Dedication

Well, guess who I get to share Actor Housing Central® with for the next 10 days? None other than the playwright of The Pavilion, Craig Wright!

He showed up at the house last night while I was napping. Nice guy. I'd actually met him once in Pittsburgh while I was doing The Mystery of Irma Vep and he was in town for rehearsals of The Pavilion at City Theatre. I was surprised to find that he remembered me, frankly. I'd be really surprised if he remembered me just from our chance encounter on the street in Pittsburgh - perhaps he saw Irma Vep while he was in town. Not sure - maybe I'll have to ask him that when I see him next.

We did a run-through of the show for Craig this afternoon, and it was pretty apparent afterward that we still have a lot of work to do. Craig was pretty gracious about it, though. I felt like I was on a train hurtling toward a wreck. I was hyper-conscious of his being in the audience, since I know that I haven't memorized the script word-perfectly... every time I misplaced a word, I imagined him wincing in the audience. Drove myself crazy with that crap.

But I've got a bit of a reprieve with the whole line-learning thing, since Craig had to go to New York this weekend - I've got 'til Sunday to work on getting it right. Me being me, of course (I am after all, known as The King of Paraphrasing), the work will continue indefinitely.

I'm keeping this entry short, since I'm doing it late at night and I've got to be back at rehearsal at 10 a.m. tomorrow. But I did want to share this photo with you that I discovered. I took it when Danny Stiker and I were out on one of our Central Park outings back in New York - I believe we were in the Conservatory Garden up near the Harlem Mere when we came across this beautiful fountain. Danny tells me it's his favorite fountain in the city, and I can totally see why... there's such a playful aura about the three women. I really enjoy its energy too....

Did you check out the dedication? Somehow seeing this fountain makes me wish I could know a lot more about Samuel and Minnie Untermyer; what were they like? Was their life together (for of course I'm assuming they were married) as happy and full of joy as it would seem from the fountain dedicated to them? Was he devoted to her, and she to him? It's the romantic in me coming out. There's just no stopping it... it's why I always have hope for better times for myself, I think. That kinda optimism is irrepressible in the end. If a day comes when the last of it's beaten out of me, I think I'll just roll over and die. I'm not stupid and unrealistic (at least I don't think so), but I'd like to believe that although there's no perfect love, there is a love so deep and beautiful and flawed and human that it's worth commemorating after you pass on. If there really is an afterlife, I think I'd like to meet Samuel and Minnie and let them know how much of an impression they've made on me.

In Which Theatre History is Made

I'm in the lobby of the Arcadia Stage at The Arden Theatre Company, taking advantage of a little down time before we start our first technical rehearsal - it's what we showbiz folk call a "ten out of twelve." That means that we rehearse from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. with a two-hour dinner break in there somewhere - hence, we work 10 out of 12 hours. I can't speak for others, but I dread these things. Hell, I'm the one who's always complaining that 7½ hours is a long time to rehearse a 3-person play! Imagine how thrilled I'll be to do it for twelve.

I'm not entirely sure how I'm gonna make it through this. I feel like crap. I've got a raging sore throat, and enough gunk sitting in my chest to choke a horse, and to top it off, I barely slept last night. I woke up every 75 minutes like clockwork, and when I was sleeping, I had the most disturbing dreams with racist overtones. I kept finding myself in a park where I was being menaced by this heavy-set young black guy... actually, another detail just came back to me... I stepped away from my stuff in the dream, to get a drink of water or something, and came back to find him hosing down my belongings; and when I got upset about that, he threatened me, physically.

For some reason, the whole thing reminded me very clearly of an episode from when I was a little kid - I'm not exactly sure how old; maybe nine or ten? The details around the event have always been hazy, but being me, I remember the event itself with utter clarity, because it was bad. I often wonder if it's just me, or if everyone in the world tends to remember the bad things more clearly and more persistently than the good?

It had to be sometime in late April or early May, because I decided to go into the tract of woods across the street from our house to pick some flowers for my mom's May alter. Yeah, not just a budding homo, but a budding suck-up as well. Anyway, while I was out looking for flowers, I happened to be kneeling down, intent on my cultivation. I was so engrossed by the whole project that I didn't notice this little black kid who wasn't much older than me come up behind me. I don't remember what, if any, words were exchanged - I'm guessing something had to have provoked what came next; and God knows even then I was a bit of a smart-ass - but he just hauled off and started pounding on me. Though I don't have any recollection of anything happening to provoke the attack. Even now, nearly thirty years later, the feelings that surround that event - the panic, the anger, the desperation - still resonate. And I was feeling a lot of that during this dream. But mostly, I think, the anger.

