The thing that sucks about quarantine holidays: they're pretty much doing the same shit as you'd be doing the rest of the time now: in your house. I have been trying to put effort into making today different and fun.

So this morning I did a patriotic scavenger hunt. It was fun, albeit I guess they got a lot of signups who didn't show up and I think it was about 15 cameras that showed up (some may have more in-house). My team was nice, patriotic ladies, one of whom had on a firework-ish headband and striped glasses and a very nicely decorated table that we used for the "fireworks" display.

Weird items on the list: printed picture of Dan Quayle, foosdtuffs out of red/white/blue, "Uncle Sam hats for all team members" (didn't have that), $2 bill, "team made fireworks display (be creative)", "Act out John Adams's dying words," "recreate the Statue of Liberty's torch," "create a team 4th of July parade with at least one instrument," "a team created bugle," and "authentic playbill from Hamilton" (EVERYONE WISHED).

Stuff I did: American flag, "Create your own American Mascot out of a stuffed animal and outfit, "Create a hat or cap suitable for Yankee Doodle," singing the first 30 seconds of "Dear Mr. Adams" from 1776, dressing up as King George at the end, a Hawaiian object, blue umbrella, accurately forging John Hancock's signature, accurate drawing of the Statue of Liberty. Here's the stuff I made for this one.

We came in third out of three, which is about what I expected. This had less items but was harder.

After that I hung out with Kelly and Shanna online for a few hours, discussing things about the play and how to improve it, possible backstories for the characters, etc. This went GREAT and was really fun, I was sorry to have to take off early a bit. A lot of musing about how to soften characters and give them more depth, what their back stories are, the relationships, etc.

Then I did an online chat with a Ben Franklin impersonator, which was fun and sweet. That guy is having a good time. He came in late and had issues with technology, which is about what I would have figured, right? I found out that he stopped schooling at ten and was forced to be his jerky brother's indentured servant from then on, so I asked how he managed to educate himself. He said he read everything he could, and then started writing anonymous letters to his brother's newspaper. According to "Dr." Franklin here, his brother loved the letters and was griping when another one hadn't come for a while. When Benjamin confessed to having written them, his brother thrashed him and said to never write anything again--so Benjamin walked off to another city, met his future wife, and all was a lot better from then on. I also found out that one of Benjamin's kids was with another woman---"my wife knew I had a wandering eye--" and his wife actually adopted the third kid as her own. Nice lady to do that one. I also asked about his time rooming with John Adams and he said he always slept in before going to work because that's how France operates, and John would go in early and nobody would be there. I got my picture taken with him, hah. So that was cute and fun. I would have liked to have asked him out of character questions about performing, but ah well.

Linda sent the revised script for Robin Hood and....she took next to none of my critiques, the ladies in waiting are still pretty much doing next to nothing, etc. HUGE SIGH. I think one of them gets a song now. The character I played originally has been cut, that might be the one note I said that made it in, of sorts (I said give the guy more to do than just be in the first few scenes....). She didn't change any of the male characters to female. I did notice that there's ah, descriptions of individual swordfights or using puppets or god knows what to act out the fights, though. Well, that part was amusing. But as a lady, it's disappointing. Really disappointing. But...y'know, my two cents were put in, now it's time to shut up. At least I'm in a show, right?

Have spent my downtime hours listening to psychiatric talks on trauma (online conference thing), which is really not what I am in the mood to be doing, but these things expire in 24 hours or whatever so I have to get it in now and I still have five of the damn things to go. Also, it's been a week since I got stung and my foot is still swollen up. Doesn't really hurt as long as I don't walk for longer than a few minutes (haven't exercised for a week, obviously), and it looks *slightly* better today, but still, a freaking week? I'm definitely not going to look into getting medical attention for it though--what could they do anyway, tell me to take Benadryl?

Last year I was hanging out with Dawn and Loretta. This year, just emailing and texting. Sigh. Did also hear from Jamie, who said she's been playing video games and NOT fixing her sewing machine. That's an interesting life choice these days. Mom said she is going to dinner at "friends" house (fifty bucks says that's Roger's neighbors). I am unhappy with this but there is nothing I can do about it, obviously.

Miami Lakes put on a July 4 streaming celebration. Unlike Texas yesterday, these folks have the spacing and the masks, including (of course) flag masks on a lot of people. Even the cops here are spacing and wearing masks, which gives me some hope for some police out there since literally every other cop photo I've seen for the last three weeks isn't doing that.
This is filmed from far away, you can vaguely hear "Living In America" playing in the air. You can see three (?) fireworks shows, one on the left, on the middle right, and on the far right/out of camera range most of the time at first, and then they actually start in the middle, thank goodness. I am happy they did fireworks, but kinda wish they wouldn't cut away every two minutes to film fireworks going off behind a palm tree for...some reason?

After that, Shanna and I got back together to finish reading Romeo and Juliet, and then she got the idea to read Hamlet....so we did about 2.3ish acts of that one. Which got pretty silly when I decided to put on green screen to play the ghost (it's pretty ball-trippy when it only partially works) and just kept muttering, "Swear!" over and over again after awhile.

I'm still listening to this trauma conference and feeling pretty sick of it, but ... fine, I'll finish it, it expires tomorrow, and I don't have a whole lot scheduled tomorrow so I can settle down with Disney Plus.

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