Friday day: I went to Stitches West in the new Sacramento location! It was a bit hard to find where to enter the building, but the new setup was nice. I saw some complaining online that they had less vendors this year, which I'd have to agree with (I got there at 10 and got through going through all the booths by about 1:30, if that helps you as a guideline), and some folks did not return, but that's about what you'd expect during pandemic. It was a bit quieter too, but that could be pandemic or just going on Friday when I usually go on a weekend day.

Either way, I had an extremely good time shopping. I spent waaaaaaaaaaay too much and bought a ton of yarn, and some other products. A giant embroidery hoop, a tool for beading, Hamilton themed stitch markers, a rainbow necklace, an amusing sticker of Baby Yoda going after yarn balls, a Baby Yoda themed craft bag. I loved that a couple booths were Baby Yoda-y, but one booth in particular--the one that had the Baby Yoda bags-- had Mandalorian-themed signs and a giant crocheted Baby Yoda there. I ended up sending Scott pictures of various geek products throughout the day.

The yarn I got was beautiful. I got three skeins of pastel mixes that went great together, and a bunch of neon-ish yarns that went great together, and a small rainbow pack of skeins, and another rainbow ball, and a bunch of super chunky rainbow that I have no idea what to do with, and rainbow roving...you get the drift. I'll get to pictures later . I wore my crocheted dress there and it got a lot of compliments. I do think I will be making more stuff along those lines with all this new yarn.

I also went to a few of the Playground presentations. I went to one on making knitted toys, one on how to turn a garment you have into a pattern, and one Hawaiian lady who did a talk on mixing yarns together. She literally made a VOLCANO CAPE that was freaking AMAZING and had so many yarns mixed together and textures and techniques, it was flabbergasting. It should be in a theater show, hah hah, though it has been in gallery shows there.

I did take a class there, by Toni Lipsey on various ways you can have a craft-related business. I really liked it, actually, as she gave ten different career options depending on how public you want to be and how business-y you want to be, but she also said you don't HAVE to monetize your crafts. She talked about passive income (videos, blogging) vs. finite income (making objects, you can only make so many) to stuff like being a virtual assistant, event planning, influencer-ing...okay, not gonna do that last one, but she did talk about how one misstep can kill your career with that one.

I had a very good, expensive time.

First night of Urinetown! Now I can say I've done the show, put it on the resume, etc. (I keep thinking of how the poor cast of The Miracle Worker still can't say they've done the show.)

Clocky bought two giant bunny baskets of treats and left them in the dressing rooms (he later said he got them at Walmart). They had candy in them and then of course management is all "don't eat it here!"

Hugo gave Morgan a smaller similar basket, with a Peep wearing a crown on it.
Sofia: "What a cutie! All mine gave me was water."
Sierra: "Mine didn't even remember there was a show tonight," he asked what was for dinner.

Ladies were showing off their high school photos and how much people have changed or not. Most people had not (Sofia's in particular), but Amy had pretty 80's look in hers.

The programs are out and Sofia (who did the graffiti) and I are billed as "Scenic Art" in the front and in the back...she's "Graffiti Girl" and I'm "Garbage Queen." I'm SUPER amused and pleased :)

Apparently Sofia and Arianna (from Shrek) are buddies and going skydiving tomorrow.
"She has a wild spider." -Sofia
"I don't like where this is going." -Sierra
"That she tamed!" -Sofia, explaining that Arianna trapped it in a Mason jar and it chose not to leave and spun a web in it. "So she started buying it crickets."

Later from Sofia: "My brother told me a statistics that I'm pretty sure is bullshit, the one about eating spiders in your sleep."

Later, after the bug conversation kept going worse: Sofia: "I'm full of pee and I think that's gross." Morgan and I promptly think she said she's full of "pinot." This may also have been "I am no longer Filipino," because "the stereotypical thing about Filipinos is we eat a lot of weird shit."

"You know it's appropriate we start the run of Urinetown with a pee joke." -Karam

"I feel like I have to pee every 10 minutes in this show." -Sierra. I second this, at least through the first act where we do like two 10 minute stints of the pee pee dance.

"Everyone loses it for five minutes." -either Sierra or Morgan, apparently I didn't label this one.

Sierra is laid back on what the bridesmaids wear (suit, jumpsuit, whatever) as long as it's all the same color: "As long as she's in blush pink, I don't care!" Sofia said she suggested lavender suits for the guys in her wedding and a friend said "Mmm, reel it in, they're going to look like pimps."

"Lines have not been crossed yet." -Sierra
"I feel like some lines have been crossed already." -Sofia

Sierra: "Tomas, are you a farmer? Because you are MILKING IT!"

Steve to Marie: "What's the name of the bear?" Marie: "I thought you said it was Theodore Urinal." Steve then said something about Theodore Peebear. "Not Pooh Bear, that's another show."

Me, looking at the set decorations and noting that Tomas and Hugo work at rival coffee pushers: "Is there a war between Starbucks and Dutch Bros?" They said yes.

On how sometimes you just want a guy to listen and not solve:
Sierra on having bad moments: "I'm mad at life and I just need to cry!"
"I don't need Captain Save-A-Ho." -Morgan.
Sofia: "My guy isn't here, he doesn't support me at all..."

Jan on deciding things at the last minute: "As we say in the basketball world, it's a game time decision."

Sofia on having to stash props down the boobs because we have no pockets: "My personal property shouldn't be used for professional use." Jan noted that her ticket fell down her dress and she had to fish it out of her leg last night.

Sofia on Steve's speech time: "We could watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother or something." Sierra, Morgan, Karam and I agreed that we all need to be doing something while watching TV.

Sofia: "Girls listen to true crime to relax themselves."

