Mosiac Class...

My dad is one of the hardest people to shop for.  He's comfortable in his retirement and when he wants or needs something he buys it.  He loves his family, his dogs and golf.  He does love music but I can only buy the man so many golf balls and CD's over the years for Christmas/Bday/Fathers Day etc.

I had a major win this Christmas.

Months ago my dad mentioned he missed when he used to macro may (sp?).   He also has a buddy who does all kinds of mosaic art and he thought that would be really neat to get into.  But he doesn't know how and what would he make and ladi da.  It's come up a few other times so a few months before Xmas I got the brilliant idea to find a class!

I searched forever it seemed and when I was about to give up and just buy him a "How to" book I found a class on Groupon.  Better yet, there was a class for 2.  I knew dad would probably be more likely to go had he a buddy.  Plus I'm always up for trying new stuff!  He loved it.

Yesterday was our class, which I also learned is a two parter.

I took the day off work since the classes were already starting to fill up and we needed to nail down a day.  Weekends were full through summer.

We headed down to Seal Beach early and had breakfast at Blackboard Bistro.  Decent place.  Nothing to write home about.  We were really really early so we strolled around the beach, the pier and downtown for a while.  Then of course this lovely selfie:

We arrived at Ocean Stained Glass ready for our class.  The gal was very quirky and cool.  There was one other woman there working on something from a previous class.  Apparently there were supposed to be two other folks in the class but they cancelled.

The gal explained how it works telling us we had a choice to make a framed item, a glass coaster dish thing or this heart bowl.  We then picked out an image we could base our design on or go rogue and make something abstract or on our own.  She showed us how to use the glass cutter, showed us our pile of tools, the separated colored broken glass, and a few cute glass bobbles that we get to use.  Then she pretty much let us work.  The class was scheduled from 12-4 but she said most people are done before then.

We got to work.  I opted for the glass dish thing since I chose the yin and yang sign and thought it would look neat on a round thing.  Dad chose a cat face to make for Lori and the framed glass as his canvas.

He picked out a bunch of browns and yellows while I opted to make my sign two shades of green.

Here's dad picking out his glass:

Basically we were to arrange, cut and place the glass on our chosen piece.  Once we were set on if those were indeed the pieces that we wanted to be there we would glue them in place.  This is so much more complicated and time consuming then one would think.  We were also perched on stools and hunched over working.  Let's just say this is not a back friendly environment.  Yikes.  Here is the beginnings of my masterpiece:

Dad didn't realize his cat face was going to turn out to be much more complicated than mine.  I had pretty much two big shapes to work with.  He had many as you can see below.  I also must mention that my dad is a perfectionist.  This does not fair well when your working with broken glass that only cuts like it feels it's going to cut.

Even though this was time consuming and quite a bit of work, I loved it.  The gal was there to offer help and encouragement when we needed it.  We chatted about all sorts of things.  I was quite pleased when the odd woman who was there left and the rest of the day was just the three of us.

I finished at a bit before 2pm.  The woman told us this was the 1st phase.  We come back in a couple of weeks to add the grout so here's my almost finished piece:

Dad's still going.  I'm also realizing at the point that we may not get out before 4pm.

Time goes by.  I walk across the street and get a chocolate drink from Starbucks.  I chat with the woman.  I watch dad and listen to him bitching at his piece cursing it and saying it's ugly.  The woman constantly encouraged him as did I.  I watched the woman as she created one of her glass pieces and watched in fascination as she created this beautiful flower in glass with a foil outline.  I watched dad concentrating so hard on his project.  The internet connection didn't work in the store so I was pretty much phone-less and it was really nice.  I was practicing mindfulness the entire time totally living in the moment!

Time was creeping by and dad wasn't moving much faster.  He then stated he wasn't going to be able to finish.  I explained he had to because the next time we came in was a different step.  He asked me to help, so I started cutting glass pieces for the area around the cat head and snapped this:

I cut some pieces and threw them his way.  The gal created a couple of very cool eyes for the cat when dad got stuck on what to do.  It was a bit too difficult to work at the same time on one piece so I just cut them up and waited.

Dad eventually had to break since his back was starting to act up so I was able to get some of the blue in there.  He came back at it cutting and me gluing and we made it just at the 4pm cut off!

We've booked the 2nd class for two weeks from now so I'm saving this blog today and will add to it once we do the other class.

Here's dad's almost finished piece:

So rad right?!

And of course here's us!

I can't wait to see what they look like when they are all finished!  So much fun and new!

