beowabbit

Many thanks to

plumtreeblossom for keeping folks back here in civilization in the loop. And many thanks to those of you who commented with well-wishes.

After a tweak to my Flexeril dosage I’m getting the relief without the scary side effect (although it still makes me a little slow and groggy — or maybe that’s not being able to use my CPAP masks, all of which still hurt too much), and I’m feeling much better. Slow steady improvement. I went in to work today, and was reasonably productive, and I have noticeably more range of motion in my neck this evening than I did this morning.

With any luck, I’ll be all better by Friday afternoon — just in time to have three wisdom teeth out!

And on that cheery note, it’s off to try to do a little bit of catching up on what’s happened here on LJ in the months since I last checked in.

This is plumtreeblossom cross-posting to beowabbit's LJ, since our f'lists are not the same.

beowabbit is unwell right now. It began with increasing pain at the base of his skull over the past few days, limiting is mobility and and eventually eliminating his ability to drive or lay down comfortably in any position for long. When pain with swallowing became a thing yesterday morning, it was time to go to MIT Urgent Care to see a doctor.

A seed of fear had been planted in us about menengitis or other spinal/brain stem infection, but he examining doctor at MIT Medical ruled that out for now. It seems to be a serious muscle issue, possibly brought on by a too-tight CPAP mask strap, but we really just don't know how it came about. He has a bad reaction to the muscle relaxant he was prescribed (Cyclobenzaprine). It was as if he had been "roofied." A call to MIT Medical took him off that drug and onto regular Ibuprophen. Itwas a rough night, and I slept downstairs so that he could have the whole bed to find (semi) comfortable positions to lay in.

He's not well enough for visitors, but I know he would love to get messages and comments from friends. We're doing what we can to get him through this.

On Friday,

plumtreeblossom,

cathijosephine, and I went to see Eddie Izzard’s Force Majeur show, which was wonderfully hilarious. Can’t possibly do it justice. (And wow, the Wang Theatre is a stunning and stunningly restored venue!)

Beforehand,

plumtreeblossom and I had had dinner nearby at Empire Garden, which was the site of our first date almost eight years ago, and I had a scorpion bowl for the first time.

On Saturday, we went to Johnny D’s for brunch with

vanguardcdk for a late celebration of his birthday, and then headed to the Quincy house. I was exhausted — I’d been a bit underslept all week, and I had had to sleep without my CPAP machine the previous night because some bits were being cleaned — so I had a nice long nap, which is almost unheard of for me. Then I was thoroughly refreshed, and we did a bunch of yardwork (planting and watering our cosmos, and finally managing to take soil samples — previous efforts had been stymied by the weather). We finished just in time to enjoy a brief but torrential downpour from the dry comfort of the porch, had a yummy spaghetti and meatballs dinner, and then watched Ken Burns’ documentary The Shakers, from which we both learned an awful lot.

On Sunday we did a bunch more puttering around indoors and out (I was alternately working on house stuff and PMRP website stuff). I had a nice phone call with my mother

silverlibre (and left voicemail for my sister). Then around 2pm when we started to feel a little eleven-o’clockish,

plumtreeblossom had a culinary inspiration and made me a grilled-cheese sandwich for lunch with Cheddar, blue cheese, cream cheese, minced garlic, and roast beef. It was spectacular! And she doesn’t even like blue cheese herself. Now it’s her turn to take a nap, and she’s dozing in her room (which has become our nap room) while I catch up with the world.

How’s your weekend been?

Tonight, in rapid succession:

Go to sleep first. [pause] Eleven Twenty-Two Nineteen Sixty-Three. [pause, then with gleeful delight:] Yay! Shave the hairs!

(It was actually a bit more like “Shave a hairs”, but kind of hard to tell.) I can only presume that in the dream I had just agreed to shave after giving her a prickly kiss.

(Only about half the photos are in thumbnails here, so you may want to go check out the set on Flickr.)

PMRP’s “Night of the Living Dead”, Fall 2013

PMRP’s “Night of the Living Dead” (selected photos), a set on Flickr.

PMRP’s “Ghost Hunt” (selected photos), a set on Flickr.

Having a wonderful weekend with

plumtreeblossom. I got to see closing night of the fabulous and very funny Theatre@First production of Twelfth Night. Congratulations to director Ari and to a wonderful cast and crew (including a bunch of excellent actors new to Theatre@First). Then after strike we went to the cast party which was delightful (and yummy, which was good, because I realized on my way out of the house to go see the show that I hadn't had dinner!).

We had to leave a bit early so we could get up this morning early enough to have dim sum with

bitty and

bubblebabble and a bunch of their friends while they’re in town. (We were still half an hour late to that, but we got to see people, which we wouldn’t have managed if we’d stayed up like the party people we wish we were.) Was wonderful to see them!