Shorthaired Sarah and I started singing "Opening Night" from The Producers backstage. Later, Evan kept saying "good luck, good luck, good luck!" "Hey, what about saying the m-word again?" someone said. James flipped Evan the bird for that one.

Hugo: "Break a leg!" Sarah, gesturing to one of mine: "I'll take this one!"

I note that Steve mentioned all the Easter eggs, including the literal ones, in the set :) I won!

"Don't listen to me, I'll go jump in a lake." -Sierra

Jan said her fly was open during Cop Song last night. Well, at least that was just rehearsal.

"I was thinking my cop should have a name." -Sofia
"I thought you said cock." -Morgan "
The night of misheards." -Katrina

"I do it for the bit." -Sofia
Sierra would be worried if she didn't make jokes.
Sofia: "Comedy is my coping mechanism."

Sofia: "Wanna go out and do some bondage?" (I presume this was Sierra's rope tying)

Some conversation came up about the teenage girl who auditioned for the show and then bowed out. Apparently she was in Titanic and well, has already heard adult language before. Sierra and Sofia admit to having no filter.

During the show: My hat fell off at the end of Cop Song, I picked it up and waved it at the audience while walking off. Otherwise, things went very well.

Marie tugs on Tomas's belt. Sarah: "That's sexual harassment." Tomas: "This belt is my worst enemy." Marie has the BEAR pull on his belt instead. Tomas: "Thank you, Gus" (presumably he thinks that's the name of the bear, not the baby) Dannette suggested that EVERYONE pull on it.

In audience tonight: Arianna (I asked her about the spider, she was shocked) and Danny.

Post-show: had cake and drinks, followed by Woodstock's. Mostly I remember hearing Brian talk about how (a) everyone in his and Kimmie's families is stage-talented except for the one kid who's a plumber, (b) he used to run a karaoke business, and (c) he used to co-run a theater company and wants to direct, but he also wants to get paid to direct and that doesn't happen here. Jan and Steve direct everything unless there's a show they don't want to and get someone on the board to volunteer (which explains Kyle doing Mary Poppins). He also said Woodland pays their head people and most people do (I said I don't think Winters does). I definitely get the feeling that Woodland is more "high class" than I am used to. We'll see there.

Fun fact: I knew Kimmie and Brian got together after previous marriages/kids, and he said they've been married for ten years, but I did NOT know that when she said, "we met when he was my boss, we reunited later" a few weeks ago, she was FOURTEEN when he was her boss. I don't know how old he was at the time or what the age gap is (he said he's nearing 60, I'd probably guess 40's for her) but it was some kind of "oh yeah, everyone knew each other and babysat each other's kids" situation...The mind boggles. Also, Brian is REALLY INTO the Pirates of Penzance and has done it for every decade of his life (he likes being a pirate, babyee) and is bummed that he'll miss doing it in his 50's by a year. I remember NOT LIKING Pirates of Penzance the one time I saw it, but I can't remember why other than thinking it was a lot dumber than I expected. Maybe I should rewatch it?

After that, I went to Woodstocks, where James talked about his sad lack of love life AND we found out what happened regarding his dad watching Fox News. "I told him I was doing tech for the show so I had a reason to not go home and they wouldn't go see it for that." Smart move. Sounds like Dad was aware the show was on TV but didn't actually bother(?) to watch the clip after that, hmmm. So, butt covered. Also Arianna (from Shrek) and Sofia are apparently besties and GOING SKYDIVING TOMORROW.

Here is something I haven't discussed here because it was in kind of weird territory: on the last set day, Steve said something about how Evan has decided he wants to go by "Eden." I didn't particularly know what to say to that since that seems like, I dunno, something you'd announce to everybody. I wanted to say "So...is an official gender change on the horizon with that name, or does he just not like Evan any more?" but didn't. I kept quiet about the whole thing since I wasn't sure if I was even supposed to know this information and I was still hearing "Evan" references and he and I were not having any particular private in-depth conversations or anything. Obviously, my conversations are all backstage snark.

My impression with things I've seen/read in the last 24 hours is maybe this got discussed/announced in the men's dressing room because I saw an "Eden" reference (along with a "what goes on in the men's dressing room stays in the men's dressing room" sorta reference) on the Facebook page, but he was still using "Evan" there officially. And then I read the program and I saw that James changed the shoutout to Evan in his bio to "Eden." Hmmmmm.

Anyway, after E??n left, the ladies remaining asked James what the heck was going on with the name thing, and James was all "the only reason I know this is because I'm trans and it came up at Taco Bell" (I am still very curious on "why Taco Bell?" but didn't hear that story), and yes, that's also an official gender change going on there, but Eden isn't out to the family and thus James had to ask to have the program changed for week 4 when the parents come on by. I said that from what I've heard from Dannette they rotate in programs, so if someone's name is misspelled (come to think of it, that WAS the same person, I think?) it'll get fixed in a future program reprinting. However, Eden "didn't want to make a big deal of it," so I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to already "know" or not, exactly? Or what pronouns to be doing if "out" isn't totally out...also while obviously playing a skeezy male character and half the time we refer to people by their character names anyway...

I don't know. Obviously that is E's issues to sort out there. I don't call people by their names to their face (I assume they know they are them) anyway unless I have to scream their name to get their attention for something, so I'll probably just not say anything in public on the issue if it's not addressed to all and sundry. Maybe just go with "E" on here regarding the state of out-ness-or-not-ness? (At this point I'm really appreciating James being all "don't mention this around my parents even if this isn't likely to come up because I do not want them at this show" on day one. Love the "just being open" on the not-out thing there.) I do like Eden as a name, though. I admit it helps if the changed name is similar to the original. But if "not out to parents" is an issue and parents may show up at the show...I dunno what to do here, I don't want to offend, or out either. Just gonna keep my mouth shut in public, most likely.

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