I'm doing Inktober again this year. Planning to do NaNoWriMo too. I've never finished either. Let's hope this is the year for both.

Here's the tl;dr rules for Inktober:

1) Make a drawing in ink (you can do a pencil under-drawing if you want).
2) Post it online
3) Hashtag it with #inktober and #inktober2017
4) Repeat

Honestly, I'm not off to a great start for Inktober. I bought a new Moleskine 'sketchbook' (Cahiers series 'Plain Journals'). I selected this one because it has 45 pages. I wanted a stand alone book for just Inktober 2017.

The pages are pretty thin to the point of near transparency. The pen I grabbed to do initial sketchwork with on this one is a standard ballpoint pen I garnered from one of my hotel stays. While I want that - to keep things simple and not worry about 'fancy equipment' - the ink really bled into other areas when I used my Prismacolor markers to throw in some tones.

Anyway. Not awesome, but Day 1 is in the can. Yay?

Subject matter is one that's been on my mind quite a bit for a while. Young Patch from the (theoretically) forthcoming book.

I'll also likely give myself a time limit every day like I did today. ~30 minutes from soup to nuts. It makes me dislike the results a bit, but it forces me to put things down and move on. In the bigger picture, that's better. Like writing the first draft and revising later. If I don't get that first draft done because I'm picking nits...

In unrelated news (and primarilly for my tech folks), I'm using Synergy to bounce between three separate work computers with a single keyboard and mouse. Have any of you used recent versions? I'm getting some lag pretty regularly and it's quite frustrating. I've tried stopping/restarting services and I've checked and rechecked settings. I have yet to uninstall / reinstall, but I just figured I would be lazy and ask if any of you have tried it and run into the same thing or not.

Hi, troops!

Today is kinda my first do-nothing day since before Lizzie had tech week.  I'm currently sitting in the chair gettin' mah hairz did.

Takin' care of bidniss

We spent the better part of the last two weeks up at my folks' place because my mom had her cataracts laz0r3d out and replaced with a permanent contact lens. They only do one eye at a time, and only on Tuesdays... so we were up there taking care of things and just generally keeping their moods chipper and helping out with stuff.  Last week's visit was hard due to a shitty bitchy fight my mom and I had, but she sincerely apologized 20 minutes before we went home... and this visit was much more chill.  Mom's eyeball surgeries went very well, so that's super-good.

My dad bought a portable air conditioner for our bedroom at my folks' house (a sunroom, so it gets hella hot during the daytime), and it is awesomesauce. Thanks Dad! 

TMI

The Ladytimes decided to visit and completely obliterate me. I won't go into the literal gorey details, but suffice it to say I did three loads of laundry in 36 hours because of HOLY GOD IT WON'T STOP.  I spent all day yesterday in my bed at my folks' place curled up a ball with a heating pad, moaning, eating Advil until I gave myself gastritis. Good times. (OK, apprently I WILL go into the gory details. Sorry.)

Closing weekend of Lizzie redux

I don't think I ever talked about how the final weekend of Lizzie went. In a nutshell, it rocked. I was sad when it closed. The penultimate show (Friday the 12th) was our best show by far... and Saturday (closing night) the rhythm was off and a few of us fucked up little things that we'd never fucked up before... but that always seems to happen on closing nights, dunno why. The show is a VERY vocally-intense and challenging score for all four actors, and by Saturday's closing night we all wanted to go all-balls-out... but since we went all-balls-out every other night too, there wasn't anyplace farther/harder we could go. So, in my snobby professional voice-teacher opinion, Saturday night show sounded a little pushed to me... and I am guilty, too.  But daaaaaamn, it feels so good to just let it all go and hold nothing back. It's hard not to surrender to that feeling and get swept up, technique be damned... but good technique is what allows you to be able to sing balls-out night after night, so you can't really toss it to the wind. (Geez, I'm making it sound like the closing night show was a disaster. It wasn't! But after the Friday night buttah-like show, it was a sliiiiight disappointment for us actors.)

