Gluten-Free Failures

The first great tragedy of gluten-free living: my bottle of Bayer aspirin.

I called the Bayer customer service office and reached a representative who was nice and all.  Then she told me that Bayer aspirin products do not contain gluten, but they ARE manufactured in a facility that manufactures products that DO contain gluten, so there’s a slight possibility of cross-contamination.

“Okay,” I said to her, “Thank you, that’s all I needed to know.”

“Do you want to receive coupons?” she asked me.

“No…” I said, “I’m all set.”

“Are you sure?  It’s very easy,” she said.

“Well, thanks, but since I’m allergic to gluten, it wouldn’t make sense for me to buy products that are possibly cross-contaminated.  So no, thank you,” I explained.  I don’t know why I felt the need to explain myself.  It must have been some compulsive, Hermione-like trait.  At least I didn’t launch into a description of the Great Gluten Experiment 2009.

“But they’re NOT cross-contaminated,” she said, “I am required to tell you that they are manufactured in a facility that also manufactures products that contain gluten, but the aspirin doesn’t contain gluten, and it’s a very slim chance that they’re cross-contaminated.”

“Yes, but I’m allergic to gluten, and if there’s even a chance that they’re cross-contaminated, I don’t want to take it,” I said, now regretting that I hadn’t just said goodbye and hung up.

“But we’re held to very strict guidelines by the blah blah blah bureau and we follow those standards exactly,” she told me.

“That’s great,” I said, “thank you, but I just don’t want any coupons.  It wouldn’t make sense for me to receive them since I wouldn’t be buying the product.”

“Well, can I have your name and address for our records please?” She sounded a little miffed.

“No, I’d rather not,” I said, “Unless there are any other Bayer products that aren’t manufactured in a facility that processes medicines that contain gluten.”

“No, all Bayer aspirin products are manufactured in that facility,” she replied.

“Okay, thanks.  Bye now,” I went to hang up.

“You have a good day and thank you for calling Bayer Health Care Associates and we hope you appreciate our…” she said, talking faster and faster in an attempt to get it all in before I hung up.  I didn’t wait to hear the rest.

So there you have it: Bayer contains gluten, which means I can’t ease my aching back today.  C’est la vie.  I think I’ll live.

Why I Love Twitter

Twitter has its pros and cons, just like everything.  Sometimes I can’t stand to read another 140 characters of nothing.  Days like today make me glad I’m on Twitter.

Dull, mundane, dull, HOLY SHIT IT’S NANCY DREW.

I Have Flying Dreams

I’m one of those people who has flying dreams on a regular basis.  I like to fly in my dreams.  I always feel so weightless.  Do you have flying dreams?  And do they ever look like this:

Sorry about the blurriness, but holding a camera steady in a helicopter on a windy day can be a tricky task.  Seth arranged for us to have a private helicopter flight over Boston as a 5th anniversary surprise for me.  This will give my flying dreams a whole new definition.

A Peek Into the World of Backstage Theatre

I was into backstage theatre for about 5 years in high school and college.  My last show was called The Art of Dining by Tina Howe.  In it, a couple opens up a new restaurant, and we look at the weird things the diners do on the first night.  At the end, there’s some kind of half-naked orgy.  I’m a little fuzzy on the plot details, but I can remember the director clearly.

The director was a theatre professor named Betty.  She taught mostly dancing classes and choreography classes, and her shows always looked beautiful onstage.

I was assigned to do props for the show.  It was a show in a restaurant, so most of the props centered around glasses, plates, forks and food.  This was supposed to be my big break; I was a second-year college student working my way up the backstage theatre hierarchy.  This show would prove to the higher-ups whether or not I had the chops to make it.

Betty in particular was reserving judgement about me.  She didn’t know me the way she knew the upperclassmen, and so she came off kind of cold.  That wasn’t a problem.  What was a problem was her unwillingness to compromise on props matters that she clearly knew better about.  Betty wanted to make the theatre smell good.  She wanted to have the audience feel like they were walking into a restaurant when they came in to be seated, and insisted on having actual food cooking on set.  Now is a good time to mention that the show did not take place in a black box theatre like this:

but rather, a proscenium theatre like this:

Do you see the difference?  One is small and the acting takes place on the floor directly in front of the audience, with seating on three sides of the stage.  One is big, and the acting takes place on a raised stage that the audience only has one view of.

