1.6.03 – Boise, ID (to stay, for a while at least)

three days of down-and-dirty cleaning, scrubbing, paint scraping, painting, papering, sweeping, mopping, hammering, puttying, plastering and dusting later, plus two trips each to home depot, bed bath and beyond, and shopko, the house is ready for us to move into. we’re renting this place, but it sort of feels like trial home ownership – the dishwasher leaks, the washing machine shorts out its circuit, the last tenants didn’t even think about cleaning out the fridge, let alone scrubbing dirt off the window sills, and the bathroom was too hideous for words until we started ripping stuff down with a hammer. next week (or month)’s task is the backyard, but first there must be furniture, curtains, boxes unpacked, find the damn shower curtain so we can stop taking baths, and then i have to find a job, since it seems that the Boise Weekly wasn’t as amused with Princess Jennifer (dec 30) as i was. tonight i’m playing survivor with my closet; this takes some time, as deciding which clothes get voted off the island pretty much necessitates a fashion show. my parents stop by my room and wonder why i’m wearing red nylon surfer shorts, a purple lace bra, and a scarf.

1.1.03 – Tucson, AZ

it was sometime after the sun set today that we’d all made it back from phoenix and managed to bath and dress for the day that had, er, nearly passed us by. the drive was rough; peyton nearly missed her plane and joe had to yak into a bag of chex mix. dinner at a generic all-things-asian restaurant was subdued, and since then we’ve been laying around the living room dj-ing for one another. paul has just begun making gin and tonics, however, so we might perk up after all.

this is the new year’s of the over-educated and under-employed: slumber-partying at paul’s tonight we have two harvard grads, five stanford grads, plus a few graduate degrees, and at the moment only one of us is employed. that’s right: seven grads, one million dollars of education, and only one job. we do play a mean game of scrabble, tho. they should put us in those prospective student catalogues. here’s what life after a liberal arts degree really looks like, kids.

the living room looks like a youth hostel, with backpacks and sleeping bags and skateboards scattered around the room, a fake log crackling in the fire place, and Willy the cat jumping about from lap to lap. paul sorts his books thus: fiction and reference go in the bookcases in the bedroom, non-fiction goes in the bookcases in the living room, and the bookcase in the bathroom has reading one might enjoy while using the facilities. selections include:

zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

the hitch-hiker’s guide to the galaxy

study guide for the GRE lit. exam

civilization and its discontents

the gashlycrumb tines

acu-yoga

the phobias and anxiety workbook

the saga of erik the viking

the art of t.s. eliot

the cat who could read backwards

the indespensible calvin and hobbes.

something for everyone. there’s even a desk lamp, for good reading light. i will photograph this bathroom later.

1.1.03 – Phoenix, AZ

guest blogger, mr. paul:

It has been a Very Car Christmas, or perhaps a Very Car Kwanzaa – I’m not sure exactly what holiday is being spanned here. At any rate, we spent two hours on the I-10 driving up to Senor Steve Marlowe’s house west of Phoenix, which for most of our guests was a reverse playback of the last two hours of their drive to Tucson from L.A. We are myself and Princess Jennifer and Lauren and Julia and Stewart and Joe and Jake, and Peyton. We left the cat at home.

Marlowe is an enabler and has been mixing everyone Tom Collinses (Colinsii?) and so things have degenerated as you wuold expect. I wore a tiara for some time and then lost it. Steve is blending something and making an ungodly noise doing it. The local development rent-a-cops (or possibly real cops, as some attest–Julia’s got a picture) showed up and asked us to stop playing the Hives and Björk and A-Ha so loud, which is probably for the best, since I was burning far too many calories jumping around the room in the shiny shirt that used to belong to Lauren and trying to sing melodies that are just way above my range, no matter what the extent of my inebriation.

I am pleased that worlds have collided in a satisfactory way—my friends from Iowa and Stanford (and the web) have all melded into a sort of mélange cake that is, as Peyton says, “totally tasty.” Lauren and Stewart took a few hits for the team and are now unconscious. Stewart emptied his alimentary canal into the toilet and then took a photo of it with his digital camera. He’s a good man. Perhaps we can link to the photo at some point.

