RV Travels With Huggy

Friday November 6th we went to dinner at the Garden Cafe and I've already posted a few photos from there in my last post. Garden Cafe is located inside a large greenhouse that is the retail outlet for Skagit Valley Gardens. Skagit Valley Gardens does a fantastic job of decorating for the Christmas holidays and this open house is a perfect time to come see the displays which look even better after dark. I took many photos and had a hard time trying to limit how many I was going to post here. I think that I will actually split the post into two. I'll do one now and another in a couple of days with the rest of the photos. They let me take my tripod and most of the photos are in available light, so it is generally pretty "warm" toned light as opposed to a colder, more bluish daylight that we are more used to. I decided to not make a color shift on most of the photos but instead just leave them as the camera saw them, with some cropping, exposure and contrast corrections. You will also notice that I am posting them in a little larger format. I checked it on my system and this size is fine with it, although I do have a wide screen monitor. Please let me know it it doesn't work well on yours. Anyway, here we go:


This is a general inside scene with their cashier station and a Welcome sign.


This old truck is one of a few that are around the area. During the warmer weather there are outdoor gardens to explore and in September the local dahlia society, that grows their display garden here on the property, holds their annual viewing and it is spectacular. In addition to this greenhouse there is a large building that is heated and comfortable that contains many gift items.


The shutter speeds on these photos are not real slow but you can still see some motion showing up in many of the people who are moving. I like the juxtaposition of the tree ornaments in this photo, both those in the distance that are in sharp focus and the nearby ones that are fuzzy. There were a lot of people here and it was very hard to get photos without including some of them.


There are many already decorated Christmas trees with various themes. They can be bought already decorated or one can pick decorations off the trees to buy individually. This is a closer view of a part of the Peacock tree.


This tree in the foreground would be perfect for an apartment or other fairly small place. It is tall and skinny. And, the trunk is lighted AND it changes colors! There is a more normal Christmas tree in the background.


This display was hanging from above so I lowered the camera and turned it upward for this photo. You can actually see the glazing that makes up the roof of the greenhouse in the background here.


Musician Marcia Kester provided live entertainment during the evening. We have heard her before and she is good, kind of a country western/pop artist. Notice the tall skinny Christmas tree from the previous photo to her right in this photo. This is a flash photo so the lighting is more like what we are used to seeing.

This gets me about half way through the photos I've got ready to post so in order to keep the post from getting too large I'll close it here. Look for the second half of the photos in a couple of days. In the meantime, go check out the Skagit Valley Gardens web site as listed at the beginning of this post.

Labels: Christmas, Entertainment, Events, Holidays, Photos

Thursday morning while listening to our local radio station, our favorite DJ Joe Flood interviewed a young man who was presenting two shows at our restored Lincoln Theater here in town on Saturday, August 29th. He is a magician named Sterling Dietz who has only been practicing the art for four years but recently was the overall winner in the World Teen Magician contest in Las Vegas! He is 18 years old and just this summer graduated from Lynden Washington High School, a town just a few miles north of us near the Canadian border. We both thought that sounded interesting so Pat called and asked for two tickets near the front where we could see pretty well. We decided to go the the show at 19:00 rather than the afternoon show, and she got two in the center section, seats 1 and 2, row A which is right in the front. You couldn't get better seats!

The show was phenomenal! This young man has a great stage presence, works very well with his audience (of all ages) and really seems to know his craft. The show does include others, especially one main assistant, and involves music and dance a bit. He has a website that has a lot more about him including a short video. Take a look and remember, he is just 18 years old now.

I didn't even try to take my camera as I know it isn't right to take photos of these where you can freeze time and look in great detail at what he is doing, so I only have a scanned copy of his poster that he autographed for Pat & I and a scanned image of my ticket. If you ever have the chance to go see Sterling perform his magic, GO!!!!!


Here is Sterling in one of his outfits.


Here is my ticket.

We have been busy over the last two weeks, including attending another melodrama play last weekend at the RiverBelle Dinner Theater. I do have photos from that performance but haven't yet had the time to get them ready to post. Hopefully soon. We also have been making some changes that will affect our future lifestyle. More about that later, too. In the meantime, enjoy what is left of summer. We are enjoying pretty nice weather right now and it looks like it may well continue at least for another month.

