Saturday, April 11

We were up at 7:30, and I did a treadmill session and weights exercises after breakfast. After that, I did a couple of things related to the upcoming photography residency, while Hubbie and Mother worked in the garden planting onions and lettuce.

We didn't do a lot after lunch, since we planned to leave mid-afternoon to go to a dinner-theater in another town about an hour and a half northeast of us. About 3:30, we left, and arrived around 5 p.m.

We were to meet Hubbie's daughter and great-granddaughter at the theater at 6 p.m., and since we were early, we toured the town while listening to an audiobook, and then stopped at a garden nursery to look around. While we were there, Hubbie fed and walked Shih Tzu, so she would be comfortable in the van while we were in the theater.

We arrived at the theater at almost the same time as Daughter and Great-Granddaughter, who had traveled about 50 miles from their town. We were seated right away, and a waitress, around fifteen or sixteen years old, dressed in a Swiss Miss costume, took our drink orders. Poor girl couldn't seem to get things straight and had to return to the kitchen several times before she finally supplied us with the glasses of water and tea, and cups of regular or decaf coffee, and creamer.

Then a group of four theatergoers were seated at a small table near ours. Our waitress obviously knew these older folks, and spent an inordinate amount of time visiting them and seeing to their needs ahead of us, who were seated first. She finally got around to serving our salads, but we thought we'd never get the entree.

At last, we did, though, and then had only to wait and wait for our turn at the desserts. Of course, she first stopped at the table with the four people with a tray containing choices of apple strudel or German chocolate cake. At our table, we wished for four orders of cake, and one of apple strudel. Unfortunately, by the time she got to us, she had only three plates of cake and two of strudel. Rather than send the girl to the kitchen again, Hubbie agreed to take the strudel.

The meal consisted of (besides a bed of lettuce, dolloped with the "house dressing," that served as the salad), a round piece of meat that, when Mother and I removed the breading, discovered was chicken, placed atop a bed of buttered noodles. The veggie was green beans, and there were two slices of canned peaches alongside. A roll completed the meal. The noodles, strudel, and German chocolate cake, were a nod to "The Sound of Music" setting in Austria ("cream colored ponies, and hot apple strudels, doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles....these are a few of my favorite things").

At each table, there was a card for rating the show and the service. I noted that the show was excellent, but pointed out that the waitress was slow to serve us. The waitresses work for tips, and we left one, but she needs to know that she should be more diligent. We were not the only table she ignored.

It was chilly in the theater, but Mother and I had dressed warmly enough. We've learned that theaters, doctors offices, restaurants, etc., are freezing, so we go prepared. But Daughter and Great-Granddaughter were not prepared, and soon grew chilled. Fortunately, Mother and I had brought along a couple of extra fleece jackets, just in case, so Hubbie retrieved them from the van before the show started.

The show was wonderful...very professionally done, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, there was a technical difficulty in the beginning, when the CD player failed to play the music for the opening number, but the woman cast as Maria sang beautifully, anyway, without accompaniment.

Later, the man who played the character of Max Detweiler hurried onstage, apologizing for being so late, but, he explained, he has had to go to (discount store in town) to buy a new CD player. It took a moment for this to sink in, but then the audience burst into laughter and applause...obviously, the character would not have visited a store that did not yet exist in the late 1930s to buy a CD player that had not yet been invented!

In the final scene, just before the children sing in honor of Hitler's birthday, and then one-by-one, or two at a time, leave the stage to make their escape from Nazi guards, three long red banners with swastikas were unfurled. The audience became completely quiet. The sight of those banners, and the swastika armbands on the Nazi soldiers raised goose bumps of revulsion, felt, I'm sure by every audience member.

It was around 10:30 by the time we left the theater, and around midnight before we got home. By then we were plenty ready for bed, and fell asleep as soon as our heads hit our pillows.

It was a long day, but a good one.