The Spice of Life

On Friday Susan and I drove to Frederick to perform at Maryland Ensemble Theatre. She was performing as Roxi Starr for whom I wrote music and play piano.

Frederick is a city an hour west of Baltimore. It has a quaint, old main street covered with towering trees which have been filled with white Christmas lights.

On Friday night when we arrived, they were having a holiday parade with little children marching and dancing down main street dressed as angels, elves and other holiday characters.

Susan and I were thinking we would probably get about three people to the show, so we were shocked when the doors opened and the theater filled up! Frederick audiences are great and we had a blast. Saturday night we filled up the place again!

I'm going to miss performing with Susan, but hopefully I will be able to arrange a performance for her in Sinagpore.

After church on Sunday I went to the airport to fly out to California. When I tried to check in, the lady told me that my name is on a list of criminals who may not fly! But she made a phone call and learned that the criminal is someone with the same name.

She wondered to me what she would do if I did turn out to be the criminal. "Tackle me?" I suggested. "Probably run out the door," she replied.

Once I got to the gate, the flight was delayed (is United Airlines EVER on time?) and extremely overbooked. So I volunteered to get bumped and recieved a flight voucher - whew, one less Christmas present to buy.

Instead of flying on Sunday, I went to the movie Beowulf with a friend. It had no wulfs, beo or otherwise, but it did have a lot of gore and quite a bit of computer-generated nudity.

Monday morning I managed to get on a flight and made it to Modesto to help my brother (who recently had a stroke) and his family. So here I am. This morning I took him to a doctor appointment and soon I'm taking the car for a tune-up.

Nothing like a vacation ... ahhh.