Middle of the week

I personally think that Wednesdays are the hardest. On Wednesdays you find yourself in the middle of the week, you've made it through Monday and Tuesday. After today you have two more days before you get the freedom of the weekend. Monday usually gets the bad rap, being the first day of the week. I never really have a hard time with Mondays, yes I am usually tired, and yes I do innerly wish sometimes to be back in my bed. Tuesdays usually pass by rather quickly. But Wednesday always seem slow. There are two more days to go to the weekend, and nothing exciting ever seems to happen on Wednesdays. Its this hump you have to make it over, before continuing forward.

Of course, lately there has not really been any difference between my weeks. They seem to all flow forward in the same way. Small differences accrue, but nothing really happens. I go to work, I go home, I cook dinner, read or watch TV on my Mac, go to sleep, wake up have breakfast, pack my lunch and ride my bike to work. On the weekends, I laundry, write, stay up late, and sleep a whole lot. Nothing seems to change, nothing seems to want to. I guess I have gotten myself stuck.

That being said I will add that I did do a major audition yesterday, and I do have a show that I will be starting soon for September. I also now have a roommate, for a couple of months at least, and that is going to change something. So maybe there will be some change in the future, right now, all I have to look forward to is the same old, same old. And making it through Wednesday.

Auditions!

She woke with a dream still hanging in the corners of her mind. It quickly evaporated in the pink of early morning. The sun, not yet up over the roofs of the row houses. Yet it was morning. The birds well into their song, dancing through the tangle of trees and vines that covered the space between the back of one row and the back of the next. She had woken too early. She rolled over and searched with her left hand for the cell phone. Finding it she held it over her head and flipped it open to read 6:15am. There was another hour and a half before she needed to get up. It was a whole half an hour before she normally awoke, but today was the audition.

A little over an hour later found her fully awake and climbing the stairs to take a shower. Nerves or stress would not let her slip back into forgetful sleep, so she was up getting ready. She took a long shower and spent a good amount of attention on her hair. Once out of the shower, she dried her self off and slipped into the skirt and shirt she had picked out the night before. She slung her still wet hair up like a turban and wondered back to her room. Her mind was already working through what she needed to do, rather than what was ahead.

She left the apartment at 8:45, hair blown dry, makeup on. She had changed her clothing three times and settled on a dress rather than the skirt. Her character shoes bounced around in her bag. Half a block away from her apartment she waited five minutes for the number 40 bus, which lucky for her would drop her off just a block away from the audition. She normally hated riding the bus, but today it was the only mode of transportation that made sense. While the bus bounced its way down 40th street, stopping at intervals to pick up and drop off passengers. She tried to consecrate on the introduction of her two monologues and that the monologues them selves, but found that she had no concentration. So she covertly watched people on the bus, but found that this was too difficult as well.

The bus made its way through university city and across the bridge towards center city. She started to watch the numbers and names of the streets. While the bus weaved its way southwestward, she found that it was easy to concentrate on things out side the bus so she did. Finally the hit 15th street, and she pulled the sting to request a stop. She stood up, riding the bus momentum till she reached the door, and waited for the doors to swing forward. She thanked the bus driver and stepped out into the cool morning air. The sun hot on her face. She turned and walking in front of the stopped bus crossed the street and headed north on Broad. Less than a block away was the theatre in which she would audition. She felt her heart thumping... and took a quick breath.

She found the theatre with no difficulty and pushed one of the large doors opened. She made her way to the sign in, smiled and gave her name. She was at least 30 min. early, but that was good. She found a seat and pulled out the pear she had brought with her, she started to eat it while she read over her monologues and continued to stay calm. After the pear was gone she went to the bathroom and made sure her hair and makeup was OK. Than she headed back out to the lobby were other hopeful nervous people waited. Someone had taken her seat, so she found another. The first group was called in. She was sure to be in the second group. So she slipped out of her flats and into her character shoes, humming to clear her voice.

Her name was called, last of the next group of five. She followed the group, a line of people around her own age, of various heights and body types. They walked single file down the hall way that lead to the back stage, to wait. This wait was worse, there was no concentrating here. She had to just let her self be, calm down and wait. She listened to the girl two people in front of her, give a great audition, than laughed at the guy who went on before her. It was nice to be able to hear what other people were doing, it was calming. Than it was her turn, she took a breath and stepped out onto the stage.

"Good morning, My name..." less than five minutes later she would be done. She made it through the slate, and taking a breath dove into her first monologue. She missed a line in the first monologue, it was the weaker of the two, but even with the few mess ups that really only she could know about, it was good. The second, one of her favorite monologues, from Chekhov's The Bear, went smashing. It was a good strong monologue. She finished stood from her chair and walked forward "Thank you" Less than five minutes and she was done.

She walked back out of the hallway, smiling at those who still had those five minutes a head of them. She grabbed her back, slipped off her character shoes and into her flats. In the bathroom she told herself that it was a good audition and that mistakes were normal. She prayed for call backs, and left the theatre for the morning sunshine and the street.

Auditions!

I would like to start by saying that I did not really sleep last night. Whether because the temperature was a lot colder than it had been all weekend, honeysuckle is in bloom, or stress I am not sure. For whatever reason I hung between being a wake and being asleep all night. Its a really weird place to be. Your body is tired, so it does not want to move, your limps are heavy. Yet your mind is still going at one hundred miles an hour, so you toss and turn. My guess is that I am already stressing about a couple of things.

