Blather

Tonight I'm resting up from shoveling gravel in the backyard. Watching TV, I thought about my time in Iraq. One of the nicer memories was Heskette. She was a kitten that lived under the pallets outside the Brits' PX. Being small and young, she was at the mercy of the other cats. But she knew that humans were OK. She was very food-driven. I'd sit in one of the cheap aluminum deck chairs outside the container hooch that was the PX and she'd come by. She wasn't fussy; Heskette ate anything that I did. Poor silly girl, she even tried to eat my lit cigar a few times. She never learned that a lit cigar isn't a good thing to eat. The photo above is her second home, the former motor pool. After the Brits pulled out, they took the hooches and removed the pallets that were the adjacent patio. Her mother, another cat I called Gigi, wasn't very maternal. I guess an adult cat was just more competition in the fang-and-tooth world of FOB Quebec. Heskette was smaller, so she had to live wherever Gigi wouldn't bother her. I think she lived for awhile in a tree next to the main building. For awhile, she lived in the motor pool. That's where she was living when I took this photo of her. Jeff and I had snuck a bit of chicken out of the chow hall. She knew us, and even let us hold her so we could put the just-visible flea collar on her. After living there for awhile, she moved to a storage space under the building. We moved to Camp Bucca. Then I went on leave. When I got back, she was nowhere to be seen. A few times I'd walk by where I thought she could be, but I didn't see her again.

Had a few happy moments with this feline. I'd give her a bit to eat, smoke a cigar, and wonder how I got to the same place Alexander the Great did, just a couple of millenia apart. Once or twice, she'd put her face under my elbow, closing off her ears and eyes to the world. I interpreted this as a lot of trust- that I would neither eat her nor let another animal eat her. When I got back from Iraq, I found a couple more cats in California, but they have their own stories.

Pretty good day today. Yesterday, my small son and I moved the old couch out onto the porch and set up the bed that was mine when I was a child. (Richie used it in San Luis Obispo when he was living there.) Much more comfy than I'd expected, since the mattress was a bit tired, but I slept well. Really well. This morning, I slept in a bit, waking to the sound of the pellet stove's blower spinning. In the adjacent room, Richie had disassembled the pellet stove. I got dressed, fixed oatmeal and Tetley's for brekkie, then went to see how he was doing. He showed me a rather hefty auger that drives pellets up and then they drop into the firebox. The auger hadn't been spinning. One end was crusty with some sort of lubricant residue, so I cleaned it off. When he put it back, the auger worked. We shoved the heavy stove back into the fireplace and I wrapped some aluminum tape (good stuff!) around the exhaust vent. Took us awhile to get the pellets lit, since we were new to pellet stoves. They kept going out, but finally we got 'em going and they've stayed lit for about five hours now. The living room is nice and warm; the adjacent rooms are not as cozy, but far more livable than before we started putting some BTUs into that end of the house.

Oh, the day also included some yardwork and I cleaned up the kitchen a bit, but the best part of today was making half the house far more comfortable than it was yesterday.

Still have to try dialing in the blower speed and the feed rate. To my uneducated eyes, it seems that there's too much air and not quite enough pellets, but only by a bit.

With this plateau, making Stockton my permanent home is that much closer. This time I brought out my two BMX bikes. Next time I'll bring Schaffe's bicycle and some of my other bikes. My too-tall bike runs, but its name is indicative of why I shouldn't try BMX stuff on it- it's too tall for my short inseam. Might bring some bedroom furniture and some of my closet stuff, too. Tomorrow I might try working in the two closets- rip out the rugs, paint the walls, find the closet poles and the folding doors so no one has to look at my messy closets when I begin sleeping there.

Not the most productive day ever, but I'm happy with the results.

For Christmas, my big son Richie got me some tickets to "Xanadu the Musical" at the New Conservatory Theatre Center. (Let's remain positive regarding their choice of name- they chose the British "Theatre" but the American "Center." Yeah, only *I* would notice this lexical hiccup. Well, let's get beyond that, OK?

Richie took me to dinner at a very good Italian restaurant in downtown Hayward, Buon Apetito, then to see "Xanadu the Musical." He is a bit less acquisitive than I am, so he favors gifts that don't take up space in one's closet. (Discussion of various overcrowded closets is tabled for another time.) I had lamb with tomato and polenta, washed down with a glass of nice wine. We had a nice, post-rush-hour drive to San Francisco, and hit the Holy Grail for us knee-jerk cheapskates: a free parking spot on Van Ness 100 feet south of Market Street. I was a happy camper. We hiked all of 200 yards to the theater, got our tickets at will-call and had a half-hour to kill. The Chinese cafe on the corner sold excellent take-away coffee, so we took away a cup and strolled San Francisco. Cool shop windows interspersed with clumps of street people sizing us up for possible panhandling. Even in my casual best, I wasn't enough of a toff to get accosted. Saw fire trucks come screaming out of a station, going the wrong way on two intersecting streets. Then it was time to look for our seats.

