Backblog – Saturday, April 25th

This particular Saturday was a fun “date day.” It was a beautiful April day, and it was “my” day, so I took Mer to go for a walk in a couple of parks. The first park is called Daffodil Trail, a part of the Furnace Run park, which is a short (about .6 mile) trail. What makes it special, especially in the spring, is that the trail has large collections of daffodils all along it, and Mer particularly likes daffodils. It was a very pretty walk with lots of flowers. Some had already gone by, and some other were not yet blooming, but there were plenty of flowers to see. The walk did not take all that long, so we proceeded to Rock Creek trail (part of Furnace Run, but in a separate area a few miles away) and hiked there as well.

On the way to the park we had passed a farm stand called Country Maid that sold ice cream. We had never heard of the place before, so we stopped on the way back. The articles on the wall of the stand praised the ice cream, but especially lauded the shakes of the place. I’ll have to take Sonotmu there sometime since he is a shake connoisseur. Mer and I both got ice cream, and we both thought it was very good. We both think Handel’s ice cream is better, but Country Maid has a wonderfully rural scene, and is a much nicer place to eat.

That evening, we went to see Hudson Players’ production of Guys and Dolls. Mer had bought me tickets for my birthday present, and was very excited to see the musical. We have had the sound track for years, and I liked the music, but the music did not make much sense to me as a story. Hudson Players is a community acting group, and I was not sure what to expect. They did a great job. They had a 7- or 8-piece orchestra that did very well, and the cast of the musical was very large. The acting was quite fine, and the singing was good; I would say the only thing that hinted at the play’s being an amateur production was that the singing was not always loud enough (and we were in the front row).

The scenery was fun – they had constructed a street scene in New York, with a painted background of a skyline and then several buildings and a newsstand in front, on the stage. When the play moved to Havana, the crew brought out a tiki hut. Well done!

I really enjoyed the play. It is a fun musical anyway, and getting to see the characters in context made the play fall into place for me. The scenery, music, and acting were all fine, and then to make sure our allegiance was won over, they had a cheesecake dessert reception after the show where you could mingle with the actors. Luck was a lady tonight, indeed!