I just love flying.
Zack picked my up at the airport and after we caught up with everything each other had done in the last week, I was in bed by 2 am, which is only midnight, Vegas time. As tedious as flying is, it could've been worse: I got a text from Margy Wednesday night. Due to storms in Denver, all flights had been cancelled and they'd had to rent a car and drive home. Utah is gorgeous but the drive did nothing to add to Margy's enjoyment of visiting Las Vegas.
I went to Las Vegas ten days ago, leaving this behind:
The icycles which hung from our roof for the last month are all gone, having taken huge chunks of roof with them and in one case, the entire gutter. Snow is nothing; ice does all the damage and there was a lot of ice this winter.
The only unusual thing about those huge piles of snow is that this year every flake fell in February. Oh, it’s not all the snow we had but everything that fell between Halloween and MLKjr day had melted, so we got to start fresh on Groundhog’s day.
I was happy to get back home, as I always am. Vacations are fun but this is my favorite place. All my stuff is here and everything I like to do is right here, in my house. Jay stayed a few days longer, for the beginning of the next tournament but he was happy to get home again, too.
I got another painting class under my belt, which was really fun. Due to everyone’s schedules, it had been a few weeks since the last time. Since then, I’d replaced several tubes of my paints. I’d realized, after two years, that several of the tubes I’d bought when I started were not of the highest quality. They weren’t student grade, I knew better than that, but they weren’t good, either. Painting is very much like cooking, in that your results are going to depend greatly on the quality of your ingredients. Bad paint, bad canvas or bad brushes will prevent you from doing the best you’re capable of. I haven’t replaced all my mid-level paint yet, just the dark end of the value spectrum. As soon as I can afford it, I’ll replace my cadmium pigments, one of which I just realized is a ‘hue’. Well, no wonder I haven’t been delighted with my results!! Using a ‘hue’ is like baking with margarine, imitation vanilla and chocolate flavored chips; better than Chips Ahoy but not even close to what they could be. One of the biggest challenges I’ve had with my work is pushing my darks as dark as they need to go in order to depict the splash of light over the subject matter. Last week’s work illustrates perfectly how good paint gets good results.
I’m not a fan of Willie Wonka. I’ve never read the book and I dislike both movies. It has long puzzled me how a psychopathic hater of children has become such a beloved cultural icon. I mean, come on, the story of Willie Wonka is basically “don’t accept candy from strangers” writ very large but people seem to think the moral is “rotten kids deserve to die horribly”. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t, it hardly seems fodder for children’s entertainment, does it?
But I love live theater, I was very interested in seeing how they’d stage it and I wouldn’t have missed going with Xena for anything. It was a blast!!
The show was at 2, we all went downtown early so we could grab lunch beforehand. Josie joined us for lunch, although she wasn’t coming to the show with us. She was going with a gang of friends over to St. Paul for their St. Patrick’s Day parade. She was dressed in green, complete with face glitter for the occasion. Katie and Nanners joined us, too; Katie is a seasonal ticket holder and this production was perfect for bringing her niece. Lunch was delightful, as we chose a place whose menu included chicken fingers, pizza and ice cream, so the kids were as happy as the adults.
Our tickets were up in the second balcony, so we got a good view of all the antics on the stage. The production was very colorful and beautiful; the songs and dances came fast and thick and the plot moved along at a clipping pace. All the performances were very good: the youngster who played Charlie was good and the fellow who played Willie W. hit that sweet spot between charming and homicidal. Like Dexter! It was all very funny, occasionally veered into unexpectedly grisly and absolutely worth the price of the ticket to watch Xena’s reaction to all of it!
As I said, I’ve never read the book so I don’t know how it differs from the movies but the musical is harder on the kids than the movies are. In the movies, the deaths of Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt and Violet Beauregarde are hinted at as worst case possibilities. In the stage production, there’s no doubt as to the fate of these ill-mannered children. We see it in full color, splashed all over the stage. Sort of like in the Wizard of Oz, if, instead of the Scarecrow, it had been Dorothy the flying monkeys had ripped to bits.
Classic children’s stories all used to be pretty grisly and dangerous. We’ve just become too used to the way Disney cleaned them all up over the years. Snow White and Pinocchio are too graphic for today’s coddled toddlers.
Xena lovedit.
Later in the evening, we all enjoyed pizza and birthday cake with more friends and relatives at Ty’s house.
And today is St. Patrick’s Day!!
I’ve got a couple of huge corn beef briskets simmering on the stove and lots of kids and grandkids coming over for dinner. What’s not to love about being at home?