Lots of that floating around these days. Understandably, I think. I still have issues with Gavan (as I'm sure he does with me - I'm nothing if not egalitarian), and the rehearsal process has been frustrating - especially feeling the pressure of having to have this script learned word-perfectly coupled with the feeling of having no time to actually do that. And poverty can spawn some anger, too, I'm here to tell you. Just you go and listen to Tracy Chapman's "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution".

Anyway, I think I'm gonna take a few moments to refill my teacup and get into rehearsal clothes. Maybe I'll have more to say later.

Well, a rather unprecedented thing happened today. Aaron, finding out I was sick, sent me home, reasoning that it was better for me to get sleep and rest now before the illness got out of hand than for me to get even more run down and end up missing actual performances next week. I have to give him a lot of credit, because I don't know that I've met many directors who would have had the foresight to suggest such a thing. The prevailing mindset in my business is "the show must go on." And that pretty much means you should come to rehearsal whether you feel like crap or not - you're supposed to be a trouper. And Aaron was smart in going out of his way to take me aside and convince me that I shouldn't put some bullshit happy face on and suffer through when I might actually be doing the show a lot less good by staying and working.

So I stayed for half the day to help get through the tech stuff for the first half of the show, which is intensely me-oriented, and came home at the dinner break. I stopped off at the Fresh Fields food store to get some stuff, and came home. I've had a little bit of a nap, and I'm planning on settling in with my script and getting some serious studying done.

David Ingram also gave me a recipe for what he considers a kick-ass cold remedy involving shaved ginger-root, lemon juice, honey and hot water. I'm trying to work up the stamina to go shred some ginger. It was the whole reason for going to the store - so I could buy those ingredients.

Bug-Eyed

I have to confess that this is how I feel today. It's been a long, hard week, and there's still one more rehearsal to get through. But we're doing really good work, I think, and the show is shaping up. It's such a joy to watch Grace and David as they develop the relationship between their characters. They're both such talented actors that I can't help but marvel at them as they work through it. I'm very lucky, I think, to be able to share the process with them, and be included in their company.

One little disappointment from this past week.... Philadelphia's version of the Tony awards, The Barrymores had nominations announced, and Picasso was overlooked, except for a nomination for overall production. I feel bad for the cast - not leastwise me - because I think that we did some really excellent work on that show, and it deserved the recognition. Awards of this sort really aren't all that important in regional theater - it's not like on Broadway where a nomination can sell tickets - but that doesn't make it sting any less when you don't get the recognition you think you deserve. Alas, however, I've been saying for years that I'm not really in it for the recognition, so I should probably shut my trap about the whole thing, huh?

I had considered taking a bus up to New York to visit my friend Toni Schlemmer - she's working on a project in New Jersey for her employer. But this week has been pretty wicked-hard, and so I'm putting it off until next week, or maybe even the week after. Next week is the beginning of tech rehearsals, so I suspect I'm gonna be pretty whacked out then, too.

One of the nice things to report is that I got to see my friend Maggie Siff before she took off for a weekend at the shore, and even more permanently for her first year of grad school back in New York! Very exciting for her! And the even nicer part is that I'll be able to see her more often when I'm back in New York myself.

Okay, I'm off to spend some quality time with my script... the playwright, Craig Wright, is coming in on the 30th to see our progress, and I need to know the script word-perfect. Word-perfectly?

Washington Square

In keeping with my discovery that it's more interesting and fun to do my journalizing outside of the house, I've dragged myself off to Washington Square park to sit and contemplate the world with a laptop in my... well, lap.

It seems to me that the world is full of possibility when I get myself out and engage with it. Alone in my room there's space for the dark thoughts to roam free - but out in the world, with other people around, the darker thoughts are forced to share the space with the wonder that's invoked every time I find myself engaging the world - with people around or not.

