October 11th, 2009:
Winter time! Where’s that warmer-than-normal October and November we were promised?
The snow started here in earnest a bit after noon Wednesday and kept it up until evening. It melted as soon as it hit the roads, and turned to ice overnight. There has just been the odd flake since then, but it has stayed cold and windy. We didn’t dare try the roads on Thursday – there were accidents all over the city – but by Friday noon it had burned off the driving surfaces.
We did something different last Wednesday – we went to a stage play at Persephone Theatre. We used to go to Off Broadway occasionally, but they shut down this past summer. Persephone offers a service that is pretty attractive to seniors: we buy a season’s ticket which lets us attend six plays; on designated days, a taxi picks us up at our door and takes us to Parktown Hotel, at Spadina and 25th; there we go to a banquet room and are treated to a very nice sit-down banquet. When we are finished, a taxi takes us to Persephone Theatre for the stage production. All this in a time frame that lets us enjoy our meal in a leisurely fashion.
After the play, the taxi takes us right to our door again.
I can’t say that I enjoyed the play, though Doreen liked it (my hearing means that I miss much of the dialogue) but the whole evening was very pleasant. We encountered several people that we knew and enjoyed visiting with people we had just met.
We had never been to Persephone before; it is quite new. It is about a third the size of the Teachers’ Credit Union Place and seems to be well laid out. I don’t believe any amplification was used in the play yet the volume was adequate, so acoustics must be pretty good. We had heard horror stories about parking for stage events, but of course that didn’t bother us in the least. We had pretty good seats, just about six rows from the front and fairly central, but people in the very back and the balcony could likely enjoy productions just as well as people near the front.
We are looking forward to the next play, Thunderstick, which will be in November. It features Lorne Cardinal, of Corner Gas fame. The blurb says: “See a raunchier Lorne Cardinal … as he joins forces with Craig Lauzon, an Air Farce regular, in this outrageous comedy.”
We are in danger of being cultured out! Langham is holding its annual dinner theatre November 6th, 7th, 8th, and 13th, 14th, and 15th. We were there last year; Hela McDonald of Archerwill and her five daughters did the catering and anyone from around Greenwater / Archerwill knows what kind of a spread they can put on. Hela’s twin sister, Sela Balzer, appears to be the person in charge of just about everything else.
We are going again this year; in fact, we are in the process of lining up a bunch of our Sunseeker friends to go with us. If we can get eight people, we get a saving of fifteen dollars, enough to buy us a half bottle of wine. That’s about all the wine us old folks can handle. If you want a closer look at this year’s production, go to www.langhamtheatricalcompany.ca; that website tells you who is involved, all about the show, Ethan Claymore, and even the seating arrangement. It’s worth the trip!
We are off again. We are going out to Carstairs, Alberta, to visit Sandy and Blaine and all their little dogs. Not with the motor home, though – it has been winterized and put into storage.
I am beginning to wonder if I should put my winter tires on, which I don’t normally do until November. I guess we’ll take a chance. Doreen’s sister, Lucille, has been visiting her son and family at Prince George; she is going to come to Carstairs by bus, so will have a short visit with Sandy and Blaine and come home with us around the end of the month. Now, the burning question – should we take our normal fall clothing, or should we pack our parkas? And a shovel?
