12.12.01

another 14 hour day with the stage manager from hell. and now hannah needs the phone line. i’d resent her, but she made me dinner and even garnished the plate with a slice of lemon.

12.11.01 – dr. jekyll & ms. hyde

that’s my new boss, in a nutshell. it was a rough first day of rehearsal. it was tempting to come home and decompress with a pint of ben & jerry’s triple caramel chunk & a couple of friends episodes, but unfortunately my roommate hannah & i are keeping each other on a health-eating kick right now, plus we don’t have a tv. so much for drowning my sorrows in buffy reruns and chocolate. instead i did paperwork (bleh) but then mari called me and i procrastinated (yay!). i like this job, really i do. but i like it better when my boss doesn’t work out her anxieties by berating and humiliating me. i grit my teeth, smile, and remind myself that these are lessons in 1) how not to let stupid people get under my skin and 2) what sort of stage manager i’m not going to become.

zeke has really chunked up in the past two weeks since we got here. i suspect he’s putting on a layer of winter blubber because we keep the house around 60 degrees (we can’t afford to turn on the heat all the time, so we just wear scarves indoors). alas, someday i will earn enough money that my cat doesn’t have to get fat just to stay warm inside. maybe i should rethink that no-eating ice cream thing. i could save a lot on the heating bill if i acquired a layer of winter blubber, too.

12.9.01 – home sweet buffalo

ooh, hot competition for the phone line after 11pm in this apartment – hannah’s got a long distance boy and i have an internet habit (just a cover for the fact that i have no friends in buffalo). once again my social life consists of drinking with the actors after midnight.

we have a home! we’ve finally acquired enough furniture that we have something to unpack the boxes into. a lot of the furniture was filched from the theatre’s prop shop: it still has glow tape on all the sharp corners, which gives it some sort of charm, i think, in addition to making it easier for me to navigate the house in the dark.

the loot: two twin beds, a futon, a dresser, a desk, a card table, a giant rubber crate-turned coffee table, a kitchen table, four chairs and a bathroom cabinet

grand total: $29.89 plus the cost of the brownies i promised to the prop guys.

i’ve moved 11 times in the past five years. it’s a slow process, but i actually am getting better at refining the list of things that have to go. i’m not down to fits-in-my-honda-in-one-trip quite yet, but i am down to fits-in-the-car and costs less than $100 to ship the rest. the key is disposable furniture. i’m thinking maybe hannah & i can sell all this stuff to our landlord when we move out and then he can rent the place as a furnished apartment. the hardest thing to leave behind is the books. i think i’ve finally disciplined myself into only taking 3 or 4 on the been-meaning-to-read list and keeping the library at my parents’ house. thank god for parents that never move and have excess attic space.

i can (reluctantly) leave the books behind, but there are a few seemingly-frivolous things that i have to go. they are: zeke. the oriental rug i inherited from my grandmother. the wall hangings from korea, japan, vietnam and ecuador. a poster of SF. the lamp paul’s mother gave me. the chinese paper lantern lauren gave me. my red paper parasol from japan. a couple of tapestries to throw over the ugly furniture. a few photos to tape on the wall next above my desk and bed. it’s not more than one extra box of stuff, (well, except zeke doesn’t like riding in the box much) but it enables me able to feel at home given four hours and a box of thumb tacks. and when you move as often as i do, i guess you have to find some sort of trick to keep the constant sensation of alienation at bay.

12.7.01 – back to the days of madam jenjen & her crystal ball

two more points for buffalo: 1) ani difranco lives here, and 2) people are really nice in a small-town say-hi-when-you-pass-on-the-street sort of way. i tend to have my big-city hackles up when i’m in a strange place; it took me few days to realize that there were no dark alternative motives behind the pleasantries the way there are in, say, the tenderloin.

went to have my picture taken for a company ID card today. karen aims the digital camera at me. “i’m a blinker,” i warn her. *click!* karen frowns. “yup, your eyes are closed. try again.” *click!* “my eyes were closed again,” i tell her. she consults the camera and indeed i look half asleep. *click!* click click click! when we reach 8 pictures, we have one blurry shot and seven lovely shots of my eyelids. “i told you,” i say. karen doesn’t look amused anymore. i try to explain to her that i actually have a psychic ability to know when the photographer is going to press the shutter button and something makes me blink at just that moment. she prints the blurry photo onto my ID card and hands it over without comment. the number of eyes-closed photos i’ve taken is uncanny. too bad i can’t apply those psychic powers to something slightly more useful.

speaking of closed-eye photos, paul and lauren are circulating a most unpleasant one of me on their blogs (no, i’m not putting up a link). ever had one of those pictures that just keeps resurfacing to embarrass you over again? this is one of those. it was on paul’s mother’s fridge the entire time we were dating. later paul named the picture after my breasts.

