GIVEAWAY: Fabulous black bag

I have been reading this blog called "Musings of a Fat Chick". I think that she is very amusing and entertaining. She is giving away a free bag on her website and request knowledge of what one would put in the bag. So this is my list:

Pen
Calender
Wallet
Chap Stick
IPOD
Earphones
Magazine (Rolling Stone, National Geographic or Mental Floss)
Mints
Brush
Allegra
Coke Bottle Caps
Book
Key's
Key Card for Work

Comedy Night at Crackers

I belong to a group from meetup.com called Ladies Night. This is a group of ladies who like to do fun stuff together and is a way to make new friends. There hasn't been any events in a long time...I think since last fall and I was happy when one of the organizers decided to have an event this week at the Crackers Comedy club downtown. It was on Wednesday night which is ladies night at the club and all women get in for free.



Wednesdays weather was fairly dreary, it snowed in the morning and it took me an hour and a half to get to work. But, by the end of the day the roads were fairly cleared so I decided to drudge downtown to meet the group at 7:45. I was not prepared for parking when I arrive downtown and I decided to park in the garage next to the building since there wasn't any street parking available. When I pulled up the the attendant, I realized that I didn't have any cash so I had to write a check for the $5 parking. Apparently, this caused a bit of a traffic mess on Meridian as people waited for me to enter the garage.



I was not acquainted with any of the other ladies attending and that was nice to to meet some new people, consequently that is the purpose of the meet-up group. There wasn't very many people in the club on Wednesday night, I would say about 30 and it looks like the place holds about 100. As a bonus to it being so slow, every patron got a front row seat. The comedians were funny but it was a little off because the atmosphere was odd. With the room so empty, even when everyone was laughing, it still seamed like the jokes were bombing.

This is smoking facility and it appeared that 75% of the audience was enjoying this privilege. I don't want to sound like an old lady but I wasn't digging the smoke. They have a couple non-smoking performance each week but they are not on the free nights. So if I go back I will have to decide weather I care more for my lungs or wallet???? It will be a hard choice. BTW...I am fairly certain that the first comedian was high while he was on the stage and there was someone smoking pot in the room.

I would go again but it would be more fun with a full audience. I think that the atmosphere of a full audience adds significantly to the ambiance of the facility and therefore to my overall enjoyment.

The Reader

No...I don't mean my Amazon Kindle. I went to see this movie on Tuesday night and I LOVED it. It was great and it kept my rapt attention.

Last week I put out an APB to my friends to see if they wanted to go for beers and a movie on Monday or Tuesday night, only one of them accepted the challenge (isn't that sad ;). (BTW...as I am composing this blog I am listing to my new Jason Mraz album for the twenty time since I have downloaded it on Sunday...I think that it is great) I met her at one of my favorite restaurants, PF Chang's, for an overindulgent meal and great conversation.

With fifteen minutes to spare we headed over to the theatre to catch the movie. We had decided to see Rachel Getting Married, and as we are in line to pay I realized that the movie isn't playing the time we were there. I had checked the movie times on Monday and it listed it as 6:45 and I had assumed that it would be the same for Tuesday night. Really is it ever different? The answer is Yes...it is. The theatre was showing a special preview of a new Showtime series (check out moorewrites blog for a description of this event) and this preempted the showing of Rachel Getting Married at 6:45.

We had to make a quick decision on what to see. I had researched my two movie choices and now I didn't know what to see, and my friend is a voracious movie goer and she had already seen most of the available movies so the actual choices were very small. We chose The Reader basically because neither of us had seen it, and I wasn't familiar with the plot or even the actors. Sometimes that makes the move extra good because you don't know what to expect.

The movie was split into two separate sections. The first part dealt with the 15 year old male character having a relationship with an older women in her 30's. We were about fifteen minutes into the movie when I leaned over and asked my companion if the lead actress famous. She gave me a "are you dumb look" and said it was Kate Winslet. I was shocked because she looked so old and haggard. After I thought about it I decided that this was done on purpose to represent the hard life of the character. I thought I had a handle on where the movie was going...an illicit affair with an older women that ends badly. I was right but then sooooo wrong.

The affair does end and badly but goes in a direction I certainly didn't expect. Eight years later while the boy is now in law school he attends a Nazi trial and there is his old girlfriend on trial for war atrocities. During the last hour of the movie I was glued to my chair. I was so enthralled with the story. This was unusual for me because I have a rather small attention span and I am easily distracted.

I really liked how this story was told and how the director put the movie together. The lead actors did an exceptional job and I was impressed. I urge you to see it, even if you are not a person who would normally frequent the art theatre. Enjoy!

Jason Mraz

I was lucky enough to receive two gift cards to itunes for Christmas, so I was looking at their website this weekend and I discovered this artist. I downloaded a few of his songs and listened to them on Saturday and Sunday. Then on Sunday night I decided to download the entire album. I didn't regret it. I am enjoying his voice and his music.

Listen and Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYhrYHmUPn0

Electric Bill

This Christmas season has been enormously expensive for me. I knew about the direct expenses and I was in control of how much I spent for gifts. I am an accountant...so you can imagine how detailed my list of spending was...per person...by gift name...and by amount. I had two sets of relatives up over the holidays, and my food bill tripled.