Labels: Entertainment, Pat and I

Friday night we attended a play at our local River Belle Dinner Theater here in Mount Vernon. It was billed as a musical melodrama and titled, "He Ain't Done Right By Nell." It will just be there two weekends and then followed by another for two weekends called, "Curse You, Jack Dalton" that I think we would like to also go see. These are summer fare and not full dinner productions so the cost is much less- $14 each plus tax for adults. It was a lot of fun and of course I took some photos, over 150 all together but I've selected a dozen to post here. It was very hard to cut them down to only a dozen but I really feel that is almost too many for a blog post so have limited it to them. I did take a CD with all the photos to the play director yesterday so they will have them. By the way, a blogger friend from Whidbey Island, who produces plays for their local theater down there, is in need of a piano player for a production they are about open. If you or anyone you know might be interested, please click on the link here on my site labeled, Life After NEXCOM and talk with Mary Lou.

Here is what their flier says about the play:
"A gay nineties musical comedy. When Hilton Hays learns that Nell is a foundling and has no right to the Perkins name, he threatens to tell because Nell will not respond to his advances. Nell is too honest to marry the manly hero, Jack Logan, under the circumstances, so she dons her cape and prepares to roam the cruel world seeking a refuge for her broken heart. But wealthy Burkett Carleton has Hays arrested for stealing, and he discovers Nell is his long lost granddaughter."

That is a short summary of the play. There were seven characters and I know one of them quite well through church. I had never been to a Melodrama but it was done as in the past, with cue cards for the audience to cheer, boo, clap, etc. at appropriate times. I guess we could have thrown popcorn, which apparently was done in past years, but I think any popcorn that was sold there was eaten rather than thrown. Anyway, here are some photos, in the order they were taken.


Granny, coming down the step, is the one who found baby Nell in a basket outside the barn when Nell was a very small baby. The lady in the background is a friend of Granny's who is also searching for a Man (for her.)


The Villain, Hilton Hays, makes his first appearance. He is the manager of the local mill that is owned by the absentee Mr. Carleton. Hays is a perfect villain and shows his many despicable characteristics.


Hilton Hays along with the young lady he claims is his girl friend but in reality he is just using her as he does everyone. He does bum $50 from her as he apparently has no cash.


Granny's deceased husband had designed some invention that supposedly will be worth a lot of money. Granny plans to give the drawings of it to Nell as a wedding present but Hilton has become aware of it and tries to bribe Granny to give it to him to check out as he plans to marry Nell. So he says. He goes so far as to offer her cash (that he got from his "girl friend") and Granny is wise enough to take his money but not give him the drawings.


Nell, who has been out walking her blood hounds, makes her appearance and makes it clear that she has no intention of every marrying Hilton Hays. The love of her life is Jack Logan.


Here is Nell and Jack.


This looks a lot like the last one but it is actually a bit later in the play. The two have pretty much agreed that they want to marry.


Hilton Hays overheard a conversation between Granny & her lady friend where Granny admits that Nell was found in a basket outside their barn. Hays, being unable to get Nell to agree to marry him (he wants control of that invention) tells Nell that she is a foundling and has no right to the Perkins name. Apparently in the 1890s this was important as Nell decides that she cannot marry Jack and will just go off on her own. Hays looks around the Perkins home until he finds the drawings, which he then takes.


Nell, dressed in her cape ready to leave, tells Jack that she cannot marry him but he tells her that makes no difference to him and he still wants her for his wife.


Hilton Hays is exposed by his "girl friend" and Jack, normally a pretty calm person, threatens to hit Hilton. Hilton brings out his only true friend, a rubber chicken, which really seems appropriate. While they scuffle, the missing invention plans fall out of his pocket and he is exposed as a thief.


The "girl friend" has contacted her father who turns out to be Burkett Carleton, the owner of the mill that Hilton manages. He and his accountants have found many irregularities with money that Hilton has taken for his own use and have brought the Sherri f to arrest Hilton. While there, Mr. Carleton (my friend from church) notices the locket that Nell wears and asks to look at it. Due to a bunch of problems, one of Mr. Carleton's daughters married, gave birth and then died. Her husband gave away the baby and then disappeared leaving no trace of where the baby went. This locket was Mr. Carleton's daughters and it contains a photo of his daughter. Thus it is determined that Nell is his long lost granddaughter. She not only really has a last name but she is from a rich family!