Julia just took a photo of me posting this entry. Perhaps we can link to that as well.

This is all getting a little confusing a cinema verité, especially since there are now two people with cameras taking pictures of me at the computer. Perhaps we should move elsewhere now. Outside the sky is sparkly (we found Saturn in the sky, happily squatting in the western part of Taurus) but it is also damned cold, and I think my sleepnig bag is still out in the car.

12.30.02 – job hunting

December 30, 2002 Boise Weekly ATTN: “Search for the Perfect Receptionist” 109 S. 4th St. Boise, ID 83702 Dear Boise Weekly,

Once upon a time there was a young princess named Jennifer (hereafter referred to as “our princess”). Long long ago, when our princess was a wee high school senior, she interned with the Boise Weekly for a semester. Although her American Government teacher believed that she was prowling the legislature looking for breaking news, she really spent most of her time hanging around the BW office helping out with the top10 music lists and developing a taste for journalism. After high school, our princess went on to Stanford University, where, during a brief stint as a computer science major, she increased her typing speed to 70 WPM and became familiar with both PC and Mac platforms as well as a wide variety of word processing, spreadsheet and database software. Upon graduating, our princess went to work for a dot.com during the tech boom in Silicon Valley. The money was good, but our princess just wasn’t happy. Why not? She discovered that she preferred working with non-profit organizations over money-grubbing Big Business-types. Her search for co-workers who loved their jobs, not their paychecks, led her to the American Conservatory Theatre, where she became the assistant to the Producing Director. This job helped her refine her skills as a receptionist: doing battle over the phone with difficult agents, sorting mail, running interference for her boss when he didn’t want to take a call, and filing headshots until her eyes bled. For the past few years, our princess has worked as a stage manager in a variety of theatrical contexts, from outdoor festivals to touring educational companies. This has made her adaptable, responsible, and cool under pressure. She’s a meticulous record-keeper and is comfortable managing multiple projects at a time. She responded to the needs of her cast and crew, while remaining unruffled in the presence of the most difficult personalities and challenging situations. A perfect receptionist, of course has a British accent. Although our princess in is a native Boisean, she spent a year perfecting her faux British accent in the pubs of Oxford. Additional travel abroad in Europe and Asia made her self-reliant, resourceful, and good at sleeping in train stations. Today our princess has just returned to Boise after traveling the eastern United States with an educational theatre company. She’s thrilled to be back in Boise, and, a devoted reader of the Boise Weekly, was thrilled to discover that BW was looking for her: the perfect receptionist. The End. The moral of this story is that our princess would be the perfect receptionist for the Boise Weekly: she’s smart, computer literate, loves working with people, and can fake a British accent over the phone. Sincerely, JCG

12.29.02 – Boise, ID

apartment shopping with A this week. the most beautiful apartment in the world is going to slip through my fingers later this afternoon, and i’m beside myself with grief. our choices are:

3 bedroom house

university neighborhood

frumpy brick exterior

$500/mo, utilities inc.

2 bedroom apartment

north end (hip, liberal neighborhood)

victorian attic apartment

$650/mo + electric heat

the house is cheap, and it is the fiscally responsible thing to do, plus A really really wants the house. i want the apartment so bad i can taste it – upstairs in a victorian house, sloping ceilings, white-washed walls, little nooks and shelves molded into the plaster walls, black-and-white checked tile floor in the bathroom and in the sunny yellow kitchen. equidistance between the co-op (wonderful hippy natural foods grocery store), and the ymca (happy family-style gym where i work out), in the hippest, liberal-est neighborhood in the city – shady, elm-tree lined streets in the summers, a 45 minute drive to the ski hill in the winters. the house has a dishwasher and a fireplace, hardwood floors and a garage, but that doesn’t change the fact that it feels like a beige living box with a new coat of paint. i love rooms with character, with life, with history.