Ok kids!  I'm back to finish up the 2nd half of this blog.

I took another Friday off work and dad and I headed down a little later this time.  The 2nd part of the class was much shorter and we weren't scheduled until 2pm.  So we hit a little hole in the wall called Nicks on Main Street for lunch and about noon thirty and wandered around downtown.  It was a bit chilly the last time we were here, but this Friday was absolutely gorgeous out!   We of course had to do our Daddy/Daughter selfie:

We hit up the class about 2pm and there were 2 other pairs of ladies there.

We said hello to Valerie and she had a little spot set up for us.  We were to add grout to our pieces and then come back in an hour fifteen.  Dad has deemed his piece "Picasso Kitty" and opted for the tan grout.  I liked the dark grout and chose that.

Very basic - you just smoosh the grout in all the open spots of your piece.

The other gals weren't too chatty, but you know my dad and I.  After this phase which only took about 20 minutes or so, so we planned to grab a drink at a bar we had already found that had air conditioning.  Valerie jokingly said "Bring me back a beer!".

Ok we said!  Does she know who we are?  Tee hee.  We of course couldn't bring her back a beer from the bar, but now we planned on picking one up for her on the way back.

We landed at Hennessys Tavern which was perfect.  Had a wine of course, dad a beer and we just chatted and chilled for a bit.  We then wandered around downtown some more and dad bought me a new hat for Doheny Blues in May.  Yay!  Thanks Daddy!  

On our way back we stopped at a liquor store.  The only Heineken they had (which was what she wanted) were 40's.  Ha!  So we arrived at the gallery beer in hand.  She was stunned and thrilled.  Apparently we were the 1st students to bring her beer. 

We then were to scrape the excess grout off with different shaped Popsicle sticks and basically reveal our piece.  It was pretty cool!  At this point I realized I wish I stuck more bitty pieces of glass in some of the crevices but lesson learned.

After we scraped em off, again only taking about 20 minutes or so, we were done!

Mosaic Masterpieces

So all in all - a super fun two days!  It was of course great spending time with my dad down in a beautiful beach town and also so great learning something new together!

Dad seems inspired now to start doing this more and that thrills me to no end!  I know he'll come up with some beautiful pieces!

Mosaic Class  = SUCCESS!

Rehearsing and Eating...

Tried another joint Saturday night!

Pie Dog in downtown Fullerton.

T had been wanting to check this place out, but we figured whilst tromping around DT Fullerton Friday night for ArtWalk that it may be too crazy that night to go so we went Sat!

We got there early, a bit before 6pm and it was perfect because there wasn't anyone there.  As we sat and enjoyed ourselves the place filled right up though!

It's a cute little place.  Has a bar to sit at, or long tables or long high tops.  Our waitress was Alisha and it was her 2nd day.  She kept apologizing for using her phone, but that's how they take orders there.  Hello crazy technology!  The place has a whole bunch of fancy fun beers and only 1 red or 1 white wine.  They do state though that they will be switching out the red/white regularly but it's known for the beers.

I got the red wine, and it really was quite good!  A very smooth cabernet.  T got a beer similar to the kind she had when we checked out The Playground and she loved.  They also apparently just added chicken wings with an array of sauce choices, so we ordered the "citrus" ones and added the creamy garlic sauce.  By the way - the creamy garlic sauce - fucking amazing!

But what it's really known for are the burgers.  They're made in house and they have a handful of different types.  I personally opted for the Team America (F@*K! Yeah) burger.  It came with bacon, BBQ, and LTO (Which I found out was lettuce, tomato and onion).  If you like, they have a crap load of sides to add and/or sauces.  I stuck with just what it came with and was certainly not disappointed.  One of the best burgers I've ever had!  T chose a burger then added a fried egg and the siracha sauce mix.  We both pretty much devoured them.

We also ordered a side of tater tots - with yes - that fucking amazing garlic sauce.

The place was fantastic!  Different waiters/waitresses checked up on us and when the place got slammed we weren't forgotten.  One of the guys told us to make sure we checked out the bathrooms!  I was a little confused but then found out why:

Tell me that's not rad!!  Ha ha!

So Pie Dog - you get 2 greasy thumbs up!  Awesome night of yummy burgers, wings and wine!


Next up - the all day rehearsal for Slings and Arrows!

I won't get into too much here, but it was rad.  Craig has fell into Laeretes just perfectly and Jeffrey is finding all kinds of great stuff as he explores Hamlet.  I had some ideas for Brenda and my nunnery scene and was so glad they worked out!