Here's a photo with the full ensemble onstage singing (remember, this is a musical) at the end of the play.

We enjoyed it and definitely plan to return. They theater returns to their regular dinner theater programs in the fall and the first production will start the day after my birthday in September. That would be a neat gift! Are you listening, Honey?

Labels: Birthdays, Entertainment, Photos

My brother has used an ebook reader for some years. I love to read and in fact probably have nearly half of the storage unit I still rent full of books, but I recently decided that it was time to join the 21st century. I bought one of these:

This is a Sony PRS-505 eBook Reader. I debated over this VS the Kindle from Amazon.com but in the end I thought this one would work better for me. The Kindle requires the user to only download books from Amazon.com and while I like their service and am even a stock holder in the company, I think I'd rather be able to have the options that this reader gives me.

I picked one in what they call blue color but it is very dark, pretty much a Navy blue color. I know it is easier to look at photos that are against a dark background and figured the page of the book would work the same way. It does seem to.


Here is the main menu and as you can see, I currently have 105 books loaded. It says that it can hold about 160 books but that depends on the size of each book. I can also use either an SD or Sony Memory Stick memory card to expand that considerably. In fact, I was able to buy a bunch of 2gb SD cards from Costco for only $5 each so am well set for quite awhile.


Here is a photo of the reader beside a standard pocket book so you can get a feel for its size. Its page size is just slightly smaller than the paper book but I have the option to select from three different text sizes. I've found that I generally like the mid-size one best. By the way, the paper book shown here is a great read and the author has half a dozen or so published with this character. They are set in New Mexico.


The text shown here is in that mid-size option. The screen is what is called ePaper and very easy on the eyes to read. It's much easier to use than a back-lit computer monitor screen and is even easy to see in bright sunlight. The battery is good for something like 5500 page turns before recharging and anytime you have it hooked to your computer, via USB port, it is charging those batteries. The USB port is also the way I download books to it. There is no built in light but Sony makes a cover that includes a lighted wedge that I bought and it works great. In addition to the USB connection charge I have chargers that plug into the wall (AC power) and one that connects to the 12v outlet ("cigar lighter") in vehicles, so we can recharge it from our solar panels in the motorhome. The list price is $300 but I bought mine online at about a 10% discount for $270. Amazon just lowered their Kindle price to that same $300 but you won't find it discounted any lower as they are the only source to buy one from, except perhaps on eBay.

There are many places where eBooks are available to download for this device. Sony has a store of their own and I've bought some there. Barnes & Noble owns Fictionwise which has many thousands of books, many of which are free. I do have to be careful to not download copy protected books that are not in one of the two protected file formats that I can use but there are a lot of unprotected formats including plain text and PDF files. The screen of the reader is not in color so photos are rendered as black & white and not real detailed, but it can be used that way. Many eBooks have covers that are from the printed versions and they look okay.

Any book that was published before 1923 is no longer protected by copyrite and many of these have been digitized and are available to download from many different sources. Google has over 500,000. Many of these are some of the real classics. For example, I have Tom Sawyer, Gulliver's Travels, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The War of the Worlds plus others. I have bought a few new books. I am a real fan of books by Nelson DeMille and have read all but his latest which is still only available in hard back format. But it is also available from Sony as an eBook for $11.99, less than half the price of the hard back. I recently borrowed a book from a friend that I really enjoyed ("The Unforgettable Minute") and I found it from Sony for the same $11.99 price. They download in just seconds, even these full current books. Mysteries are my favorite genre and as you'd guess that is where I have the most books, currently 33.

Many authors are now publishing only in eBook format. It saves trees, is less costly as there are no books to print and I understand that authors actually get to keep a higher percentage of the cost of eBooks than they do from standard publishers. That sort of sounds like a win-win kind of thing to me.

If you have any questions that I might be able to answer, go ahead and ask. I am far from an expert but I am enjoying this device. It is a great way to be able to take a lot of reading material along on a trip in a very small space!

