Silly Plays and Shipping Gifts

Last week was busy:  I was in an online production of "Peter Pan" on Wednesday evening, playing Nibs, one of the Lost Children.  Thursday I went to Chicago for a professional meeting, and Friday I flew to Dallas for two days of holiday shows.  I hoped to get out of meetings early and possibly catch a fourth show but that was not to be.  And I considered seeing a show on Thursday evening in Chicago but was enjoying talking to old colleagues and others that it wasn't possible.  Well, I had a surprisingly good evening of being social.

The plays we saw in Dallas are "Santa Claus Versus the Martians", based upon a 1964 film, "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians", which appears on many lists of "Worst Movies".  This is the sixth outing of the play, which parodies the source by playing it as straight as they can, with as low a budget as possible.  It's great!

That evening we went to the latest edition of "The Beulaville Baptist Book Club Presents: A Bur-Less-Q-Nutcracker!!!" which is very silly and also a lot of fun.  It has has been nominated for or won "The Nutty", the annual award for best production of The Nutcracker in the country, several times.

The third show was "Little Women", which a friend directed and for which she'd made all the knitted items the cast wore.  Each one was in keeping with the character and several told a story of the character's development through the play.  She plans to give each item to the actor or actress as their from-the-director gift after the show, and is making hat and fingerless mitts for the crew out of the leftover yarn.  My friend promised to send photographs, because of course we (I went with a knitter friend) could not handle the costumes!

I knitted some, and mostly visited with friends, and ate a lot of Tex-Mex food.

Just before going I mailed several Hannukah packages, and friends are sending photographs as they open and see the goodies.  Because a planned gift wouldn't be ready in time, I quickly made some snowflake-shaped ginger cookies (using an old recipe from a cookbook I collected) and since it was a big batch, some of the Christmas gifts went out early.  I also made sugarplums, which are dried fruit and nuts (pecans, in this case) ground together, then rolled in sugar or dipped in chocolate.  I did the former.  I also dropped several wrapped gifts for people at the Durham Rescue Mission through an Angel Tree program, and since this year's Toys for Tots pickup ended before Thanksgiving (but we didn't find out until afterwards), they DRM was thrilled to receive toys to distribute at their holiday party.

MASKS - of course I keep wearing them, especially with the travel and being out in crowds.  And I add a quote or fact appropriate to the date.  Because I wore one every day whilst traveling:

Noam Chomsky - born on December 7, 1928.

James Thurber (difficult to find a quote that fits
on a mask!) - born December 8, 1894.

Adm. Grace Hopper - born December 9, 1906.

Ada Lovelace - born December 10, 1815.

Rita Moreno - born December 11, 1931.

I keep not reporting on my Resolutions, probably because I don't think I am getting anywhere.  I seem to be in another reading slump - or maybe it's just because I keep picking up long books?