Someone recorded the awesome Friday night show, but they forgot to record sound (KHAAAAAAAN!!!!) so they recorded the closing Saturday as a re-do which was a wee bit of a let-down. So I have no desire to watch the recording because all I can do is focus on the three notes I sounded scratchy on and the one spoken line I butchered, so I can't enjoy anything ever again.  Buuuuuut, the girl who played lead guitar (Meghan, on whom I have a TERRIBLE crush, good GAWD) recorded the show on a tablet from her music stand (she was getting footage of herself playing to build her online portfolio of her musician-for-hire skillz) so we've been thinking about using her sound from her Friday night recording and laying it over the soundless camera recording.  The sound from Meghan's iPad is gonna be band-heavy, but at least it'd be something.  Anyway. That's a someday project, and it's something I'm hoping Sandler will do, because he's awesome like that. 

We interrupt this program...

Fuck, my cramps hurt right now. I wish someone would just agree to yank out my goddamn lady parts. ("YOU'RE NOT WANTED!!") But my girlie doc says "Uhm, we don't just go removing perfectly good organs y'know." Aaaaah, fuck you. Gimme some fuggin' nail clippers and some Everclear and I'll do it myself.)

House stuff

My house has so many things it needs done and I just ignore them. La la la, nothing to see here!  Things like:

Why does the basement smell wet all the time? It is not wet. 

When will I get around to calling the plumber and getting my basement slop-sink fixed?

When will I get around to calling the exterminator and making sure our house is more basement-mouse-resistant before it gets chilly and the mice move indoors?

When will I hire some nice people to remove the Big Gay Purple Shed (or when will I give Houser a sledgehammer and some rum  and a GoPro)?

When will I hire some nice people to look at Grandfather (our redwood tree, only 1 of 11 in the state) to make sure he's OK?

When will I hire some nice people to re-pour the cement slab in the backyard and maybe even build a fire pit or a patio or something that doesn't look shitty?

When will I find a new owner for The Barcalounger motorcycle that is in my other shed, surely with a gunked up gas tank by now since it's been stored with stagnant gas for god-knows-how-long?

When will I have Joe's car removed from our driveway? This has been the longest weekend favor evaaaar. (Though OTOH, it is nice making it look like someone's home by having a car in the driveway.)

The answer to these questions are all: Mehhhh.

Bye now

OK, my hairz are done, but the wifi here stinks, so I'll post this later.

(EDIT: It's later. Hello from THE FUTURE!)

Opening night of Lizzie (Friday night) went very very very well. I felt great. We all did. The band is AMAZING.

The show's run had been rescheduled several million times and we had agreed to play the Kennett Square Mushroom Festival which happened today... but that was before this weekend became opening weekend for Lizzie with a show the night before and a sold-out show the evening of this afternoon gig.  I praise the baby jesus every day that I have vocal cords of steel... and our one-hour set from 12:30-1:30pm went swimmingly (with a special super bonus visit from Tom and Roxanne! Wheeee!), and didn't affect my evening performance at all. Yay.

We went directly home and took naps and slept super-hard for a few hours, and were ready to rock tonight's Lizzie production. Did I mention it was sold-out? And WHEEE #2, we had special PhilaDel representation by Lindsay, Shellebot and Archerbot (how is he 6 feet tall?!), Jermatron, and sadly Laura's back couldn't tolerate the uncomfortable seats so she bailed at intermission. But I didn't even see them in the audience until the end of the 2nd act, but I was happy to spy them.  Got lots of huge love from friends and strangers, which felt really nice. I am really enjoying the show now, and it's an honor to be a part of it.

I have a vague recollection of someone on OPW asking to crash on my couch so they could come see the show, but I'm having a brain-fart as to who that was.  If it was you, please remind me!  I don't know about letting you crash on my couch only because I'm a shitty person on show days with my head solely focused on the show and nothing else, and I don't wanna worry about being a good hostess or having a clean house or being on good behavior, but I'd be happy to give you my Hilton points and get you a hotel. :)  And maybe you could go on a night when other OPW pals are going so they can be your chaperone.  Just a thought!

