1.18.02 – ghost in the machine

there’s mysterious music that plays very softly out of my computer speakers. i only notice it when the house is otherwise silent. if i hold my ear up to the speaker, i can identify the song; it’s usually some sort of boy-band-pop-radio-station-mush – definitely not any of the mp3s that i have saved on my drive. so the question is, where is the music coming from? i don’t have a radio card or anything, so what part of my computer had decided to act like a radio receiver? right now there’s an advert for Quality Grocery stores playing, and now the speakers are trying to sell me a car alarm system. i wonder if i can tune it to a better station?

1.17.02 – NYC or bust

found out today that the theatre is sending me to NYC for sure later this winter to rehearse a play there. happy me! 3 weeks of work in NYC means 3 less weeks of work in buffalo. and it seems that everyone and their dog is convening in and around new york these days, so I will have a considerably more interesting social life than i have here. also found out that the theatre will probably ask me to stay on for an additional 3 weeks in april to run a show. hmm. was wanting to get the hell out of here as soon as possible, but i know me, and i know it will be hard to turn down work if it is offered.

went out for drinks after work with justice (actor), dave and sarah (wardobe) and dave’s boyfriend ben. sarah thinks justice wants her bod, which is a distinct possibility. after a drink at this irish pub, the guys all wanted to go to Vinny’s to look at the beautiful boys and girls. Vinny’s is a dive bar near the theater that is famous for not carding. thursdays are “frat night” and everyone in the place is about 18. sarah and i were bored and sketched out, so we left the guys behind and she drove me home. sarah has threatened to set me up with her friend roland, who is “a vegetarian, sweet poet-boy who works at the olive garden.” he’s still in college, tho. probably too young, in that case. but i do like the olive garden…and poets…

am home now, eating eggs and tomato soup for dinner. must sleep soon, hannah is going to drag my ass out of bed to go to the gym at like 9 am, and then i have to go grocery shopping for food for the show; twice a week i have to buy a cart full of stuff like microwave fried chicken, frozen apple pies, canned fruit, cornbread and cake mixes that i then cook and serve on stage for the big dinner scene. it’s my own personal nightmare: standing in the checkout line to purchase a stack of apple pies, cakes and fried chicken, convinced that everyone is looking at me and thinking, “you eat that crap?” you can grow up and get smarter and healthier, but it’s hard to leave the neuroses of the teenage years behind completely.

1.16.02

i am getting verrr-rrryyyy sleepy. got called into work at 11, which doesn’t sound so cruel except that i didn’t get off until after 11 tonight. hey, someone just pointed out to me that the acronym for Seasonal Affective Disorder is SAD. ha ha. i suppose psychologists have to retain a brainy sense of humor, working with depressed people day in and day out. must sleep now.

1.15.02 – fan mail for me!

To: slithy@slithy-tove.net

Subject: random warm fuzzy

hey Jen –

okay, so this is going to sound a little weird,

but i can’t think of any other way to say it:

if i were wired to be attracted to women, damn

i’d have such a crush on you. :)

now if only i could get everyone in my life to think that way…

1.14.02

two interesting things i learned this weekend:

– i have the same birthday as buddha – april 8.

– the universe, when viewed from far away, is my favorite color – green.

i just finished reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig). it’s a book that my father says he reads once every five years just to remind himself of what it has to say. it’s not a bad idea. i’m going to loan my copy out to a few people i think might like it, and then put it on the shelf and save it for year 28. at the gym i’m reading The Tao of Pooh, which is very sweet and has large print (good for the gym), but is vehemently anti-intellectual, which always makes me squirm a bit, because, of course, i don’t like to be told that my intellectualism is closing doors for me as fast as it is opening them. so far i’m a bit dubious, as the author has spent the first couple of chapters explaining how he won’t be able to define taoism because by it’s nature it is indefinable, yet he’s written a whole book about it, so there must be a definition lurking somewhere in there. Zen and the Art had sort of the same challenge, actually – writing about a philosophical paradigm that defies description – but Pirsig and the main character were aware of that catch-22.

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.