Tablesaw!

A combination of procrastination and anticipation, I purchased new glasses. The glasses I should've already purchased are the bifocals for my new prescription. I'm trying progressives this time, but I'm stuck without anything good for mid-range. Bad for reading a script while moving. Ahead of the ballgame getting cheap character glasses for the next show. Starting to get a collection of no-frills, kinda ugly backups.

Took a nice long walk after work with Psyche. Didn't take Barklee, who slows us down trying to sniff everything.

Vampire Lestat has another great episode. I love probing Psyche's memories of the series while avoiding spoilers.

In the park today while walking the dog, I saw the girl blow a bubble that was picked up by the wind and taken up higher than the tallest tree in the park, then over three houses before I lost track of it. A more beautiful spectacle than anything later in the night.

Set an alarm(!) to make sure I didn't waste the morning by stealing extra hours of sleep. Managed to get some housework done. Eventually spent much of the day wrestling with Calibre Web to get my e-book server working again before remembering that it doesn't handle PDFs anyway.

Spent the rest of the day grilling a holiday meal: tri-tip, zucchini, and portabella mushrooms on the grill with cauliflower mash in the kitchen. The cauli mash didn't turn out well (too salty), but everything else was great.

"Rented" Hokum. Fun to watch with the fireworks booming nearby. Inoculation against jump scares.

Heard back about auditions, and I've been cast in the role of the "slimy landlord." It was definitely the least interesting role by character breakdown, but from the sides at auditions, it's clearly one pitched to get a lot of laughs. Read-through is on Sunday, though I should be able to see the full script before then. The only Urinetown cast member I saw at my audition didn't get cast, which is disappointing to me because I really liked working with her (Little Sally to my Officer Lockstock). Don't know if anyone else from the cast auditioned, so I'm waiting for the formal cast announcement rather than blowing up the main group chat.

Arrived at standup late after taking the car in for an oil change and minor tune-up. When I returned, the scrum master asked, "Tablesaw, do you like puzzles? We're doing a puzzle!" I expected to jump into something like a group solve of Connections, but instead it was an online jigsaw puzzle (66 pieces). I talked a bit about some of my puzzle background, and they were all suddenly glad to have had a two minute head start on me. Nobody had time to finish, but I did manage to get the highest completion of the group.

Have a friend over tonight that Psyche will drive to LAX tomorrow while we sleep in. Not much planned for the weekend (other than the read-through), and we're not sure if we're going to try to head towards any Independence Day celebrations or avoid them.

Learned today that one of my favorite local bands from college has put out a new album this year, their first since 1998. Looking forward to getting to know it better.

After copious sleep, started the day late weakened only by hunger. I think I had a bad reaction to overeating with munchies leading to gas and constipation. Planning to add more fiber and to be a little more careful about overindulging.

Working without a fever made bug-hunting much easier, and I believe I've cracked it. May need to prove that the other case on the ticket has already been fixed in previous work if I can duplicate it.

Dreamt of a beautiful summer afternoon filled with an embarrassment of love for Psyche.

Yesterday, spent the day with Tuesday, doing touristy things in Pismo, then heading to Orcutt to try out Knotty Oaks brewery. Enjoyed drinking "To The Nines" and listening to Grunge Muffin, a '90s alt-rock cover band. Really good drums and lead guitarist helped carry them. Returned home closed the night watching Being John Malkovitch.

Today, slow, painful recovery, along with auditions. I thought I might be able to pass for the male romantic lead, but given the ages of the women reading for the romantic lead, it would be a bad look. Instead, I was heavily read for the "slimy landlord" character. Had some good choices, and got some good laughs, so I feel I have a decent shot.

Returned to the cineplex again tonight to watch Backrooms, which I enjoyed. I'm glad it's doing well, but I'm not too surprised, since it has a bit of the stink of the blockbuster on it. Preferred The Death of Robin Hood more.

Both nights, I ran into people I knew outside the theater. Today it was Old Man Strong and friends on their way to see Supergirl. Hope to see them again at a cast reunion, if the date ever gets settled.

Saw a police chase when I got home. Weirdly close. I guess the town is just that much smaller. Fewer chases (no helicopters), but very few streets to chase through.

Finished with the rest of Dimension 20, which was a killer episode. I love Oyama's character work this season.

(Backdated entry: 2026-02-09. Memories may have frayed...)

Auditions for Urinetown. I'd been thinking about getting back into theater since we moved and I realized there was an established community nearby, but it's taken a long time to find the courage. I had excuses earlier (shows that I didn't know or didn't look interesting, misaligned times for auditions or performances), but I didn't realize how scared I'd been until I was experiencing extreme anxiety in the house getting ready to go. Almost pulled out. Eventually talked myself down and made it to the theater (after frantically searching for my keys).

