3.29.02

job-related unrest is making me antsy and very very boring. back soon.

3.26.02 - boise, id

today: wyoming, utah, idaho. 753 miles. time to stop traveling. it's warm here, in a way that makes me believe that spring will actually come after all - the farmland i drove through today is starting to turn hazy green, and the fields were full of baby animals. there's a special bitter cold reserved for east coast winters that you don't find in the dry desert air around boise.

am hanging out with the family this week - everyone is either on spring break, between jobs, or taking vacation time, so the house is filled with the happy chaos that always characterizes family gatherings. the plan is to drive up to sun valley tomorrow and ski, however, i still haven't decided whether i'm going to chicken out. i haven't skiied since i was injured two years ago, but so far i've been able to put off the decision by being too busy/injured to really consider skiing again. i don't really feel like looking the whole ugly mess in the face tomorrow. maybe i'll hide in the lodge and blame the weather.

3.25.05 - cheyenne, wy

today: iowa, nebraska, wyoming. 738 miles. saw: 3 wild turkeys, about 10,000 blue heron, a herd of donkeys, 1 camel (the one-hump variety), and 0 curves in the road. nebraska isn't a very exciting state. had an 8 am breakfast date with paul (in the two years that we dated i don't think i ever saw paul awake at 8 in the morning, so i'm honored that he was willing to meet me that early). tonight i am in a motel near the train tracks; every time a train whistles, zeke runs to the window and peeks under the curtain at the train rolling by.

3.24.02 - iowa city, ia

today: new york, pennsylvania, ohio, indiana, illinois, iowa. 853 miles, 3 tanks of gas, 1 quart of oil. zeke slept in my lap for most of 12 hours, except when he tried to use the litter box, bouncing along at 70 miles an hour, which was hysterically funny. ate a chicken sandwich at Country Kitchen that i was convinced has poisoned me 10 minutes later, but it turned out that i was just paranoid. dido cd got stuck in my cd player for the first four hours of the trip, which was a rough start to the day, but retrieval efforts were successful in the end. i'm in a motel in iowa city tonight. i can hear the roar of the freeway though the double-pane glass, but this place 1) takes pets, 2) has a pool and 3) allows me to dial out on my laptop, all for the bargain price of $39.95 so i really can't complain.

3.23.02 - the last night in buffalo

the last night in buffalo. haven't been posting because i can't seem to access the blogger page via my isp and haven't had time to really wonder why that is. tonight i'm just posting brute-force style, by editing the index page that blogger usually writes for me and ftping it back to my server. not that you should be terribly interested in the mechanics of how i post to slithy tove. haven't had much to write, anyway. my life has been filled with the mundane details of packing, saying goodbye, returning borrowed items, finding new homes for the stuff that won't fit into my car. zeke is openly traumatized by all the change and movement; he spent large parts of the day hiding underneath the papisans. inwardly i feel equally traumatized; if i had the option of hiding under the furniture until this is all over i probably would do so as well. i can't figure out why moving is so psychologically difficult. i mean, i put all my stuff in boxes, mail them off to my next home, clean the apartment, put zeke in the car and we go. this time i'm even headed back to my hometown for the summer, so it's not like i'm headed out into the great unknown or something. but something about the process just makes me tense and anxious on a very subconscious level. somewhere during college i adopted a rather unhealthy coping strategy in which i'm not longer aware on an intellectual level that i'm experiencing stress, but rather i internalize it, express it through my body, and only realized that i must be stressed out when my stomach starts acting up or my shoulders begin to ache from being held hunched so high. i don't think this can possibly be good for me, but i'm not sure that there's a way back.

is this wanderlust a part of some self-defeatist attitude? i know that i crave stability and a sense of belonging, yet i continue to place myself outside of those comfortable boundaries, in the hopes of, what? finding something, i guess, although i'm not quite sure what that something is supposed to be yet. maybe i'll just learn to settle down eventually. maybe this is a massive the-grass-is-always-greener lesson that i have to learn. but maybe there's something else waiting out there for me to find it, and that's why my furniture's been given away, clothing packed, and tomorrow i'll hop in my car and set out for idaho.

hannah and i took a late-night walk to walgreen's to get her some trashy magazines to read on the plane tomorrow. the cold air cleared my head, tums calmed my stomach, and besides, it gave us a final chance to shoot dirty looks at the security guard who hassles everyone late at night. i'm really going to miss having hannah as my roommate. i've had wonderful roommate karma. in college, while everyone else was seeking the highly-coveted senior single, lmo and val and i were trying to snag the only triple in the french house because we genuinely valued each other's company over our own need for personal space.

a while back, musing on the topic of moving and new places, i wrote that theatre seemed to be the constant in my life, and that everything else was transitory. i kind of had my head up my ass while i was writing that (but then, what's new?), getting all intellectual and thinking about the parallels between a transitory art form and a transitory lifestyle devoted to said art form. my life is full of constants that i take for granted - some good, some bad. it's a constant that zeke will be waiting for me at the door when i come home, which ever door that is. it's a constant that i get anxiety attacks the week before i move to a new place. i will always stay up late, regardless of what i say about going to bed early. movie theatre popcorn sounds like a good idea before you eat it, not after. white russians taste good, martinis taste bad. exercise always makes me saner. sleeping alone isn't much fun, but you get better rest that way. but most importantly, there are incredible, special people in my life and they are not transitory. our relationships are always changing, because we ourselves are not constants, but i am incredibly blessed that they are in my life, and they are not expendable.

