1.13.02 – it’s a cold rain / it’s a hard rain / like the kind you find in songs

it was precipitating heavily on my way home from work this evening; i can’t tell exactly what is falling, rain or snow. it hits the pavement with a wet *splat* like rain, but in pool of the street lamp it has form and substance like snow. i wouldn’t mind some more snow – the seven feet of snow we had over christmas is almost gone, and the buffalo that is emerging is an ugly grey january buffalo that i could do without.

seasonal affective disorder has arrived: i can feel the winter doldrums settling around me, nestling in for a long winter’s nap. demons, begone!

1.12.02 – my, you look fetching tonight

hannah comes back on monday, yay. although i am enjoying the freedom to walk around the house naked whenever i please and never do the dishes, it’ll be nice to have my roommate back. i’m a social creature. i crave companionship far more than i do personal space. besides, at 55 degrees, walking around the house naked really isn’t that much fun, and in the end, i have to wash the dishes in order to eat off of them again.

zeke has acquired the cutest habit – at night i get into bed with a book and zeke brings me a toy mouse. i throw it across the room, he flies through the air like a whiskas commercial, captures the mouse, and brings it back to me. repeat until i get sleepy or he loses the mouse. on his way back to my bed he has to pass a mirror, and on about half of his trips, he pauses in front of the mirror with the mouse in his teeth, turns this way and that, lowers his head, poses, and generally checks himself out before heading back to me with the mouse. i know cats spend a lot of time grooming, but i didn’ t know they could get vain enough to use a mirror.

1.11.02

okay, i’m being a sourpus. opening night was fun after all, lots of people bought me opening night gifts (altho, curiously enough, all of the gifts were in the incense-candles-potpourri category of sweet-smelling stuff, which makes me wonder if the cast was trying to tell me something), and there was the usual excitement backstage and the foo-foo party afterwards. the party was kinda dull – lots of people i don’t know and the yummy food was all gone by the time i got there – but mike, the stage hand who crews the show with me bought me drinks and told me stories about his ex-wife and his psycho ex-girlfriend, and it was fun to see all the shop guys dressed up in ties instead of their usual paint-splattered jeans. the carpenters all treat hannah and i like kid sisters – they tease us and make up nicknames for us and mike beats up on me, but that’s okay b/c i hit him back, hard enough to make him say “you sure don’t hit like a girl.” i warned him i had brothers.

but when all is said and done, i come home and the house is empty but for zeke. i’m lonely out here. how does that phrase go? i made my bed, now i have to lay in it? i asked for this independence, i know. but i’m trying to learn the difference between things that actually make me happy and things that i think should make me happy. it’s a fine line. i don’t know where the answers lie. if my post-college 20’s have to be as unsatisfying as they were for wynona ryder in “Reality Bites,” at the very least i wish i could have her hair.

1.10.02 – tonight, tonight

yay! opening tonight. i wish i could say that i’m excited about the play opening, but really i’m just hoping that getting into the run of the show will get my manager off my back for a bit. i have 71 days left on my contract in buffalo. i’m thinking of making a paper chain. i’m at the point that whenever she walks into the same room as me i can feel the negative energy radiating out toward me. the really frusterating thing is that most people in the company think that she’s just fabu, and that’s b/c she only berates and humiliates her ASM and crew, as near as i can tell. if i had a thick skin, i’d just shrug this off, but the bottom line is, i’m an empath and i don’t know how to block out bad energy when it’s coming my way. i think theatre protocol dictates that i have to get her an opening night gift. i wonder if a bouquet of dead flowers would be over the top? yeah, probably.

1.9.01 – drink me

after the first preview on sunday i went out to Vinny’s for a drink with some of the tech guys. i was drinking a white russian and commented to someone that white russians remind me of college cast parties. then i started thinking about what i associate with various drinks. i came up with the following: white russians taste like college cast parties, vodka shots make me think of valerie, gin and tonics belong to david ball, gin and sprite belong to lauren and fall afternoons in our dorm junior year. gin and juice reminds me of paul and terra, amaretto sours taste like last summer in boise, although if they have tangerine juice in them then i think of grant. diet sprite and strawberry wine make me think of slumber parties in lauren’s apartment on green street, strongbow cider reminds me of oxford pubs, peach cider makes me think of being a freshman again, cheap red wine of drinking in the stanford house at oxford. white wine is summer dinners with my parents. hot buttered rum is christmas time when i was a kid, newcastle makes me think of lauren, and also jeff. jack & cokes remind me of parties at my brother’s frat at MIT when i was in high school. margaritas make me think of hannah goldie and the “i’m blue aboo-dee-aboo-di” song and fountain hopping and scrabble.

