Too Much Detail on a Tired Tuesday Run?

Posted on August 16, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

I have this recurring dream where I am trying to get somewhere and my legs won’t work properly.  I can’t pick up my feet, I can’t move forward, it’s simply dreadful.  I pretty much felt this way at work today, and I worried tonight’s run would be more of the same.  However, I have not been running since July and I was determined to begin again.

I made a bargain with myself that I would only run for 20 minutes.  I could hang for 20 minutes.  This would work.  Of course it was a rigamarole getting ready to run.  I wanted to put in a load of laundry while I ran, including the pants I had worn to work today.  Since I had gotten sweaty at work, I took advantage of this.  I stayed naked while I filled the basket with laundry, then put on my running clothes (sorry if that gave you an unfortunate mental image) (then again, what are you doing picturing me naked?  Shame on you, you dirty-minded thing, you!).

Of course I was still sweaty.  I put powder on my upper body, but my second sports bra  still rolled up as I put it on and I couldn’t reach the back to unroll it.  I hate when that happens!  I got it, though, because, like I said, I was determined.  If this is too much detail, tough.  I calls it like I sees it.  I almost got out the door before I realized I had not thrown the laundry in.  Back up the stairs to retrieve the basket, then down to the basement.  I figured it could count as my warm-up.

Usually when I run, I make a left at the end of my driveway and head to German Street.  If I have not been running in a while, I head to Caroline Street, then go up and down the streets, working my way back home.  I decided to mix things up, so turned right and headed towards Meyers Park.  I even crossed the street and ran down the opposite side from my house.  The sun came out from behind a cloud, showing me that I had not picked the shadier side of the street. No matter.   It was my first run of beginning again, and I was going to persevere.

Persevere was what I had to do, because I never hit the I Can Rock This stage.  I won’t say that every step was an effort, but a goodly number of them were.  I tried to distract myself by looking around.  Mostly I noticed other people’s porches and wished I was sitting on a nice porch, perhaps enjoying a beverage.  I had told a work friend that I might reward myself with a glass of wine after my run.  Suddenly I remembered… chocolate milk!  When I was training for the Boilermaker 15K, I got in the habit of re-hydrating with chocolate milk.  I read somewhere that it is an excellent recovery drink.  I must say I enjoy it quite a bit.  I knew there was milk and chocolate in my refrigerator.  That thought sustained me for the rest of the run.

I ended up running for 22 minutes.  I felt pleased with myself that I had gone at least a little over 20, especially since the devil on my shoulder had been whispering that 15 would be just as good.  The cool shower felt wonderful, and the chocolate milk was heaven.  I probably won’t run again tomorrow, because I have rehearsal for The Tempest (no, that is not over yet, and I will no doubt write more blog posts about it), but I hope to run on Thursday.  Sooner or later, I must hit that I Can Rock This stage.

 

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Two Tempest Pics for Mental Meanderings Monday

Posted on August 15, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Some of us may look a little shady, but we are bad hyphen ass.

Well, rather than whine about how tired I am and that’s why this is going to be a Mental Meanderings Monday, I thought I would open with a picture of the cast of the Tempest, taken after Sunday’s performance. Regular readers know that we just had three performances in four days (Thursday, Saturday and Sunday).  Oh, I know, YOUR play ran for ten performances in three days; there’s always someone!

Performances went very well, but I’m sure I’ve mentioned that already.  Did I mention how hot it can get for some of us in our costumes?  Not the fellow front left, in the shorts and body paint.  I think I may hold out for a similar costume if I do Summer Shakespeare next year (which I keep saying I am NOT going to do and for some reason nobody believes me).  One thing I keep saying is no pantyhose and only one layer.  I suppose it is my fault for not finding a lighter vest, but we all know that the selection in thrift stores only goes so far.  Never mind.  With only two more performances to go, I am more than capable of sucking it up (but please don’t call me Buttercup).

Having rattled on for over 200 words, I think I’ll close with the other cast photo taken Sunday.  The first one we smile, the second was in character.

Incidentally, that fellow is asleep in my shoulder because he is drunk. Had he not been there, I may have been smiling in both pics, because my character is rather a happy fellow.

 

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Wrist to Hitchcock

Posted on August 14, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

It is Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday, August 13.  Steven and I had hoped to watch an Alfred Hitchcock movie when we got home tonight, but it seems that will not work out.  Is it a Wrist to Forehead Sunday?  I fear so.  Never mind why; explanations are tiresome.  We won’t worry about that but concentrate on the famous director’s birthday.