I just read back over that last paragraph and thought to myself, "Jesus, I sound like a psychopath who's barely keeping the scary shit below the surface." That's not really what I mean by "dark thoughts." What I mean, mostly, are those thoughts that we all have when we're not positively reinforcing ourselves. The "I'm not good enough" thoughts. The "things will never look up" thoughts. Or in my case, more specifically, the "if it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all" thoughts. I find that's how depression manifests itself in me - I shut myself away from other people and dwell on the sadder aspects of life; all the stuff that isn't right, as opposed to the myriad beauties around me.

I had to stop and put the computer away, because it began to drizzle - the day is party cloudy, and some of those clouds have the suspicious appearance of rain clouds. But they come and go, so it's okay. Now the sun is shining again, and it's really quite beautiful out, if a bit humid. I think the temperature is hovering somewhere around 87°. A little hot, maybe, but otherwise fine.

You know what I love about parks? The feeling of ease - of having been disconnected from the wider world and somehow plugged in to something quieter, something calmer, something more essential than the everyday world. That, and that you find all sorts of people indulging in the calmness that is a park... it's a communal gathering ground where people who have no otherwise apparent connections can share the same experience, and take different things away from it. Somehow, the park is still the park, but it's all these different things to different people.

Of course, too, I get to indulge in my favorite past-time: People watching. I found myself sitting on a bench across from a rather attractive young man, and as I had my camera with me, I snapped a quick photo. But it occurred to me suddenly to wonder again why it is that I find myself wanting to snap these sorta voyueristic photos. When I thought about it, at least a part of the reason came to me: it's at least partially about capturing something beautiful (or, at least, beautiful to me) and being able to hold on to it - making it less ephemeral... that's what photographs do. Makes me wish that I was somehow better at it than I am. Something to think about someday - a photography class; a better camera?

A Good Kind of Tired

Well, not a whole lot to report, except maybe that I get closer and closer each day to grasping what this play is about, and how I'm supposed to communicate the idea of the thing to the audience.

I've been tired a lot lately, but it's been a good kind of tired... the kind you get from working hard and and doing the twenty-minute walk to and from the theater. I think I've been eating a little more than I have recently, so my weight may be beginning to creep back up. I'll have to try to keep an eye on that, though in truth I really have no idea how to do that, given that there's not a scale to be found anywhere in Actor Housing, or even at the theater, that I know of.

Oh, I did manage to snap a shot of Independence Hall that I've been meaning to get for some time... it's up close and looking up at the clock tower. Of the shots I actually took, this one is my favorite, even though the tower isn't straight up and down in the frame. The light was best on this one... the face of the clock is actually gleaming brightly in the afternoon sun, so it looks especially bright. Lemme know what you think.

Oh, the Irony

Well, how's this for ironic... I finally find myself journaling again with a little regularity, and I can't upload the entries, 'cuz my ISP's servers are down! Not entirely sure how long THAT's going to last, but boy isn't that annoying.

Well, there's nothing I can do about it but just wait for it to come back up and then upload the entries when I can.

I've been finding lately that I don't actually enjoy writing these journal entries when I find myself stuck at home and plugging away at the computer. More often than not, I'd rather be out and in the world, sitting in a park or coffee shop, writing about the things that are going on around me. This means one of two things: (1) I'm sick of sitting around, moping and being depressed, and I'm getting closer to engaging with the world around me, or (2) I'm just as depressed as I've been, but I'm just sick of listening to myself bitch. Either way, it's a step forward, I think.

Today's my day off, and we've just concluded the first week of rehearsals on The Pavilion. It's been heavy and hard going... and I don't think that it's going to get any easier. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. This is a really challenging show for me, and I'm enjoying being stretched to my limits as an actor. I'm playing a narrator character who assumes the identity of all the characters in the piece who aren't the two characters played by Grace and David, so that's fun and challenging. Even more challenging is the fact that in my role as narrator I have monologues that open each of the two acts, and these monologues are chock full of imagery and poetry that have to communicated effectively to the audiences... really genuinely difficult metaphors about the creation of the world and evolution and that kinda thing. So I've been a little nervous and struggling with that stuff. Aaron seems to think I'll get it, so I guess I shouldn't be too worried, but I've been coming home at night completely fried... this shit makes my brain hurt!

That having been said, this is turning out to be a great experience, and it's frankly a bit of a plum role. I wish I could get agents from New York to come and see it. Both Grace and David have turned out to be incredibly fun to work with, and that's on top of the fact that they're both kick-ass actors. I've been telling people that my favorite part of the show is the second act, and it's not because the narrator sorta takes a back seat and hangs out on the periphery, but because I get to sit there and watch the two of them work.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that the best way to learn acting is to watch really good people do it.

