Home Ahead of the Weather
Dec. 15th, 2018 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeI had a fantastic time attending Who's Holiday last night at 3Below Theatre. This is a one-woman show starring Shannon Guggenheim as no-longer-so-young Cindy Lou Who, delivered (mostly) in rhyming couplets a la Doctor Seuss.
I forgot to turn low-light detection back on the camera phone and did not hold still enough when I took this pre-show photo of the set, and forgot to check the photo. The photo of me and Shannon Guggenheim post-show is similarly out of focus and I look awful (instead of smiling, it looks like I'm gritting my teeth for some reason), so I'm not going to share it. The phone ran out of battery right after taking the second photo, and I left the reserve battery at home on this trip, so that's a missed opportunity.
The set is of the beat-up old trailer in which 40-plus-year-old Cindy Lou Who is living behind Mt. Crumpit and where she's planning to host a Christmas party for all of the people of Seuss-land she's invited. Except none of them want to come, due to the checkered life Cindy Lou led after the events in How the Grinch Stole Christmas and those of us in the audience become her party guests.
Once again, a 3Below production has left me smiling and happy more than a day after I left. Shannon was very kind to me post-show, saying, "You get the prize for traveling the farthest!"
I told Shannon, "I find myself trying to form rhyming couplets talking to people here after the show."
She said (approximately), "It's infectious, isn't it?"
I also spoke with Scott Guggenheim, who thanked me for making the trip. I told him, truthfully, that it was a pleasure, and that I'm really glad that Lisa encouraged me to make the trip and that the weather cooperated.
As I've mentioned, this was something of a BASFA outing, and our section of the theatre was full of what the Guggenheims dubbed "the Super Fans" when the Retro Dome closed. After the show, some of us went over to the lobby bar of the Fairmont and had drinks and talked for what must have been longer than the show itself. That was fun, too.
San Jose's downtown Christmas is back and is much bigger and more elaborate than I remember it from the last time I was here, which was some years ago when SMOFCon was in the Sainte Claire (now Westin; some of you will remember it from Worldcon 76). I wish I'd had more time to explore it. As it was, my brief foray meant that I once again missed a train back to my hotel by only a minute or two, and that late at night it means waiting up to half an hour, compounded by the fact that the first train arriving heading my way actually goes out of service before getting to Gish, where my hotel was. Net effect: I didn't get to bed until 1 AM. But even so, I'm glad I came.
This morning, amazingly, I work up without benefit of alarm at 4:45 AM, but decided that I needed more sleep and got it. I did not rush, and I had a couple of errands in Sunnyvale and Mountain View. Combined with Christmas shopping traffic, I didn't get clear of the Bay Area until early afternoon.
I did have time to visit my sister at the nursing home in Sacramento and deliver to her a Christmas basket of chocolates that Lisa and I picked out for her. Because of her health, she is encouraged to eat what she wants, simply because she needs to gain weight. But I did encourage her to not try and eat too much of this at once, lest it make her sick. Too much of anything at once is not necessarily a good thing.
Weather was fine and clear tonight, and roads were dry. I got to Donner Summit rest area just before full dark. There was as much as a meter of snow on the ground, and it was cold, but it was not a bad night for traveling, other than I don't like taking that road at night. I eased my way down the east side following a slow big-rig all the way to the Nevada state line, where I got off the road and had dinner at the Gold Ranch Casino before driving the final 50 miles to home.
It's been a good weekend. I'm glad, though, that I have tomorrow to recover from it before going back to work on Monday. This coming week is the only full five-day week I'll have in the entire stretch from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day.
I forgot to turn low-light detection back on the camera phone and did not hold still enough when I took this pre-show photo of the set, and forgot to check the photo. The photo of me and Shannon Guggenheim post-show is similarly out of focus and I look awful (instead of smiling, it looks like I'm gritting my teeth for some reason), so I'm not going to share it. The phone ran out of battery right after taking the second photo, and I left the reserve battery at home on this trip, so that's a missed opportunity.
The set is of the beat-up old trailer in which 40-plus-year-old Cindy Lou Who is living behind Mt. Crumpit and where she's planning to host a Christmas party for all of the people of Seuss-land she's invited. Except none of them want to come, due to the checkered life Cindy Lou led after the events in How the Grinch Stole Christmas and those of us in the audience become her party guests.
Once again, a 3Below production has left me smiling and happy more than a day after I left. Shannon was very kind to me post-show, saying, "You get the prize for traveling the farthest!"
I told Shannon, "I find myself trying to form rhyming couplets talking to people here after the show."
She said (approximately), "It's infectious, isn't it?"
I also spoke with Scott Guggenheim, who thanked me for making the trip. I told him, truthfully, that it was a pleasure, and that I'm really glad that Lisa encouraged me to make the trip and that the weather cooperated.
As I've mentioned, this was something of a BASFA outing, and our section of the theatre was full of what the Guggenheims dubbed "the Super Fans" when the Retro Dome closed. After the show, some of us went over to the lobby bar of the Fairmont and had drinks and talked for what must have been longer than the show itself. That was fun, too.
San Jose's downtown Christmas is back and is much bigger and more elaborate than I remember it from the last time I was here, which was some years ago when SMOFCon was in the Sainte Claire (now Westin; some of you will remember it from Worldcon 76). I wish I'd had more time to explore it. As it was, my brief foray meant that I once again missed a train back to my hotel by only a minute or two, and that late at night it means waiting up to half an hour, compounded by the fact that the first train arriving heading my way actually goes out of service before getting to Gish, where my hotel was. Net effect: I didn't get to bed until 1 AM. But even so, I'm glad I came.
This morning, amazingly, I work up without benefit of alarm at 4:45 AM, but decided that I needed more sleep and got it. I did not rush, and I had a couple of errands in Sunnyvale and Mountain View. Combined with Christmas shopping traffic, I didn't get clear of the Bay Area until early afternoon.
I did have time to visit my sister at the nursing home in Sacramento and deliver to her a Christmas basket of chocolates that Lisa and I picked out for her. Because of her health, she is encouraged to eat what she wants, simply because she needs to gain weight. But I did encourage her to not try and eat too much of this at once, lest it make her sick. Too much of anything at once is not necessarily a good thing.
Weather was fine and clear tonight, and roads were dry. I got to Donner Summit rest area just before full dark. There was as much as a meter of snow on the ground, and it was cold, but it was not a bad night for traveling, other than I don't like taking that road at night. I eased my way down the east side following a slow big-rig all the way to the Nevada state line, where I got off the road and had dinner at the Gold Ranch Casino before driving the final 50 miles to home.
It's been a good weekend. I'm glad, though, that I have tomorrow to recover from it before going back to work on Monday. This coming week is the only full five-day week I'll have in the entire stretch from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day.
