so today my web host company gave me the option to renew or give slithy tove up, and since i renewed, i guess this little experiment hasn’t died quite yet. i flinched the other day when, in conversation with a hip sort of person i wanted to impress, i referred to my blog while telling an unrelated story and this person interrupted me with, “you have a blog?? i don’t think i’ve ever actually met someone with a blog before.” this was not said in a flattering sort of way. my attempt to defend it (“hey, i was keeping a blog before we started calling them blogs”) was admittedly feeble. then again, feeble is also the word for my blog entries of the past year. maybe i’ve become more self-conscious about the work-in-progress me, or more tangled up in it and unable to process coherently and externally. maybe i’ve just become more boring and have less to write about. both are distinct possibilities, but more than anything i think it’s that i started slithy-tove in the BA (before Andy) era of my life, when i was just out of college, living on my own for the first time, navigating the beginnings of adulthood. i amused myself by being witty here. now i share the same thoughts and reactions with andy instead. i need this outlet less. maybe that’s why slithy tove’s been wasting away – because other parts of my life have flourished. not that i feel flourished most days, more like famished. but it’s true, i have a partner, i have a career, i have a home. as i approach the mid-twenties-late-twenties dividing line, i find i am settling.

it’s been a long week.

on tuesday, i fired my propsmaster.

on wednesday, my technical director quit.

on thursday, the city of evanston tried to shut down our theatre due to a wiring code violation. (happily, they did not succeed, and the wiring in question has since been brought up to code.) on the other hand, had they shut down the theatre, then tuesday and wednesday’s mishaps wouldn’t have mattered so much, as we’d all have been out of a job.

on friday, the lights developed a mysterious and hard-to-diagnose christmas-light-like flicker problem, which continued to plague us today (sunday). our ME is so overworked and (i suspect) frustrated that i’m having nightmares that he’ll quit, too.

now i am production manager and propsmaster and technical director for the production that opens on (can’t-come-soon-enough) monday. luckily for me i hired another stage manager to do this show, or i’d be four people right now, which might cause my head to explode.

i did, however build a brillian oxygen tent after i took over propping the show. i also created an evening bag/holster for an actress to hide an IV bag full of water under her arm so that she could make gush water out of her mouth after her drowning in the bathtub scene, and with andy’s help i assembled a gigantic radioactive jenga set.

this job was definitely not listed in the career center files in college.

a foot of snow falls on new york and it’s all NPR can talk about. hello? it snowed 15 inches outside my apartment last night too! i guess lots of snow in chicago isn’t exactly newsworthy, as bad weather is the just punishment for those of us crazy enough to live in a place like the midwest. it’d be like reporting on a mugging in new york, or a smarmy politician in washington, i suppose.

anyway, it did snow 15 inches on friday/saturday. it’s terribly beautiful, if inconvenient. no playing in the snow for me, however, i’ve been trapped inside the apartment with laryngitis all weekend. i’m starting to get a little stir-crazy. i can’t speak above a whisper, which, as it turns out, severely limit’s one’s activities. unable to leave the apartment or talk on the phone, i’ve been alternately cooking and organizing things. andy finally fled the apartment to take refuge at a football-watching party this afternoon, which was probably wise when he saw me drag everything out of the pantry and prepare to sort and reorganize it.

i made a first attempt at making vegetarian chili this weekend. the results were yummy but really more like tomato soup than chili. andy pointed out that the recipe i picked didn’t call for any chilies, which might have been a part of the problem. hmm. anyone have a good recipe to share with me?

shame on you, president bush, for spending all that money on a party, at a time like this. american financial aid to the countries flooded by the tsunami wasn’t even half of what you spent on security alone for the inagruation. your war in iraq is draining our nation’s financial and human reserves daily, and yet you decided to have a big party. you’re already president! shame.

on wednesday night chicago saw a record high of 61 degrees. 48 hours later the temperature had dropped – by 52 degrees. the radiators and old creaky windows in our apartment can’t keep up when the daily highs are in the single digits. we move around the apartment wrapped up like eskimos, polar fleese and wool and goose down strategically layered, showering periodically in order to raise the core body temperature. mostly what i want to know is, who first thought it would be a good idea to build a city HERE? i hate chicago winters. the air is so cold it burns exposed skin, and there’s no skiing or other fun winter sports to make the weather bearable. hrrmph.

