Ever the Drama.

We ate dinner Friday with some theatre buddies, and I got more news. The renovation project is going in a bad direction. The tiny subcommittee talking to the architects thinks it's a good idea to spend a full third of the total funds on the dressing rooms. Instead of, maybe, the stage. When we produced the courtroom show, we changed in teh law library. All you need in a dressing room is a toilet, a mirror, a sink, a table and some clothes hangers. That's it. It shouldn't cost more than $50,000 -- their proposed amount. The people I had dinner with are considering leaving the group over this and other weak decisions. There's no cohesion on fund-raising. For these concerns, he held off sponsoring me for the board of directors.

It's a small theatre, and they seem to have exceeded their grasp with this major renovation project. They need a space to present shows to make money, but they need money to fix up that space. I had the idea of a paid Banned Book Week reading. Get folks to sign up for 15-minute readings from a banned books and sell snacks for money. We could partner with the library or local bookstore. Barnes and Noble used to do this, and I once found myself reading Where the Sidewalk Ends to half the store.

Our season of plays still isn't public, and the expected backlash from vocal theatre mainstays is still on the horizon. I've offered to field the complaints, and I stand by that.

Again, there's always more drama backstage.

The squash vines are fading fast, and I plucked up all the gourds. We have one pumpkin still growing, and I don't think it will mature before Halloween. The tomatoes might keep going for another month, and the corn --- well, we'll see. We'll be lucky to get four ears off them. Next year's garden will be much better.

We walked into a local store and found a comic spinner rack. They wouldn't sell it to me, but they offered to pass along the name of the company from which they bought it. I'd love to have one in the big living room. I also bought a GI Joe comic for Your Sis. The cashier thought she knew her from Earth Shine, and we suspect she recognized you in Your Sister's face.

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The Sarah Palin interview made one thing clear: Framing yourself as an outsider suggests you don't know how things work. Palin didn't know about discretionary spending versus accepted budgets, and that's significant if you pledge to fix government expenditures. She also wouldn't definitively answer a question until she was prompted two or three times. She has to step up.

Picture of the Day
I have to work to stay pretty.