STDOO- 005 Gail Graham

 I talk to Gail Graham, a portrait painter from London, this week.

You can visit her website here:

www.gailgraham.co.uk

Gail Graham

Latest Podcast Episode - Ralph Meyering Jr.

 This week, I talk to actor/writer Ralph Meyering Jr. He talks about his grandmother visiting him from beyond to help with his career and to get him to do some important work for her.

I'm podcasting, again.

 If you have known me for a long time, you'll remember when I tried to do a crafting podcast, maybe 10 years ago or so. I only did a couple of episodes before I got bored. Well, I'm at it again. I'm trying out 2 podcasting ideas, working to get the technical aspects taken care of.  The first podcast is called Stories to Dine Out On. I get people to tell me the stories they like to tell at dinner parties.

Here's episode 1:

And episode 2:

Fire! Fire!

 My house could have burned down yesterday. It didn't, but it could have. My cats could have been cooked inside. I could have been cooked inside. 

I was sitting doing some work on an audiobook edit when I heard some noises out on my front porch. I've got cats, and a handyman/gardener (Nacho) who potters around my yard, so hearing noises doesn't mean anything and I ignore them as long as they aren't vomiting cat or peeing-not-in-the-litter-box cat. I kept working. A few minutes later, the noise sounded more like an explosion and I finally looked up from my laptop. 

There is a moment when you see your front porch engulfed in flames that you doubt what you are really seeing. My front porch can't possibly be on fire. There is nothing out there to burn. Did someone throw a Molotov cocktail over my fence? Is Nacho having a barbeque? After a brief moment of disbelief, I moved Hot Lips off of my lap (she didn't notice anything was wrong), jumped up and ran outside, through my back/kitchen door. 

I had my phone with me and called 611 as I hurried, barefoot, to the garden hose on that side of the house. Yes, 611. Oops. I managed to dial 911 correctly while turning on the hose and getting to the porch. I was on hold with 911 while spraying back the flames, uncertain of what was burning, why it was burning, and if water was going to work. I ran right past my kitchen fire extinguisher, but didn't want to put the hose down to go back inside to get it. I just had to hope water would do it. There was a firetruck just a few minutes away, I was reassured.

A woman (was it my neighbor? I was too adrenaline-filled to notice) stopped by my gate to say she heard the explosion. I think I just said "Fire! The fire department is on the way!" and she left. I should have said, "The fire department is on the way. Can you stay out on the street to direct them here?" My house is on a corner and people almost universally fail to figure out where the walk-in gate is, instead parking on the cross street near my driveway. The firemen wouldn't be able to see me if they stopped by the gate on the wrong street. 

I just kept spraying the water, aiming it at smoke as the smoke appeared. The flames died down quickly, but not the smoke. Two large fire engines arrived. One parked on the wrong street near my parking gate. The other stopped in front of my house and the firemen just looked around, confused. The flames were gone, most of the smoke was gone, but I still needed help. I'm not a fire-fighting professional.

I waved my arms around while continuing to hose off the porch. They saw me and came over. One man took the hose away from me and I backed off to let them do their jobs. They grabbed rakes and started pulling the charred remains of vases, flowerpots, a trash can and other items away from beside the porch. 

Did I know how this happened? No. I just looked up from my work and saw flames. Was the burning stuff mine? Did I know what it was? No. It wasn't mine. It belonged to Nacho. I called him and he came running over. He was just at the other end of the block at the gas station. He had heard the explosion. 

 Nacho pushed his way through the crowd of firemen and got in the way. They asked him to back up.

After just a few minutes, the firemen declared that everything was fine. I had put the fire out and they didn't think I needed to worry about it reigniting. A boss-like fireman left briefly and returned with a tablet to make a report about the fire. I could get the report if I need to make an insurance claim. 

There wasn't a lot of damage. I don't think I'll make a claim. 

The fire started around 1:23 pm and I was outside with the hose by 1:31 pm. Usually, I'm not home at this time. I go get a drink at Panera around then, or go to TJ Maxx, or go to Albertsons. Some days I go visit friends or go to lunch. I was recording the audiobook on Tuesday and Thursday this week, not at home. But I was selling my car yesterday (Friday) and didn't know what time the new owner was coming to get it. I had decided to just buckle down and work, although the idea of putting a sign on the door that said, "Call me, I can be back in ten minutes" did cross my mind. If I hadn't been waiting for her, my house might have burned down. Is it good luck that I was here to stop the fire, or bad luck that there was a fire in the first place?

