Yeah, so I’ve been home for two weeks. That first week was about the Bear Necessities, such as buying groceries and getting a haircut and a mani-pedi, and combing through a thousand emails and paying bills and so on.

I knew this past week would be busier – I had houseguests coming in on Wednesday. And then my former neighbor Mariah (whose historical mystery about Zelda Fitzgerald is coming out next week) invited me for drinks at the Algonquin on Friday – cool, yeah, OK. And then Village Light Opera Group, where I’ve had my eye on membership so I can audition for their Sweeney Todd in the spring, announced they were holding member auditions, like, immediately. So suddenly I have a Tuesday night appointment and am quickly working up “Too Many Mornings”.

So the VLOG audition on Tuesday night went fine. Two of the membership panelists who heard my audition are friends of mine, and the third is the husband of one of the other two… and it turned out he’d been in JC Superstar (I’d been in the orchestra), which is why we didn’t actually know each other, but looked familiar. So, friendly bunch. I made it clear that although I am a music director, I wasn’t a good enough pianist to MD from the keyboard (which is what VLOG does), but would happily play rehearsal piano for staging rehearsals, which is a different ballgame and much easier. So we’ll see where that gets me. There’s a lot of crossover between (among) VLOG and Blue Hill and St. Barts, so I know a lot of the members, and VLOG has been doing really great shows over the last couple of seasons.

Wednesday was going to be pretty big. My buddy Liz was flying in from Richmond with a friend to go to the US Open for a couple of days and they were staying with me. Liz is married to Drew, who I went to college with, and both of them were in the Ruddigore I did at the G&S Festival two years ago. So I was not only welcoming them, but throwing them a cocktail party so all the Ruddigore locals could get to see her. (The Ruddigore locals were, almost all of them, also Pinafore/Zoo people, so I’d just spent two weeks with them in England, but they hadn’t seen Liz in a couple of years.)

So anyway I’d done party food shopping on Tuesday and a bit again on Wednesday, and Liz and her friend Anne showed up quite early, and then left for Flushing Meadows before my cleaning lady showed up, and that was all great. And then after work, I set out all the party stuff and got ready.

And my people started to show up. I’d said, like “6:30ish to 9:30ish”, but no one showed up on the dot, which was fine. The party was already started when Liz and Anne came back and there was much rejoicing. I’d made a big batch of cosmos, and those got drunk (as did we) – other than that, just a bit of wine, some bourbon and a lot of Diet Coke and seltzer. Cheese and crackers, veggies and dip, hummus, regular and chocolate pretzels, chips and salsa, sausage, peanuts (a gift from Liz), and it mostly all went, which was great. I wish I’d taken pictures, but Liz got one with Lauren and Chaz.

And even though we were having a great time, everyone was nice enough to skedaddle by 10:30 so Liz and Anne and I could go to bed. School night, y’know.

I said hi to my guests in the morning and made sure they knew where the bagels were, but I headed off to the office and they went back to Flushing Meadows. At the office, I met up with my ‘wicked daughter’ from The Zoo, to pass on the show Blu-Ray I’d transported back for her and her husband from the festival – we had a nice chat outside my office before getting our days started.

Liz and Anne said they’d probably stay at The Tennis late enough to eat dinner there, which they did, so I just took myself out. Some lovely late-night conversation when they got back, and then to bed again.

Friday morning, more bagels and they got cleaned up and headed back to the airport. (it was a really nice visit, and they were great houseguests. I’d never met Anne before, but she was very fun.) And I worked. It was our last half-day Friday of the summer, and I didn’t have a lot of ‘get it done’ plans, except I’d forgotten about a fairly important 10:00 meeting – so quickly prepared for that and it went fine.

I’ve said it before, but Charles very much set up our home for entertaining, so both having houseguests and throwing together a quickie cocktail party is actually quite easy, and I was really happy with how that all went. Although I’m not the host he was, I learned from the best, and keeping on the traditions is part of how I represent and honor him.

Spent a good chunk of Friday afternoon on the phone with my dear friend Susanna. We were overdue for a catch-up – she’d had a hip replacement (which went beautifully) and of course I’d been both to visit my dad and to England for the festival. Looks like I’ll be heading to her house again for Thanksgiving, which is always a lovely experience. Wrapped up the call just in time to get changed and head into town.

Met Mariah and Josh at the Algonquin. Mariah was kind of scoping it out to be a post-book-launch venue, and it was really nice. Last time I’d been there, there had been two separate bars, which was confusing, but now only one. We got a table. Mariah and I each had a “Vicious Wit”, which was a cocktail with vodka and mint and ginger, and was delicious. Josh had an Old-Fashioned, I think. Then we were thinking about going to Cafe 123, right down the street, but they were like, “what’s that restaurant we just went to that we really liked?”. Turned out to be Chez Josephine, which C and I used to go to all the time, so we walked all that way west and had a really nice meal. They both had steak tartare (I like it, but don’t know if I could have a whole meal of it) and I had a really good pork chop, and we shared profiteroles for dessert. Lovely to see them, I miss seeing them regularly.

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Also, during the week, as expected, our horn section leader from QUO reached out to see if I wanted to do the “Planets” concert in October. Yes, please! And I also got a confirmation that I’d be playing in the orchestra for my buddies Will and Rachel’s co-production of The Mikado, also in October. These are both great performing projects, but this fall, I am determined to get done some important life projects that have nothing to do with performing, so I think from now on, it’s going to be a world of “no’s” as I turn everything else down, no matter how tempting the opportunities might be.

Today’s been about laundry. Tomorrow is my wedding anniversary, which will probably be what the next post will be about, and the Monday holiday already has a list of random projects geared up.