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.

12.29.01 – uh, where’s my car?

12.28.01 – guess you already know.

Record snow paralyzes Buffalo, N.Y.

another snow day! the city is at a stand-still – stores are closed, driving is banned and k-mart sold it’s last snow shovel last night. apparently it’s a new record for buffalo. more than six feet of snow have fallen in the past four days. it’s been snowing all morning – i can barely see across the street right now. the city has run out of places to pile all the plowed snow, so now the national guard has come in to help truck away some of the snow, and the state prisons are sending prisoners out to dig out fire hydrants and get the snow off roofs threatening to collapse. the only movie we have here to watch is It’s a Wonderful Life (due back yesterday, but I can’t find my car under the six feet of snow, so Blockbuster will just have to wait), but Seth has some sort of personal vendetta against the film, and now he’s dragging Hannah down with him, so we’re stuck making popcorn and watching the snow fall for this afternoon.

i received the following email from an old friend:

oye, my dearest jenny, i was hoping your alumni account wasn’t up-to-date when it listed buffalo as your current residence…i just looked up the weather on cnn.com/weather, and the site’s cover story is: buffalo’s fucked. guess you already know.

12.27.01 – snow day!

it just keeps snowing! another 18 inches fell last night. everything is beautiful and white and the city is completely shut down. i got up and slogged in to work just in time for the theatre to decide to cancel the shows and rehearsal for today. i looked like a snowman when i got home. there’s a driving ban in effect and everything is closed. i meant to go buy a shovel and some boots, again, but whoops my car is buried in another two feet of snow now. i’ll have to borrow one from the neighbors when i want to dig my car out, but at this point, i’m not driving anywhere. the snow is deeper than my honda’s clearance is high. they’re expecting as much as another 18 inches tonight and tomorrow. good thing we have lots of turkey leftovers.

12.26.01 – the weather outside is frightful

whoa, nelly, is there a lot of snow out there! flew to boise on christmas eve, came back to buffalo late on christmas day to find that 2 and a half feet of snow had fallen while i was gone. holy shit is that a lot of snow. when i went to find my car in the parking lot, i just walked to the place where i thought i’d parked it and started digging till i could confirm that it was the right car. okay, so i didn’t really heed all of those safety instructions that told me to keep a shovel and boots in my car, so i ended up spending more than an hour digging my car out of the snow with a long-handled ice scraper, wearing my wool dress coat and little leather sneakers. i made it home safely at least and sat

down to a second christmas dinner with hannah and seth around midnight.

my trip to boise was much too brief but fun; i had approximately 25 hours to spend with my family before i had to turn around and fly back to buffalo. christmas was characterized by the usual happy chaos that accompanies all of our family gatherings; christmas carols are on the stereo (the family is firmly divided into pro- and anti-manheim steamroller factions), gifts are frantically purchased and wrapped at the last possible moment before dinner, the dog runs around shredding all the christmas wrap she can find into 2-inch squares, we have a birthday party for my twin uncles, my brothers run in and out of the house working on their home-made snow-making machine, the outdoor cat streaks in the open door and has to be tracked down, everyone talks at once and there is much laughter, good-natured teasing and absurd arguments.

12.23.01 – jen who?

went to dinner tonight with one of the actors, our director and her husband, who is the artistic director of the theatre. the restaurant turned out to be this super nice candle-lit affair, with yummy food that i couldn’t really afford but fortunately jane treated us. dinner conversation was a little lopsided, since much of it consisted of discussing people in The Biz that i don’t know, seeing as how i’ve never even been to NYC and these guys all work there most of the time. i attempted to keep up my end of polite conversation, but mostly i ended up feeling like the poor baby intern, country bumpkin who didn’t have anything interesting to contribute besides comments about the weather, terrorist attacks, and well, that was about it. it wasn’t until i got home that it occurred to me how thoroughly tired i am of trying to be someone else. i don’t know exactly who that someone else is, but i suddenly felt like i’ve been keeping up this complicated charade any time i leave the house. i like stage managing, and i love theatre, but i’m starting to hate this job because of the way that my stage manager treats me like something that got stuck to her shoe, and everyone else is so bloody pretentious and condescending. i’m determined not to let my boss drag me down to her level, so i’ve pasted on this permanently cheerful persona. i feel like Small Talk Barbie. i can make polite conversation until i barf, but what i wouldn’t give to have a real conversation with just one of my co-workers. fuck, i’m tired.

thank god for my roommate hannah, who is cool and sweet and unpretentious and understands what a bitch my boss can be, and so that when we’re at home i can actually chill out. i’d trade all my fancy dinners out for a night of drinking beer with the old gang.