3.18.02 - it has begun

i have new yoga pants! from target. they are itchy. i couldn’t figure out why my roommate’s tooth-brushing noises were bugging me so much until i realized that my yoga pants! were making me irritable. i wonder if i can return them on that basis: "hello, i would like to return these yoga pants. they make me irritable."

the packing hurricane has begun. zeke has taken to sleeping in half-full suitcases; it’s as if he knows that i’m going somewhere and is worried that i’ll leave him behind again.

3.17.02 - luck o' th' irish

st. patrick's day in buffalo reminds me something of an over-grown frat party. the drinking began as early as 10 am. by the time that i walked downtown to get dinner between shows, the bars along delaware and chippewa were spilling green-clad drunken revelers out into the streets. there were fights, someone was actually run over by a SUV on chippewa street, men and women were peeing and throwing up in the streets, mardi gras beads were being tossed around to the tune of "show us your tits!". there were parades and live bands and hot-dog stands appeared on all the corners, roving groups of bagpipers (i know, i was thinking the same thing - but maybe there are irish bagpipers as well?), and yellow school buses scooping up and spilling out drunken revelers. the coffee i ordered came topped with green whipped cream and everyone who worked at Spot Coffee seemed to have taken an oath to speak with an irish accent. while i dodging the drunks on my way up main street, for just a moment buffalo seemed like the saddest place i'd ever lived. everyone was partying but no one really seemed to be having fun, they were loud and drunk and seemed to know that they looked silly with green shamrocks painted on their cheeks. on my way back to the theatre it began to snow.

3.16.02 - brunch at hannah & jen's place

yesterday hannah and i threw a grown-up party, as evidence by the fact that we spent friday night cleaning our apartment from top to bottom so that people could come over and munch on coffee cake and dutch babies and other we-cooked-it-ourselves-for-real breakfast goodies, and we didn’t even have to get an older friend to purchase the champagne for the mimosas. other than a disastrous attempt to cook bacon for the meat-eaters in the room, the party went well. zeke was the main attraction, so the conversation basically drifted between the show we’re all working on, and all the silly antics that our respective pets do. coree tried very hard to get zeke to show everyone his oversized fangs, but he was having none of that.

last night we watched Magnolia, which i thought was rather like reading a david foster wallace novel: it’s very long, has about twelve distinct plotlines, and just when you think that it’s going to be impossible to wrap up all the separate ends, it rains frogs and the movie is over.

3.15.02 - it's not you, it's me.

when someone says he thinks you're super swell, but he's afraid of getting too attached right now, that's code for "i'm just not interested," isn't it? i thought so.

3.14.02 - this is where i work

3.13.02 - after these messages, we'll be right back

computer problems + tech means that slithy tove may be a bit neglected for a few more days till i get Buffalo Gal open and have time to do battle with Earthlink.

3.11.02 – buffalo gal, won’t you come out tonight?

the past few days have been filled with laughter and old friends and good food, and i feel very fortunate indeed.

met sumit for dinner; we went to an indian restaurant near his office where he’s something of a regular. apparently he usually goes there after working late and brings work with him, so when he showed up at 8 o’clock on a saturday night with a girl, there was a flurry of excitement, a quiet table for two set up before we could get our coats off, free deserts and much conversing in hindi. later my stage-manager-turned-law-student friend emily called in search of a study break. we ended up drinking pints of bass in some bar in the village, yelling at one another about theatre and men and politics, and a good time was had by all.

yesterday i met amanda at penn station and we hung out; the aim was to shop but we mostly ended up chattering and walking in the wrong directions. she brought me home to randolph, nj, for a home-cooked meal with her family and a chance to finally meet winston (pronounced “WEEN-stun”, with the first syllable very high pitched, the second very low) the chocolate lab who reportedly spends 98% of his energy growing and losing fur on everyone and thing. winston didn’t seem quite as hairy as one might have expected, but he had beautiful, chocolate brown eyes and a big doggy smile.

tonight i am packing; i fly back to buffalo early tomorrow morning and plunge straight in to tech for Buffalo Gal.

i seem to be having a semicolon phase in my writing these days. i don’t know what that means.

3.10.02 - on the bathroom wall in amanda's parents' house:

"The plumber dug around in the pipes and saw something glitter in the muck and it turned out to be the soul of the previous tenent. He gave it to me and i wondered how we might return it and he shrugged and said he found stuff like that all the time. You'd be amazed at what people will leave behind, he said."

