Yeah! I slept in a few hours today. Of course the cats weren't happy about their feeding time, but my roommate took care of that. I'm feeling better than i did last night after the show. Which is good, since i was mostly sleepy and couldn't breathe very well. The shows yesterday all went pretty well. I think overall they may have been some of the most solid first shows. Last year ciro and i ended up doing two of the four shows because of a last minute partner switch which left one team completely unprepared. This year, even though two of the folks were hired just before rehearsal, all the teams were performance ready. Whew! Big sigh of relief. Today they get their cars and tomorrow they drive away.

Last night's show also went very well even though the crowd was small. The only problem i had with the evening was making a dash for the bathroom during what i thought was a break for me, only to discover that someone had to fill in on a poem that i missed seeing on the list. As coincidence would have it, it was the poem i said i didn't want to do, the same one i forgot to do several times when it was in the show a few years ago. The same one that all the kids looked at us like "huh?" when we finished with it. So, you might think i did it on purpose. But really truly honestly, i looked at my list and managed to just plain not see that last yellow highlight. Fortunately, Margie, who had tried to skip the same poem the day before at their school performance, was there to jump in and redeem herself and save John the embarrassment of trying to play both parts since i had gone missing. So, why do i have such a deep loathing of the poem Lord Randall? Well our version is missing a stanza or two, so it doesn't really make sense, it's written in dialect that the kids have a hard time figuring out, it's about a mother figuring out her son was fed poisonous eels for dinner by his true love and him dying at the end of the poem, it's a ballad with very repetative phrases along the lines of "Where have all the flowers gone?" that loses most of it's magic when it's spoken instead of sung. So, subconsciously i may have edited that poem off my list, but i swear that i had no intention of purposely missing that poem.~w

I still have a cold in my head, but i'm about 5 pounds lighter. I got sick of my hair yesterday (it's been bugging me for a while now) and decided to chop it to shoulder length (from waist length) and dye it red. Not a bright firey flashy red, but a smoldering dark violety red. I found a woman named Barbi who would stay late to cut my hair after rehearsal in addition to giving me the best price in town and so i took the leap. I'm very happy with it, it's short, curly, out of my face and easy to deal with for someone who doesn't like fussing with blowdryers and such. Hurrah! I feel liberated and lighter already.

Now if i could just get this cold out of my head.~w

I definitely have a cold in my head this morning. It's not fun. I'll have to sniffle through the show that two of the performers are doing at the high school here today. I tried to be good, for the second night in a row i was in bed early and got a full 8 hours of sleep.

Yesterday was spent auditing shows as i mentioned before. Today we have a photo shoot for publicity shots.

Blame it on the stuffy head, or the early hour, but i'm having a hard time thinking of words to type. I would really like to go back to bed.~w

Despite taking it easy last night and getting a full 8 hours of sleep, i woke up with a stuffy nose this morning. Grrr. I don't have time to be sick. It's on the light end of things though, so i'm taking my vitamins and planning on taking it easy the next couple of evenings as well. Today is run-through day for the teams. I will see two of each team's shows (or eight total) with Ken, while Rodney and Nadine watch the other eight shows. The idea is to give final notes and make sure that they are ready for an audience. In my spare time...(ha,ha) i need to run and polish up the elementary shows with John for our performance on Monday.

The sun came out yesterday and tried to dry things out, but it was awfully humid last night. This morning as the light outside my window turns from black to grey i notice that everything still looks damp.~w

I woke up wondering why my alarm was going off on Saturday. Granted it's Tuesday, but i think my brain was wondering when it got to take the day off. I was looking forward to finally getting a break next weekend, but Bob went and booked a show on Monday that doesn't fit into the five columns. Guess what that means...i have to go do a show with the new alternate on Monday. That's not what i was planning on doing. In fact, if there is anyway i can get out of it i will. Unfortunately, both Rodney and Bob will be travelling that day as well. I'm sure the other office person who has given her notice was really happy to hear about that since she probably wasn't planning on working 8 hours on Monday, but she'll be the only one in town to open the office. We'll have to see what we can do...I really need to have a whole weekend off for myself.~w

You'd think i was living in the Northwest the way it's been dripping here for the past few days. Although in the NW it drizzles. These are bigger drops, they just fall less frequently. The world outside has the damp glistening sheen of wetness that will take days to dry out. That didn't stop us from having our company picnic though. It's still warm and all that really needed to be outside was the grill. So, we stuff ourselves and played indoor games yesterday even. Besides, it kept the mosquitoes away.

Today we walk through the fourth and final show for K-2nd graders. I'll be leading this one again. It shouldn't take long, there is some overlap with the older show and the blocking doesn't involved any wrestling moves. After that it's run-through and run-through and tweek and run-through so that the teams are ready to perform on Thursday and Friday in front of students.~w

I finally got to sleep in today, which was good, because i was out until 2am helping celebrate the 25th birthday of one of our cast members (he is now officially old enough to drive a Hertz rental car). He shares a birthday with a returning cast member, but we were split on where we wanted to go. However, we all ended up running into each other on the street back to the motel. It was fun, after we all turned into mush puddles of poetry in the afternoon (by 3:30pm folks had run shows a few times and were lying on the floor running lines out of sheer exhaustion), to have a chance to catch our breath and do something mindless like dancing to a club beat.

Yesterday, they learned the blocking for the 3rd show and i managed to get the walk-through done in a timely manner even though this show includes some intricate choreography and a stage fight. I felt pretty good about how much was retained from the walk-through and they were able to run through the shows a few times. I felt a little odd to be "in charge" but i think it went pretty smoothly.

Today we have workshop training. It's a bit of a brain break for me, all i have to do is demonstrate how to work with kindergartners to teach them a short poem. Then we picnic at the boss' house this evening. Whew!~w