Tootsie Yr2: STL part 1
Random things that I forgot to mention from last week:
There was a restaurant down the street that made an entire TOOTSIE-themed menu! How cool is that!
A few people tried some dishes and said they were delicious.
I also uploaded a recording that I made of myself playing some circus music.
This is part of my portfolio that I send out when auditioning and such, but I felt it might be interesting for people to kind of visualize how the cuts, vamps, and jumps in the music work according to what's happening on the arena floor, and in each act. So I added little captions explaining what's happening or who's performing (and why they are awesome)
TikTok by @tromboneontour
And then a little sad news: I've decided to let go of my nursing home data entry job for the remainder of the tour.
There are two reasons.
Reason One is that for the entire two weeks in Cincinnati I was unable to do my work for more than a few minutes at a time. I spent HOURS on the phone with tech support every day for the first EIGHT DAYS of our stay, wiping my caches and running virus/malware/disk scans, reinstalling VPN and support software, and fighting with the hotel front desk to the point where an engineer had to come up and see for himself that internet truly was not working in my room, even for him, and then I ended up switching rooms at 1am which gave me a poor connection but STILL did not resolve the core issue.
Reason Two was that according to hotel staff I was the only one experiencing this issue, and after one of the many scans and updates things did sort-of go back to normal, which tells me that in addition to the poor internet I could have had a virus or something that compromised the information on my machine. I'm talking about a nursing home resident personal information. That is NOT OK. I have done everything that I can to protect the sensitive data that I work with as I travel, but the bottom line is that every week (and sometimes every few days) we are in a different city at a hotel with a different IP address and different security protocols, and ultimately ALWAYS on a public network.
This whole ordeal was incredibly stressful, demeaning, and ultimately did not resolve the problem, so I got no work done for two weeks. This is not the first time that this has happened, just the longest period of it. It's not fair to the employer, and it's become way too much stress for me to struggle with on top of travel and looking for full time post-tour work.
I've sent a letter asking to either be "put on hold" until June if for some reason they still want to keep me on, or if not, to consider it my two weeks notice and big thanks for letting me work with them this far. I feel sad, it's not how I wanted this to end, but we will see what happens.
-------------------------------------------------------
On Monday we had an uneventful travel day, which is the best kind of travel day!
We got to the hotel as scheduled. This hotel is one of those "artsy" ones with a "theme", which is "art", and so the "entryway" is an "art gallery". Lol.
In addition to paintings on the wall, there was a functional piece of art involving little doors that you could open to reveal misc abstract artistic statements (I suppose?). I've seen other folks playing with it and will take my turn with it eventually :)
Each floor of the hotel also has color-themed rooms, which is kinda cool.
The colors are red, yellow, green, and blue.
It looks like one of us is staying in rooms of every color except blue (or the blue room ppl ain't sharing haha)
The blue image is stock from the hotel's website.
The red room is the room I initially had, but unfortunately there was food in the fridge and something nasty in the trash, so I was quickly relocated to a smaller room that, ironically, has exactly the same layout as the room I had in Cincinnati. Once again there is limited counter space, so I'll be using the ironing board as a table. The ironing board is NOT red, if you were wondering ;)
After getting settled in I walked to the nearest grocery which was called Fresh Thyme Market.
Located in an old foundry near a college, I figured it had to be some hipster co-op or something.
But once I saw the logo I knew exactly what this was.
Does it look familiar to you? When we were in Grand Rapids earlier this year, there was a grocery called Bridge Street Market.
Which turned out to be a Meijer in disguise as a hipster co-op:
That's right, Fresh Thyme is another disguised Meijer.
So I was not surprised to see Meijer-branded products on the shelves.
It was a bit pricey, but the quality was good and they had a mix of everyday products and unique local finds.
I got some interesting things to try which I'll detail later.
Back at the hotel I unpacked and spent the rest of the night resting.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, I woke up too early because Central Time.
I used a laundry service because I am feeling flustered and stressed this week, and really wanted to use today for cooking and job applications. Once the laundry was sent off I fired up the Itaki and made the dried herb and tomato risotto that I'd picked up at Jungle Jim's, cooking it with chicken broth and cracked black pepper. It turned out fantastic, creamy and delicious despite the lack of cheese.
Then I did two tilapia filets, which cooked up perfectly in just 15 minutes and were flaky and tasty with the risotto and some green beans.