1.8.01 – there’s nothing noble about poverty

i worked 112 hours in the past 8 days. at my current “stipend” salary, that means i earned, uh..about $3.27/hour. i got a stanford education for this? geeze, i could make more if i’d gone to the university of mcdonalds. yeah yeah yeah, all that crap about not being in the arts for the money or glory is still true, but there are time when i jut get really tired of being poor. i mean, the parking tickets i racked up on wednesday afternoon alone will end up costing me an entire day’s salary. i’d just like to have enough money to buy groceries, heat my house, feed the cat, and pay for health insurance. oh, and it’d be nice if i didn’t have to sleep in the living room, too. it’s easier when i love what i’m doing, of course, but the stage manager i’m working for right now just sucks all the fun out of life. she’s really starting to make me hate my job, hate buffalo, and hate winter, although i concede that that last point is perhaps not her fault. as paul’s writing teacher pointed out, “the myth persists that there is something ennobling about [poverty]… all it does is limit your experience. And a claustrophobia creeps in—minor problems become major problems, because you can’t afford to call the plumber or get your car fixed… fuck poverty.”

1.4.01 – what about bob?

i’m in the middle of tech, so posts will be scarce until the show opens on the 10th. on tuesday, while showing me around the theatre, hannah unlocked the room where we store props and said, “that’s bob,” and pointed to an ashtray, the kind that stands about three feet high. no, the ashtray isn’t named bob, the ashtray contains bob. apparently, bob (former studio employee) died of lung cancer, and his dying wish was that his cremated remains go into an ashtray and that they would live on in the theatre’s prop storage room. bob gets to go onstage, ashtray and all, for the final performance of each show. i’m not making this up. there’s a dead guy in my props storage room. it’s weird at first, but you get used to it pretty quickly. i find myself saying things like,”oh, can you store the shotgun behind bob?” or “bob’s in the way, can you move him over to that corner?”

1.1.02 – new years resolutions

start putting away money for a retirement fund. stop finishing people’s sentences. be healthy. do things that make me happy, rather than just pleased with myself. drink more water. be bold. actually do volunteer work, instead of just thinking good thoughts about it. spend less money on lattes. spend more time reading newspapers. spend time with the people that i love. read library books instead of buying paperbacks. take more pictures. learn how to deflect negative energy, and channel my own positive energy.

12.31.01 – no one to kiss but the cat

well, goodbye 2001. since i can’t be in california, and i couldn’t afford a last-minute plane ticket to boston, i’m spending new years eve working in the scene shop at the theatre….it’s sad that i can make more than half a week’s salary on my day off working over-hire in the shop. i need to join a union so my industry will stop exploiting me. so much for a new year’s party plans…but it’s okay, really, b/c i don’t have anyone to kiss at midnight this year, and besides, i hate new year’s eve like most single women hate valentine’s day.

12.30.01 – when hell freezes over…

digging out my car didn’t turn out to be as much fun as i’d expected. partly because i put the task off until early sunday morning, and partly because six feet is really a fuckload of snow and i scratched my car with the snow shovel like ten times. plus the snow is really light and fluffy, which makes it nearly impossible to shovel – it just rolls back down to the bottom of the pile again. i felt a little like sisyphus, condemned to a winter in buffalo instead of a fiery burning hell. but at long last the car emerged, and now i really have no excuse for not returning my severely-overdue dvd to blockbuster. i am going make a serious case for not paying late fees because my car was buried in six feet of snow and driving was against the law all weekend.

yay! phone call from an old friend just now…weird, i had this premonition that callie was going to call just before the phone rang, even tho i haven’t talk to her in months. once again, my psychic powers are wasted on little coincidences like this, never anything useful like lottery numbers or whether i should take my umbrella with me when i go out for the day.