Anyway, I cannot express to you the relief that I feel now that we've opened and the show is rockin'.  

I am already starting to get sad that we only have five more performances.

A billion thanks to everyone listening to me bitch about the process, and a billion more thanks to everyone who came to see it and/or who is planning to come see it. I'm really proud of what we've done.

OK, must sleep now so I'm ready for our single matinee of the run.

Xoxo,

Jill-oooo

Yes, I do. Particularly in this interview about you know what. 

In other news, today I was told that I am a horrible evil woman. Another person offered to smack me across the face. Both of them wanted to cut in line. I said nope. 

I just finished a webinar on career advice for playwrights. It was helpful but not exactly worth the $75 I paid for it. But it was helpful. Maybe $50 worth of helpful. 

This gets me thinking. This eveningI had two good things happen in the career I wish I could embrace fully , after shoveling a load of shit all day. Can I just drop the shit shoveling? Oh, income. Right. 

I wrote this Thursday, August 24th.

I woke up at 7am this morning crying my face off from a horrible dream where I was alone in a hotel room on a work trip, and it occurred to me that I was dying. I was actually mostly OK with dying, but I wanted to be with Matt and my parents, and I couldn't get to them. There's a lot more to the dream, but I'm typing on my phone here at the hospital... I'm currently getting my 2nd iron infusion, so I have a tube in my arm and today it's extra-pinchy for some reason.

Anyway, I have been on the verge of tears for 10 days. I don't know if it's that I've been in slightly more emotional situations lately, i.e., the house concert was great, but made us miss Paul; seeing Patty in California was awesome but her mom recently died and reminiscing was so, so good, but also really sad. The eclipse was happy and wonderful, but got me choked up. And singing just about anything makes me cry... if it sounds bad, I cry... if it sounds good, I cry.  I don't get it. Maybe this is the world's longest bout of PMS... but I've gotta figure out how to handle it, because I can't cry at rehearsal or during the shows!

Anyhoo, tonight I have my first Lizzie rehearsal since vacation. They moved into the theater while I was in California, so tonight I'll be seeing the set for the first time. I'm not gonna be able to sing tonight because my voice still sucks from this cold. Argh!

In other news, everyone here in the hospital chemo/infusion suite is extra-chipper today. It's a bright, sunny, 80-degree day today, and I think people are just kinda feeling the change of season starting. There are three other patients here right now (as opposed to last week where all 20 chairs were filled), and one patient is telling her cancer story-- she's a relatively new patient-- she's 37 with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She said she had no idea she was even sick until someone mentioned she looked a little yellow. So she went to the doctor and he was like "Get your ass to the hospital NOW."   So hearing her story and the other patients talking about their chemo ports and yadda yadda makes me STOP BITCHING about having a dumb cold. (A crappy, tenacious cold with a lungmeat cough that is now here a week and holding my voice hostage... but whatever.)

We're taking our Billy Joel tribute to The Rehoboth Beach Bandstand this weekend, and we had to cut our 2-hour show down to 75 minutes. It'll be a quick but fun show. And when we get home we'll have a dogggggg. (We're dogsitting JD. Yaaay!) 

[...time elapses...]

Aaaah. My infusion is finished. They also gave me a steroid (Decadron), which, in addition helps prevent any potential death by anaphylaxis that iron infusing can sometimes (rarely) cause, will also reduce the inflammation of my vocal cords, so my voice should be back soon. 

August 28th Update

So it's a few days later and the Billy Joel show in Rehoboth was a smashing success... the guy who booked us said we had a crowd of about 1000, which is impressive considering the bandstand only has seats for 350. It looked like a sea of people out there, and everyone said that the audience was all singing along and dancing, which is cool. As usual, my damn mic barely worked and a zillion audience members complained to me after the show about it. I wasn't able to hear myself in the monitors so I crammed two earplugs in just so I could hear myself, and it was sub-optimal at best. Oh well.  

