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Eat, Shower and a Show
After a hard week in the networking trenches, I decided to give myself a morning off. The first thing I did, bright and early, was to hit the scrapbooking table. Recently, most of my memory keeping business has been digital. I have some traditional albums on the books in March, but for now, I have the opportunity to work on my own albums – but I really can’t call it work.
The current album is my 2022 Travel Album and I’m putting together the pages for my NYC trip, which you’re reading about on my Wednesday Travel There posts. Have you ever been having so much fun that you forget to take pictures? Raising my hand as the guilty party. What was one of the best trips of my life will have less pages than some day trips I’ve been on. I got in a couple of hours, but then the phone intruded and I had a shower gift to wrap. After having coffee hour with Mr. Bill, I got ready for the day.
First up, lunch with bestie at Casa Mama. Deb loves their brisket and spinach quesadillas. I’m still looking for my dish. Because I just pointed at an item with Tex-Mex in the title I ended up with sour cream on my entree. Not what I wanted, but not their fault. It wasn’t like the frittata I had ordered once, drizzled with sour cream which wasn’t mention on the menu. So I ate the sour cream enchilada, begrudgingly and promised myself I wouldn’t order it next time, because as much as Deb loves those quesadillas there will be a next time.
Next stop, a baby shower for a soon-to-be mama from church. She’s a delight and it was a joy to see how happy she was with every gift which was offered. My hand-made card got more mileage than anything else I had for her, so I was grateful for my scrapbooking skills. After the shower, I had a little more time for my NYC album before we headed off to the theater.
As a Christmas Eve treat, Bill and I went to SIX at the Winspear. It was a great show and we didn’t fall off the balcony, but the ticket price and parking cost did take a bite out of our budget. Still we’d decided we wanted to see more live theater in 2023, so we bought tickets to a show at the Mesquite Arts Theatre (MAT) – Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite.
Now, MAT, is community theatre, so the actors and actresses are all amateurs, as are many of the tech folks. Hence our tickets were $18 a piece. Quite a reduction from the triple digit nosebleed seats at the Winspear. Of course, Plaza Suite is a much scaled down type of performance – no music and no fancy costumes, even when the pros are doing it.
The play was presented in the Mesquite Arts Center Black Box Theater. Other black box theaters have offered theater in the round, but this is just a ground level stage with tiers of seating and we sat on the front row. No complaints. We certainly got our $18 money’s worth. Some of the comic timing was a little off and the costumes look as if they came from the thrift store, but we were entertained.
The second act had a little faux pas that made it a little funnier. The characters were supposed to be getting sloppy drunk, but as the water/drinks sloshed all over the actors and the stage, it was apparent they’d gotten a little sloppier than they intended.
There was also a little costuming mishap in the third act. I’d noticed the strappy pumps on the actress didn’t fit very well and being a shoe freak, I was distracted by how she was handling her blocking with misfit shoes. Then it got worse, one of the straps broke. The blocking required her to fling herself from one end of the stage to the other with great drama and I anticipated her shoe tripping her up somewhere along the way. She stayed upright and the shoe stayed on. She has my undying admiration. I’d have had to find someway to kick those offending sandals off my feet or I’d have been glued to one spot.
All in all, it had been a great Saturday. I spent time with people I love and enjoyed some of my favorite activities. That’s what a weekend is about – even if you do have to field a few business calls and texts.
A Sunday Adventure
The first thing on Sunday is usually the same old thing – church. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my pastor is leaving, so I am thinking about changing churches. Nothing against my old church, sometimes God just has some place else He wants you to be. I’d been feeling some restlessness before I found out the pastor was leaving, so it made sense to follow my instincts, especially since this church had never felt like home to my hubby.
So, this Sunday, unlike it has been for several years, Mr. Bill and I headed out to church. Bill and I come from very different religious backgrounds. He grew up in an orthodox liturgical church with all the incense and ritual. I grew up in no frills evangelical churches. It beats me how people from really diverse religious associations ever make it through marriage – say a Catholic and a Jew or a Muslim and a Baptist. We just have a difference in worship, not beliefs, and after 28 years we still haven’t gotten it all figured out.
We visited Christ Church, an Anglican Church almost around the corner from us. We’d belonged to another Anglican Church at one time, but Bill had gotten tired of the rector’s preaching style – a little too much on the personal sharing side for him. When he quit going, I did, too, because it was way off on the liturgical end of things for me to sit through by myself. It was one thing when he was with me, but by myself it was all stand-up-sit-down-fight-fight-fight. However, we thought there had been enough commonality there, that a different teaching style might make it work.
Long story short, we like Christ Church Rockwall (which happens to be in McLendon Chisholm). The sermon was really good. The music would do. It wasn’t all the chants I’d hated in the Episcopal Church, but it wasn’t traditional hymns either, which is what I like best. While it was contemporary worship music, it wasn’t the flavor that drives me mad – rock and roll music with hours of repetitious choruses focused on how wretched I am, instead of how wonderful God is. I’m also not big on hand-waving and thumping drum beats.
So, it stays on the list of potential churches. We’d have like to see more diversity in the congregation, but that’s not a deal killer. We are working on what our next target will be. He’s thinking Methodist, which I usually call ‘church light,’ but I’m keeping my mind open.
After church we went on one of out rambling adventures. First we tried Downtown Rockwall forcoffee, but Fire & Fable was closed and Book Club Cafe was too crowded. After coffee at yet another Starbuck’s (Don’t you get tired of Starbuck’s?), we headed towards the Dallas Museum of Art, but never made it. We hit a couple of Deep Ellum spots, thinking to get lunch, but the volume killed our appetite. (Does this mean we are old?)
Then we happened on Uptown, looking for sustenance. We stopped in West Village and took a stroll. We decided we were definitely old, because the trendy gluten-free, veggie heavy venues didn’t sound at all like what we wanted and Thai is just not a fave with us. Thank goodness for the Village Burger Bar. Home again, home a gain jiggedy jig, to follow up on calls we’d gotten during the day and I did a little more scrapbooking.
That’s it for the week. Next week, there will be more NYC, more Memory Keeping and another Weekend Report. Please come and keep me company on my adventures.
jane sadek 