I’m thinking this is only true in a sense.

I picked this picture of him to share, because I liked the saying on it.  This is not a rule I follow when I am directing or acting on a stage, by the way.

Nevermore, you say?

The Birds is one of our go-to movies, especially on a Sunday night.

Love the poster art.

Rear Window, however, is arguably our favorite Hitchcock movie.  The casting, the acting, the script, everything combines to make an entertaining whole.  I say “arguably,” because there is also my beloved Rope.  However,  I cannot find any photos of Rope, so we won’t talk about that movie right now.

We won’t talk about anything much, as it turns out.  It is SO Wrist to Forehead Sunday.  Happy Birthday, Alfred Hitchcock.  Blog readers, please bear with me.  I will try to come up with something better on Middle-aged Musings Monday.

 

 

 

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Post Performance Post

Posted on August 13, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Wouldn’t it be cool if our set  looked like this?

Last Saturday, I meant to act and type (as opposed to drinking and typing), but that did not work out (don’t judge me).  This Saturday, I just got back home from, you guessed it, acting, and here I sit typing (and drinking as well, once again, don’t judge). Therefore I continue my theme of All Tempest All The Time with a few words and pictures.

We had our first of two performances at Sterzinar Park, Canal Place, Little Falls.  We were part of the Little Falls Canal Days Celebration.  Chicks Along the Canal were in the park with all kinds of vendors, craftspeople and artists.  I did not get a chance to walk around the booths, but it seemed there was a lot of good stuff.  Surprisingly, the weather cooperated.  There was a little rain before we started.  Then it seemed there might be a downpour during the last scene.  The wind blew some set pieces around.  However, we dealt with all problems and got through the whole play.

I think the audience was very pleased.  At least, they kept clapping through the entire curtain call, which I think goes on for kind of a long time (then again, once I’ve said all my lines I confess I’m a little anxious to get on to wine time).  Alas that I have no picture of today’s performance.  However, a trip to LiFT Theatre Company’s Facebook page showed me several good ones from last Saturday’s performance in Caroga Lake (full disclosure:  this might be from our dress rehearsal the night before that performance, but I think it will work just as well).

I’m the one in the orange tights.

Naturally I had to include a picture with me in it.  This is what I refer to as my big scene, because I have a few sizable speeches (not as long as some actors have, but they gave me a little trouble learning).  It is also the scene where I get made fun of, but you’ll have that when you play a garrulous old man.

I’m wondering if the teeth glow in the dark.

This is a shot taken when we were still searching for costumes.  I get to wear one of these masks in one scene.  I must confess I’m not too nuts about it, because it squishes my nose down and it is difficult to see through the eye-holes, even when I wear contact lenses.  Still, it is fun to be a wolf.

We have another performance at Sterzinar Park tomorrow at 3 p.m. Then we are at the Utica Zoo next Saturday and at the Herkimer Elks Lodge Sept. 1.  For more information, visit the LiFT Facebook page.

 

 

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Is a Lame Blog Post Useful?

Posted on August 12, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Who knew I would make it to another Lame Post Friday?  Not me on Monday, that’s for sure.  Friday seemed oceans of time away!  Come to think of it, the end of my work day seemed pretty far off earlier today.  Ah, perspective.  There’s a bit of half-baked philosophy for you.  For anybody just tuning in, Lame Post Friday is the day I sometimes indulge in random observations and half-baked philosophy.  I do not know how much I can indulge in anything today, though.  I think my fall allergies have kicked in, big time.

I’m sure many readers can identify with my allergy-related tribulations.  If you have never suffered from allergies, congratulations.  If you suffer from allergies and have never to complained about them… PANTS ON FIRE!!!!  How can you say you have suffered and have never complained???  Oh well, maybe nobody ever said that.  Anyways, I have pontificated before on how I raise concerns, YOU complain, THAT GUY OVER THERE pisses and moans.  But I guess I can admit to a little personal whining.

Where was I?  Ah yes, trying to make some semblance of a blog post, before figuring out what to do with the rest of my Friday evening (ooh, that would be a good blog title, but I think I have already used it).  I feel I must do something useful.  I have a rather full schedule this weekend (remember All Tempest All The Time?  Well, that’s still going on), so I have no time to waste.  Therefore, lying flat on my back, watching the room spin, is not the best use of my time (full disclosure:  I actually tried it earlier, and it just made my back hurt).

