Magical MissTari Tour: Happy 2018!

photo credit: my mom!

Howdy, everyone! I hope everyone had a break over the holidays and I hope it was enjoyable! My two weeks off were mainly very nice - I tried to unplug and succeeded for the most part, though my mom has an unhealthy attachment to the news feature on her phone and kept bringing up unhappy news. But at least the unhappy news didn't sit in my brain for too long. I think I'm ready to start a whole new year...

My first show is next week (and I am SO EXCITED ABOUT IT!!!); I'm trying to figure out a way to maintain a responsible budget and still see all the theater I need to see to be happy. If I'm able to figure it out, I'll be as surprised as anyone. After the revelations about NYCB and ABT, I'm considering taking ballet out of the equation for the time being, though that might make me more unhappy than the sad news. I don't know. I guess there's a lot I'm still sussing out at the start of this new year.

Over the holidays, I mainly spent time with family; did a little shopping with my sister and played board games with my sweetheart. I did see a couple of movies when I was home, and I also went to a couple of cool holiday events, so I'll do a mini-report, with mostly photos. There were several other movies I wanted to see over the holidays, but my aunt was back in the hospital, so it was much more important to visit her while I was around than it was to see more films. She's on the mend again, I'm happy to report, and I'm glad I got to spend some time with her over the last week or so.

My mom and I went to the movies to see The Man Who Invented Christmas, starring Dan Stevens as Charles Dickens and Christopher Plummer as Scrooge. Clearly, this movie had my name written all over it. I didn't get to see a live production of A Christmas Carol this year, so this was as close as I could get. We enjoyed the movie - it was pretty well-done, with attractive production values and good acting. I enjoyed seeing so much of A Christmas Carol's plot built into Dickens' life, and I got teary at the end, as always. I'm very glad I saw it and may even buy it when it comes out on DVD to add to my holiday movie collection. I also saw Kingsman: The Golden Circle (on DVD). I saw the first film with my nephew the last time I was home and he was especially keen for me to watch this sequel with him. It was engaging, with vigorous acting and quite a bit of humor (and Colin Firth!), though it's so clear to me these movies are directed by a straight man. Some the humor is so misogynistic and so sophomoric. I guess that's why my teenaged sweetheart enjoys them. But I do like making my sweetheart happy, so I was glad to watch it with him. Oh, gosh, did I mention earlier that I have seen The Darkest Hour with Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill? I saw that before I went home for the holidays. It's probably not the best movie I've ever seen (I just don't think I'm a fan of the director's style), but Oldman is simply fantastic and seeing a movie about WWII is rather rousing right about now.

My family lives near Stan Hywet Hall, which is (according to their website) Akron’s first and largest National Historic Landmark, and is also the nation’s sixth largest historic home open to the public. Stan Hywet Hall was built between 1912-1915 for F.A. Seiberling and his family (Seiberling co-founded the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company). I always enjoy visiting Stan Hywet - it's lovely and so well-preserved. One of the things I usually hate about visiting is that photos aren't permitted in the manor house. Well, when you go to Stan Hywet for Deck the Halls, their Christmas celebration, you're allowed to take photos! Wahoo! I went a little nuts, getting pictures of all of the various trees in all of the various rooms. My family and I enjoyed touring the house, the conservatory and watching the light show in the gardens. We were luckily there on a warmish night. I also enjoyed getting my photo taken with Santa Claus, because...hello. Santa. I'll put some photos below.

I also made my parents drive me around neighborhoods so we could look at holiday lights. I just love to see the lights in small towns - they make me feel happy and festive. I'm grateful my parents indulge me. Another holiday outing was to a pop-up bar called That Christmas Bar. I went with an old pal from my long-gone community theater days. We had a terrific time - the bar was adorable, small and chock-full of holiday fun, and I loved catching up with my pal. There was Christmas music and Christmas movies playing on tvs and delicious Christmas cocktails. I had the Christmas Misery, which was gin, pomegranate juice, lime and something else. It was quite tasty and quite potent. I was maybe a little bit tipsy after having such fun. I would definitely want to go back.

New Year's Eve was spent quietly in my apartment, but the night before was delightful - I had a reunion with my Italy pals! We recreated all the dishes we learned to make last Thanksgiving (and they were still delicious!) and I think we tried to recreate all the wine we drank over ten days in one night. We got pretty close (eight bottles is a LOT - I had to go on the wagon for NYE) and I had a blast. I just love spending time with those fantastic people. We started ruminating on our next adventure - fingers crossed we can make it happen. I'm dying to see the world with them! May 2018 be filled with adventures, tasty cocktails and lots of lights. I'll try to report on it as faithfully as I can and hope you continue to join me.