Labels: Books, Entertainment, Internet, Photos

Last Friday night we went to McIntyre Hall at our local college to see the stage production of "Defending The Caveman." Pat won the tickets to this on our local radio show which was good as ticket prices started at $30 each. We had great seats, in the balcony but right in the front row. I of course took my camera and took a couple of photos of the stage to get a feel for the view I had, which focal lengths I would want to use and to set the exposure.


This is looking down on the stage from our balcony seats. This is a beautiful almost new theater and is very nice. I've been to other shows here and always enjoyed them.


This is a closer view of the stage. The play is a one-man production, with a guy on the stage talking to the audience, explaining the differences between men & women and how things really haven't changed since back in the caveman days.

It is a good thing that I took these two photos as this is all I have of the "production." An usher came to me and said I was not allowed to take photos here. I can not understand why there is any problem with still photos taken without flash, in fact it seems to me that they might help with promotion of these events. I can see why they would not want video with sound as that would give the whole performance in a way that could be shown to others and produce no revenue for the production crew. I can also see why they would not want flash photos taken as flash can be distracting.

People can order a glass of wine, a mocha, or even just a bottle of water ahead of the show and then go get it during intermission. You have to drink it in the lobby as you are not permitted to take food or drink into the theater itself. We were up in the balcony so went walking at that level to stretch our legs and I took the following photo looking down into the lobby.

This will give a bit more of an idea what this place looks like. It really is nice.

But we decided that since I couldn't take photos and we didn't find the play all that entertaining, we'd just go home and watch the rest of the Mariner's baseball game on TV. So we did. I don't know if I'll ever go back to McIntyre Hall as I sure don't like their photography policies and the prices tend to be pretty high, too. As I said, it doesn't make much sense to me but I think they've driven me away. Too bad as I really do like the facility and it, being on our local college campus, is a public facility. But there are a lot of other options in our area.

Labels: Comedy, Entertainment, Griping, Photos

We keep thinking that we are going to slow down but that doesn't seem to happen. I was lucky enough to win two tickets to a show that we attended last Friday night at our local Skagit Valley Casino called "Ricky Nelson Remembered." It featured his twin sons, Gunnar and Matthew Nelson who have had more than one top ten hits on their own but in this show they were mostly playing the music of their Dad, a singer that I have very fond memories of both as a singer and for his role of a kid in his parent's TV show, "The Ozzie and Harriet Show." Ozzie was a band leader, Harriet was a singer in the band, and they also had at least one number one song during their performing years, so these sons represent the third consecutive generation in the Nelson family to have number one hits. I was lucky enough to win these tickets on our local oldies radio station, KBRC but I'd have gladly paid to attend. It was good.


This is the slide that was displayed on the large screen on the stage when we entered the Pacific Showroom at the Skagit. The show used this screen to display various slides and video clips during the show of various things in Ricky's life.


Gunnar at the left side, Matthew at the right, with an image of their father Ricky displayed behind them on that large screen. Gunnar originally was a drummer, as was Ricky, but he has since taken up the guitar which he played that night.


For at least this show the Nelsons (the name of their own band) performed with a group known as the Stone Canyon Band, the name of Ricky's band. Here they are with, from left to right, the lead guitar player, the drummer at the rear of the stage, Gunnar, Matthew and at the far right, the keyboardist. I am sorry that I don't have the names of the band members.


Gunnar playing and singing, with his eyes closed just as Ricky often did. The boys don't sound exactly as Ricky did but it is pretty close.


Matthew playing and singing. I think this is a bass guitar.


At the left is the lead guitarist, who has been with the Nelsons for a long time. Next is Gunnar and Matthew at the right. You can just see the drummer above the cymbal at the rear of the stage.


I liked it when the two boys sung together but they didn't stay in this position very long. They did this maybe half a dozen times but I think I only got two good photos. Here is one of them.


And here is the other one.


It was a bit of a challenge to get the skin tones close to correct. They used a lot of both red and blue lights onstage and neither of those light colors leads to good skin color, as far as I am concerned. The corrections are not perfect but they look better than they did uncorrected. Anyway, here is a last photo from near the end of the show of the two boys together. It was a show that I'd go to see again.


