Closing in on the Holidays

We had a relatively quiet weekend but a busy week.  I received the rundown on my echocardiogram and it was excellent.  We discussed the two veins in my left leg that are superficial but they are unsightly and scare the heck out of me at times when they are “bulging.”  I always wonder if I have another blood clot.  So they ordered an ultrasound to see exactly what is what and said probably they will do the Venclose procedure on them which is a minimally invasive outpatient procedure that uses a small catheter that delivers heat, shrinking the vein.  Blood flow will naturally reroute to nearby healthy veins.  Or so they say.  But first, the ultrasound to determine if it is safe for me.  

We played Shanghai at the country club that evening and I came in second, losing out of winning by 1 point!  But I did get 1/3 of the money!  They have a new chef and the entire menu was available and the same food was much better than it had been.  

Thursday was a Forum work day!  I had to be at the Pavilion at 8 am.  Our main job is literally herding over 3,000 children to their seats for the Children’s Festival educational production.  Bus after bus brings them pouring in from all over the county.  We are given maps showing where each school is sitting.  The hardest thing is getting them to go to the end of the rows and sit in the next available seat.  They just keep going into the row so we had to go in the row behind and get all the seats filled so they could then start the next row.  

Then there are “where is the restroom, where is medical, where can I put our coolers wagons.”  I had to stand with two young boys outside the women’s restroom so the female teacher could go in by herself.  We just talked about their field trip for the few minutes.

Then there is the “switch.”  The groups in the Encore venue come to the tented pavilion and those that have just seen the program go there.  One group has had their lunch, the others were scheduled to eat in their seats upon arrival!  I don’t think we lost anybody.  The kids were very good about trash, we in our spot of section 101 had about a dozen huge bags collected and ready for custodians to pick up.  

In the past we would lead the schools to their buses.  Depending on where the buses were parked determined your spot.  But we were told the Pavilion volunteers were going to do this because in the past some teachers got “testy” about their need to leave right then!  The volunteers that deal with crowds all the time were better suited to handle this than we outside volunteers.  So we looked at each other, said “Let’s beat the buses” and headed to the garage for a quick trip home.

The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in the Woodlands is the most popular outdoor entertainment venue in the world, according to concert industry trade magazine Pollstar. The accolade comes after a busy summer during which the Pavilion hosted 38 shows and more than 268,000 fans.