How Much is Too Much?

I never really know how much television is too much. All the expert studies seem to change every couple of years ... kind of like diet stuff and which foods are good for you.

So, here are the shows I currently watch: Medium, Law & Order: SVU, Lost, CSI, ER, Desperate Housewives. Also, Jeopardy 5 days a week, if I'm home, and either reruns of Roseanne or That 70s Show, if I'm awake and still feel like watching something at 11 p.m. That's 12 hours a week of actually watching television. There are other shows I have on while I'm doing other things. Let's see ... Dick VanDyke, I Love Lucy, The Real World, The Abrams Report, Countdown, The Surreal Life. That's 5 hours, which adds up to 17 hours. Even if you add the fact that I sometimes have MSNBC or The Food Network on for background noise when I'm on the computer, that's only about 20 hours. Is that too much?

People are Strange

There's this person I went to junior high and high school with. We were pretty good friends back then but, as is often the case, we lost touch with each other. Now, I see her three or four times a month and she never, ever recognizes me. Or, if she does, she doesn't say hello to me. There are two reasons I believe she doesn't recognize me. This person also dated The Best Friend for a while. He told me that a few years ago he saw her, said hello then talked to her for a few minutes before he realized she had no idea who he was. He hasn't changed that much since high school. In fact, the first time we saw each other after 15 years we recognized each other instantly. Anyway, when this woman sees my mother, she always talks to her and ... Now, this is weird ... always says "Tell Anne I said hello." Uh, you could tell me yourself, ya know?

Yesterday, I took my Mom to Mass. This woman sat a few rows ahead of us. After Mass, I went to a convenience store to get a pumpkin spice cappuccino. The woman was there. I said hello to her. She turned her head and walked away. That wasn't surprising, of course. But just 30 minutes earlier the priest's sermon was something along the lines of "All God really asks of us is to be good people and to be nice." So, even if she didn't recognize me, wouldn't you think she'd do what the priest said and acknowledge my greeting just to be nice?

Apparently, she's one of the those people who goes through the motions of being Catholic but doesn't know anything about being Christian. And, I'm not judging her, or anyone concerning how they live their lives as a Catholic/Christian. I'm just making an observation.

Another Weird Dream

I walked into a bar with a woman I used to work with, which is strange in and of itself for a number of reason, one of them being that she doesn't drink. We sat at the bar. She ordered something. Then, while trying to decide what I wanted, I noticed the bartender was standing next to the Labatt's tap, so that's what I ordered. (The Best Friend drinks Labatt's. I drink either Mich Ultra or Amstel Light.) Three times the bartender asked what I wanted. Three times I repeated Labatt's. After the third time, he said "You want a Labatt's? Here's your Labatt's" and he spit at me, getting it all over my face and hair, then walked away. I told the woman I was with that I was going to report him to the police and have him charged with assault. She laughed and told me I couldn't do that because he just spit at me. I told her I most certainly could have him charged with assault. We argued about it for a while then, with the spit still on my face and hair, I went to the police station and reported him. Then, for some reason, I called GSG to talk about something else. We ended up scheduling a barbecue for the weekend before Memorial Day next year. After I got off the phone with him, I went back to the bar and sat next to the woman I went in with. GSG got there right after I did and sat down next to me. She said something to GSG about how stupid I was in thinking that I could ask the police to charge the bartender with assault. He agreed with me, and told me I could have him charged. Then the bartender came over and asked GSG what he wanted. He ordered a Labatt's and the bartender wouldn't serve him either. Then the bartender asked if he was with me. When GSG said yes, I was really happy until the bartender laughed and walked away. I asked the woman I went in with what the story was with the bartender. She said he was the brother of the guy who sued me. I was livid and asked her how she could be that mean, to bring me in there knowing he worked there. She just shrugged and didn't answer. Then GSG said he'd see to it that the police charge the bartender.

Nostalgia or Inflation or ... Something

Does anyone remember 45s? You know. Records? Singles? If you do remember, do you remember when they used to cost a buck or less? Well, I haven't bought a single in ages. Actually, until yesterday, I never bought a single on CD. Considering it's been about 25 years (Oh ... my ... God!) since I bought a single, I shouldn't have been surprised at the cost - $3.44. At Wal-Mart. Before tax. But, considering the full-length CDs I bought were $14-something, I guess the price is in line with what it used to be in the old days.

