2.18.02 – thomas jefferson makes me queasy

my trip to washington was good, food poisoning not withstanding. Good Pants were sought, found, purchased and later returned in favor of a Good Haircut with Coco. we wandered around georgetown and looked at all the beautiful people walking their beautiful dogs and their beautiful houses, explored a happy independent bookstore where i was torn between buying the sequel to bridget jone’s diary and anna karenina, and ate ice cream on a regular basis. sunday mari and i made an omelet out of questionable turkey, and three hours later we were at the Jefferson Memorial, trying not to barf on Thomas J’s feet. they always say that men turn into such babies when they get sick; the same goes for me. nothing takes 20 years off my age faster than getting the stomach flu. mari’s sister-in-law made us seltzer water with lemon, and we laid around clutching our stomachs until i had to leave for the airport. as we left for the airport she handed us ginger ales. right after i opened mine i remembered that i’d given up soda for lent. “lent? since when do you celebrate lent?” asked mari. “i’m a lapsed catholic,” i told her. “the only things we celebrate are christmas, lent, and guilt.” i figured since i was feeling guilty about wasting the soda, or else would feel guilty about drinking it, that guilt would have to take the place of my lenten vows for the day. fortunately i had decided on anna karenina at the bookstore, since i had hours to kill at the airport and the usual airport trick of searching out the requisite cinnabon shop and eating a huge gooey cinnamon roll in order to past the time wasn’t going to work.

my stage manager made me sharpen 48 pencils by hand today, because the back of the box said “for best results use a hand-crank sharpener.” this is what she thinks an assistant is for. i really don’t mind sharpening pencils, but for god sake, electric pencil sharpeners were invented for a reason! besides, these are the pencils that we never use, we just give them out to the actors who forget to bring their own pencils. what do they care whether we sharpened them with a hand-crank sharpener? at this point, she doesn’t really make me upset any more; my relationship with her is so absurd some days that i just have to laugh at it. mind you, i might not be laughing by this time next week, since i’ll be sharing an apartment with her in NYC for the next month or so.