First, amazingly, I have a girl moving into the apartment today. Which is GREAT! finally having a roommate will be a wonderful thing. Its really annoying not having someone in the apartment.

Second, and this is the real stress part, I have an audition tomorrow. But it is not any audition. It is the Philadelphia Annual Auditions, and it means that there will be a whole lot of people there. I'm hoping that this means that I will get parts in this next years productions. Obviously I'm already nervous, I can feel that in my stomach right now, while I write this. The important this is not to let those nerves get in the way of a good audition, and being really positive. I'm praying for a good nights sleep (I'll need it).

And of course this past weekend I did work on my monologues, but probably not as much as I should have. I have the Chekhov memorized completely, but the other one is still a little shaky and making my nerves worse. And of course being low on sleep is not helping either. I guess I need to work on calming myself down...

Worst Pick Up Lines Ever

Yesterday on my way home I was following the same biker through several red lights. After stopping at the third or fourth one, he turns to me and says "We need to stop meeting like this." Now what in the world are you suppose to say to that? My reply was "Ya I hate red lights..." End of conversation. But it got me thinking about really bad pick up lines. Like "did it hurt?/when you fell from heaven" or "you must be tired/because you've been running around my head all day."

Of course I do have my favorite come back, directly for my life as a theatre artist. "Wow the entrance was great, the delivery superb, lets see the exit." (yes I have used it). But come on why do guys feel the need to use those cheesy lines, that none of us women can take seriously? Am I too much of a romantic if I just want to have tea and talk? I would really like to stop having scary guys flirt with me on the subway, and get random pickup lines from people I do not know... Or am I a cold heart B----?

Eating Chinses Food

There is something absolutely wonderful about Chinese food. Beef/Broccoli is my favorite. And although I'm good at stir frying veg's, I never can get the right taste. Of course the Chinese food that we eat here in the USA is very different from real Chinese food, or even the Chinese food you get in other countries. I've never had 'real' Chinese food in China. I did have some while I was in Ireland, and not too surprising potatoes were a big part of the selection. It was good food, but very different from what we get here.

And then there is the wonders of left overs (I'm writing this while I eat left over shrimp broccoli). Although not everything is good re-warmed, Chinese food seems to do wonderfully (apart from sea food, all re-warmed shrimp is weird). I know that some people (my sister for example) can't eat Chinese because it makes them sick, but every once in a while I get a really craving for Chinese. Last nights purchase, might have stemmed from the fact that one of my co-workers had it yesterday for lunch. (question, can cravings for food be passed from person to person like a yawn?)

Well hopefully this will cure me to needing Chinese in the future, seeing as it really is bad for you.

Playing Solitaire

There are times when just playing several games of solitaire can lead to a kind of unfocused, unproductive busyness, that helps to keep off boredom. I've always loved playing solitaire, its one of those games that leave much up to chance. When you play with real cards, there is the break for the shuffling, the dealing, and then the slow moving of the cards into rows of black and red. There is something so soothing about just playing a game of cards with yourself. You play by your rules, one card or three from the pile? You might even cheat a little to get your way.

I first learned how to play solitaire on the plane to the Netherlands when I was in second grade. For a while I watched one of the men near me, deal out cards onto his tray table and play a game. Very soon I was playing it myself. In fact that trip included many things that were completely new to me, a language I could not understand, cobbled streets, and markets that seemed to come from fairy tales. For two very short weeks my mother and great-grandmother shared a country with my sister and I. We had gone to see one of my mother's host sisters (From when she had been a exchange student) get married.

I might have been a little young to remember everything that we did, but I do remember riding a train, walking the dikes, eating pancakes with nutella, and finishing a whole pot of mussels all by my self, and than helping my sister with hers (she hated seafood at the time). So many little things that I kind of remember, like the old church where the wedding was and my great-grandmother before Altimers took away any memory she had of my existence. Obviously solitaire was not forgotten for I have never really stopped playing it. Although I do not play it often, I do randomly play through a couple of games one day, or perhaps tick away some time on a bus or train playing it on my i-pod. And of course my ability is gotten better since those first few hands on the plane all those years ago.

Hot, Hot, Hot

I'm sure everyone knows the song. 'How you feeling? hot, hot hot!" It is one of those Bollywood songs that seemed to just get picked up and used everywhere. Most memorably at the end of Bend it like Beckham, with hilarious perfection. It is not however a helpful song to have stuck in your head when it is eighty in your apartment and all you have is one little fan to help out. Summer it seems is in full swing.

We never had air conditioning growing up. You opened the windows at night and ran fans in the worst weather, closing up the house(closing windows and pull shades across them all) once the sun started coming in the windows. I remember I also could not sleep at night with out my comforter on, something that drove my mother insane. It was would be hot and humid and I would be snuggled deep down under all my covers as if it was a cold winter night. Thankfully I grew out of that. Maybe it is was my youth, but I do not deal with the heat as well as I once did. Part of the problem might be that once I was in middle school, I got my own room in the basement and it was always cool down there in the summer (sometimes I even had to run my heater).

I can't imagine what it was like before air conditioning or even electric fans. Women wore full dresses, with corsets and stockings. I wonder how they did it. personally I am glad that I am freezing right now in my office, in glorious air conditioning. Although I am struggling to keep awake after a night of not sleeping due to the 'hot, hot, hot', I can't wait till true summer comes, won't that be fun!?!