So, what single was it that compelled me to slap down $3.44 plus tax, you ask? OK. I'll admit it. "Inside Your Heaven," the Bo Bice version. (Nothing againt Carrie Underwood but, I like Bo's version better.) It's the first CD by an American Idol contestant I ever bought. Well, yeah. I also bought Kelly Clarkson's CD yesterday but I picked up "Inside Your Heaven" first. Bice comes before Clarkson alphabetically. That's why I picked it up first. I went in to by Kelly's CD and a Melissa Etheridge CD, which I forgot. For some reason, I bought a Rod Stewart greatest hits CD and forgot all about Melissa. Sorry 'bout that, Melissa. You and Sheryl are next, though.

Back to "Inside Your Heaven." Sometimes, when I'm in a mood, it makes me cry. Any song that makes me cry, I need to have.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

If you can possibly avoid having a job interview on a Friday, do it. Why? Obviously, you have to wait until at least Monday to find out if you got the job. Eek!

Anyway, as my regular readers know, the Red Cross job is just temporary and ends in 3 weeks. Because I tend to procrastinate, I haven't really been looking for anything else. But, as luck would have it, "anything" came looking for me. I got an e-mail yesterday asking if I would be interested. I said "YES!!!" He asked if I could come in for an interview this morning, which I did. I'm not a good judge of these things but, I think it went fairly well. I hope it did.

I'm not going to jinx this by actually posting about what the job is. Besides, if I don't get it, anyone who reads this and knows me in person might think I'm a loser for not getting it. Anyway, I've wanted this job (or something similar) ever since I was a little kid. But, as my regular readers also know, I've always been painfully shy with major self-esteem issues. When I was about 12 years old, I made the mistake of actually telling people I wanted this job. The people who didn't laugh at me told me I'd never be able to do it.

I'll show them! I hope.

I Broke a Rule

One of the first rules of cooking and baking is to make sure you have all the ingredients you'll need before you start. Last night I made candy corn fudge. (It looks like candy corn. You don't use candy corn to make it.) I got through steps one through six just fine. Step seven, however, called for yellow and red food coloring. I was almost out of yellow, so I had to use it sparingly. Unforunately, instead of bright orange and bright yellow, my finished product was kind of a pumpkiny color along with a kind of lemon chiffon color.

It tasted good, though.

But, I have learned my lesson. Next time, I'll make sure I have all the ingredients before I start.

Tales of the Traffic-Law Challenged Part 10

"Stop here on red" with an arrow pointing to a big white stripe on the road. Self-explanatory? You would think so, wouldn't you?

I wonder if the people who don't "stop here on red" and then have to back up when a tractor trailer can't make its turn are the same people who stop on the tracks at railroad crossings. I also wonder where they're going in such a hurry that they think getting a two-foot head start at the intersection is going to get them to their destination faster.

A Little Late

Yesterday I woke up at about 1 a.m. I knew I had a dream but, I couldn't remember exactly what it was. All I remembered was that it had something to do with food poisoning. I told myself I'd have to be careful of what I ate for the next few days. Then, I went back to sleep. I woke up a couple of hours later with one of the worst stomach aches I've ever had. And I had abdominal craps worse than I had right after my surgery before everything started working right again. It was awful! I couldn't tell which end stuff was going to come out. It ended up being both. So, a couple of hours after that, when I started feeling better, I said "If I'm going to have psychic dreams about getting sick from eating something, would it be possible to have the dream before I eat the sandwich?"

Aaand ... Strike!

It's over. In a way, I'm glad but, I'm sure I'm going to go through some kind of withdrawal. If nothing else, I'll go through caffeine withdrawal because I drank a lot of it during rehearsals and the show. Anyway ...

Saturday's show: Perfect. All the mics worked. We (SFX, lights and actors) hit all our cues. No one flubbed any lines. The audience was good. Also, the president of the theater company (who was also in the show) told me that his daughter was at Friday's performance and I was her favorite part of the show. (I think she's 10, or around there somewhere.) I said "Wow! I have a fan!" Then, during the "meet and greet" the audience thing after the show, a woman came up to me, introduced herself, told me how good it was, then went on to tell me she read and loved "Contempt of Court" and just started reading "Actual Malice" and loves that so far as well. Cool!