I recently came across one of my favorite quotes on acting... it's by David Mamet, from his book True and False:

Acting is not a genteel profession. Actors used to be buried at crossroads with a stake through the heart. These people's performances so troubled the onlookers that they feared their ghosts. An awesome compliment.

Philadephia, Here I Came.

This has been quite the week. I arrived in Philadelphia at around 7 p.m. last Monday, and after waiting a while for my bags to clear through the ol' Amtrak baggage claim (they're a lot slower than the airlines, I can tell you - and that's saying something!), I finally made it to actor housing around 8 p.m. The train trip had worn me out pretty thoroughly, so I ended up making an early evening of it and staying in.

Rehearsal started at 2 p.m. the next day... it was a reunion with Aaron Posner, the director (who also directed Picasso at the Lapin Agile), and Grace Gonglewski, who I'd not worked with before, but with whom I'd stayed for the first week of my first visit to Philadelphia. And I got to meet David Ingram, who's also doing the show. I snapped a number of pictures during the week. On the right there, you see stage manager Kathy Koenig, who's great. We worked together earlier this year on Picasso... it seems like ages ago, but it's really been less than six months. And what a six months it's been, huh?

Which, of course, makes it really easy to be happy to be back in Philadelphia. I've been being reminded daily just how much I like this city - my walks to and from the theater are chock full of beautiful historic sights (I walk through the Independence Hall area). And the people here - at least the people from the theater community that I've met - are really friendly. For instance, the other day I was trooping down Market Street on the way to the theater, and who did I see in the window of the Griffon Cafe but Matt Pfieffer, whom I'd met on my last stay in Philly (he's in the picture on the right - taken at one of the Picasso parties). I got a much heartier greeting than you'd normally expect from someone you've only met on about three occasions, and we sat and talked for a while. He's friend of both Grace's and Aaron's, and mentioned that he'd known I was coming back, and was looking forward to seeing the show.

Truth be told, I'd like to see this show, too! Since we're still at the beginning of the rehearsal process, I still haven't gotten to that "I'm saturated with this show" stage where I lose all objectivity and can't tell anymore whether it's gonna work or flop, so there's still a lot of excitement about the show. And the work is hard - Aaron is pushing me 'cuz I think he knows he can; that I'm willing to dig into the material to see what we can make out of it.

This picture is one of Aaron and Grace talking over the scene we'd just been working on. That's the finished set they're sitting on. The fact that the set's finished and we're able to rehearse on it is a very unusual thing... quite a luxury.

The rehearsal schedule has been hard - we're rehearsing from 2:00 to 10:30 each weekday, and doing concentrated six hour stretches on the weekends, so it hasn't left me a lot of time for getting out and exploring... plus I've got some work to finish for Gordon Rosenthal, which I need to get to. The schedule has been pretty hard on David Ingram, who's got a sick son at home (and consequently while not getting much sleep himself, is also suffering through the cold that Adam - his little boy - has)... I probably don't know David well enough to get away with posting this picture of him, but I'll try - adding the caveat that this is a picture of a sleep-deprived, cold-ridden father, who's just rehearsed a pretty grueling scene. Here's hoping I didn't just kill a new friendship! :o) I frankly don't think the picture does him any sort of justice... when you see him in person, and from just the right angle, he reminds me a LOT of Peter Scolari. For those of you who don't know, he was in "Newhart," and was Tom Hanks' buddy in "Bosom Buddies."

One last shot of Grace and Aaron, once again confabbing over the deepest meaning of the play. And now I need to sign off and get a little sleep... I'm writing this painfully early on Sunday morning, and I have to get up early for rehearsal.

I'll try to write more tomorrow - which is my day off. 'Til then: Ciao!

A Journey of A Thousand Miles...

