The Clone Machine

I want a clone machine. I don't want one of those ,machines which clone yourself as a baby so you can watch your self grow up, or clone your dead dog so you can have him again, I just want to duplicate myself when I need to be in two places at the same time. This week it's be in four places at the same time. Where's Gene Roddenberry when I need him?

Normally it's not a problem. I set up my reviewing schedule at the start of the year and there are rarely conflicts.

Right now, however, the touring company of Phantom of the Opera, which would normally open on Wednesday, is coming to Sacramento. But for some reason they've decided to open it on Friday instead, which is the same day that the Acme show, the one I've been doing all the feature article stuff for also opens. There is no publication on Saturday and the Acme show is only one weekend long, so it has to be reviewed on Friday for the review to run on Sunday. Besides, my heart is in this production and I was looking forward to seeing it.

THEN along comes the university which is also opening a show this weekend. That means there are THREE shows I'm supposed to review the same night, one of which I could possibly review on Saturday (since the show runs two weeks), but we had planned to go see Brianna on Saturday.

Making this all much more complicated is that there are a couple of people who substitute for me when I can't review a show, but one of those people is the guy who is directing the Acme show, which means he can't review that show and isn't available to review either of the other two shows either.

With a lot of phone calls and e-mails we finally decided that I'll review the Acme show, while someone does the University show and the touring company decided I can come to Phantom of the Opera on Tuesday. That does mean that if we drive to Santa Barbara we'll have one whole day to spend there, two if we leave to return home at the crack of dawn on Tuesday. Sigh.

But it's worth it. Laurel, who has been wonderful about sending baby photos sent this one of Uncle Norm's first meeting with his great-niece and that makes 16 hours of driving for 1 to 1-1/2 days there all worthwhile.

At least the three shows I have to review this weekend are all on different days. I do Measure for Measure at the university on Friday, A Number on the riverboat in Old Sacramento on Saturday, and Streetcar Named Desire in Woodland on Sunday.

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Now....remember my camera?

No, not this one...this is the newest model of the Panasonic Lumix TZ series, which was released in January. Mine was a TZ3, this is a TZ5 and has more bells and whistles and features than the TZ3 and there is an active discussion group on DPreview.com which looks like it will be very inspiring and informative.

Well, miracle of miracles, the reimbursement check from the rest home arrived today. They seem to have covered everything that was stolen. I thought that it was a little tacky to just send the check with no note of apology, but heck, I'll take the money.

I found the camera at a good sale price on Amazon, and it came with free shipping. So I've ordered it and by this time next week (I hope), I'll have my camera, or a reasonable (better) facimile back again. This one apparently takes better video than the TZ3 did, too, which should be fun to experiment with.

In a way, this is like cloning too...My "old" (all of 3 months old) camera has been cloned into a better model.