'Twas a small theater, so the stage was tiny. But the cast was terrific!! Kira (Olivia Newton-John's role) was very good, very young and very pretty. Sonny Malone (Micheal Beck's role) was a great actor, funny and confident enough to wear goofy 80's clothing. Gene Kelly's part, Danny McGuire, went to an older guy who was both a good singer and funny in an almost burlesque manner. Two muses stole the show- a rather pretty gal who got very un-pretty by wearing goofy hair and glasses, and a saftig gal with an outstanding voice and a ton of moxie. These two really carried the plot which differed from the movie. In this production, the two sister muses conspired, amid lots of hysterical cackling, to make Kira and Sonny fall in love, a serious Mount Olympus faux pas. They were perfect as malicious siblings, but in a very funny, non-threatening way. This wasn't a serious play, just an excuse to sing a lot, skate a little, and have bunches of campy fun. They poked fun at a lot of things, including themselves. Of necessity, Zeus had to note that if Kira stopped being a muse, there would be no creative work in "the arts" for several decades, beginning in 1980. And there was a hilarious moment when this led to a pessimistic appraisal of a bad movie's music getting thrown at a group of actors in a futile attempt to revive a thin plot. Yep, if you can laugh at yourself, you're all right with me.

Probably because the cast had to be small, they only had seven muses, six of whom had a second role, but allowed two of the muse sisters to be in the "technical box" at the back of the theater. (Hey, someone had to wind up the lighting and music, right?) And in an only-in-San Francisco way, two of the muse sisters were guys, again with a lot of individual, personal confidence. A few costume changes, some rolling scenery and some pretty good mikes up in the air made for a not-so-complex production. But the best part was the singing and fun everyone had. Sonny broke the fourth wall frequently, had a lot of tongue-in-cheek lines and the personality to go with that approach. Kira put on a very hokey Aus-try-lee-ann accent. (We all know where Olivia Newton-John is from, right?) For the scene when Gene Kelly recalls his youth, she becomes Kitty, with an equally broad and annoying Southern Belle accent. One of the male sisters was a terrific dancer, and slid onto the stage when Gene Kelly was recalling his youth with Kitty/Kyra, tap-dancing and dancing with Kyra. She and two female sisters did the 40's medley of songs, and Sonny and the two male sisters, now dressed in suitably macho punk slashed jeans, did the modern hard-rock stuff. Really fun, really good. The other male sister muse got a second role as Mercury, messenger from Zeus and brought the house down the way he dissed Kira when she moaned about Zeus' impending anger. Kira and two of the other females sang the 40's medley while Sonny and the two male sisters, dressed in suitably punkish slashed-levis, sleeveless jacket clothes, did a great number, eventually filling the stage with six talented and dancing actors.

I guess I expected a low-budget version of the movie. The music kinda got shuffled around a bit, Richie noted a couple of ELO songs that weren't in the movie, but the plot wasn't badly bruised. The movie scenes where Sonny argues with his boss were gone, just not essential to the story. We agreed that all you needed for the plot to work was for Sonny and Kira to "fall in love," so the office stuff wasn't needed. The scenes with Zeus were a bit different, with three sisters putting on ridiculously big wigs on and trying to stick up for Kyra. The gal who played Euterpe was an outstanding dancer, tall and willowy yet strong and never hesitant in her gestures. The program says she trained with Ann Reinking's Broadway Theater Project. (Who could forget Ann Reinking in "All That Jazz?" What a dancer!!)

The big finale with everyone on roller skates was more like a couple of slowly-rotating pinwheels, but the small size of the stage meant no one had much chance to skate well. There was a cool scene where Sonny got into a telephone booth and sang with Kira as she rolled the booth across the stage. When he exited the stage, he was on skates. Oh, all right, not the most difficult of sleight-of-hand, but everyone gasped a bit at the "magic."

Not sure how often you get to the city, but if you have a chance, go see this schmalzy, warm, funny bit of theater that will end soon in the middle of January. Thumbs way up!!! I dare you not to sing along and laugh at the humor. This was a terrific show, woo hooo!