In other news, the ladytimes have kicked in, so at least I know why I was a crying hot mess last week. And hopefully it'll only last a week or 10 days so it'll be over for when Lizzie opens, considering we're wearing all white.  

If you're coming to see Lizzie, might I gently suggest coming to the second weekend if your schedule allows? 

In the last bit of news, we're dogsitting JD again. They've changed up his meds and he's a lot "doggier" now-- he's getting around better and seems happier, too. This is the best news.

I am not in the worst mood. The temperature is coming down. Things are not that bad. I'm tired, but not unhappy. It's like bubble wrap. 

Yesterday I was walking west on Arch to go get some lunch. I saw a Buddhist monk walking ahead of me. He was an older guy,  had a shaved head and a worn yellow robe, over jeans and sneakers. I walked behind him for a block or so, and noticed he would smile at passers-by, try to engage them, and they would wave and smile a little bit, but keep going.  I thought, "Buddhist Monk! Paragon of perfection! I'm happy to be walking behind this guy!" I've seen Buddhist and Jesuit monks in the area before, but never engaged with them. 

He turned and saw me, then let me catch up with him. He offered me a wooden bead bracelet, and this shiny gold card. 

I thanked him, and then he handed me a pad and a pen, with a little spreadsheet, indicating that I should write my name and "peace" on it, and give him twenty bucks. 

I reached into my purse and pulled out some cash. I had a five and three or four ones folded together, and I handed them to him. He wasn't happy. He said, "Twenty." I said, "This is all the cash I have." He said, "Ten." I said, "This is all the cash I have." He said "Ten," and I repeated the statement. It wasn't a lie. 

He shook his head and walked away. 

I did a google search for "kai guang amulet," and found that apparently monks giving tokens of peace in exchange for suggested donations of $20, $30 or $50 is commonplace in New York. Whether the items are blessed or not, and to what the money goes, is up for debate. 

So, now I have a wooden bead bracelet on my wrist, and a golden ticket in my purse. I'm trying to work the placebo effect as hard as I can; wooden beads on elastic around your wrist is a gentle reminder. Am I feeling more peaceful? I don't know. 

HOLY  CRAP, the Southwest Air Eclipse Flight was awesome awesome awesome. Just so much fun! 

After we deplaned, a news crew from Channel 11 Alive Atlanta was interviewing people about their experience, and since I'm a whore, I jumped in front of the camera. Apparently I'm gonna be on the Atlanta news. Woot!

So if you watch this video, that's me at 1:36 in my ITMFA shirt kvelling. :-) 

The Channel 11 folks also asked us to write up our experience and email it to them with photos, so here's what I sent.

_____________________

Hi, Julie and crew!

I'm the Jill Knapp that Matt mentioned in his first email. I believe someone from your station grabbed a quick interview with me when we landed in Atlanta. (I have the spiky platinum-blonde hair with the blue streak and the big smile.)

We've attached some photos for you. 

We are an acoustic dork-rock duo from Wilmington, Delaware called "Hot Breakfast!", and we fly Southwest exclusively because of our earned Companion Pass status on the airline. (Companion Pass status allows us to perform all around the country in a buy-one-get-one-free arrangement, reserved for their most frequent flyers.)  

When we heard this flight was happening, we jumped on it specifically to see the eclipse from above the clouds!

Boarding the flight was super-fun-- the plane was decorated with a disco ball and colorful streamers, and the flight attendants were all dressed up with glittery wigs, glow glasses, alien antennae ("deely-boppers" for those of us '80s kids), and the pilot was able to bank the plane several times to let both sides of the plane get great views. Matt and I sat in the "LUV Seat," which is the exit row with only two seats in the row, so we had room to crouch down low by the window to see the eclipse, and we encouraged other passengers to jump in our row to get the great view, too! 