Well, I find myself at the start of a new adventure, and I'm curiously depressed. I don't suppose anyone would blame me, really, given the summer I've had. It's been a hard one. New York kicked my ass (though that wasn't entirely unexpected, or even unplanned for), my relationship ended (though in truth, that wasn't entirely unexpected either), and now I'm leaving my hometown again. And there's a finality to it this time - I think I may have remarked on this already - a feeling that it's a place I no longer belong, a place in which I have no permanent part. I think that's a lot of what I've been dealing with of late - the heady mixture of fear and excitement and worry and intrigue and joy and sorrow that comes with the beginning of a brand new adventure. I can already feel myself snapping out of the melancholy, but I don't think that the rebound is going to be quite so great as I might have liked, once. And I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing.

I'm different, somehow, than I was when I first left Pittsburgh seven months ago. One expects to be changed by one's life experiences, but something's telling me that I'm different in some fundamental way. There's something that's been burned away from the essential me - maybe some vestige of ego? I'm not so carelessly glib about my success, but more importantly, I'm less fearful of my failure. Maybe that's 'cuz I've discovered in an essential and intimate way exactly what failure, real failure, feels like. And I'm not even talking about failing to find work in New York, or feeling that, because my money ran out, I had to come back to Pittsburgh. I think mostly about how the relationship with Gavan failed. How we grew apart and were unable to grow in the ways we needed to but in tandem, as well. And I should point out that I don't think of it as a singularly personal failure, but a failure of both of us. Sometimes you don't have control over the fact that you fail. It does take two to tango, after all. And maybe that's the lesson I've learned, the part of me that's been burned away in the forge of the last few months - that failure isn't you, it's a thing that happens to you. I can't say that I'm a failure, even though I've failed. Maybe I've even totally rejected the idea that anyone can be a failure - in the generally accepted sense of that phrase.

But even if you rightly recognize that failure is something that happens to you despite your best efforts and not something that you do because of your inadequacies, you still feel the sense of loss, don't you? It's human nature, to mourn in some way something that's lost, or not achieved. You can't claim it's a human construct - any more than you can claim that joy or anger are - since it's felt viscerally in your heart, in the same way joy and anger are felt.

So I think that's what I've been going through - grieving that loss. I think it's lasted longer than I expected it to because I wasn't able to really examine what was happening. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the best person in the world for facing up to my feelings. Not just a classic procrastinator, I'm the classic passive aggressive... lots of anger/hates conflict. The good thing is that I've grown since the days when I was in corporate America and horribly unhappy, and I've learned some skills for recognizing those behavior patterns in myself, and trying to redirect them. Not to be overly-clinica, 'cuz I don't really think it's terribly helpful when you're dealing with your own emotions, but being able to look at and identify what I'm going through helps me go through it more quickly and... less painfully? That may be asking a bit much.

Did I mention that I'm haivng my first experience with travel by train? Welcome to Amtrak, baby. No more for me the high-rent air travel of the days of yore. I get to travel around on the ground with the rest of the little folk.

I have to say, train travel has both met and not met my expectations. I should perhaps clarify by saying that I really actually didn't have a whole lot of expectations, other than that it was going to take a long time. Something along the lines of 8 hours to Philadelphia.

The train just pulled into the Greensburg, PA station, and it was like something out of an old movie, with more modern signage added. Tiny little station with one platform. Maybe one person got on and off.

Anyway, I'm not quite sure what I was expecting, but I can tell you although I did expect the continuous clack-clack, clack-clack of the cars running over the rails, I didn't expect it to be as bumpy as it is. And I was completely unprepared for the way the car sways from side to side! That having been said, it's an otherwise pretty enjoyable experience. Amy Hartman told me that I'd enjoy the scenery as the trip progressed (she's done the train trip to New York on a number of occasions), but between Pittsburgh and Greensburg, I can report that the route passes through a lot of heavily wooded areas bordering on old mill towns; I'm taking a guess and saying that the really striking scenery happens once we get into the mountains. Or at least I hope so. So far it's just been a lot of greenery flashing past and blocking my view of anything farther away. Matter of fact, so far the track seems mostly to be passing through gullies and ravines and the like, so the trees tower up over us like a wave of leaves about to crash down.

I'm thinking about a little nap, since I haven't slept well at all during my time back in Pittsburgh. You wanna hear something laughable? Everyone keeps asking me why, as if it should be a shock. Hmmm... lemme think: Maybe 'cuz I'm worried about money, about how I'm gonna get all my belongings out of my ex-boyfriend's house and where I'm gonna put them, whether or not he's actually already replace me in his heart with someone new - or worse yet, maybe had even before we'd broken up, how the friends we had mutually seem to have forgotten about me in thier haste to set him up on dates, or some combination of all these things?

