Working my way through an unhurried, but planned morning, as I prepare for my now-traditional family visit over this holiday weekend. I leave for the airport at 10:00 – before then, I have to finish packing and close up the apartment, not a big deal, but important.
Last week wasn’t that busy, except we had a yearly town hall at work, coincidentally on Halloween. So I wore essentially what is my G&S Festival conducting outfit – except I’d bought two spooky ties for Ruddigore and of course had chosen one – so on Halloween, I wore the other one.
No one was in full costume at the office, but others had nodded to the holiday about the same way I had. They served up hot cider and candy before the meeting. The meeting was nice, too – a state of the union, essentially, and my company is a really great place to work and does what it does really well.
I also finally got my act together and got the applications in for the two trusts for the kids, which is the last item on the estate checklist. I had all the paperwork together, including the checks, but the guy behind the counter at Schwab handed me back the checks, saying, ‘let me submit these and our estate office will get back to you if there are any problems, and when everything’s a go, then give me the checks.”. OK.
Then this week I got a call from one of their people in Atlanta, asking about a couple of things. First, the trustee assignment paperwork from the court was now ‘a year old’ and might be stale. I’ve had to deal with that a couple of times on this journey – both with the executorship and the trusteeship. Schwab particularly thinks those declarations are like fish and go bad very quickly. I’m, like, these are the result of someone’s last will and testament and nothing has changed. He’s still dead, I still am the executor and trustee, WTF. Also, the other problem was the pages of the will I’d submitted were scanned badly and did I have a better copy? No, oddly enough, I didn’t. The copies I had of the will were terrible – I’d asked my lawyer to send me a scan of the original will (which of course I no longer have) and that scan wasn’t much better. So this lady said she’d check with her manager and get back to me.
Then I got a notification that the account (the one account) had been set up. I logged into Schwab and sure enough, there was a new ‘Testamentary Trust’ account – but only one, and no detail on it.
Then my friend from Atlanta called again to ask again about the scans (same answer). And I was like, there seems to be one account already created. And she looked at it and said, yeah, that was for the other one, which her colleague had handled. So, I summed up –
- I submitted applications for two (identical) trusts.
- Someone decided that two different people should handle each trust.
- One person had no problem with the application and created the trust.
- The other one is giving me grief about silly piddly shit.
So, I asked her to point out to her manager that the other trust was created with no problems and they were identical. So she’s following up on that. Anyway… no rush, just annoying.
My friend and upstairs neighbor, Richard, runs a monthly author series at our local coffeeshop called First Tuesdays. When he found out my brother was an author, he scheduled Sam into the series – months and months ahead of time. So Sam’s reading was this month and Sam came up from Durham for an extended weekend. (and then Richard got COVID and it was unsure for a bit whether the reading would be cancelled – which would have sucked – but he got a substitute and it did happen)
I thought Sam would be coming in on Sunday, and Saturday night I was going to see Blue Hill Troupe’s production of Anything Goes, involving many many dear friends. I was taking my buddy Susan, and she’d already asked if she could crash at my place after the show, as her loud and noisy neighbors had already announced that they were throwing a party. Well, Sam booked his flight and came in on Saturday, so we ended up doing this… Sam arrived early afternoon, Susan came over mid-afternoon, I took them to an early dinner at a Thai place, then left Sam behind as Susan and I went to the show.
Anything Goes was terrific! I’d give you info, as it runs through this weekend, but it’s sold out! Wonderfully cast and cleverly directed, it’s the best ‘fall show’ I’ve seen BHT do in a long time. (The quality of the performances are always wonderful – sometimes the quality of the show itself drags them down.) The Troupe is not known for their dancing, but Gary, the director, drilled them, and there were more than one show-stopping tap number that looked terrific. Anyway, they knocked it out of the park. Susan and I had a great time, and I got to say hi to many many people I know. Last year, when I went to Addams Family, the subtext was ‘oh, your husband died a few months ago’ – this year, it was the subtext of ‘weren’t you just in the hospital?’. Lots of concern, lots of happy conversations.
Susan and I grabbed a cab home – Sam was already in his room, but Susan and I sat up chatting until midnight or so. I’d set Susan up in the ‘maid’s room’, which works well as a 2nd guest room in a pinch, and we all went to bed.
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Sunday, we all leisurely got up. I put breakfast together – somewhat tricky as both Sam and Susan are gluten-free (Sam more than Susan) and Susan has a terrible egg allergy. So it was oatmeal with lots of different toppings, fruit salad and bacon, just because. That worked out well.
Then Sam and I had reservations for a 1:00 drag brunch at KWEEN in Astoria. This was the same place I’d tried to take Susan, Renee and Nancy a few months ago and they’d lost our reservation – but it all worked out this time. We ended up at a small table between a medium-aged gay couple (the one sitting by me was cute, but I kept hands off) and the father (?) of one of them – and then a long table of ladies who were friends of the one of the drag queens. Sam and I ordered their special eggs benedict on arepas (yum!) and took pictures.
Sam got pictures of the queens too, maybe I’ll add them later. Anyway, the main queen was a hilarious and wonderful host, and she did about three numbers, plus hosting kind of a game show with people from the audience. Her ‘drag daughter’ did some numbers too, but I didn’t think that much of her. But it was totally fun and I’d totally go back.
I wasn’t sure what we’d do for dinner, but we ended up just snacking and I made myself a wrap.
Monday morning we went for a powerwalk, then we both worked. Dinner was again mostly snacks, but I’d pulled out some of the chili/pasta sauce I’d made last week and served that over gluten-free pasta, which worked. And we watched Bottoms, which was a hoot.
Tuesday was much the same, except for the reading. We headed over to Cafe 77 in time to get settled and order food, and to meet Henry, the substitute host. I’d been to a First Tuesdays before – there’s an open mike portion, and they make a big deal about creating a cento. So after each reading, a discussion about which line(s) to pluck out and add to the cento. (The one we created will end up on the website, see above.) The open mike portion is entertaining, but as I’d noted before, writers are not necessarily performers and I wanted to coach several on how to perform their own work, rather than acting like scared rabbits.
Sam’s reading – a couple of chapters of Trunky and one from Sugar – went extremely well. Sam is a good reader of his own work, and the audience (which was not particularly queer or trans) was rapt. He got a lot of good buzz afterward, and he sold all the books he’d brought with him. So that was great!
Back home, and I thought it was after 10:00, but of course it was only 9:15 and I just hadn’t reset my watch yet from the time change. But I headed off to bed soon anyway, I was beat.
Wednesday, I worked from home again. Sam headed off to the airport, I reset the apartment as best I could, and started prep for my own trip. And yesterday, I went to the office.
And we’re all caught up! As soon as I get back on Monday, I have my followup with the cardiologist (fun!), a great dinner date on Wed with my buddy Marisa, and a coaching session on Thursday. Then two matinees on the weekend.
Enjoy your weekend!
The Toast Point Page 