The vibe on the plane was so friendly, fun, enthusiastic. The Southwest flight attendants are always top-notch, but they went above and beyond today with custom eclipse-themed cocktails, eclipse and space trivia games, and glow-bracelets for everyone, and plenty of jokes and smiles. 

Sometimes the news will make you think that everyone is angry and there's no happiness in the world (and especially in our country). But this flight made me remember that people are almost all wonderful, curious, and fun. I admit, I needed this. :-)

This flight was absolutely everything we hoped it would be and more. 

Thanks for letting us report in!

Our very best,

Jill and Matt

Matt and I are SO FRIGGIN' SICK, like lung-meat death-cough no-voice-fever sick. Fun vacation. But right now we're sitting outside on Santa Monica Blvd drinking Philz Coffee, and a douchebag in a convertible drove by cranking "Life in the Fast Lane" and I've never felt more California. 

Life is good despite it... though I'm not looking forward to 43 flights in the next 24 hours with clogged ears. (But I am looking forward to watching the eclipse from the plane.)

So much for singing Total Eclipse of the Heart for Southwest Airlines. Can't currently talk. 

Boo.

OK, that's it. More later.

My friend Anthony Stramaglia (whom I wonder if Thomas Boutell and Jeremy Moskowitz know from the classic computing shows they've gone to?) attended this weekend's house concert, and was kind enough to tape all of the songs.  I am SO grateful to him for doing so, because in all of my prepping for the show, I totally forgot to set up something to record the happenings. Anthony is a life-saver and an all-around awesome guy-- he used to run a local BBS back in the day. (Epsilon Process in the hoouuuuussse!)

So this morning he sent out a link to the second Sunnyvale song of the evening; this one is called "The Enemy."  This song is an old Evelyn Situation song, and we retooled it for one voice, as opposed to the three voices that sang it back in the day.  We dropped the key a step because in the old days Danielle (top voice) sang the melody on the choruses, and now that I'm covering all the parts essentially, we had to drop the key so I could sing the choruses that lay a little higher, as well as the verses (which I always sang because they, like my balls, hung low).  (so classy.)

This song was always my favorite Evelyn Situation song. It was written from the perspective of a person who was left behind as their significant other decided she was leaving the "cold cold northeast."  (In case you're wondering: Yes, Jeremy knows the song was inspired by him, though he wasn't interviewed before the song was written or anything. Durk just sorta imagined that this is how someone in Jeremy's position might feel.)

Once again, I tried to be extra-dictionny with the words so you could catch them all.  In the event you can't, here's a link to the lyrics.  (Click "Lyrics" from the cutting-edge 1996 FRAMES web technology, and then choose "The Enemy."  (Huge apologies to Tom, whom I can hear cringing from over here! lulz))

If you want to hear what the song sounded like in its original Evelyn Situation format, click here.  Cue college-age Jill.  Good lord, how I loved that band like it was my only true, true love.  And daaamn, how I love how the voices end the song with Danielle resolving to the 7th of all places, because why the hell not.

God damn, I love music.

ps: I wrote this while getting my iron infusion today. It went well. I can already feel the difference. Tomorrow I will be really cooking with gas. I go for a second infusion next week because MOAR MOAR MOAR.

Yes, I know you all know this. But just in case: 

Please, PLEASE!! PROTECT YOUR EYES DURING THE SOLAR ECLIPSE.  Everyone knows how to make a pinhole camera, but some people erroneously believe that you look at the sun through the hole in the paper. NO NO NO.  You look wherever your pinhole camera is projecting the image onto. 

Or, you need to get some ISO-certified eclipse-viewing glasses. But PLEASE don't look directly at the eclipse.  "But I can look at the regular daytime for a second, so why can't I look directly at an eclipse?" BECAUSE YOU CAN'T, OK?

House Concert in NJ with Sunnyvale and Hot Breakfast!

