Life in Rice Lake, WI: Wicked!

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Wicked!

Last week I was in Herold/Alma on Thursday night, my niece and I drove into Minneapolis to see the musical Wicked. It was showing at the Orpheum Theater, and just going there is really something and the show was outstanding. I drove to Alma on Thursday, and met Lora after she worked half of the day and then we headed for Minneapolis.

We had planned to eat at a nice restaurant called Crave. It is just across the street from the Orpheum theater and had an interesting menu, including Sushi.

Our drive into Minneapolis (Lora at the wheel thankfully) went a little faster than planned, we found a good parking spot quickly as well, so we had plenty of time before the show.

We decided to have a beer at The Rock Bottom Brewery before going upstairs to dinner.

Lora and Wanda before Wicked

We found a great place to sit at the end of the bar. Our bartender, Brendan, was very friendly and entertaining and put on a good show while mixing drinks.

Eventually, he convinced us to look at menus and we decided we were having fun right there so would eat there too.

Along the way he signed us up for the loyalty card for RBB and in the end we ate and drank for much less than what our tip would have been upstairs!

And we had lots of fun.

We even told our bartender not to let us miss the show as we were really enjoying the beer and visiting.

Lora and Wanda at the Orpheum Theater

It was exciting getting to the theater.

Lora had reserved our seats and they were prefect!

I was quite taken by the theater and started snapping a few photos with my phone.

It has been restored back to its original beauty.

Very stunning.

It wasn't long before the usher came and scolded me. No photos in the theater! Ooops.

I knew better than to shoot during the performance but it didn't really dawn on me that I was breaking any rules. So, my apologizes and thanks to The Orpheum for these pics.

The Wicked performance was outstanding.

I loved the story-line, which I didn't know before the show, and the music was amazing.

Lora had scoped out our seats and they were just right. We had a speedy access to the powder room for intermission, which meant we were back in our seats while many women were still standing in line when the show resumed! These are important things to make for a fun evening at the theater...in my opinion.

The drive home after the show went fine, but of course we were tired, it was raining and both of us (probably especially Lora) were very glad to pull into the driveway at about 1am.

It was a short night of sleep for Lora who had to work on Friday.

I loved the play and spending time with Lora.

I can't wait to go again.

After visiting with Kris and Anders over coffee Friday morning before they headed off to work and school, I met Roche's Uncle Dale in Winona, MN for lunch.

He decided that since it was his sister Betty's birthday that day, she would have been 91, and since Betty had liked pizza, we should go for pizza buffet at Godfathers Pizza. It was very good food and quite a nice view of the river from there as well. It was cloudy and a little rainy, but I still liked the view. Dale and I had a very nice chat over pizza.

After lunch we ran some errands.

Dale had his bingo winnings in quarters and cashed that in at that bank. Then we tried to find him a cardigan sweater at Penny's but we didn't find one. We also drove out to the house where he and Lois had lived. The land there is being purchased by a business that is offloading containers from rail cars onto semis, and according to Dale it looks a lot different there now. He's glad he's not living there anymore. When I took Dale back to Watkins we had a nice chat in his apartment. He showed me some magnifiers that he got from the Blind Society, and it looks like those really help him with his reading. He also has a tape player from that group and he gets books on tape to listen to. He said he is on his third or fourth book and enjoys listening to those, when he finishes a book, he sends the tape back and they send him a new one. Dale is working out 30 minutes everyday in the gym there. He also walks the 3 flights of steps up to his apartment. He said he thinks he is in better shape now than he was 5 years ago. (I wish I could say the same!) I really enjoyed our visit. I didn't know how Dale and Lois met nor did I know that Lois had sent him a "Dear John" letter when they dated the first time. We had a nice afternoon and I look forward to my next visit to Herold and will plan to include a visit with Dale. I didn't get a photo of us at lunch, we got too busy talking and I forgot, but I'll do that next time. He talked about all the visitors he has had this summer/fall and he sure enjoys that. Dale said he likes it there at Watkins and feels safe there, even though the pizza that they serve just isn't good. I'll be sure to take him out for pizza again next time I get down there!