i will give up the apartment, but i’m not ashamed to shed tears over the loss of a place in which i have already mentally lived, loved, laughed, thrown dinner parties and watched the seasons change in the trees outside the bedroom window. i will do all of these things in the house, and i will get over the apartment once we move in and start picking thru yard sales for furniture, ripping out the ugly fixtures in the bathrooms, and begin the process of living in the house. when i saw it, it was full of someone else’s stuff; it didn’t look like a clean slate where i could imagine our life together there.

my older brother can live for months in a new apartment amid half-unpacked boxes, with framed pictures leaning against the walls and clothes still in the suitcases. i’ve seen him do this in nearly every apartment he’s moved to. i guess housing simply isn’t as important to some people as it is me. maybe it’s some sort of flip side of the wanderlust that keeps me moving; when i come home, i want to have a home to come into, that’s cozy and welcoming comfortably cluttered. i want lighting that’s gentle and flattering, soft furniture, high ceilings and deep colors. i resist the apartment-complex style beige-living-box most of all; i seek out the funky, oddly shaped apartments with narrow hallways, uneven floors and doors that lead nowhere. i am most comfortable in a house that feels as if it has been lived in for many years, by many people. it’s a space that has absorbed a sense of purpose, the walls have drunk up laughter and tears and the need for shelter and protection.

12.25.02 – Boston, MA; San Francisco, CA; Boise, ID; McCall, ID

(wonky retroactive posting still happening, as i find hand-written entries and things saved on my computer and other lost entries)

happy christmas, everyone. i’ve survived the tour, done my time, completed that particular rite of passage. i have strong biceps, callused hands, and a much better knowledge of technical theatre. i’ve eaten out so many times that i never ever want to see another road-side diner again, and i’m very good at navigating thru strange cities using fancifully-illustrated maps. i’m tougher, mentally and physically, than i was four months ago, and i’ve gained a stronger sense of what i want out of life: that is, understanding the difference between things that actually make me happy, and things that i think should make me happy (but don’t, necessarily).

12.17.02 – Providence, RI

traveling in american teaches one to love franchises. they’re familiarity in a strange town – the home depots and starbucks, chilis and walmarts – big neon signs that beckon from alongside the freeway. franchises are comforting because you know what exactly what you’re going to get – it might be mediocre, but it won’t be a surprise. starbucks will always be over-priced and highly caffeinated, the waitress at chilis is the same regardless of what city you’re in. home depot won’t have the hospitality of a mom-and-pop hardware store, but it sells exactly the same products all across the country. consistency is the secret to the success of the franchise. life on the road is plenty unpredictable – i don’t need any more surprises when i go for coffee.

the above rules go for hotels, too. based on my large sample pool, i’ve arranged the following budge motels into a sort of hierarchy.

Days Inn falls at the bottom of the heap. their idea of continental breakfast is usually a box of Ho-Hos and some Sunny D. worse yet, they’re dirty, poorly equipped, in bad locations and poorly staffed. avoid at all cost.

Econolodge crawls in next. they skip breakfast and the in-room coffee altogether, but they’re usually clean, if short on amenities and small.

Harvard Johnsons usually leave something to be desired in terms of room maintenance, are stingy with the towel allowance. breakfast should be approached with a higher-than-average level of suspicion as to the freshness – beware of sour milk or rancid apple juice. sanitation level is average.

Best Westerns are the wild-card of the budget motel. they run from really grotty to fairly posh, and you never know which it’ll be till you arrive. chances are, the sanitation will be passing but not exemplary, hotel soaps and coffee are basic but included, and breakfast is something more than a stale Danish. some days you’ll score an indoor pool, but on the other hand, there was the place in Memphis that was running a pawn shop out of the conference room.

Comfort, Quality, and Clarion Inns are all varying levels of the same franchise: Comfort will be the plainest, followed by Quality, and in Clarion Inns you might even expect a hot breakfast or an indoor pool, and certainly hallways. Comfort Inns will usually be the sort of motel where the room doors open directly to the parking lot, Quality might have hallways, and you’ll probably score an in-room microwave and fridge.

