ers/Raiders game. I haven't watched a football game on TV in ages, but that particular matchup would make me watch it. The 9ers squeaked it out in overtime, so it was a close, tense game. Then the other lady left after the game ended, and his dad asked me to watch Maverick, so I skipped Jean's party and did. (I note that I did find out Scott was invited to that one...we just didn't get off our butts and go.) They said I could stay as long as I liked, but I just hung around for like an hour afterwards until they were yawning. He and I were talking about theater again, mostly, i.e. what to audition for next. Both considering Young Frankenstein (he said he has to come up with something), he hasn't seen Pirates but doesn't sound that into it (I said it's bad), neither of us likes Newsies, he wants to go for Anthony or ensemble in Sweeney Todd, though I did mention the whole "ensemble doesn't do much, they said" thing and that Tony n' Tina is coming back. Not sure what he made of that last one, mostly focused on the location of it.

As for The Present Issue, I asked if it was silly for me to keep giving him stuff like I've given him, he said it was more or less fine/has that stuff, and his mom was all "he has a secret drawer for it." HMMMMMM. I said um, I was considering two patterns (sadly true), so um...yeah. Here we go again. Not sure when I'm seeing him next, guess I'll just...make something again.

I note that I apparently didn't get cell reception up there (asked how he does, he said it's spotty), so I had to drive down the hill to get the GPS to work (and then my phone went off with texts) and THEN it took me through town. Go figure. After that, I went home, had dinner, wrote this, and answered texts.


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