I went in hoping for Officer Lockstock, or maybe Cladwell, but I was trying to temper my expectations. I didn't know the politics of the theatre, and as well as I might do at the audition, I didn't know what talent might be there, or how much faith would be put into an unknown actor to be reliable. Still, I was pretty sure I could land Tiny Tom in the ensemble. But when I got there, the director was pretty upfront about not having a lot of the regulars available, so I thought I might have a good chance.

I felt like I'd made a good impression reading for Hot-Blades Harry. I did a reading straight (high-energy, barely controlled bloodlust), but got a chance to read a second time and went for something more Peter Lorre creepy, which got a lot of surprised laughs.

Finished the evening with prepared song "Not a Common Man" from American Psycho, which fit range and the theme of the show. I had been naive about the ability to get a karaoke backing track, but I eventually did some Audible hacking to get something passable.

I was asked to prepare "Cop Song" and "Don't Be the Bunny" for a potential callback for next week, which seemed like a good sign.

Following up on the last post, Inbox Zero has been working well. I cleared out my main inbox back to about mid 2019, which appears to be the time that I arbitrarily marked everything in my inbox as read. When I started I had over twenty thousand unread conversations, and I finished with a Trash folder containing over twenty-seven thousand items. I'm now undertaking the same process on my real-name account, and it's going well.

And it's been a pretty good low-effort project to work on while dealing with my first case of COVID-19.

Last Thursday night (August 28), I was feeling unusually antsy regarding my sinuses so I decided to take a COVID test to put my mind at ease. It did not do that. Instead, I woke up Psyche and we figured out how we were going to deal with isolation. I logged into work to tell them that I'd tested positive, but the symptoms were minor, and I would not be working on Friday. I then proceeded to develop a raging fever for the next 24 hours or so. A few days later, Psyche tested positive despite our best efforts, and we have spent the rest of the week muddling through major fatigue coupled with relatively minor flu symptoms.

There is, of course, no good time to be laid out for over a week, but it was particularly rough because we had been the main people organizing the logistics for the 74th wedding anniversary of Psyche's grandparents, an event scheduled to take place last Sunday. So she had to spend a frantic few days collecting all of the remaining tasks and assigning them to various members of her family, all while having to sit at home while everyone enjoyed the party we threw.

As for contact-tracing, I believe I was exposed when visiting with Psyche's other grandmother, who had been sick (untested) earlier that week; and then I exposed Psyche before testing positive myself. Given the way our positive test results seem to be hanging on longer than our main symptoms, it's not too hard to believe that Grammy was still shedding virus when I visited. I didn't spend much time with her directly, but the windows were generally closed in the house.

It's been a week and a half of sleeping and hydrating and then doing it again but reversed.

In less plaguey developments, I'm looking forward to this year's Beyond Fest which will be announcing its full slate this week. So far, the only screenings announced or for a retrospective of Guillermo del Toro, and I have tickets to see his early works (Cronos, The Devil's Backbone, and Mimic) and a screening of Pan's Labyrinth. I will also be in New York at the beginning of October for a work trip and am making the time to see Reeves and Winters in Waiting for Godot before flying back home.

I just need a negative test soon...

Sometimes I think about "Earl Grey, hot."

When TNG was airing, I wasn't drinking or ordering tea yet. Now that I do, I find myself having to make clarifications about tea that I wouldn't usually expect, like clarifying that I want a chai latte in the morning to be hot, even if it's summer. But I mostly think about it, because when I make tea for Psyche, she does not want it hot, just warm.

The electric kettle heats the water to a good steeping point, just below boiling, and after a few minutes that's where I expect it too be. It's probably too hot for my own good, but I still take a few sips, quickly, to get the first taste. Then as I work, and periodically forget it, it cools more and more, and my sips get larger and larger. If I get absorbed too much, and it reaches near room temperature, I usually just shotgun the remainder so I can make another cup.

Psyche will wait for the tea to cool down to warm before she starts drinking. And that can take a while. I've taken to steeping her tea a little short of ideal, then dropping some ice after removing the leaves, so that she can get a head start.

In Star Trek's future, I imagine that tea is replicated the way Psyche likes it. Imagine it brewed hot, but then already cooled down to a pleasant warmth, for easy drinking. By default, then Starfleet officers are picking up their cups of tea brewed several minutes before it was even desired.

Picard doesn't brew his own tea (where we regularly see him onscreen), but he clearly already has a history with tea that starts too hot to drink. Why else would anyone think to order their tea hotter than drinkable, in a time where pizza never burns the roof of your mouth either? It suggests some of the family history, that in his past, at least, he was party to the manual steeping of tea and still moves to its rhythms.

I found the mobile-friendly new-entry page again. I didn't think this would be possible without it.

One grandparent-in-law is in town, with the other arriving tomorrow, so we should be getting visitors.