The nice thing is, if I do anything useful now, I might be able to blog about it tomorrow.  You, gentle reader, will be the first to know. Happy Friday, everyone.

 

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The Silliest Blog Post?

Posted on August 11, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

I could not think of anything to write a blog post about (I know, All Tempest All The Time, only I could not think of anything new to say about that either).  My husband, Steven, suggested I write a post about my silly husband.  Now I am afraid he will be dreadfully disappointed if I do not write such a blog post, so here goes.

The most glaring example of Steven’s silliness is that he was silly enough to marry me.  Obviously somebody married to me must be very silly, or perhaps a glutton for punishment (which is also, arguably, a silly way to be).  As anybody who has actually met me knows and readers of this blog suspect, I am no picnic.  Oh, I’m sure I have my good points, but we’re not talking about me.  The operative thing to do next is to give other concrete examples of how Steven is silly.  Well, for one thing, he has dubbed me the silliest.  Can you imagine such a thing?  Me, silly!  Well, I do write a silly blog, but, once again, we are not talking about me.

When my nieces were younger, it was quite the family controversy of who was the silliest, me or Steven.  Showing their wisdom and discernment, my nieces usually concluded that it was Steven, although for some unaccountable reason, the scales sometimes tipped in my direction.  My niece Gillian, however, wholeheartedly embraced Uncle Steve as the silliest.  Being a gentleman (albeit a silly one), he returned the favor.

One Christmas when I spoke to Gillian on the phone, she asked how The Silliest was.  Steven, in the background, said, “Tell her to quit talking about herself.”  When I asked Gillian what she had gotten for Christmas, she told me that one of her presents was a pig.  Steven immediately began saying, “Oink, oink.  Oink, oink,”  to which Gillian replied, “Tell him to quit talking about himself.”

 

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More About the Tempest

Posted on August 10, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

I hope everybody can read it.

It may be All Tempest All The Time for the next couple of weeks.  Our Aug. 5 performance is in the books, but we have shows the 10th, 12th and 13th.  Then we’ll have at least a couple of rehearsals at the Utica Zoo, preparing for Aug. 19.  I may be able to sneak in a few real Mohawk Valley posts after that, but then we’ll be preparing for our final performance on Sept. 1.

Then I’ll start getting ready for Halloween, yes!

Thursday’s performance is at Benton’s Landing in Little Falls.  It is where we did our preview performance on July’s Third Thursday (that’s a thing in Little Falls).  Perhaps you read one of my blog posts about it.  It is an interesting performance space with a couple of different levels.

It doesn’t really show the whole space, but you can get an idea.

This is the cast of last year’s summer show, Much Ado About Nothing.  It was the only photo I could find on LiFT’s Facebook page of Benton’s Landing.  As I was adding it to this post, I remembered, I shared some photos of our Preview Performance last month at, you know, Benton’s Landing.  How silly of me!

I took this one standing behind the rapt audience (if they were not rapt, I would rap them on the noggin!) (just kidding, in order to make a pun).

So I am getting ready to go to rehearsal at Benton’s Landing.  Tomorrow is the performance.  Yikes!  That happened fast!  How did three days of this week just slip right by while I was at work thinking time was dragging on?  Ah, that is a topic for Lame Post Friday, when I occasionally indulge in half-baked philosophy. Now Friday seems pretty far away.  Perspective!

 

 

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Damned or Dead, What’s the Difference?

Posted on August 9, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Sorry kids, it’s Tired Tuesday.  Instead of whining about how tired I am (except for these first two sentences), I thought I’d share a few pictures and remarks about a favorite monster guy of mine, Boris Karloff.  When I was looking at my On This Day on Facebook, I saw this gem:

The movie version adds a “?” to Mad Monster Party

I wrote a blog post about Mad Monster Party? and would like to add the DVD to our Halloween collection (which everybody knows I watch all year long).   I downloaded the picture, thinking to use it at some future date.  Then again, why wait?  So I decided to use it and began trolling for more Boris Karloff pictures for my post, preferably of movies I own or have seen.  I remembered a double DVD my friend Rachel had sent me and soon found this:

Now I was on my way with a kind of movie poster theme.

