I was hoping to be able to say whether I owed or whether I was getting a refund, but when I went to my scheduled appointment at my accountant's office today, he was having computer issues and was on the phone with Geek Squad. So I left all my tax documents with him, to be picked up later. I have a buttload of medical expenses for 2024, so many that I might be able to itemize. I paid for a lot of occupational therapy sessions out of pocket because insurance stopped covering after a certain number or amount. (They only covered 50% anyway.)

And somebody got sick from the food that she wasn't supposed to eat, which I didn't put away. She got sick in multiple places mostly over the carpeted stairs, but also in the bedroom and in the living room right in front of her crate. The carpet would definitely benefit from a cleaning. There are a number of carpet cleaners having specials like "three rooms for $xxx," but stairs are extra.

So that has been my Thursday. Frustrating and it will most likely end up being expensive.

Quote from: DiveMilw on Mar 16, 2025, 10:01 AMIs there a Mac version of "toggling" between screens?  In Windows this is Alt+Tab. 

I don't know if this does exactly what you want, but I use it all the time. It will toggle between open applications. Command+Tab.

Quote from: KathyB on Mar 16, 2025, 07:16 AMOr you can leave it the way it is and get used to it.


P.S. Refurbs are great!

Thank you Kathy!!!!!  
I figured there was a way to reset the scroll wheel but I do not know how long it would have been until I figured it out.  I was thinking of trying to get used to it but it might have been confusing as I switched back and forth.  

Is there a Mac version of "toggling" between screens?  In Windows this is Alt+Tab.  

Quote from: DiveMilw on Mar 15, 2025, 10:33 PMSo far my only complaint is that the scroll wheel is "backwards" from what I'm used to.

You can set up the scrolling so that it works the same way that you're used to.  Go to System Settings and search there for "Natural Scrolling."

Or you can leave it the way it is and get used to it.


P.S. Refurbs are great!

I ended up buying a refurb Mac Mini.  That was not the mistake.  The mistake was not realizing that none of my existing keyboards or mice will work with it.  Fortunately, taking Kathy's advice, I went to the MicroCenter in Dallas to get a usb hub.  While I was there I figured out that I needed a new keyboard and mouse.  I also got a surge protector as long as I was there.  I spent a little more money than I wanted but I could have spent a LOT more.  I had no idea keyboards could get so expensive no matter what type of computer you own.   

I set my new mini this evening and am using it right now!  So far my only complaint is that the scroll wheel is "backwards" from what I'm used to.  At some point I will transfer files from my lenovo PC to the mini but I am not in much of a hurry to do that.  

I might have to get a Marie Callender's chocolate satin pie at Safeway when I go grocery shopping today.

After a couple of days in the mid-60s, it looks as if it's going to start snowing any minute. 

Only three more days before the current PBS pledge drive is over!

The League of Live Stream Theater is currently offering Trouble In Mind from Pittsburgh Public, through March 23; and Beckett Briefs from Irish Rep, from March 16-30.

Each show costs $39 for three days of streaming-on-demand (once you start) anytime within those respective windows.

I saw Beckett Briefs in-person in January and can recommend it — especially F. Murray Abraham's superb "Krapp's Last Tape", but all three one-acts (also including "Not I" and "Play") are masterfully performed by a first-rate cast in an elegantly polished production.  (The show closes at Irish Rep a week from today, the same day it becomes available to stream).

I haven't seen the Pittsburgh production of Trouble In Mind, which closed two weeks ago (likewise the day before it became available to stream), though I did see the 2021 Roundabout revival starring LaChanze.

I'd gladly see either show again, but I'm not sure whether I want to spend almost 80 bucks to stream both — though that's still less than the cost of a single theatre ticket to almost anything these days.

How exciting!  I hope I can travel east to see it.  

Still more from The Sondheim Hub:

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
A guide to the film that inspired Act I of Sondheim's Here We Are

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This summer I'll be returning to Surflight Theatre for the first time in fifteen years (!) to design the North American premiere of Top Hat – the 2011 West End adaptation of the 1935 Astaire/Rogers RKO movie musical, with its Irving Berlin score augmented by half a dozen additional songs from the Berlin catalog.  The movie is a masterpiece of its kind — which is presumably why, apart from those song additions, the adaptors seem hardly to have altered its screenplay (and only to maintain its flow onstage).

This, in turn, results in what Wikipedia lists as a 2hr 45min runtime (including interval).  By today's standards, that might seem excessive for such gossamer material; but if we really nail it, a pleasingly old-fashioned sense of period indulgence might not come amiss: as in 1935, the real world's dire enough today that audiences looking for escape might be just as happy to spend three hours as two in Berlin's feather-light nostalgic swoon, assuming we can keep its spell from flagging (while stage comedies of the time often ran 2½ hours or more, the original film clocks in at a fleet 1hr 40min).

And it's easy to see why the adaptors chose to stick close to the screenplay.  Wikipedia calls the movie a "screwball musical comedy", but there's very little physical comedy, and the verbal humor is light and dry.  Three-quarters of the story takes place in hotel rooms, though the gorgeous array of Art Deco furniture rarely gets used.  I'm very much looking at all this as a set designer at the moment, trying to figure out how little we can get away with onstage, with 29 (!!) scenes (and scene changes, where furniture is a killer) to get through without adding another hour to the runtime.  Plus, of course, there has to be room to dance — although, thankfully if curiously for what might be thought of as a dance show, there are really only three big ensemble dances, plus a few Fred-and-Ginger pas de deux.

Building a new model box, I'm recalling just what a deviously challenging space this is: impossibly shallow, with limited height in the wings (nothing taller than eight feet can be stored there) and a fly system that has its own quirks.  The audience sightlines are so wide that it's flatly impossible to mask the view into the wings without blocking physical access for actors and scenery (and angles for sidelighting, which are especially crucial in a dance show) — access which is already severely limited by the sheer upstage-downstage shallowness of the space.  Front projection can work, but comes with another set of challenges.

Wish me luck...