Labor Day

Needed to get out of the house and was attempting to go to the beach for a couple of hours, but didn't try hard enough to catch the bus (run fast) and so ended up continuing to walk and stopped by a coffee shop (for coffee) and saw that one of my current favorite Seattle-area artist had work up. http://www.jesselink.com/ I've never met him, but I bought a couple of (really small) paintings of his a couple of years ago (8"x8" and maybe 3"x3".) Most of the ones in the coffee shop are limited edition Giclee prints. The two I have are originals and they both remind me of cave paintings.  I'm glad I scraped up the money for them at the time; I don't think I can afford the originals anymore. Still, that's great for him. I hope he can support himself with it, and again, I love his work. (I might sell books or clothes or something and try to buy a print, they are under $100.)

Not nearly where I need to be with the monologues. (Okay, that really should be singular.) While walking, considered scrapping the audition. I can't do that. I need to get this down, I don't want to waste their time. It's kinda' a strange choice, based on the advice of the monologue book I was looking at. It's conversational, i.e., in the very present tense, as opposed to reverie. I need to really focus on the fact that everything I'm saying is in response to him and today is the day I get him to admit he loves me...and everything he is saying to me is not proof of that love; he's treating me like dirt. (For the record, he might, but sees me as beneath him, and sees sex as base, so he can't admit it, especially to himself.)

And on Saturday evening I was getting close to super excited for the other one, but I haven't able to get back to it either yesterday or today...but since I did get close, there is a way to get there again, I just need to find it again. I was doing it all from the outside in. And this is all very public, everyone is in the room now.  I just have to let it go nutso, I can always bring it in if it's too much. Four days. Maybe nerves will help. Have four hours 'til I have to leave for tech call. Back to work on both.

Thursday-lo siento

Deleted previous post, really was rambling on about nothing. I just heard the smallest bit of choral singing coming out of the stairwell, made me think of S. African choirs. Sounded wonderful, wish there were more.

Since I stopped, for the most part, drinking coffee after 12 noon, my consumption has gone way down. I'm also beginning to be able to sing again, haven't attempted to sing more than a couple of songs, but the pain isn't there with that. It's not healed, but it's getting better. The range is getting back to what it was before. (42 spam hits and counting. I report it, they change domains, it starts up again.)

Since I'm now allowing myself to like some things more than others, this morning I was mentioning to the (orange-giving) barista that the best cup of coffee I ever had was in the old section of the Heathrow airport last summer. I had a bit of a wait for my connecting flight to Helsinki, and there didn't seem to be any food courts or stores in that part of the terminal. There was this one coffee cart that had a convenience store feel about it, in the hall. I really wanted a cup of coffee, so I ordered a mocha. Walked back to my waiting room area, (it was an actual room, I don't think you could leave once you went in) and began drinking my coffee and trying to clean up a bit with those hand-wipe things (a lot of people were doing that, there wasn't access to a restroom. I'd been travelling for almost a day by that point.) I kept hoping we wouldn't board soon and I wouldn't have to dump it out. Maybe it was the fact that my expectation was low, but it was fantastic: chocolate was a little bit bitter, don't know what he used.

The worst cup of coffee was at a hotel breakfast in Strausborg, France. It tasted like they had burnt it in a metal pot over high heat. I actually tried to hide my first cup and get some from a different pot, but of course, that wasn't any better. It's too bad, I had high expectations for it. (It's France!) Although now I recall my high school French teacher saying you could either get good espresso, or really bad drip coffee in France. When I finally found an open café (it was the off-season), I had a decent cup of coffee in Lourdes. (Sadly, I mostly ate at Burger King there, because it was open, and crowded with French teenagers. I hadn't planned on being in France, and so I didn't know how anything worked; missed out on good French cooking.)

Speaking of French things, three more days. (Word of the day, "since.")

Returning from lunch I was overtaken by a stampede of children, one of whom, upon passing by me, said, "It's like being in a herd." Yup.

Oh, Russian spammers, please find something better to do. 63.