And then we went and saw a movie. We went to the theater knowing nothing about any of the films that were playing; one was a sequel to something whose original I had at least heard of, even if I hadn’t seen it and hadn’t realized that there was a sequel, and a couple others that I’d vaguely heard of, or whose franchises I’d vaguely heard of, but then

plumtreeblossom noticed that one that was about to start had James Gandolfini in it (in his last lead before he died), so we saw Enough Said, and we loved it! The acting and directing were really good — the dialogue (especially in awkward situations) was very naturalistic, and we left the theater sort of feeling like the characters were a bunch of people we knew. Highly recommended. (And I’m not just saying that because as a middle-aged fat guy I like seeing James Gandolfini as a romantic lead. :-)

Around 5:00am I got up to run to the bathroom, and told

plumtreeblossom where I was going. She woke up enough to say that she’d go after me, and then said “I should be clumping.” “What?” I asked? “Clumping. Climbing trees. It’s how they hunt prey. But it’s not my day for it.” I wish we knew what dream that came out of!

At 6:00am, before the alarm had gone off: “Wellp, I’ll just have to have this baby.”

I love my wuzzle’s sleeping brain. This morning at about 4:40, she told me “Smell-Good is an artist. On Monday mornings we dehydrate him. So you can jot that down.”

(The actual quote came out in interrupted pieces because when she started talking I had earplugs in and I had to ask her to repeat the first bit a couple times before I got it, and I asked for confirmation that “dehydrate” was actually what she meant. And then, still asleep, she said some accurate stuff about the skunk smell in the neighborhood.)

Propeller aircraft coming in for a landing at Logan

Boston skyline against sunset (detail 1)

Boston skyline against sunset (detail 4)

Revels Harbor Island cruise, 2013-08-14 (selected photos), a set on Flickr.

Via Flickr:In August 2013, my darling plumtreeblossom took me on a harbor cruise and sea-chantey singalong put on by the Revels (http://www.revels.org/). We had a blast! These are some of the pictures I took from the harbor.

Last night my beloved wuzzle took me on the Revels’ Harbor Cruise and Sing, and we had a truly fabulous time! Neither of us quite knew what we were in for; we both envisioned something like an smaller, but still concert-like, Christmas Revels performance aboard ship, but it was basically a sea-chantey singalong. It was wonderful! It really touched a chord in me (heh, heh) because I had a group of friends in college who used to get together on a fairly regular basis and sing folk songs (including some of the same sea chanteys we sang last night). It was just wonderful, and very romantic. I love being on the water. And I love my sweet honeywuzzle who knows how to make me so very happy.

(Photos to follow, BTW.)

(Cross-posted from the Evil Empire:)

Come audition for my show! I am doing a live-radio-drama adaptation of Night of the Living Dead, and auditions are next Monday and Tuesday (with possible callbacks on Wednesday). Lots more information is on the auditions page. Descriptions of the available roles (for both shows; see below) are here, and sides — sample scenes we’ll be using for auditions — will be up soon. Besides “Night of the Living Dead”, Mindy Klenoff is directing “Ghost Hunt”, originally broadcast on Suspense! in 1949, about a DJ who agrees to spend the night in an allegedly haunted house to prove there are no such things as ghosts. In addition to voice actors, we need Foley (live sound effects) performers, administrative staff (doing things like selling program ads, putting up posters, and collecting sound-effects equipment) and crew.

Live radio drama is not memorized; we perform with scripts in hand, standing on stage with microphones. It’s a great opportunity for beginners and old hands alike; we’ve had some people turn in very impressive performances who had never done any kind of theater before.

(And of course, in a few weeks, I’ll be telling you all to come see the show! Performances are on several dates from October 24-November 2.)

I just had a dream that Hell was in my basement. (Which was more or less the basement of the house I grew up in, only somehow large enough to fit all of history’s damned.) It was kind of a hassle, because whenever I had to deal with the furnace or flip a circuit breaker or do laundry, I had to struggle through the crowds of tormented souls, and some of them were kind of annoying.

When I haven’t posted for a long time, it’s hard to get posting again, because I want to fill in all the blanks, but that would be a post so long that (1) I would never get around to writing it, and (2) nobody would ever bother reading it. So I’m going to try to divide things up thematically. This post is about things.

I have a new camera that I am so far very pleased with. It’s a Samsung Galaxy Camera. It does 21x optical zoom (with optical stabilization), and has an automatic mode but also a fully manual mode (except for focus, but you can tap on the part of the image you want the camera to auto-focus on). ( More about the camera. )

I have my car back on the road, which is wonderful! If I’d realized how little it was going to cost to fix, I would have gotten it done a long time ago; I’ve spent several times that much on Zipcars in the interim.

( The car saga, and an auto-body recommendation in Quincy. )

I had assumed the car would be a few hundred dollars to repair. It wasn’t. So today [looks at clock] er, yesterday, I finally bought a powered lawnmower. ( On lawn mowing. )

Congratulations to everyone involved in The Baltimore Waltz. It was a great show, funny and poignant.

plumtreeblossom and I are going back to see it next week, and I’m sure we’ll notice lots of things we missed this time around.

I’m not saying I’ve lost my faith in the basic goodness and responsibility of my fellow human being. But trying to give away furniture for free on Craigslist tends to test it a bit.