Monday, August 13th, 2007 - The Craziness Continues!

Dear Bloggy,

It has been 10 days since I last wrote in here... where does the time go? Ok, I don't think it's the usual summer whizzing by. I think, in my case, I can blame it all on Theatre Under The Stars. My whole life right now revolves around the two shows, Grease and Oklahoma! We are in countdown mode now with this coming Saturday being the big closing of the season... and closing night for Grease. But this past week has seen me spending morning until night at the office and theatre... and I'm not complaining because I'm loving every minute of it. We have an incredible group of volunteers/staff in all departments, and all the department heads are fantastic... all headed up by James Pollard who is the General Manager. You don't get them any better than James! We even have Board Members pitching in and being there every night... which is pretty much unheard of in other theatre groups. Definitely a feel of one big happy family and EVERYONE is putting in long hours to ensure this year's startup season is as successful as it can be! This has always been one of my dreams... to volunteer/work for a theatre group that has this kind of involvement by everyone and not just a couple of hard workers.

So, where did I leave off?? A few of you have written to me and asked how CB, my little cockatiel is doing, after the scare where it was looking like we might have to put her down a couple of weeks ago. But she is a little fighter and is still with us! She has been back and forth to see Dr. MacDonald, who has drained her cyst again and given her oxygen and vitamin shots... and she is doing much better. She still has the cyst, as well as a lot of her other oddity problems, but she is happy, content and in comfort... so onwards we go! She will be going back for another followup appt either this week or next week. I'll probably put it off until next week since this week is pure craziness...even though Mimi would take her if I end up with an appt. this week.

Last week, I did take Tuesday off from the theatre to go visit family friends from waaaaay back when I was growing up. Julia and Doug Keller lived two houses down from us when we were very young (I was 5, Doug would have been 7 and Julia would have been 10)... and we all grew up together. Obviously, as the years went on and we got older, we all went on our ways. I have not seen Julia for possibly 35 years! I have seen Doug because, for the last 18 years we have lived across the street from each other (grin). But Julia, her husband, her daughter and 5 of her grandchildren were vacationing in Pt. Roberts for this last two weeks. And here I am at the theatre for the whole time! So I purposely took Tuesday off and Doug and I went out to join them for the afternoon/evening. What a great time we had! I really had no idea that it was going to be that much fun. I am not used to being around young children for any length of time... nor is Bridget. I figured if Bridget didn't take well to the children, I could always put her in her bed in the car. She is soooo tired from her "Meet and Greet" job at the Box Offie, I knew she would be perfectly happy to just sleep in the car. But, surprise, surprise... she was great with the kids! Even when they all wanted to take turns taking her for a walk in the back yard on her leash.. she put up with it. Then stayed in the bedroom and watched TV with the kids. Here are two pictures of her with the oldest (10 years) in the evening, which I thought was just priceless:





Then last Saturday night was the finale of the Fireworks competition. What a disappointment!! The fireworks were great but none of us could believe that Canada won the competition!! As far as we were concerned, Canada was the lamest of the three countries (Spain, Canada, China). China should have won and we wouldn't have argued if Spain won... but Canada should not even have been in the running in our opinons!

But, we had fun anyways! Last weekend was Pride weekend, so there were parties all over the place on the Saturday, then the Fireworks at night, and the Pride Parade on Sunday which went down the street in front of our building. Since I am having trouble with my feet because of the nerve damage from the chemo, we all watched the Fireworks and then the Parade from the roof of our building (oops, I got too much sun on the Sunday watching the parade... and I know better than to do that while in treatments!). We had a bit of a slumber party where Greg and Jo stayed over at my place, then Robyn and Graie got back from their Alaska cruise Sunday morning so came straight over to my place... just in time for me to make Sunday breakfast. We had croissants, scrambled egg with mushroom, onion and cheese, ham and a variety of sweets. Robyn and Graie also did a Starbucks run, so we had various Starbucks coffee drinks :)

Oh, and Greg, bless his heart, gave both Jo and I a trim and flat-ironed our hair :) Here are a few pictures from that night/day:

Jo and Cheryl... friends forever (both with flat ironed hair) :)

Greg and Jo. We were trying to figure it out and we think the three of us have known each other for about 28 years.

My hair has pretty much grown out from the last colour I had... and is now a colour I never knew I had. Notice a lot of the gray in the mousey whatever colour that is. Chemo drugs do weird things to hair colour!

Slumber party... and Bridget is not going to miss out on a campout.. even if it is just on the floor of her home!

Well, it is getting late and the memory is foggy. Today was a chemo day so it does tend to play tricks with the mind. I know I was going to report lots of catch up news from the past 10 days but do you think I can remember what that news was? Even though my memory doesn't work well with some things, it does seem to be doing ok with my Box Office Manager duties, for the most part. It was hard at first, but I'm not pretty much holding my own (with the help of everyone around me). So I forget what I was going to say about the following pictures, but I may as well share them all with you, and you'll just have to realize there is a story behind them (grin):

We call this the Bonkamayer, named after Dustin Bonkamayer who worked on putting this "gateway to the theatre" together for his Eagle's badge as a scout. This was pretty amazing... a group of Mormons, the Bonkamayers being a family involved, got together to to something for Theatre Under the Stars because they liked the way we support family entertainment... and did they ever do a fabulous job putting this together!

Here's a picture of the Bonkemayer, closer up, after the show had started. The Box Office Dog is still on duty, waiting for Mom to come and cash out ;)

The Bonkamayer view from the back. These two sections are where we sell Starbucks Coffee/Tea/Hot chocolate from one section and Beer/Wine from the other.

Not the best picture of me, but one that shows Bridget loves her pink bed/basket. As long as she has it, she is one happy girl. The basket has seen better days, but there's no way I can replace it!

And this is Bridget after a full day at the theatre! All that fresh air and then all the people stopping to pat and touch her... well, a girl gets tired!

So this is my entry for now. The rest of this week is going to be super busy, what with us selling out houses of 1700+. It means we have to process all these people before the show...and we've been doing it! So chances are the next update to the blog won't be until next Monday.

Keep your fingers crossed that I don't have any rough reactions to the chemo this week. I don't have time to be sick and this weekend will be the big closing night party, so I can't miss that! But I see it is going on 2am now which could explain why I'm starting to feel tired (grin). Since I will be going into the office tomorrow by noon, I better go get some shut eye. My oncologist has filled out the application for me to get one of the Handicapped Parking passes, but I just sent it in today so I won't get it in time to be able to use in the park. So far, I have been lucky to get parking very close to the theatre, but sometimes I have to park in the back lot. This means I have to walk (read hobble) to the office, then someone goes and gets my car at night and brings it around to me (or drives me to my car).

Ciao for now and we'll be back with an entry when I'm at home long enough to do it!

Cheryl