Then it was job applications for a while, and chores like finding a dry cleaners nearby for my coat, working on Foodie Finds for upcoming cities, trying to find a PCP back in Florida, and making plans with my friend Elliana for Wednesday.
The Fabulous Fox here in STL is right next to our hotel, so it was a short walk to get backstage.
This theatre is amazing.
(stock image)
These photos don't do it justice...there is so much going on. So much filigree, decor, history, etc.
Not to mention every square inch of the backstage is covered in signatures and wall tags from both famous and unknown bands, shows, and artists.
We are getting a tour of the entire theatre next Thursday, so I'm going to hold off on more pictures until then.
I'm very excited to learn more about this historic and incredibly beautiful theatre!
And, I'm going to be recording some portfolio materials here.
The sound isn't "the best" for that sort of thing, it's a big gaping space that feels kind of like playing in a barn.
But the timing seems right.
Anyway, our opening night show went well I think. Good crowd, and it was good to get used to the space.
---------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, adventures with my friend Elliana!
Here she is:
(photo from NPR)
Elliana is circus-born; that is, she was one of those children literally born into the circus, on the road, and made her stage premiere before the age of three, riding into the ring on the back of an elephant. When I worked for Ringling, she was a Human Cannonball (that should tell you something about her bravery levels!) and now she's a circus arts instructor for several facilities here in St. Louis.
She expressed interest in having a foodie adventure together, so off we went to The Foundry Bakery!
The three of us (Elliana, her bf and myself) got there right as they opened, and let me tell you, they were making the bread FRESH.
Everybody was in the bakery side helping to bake.
The bread for the day in one of the ovens. Staff reassured us that it would be out on the shelves in about ten minutes.
We chatted as we waited, the smell of hot fresh bread and pastries filling the small cafe. What a glorious thing!
Staff members did a sort of relay with little wicker trays full of buns and breads, bringing them out hot from the oven and setting them on the shelves next to their labels, steaming in their open-ended bags.
There were many kinds to choose from! Sweet pineapple milk buns, baked cronuts, miso chocolate walnut cookies, the ubiquitous red bean buns. We waited patiently for the breads that we wanted. Elliana got a pineapple bun, some lavender yuzu cookies to take home, an egg tart, and a loaf of walnut bread.
I got an egg tart as well. These are "pastel de nata", a pastry originating in Portugal.
It's a puff pastry shell filled with rich egg custard, and bruleed on top.
Cross-section to show the creamy decadent custard, cooked all the way through and still steaming hot.
Believe it or not these are made with plain whole milk, not cream or condensed milk (that's GREAT news for lactose-intolerant me!)
Along with our treats we enjoyed some bubble tea, which I don't normally get but they had lots of dairy-free options.
I had light oolong with oat milk and grass jelly, it was refreshing alongside the rich tart.
I also picked up a loaf of bread for the week, called "Umami Burst": rustic sourdough with miso, shiitake mushrooms, seaweed, and green onion. It was still steaming and smelled earthy and amazing.
The greatest thing about this bakery was that the owners, a husband and wife team, were right there hands-on alongside their staff. Manning the ovens, manning the cash register, and mixing bubble teas. They were doing EVERYTHING. It was a beautiful thing, and made me want to work here!
From there we went to Olive Supermarket, a Chinese grocery.
Elliana loves to explore these places as much as I do, so we had fun going up and down each aisle.
I've been to a LOT of Asian and international groceries, yet somehow I always manage to be surprised by new products that I've never seen before. Today there were Matcha and Coconut flavored Ramune sodas!
Some other fun products, both new and familiar.
I exercised as much restraint as I could but still ended up with a pretty decent haul.
Pictured here are
- "Cuttlefish egg roll with ink" (I think it's actually a cracker that is flavored like a cuttlefish egg roll)
- “Snowflake crisp” cranberry treat
- Dried bean curd variety pack
- Shelf stable tea eggs (I was so excited to see these!)
- Black sesame porridge (very intrigued!)
- Black soybean tteokbokki
- Citrus water with a real kumquat inside
- Cucumber sparkling water
- Sunyeam almond oat beverage
- Morinaga caramel peanut candy (spoiler: I grabbed these at checkout on a whim, turns out they're pure condensed milk so I won't be eating them. I did taste one though and they are delicious, it's basically a peanut caramel.)
Food reviews to come!
Throughout the store Elliana had been hinting at visiting another bakery, and I absolutely wasn't going to say no!