We rehearsed at McCoy Rigby studios in Yorba Linda, so it was a great space and we could do what we wanted.  Dave had us run the 1st part of the show then we broke out into our room scenes and worked on them individually.  Dave would pop by adding suggestions, notes, praises but it was pretty much just us running them on our own.  This was great for Brenda and I because she's so easy to work with, she went right along with my suggestions and the scene played out beautifully.  I enjoyed putting on the director shoes a bit and now the scene is way better.  I'm super happy with it and so was Dave.  He said it's only going to grow from there.

We broke for lunch then returned to run the before intermission stuff then broke off again.  This time I was alone since it will be my death scene, but it was a great time to sit down and chat with Dave about what I want to do, try and hope to get to emotionally.  He knows I'm nervous but tells me not to worry.  We're not going to run it until we're down in San Clemente which I'm glad.  Then we ran the finale best we could (We're missing 3 actors for this rehearsal) and I had a blast reading for Shadow Hamlet 2 (Who I've deemed Shamlet) and Rosencrans/Gildenstern.  Hell I'll play multiple roles! Ha ha ha!

This gives you a nice idea of our split outs

I love collages!

Then we were done well before our scheduled end time.  Yay!  With the time change it was nice to get out early and grab a nap.

The show is coming along brilliantly!  Hopefully we'll get to have a rehearsal where the entire cast is all together for once!  (Maybe Thursday)?


So there we are.  2 of my favorite things.  Working on a show and eating!

Now if I could just have a nap...damn time change....

Update on Slings and another friends performance...

We're still trekkin along!

We've run into some issues, but I gotta say - we've bounced back incredibly.  Dave was even saying last night how with as much bumps as we've had, this show is still totally on track!

One of the issues (which I don't consider a total issue but it has it's faults) is we're a floating company.  Basically we have no home.  Now - I'm totally cool with this, as it's just how guerrilla theatre works.  You rehearse where you can and work with your space when you find one to perform in!  But it does have a few drawbacks.  Right now we're rehearsing in people's homes pretty much.

This shot below is a meet and chat we had at Jill's (Gertrude) house.  Beautiful house but she has a mother she cares for, so we had to be respectful of course.  This was not big deal for this meet since it was just table work and alot of snacks!

We've also had a few table reads in Starbucks which is really awkward, but we did it.

Then we rehearsed at our costume gal's house, but she has 3 kids that were in bed when we were there so we had to keep our voices down.  This was not easy and I felt horrible.

Shadow Hamlets and Hamlet

Now this week and next week we rehearse at Rick's (Polonious) amazingly beautiful condo but it's on the 3rd floor, and again - voices down and don't jump around.  Guess who kept forgetting that!  Doh!
The pictures below are all taken by Brenda (Shadow Hamlet #1) from last night's rehearsal at Ricks.

Ophelia Mad

We're a bit immature

Gertrude, Claudious and Ophelia

Dave and I probably sassing each other

Aren't we the cutest Hamlet and Ophelia!

Apparently my ass in Brenda's camera

This coming Sunday and another Sunday we will be rehearsing in a warehouse space for 8 hours each day - so - I know some great work will be coming out of those and I'll blog about that later.

The other challenges:  Remember the last blog when I said we lost Keith (Laeretes) and Jeffrey stepped in?  Well, we lost our main Hamlet.  The poor kid is heartbroken he can't do it, but living in LA, car breaking and financially can't fixing it will keep you out of a show.  So as much as I'll miss Conor, Jeffrey has stepped into the role of Hamlet and is bringing a totally new element.  He's fantastic.  So - that means we have no Laeretes!  Well until just last night.  Craig Johnson an old Rudie and also done alot of work at Garage Theater has agreed to jump in.  SO - we'll see him on Sunday.  Other bad news - we lost our costumer.  That one really crushed me, but she's got some major stuff going on and I totally understand.  We have had a gal step in who costumed Revengers Tragedy which as you see below with a couple of shots was fantastic:

Revengers Tragedy

Revengers Tragedy

But still.  Totally bummer!!!  I have faith in Amanda for sure, but damn will I miss Heather.  I'm her favorite barbie!  Le sigh.

So here we are today!  Still going strong!  I'm still excited, but now getting a bit nervous and anxious because it's coming up on us really fast!  But I'm also very confident because I know it will all come together!