I smelled like smoke the rest of the day. I could have changed clothes and showered, but I didn't want to move away from the front room and window view, worried that the fire would start again. I kept checking my Ring camera all night, making sure everything was calm outside. I checked my Ring camera all day today when I finally went to the grocery store after deciding to not go there yesterday. Despite the surge of adrenaline, I managed to sleep last night. And I didn't dream about fires.

The Voice Lesson

 This is the latest episode of Lola is here. Our good friend Katherine Lench Meyering, who voices the Phantom Bride, Melanie Ravenswood at Disneyland Paris, guest stars as Lola's voice teacher in this episode.

Lola is Back!

We are more than half-way done releasing new episodes of the Lola LaRue Variety Show over on YouTube. We wrote an original song for each of the 5 episodes this series. It was a lot of work, but we are both really happy with how the episodes, so far, have turned out.

Here's one of the songs from the first new episode of the series. Diana agreed to let my love of The Pirates of Penzance and of Tom Lehrer serve as inspiration for this one.

Saturday, May 4, 2024. Heading home.

 I don't think I needed the alarm. I was pretty much packed from the night before - just needed to throw my pajamas in the suitcase and I was done.

We had tickets on the Heathrow Express back to the airport. They don't have a set time. A train leaves Paddington Station every 15 minutes. Our hotel was about ½ mile away from that station, but with heavy, full suitcases and carry-on bags, I wasn't going to complain about the Uber Cynthia summoned for us.

 The Uber dropped us off at the taxi area on the back of the station. Until now, we'd only gone through the pedestrian entrance on a different street. We had to take an elevator down one level from the street. The station on this side was unusually quiet. Luckily, there were signs on the floor leading you to either the Heathrow Express or the regular Tube trains, so we didn't struggle for more than a couple of minutes before figuring out where to go.

 We passed through the automatic gates that scanned our tickets and were between two trains. A man ran past us and hopped on the train to the left. We had first-class tickets, so I didn't want to just hop on a train without orienting myself, so we walked down the platform toward some workers. The train the man jumped on left while we were walking.

 I approached a worker, showing him my ticket and he said, "Why are you showing me your ticket? Just get on a train." Well, on the other end, at the start of the journey, I needed to show my ticket before getting on to the train in a first-class car. This guy didn't care what we did and was angry to be approached by someone. Ah, London. Thank you for bookending my vacation with angry workers who are resentful they have to do jobs.

 We got on the remaining train, in one of the first-class cars, and sat down. We started out alone in the car, but one man did hop on before the train departed. He sat a good distance away from us, which was good because he was coughing.

 After a quick train journey, we found ourselves back at the airport. I tried once again to check-in at one of the automatic kiosks, but was given a card to report to an agent instead of a boarding pass. Cynthia got her boarding passes. I was ushered through to the back-checking agents and they were able to print my boarding passes after informing me that I would have to go through customs and security in Dallas before continuing to Burbank. I don't know why I needed extra waring while my sister didn't, but whatever.

 The security line was a little bit different than in the US. There were tables where you could search through your carry-on bag before going through the scanners, to make sure you didn't forget any liquids or electronics. We didn’t stop here, since I think we both knew where our extra scan required items were in our bags and we could easily find and remove them.

 Even though in Burbank I didn't have to take my phone or iPad out of my bag, I had to in London. But I didn't have to take my shoes off. You only had to take your shoes off if you were asked to do so. I made it through the security scan with no problems. Cynthia was no so lucky. Her bag was flagged in the x-ray machine and she had to stand with an agent while he searched through her bag for whatever had looked suspicious. I sat and waited. It was a rattail comb in her bag that had looked like a knife. And she had too many liquids so they threw a couple of them away. 