So from here we went to Wei Hong.
Any time you walk into a bakery and see steamed buns and banana-wrapped stick rice, you know it's a GOOD place!
Not to mention the bakery case! It was fully of fluffy sweet and savory treats like bean buns, coconut cream rolls, pork floss rolls, and BBQ buns.
There were also some Peking ducks hanging near the register, and a few other meat offerings.
I argued with myself about what to get (Elliana and her bf just watched and laughed, they come here all the time) and finally settled on a pork BBQ bun and half a Peking duck. The duck was expensive...but that's why I've never had Peking duck before!
A young man came out and chopped the duck up with a big butcher knife, cutting through bone and meat and layering the pieces nicely in a container with some sauce.
Thus ended our foodie adventure! We hugged and parted ways for now.
Back at the hotel I put my exciting food finds away and gave the duck a try. It was salty and sweet, the skin was not as crunchy as I expected but the flavor was amazing and I can see why duck cooked this way is so prized. I'll definitely enjoy eating this for the rest of the week!
I tried to look up nutrition info for my other food items as well, and think I got some pretty good estimates so I can do my calorie counting.
At the theatre, Elliana came to say hello at the edge of the pit :)
We had a good show. It was our 400th! A company photo was taken which hasn't been shared yet, I'll put it up in the next post.
Paul (our drummer) helped me to set up some recording equipment, so I messed around with that throughout the show and will be interested to see how my footage and audio came out.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It's Thursday morning, and I just finished a podcast interview with Heidi Herriott for her "Animal Tales" podcast.
She interviews animal specialists, or just people like me with experience alongside animals, to try and get different perspectives on animal care, welfare, husbandry, etc. The interview was fun and engaging, so hopefully it will be a helpful addition to her content.
I got up very early for that, so now I'm going to take a look at my footage from last night and make notes on any changes for the next recording. Then I hope to check out a nearby Goodwill, pick up a jug of water and some oatmeal from the grocery, and enjoy some of my tasty Asian treats for lunch and dinner!
The plan for Friday is to eat at Fountain on Locust before watching Elliana perform at City Museum.
Saturday and Sunday, no plans because they're two show days.
Monday is a Golden Day, so I'd like to visit the art museum and adjacent park, then have lunch in Little Italy/The Hill.
There was a restaurant down the street that made an entire TOOTSIE-themed menu! How cool is that!
A few people tried some dishes and said they were delicious.
I also uploaded a recording that I made of myself playing some circus music.
This is part of my portfolio that I send out when auditioning and such, but I felt it might be interesting for people to kind of visualize how the cuts, vamps, and jumps in the music work according to what's happening on the arena floor, and in each act. So I added little captions explaining what's happening or who's performing (and why they are awesome)
TikTok by @tromboneontour
And then a little sad news: I've decided to let go of my nursing home data entry job for the remainder of the tour.
There are two reasons.
Reason One is that for the entire two weeks in Cincinnati I was unable to do my work for more than a few minutes at a time. I spent HOURS on the phone with tech support every day for the first EIGHT DAYS of our stay, wiping my caches and running virus/malware/disk scans, reinstalling VPN and support software, and fighting with the hotel front desk to the point where an engineer had to come up and see for himself that internet truly was not working in my room, even for him, and then I ended up switching rooms at 1am which gave me a poor connection but STILL did not resolve the core issue.
Reason Two was that according to hotel staff I was the only one experiencing this issue, and after one of the many scans and updates things did sort-of go back to normal, which tells me that in addition to the poor internet I could have had a virus or something that compromised the information on my machine. I'm talking about a nursing home resident personal information. That is NOT OK. I have done everything that I can to protect the sensitive data that I work with as I travel, but the bottom line is that every week (and sometimes every few days) we are in a different city at a hotel with a different IP address and different security protocols, and ultimately ALWAYS on a public network.
This whole ordeal was incredibly stressful, demeaning, and ultimately did not resolve the problem, so I got no work done for two weeks. This is not the first time that this has happened, just the longest period of it. It's not fair to the employer, and it's become way too much stress for me to struggle with on top of travel and looking for full time post-tour work.
I've sent a letter asking to either be "put on hold" until June if for some reason they still want to keep me on, or if not, to consider it my two weeks notice and big thanks for letting me work with them this far. I feel sad, it's not how I wanted this to end, but we will see what happens.
-------------------------------------------------------
On Monday we had an uneventful travel day, which is the best kind of travel day!