3.9.02 - on the 7 train

"Hang on to your dreams. Hang on to the handrails, too. -a public safety message from new york city subway"

3.8.02 - want fries with that?

the burger king on 42nd street advertises "free internet access with any food purchase!" does burger king as an ISP seem questionable to anyone else?

3.7.02 - it was a rhetorical question

an actor that nanci & i know came into town for an audition; in exchange for a deluxe portion of floor space in our queens apartment she insisted on buying us dinner. nanci protested politely, but hey, free food is an integral part of living on an intern’s salary so i went along without putting up much of a fight. we went to this place in the village called Stingy Lulu’s, which advertises “fabulous food, generous portions, stingy prices and O.K. service.” the service was better than O.K., but still disappointing since deb had promised that all the wait staff would be drag queens. it turns out that they only do that on weekends. most of the other patrons were in drag, however. the business card for the place said:

Cool DJ’s and disco balls
handsome guys pretty girls
ugly drag queens and stiff drinks

the bartender made wicked cosmopolitans, and i had salad with warm brie on it. what more could a girl want?

3.6.02 - life is weird, can i be your stylist?

life is weird. but generally in a good way. found the world's greatest cafe in the village last night, i would go back there all the time just to sit on the cushioned window seat, drinking tea and reading something fashionable if only i could remember exactly where it is. jon & his roommate, garrett, were in nyc yesterday; they are actually the ones responsible for discovering said cafe. i think they originally wanted to go there because it was called the Esperanza Cafe and esperanza is just inherently funny. over funky over-priced teas garrett & i nearly bored jon to death comparing notes on our respective bengal cats (oh, does your cat chirp too? yeah! he makes these clicking sounds, like this! *cat noises* isn't it scary how smart they are? mine always reminds me of a velociraptor when he's hunting for his toy mice - you can actually see him thinking! mine can turn on the tv! oh, mine watches tv too! on and on, ad nausea). two contenders for Freak of the Week: the first was a guy who wandered through the Esperanza café a couple of times. he was talking loudly on his cell phone, pausing frequently to make sure that everyone around him was noticing him and his conversation - which wouldn’t have been weird except that the cell phone was actually a plastic toy phone with a coiled cord running inside his jacket, so that it looked like the phone was plugged into him. the Scary Freak of the Week would probably have to be the guy we encountered on the subway train later that night who was holding a 9mm in his lap, and actually loaded the clip into the gun while we were sitting across from him on the train (we got off at the next stop).

matt & i saw proof tonight on broadway - it was quite good. exactly the sort metaphysical math and science concepts meets humanity stuff that i really dig. jennifer jason leigh was starring in it; i thought she was an interesting actress to watch in terms of her physical characterization, but she has a voice that is clearly trained for the camera, not the stage. trying to project to the back of the house left her sounding nasal and strained, so that at intermission i heard people asking what sort of accent or impediment she was trying to affect. afterwards matt and i sat in a very 80’s hotel bar and over coffee and cheesecake i learned what an investment banker actually does, and he let me dissect the production we’d just seen. the cocktail waitresses fit right in to the 80’s scene we’d just walked in to; they had to wear these awful little black mini dresses with big poofy sleeves and a low-cut front. matt said, “i bet they get laid a lot.”

3.4.02 - monsters, inc.

there's a radiator right next to the futon that is my bed right now. warm temperatures meant that the radiator was relatively inactive for the first week i was living here, so i kinda forgot about it. one night i had these terrible dreams in which something in my room was making this horrible, heavy breathing sound. clamp your teeth together, pull your lips back, and draw your breath in in several sharp bursts, and then let it rumble out in a sort of throaty growl, alternating with a snake-like hiss. that's what it sounded like. i woke up from the dream, but the heavy breathing kept going on, right behind my head. i slowly realized that the sound was coming from the radiator, but in my sleepy state, having that sound in my room was still threatening. "no wonder kids are scared of the monster under the bed," i thought to myself. "the monster is right here in the room with me, only he lives under the radiator, not the bed." even still, getting up to go to the bathroom i half expected something to reach out and grab my ankle from under the futon, and i had to shove the closet door closed as i passed by. when mari stayed over here this weekend she confirmed that the radiator was indeed scary. i'm typing this in the living room now, but i can hear the radiator panting away back there. eek!

3.3.02 - 1:05am: yawn

had 3 days off from work in honor of the grammy's (betty was nominated for a grammy so she had to go out to CA for the ceremony; unfortunately harry connick jr. stole it out from under her, but at least we got a break from rehearsal anyway), so i've been busy being a good tourist: went to museums, saw a show, took the ferry to ellis island, drank cosmopolitans in SoHo, misread the subway map and took a detour to brooklyn, ate crepes from a street vendor in central park and went window shopping on 5th avenue. now i am sleepy, so further details of my adventures will have to wait till tomorrow. or the next day.