I’m sure you can guess why the idea of scenting the auditorium would be a problem — namely, having food cooking on the stage means that the stage will smell good, but the scent of the food won’t travel past the proscenium arch (the big curtains and front of the stage).  As an experienced director and theatre professional, Betty knew this.  I don’t know why she stuck with the idea, even after several rehearsals proved that the smell wouldn’t carry.

Doggedly, she insisted that we should have hot plates strategically placed around the auditorium with pots of onions and garlics simmering on top.  This would enhance the ambiance of the show.  It would also act as safety hazards in the aisles of the auditorium, and the fire inspector wouldn’t let it pass.  So we gave up the idea of hot plates, but humored Betty by having a pot of onions and garlic simmering on the stove onstage for an hour before the audience came in.  It was a pain in the ass, really, because we had to wire the stove for electricity and couldn’t use the junk stove we had in the props closet.  Details!  What was an extra $400 from the budget if it appeased Betty?

Betty eventually dropped the crusade for a good-smelling auditorium and moved on to the table settings.  “They had to look elegant and graceful,” she proclaimed.  Okay, we could do elegant and graceful.  We’d have to do elegant and graceful on small cafe tables, but we could manage it.  I was thinking something with a little color, like a fake floral arrangement.  It would show up nicely from the auditorium and add something to the tables, where the tablecloths, china, and glasses were all plain white or glass.

“I found these great glass swans,” Betty said one day before rehearsal, and plunked down a box of glass swan bud vases.  Each swan was about 8 inches tall.  They looked similar to this:

“Oh!  Um…okay….Did you want to fill them with colored water so they stand out?” I asked, thinking that maybe we could put a big, bright flower in the hole on each swan’s back — something, ANYTHING to make them visible from the audience’s perspective.

“No, I think they’ll look great just as is,” said Betty said, “They bring the perfect touch to the tables.”

I set a swan down on each cafe table, amid the two wine glasses and two water glasses already placed on the tables.  As I expected, they added to the glass clutter, and when I stepped back just ten feet, I couldn’t distinguish between the swans and wineglasses.  How would the audience know what they were looking at?

“Perfect!” Betty exclaimed, and the matter was decided.  She wouldn’t hear any arguments against the glass swans, and didn’t want to change a thing about the tables.  Never mind that the restaurant was called “The Carousel,” and swans didn’t fit into the theme.  THE SWANS WERE PERFECT.

After the show finished its final performance, Betty presented me with a glass swan as a keepsake (as though I would want to cherish it forever).  The next day, I changed majors from Theatre to English.  A week later, the swan fell off the back of my dresser and shattered.  Aww.

You know that quote from the movie Center Stage, where the teacher Juliette Simone is telling Eva Rodriguez that Jonathon (the ballet school director) is an arrogant asshole?  But you’d be hard-pressed to find a director who isn’t?  That’s not just good script-writing; it’s the truth.  And that, my friends, is why I no longer work in theatre.

Image sources: black-box theatre, proscenium theatre, glass swan.

Nancy Drew, Where are you?

Is this not the most beautiful sight you’ve ever seen?  Last night, Seth and I braved the (admittedly, very little) snow and went to the used book store to look for a book to give away on my other blog.  We didn’t find a book to give away, but we did find the old book section.

The old books shared a cold back room with a wall of textbooks — most of which hadn’t seen the light of day since the 1970s.  A young father with two young boys searched for Java programming to no avail.  They ignored me as I knelt on the concrete floor and pulled out book after book, admiring the gold leaf covers, broken spines and soft pages that are so characteristic of well-worn books.

Amid the dog-eared corners and faded titles of Kipling’s poems and The Pilgrim’s Progress, I came across this Nancy Drew.  Oh Nancy, I love you.  You see, I collect first, second and third edition Nancy Drew books.  Haven’t I mentioned this before?  This Case of the Whispering Statue is a second edition, characterized by the orange silhouette and hard blue covers — and now it’s mine.

I love old books.  I love getting lost in prose that hasn’t been used for 80 years.  Nancy Drew provides a window into the 1930s, when young girls were starting to break out the mold that the Victorian Era provided them.  And now, especially, it’s interesting to see what an middle-class affluent family looked like at a time when the economy was faltering.  River Heights never seemed to be struck  by any hardship — except for a surprising abundance of petty criminals, that is.

If you’re interested, but can’t get into a Nancy Drew, I recommend renting the movie.  It captures the overall spirit of the books and Nancy, but updates it a bit for a modern audience.  That part in the beginning, where Nancy singlehandedly catches two criminals and the police officers praise her?  That’s just how it was in the books.