We got to the hotel as scheduled. This hotel is one of those "artsy" ones with a "theme", which is "art", and so the "entryway" is an "art gallery". Lol.
In addition to paintings on the wall, there was a functional piece of art involving little doors that you could open to reveal misc abstract artistic statements (I suppose?). I've seen other folks playing with it and will take my turn with it eventually :)
Each floor of the hotel also has color-themed rooms, which is kinda cool.
The colors are red, yellow, green, and blue.
It looks like one of us is staying in rooms of every color except blue (or the blue room ppl ain't sharing haha)
The blue image is stock from the hotel's website.
The red room is the room I initially had, but unfortunately there was food in the fridge and something nasty in the trash, so I was quickly relocated to a smaller room that, ironically, has exactly the same layout as the room I had in Cincinnati. Once again there is limited counter space, so I'll be using the ironing board as a table. The ironing board is NOT red, if you were wondering ;)
After getting settled in I walked to the nearest grocery which was called Fresh Thyme Market.
Located in an old foundry near a college, I figured it had to be some hipster co-op or something.
But once I saw the logo I knew exactly what this was.
Does it look familiar to you? When we were in Grand Rapids earlier this year, there was a grocery called Bridge Street Market.
Which turned out to be a Meijer in disguise as a hipster co-op:
That's right, Fresh Thyme is another disguised Meijer.
So I was not surprised to see Meijer-branded products on the shelves.
It was a bit pricey, but the quality was good and they had a mix of everyday products and unique local finds.
I got some interesting things to try which I'll detail later.
Back at the hotel I unpacked and spent the rest of the night resting.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, I woke up too early because Central Time.
I used a laundry service because I am feeling flustered and stressed this week, and really wanted to use today for cooking and job applications. Once the laundry was sent off I fired up the Itaki and made the dried herb and tomato risotto that I'd picked up at Jungle Jim's, cooking it with chicken broth and cracked black pepper. It turned out fantastic, creamy and delicious despite the lack of cheese.
Then I did two tilapia filets, which cooked up perfectly in just 15 minutes and were flaky and tasty with the risotto and some green beans.
Then it was job applications for a while, and chores like finding a dry cleaners nearby for my coat, working on Foodie Finds for upcoming cities, trying to find a PCP back in Florida, and making plans with my friend Elliana for Wednesday.
The Fabulous Fox here in STL is right next to our hotel, so it was a short walk to get backstage.
This theatre is amazing.
(stock image)
These photos don't do it justice...there is so much going on. So much filigree, decor, history, etc.
Not to mention every square inch of the backstage is covered in signatures and wall tags from both famous and unknown bands, shows, and artists.
We are getting a tour of the entire theatre next Thursday, so I'm going to hold off on more pictures until then.
I'm very excited to learn more about this historic and incredibly beautiful theatre!
And, I'm going to be recording some portfolio materials here.
The sound isn't "the best" for that sort of thing, it's a big gaping space that feels kind of like playing in a barn.
But the timing seems right.
Anyway, our opening night show went well I think. Good crowd, and it was good to get used to the space.
---------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, adventures with my friend Elliana!
Here she is:
(photo from NPR)
Elliana is circus-born; that is, she was one of those children literally born into the circus, on the road, and made her stage premiere before the age of three, riding into the ring on the back of an elephant. When I worked for Ringling, she was a Human Cannonball (that should tell you something about her bravery levels!) and now she's a circus arts instructor for several facilities here in St. Louis.
She expressed interest in having a foodie adventure together, so off we went to The Foundry Bakery!
The three of us (Elliana, her bf and myself) got there right as they opened, and let me tell you, they were making the bread FRESH.
Everybody was in the bakery side helping to bake.
The bread for the day in one of the ovens. Staff reassured us that it would be out on the shelves in about ten minutes.
We chatted as we waited, the smell of hot fresh bread and pastries filling the small cafe. What a glorious thing!
Staff members did a sort of relay with little wicker trays full of buns and breads, bringing them out hot from the oven and setting them on the shelves next to their labels, steaming in their open-ended bags.
There were many kinds to choose from! Sweet pineapple milk buns, baked cronuts, miso chocolate walnut cookies, the ubiquitous red bean buns. We waited patiently for the breads that we wanted. Elliana got a pineapple bun, some lavender yuzu cookies to take home, an egg tart, and a loaf of walnut bread.