So this week the soft expenses started rolling in. First, I received my water bill. It was only $10 more than my usual bill, but it was double my normal consumption. Usually, Joanne and I don't use that much water and I pay a minimum fee each month. In the summer, I may use more when I water the grass but mother nature was kind to us and we had a very wet summer. I normally use 1500 gallons per month, in December we used over 3000. Ok...OK...$10 more isn't so bad.

Then I received the electric bill. It normally ranges $80-$100, and my highest bill last winter was $130. Keep in mind that I like my house to be fairly cool and I keep the heat on 66 degrees. My December bill was a whopping $200. My eyes nearly popped out of my head! I couldn't believe it when I opened the bill. So I decorated my yard for six weeks, and I had all of the outside lights on timers that came on at dusk and turned off at 7am. Then, I decorated the living room and also had those lights on timers for about five hours each day. In my head I couldn't imagine the lights costing me so much extra money, and I loved them. It was so nice to come home every night and enjoy the beautiful decorations.

I had an extra four people at my house for 10 days as well as another four people there for two days. When they were there I had to run the dishwasher two to three times each day and also do the overflow the manual way. We also had extra showers every day as well as extra laundry. It really is expensive to have relatives over for a visit. I will have to remember that for the future. It is going to hurt me to have to pay that gigantic electric bill!

Love Person at the Phoenix Theatre

I went to see this play at the Phoenix Theatre on Thursday night and I LOVED IT! LOVED IT! LOVED IT! I think that it gets Candy's highest rating!

I met my fellow theatre going friend Gretchen at Subway for dinner before the show and we rushed thinking we were very late. We gobbled up our subs and salads and rushed out to the Theatre. We were surprised when we arrived because we found a prime parking spot exactly in front of the Theatre doors. We thought that was odd, but congratulated ourselves on our good luck and rushed inside to discover that not only were we not late, but we were the first patrons to arrive. I guess neither of us as any ability to tell time as we were 30 minutes early.

We enjoyed spending that 30 minutes catching up and having a very fast moving and intense conversation. All of a sudden we looked up and the lobby was full of people and they began letting people in to the theatre. This theatre only has open seating so there is an advantage to arriving early to get the prime real estate. However, due to our ability to block out the outside world we were actually last in line to get our seats.

This was our second visit to the Phoenix Theatre and we discovered that they have two stages. One on the main floor that is traditional and one that is downstairs that is a big room and most of the patrons sit at round tables almost like a bar setting without all of the smoke. There were two rows of chairs lined up in the back of the room and that is where we chose to sit. AKA...we were the last one's in and there were no tables left. The chairs were the high bar stool variety so my feet didn't touch the ground and dangled throughout the evening.

So about the play. It was a love story between two couples. One was a lesbian couple and one of the characters used ASL (American Sign Language) to speak. When she and her partner were having conversations the entire room was quiet and you would read what they were saying on one of three screens located around the room. It was interesting to go through such periods of silence in a play, but it did keep my attention.

The second couple was in the stages of first meeting and first love and the male characters job was to read and translate poetry from Sanskrit to English. There were times when the actor was speaking in Sanskrit and the poem he was reading was projected upon the screen in Sanskrit. You didn't always know what the poems were about.

The love story portion had an interesting twist as the non speaking lesbian sister started emailing the other sisters (Vic) new boyfriend pretending to be Vic. It became very complicated and an interesting twist.

Go and see this play and you will not be disappointed.




About Love Person from their Website:

by Aditi Brennan Kapil
JANUARY 8 - 31, 2009 — The Frank & Katrina Basile Theatre
Love Person is a riveting and spirited love story about language as a portal and barrier to human connection in which love transcends sexual orientation, physical attraction, and social structure, and rests instead on the ways in which people communicate. It is performed in American Sign Language (ASL), Sanskrit, spoken English, and projected text for a multi-lingual experience.
Presented as a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere with Mixed Blood Theatre (Minneapolis) and Marin Theatre Company (Mill Valley, CA)

This Wonderful Life at the IRT

I finally went to see this play at the IRT on Sunday afternoon. I have season tickets and they are for the first or second Thursday of the show. Gretchen (the friend who I have the tickets with) had to cancel for our designated time and Sunday ended up being our fourth rescheduled date. BTW…Sunday was the last performance and we just barely were able to see it.

I am glad that we chose to purchase the season tickets. It has been nice to know what I am going to see as well as paying a good price when the tickets were offered. I think that the IRT has good productions as well as a variety of types of shows.

This production was based upon the Jimmy Stewart movie and basically retold the famous Christmas story. The play was told in a story telling format. It gave me the feeling of the older generations passing down stories to the children. There was only one actor who carried the entire show. I was impressed with his ability to capture our rapt attention for an hour and a half. The actor had good charisma with the audience as well as endurance, as he was quite physical throughout the show. One of the nice things about this show was that the actor was strong enough to bring forth an emotional connection with the audience (including me).

I enjoyed this production and it was a nice way to end the Holiday season.