I had Sunday morning free, so spent it finishing the unpacking and getting the house set up the way I liked. I also was trying to set up my laptop (which I rarely use, except for traveling) to download my mail to Outlook, so I could sort and folder and delete it in a way that the Gmail browser doesn’t let me. But those who obsessively follow every little detail of my life know, the last few weeks have been tech disasters for me, and this was no different. First of all, the laptop refused to see the wireless mouse that has been dedicated to it for quite a while (like, there’s a label on the mouse that says ‘home laptop’). Even swapping out batteries didn’t help. And I hate using the touchpad. And then even though I could start the process of downloading Outlook to install locally, at some point you had to log into Microsoft and it was pretending it had never heard of me for one confirmation step, even though I could log in as the same account using the browser coming in from a different direction. I never did solve that problem. (Now that I’m home, I have a list of stupid tech problems to deal with and that’s one of them. I may end up replacing this laptop, which I dislike. It’s Charles’s last one, and we’ve never had a rapport. But again, I rarely use it, so maybe not worth it.)

Around noonish, I headed up to Noonology for breakfast. It’s an adorable restaurant at the top of the hill, but not necessarily a place you can walk into and get a table, I was lucky. I had scrambled eggs on toast with salmon, yummy.

Down to the pedestrian mall. (I just had to look this up, I know it’s not called the ‘pedestrian mall’. It’s called Spring Gardens.) Not only did I need a new mouse, I needed washclothes – they’re almost never supplied – got some nice pretty purple ones. Bought some other stuff (I think it took me 3 days to get the house to what I considered ‘fully stocked’). And then up the hill to the church for Zoo rehearsal. This hill, while steep, isn’t really that much of anything, and it annoys me that I’m of an age and condition where I really have to think about going up that hill. (I will say that after being in Buxton for a week or so, all the hills get easier.)

First “Zoo” rehearsal was just principals, plus Andrew (stage director), Marisa (musical director and producer) and Clive (rehearsal pianist). The Zoo has four main principals (two love couples), and then my character, the grumpy father, who only has one short scene 3/4’s of the way in, and then another dramatic entrance after the ‘simple little child’ number (best thing in the show) before he stays for the rest of the (short) opera. Four of the five of us had done the dry run concert together in NYC back in April, and three of us had sung it again at a G&S soiree a month later, so we were mostly good to go, musically. Our fifth, Laurence, playing Tom Brown, was new to the company, but he’s very talented and wonderful. His wife, Lindsey, also very talented, was in the Zoo chorus.

Andrew, our director, had scheduled the end of the show first. So we blocked my scenes as best we could without the chorus, and then I got to leave while Andrew blocked the love couple stuff, very grateful for that. So I had a lazy late afternoon before heading over to the Old Club House, the pub right next to the opera house. (noted for being incredibly convenient, but also – almost by tradition – aggressively dedicated to not catering to the theater-going crowd by, for instance, making sure you get your food on time. It’s so weird, half their clientele is there for pre-theater, and they just are not interested in doing any sort of pre-theater deal that promises to get you fed and out the door by 7:30.) By tradition, Savoynet does a meet-and-greet there the day before full-cast rehearsals start, and this year we had two shows, so two meet-and-greets. This was a great deal of fun seeing old friends for this first time this summer, and I ended up getting dinner there and hanging around. The younger crowd, company stalwarts, have a tradition of playing board games, and Oli had brought a neat little game which we could easily play at the table. (I just described it, but deleted it – here’s a video of it.)

I was terrible at it, but won a few rounds. It was hilarious to play.

The obvious most direct way to get back to the digs from the opera house was up that super steep hill, but I sidestepped it and took the Broad Walk (pedestrian walkway along the side of the park, very pretty and peaceful) and that turned out to be a nice way to get back that wasn’t too hilly.

My back had been bugging me after all the suitcase schleppage, and I didn’t sleep all that great the first two nights, but it got better (again, walking the hills probably got my back in shape).

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Next up – first full Zoo rehearsal! (of only two!)