Random Thoughts: The Remix Album

I've been home from San Diego for one week today and that week has been a busy one, full of repair and maintenance, small reunions, and preparation for the busier week ahead. My thoughts are scattered into small corners, leaving these fragments visible:

 A service technician arrived yesterday to solve the apartment’s low water pressure problem and snake whatever line was causing the backup and leak in the hall. A carpet pro, called in to dredge the resulting lake, has left a large green fan blowing beneath an edge that's been pulled up, giving the wall-to-wall impression that my apartment is breathing.

 Sequestering the cat downstairs worked only briefly. It was not that she escaped her barriers, but rather that I could not escape her shrill cries for freedom. Her favorite perch, much to my chagrin, is one floor higher -- the arm of my upholstered chair in front of the window.

 The alien green goo at my walkway has been identified. A bag of kitty litter had been spilled en route to the apartment and bloated with rain.

 Patterns hoped broken after seven months' absence are familiar routines too easily fallen back into. With Tennessean friends too far south and Californian friends much farther west, Nashvillian camaraderie is, for me, limited to late-night commiseration with a strident co-worker over many a beer at the local dive bar – an oxymoronic situation that still beats the crap out of being alone.

 I'll meet one Tennessean friend and his lovely wife for lunch this weekend two hours from Nashville. Another distant Tennessee friend spends his weekends too often kayaking and had best clear a spot in his calendar soon!

 The show I’ll soon be running is not technically difficult regarding lights and sound, but it looks to be a properties nightmare. In a theatre where I’ve managed at least 30 productions, I’ve never before written so long a preset list. On the other hand, I had the advantage of mounting those other shows and may not have needed so thorough a list to assure the stage would be set properly.

 In San Diego, I quit smoking and became a morning coffee drinker, remembering my old morning show radio days. I should never have forsaken that gig for the theatre, but nothing less could have pried me away. And had I stayed I wouldn’t have had seven months to spend in San Diego at all.

 In Nashville, I am not a morning coffee drinker. I was, for a few days, tempted, but the cupboard offered only what I once thought were perfectly wonderful single cup brewing bags, much like tea-bags, which I now found lacking the robust kick and flavor to which I’d become accustomed. And though I enjoyed my brief San Diegan fling with java, I haven’t yet bought a bag of beans in Nashville. I’m not sure I’m ready for the commitment.

 Seven months in California proved to me that my body clock is a strange and wondrous thing, set to a time zone I’ve never visited. Because I work and socialize at night, I rise late: ten a.m. every morning, without fail. On the west coast, however, where the clocks register two hours difference, I woke at eight a.m. Every morning. Without fail. With unchanging indifference to the time zone, my internal clock remains true to itself. Which begs the question: assuming my own clock constant, if I really wanted to become a morning person and comfortably hold a day job, how far west would I have to move? And, having already gone about as far west as one can on this continent, what country would I be living in?

Until the next round….