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

well, here i am in upstate new york. the bizarre weather persists: it was 65 degrees today. the theatre i’m working for (studio arena) is currently running a play about the blizzard of ’77 that buried buffalo in like 8 feet of snow. inside, the crew shovels several feet of fake snow into plastic bags, and then steps out the stage door into a balmy december evening. its actually colder inside my apartment than it is outside.

good things about buffalo:

-my new roommate, hannah. even zeke approves of her

-the apartment, like most of downtown buffalo, is a neat old turn-of-the-century building, with high ceilings, hardwood floors and wide white decorative molding

-spot coffee, a coffee house with lots of squishy couches that invite one to sit and drink and read the paper

-economic depression = low cost of living

-living with in walking distance of 1) the theatre, 2) the gym, and 3) spot coffee

-ready accessibility of the New York Times.

-canadian radio stations

bad things about buffalo:

-i’m disappointed in the lack of snow

-parking is still an irritating hassle, although it hardly compares to that of SF, of course

-one bedroom apartment + roommate with a boyfriend = i have to sleep in the living room

-lots of scary leering men loitering around main street at night when i walk home

-a significant lack of furniture means that i’m still surrounded by boxes and boxes that can’t be unpacked

-buffalo radio stations

12.4.01 – the turkey has landed

the apartment is small but lovely and i think i’ll like the theatre. so much for everything i’ve heard about buffalo winters – it’s 60 degrees out there today. still no internet access – hopefully soon.

11.27.01 – hit the road, jack

well, it’s NY or bust. zeke handles the driving, i read the maps and make witty comments along the way. those of you who live along I-80 – I am coming for you.

11.23.01 – 00110101011

corrupted disk ate all my weekend entries. packing for buffalo. more soon.

ps – it snowed!

11.21.01 – the life and times of a nerd

watched the new episode of buffy last night. woo, buffy and spike finally got it on. i figured it had to happen eventually. it’s a dramatic standard: build sexual tension between lead characters for approximately 2 seasons (2 hours if we’re talking stage), and then either you gotta kill one of them off or let them go at it. yes, this is what my life consists of these days: inspecting the soles of my feet and watching buffy reruns (with my parent’s cable tv package, buffy is on 13 times a week. how am i supposed to be a productive member of society with that sort of temptation? the cute thing is that my parents have become buffy junkies as well.)

it’s not so bad, i’m only unemployed until dec. 4, at which time i’ll be living in buffalo sans tv, and working crazy overtime hours again. those of you who know me personally know that this is the most down-time i’ve had since i was about 8 – i think i’m handling it fairly well, being the type-A over-achiever that i am. i suspect (at least in my case) that over-achieverness is actually a mask for general insecurity. if i’m hard on myself, then i achieve more, and then i have a reason to feel like i have self-worth.

i was going to write a treatise on the idea of self-worth here, but the more i think about it the less i understand it. what makes someone value themselves? is it an innate belief, like religion: “i know i am valuable because i know.” is it a goal that one can reach: “i know i have self-worth because i did all these good things.” is it like the carrot on a stick in front of the donkey: “i know i will have self-worth if i go a little bit farther, do a bit more.” is it something that has to be constantly maintained: “i know i have self-worth, but if i stop achieving i will lose it.”

the never-ending circle of over-achiever-ness is something that gets developed early on in school, i think. i get good grades, my parents are proud of me, which makes me feel good, ergo, good grades = self-worth. the cycle continues as long as the education system lasts. by the time i got to college, i met a whole lot of people like myself who use achievement like a drug: it’s the only way to feel good. sort of masochistic, yes. sad, probably. i finished my degree a year and half ago, and i’m slowly figuring out how one lives a positive, happy life without depending on constant academic approval. maybe i just substitute other forms of approval now. there’s a simpsons episode in which school gets canceled, and lisa freaks out and begs her mother for validation – marge scribbles an A on a blank piece of paper, hands it to lisa, and lisa heaves a sigh of relief and sticks the paper to the fridge door. god, that’s a great show.

it’s 2 am on thanksgiving eve. i have to sleep in order to face the family tomorrow, so these musings will have to remain in the unformed infantile phase that they’re now in. see? i’m apologizing for my own blog. guilt and over-achieverness are a wicked combination. i blame the catholic church.

11.20.01 – things you didn’t need to know

just noticed that the soles of my feet are peeling. eww, gross. i knew i should have worn flip flops in the hostel showers. now i probably have weird european foot fungus. didn’t need to know that, did you? ah well, it’s cyberspace. you don’t have to actually look at my feet.

have been elected to go to the grocery store and purchase thanksgiving dinner; this is what happens when you are the only unemployed member of the household. i spent all morning at the gym, bagels for lunch, shower, email, and am now thinking about getting dressed. being the only one home all day long does afford me plenty of opportunity to wander around the house in various states of undressedness. i figure if the UPS delivery man peers in the windows that’s his problem, not mine.