Sunday's show: Not quite perfect but still good.

Sunday's cast/crew photo: Funny. There's a part right in the beginning of the show where the theme from "The Adams Family" is played. Of course we all lip sync it and do the snaps. During the cast/crew photo session, the photographer was having a little trouble with her flash so, while we waited, we sang the Adams Family song. I think the photographer thought we were nuts. Well, we are. But in a good way.

Cast party: The best part of the whole thing. I don't know if all the directors do this because this is only my second show and the same person has directed both of them, but she gives little gifts to the entire cast and crew. We all got little pewter (I think) globes. (War of the "Worlds." Get it?) We also got wooden stars with "BLT 2005" on one side and "WoW" on the other. Then, after every show, the entire cast and crew receives "awards" ... with certificates. I got the "Playtex Gloves Award" for "diving head first into SFX, especially the water ones ..." The SFX crew gave the producer a box of Cheer laundry detergent (signed of course) for making us coordinate our laundry days so our matching T-shirts would always match and one wouldn't be more faded than the other. (Actually, she didn't want us to do laundry at all but we couldn't not wash our shirts. It was hot on stage, if you know what I mean.) One of the coolest things we all got was a big surprise to all of us, including the director and producer. The tech director/writer said he was going to edit the best parts of the dress rehearsral and the three shows together so the show that's re-broadcast on the radio would be a "best of" type of thing. So, we all expected the finished product would be ready for us to buy in a couple of weeks. But he gave us all a copy of it at the party so, not only do we not have to pay for it, we don't have to wait 'til Oct. 29 to hear it. And, by the way, it sounds awesome! I'm very proud of it.

Well, I guess I'm going to go start working on my WoW scrapbook. Maybe that will help ease the withdrawal symptoms.

Opening Night

It went really well! There was one problem, though. The SFX crew has six microphones. One of them died. The tech director fixed it and everything was fine after that but there were a couple of effects that the audience didn't hear. Oh well. I told the tech director that's our glitch for the the three-day run. As I'm typing this, however, I remembered the movie "Apollo 13." Very early on in the mission, a hydrogen tank bursts and Jim Lovell says "That's our glitch for this mission." Man, I hope I'm not as wrong as he was!

Anyway, we hit all our cues. I was suprised that I did, considering I was shaking so much. ;) But after I got past the part where I have to walk to the front of the stage and do an effect during the death scene of one of the actors, I was fine. Actually, somehow I was able to tune out the audience and concentrate hitting my cues. The actors did really well, too. Some of them had their best performances ever.

After the show, we all go out to the lobby for a "meet and greet" with the audience. (Refreshements are involved as well.) People I didn't even know were coming up to me and telling me how much they enjoyed it. It was so cool!

I didn't get a chance to blog about this before but I didn't realize I'd have to wear make-up. Yuck! The only make-up I wear in everyday life is a little mascara and, sometimes, lipstick. Because this is supposed to be a radio show, the director didn't want us to look really made up, so she told the women to wear their street make-up but kick it up a notch. If that didn't work, we could use stage make-up. So, for rehearsal on Wednesday, I figured I should kick it up two notches since I don't usually wear make-up. I thought I looked like a hooker but, under the lights, I looked OK.

One more thing. One of the grocery stores in town always has a sandwich board set up with a poster from the show and rehearsal photos. After Wednesday's rehearsal, I went to the store and I was standing in the check-out line. I saw both cashiers near the door chatting. They turned to look at me a couple of times but didn't come to wait on me. After three or four minutes, they both came over. They said they were looking at my pictures on the sandwich board. Pictures. With an "s." Two of them. Cool. They asked me if I had a big part. I said, although it's not a speaking part, yes, it's big.

OK. This really is the last thing. My picture was in the paper (not the one I used to work for) on Thursday with a great article about the show. Yesterday, the local paper ran a story and the director was quoted as saying "The sound effects crew is almost the star of the show." So, I figured if anyone asks me why I wanted to do sound effects instead of having a speaking part for my first time on stage, I'll say "If I wasn't going to be the star, why bother?" ;)