Katie is, to my delight, in town this weekend - she got a job (yay!) and decided to come up here and get sworn into the Iowa bar before her job starts on Wednesday. In an effort to find something to do, we decided to go to the town play, which just happened to be tonight.
Every year, my hometown puts on a play - the first one was in 1981, and my parents were in it (while my mother was pregnant with me), although they haven't been in it again. The plays tend to alternate between Western musical comedies and pirate/seafaring musical comedies - this year was pirates, which I always find to be preferable. It's held on the stage of the Centennial building - a multipurpose community center housing the library, fire station, city clerk's office, and a large room with a stage, kitchen, etc. that works well for gatherings of ~200 people - plays, Christmas pageants, church suppers, auctions, etc. The yearly plays tend to feature a fairly stable cast, and are always directed by the same three women (whom Katie and I aspire to be someday).
The first fifteen or twenty minutes, while we waited for the play to start, were so-so - I ate a $1 hotdog and $1 nachos, Katie had popcorn, and we both kind of wondered whether we should have bothered. However, it turned out to be pretty funny - there was a character who did some wildly-inappropriate things while wearing a beret and a gold cape, another character carrying a fake yorkshire terrier named Rasputin, and a third character who was completely over the top, wearing a Rastafarian wig and leading a band of preteen pirates. The casting in these plays is always amusing given the dearth of qualified participants (and an occasional excess of not-so-qualified participants) - the use of adolescents to play the pirates was particularly inspired, even if they couldn't sing very well.
So, I'm glad we went to see the play; my town may be dying economically and physically, but there is still enough community spirit to put on a play, which is nice to see. Afterwards, Katie and I cruised around for awhile, stopping at the convenience store where we used to work, and lamenting the fact that we're still not cool enough to know where the parties are. We have plans to see each other tomorrow too, so I'm pretty happy.
The rest of my day was uneventful - I spent a couple of hours working on the plotting of my book, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. I think I have the ending mostly figured out, finally - yes, romance novels are always happily-ever-after, but getting there is a challenge. I'm going to have to start back at the beginning and rewrite as necessary to make sure that things are tight and clean before progressing to the end. Yay! And I must say that if I can't write my book here, there's no point in deluding myself about making a career as a writer in the future - there really are few to no distractions outside of the house, provided that I can stop wasting hours of the day online. Someday soon I'll take pictures for a virtual tour of my town, but right now it's time for bed.
2 comments:
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I'm Dr. Heathcliff Harkness, eligible bachelor and English professor. You've probably heard of me. I did my dissertation on early American situation comedy on television. I left the university a few years ago in order to chronicle the adventures of the brilliant consulting detective, Mortimer Jones. After our first case together, I knew my life would be forever changed. Yes, that first case was a doozy, though there have been many exciting and baffling cases since. For example, our most recent adventure, which I have titled, "the Case of the Absent Uncle," was quite a puzzler. It began when we received a call from one Jack Cleaver, no relation to the Beaver. The case concerned, not Mr. Cleaver himself, but his lady friend Rebecca Sunnyside. Well, her uncle actually. It all began one dark and stormy night in November...It was the evening of Sammy Sunnyside's 80th birthday. Rebecca had planned a surprise party for her uncle. She had invited all the family members and close friends, but Uncle Sammy, was overdue...
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