In other news, we were up in NJ at my folks' place on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday this weekend, because Hot Breakfast!, along with Sunnyvale, co-billed on a house concert in north Jersey at my brother's house. ("Sunnyvale" is our new bi-coastal musical project which includes me, Matt, and my pre-Matt lifelong musical collaborator Andrew Durkin. We play Andrew's compositions-- some are retooled versions of old Evelyn Situation tunes, and some are brandy-new compositions.) Andrew lives in Portland (OR) but was out east taking care of some family stuff, so we decided to try to play a show while he was out east. We also used this house concert as a way to honor Paul's memory. After Paul's memorial service in January, we all vowed to stay in touch... so we called everyone together to hear these Sunnyvale tunes which were all songs inspired by Paul's passing, or songs on which Paul had some input while Andrew wrote them, or songs that Paul had played on back in The Evelyn Situation days.  Hello, house concert!  It was attended by my and Andrew's and my brother's overlapping high school friends; some I hadn't seen in eons. 

Here's a video of the first Sunnyvale tune of the night, called "Blood and Bone." It's my favorite of our Sunnyvale new tunes. I sing a bit more "legit" (meaning "treat these songs more like an art song rather than a pop song." Or, more precisely, find someplace in between art-song and pop-song) with Sunnyvale songs as opposed to the "always huge voice, all the time, always with a knowing wink" with Hot Breakfast.  It's sincere. Since I was mic-less for this, I really tried to focus on my diction because I wanted everyone to catch every word. I might have over-done it... I was nervous as hell, mostly because I wasn't able to get through a lot of these songs in rehearsal because I kept crying. (Plus, many of these songs are brandy-new and I've only sung them once before. Or never.)

I fucking LOVE this song so much; it's in 6/4 which just gives it this hypnotizing droney feel... but then I love how the piano part and the vocal intertwine with his majestic right-hand thing with the vocal's wordless "ooohs."  And then the bridge goes into a quicker 4/4 time as it talks about remembering how it feels like to be a child on the family vacation, and just *being.*  [1]

OK, so now here's the video of the first Sunnyvale tune of the night, called "Blood and Bone." It's my favorite of our new tunes. (Music starts around 1:10. Feel free to forward through my thank-yous and the backstory.)

Lizzie

What else. Lizzie rehearsals continue to go well. The girl playing Lizzie hasn't been at the last few rehearsals because she was wrapping up another play, and then she caught the plague, poor thing. But the other cast members have been doing good work, and Lizzie will plug right in, no doubt.​​​​​​​

Iron Time!

In other news, tomorrow (Tuesday) is my first-of-two iron infusions. I cannot wait... hook me UP!  And then Wednesday we leave for California to visit Patty and to see one of Matt's plays at the Little Fish Theater in San Pedro/Los Angeles... and then we fly home during the eclipse. Wooooot!  We'll be home late on the 21st.

So that's the latest!

If you've emailed me (Shelle Klein Houser ​​​​​, Lindsay Harris-Friel ​​​​​​, Thomas Boutell ​​​​​​), I know I owe you a reply. I'll reply soon, I promise. 

Xoxo!

Jill-o

 _____________

[1] How the hell did I get so lucky to get to sing the songs that Andrew writes? It was just right-place-right-time -- If Andrew wasn't on my bus on that band trip in 1986, he never would have heard me sing, and he never would have asked to work together. And then none of the Area Code (201) / Brooklyn Ferry/ Evelyn Situation/ Jay's Booming Hat / Industrial Jazz Group bands ever would have happened. Which then means that I wouldn't have had the musical taste and experience that makes me me... which means I wouldn't have been the right fit to sing Matt's music in either the "Matt needs backing vocals for his solo record(s)" to "holy crap, playing as a duo is fun, let's do this more" days, up to and through to the Casarino Royale and now to the present Hot Breakfast! days. And now I get to make music with these two absolutely It's all right-place-right-time... and once again, I am the luckiest girl in the world. THANK YOU, UNIVERSE.