Bedlam is perhaps not as horror-filled as one might expect with Karloff as the lead, but it is a pretty good flick.  It is very stylish.  I wrote a blog post about it.  Of course I decided to look for the other movie on that set.  Unfortunately, I could not remember the title.  I knew there was an island and almost everybody died, and the title reflected that.  It wasn’t Island of Lost Souls, that was something else.  It wasn’t Island of the Damned.  Hmmm…

Oh! Not island, ISLE! Silly me!

I found it with the help of a Google search.  I hope regular readers are proud of me, because I can almost never find anything with a Google search.  I did not write a whole blog post about this movie, but I did mention it in one.

I close with a poster from a movie that I have neither written about nor seen, but when I was pulling the others out of the Download file, I saw it and said, “Hey!”

I am adding it to my list of movies to look for.

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

 

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A Sad Post

Posted on August 8, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

It’s that awkward moment when you thought you did not have rehearsal, then you find out you do, but you still have to make your blog post, and you realize you’re making a terrible run-on sentence, but you do not want to backspace it out, because that is a slippery slope that leads to no blog post at all.  Oh dear.

And I am very sad.  I just found out a Facebook friend of mine passed away yesterday.  Rick truly was a Facebook friend. He requested me. I think I had made some comments on my high school class reunion page, and he was from my high school.  I thought he must be a classmate I could not immediately recall (I graduated with a class of some 580), but it soon became apparent he was a little older and had been to Vietnam.  Of course I was happy to be friends with a fellow veteran.  He used to share good songs and historic information about such things as the Tuskegee Airmen, of which I believe his father was one (I could have that wrong, but at least I know his father was a high speed airman or soldier of some sort).

I also liked Rick’s politics.  I try to keep politics off my blog, but I have been known to indulge in a mild sort of way on Facebook.  Rick had some friends whose views were diametrically opposed to his, so I saw some lively discussions.  I enjoyed reading them, because for the most part, participants were respectful of each other:  “I love you, brother, but you’re wrong.”

So I feel too sad to write a real blog post.  He was a good man, and now he is gone.  I did not know him well, but I am thankful for what I knew of him.  Peace to you, my friend.

 

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Scattered Sunday?

Posted on August 7, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

I wanted to have another Severed Head Sunday.  I thought it would happen when Steven agreed to watch The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, one of my all-time favorite cheesy movies.  From there we could have gone onto a number of other features, cheesy or otherwise:  Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Straitjacket, Sleepy Hollow (or, as I like to call it, The Headless Everybody), even Jaws has a scene with a severed head (I believe Jaws was a feature of my first Severed Head Sunday).

Then we decided to go for a walk, because  I finished a letter I wanted to mail.  I brought along the Tablet and took some pictures, so why not do a Sunday Stroll post?  While Steven was changing his shoes, I went into the backyard and got a picture of our Black-eyed Susans that I have been wanting.

The three bushes in the background are in the neighbors’ yard.

 

I took two shots, thinking to use the best one, but I now I think I’ll use both.

I don’t know if you can tell, but we’ve got quite a nice batch of chives next to the Black-eyed Susans.

I had just been remarking to Steven that our spearmint seems a little out of control, so I got a shot of that, too.

I should have gotten Steven to stand next to it for perspective.

I was glad I had taken two pictures at home, because I did not find as much to shoot on our walk.  However, I knew I wanted a picture of our post office, because I think it is kind of cool and historic looking.

I stood across the street so I could get the whole building.

As we walked up Main Street, I saw some flowers in front of Basloe Library which I had not taken a picture of, I don’t think.  I think I only took a shot of the ones in the park next to the library.

I wish I had focused in on the big pink blooms more, but you can’t see on the Tablet really well in the sunshine.

I was glad to get back home, because it was hotter outside than I had thought.  Also, I had not worn my sunglasses and the bright sunlight was bothering me.  Just to piss and moan a little, so this is more of a Wrist to Forehead Sunday after all.  However, my headline promised a Scattered Sunday and I began by talking about movies, so I will close with a photo I downloaded from one of my monster movie groups on Facebook.

Is it just me or does the building in the background look a little like Stone Mill at Canal Place in Little Falls?

It is a rare close up of Max Schrek in make-up as Nosferatu, who, as regular readers know, is one of my all-time favorite guys.  Happy Sunday, everyone.

 

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