Today John and I headed out to Martinez to check out The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a musical comedy I’ve been wanting to see. Despite having to take a detour, we arrived to town early, grabbed lunch at Marie Callendar’s (key lime pie!), and still scored front row seats!

The play was well worth the drive. And funny thing, they were recruiting members from the audience to participate in the spelling bee, so like the usual dork that I am, I volunteered along with three other girls (all under 21). Surprisingly, I didn’t get overly stressed about being on stage, but I will admit that I started cramming before the play started. Yup, I kept trying to think up tough words. I know, SUCH a nerd. None of it mattered really. My first word: Mexican. My second word was like altagogy (?) or something. Anyway, it was interesting being on stage with the cast who were of course all exaggerated and in character. Then, they would kind of nudge us to stand or sit or move around. I saw Bubbey in the front row just laughing. I was up there for a while too, so I was much relieved when I spelled the second word wrong. Anyway, the play itself was so cute and funny. And the theater? What a gem!! The seating is cabaret style, so you have small round tables, they serve drinks and food… so charming! I was so sad to hear that they might close after 30+ years. Fucking economic downturn. Total drag.

Downtown Martinez itself was pretty dead too. Lots of vacant retail space and just an eerie silence.

On our drive home, John and I swung by the windmill farms in Livermore. It really was ultra windy over there! We hit the local Sonic (I had never been), and John said that would be my ideal second job– waitressing on rollerskates. Haha.

I’m pretty beat now. Got home after 6, fed/walked the pups, hit the hot tub, got all cleaned up. Tomorrow, we’re catching up with a couple of friends from out of town. Who knew so many people actually planned to travel this Labor Day weekend?! I thought everyone would opt for staying home because of all the traffic and road construction.

Oh well, I’m glad John and I will get a chance to catch up with KL and Belques: KL and I used to work at that fuel cell startup, so they used to live in Fremont, then moved to Irvine, and now just recently moved to San Luis Obispo. Always on the move, like every 12-18 months, and now they have a little baby in tow too! But no matter where we are now, we always like to do at least one quick round of trash talking about our former workplace.

In the evening, John and I are going into SF to meet up with my college roomie and her buddy. A few months back, I had told Yova about my fascination with the concepts of speed dating and of improv classes. Well, she actually followed through with both! The former– horrible experience, but the latter– awesome. I’m trying to get John to try improv… could totally be up his alley.

To follow in the same vein (yeah I had to look that one up: was it vane or vein?), we’re gonna hit up Killing My Lobster after dinner. We caught their sketch show a few months back, and it was hilarious, like John had tears in his eyes, it was so funny. Sunday’s show is a new one in a different theater. Can’t wait to see how it pans out.

Either way, I wanna give a shout out to Goldstar for hooking us up with discounted tix. Seriously, I love them! Maybe I should work for them too…