I'm hoping things will be, if not "better," then at least more restful in Philadelphia. Feel free to send good wishes my way. And money, too, if you've got it to spare. :o)

The train just pulled into Johnstown, PA and took on a whole lot of people. Many are going to Altoona, which I'm suspecting is the next stop.

Among the folks who got on in Johnstown are two... what's the politically correct term? Challenged indiviuals? I'm frankly not even sure that they're challenged, or at least both of them are. There's a woman and a man, and they're both possessed of that blissful unawareness the handicapped have of just how loud they are. This lady's enthusiasm for her train trip is, in a word, impressive. Grand, even. At first, when she got on, I thought that she was British, 'cuz of the sing-song quality of her voice. Now I'm not so sure, but the final answer will have to wait a while, for I've donned my headphones and I'm listening to music from the computer in an attempt to escape their conversation. I wonder how far Altoona is?

Altoona's only about 28 miles as the crow flies, but from there, I imagine we have to stop in Harrisburg, the state capitol, before going on to Philadelphia. It's no damn wonder this trip take's so long.

I'm here to tell you, by the way, that people don't think to take much care of properties along a railway through-way. Not that that should be so surprising, actually, since they usually run through industrial areas. I've lost track of junked cars I've seen by the tracks. Now that we've left Johnstown, I have a feeling we're going to start climbing up into the mountains pretty darn quickly.

I had a quick 1½ hour nap right before we got into Johnstown... or maybe it was really only an hour. I'm not quite sure what time I dropped off, but I was guessing that it was sometime around 11, having boarded the train and had a chance to settle in. I woke up at 12:20 or so. I've also noticed that at higher speeds that swaying of the railroad car that I was so unenamored of really lessens. All in all, I'm thinking this would be an agreeable way to travel if I had the money. It might be kind of cool to get a private compartment and cross the country this way, I bet. If I had the money. Of course, if I had the money to do that, I should damn well be spending it to pay off some bills.

There, I said it myself, you didn't have to remind me.

Melancontemplation

Many of my thoughts lately have been tempered by a sort of melacholy blended with a mix of contentment and resignation. Contentment that my life seems finally to be moving forward again after the long period of wondering where I was going and what was happening in regard to my relationship with Gavan, resignation to the fact that while I still believe that my dreams will be fulfilled there's no such thing as instant gratification in my future, and melacholy over... a lot of things, I guess.

The feeling that I'm leaving my home, perhaps permanently? There's something about leaving Pittsburgh this time that feels more final. It's got at least a little to do with the fact that I know I really have no place of my own to come back to this time. I mean, I'm blessed with friends who would take me in with never a question asked, but Gavan's house is not mine, and the reminders of that are legion. He's recently started buying up furniture to replace the stuff that'll be going with me when I go - end tables and coffee tables and the like. Slowly but surely, the little things that marked this place as at least partially mine are being removed. And maybe I'm a little melacholy over the fact that I could have been part of his life for so long and it seems so easy to erase my presence here - just replace a few pieces of furniture.

Always one to see parallels to my life the music I hear, I was kinda struck by the lyrics to a Rascal Flatts song I heard a couple days ago, called I'm Moving On. They were something along the lines of

I've lived in this place and
I know all the faces...
But I never dreamed home
would end up where I don't belong.

So I guess I've been thinking about that a lot, too. And the thought of leaving my friends, too. At lunch yesterday, Amy Hartman hugged me tight and, instead of saying "See you soon," she said, "What am I going to do without you?" Which broke my heart and unsettled me all at the same time.

I had a wonderful talk today with Brian Czarnieki (and probably just spelled his name incorrectly), a friend who I've known from the acting scene in Pittsburgh for years. We'd not had a chance to catch up, really, of late, so it was nice to spend some time on the phone with him. He was the first person to point out how clearly my recent sadness was coming through in the journal entries. And I guess that it's pretty clear that I've been going through a lot lately, and been pretty down about it. But there's light at the end of the tunnel, friends, and it's that that I'm shooting for.

By the way, on a lighter note, check out this photo that I uploaded but had forgotten about. I took it while wandering Central Park one day - probably the day I picked up the tickets for Measure for Measure... I remember coming across this little garden and thinking, "I just have to have a picture of that..." This is the result: