I updated my iPhone 11 to a 14 a few weeks ago and have been loving the bump in volume: I no longer have to put calls on speaker AND hold the phone to my ear (thus often accidentally disconnecting them or muting myself) in order to just-barely hear them!

Other than that, the old phone seemed to be working fine after three* years.  I suppose it's possible that its speakers were just dirty and a good cleaning might have rejuvenated them.  But the battery life was starting to diminish -- getting through a workday without recharging was becoming a rarity -- and I guess I just figured it was time.

*Ed.: I originally wrote "four years", and could have sworn it had been that long, but after looking it up: yes indeed, as their numbering would suggest, only three years actually elapsed between the release of the 11 and that of the 14, duh.  Now I feel sheepish about not having waited longer: four or five years is my more usual lifespan for phones.  But then again, the last three years have felt like four or five ...decades.

I got a new phone today. I had the old phone for five years, and loved it, but it became obsolete in September, when the new operating system came out. It took me a couple of months to decide which model would work best for me, and I was planning on just exploring options today, but I decided to get the phone, mainly because next week is going to be a zoo at the mall, and I didn't feel like dealing with that. In December, I'm getting two checks from an IRA, and I can pay for the phone then.

The new phone does not seem to work with my old version of iTunes, but that's OK for now. I've got way too much stuff in the cloud from when Apple used to have a download of the week (many years ago). Eventually, I'd like to put a bunch of cast albums on the phone, but I'll deal with that at a later date. First order of business is getting a case. And calling someone to make sure I can still do that. 

Jack Was Kind marks the first time that a show I've designed has been photographed by the great Carol Rosegg!

I'd been holding my breath to see these photos ever since she came to take them at our final dress rehearsal last week -- and they turned out even lovelier than I'd hoped:  [CLICK HERE]

As I mentioned the other day, this is a resolutely small and simple design (which is to say, deceptively less small and simple than it looks): essentially, a tiny jewel-box in which a single performer sits in front of her camera phone and tells a story, to it and to us, for 75 minutes.  Comprising barely a dozen objects in total, with little perceptible change or movement to speak of, every minute design decision had to be just right.  It was fun, and sometimes a little maddening, and, in the end, uncommonly rewarding to be able to drill down into each and every "small" choice with such precision and focus.

After working on such a satisfyingly intimate scale, and spending the past month sweating the details, it's an honor indeed to have the finished production captured by an artist of Ms. Rosegg's caliber.

It was cold down here today too. It didn't get above the mid-40s all day. I actually wore a coat to work because it's also very windy. I hope you had a good walk this afternoon. I also much prefer this weather to what I'm going to have to endure next July 

It is sunny and cold outside. We need to go on our afternoon walk, and I don't want to, but I would much rather have this weather than sunny and 95°, so we will go on our walk without complaining.

I need to get gas. I think I'm going to procrastinate on that one until tomorrow morning, because Costco gas isn't normally too full of customers before 10 am.

Today these tables joined my family. Well, the dining room table will come home some time this week. Possibly tomorrow after work. 
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https://irishrep.org/show/2022-2023-season/jack-was-kind/

Upon its Zoom premiere in fall 2020, this play was picked by the NYT as one of the ten best solo shows for online viewing.  It was published by Samuel French the following spring, and then, almost a year and a half later, its world stage premiere was announced for the 2022-23 season at Irish Rep.

I had been intrigued by the Zoom performance, but was pleasantly surprised to be asked to design this premiere production (barely six weeks ago, and quite out of the blue, just as Curious Incident was getting ready to open downtown).  It has been a fast process, and not without bumps, but for me it makes a very gratifying finish to this challenging past year of theatrical re-opening.

Jack Was Kind had its first preview performance last Wednesday Nov 9, opens this Thursday Nov 17, and runs through Sunday Dec 18.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/theater/kimberly-akimbo-review.html

I'm glad they took the opportunity to do some tweaking, and am still up for seeing the show again.  But on the evidence of its Off-Broadway premiere at the Atlantic, I wouldn't have said Kimberly Akimbo qualifies as much of a "nerdical" (Green's term), except in his broadest baseline sense of being small and not based on an existing pop catalogue, movie, or other household-name intellectual property.  And, I suppose, the narrow literal sense in which most of its characters are high-school outcasts -- the eponymous heroine and her anagram-loving boyfriend, plus a quartet of show-choir gleeks -- but that doesn't seem to be the kind of nerd-appeal Green means.  Indeed, what he does mean would appear to be exactly the kind of musical that hits my own personal sweet spot; but if KA hasn't yet done so, it's partly because, downtown, at any rate, it struck me as a bit too broadly crowd-pleasing for its own good.

In the context of Tesori's career, which has hitherto been pretty neatly dividable into commercial work (Millie, Shrek, a few direct-to-video Disney animated sequels) and non- (pretty much everything else), Kimberly seems well-positioned to bridge those two worlds; but I'd argue that, in spirit at least, it falls comfortably into the former, despite its less-well-known source material.  Where Violet and Caroline and Fun Home and even the imperfect Soft Power all pack huge questions into tiny, stubbornly thorny packages, Kimberly, to me, feels small in every sense except its appeal to middle-class, middlebrow, mainstream sensibilities (the broad opposite of "nerd appeal"), while its ostensible "big" themes -- family, mortality, etc. -- aren't so much developed as signposted amid all the strenuously quirky goings-on.

It's possible I might feel differently if I were a parent; something about Green's review suggests to me that his enchantment might have partly to do with being a father himself, which, if that's what it takes, means I'll likely never come around to loving this show.  I did feel heartbreaking empathy for the flawed Gellman and Bechdel parents (in Caroline and Fun Home, respectively); but the Levacos of KA struck me as sitcom figures, occasionally enlivened by faint glimmers of humanity, but never in any serious danger of acquiring a third dimension.

FWIW, mine is decidedly the minority opinion, and for Ms. Tesori's sake I'm glad for that to be the case.  Kimberly certainly isn't a bad or unenjoyable show; as always, if I do manage to revisit it, I would dearly love to be won over, and will happily eat my words should that occur.  At least one reviewer has pronounced it "darker" and "sadder" in its uptown incarnation, which sounds to me like a step in the right direction for this material.

I had combo lo mein with pork fried rice for late lunch, and it was delicious.

Otherwise, it was a long, long day.

Today I went to the JCC ceramics sale and bought a platter and some sort of bowl that I liked because it was somewhat unusual (and inexpensive). I then went to Costco and got three bags of peppermint bark pretzel crisps because they were $2 off per bag, and I figured that three would last me through the end of the year, particularly if I store them in the garage rather than the house. And I got myself a hot dog and drink for lunch.

AND... my computer that decided to ignore its USB ports on Tuesday night is now working again, thanks to the Mac user group. 

I have work that I'm going to ignore until tomorrow.