Brenda and my nunnery scene needs some work.  I'm a little lost as to what Dave is wanting and what I'm thinking, but I'm looking forward to hashing that out on Sunday.  The Ophelia mad scene is coming together.  I've been trying different things here and there and Dave has thrown some ideas out and I love where it's going.  I've been able to start to get there emotionally.  Not totally of course but I feel it brewing.  I've been working on this one and my death scene a bit at home by myself trying to find ideas and direction to go.  It's going to be a challenge but I feel good!

I'll blog more into rehearsal stuff after our long Sunday.  But I know Dave is feeling good too!  Here's some updates from the MWC Facebook page:

Best Reason to Cast Good Actors #1:
Worked the scene last night where Hamlet kills Polonius.
My vision of it was that the killing would be a shock at the end of the scene, but Rick argued that there would be more impact if Hamlet was circling him and acting in a menacing way prior to the fatal moment. I disagreed, but told him to show me instead of telling me.
He and Jeffrey knocked the scene out of the ballpark.
Listen to your actors, directors. If you cast correctly, they'll know the character better than you do

Added movement to Hamlet's "get thee to a nunnery" scene and the visual dynamic changed dramatically. In the other scene, we changed a character's gender and motivation, turning him into a giddy member of the 1% and the scene became funnier...and far more biting.


Terrific rehearsals the past few nights for SLINGS & ARROWS, Monkey Wrench Collective's re-imaging of HAMLET.
Jami's Ophelia brought tears to my eyes as she mimed cutting her wrists, while singing The Beatles' Golden Slumbers.
We also searched through a handful of poems about mourning to replace her "song" in an earlier scene, settling on one from William Blake and another from Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Bryan nailed Claudius' opening scene after a few misses and you could see his eyes light up when he eventually zipped through it.
Hamlet sending Ophelia to the nunnery with a few stanzas of Bjork startled me and made me laugh.
Jami and Jeffrey as Ophelia and Laertes playing his goodbye to her with a tenderness and love that made me forget they were acting.
A conversation between the melancholy prince and his two shadow "personalities," as they talk the mentally ill man into murder and incest, was the kind of improvisation most of us can only dream about witnessing. It was eerie, funny and immensely uncomfortable.
A later bonding exercise, with Conor, Adam and Wombat doing impersonations of each other (silently and with dialogue) revealed the three to be excellent mimics. When you see them on stage together at Casa Romantica in April, you'll believe that they're all "related".

So there ya go.  Happy Jami.  Happy director.  Show is coming along!

As I've mentioned before, I also want to give shout outs to other good stuff I'm seeing out there!  SO - as you know, I do that A-Dolts Only Xmas Pageant every year.  Well, one of our cast members is a regular at Medieval Times.  He either plays the King or the Lord Chancellor.  We have razzzed him about this forever and this year decided to take our earnings from the show and all go see him!

It was so rad.  He chose to play Lord Chancellor since it's a much better role.  Here's our Brad below:

Bradley!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On a horse!!!

First of all I can't believe Medieval Times is still around!  It was totally sold out too!  We were placed in the Blue Knight section (who of course won), given our paper crowns and sat in two rows.  The poor people around us had no idea who these loud group of adults were.  They do celebration (birthdays, anniversaries, etc) shout outs during the show and the "Dolts" crew got a few.  Brad did a funny bit with the Queen explaining that it's a Xmas show, etc.  Super cute and we of course were screaming! 

I've been once before, when I was a kid.  It's adorable for the chitlins.  Joel and I kept joking that this must be a Ren Faire Geek's life long dream.  The food was horrible and our waitress was a bitch.  The waiter that the other half of our group had was fantastic though and Sean and I ordered a bottle of wine (They actually had real wine) to share so we were happy.  Despite the poor quality and crappy service we had a blast of course!  My throat was totally scratchy the next day from screaming for Brad so much.

Here's some group shots

Apparently the "Mead" wasn't so good

Can you tell we're having a good time?  Some of our crew brought their littles so they enjoyed it as well!  The knights were great.  Our winning knight came into the stands and gave a tiara and his winning sash to the most adorable little girl I almost died.  One of our group caught one of the carnations (Didn't it used to be roses?) and we laughed and screamed and cheered all night.

Brad was fantastic!  He was straight out of Game of Thrones.  His performance was perfection!

We took some photos after and praised him for his performance.  Such a damn fun night!

The hot villain with Kali

Most of the crew minus a few who were outside smoking!

Dolt's Crew!

Birthday Weekend...

So my birthday this year was pretty mellow, but I got some god eats to report!