We sat at our gate, and only had about 30 minutes left until the airplane would start to board. Good thing we did give ourselves the full 3 hours they suggested to get through the airport because apparently that wasn't an exaggeration. I got a tea at Starbucks and a Coke for Cynthia at a newsstand. We were in the second-to-last boarding group, so had to wait while watching almost everyone else get on the plane. Airlines - window seats should go first! I don't understand the stupid way that people are loaded onto planes.

 This time the flight was full. There were no empty middle seats. And this wasn't a redeye flight. We left London at 1:10 PM and I was scheduled to arrive in Burbank at around 9 PM.

 My vegetarian lunch this time was a little better - not vegan. It was also the same as the vegetarian option all of the passengers had, but I was given my tray early to make sure they didn't run out of that selection. It was paneer in curry with rice, a chocolate brownie, a bread roll and quinoa coleslaw. The snack later in the day was less appetizing - a toasted pastry filled with zucchini and marinara sauce. I only took a couple of bites of that one. Yuck. 

 

I watched three movies on this leg. The Beekeeper: terrible writing and acting, but not bad enough to turn off. Bullet Train: by the same guy who directed The Fall Guy. I liked it overall. Aaron Taylor-Johnson was very good and I would have preferred that his character not die, even though he was a bad guy. Brian Tyree Henry was also excellent. It was pretty good. I took a break and wrote up a lot of this travel memoir, even though my keyboard had died and I had to enter it on the little keyboard on the iPad screen. With just over 1 ½ hours remaining, I watched Relax, I'm From the Future because it fit the time constraints. It was ok, but had some confusing logic in it. Best not to think too much about it. It was short and not didn't require a lot of thought to watch.

 Back in the US, we had to go through customs at Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW). Luckily, the line for citizens was shorter than the line for people visiting the country, so we got through the customs line pretty fast. Nothing to declare!

 Then we had to go collect our suitcases and drop them off in a different location. It seemed stupid, but I guess it was just to make sure that there weren't unclaimed bags getting on plane transfers. I got an email that a lot of suitcases didn't make the flight, so to not freak out if our suitcases were there. Luckily, they both made it. I would have been surprised if they didn't considering how early we got to Heathrow.

 From dropping off our suitcases, we had to go back through a security line. This line was long. It was estimated to take 20 minutes from a place in the line that was still 15 minutes away from us. That's how they counted it as far as I could tell. They didn't just say, "From here, it is 35 minutes." Nope. Fifteen minutes from here to where it will be another 20 minutes. This is where it started to look like we might not make our connections. I was still optimistic, but things could go south.

 We finally got to the scanning area and this time, I was the one who got pulled aside for a bag search. I had packed a lot of tea in my carry-on, because it was heavy, and the tins looked suspicious. A TSA worker pulled all the tea out of my bag and swabbed the containers. He put the swab in a scanner and it set off an alarm! He had to call a supervisor over. My sister, worried she'd miss her connection, left me at security. I wasn't bothered. The supervisor and original TSA worker opened all of my unopened teas and said, as they looked into each one, "That's tea." They swabbed them one at a time and this time the alarm didn't go off. They offered to pack my bag for me, but I said I would do it.

 I packed my bag and found my gate. I then went into the toilet and removed my compression socks. I hate them! I only left them on this long because I knew I'd be taking my shoes off at DFW for the security line and didn't want to walk barefoot on the airport floor.

 I was getting email updates for both my flight and my sister's flight. Both flights were delayed and kept changing gates. My flight left at least an hour late, so worrying about the long security line was a waste of time. The delays were weather related. There were big storms all across the country. As a result, the flight to Burbank was bumpy to an uncomfortable degree. I was relieved when we landed safely. My friend who had been watching my cats picked me up and drove me home. All of my cats, except for Shio, came out to see me as soon as I got home. My house was just even messier than I left it. The cats knocked a couple of chairs over, but everything was fine.

 I had been up for close to 24 hours by then, and fell asleep pretty quickly. Glad to be home. My vacation this time was short enough, though, that I'm not swearing off traveling again like I did in 2014. The flights were brutal, but I could see doing it again under the right circumstances. The right circumstances might have to be saving up to fly business class, though.

 The end.

(The cookies from M&S that were delicious and beautiful.)

(Diva happy to have me home.)

 

(Flight path home.)