We (me, Matt, Kevin Niemi, and Joe Trainor) went to go see Yes (well, one of the two groups currently touring as Yes... the better one, in my opinion), and HOLY CRAP were they absolutely amazing. It was a five-piece band, and it featured an absolutely flawless (FLAWLESS!!) Jon Anderson on soaring, original-key, perfectly smooth and dead-accurate how-the-hell-is-he-73-years-old vocals, percussion, "acoustic guitar" (though his fingering rarely changed and we don't think it was actually plugged into anything) and celtic harp; Trevor Rabin on freakin' fantastic guitar, and the sparkly-caped Rick ZOMG Clearly No Arthritis Wakeman on keys and keytar. Since they had Trevor Rabin, the show had a bunch of songs off of 90125 and even "Rhythm of Love" off of Big Generator (and we all agreed that was the most we ever liked that song). The show was in Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center, and it was so damn civilized! The crowd (with the exception of the one guy yelling "YES!!!") was super-enthusiastic but so respectful-- people didn't "woo" during quiet parts, and they clapped for good solos... and the Kimmel Center staff made you wait until between songs to re-enter the theater if you left to pee. (Of course, at a Yes show that could be 20 mins...) It was AMAZING and we are all still buzzing about it.

Little did we know a few hours later some fuckstick would be shooting a zillion people at a concert in Vegas. I can't wrap my head around it; I really can't.  I try, and I fail. I just can't make sense of this year. Whenever I see the phrase "President Trump" written, it seems like an '80s Bloom County joke where Opus, Steve Dallas and Milo are making fun of the 21st Century. 

Speaking of the 21st Century, we went to go see Blade Runner (the 1982 version obviously, but the Directors Cut, without the voiceover); Matt had never seen it before, and it'd been just under a decade since I'd seen it (though I was so tired during that screening that I slept through most of it). I really enjoyed it this time around. It was playing at Theatre N, which is a cute little auditorium in the Nemours building in downtown Wilmington. ​We ran into a zillion people there who seemed genuinely happy to bump into us, and it felt nice to feel liked. (Whatcha think? Is Deckert a Replicant or not?  Discuss.)

Get off my lawn

​​​​​​In other news entirely, I've decided there are some 21st Century things I just don't give a shit about, and I don't really want to learn about them or invite them into my life. The list (which is sure to expand) currently includes:

Any smart-home technology. My fridge does not need a fucking IP address. Neither do my lightswitches, lightbulbs, garage door openers, thermostat, etc. If I wanna turn a light on, I'll friggin' turn on the switch, thanks.  I trust GE to make a lightbulb; I don't trust them to have the expertise to lock down their products with the kind of internet security anything with an IP address needs today. And cars sure-as-fuck don't need wifi.  (Read the short article, and then scroll down for the related video from 2013 of a Jeep getting hacked while driving down the highway.)

Any voice-activated assistant, be it Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, etc. Screw you, you can't listen in. If I need to order more Luna bars, I'll fucking click three things on my phone. 

Facebook Messenger. Fuck you, I will never, ever install it. Ever. You already know how I feel about Facebook. I am not gonna get swept up in its bullshit, whether it's positive or negative bullshit. It's a timesuck, and I already suck at time. Besides, I'm pissed off enough about Trump and life's injustices without Facebook. (And for the love of god, please stop thinking/worrying I'm judging anyone who is on (or even loves) Facebook. I am not judging. I'm happy you've found something you dig. You do you, I'll do me. Done.)

Spotify. Fuck you, I don't give a shit. If I wanna listen to music, I'll fucking turn on my iPod, or Sirius, or WXPN. I haven't used Spotify and I don't care to try it. It bones musicians so badly that I can't possibly contribute to it. And even if it treated musicians fairly, I still wouldn't be interested because I'm lazy and don't like new things, SO THERE. 

That new-fangled Windows XP. (I kid, I kid.)

​​​​In still other news...

Matt and I have gift certificates to sensory-deprivation float-pods in West Chester. This will either be the best most awesome thing or the absolute worst possible thing for someone with crippling anxiety, but either way we're eager to give it a whirl. We'll letcha know how it goes. 

And in yet still other news...

Work is FINALLY starting to pick up. Hey, it's only October, right?  I'll be at UPenn every Friday morning between now and October 2018, and the occasional Wednesday, too. Yay. Money. This Friday I'll be there all day. If you work near Penn, maybe we could get lunch every once in awhile? 

OK, that's enough outta me. 

Probably my favorite one so far this year. It started when I was thinking about the cliche' image of the masculine hero carrying the Damsel in Distress. I was thinking specifically about how over done it is. Then I thought about reversing the roles.

I started roughing in the forms, and the idea that the male would be Patch (who, if I'm honest, is about as cliche as that original image idea) struck me as a good idea.

So who would the heroine be? Perhaps a valkyrie or angel? I dunno. I was focussed on the forms, and when I realized I was smudging the pencil a lot, I decided to erase the wings. I thought it might be neat to create something by its absence.

In case you're interested, I'm posting all of my Inktober sketches over on my Instagram - even the ones that I'm not a fan of...

Festival life does not suck. 

BALLS. Balls Camp. Balls lite. Happy happy hour(s). Pink Heart redubbing.

Parking. Coordinating. BOD-on-Call. Gate.

Lost. Found.            Rings. Radio.          I don't believe I like having a radio. 

Walkabout. Backfield. Country Club Life. I need better camping fest shoes.

Festival life does not suck. Or so I was told. And so I agreed. Agree.

Serotonin. Dopamine. Anticipating drops. The sad parade.

Flips. Conclave. Sanctuary Dance. Fight milk. Furries. Showers. On call. Hot seat. Suspension unseen.

The Land. Misty Mornings. Frost! Perfect Fall weather. Cold cold nights.

Building the burn you want. Long nights, walks with friends, walks alone. Golf cart rides. Dancing. Fire pit camaraderie. Constellations.

And always coming home to the welcoming blue shiny embrace of camp.

How about this:

each of us writes in a paper journal for 30 minutes. When you’re done, stop, walk around, and then write a haiku based on what you wrote in those 30 minutes. Post only the haiku. 

Anyone else game? 

EDITED TO ADD:

List our shared burdens 

Macaw shrieks in the driveway 

Cook and clean our fears. 

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.