Friday night Becks and I hit Prime Cut Cafe.  Our birthdays are near each other and we like to just go out and celebrate ourselves and split the bill. Done.  Happy Birthday.  No fuss no muss.  I've been here before and have always liked it and I forget that have a pretty good happy hour!  They also have great wine!  So - I got myself a yummy filet Mignon taco, their ridiculously good deviled eggs and some greasy onion straws.  We chatted and had a lovely evening.

Saturday I had planned to see the show my friend directed over at Stages.  It was an early showing (5pm) so I text T and asked if we probably wanted to eat after?  She text back saying we should try this new wine bar that opened in Fullerton first, then show, then dinner at the Anaheim Packing House!  Um Ok!!

So - 3:30pm I arrive early of course and the wine bar is right next door to this great little store called Roadkill Ranch.  Um hi millions of clothing that I love.  4pm I waltzed into Vino Nostra, the wine bar I'm meeting T at with a giant shopping bag full.  She laughed.  They have flights a week I guess, so the flight that week was 1 white and 3 reds.  Shockingly I liked the white the best!  T started calling the events of the day my birthday extravaganzas and showed me how to "tweet" a picture and proceeded to "tweet" my behalf saying 1st stop of Jami's Birthday Extravaganza!

 I promptly bought the white.  Yes a white!  Then the guy told us about this Pinot Noir that was quite good - he gave us a taste - and it was called scratchpad.  The label comes with a charcoal pencil and you can write on it!  T got so excited but ended up writing on a Chardonnay!  Whoops!  So I bought that for her upcoming birthday and she got me my very own Pinot Scratchpad with a lovely note!  Another bottle I'll defiantly keep after I drink it!

After this we headed to the show!  Very funny!  It was modeled after The Breakfast Club but in the Shakespeare style of language.  Very cute and very original.  Jill my friend the director did a great job!

Off we were to Anaheim Packing House!  This seems to be the new thing around here.  It's quite similar to Oxbow Market that Libby and I visited a few times when we were up in Napa.  It's a bunch of food places (lots of food truck peeps) in sort of like an indoor mall setting.  There are places to sit at a lot of them, but some you just pick up your food then wander off and try to find a spot in the area.  The place was PACKED.  It was a Saturday night, and I really would like to come back on a weeknight and really check it out.  T gave me the run down on most of the places and we did a sweep of the upstairs and downstairs before making a decision.  We landed at Kettle Bar.  Honestly it was the only place we could get a seat.

Super cool though!  We sat at the bar that faced the kettles.  It was really cool to watch the chefs making all the yummies in the metal bowls.  Total trip.  Very unique.  The wine was very good!  I got myself some oysters and they were delish!  We also split some garlic fries that were divine.  I ordered the ciopinno.  Very yummy and full of fish, mussels, shrimp and squid.  I couldn't eat the squid though.  It kept wiggling at me so they always got pushed aside.  We devoured our meals and had a fun waiter.

We rolled out of there fat and happy and T suggested Gypsy Den.  I had no idea there was one in Anaheim!  I've been to the Costa Mesa and Santa Ana one many times but what do ya know!!!  We popped a squat at the bar.  T got a latte and myself another wine.  We chatted with the super cool bartender whom I thought I may have had a connection with and so did T but dude mentioned a girlfriend.  Doh!  I really am clueless. But alas a lovely wind down time and we even got to see some of the Disneyland fireworks!  A perfectly lovely evening for sure!

Sunday brought Twisted Vine.  My friend Bob has joined the wine club there and always brings me as his guest for the pick up party.  I have finally decided to join because it's such a great deal!!  $120 quarterly.  (I can make payments!)  You get 4 wines (you can choose all reds, all whites or mix) and you get a pick up party.  This pick up party you can bring a guest too, you get food and you get to taste all the wines you're getting!  Rad right?!  So - I gave in and joined!

It was a super fun evening but unfortunately I have no will power when it comes to yummy foods and with all what I had already eaten over the weekend, then the heavy cream based yummies from here and quite a bit of wine - my ass woke up on my actual birthday sicker than a dog.  Ooops.  This old ass 39 year old cannot eat what I want in excess anymore!  So my birthday was spent in bed recovering all Monday.  Oh well, my own doing!

The whole day though I was getting texts and calls and my FB was blowing up.  Below are some of my favorites:

Do you think my friends know me? :)

A few days later I had a belated birthday dinner with my best friend in the whole world and her darling daughter who is the closest do a daughter I'll ever have!  We hit up Shiki and the owner brought me cake and a cute pen for my birthday!  Libby and Hailey showered me with "warm" presents since my place is so cold - socks, slipper, a wine glass.  Love em all!

So a Happy Birthday to me indeed!