on the plus side, i’m all about winter food. tonight i made mushroom risotto (cheers to mari for the recipe), and last night we went to the Duke of Perth, a pub which makes me nostalgic for my oxford days right down to the super-chilled pints of strongbow. in spite of the mexican polka music which can occasionally be heard seeping out of the kitchen, they serve up tasty, steaming pots of vegetable or shepards pie garnished with mashed potatoes – perfect for winter nights. zeke has been putting on his usual winter weight to cope with the cold apartment – perhaps i should follow suit.

signs one is being outpaced by one’s siblings:

when my baby brother calls to tell me he’s named me as a beneficiary on his life insurance policy. what? he has life insurance? i still remember when matt would throw a fit at the dinner table if his vegetables touched his macaroni.

initial impression from watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade:

the Barenaked Ladies are really bad at lip-synching.

a thanksgiving-eve snow storm coated everything in a glaze of white, and on thanksgiving morning the sky cleared and everything sparkled all blue and white.

thanksgiving day was pleasantly spent in the cozy apartment of chelsea and lee, gourmet cooks who, like the rest of their guests, don’t believe in getting up early just to cook a turkey, so consequently our thanksgiving dinner started on the late side and continued into the wee hours of the morning. the scrabble game was competitive bordering on viscous, but when the game ended there were three pies, and so we’re all friends again. and, for the record, tam is too a word.

i did mourn the loss of the pumpkin pie (an unfortunate mix-up of sweetened condensed milk and non-sweetened condensed milk), but lee makes an apple pie that i would sell my first born son to have another piece of, and i satisfied the pumpkins craving by making pumpkin pie at our apartment later this week. now andy and i have a fridge with nothing but some leftover udon and lots of pie.

Omnium Gatherum is a smash hit, so yay for that, we’ve extend the show through the 18th and the box office phone is ringing off the hook. of course, i am a slave to the show and have no free time, but so it goes. the latin confuses our patrons; earlier today a i booked a ticket for the play ‘Ominous Gathering.’ tee hee.

i’ll admit it. i’m an incorrigible laundry optimist. and i’m a cheapskate, and since i have to pay for laundry by the load, that only makes the whole situation worse. i make poor judgments all the time:

surely that red tank top won’t bleed onto the whites again this time.

dry clean only? they don’t really mean that.

reshape and dry flat? well, draping it over the radiator is a shape, right?

anyway, tonight’s laundry mishap was worse, because it’s not my laundry. see, i got roped into taking on wardrobe duties for the show i’m stage managing right now. no big deal, really, i just have to do a bit of ironing pre-show, and wash a load of socks, t-shirts, table linens twice a week. well, that’s where i went wrong tonight — this play is a five-course dinner party, and the cast has to eat quite a bit on stage, and they wipe their mouths on cloth napkins. which i tossed into the washer along with all the clothes. which unfortunately stank of salmon, even tho i shook them to remove any lingering crumbs. which spread the small but potent quantity of salmon oil evenly throughout the load, so when i took the clothes out of the dryer, everything smelled like a stinky fish.

and all this because i was too cheap to put the napkins in a separate load.

on mom’s advice i am now re-washing in hot water with a long soak cycle and a half cup of baking soda added to the mix. the fish smell may go, but will i have shrank everything in the process? putting me in charge of wardrobe just has disaster written all over it. if not tonight, then next week, when a pen sneaks past me into the washer, or i forget to separate reds from whites, or i leave someone’s sock in the dryer…the possibilities are endless.

i woke up the morning after the election and it was like un-christmas. you know – that drowsy feeling of anticipation, aware that there’s something special about the day even before you’re awake enough to remember what that is. only this time i had this ugly, black pessimistic feeling as well, like a grey storm cloud hanging over the bedroom.

the long and short of it is:

the half of america that voted for george bush: who are you?

this isn’t the america that i know. and while the subsection of the united states in which i live clearly isn’t representative of the whole (i can count all the people i know who voted republican on one hand), i feel disillusioned to be so far out of touch with the part of american that is and will be making policy decisions that affect not only me, but people all over the world.

ugg. i’m utterly disgusted. i should have done more.

…was celebrated in understated style this year. my costume consisted of a t-shirt which said “scaredycat” and a pair of leopard-print cat ears: i went dressed as my inner child – a little bit frightened of everything, and distinctly feline in my predilection for napping in sunny places and my high strung nature. zeke found the cat ears most intriguing.

i did, however, torture Andy by engaging in my beloved halloween-morning ritual: downloading “monster mash” from itunes and listening to it at full volume right after hopping out of bed in the morning. i can’t explain it; three years of co-habitation with lauren imbued me with a weakness for certain pop pleasures.