Here is a photo of the main part of the Skagit Valley Casino that I took as I was getting into our car. The multi-story hotel part is out of the photo at the left. This is a pretty big complex and quite striking, looking like a large castle. The freeway exit from I-5 that is closest to our house is #226 and this casino is just off the I-5 at exit 236 so I guess it is about 12 miles from our house. We are not late night people and my free tickets were to the second show that didn't start until 21:30 and we didn't get home until after midnight. But it was good and exciting enough that there was no problem staying awake. Here is another show that if you have the chance to see, especially if you are old enough like us to remember Ricky Nelson, Do It!

Labels: Entertainment, Photos, Reminiscing

We have been busy. I've posted photos before that were taken at productions put on by the RiverBelle Dinner Theater here in Mount Vernon. We have had reservations for over a month to attend the current production there, a murder comedy called, "Drop Dead!" and we did that last Friday night, along with neighbors, D & B. It was our fourth play to see there and their first. While all of them have been good, they do seem to be getting better and better. Needless to say, we all enjoyed this one very much and are looking forward to seeing many more there. It sure doesn't hurt that the theater is less than two miles from home.


Here is the cover of the program. It had a couple of actors that we have seen before in other productions here and the director played a major part in filling a couple of roles. Plus he is the real life husband of the actress who played the sister/daughter, Mona.


This photo shows the brother/son, the director, the new wife of the brother and the stage hand. The play has two acts with a short intermission between them and occurs all in the one setting. The story line has the first half occurring during the final dress rehearsal the night before the opening night and the second half during the opening night.


Quite a few times during the production the brother goes offstage into the "blue light" and usually comments about the snow. I wasn't sure how the photos taken there would come out but they actually did pretty well.


The story line has this rather odd family coming together at the home of the parents after the father has been found dead in the library. This photo has the sister/daughter and the new wife of the brother, who it turns out is his 13th. The others have all died.


The butler is at the left, then the Mother who is 93 years old. The actress is supposedly both hard of hearing and very forgetful of her lines.


Remember, this is during the rehearsal half so we often have others on the stage. At the left is the author of the screen play who is upset at the way it is being presented and at the right is the one financing the play who also happens to be the father of the actress playing the new young wife. He is also a bit unhappy about some of the goings on that are happening- more later.


Once the young wife learned about her husband's marriage history, she seemed to be more interested in the butler than the original husband. Here she has lost her dress. I never fully understood the face painting on the butler, but it is different.


Again, remember this is the rehearsal half. Here the stage hand, who is a little different, is getting consoled by the director while the sister looks on wondering what is going on.


I like this young lady. She has appeared in four productions at RiverBelle and we have had the privilege of seeing three of them. She plays her roles very well.


Now the young wife and the butler have been getting a bit frisky and Daddy, the financier of the production, is getting upset. We also have the ace detective who is here to investigate the murder of the Father onstage.


The sister/daughter and the new wife have a bit of a battle. This is the second time through this scene as the first bottle, a sugar based one, broke rather unbelievably when she smacked it on the head of the sister. I don't think going to a fight with a bottle against a gun is a good thing, but neither of them gets hurt.


We are now into the second half after the intermission. This is during the first performance for live audiences. The Director came up with the idea of putting a ear receiver on the Mother so she can be given her lines from offstage and he sent the stage hand off to buy one. He came up with this rather large headphone set, and it really doesn't work all that well. Especially when the Mother starts repeating off-stage comments that are not her lines but she is hearing.


In order to make the role of the Mother work better, the Director dresses himself up in a like outfit and comes onto the stage to play the role. Now we often have two Mother's onstage at once which gets interesting. You also notice the new look of the butler. It seems the financier thought he should be a French Butler, so this is the look he adopted for the second half. Interesting.


We finally find out who has been killing all of the people- yes there are more than just the Father. It seems the stage hand is the culprit and here he is trying to make his escape while using the young wife as a hostage. He eventually gets captured and it ends well.

I haven't done a very good job of describing the story line and part of that is because I am not sure I fully understand the story line. But that may be a part of the idea- it is kind of a murder mystery farce. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and we are really looking forward to the next production there. I think our neighbors will also try to attend along with us. You don't have to go to the big city to enjoy good live productions. Look around your local community- you'll no doubt find a lot of things that are well worth your support. Go for it!

Labels: Comedy, Entertainment, Photos