Celebratory shenanigans, homeowner tomfoolery and a fair amount of French horn.
Yeah, I’m 61 now. My main reaction was “oh, I guess I really am in my 60’s”.
I’m a firm believer in the ‘the older you are, the more days your birthday takes up”. Birthday was Thursday, but I started on Tuesday. Since my brother wasn’t able to come up to join me, I went to see “Oh, Mary!” again by myself before Jinkx Monsoon left. My office is on the same block as the theater, so I just buzzed down to the box office mid-morning as a quick little break. After work, I’d hoped to go to the same fancy restaurant across the street as I did last time, but it seems to be gone (Bobby Van’s, in case you’re curious). So I went through a hotel to the next block south (I didn’t know you could do that, that’s a new discovery. I’d never need to go from 45th to 44th mid-block before) to one of my favorite restaurants, Cafe 123. I wasn’t super-hungry, just had a chicken caesar salad, but had chocolate mousse for dessert.
My seat for “Oh, Mary!” was better than last time, on the floor, but off to the side. I had a great time, of course. I will say that Jinkx, although very funny, wasn’t as perfect as the playwright, Cole Escola. In particular, she somehow made a delivery choice on the play’s funniest line, “The South of what!?” that just torpedoed the funny of it. Ah well. But she was great and Kumail Nanjiani was delightful as the beleagured Abraham Lincoln, “Mary’s Husband”, and Michael Urie, who I always love, was a hoot as John Wilkes Booth, “Mary’s Teacher”. So, nice to see it again.
Wednesday, I had orchestra rehearsal, but the only piece that involved me was the “Saturn” movement of The Planets, which is boring (for Horn 5, at least). It also contains the only call for muted horn in the whole piece, for one friggin’ note. OK, so this may not sound like a big deal, and it’s not for me because my horn case has a space for the mute (not true of most horn cases), so it’s always with me anyway, but it’s annoying to have to remember to bring your mute to rehearsal and on stage with you (and probably knock it over, as I did several times during rehearsal because I’m me) just to play one friggin’ note. But that meant I didn’t have to stay until the end of rehearsal, got home early and had a quick little dinner and margaritas at the Mexican place around the corner.
(realized when I got home that the long thin box in the lobby I’d seen heading out was actually for me, and turned out to be flowers from my niece). I’d also gotten that blue-bag gift from my brother, which turned out to be a really interesting-looking book.)
Thursday was the birthday, but I worked anyway. Then headed into town for a happy hour with VLOG to welcome new members (I am one!). That was a lot of fun, got to meet some lovely people and catch up with friends. What did I do for dinner? Oh, right, I had those bar-food chicken spring rolls, and then picked up an enormous piece of chocolate fudge cake on the way home, which I ate half of.
Friday I took the day off, but had to go into town for a doctor’s appointment. In the afternoon I had the toilet tank replaced (see below), then used the gift card Dad sent me for my birthday to take myself to dinner at Uncle Peter‘s, which was lovely. I got the handsome waiter this time, he’s so cute, and remembered my drink order.
Saturday was about laundry and rehearsals – QUO had a reading of Tchaikovsky 2. We had six horns to play four parts, and did a lottery to assign different parts for each movement. I actually won the prize of playing 1st on the first movement, which starts with an enormous unaccompanied horn solo, but I’m ashamed to confess I didn’t actually know it at all, so I traded and our principal played it (beautifully) instead. I’ll have to take a look at that one sometime. Then run up to midtown for our first Mikado rehearsal. That was fun – friends in the cast and the orchestra. I’m playing 2nd horn, which means I have no high notes to speak of (on the contrary, a good deal of the part sits in the muddy lower octave where you have to actually work to make it sound nice), which basically means no pressure. That went until 8:00, and I took myself to Romeo‘s for dinner, where they were doing (bad) karaoke, which I ignored. That was a nice meal too. Jackson Heights is blessed to have two (actually three, with Armondo’s) high quality Italian restaurants. If only we had decent sit-down Chinese. Anyway…
And Sunday, I got taken out by The Ladies to brunch at Eloise, which was fantastic. Susan, Renee and Mariah (Tessa and Patti couldn’t make it) treated me to kir royales and croque madame and it was just lovely. Great getting caught up. Then Susan took me home and fixed my clock (see below).
So that’s the end of the birthday stuff. I guess I need to start eating at home again. But it was nicer this time around than sometimes. My birthday is poorly timed in that it’s right at the ‘start of the school year’, and invariably, everyone (including me) is insanely busy. But this time we made it work.
So, household stuff. So much, but it all got resolved.
First, a couple of weeks ago, I casually walked into the master bathroom to find water all over the floor. NOT GOOD. Got one of the co-op porters to come up and take a look, and he pointed out that the tank was cracked. How did that happen? So, shut off the water to the toilet, and order a new tank. That porter offered to do the replacement for me. And that all happened and it’s all fixed now, but the tank was over $200 and the fee for the replacement was a lot more than I thought it would be, so that was a hundreds-of-dollars adventure.
As mentioned, I replaced my old microwave/convection oven/broiler (and toaster) with a Cuisinart 8-in-1 toaster oven/air fryer/lots of things, plus a simple microwave. They arrived on Monday and they seem to work fine, but I’m trying the 8 functions one by one as I find reason to. So far, I know it toasts and air-fries just fine.
Also, my grandfather clock had stopped running. I called the only repair shop in the city that the manufacturer recommends, and they replied that just coming out to my home to look at the clock was $950! Never mind the fixing. So, knowing that my buddy Susan was the child of a clock/watch repair guy, and was no slouch herself, I asked if she’d give it a shot, which she did right after brunch. Basically, it needed to be re-leveled, something had put it off its very delicate plumb. But it took her all of 20 minutes and it’s still ticking away now and it cost me nothing but gratitude, of which I have lots. I found I’d really missed the chiming.
Oh, I also started looking at chairs to replace my recliner. That recliner only cost me $250, and has been my best friend for years now. But replacements are looking to be about $700 (for comfy chairs that are not recliners) and although I wasn’t expecting that, no one I’ve talked to was surprised. So I guess I’ll suck it up and keep looking and buy one. Urgh.
But the big fuckery of the week was Con Ed. I’d received a piece of snail mail from them saying that someone else had applied for electricity at my address, and they’d be closing my account unless I called them to say it was a mistake. Which I did. But then the emails started flying on the co-op message board and it turns out that there’s been a rash of this all over the complex (we have eight buildings – and also happened to another friend of mine in a different neighborhood) and it’s a scam. Basically someone applies for electricity at an address that isn’t theirs so they can then use the electric bill to then try to get other services. And Con Ed can’t (for some reason) deny them, so they just assume they need to close the old account. So a lot of phone calls and ‘what are you doing STOP IT” conversations and some people, who’d missed their notification, actually had their electricity cut off.
I myself, having (I thought) fixed it, logged in this weekend to find out why they hadn’t taken the bill money out of my account, and my account had been closed! I don’t know if this was try #2 or what, but I got that straightened out and said “please put a note on my account that I’m not going anywhere any time soon and check with me before you do anything.”.
Luckily for us, one of the victims was my upstairs neighbor, state rep Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas. and she’s been throwing her power behind getting this resolved. But what complete nonsense.
So… good times.
Anyway, this week is about gearing up for a weekend of Mikado performances and for the start of Spooky October! Enjoy!
The Toast Point Page 