Ramada Inns will be basic but very clean and in good working order. i’m partial to the geometric design on the complimentary soaps and shampoo bottles. guess what you’ll all getting for Christmas this year….

Holiday Inn is the jackpot of the cheap hotel lottery. rooms will be clean and in good repair. extra towels and in-room coffee, included a packet of decaf, are a standard, and the desk clerks always speak English, have a good working knowledge of the city, and are willing to give directions (not a grantee in any of the other motels listed here). Holiday Inn Expresses have the best continental breakfast out there, plus perks like free cookies in the afternoons. The full holiday inn will have a hot breakfast, but they make you pay for it. There’s the possibility of scoring a HoliDome if you stay in the Holiday Inn, and that’s when you’ve really hit the jackpot.

this might seem petty, or at least excessive, to those who haven’t lived in motels for a significant period of time. the other day i was complaining about some hotel to my mother and she said, “oh, i figure if the door locks and the sheets are clean, the place is fine.” “yeah, but you don’t live in motels full-time,” i told her. “my standard have gone dramatically UP.” when you’re staying in a motel that doubles as a brothel, it’s too much to assume that the sheets are clean and that the door locks – better double check.

12.16.02 – Trenton, NJ

(retroactive posting due to connectivity problems…)

so i had dinner with an ex-boyfriend last night. there are few things as gratifying as reaching that state of mutual healing such that both people can genuinely wish the other well. we’re far enough down the emotional/relationship/life events that it just doesn’t sting anymore. it takes years to get there, and it’s not a state that you can will yourself into. you grow accustomed to the hole in your heart, and then one day you wake up and it’s gone. the heart has regenerated, long after you ever stopped believing it could.

the following might seem to contradict the above claim of complete healing, but i can’t resist:

ex-boy: wow! your hair looks great! the whole way down here i was thinking, short or long, short or long? i like it a lot.

ex-boy: 0, jen: 1

jen: here’s a picture of my boyfriend.

ex-boy: neat. here’s a picture of my fiancee.

ex-boy: 1, jen 1

jen: you know why we were never meant to be? you never took me seriously as an intellectual.

ex-boy: really? this isn’t just the wine talking?

jen: no! you never listened to what i had to say about books.

ex-boy: wow. i’m sorry i was such an asshole.

ex-boy: 1, jen: 2

ex-boy: i was shattered when you told me you were dating someone new.

jen: you dumped me! it was my right to start dating first.

ex-boy: i know, but that doesn’t mean that i wasn’t completely traumatized.

ex-boy: 1, jen 3

jen: that girl you dated in japan, after we broke up? the bossa nova singer?

ex-boy: oh, that was just because i found out you were seeing someone, and i needed to be, like, “see, i have sex too!”

ex-boy: 1, jen 4

dinner was a rousing success, i have to say. pat, pat the ego. it took a pretty serious beating over this boy, even though it was a long time ago.

12.15.02 – Fairfax, VA; Wilmington, DE; Engelwood, NJ; Brooklyn, NY; Baltimore, MD

internet access continues to be pricey and difficult to obtain; but we’ve made it to the countdown: five shows, four cities, 450 miles, eight nights. just breathe.

12.5.02 – Binghampton, NY

it’s a SNOW DAY! as much as i sat up late praying for the slightest skiff of snow to soften the hearts of school administrators as a kid, i have to say that snow days from work are even more gratifying (possibly because i still get paid?). last year in buffalo when it snowed seven feet the theatre closed down for three days, and hannah and i sat home watching the snow drifts gently blot out the lower part of our windows and cars turn into giant white volkswagon-shaped domes. there was so much snow that the city didn’t have anywhere left to plow it to, so the national guard had to come in with trucks and take it away.

this morning in harrisburg it’s only snowed an inch or so, but more is predicted for the afternoon and it was enough for all our schools to cancel. hotel toaster waffles for breakfast, a few emails to write, and i’m going back to bed on this lovely snowy morning.