I got an egg tart as well. These are "pastel de nata", a pastry originating in Portugal.
It's a puff pastry shell filled with rich egg custard, and bruleed on top.
Cross-section to show the creamy decadent custard, cooked all the way through and still steaming hot.
Believe it or not these are made with plain whole milk, not cream or condensed milk (that's GREAT news for lactose-intolerant me!)
Along with our treats we enjoyed some bubble tea, which I don't normally get but they had lots of dairy-free options.
I had light oolong with oat milk and grass jelly, it was refreshing alongside the rich tart.
I also picked up a loaf of bread for the week, called "Umami Burst": rustic sourdough with miso, shiitake mushrooms, seaweed, and green onion. It was still steaming and smelled earthy and amazing.
The greatest thing about this bakery was that the owners, a husband and wife team, were right there hands-on alongside their staff. Manning the ovens, manning the cash register, and mixing bubble teas. They were doing EVERYTHING. It was a beautiful thing, and made me want to work here!
From there we went to Olive Supermarket, a Chinese grocery.
Elliana loves to explore these places as much as I do, so we had fun going up and down each aisle.
I've been to a LOT of Asian and international groceries, yet somehow I always manage to be surprised by new products that I've never seen before. Today there were Matcha and Coconut flavored Ramune sodas!
Some other fun products, both new and familiar.
I exercised as much restraint as I could but still ended up with a pretty decent haul.
Pictured here are
- "Cuttlefish egg roll with ink" (I think it's actually a cracker that is flavored like a cuttlefish egg roll)
- “Snowflake crisp” cranberry treat
- Dried bean curd variety pack
- Shelf stable tea eggs (I was so excited to see these!)
- Black sesame porridge (very intrigued!)
- Black soybean tteokbokki
- Citrus water with a real kumquat inside
- Cucumber sparkling water
- Sunyeam almond oat beverage
- Morinaga caramel peanut candy (spoiler: I grabbed these at checkout on a whim, turns out they're pure condensed milk so I won't be eating them. I did taste one though and they are delicious, it's basically a peanut caramel.)
Food reviews to come!
Throughout the store Elliana had been hinting at visiting another bakery, and I absolutely wasn't going to say no!
So from here we went to Wei Hong.
Any time you walk into a bakery and see steamed buns and banana-wrapped stick rice, you know it's a GOOD place!
Not to mention the bakery case! It was fully of fluffy sweet and savory treats like bean buns, coconut cream rolls, pork floss rolls, and BBQ buns.
There were also some Peking ducks hanging near the register, and a few other meat offerings.
I argued with myself about what to get (Elliana and her bf just watched and laughed, they come here all the time) and finally settled on a pork BBQ bun and half a Peking duck. The duck was expensive...but that's why I've never had Peking duck before!
A young man came out and chopped the duck up with a big butcher knife, cutting through bone and meat and layering the pieces nicely in a container with some sauce.
Thus ended our foodie adventure! We hugged and parted ways for now.
Back at the hotel I put my exciting food finds away and gave the duck a try. It was salty and sweet, the skin was not as crunchy as I expected but the flavor was amazing and I can see why duck cooked this way is so prized. I'll definitely enjoy eating this for the rest of the week!
I tried to look up nutrition info for my other food items as well, and think I got some pretty good estimates so I can do my calorie counting.
At the theatre, Elliana came to say hello at the edge of the pit :)
We had a good show. It was our 400th! A company photo was taken which hasn't been shared yet, I'll put it up in the next post.
Paul (our drummer) helped me to set up some recording equipment, so I messed around with that throughout the show and will be interested to see how my footage and audio came out.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It's Thursday morning, and I just finished a podcast interview with Heidi Herriott for her "Animal Tales" podcast.
She interviews animal specialists, or just people like me with experience alongside animals, to try and get different perspectives on animal care, welfare, husbandry, etc. The interview was fun and engaging, so hopefully it will be a helpful addition to her content.
I got up very early for that, so now I'm going to take a look at my footage from last night and make notes on any changes for the next recording. Then I hope to check out a nearby Goodwill, pick up a jug of water and some oatmeal from the grocery, and enjoy some of my tasty Asian treats for lunch and dinner!
The plan for Friday is to eat at Fountain on Locust before watching Elliana perform at City Museum.
Saturday and Sunday, no plans because they're two show days.
Monday is a Golden Day, so I'd like to visit the art museum and adjacent park, then have lunch in Little Italy/The Hill.