Please Pass the Barbiturates

Couldn't sleep last night until 5 AM, took 4 hours to do two loads of laundry this morning because some bitch took my we clothes out of the washer and proceeded to take up both dryers for three hours straight so I ended up two hours late for my improv class's final rehearsal before tomorrow's show. An hour and a half to try and find presents (or at least silly stand-in presents until I come up with something more quality) for my family, who will be doing Hannukah tomorrow night, walk the dog, and change for work. Not surprisingly, I was late to work as a result. Bah. But BL switched with me so that I worked the bar while she worked the concessions stand thing upstairs, partly because she'd been there all day and wanted to go home earlier, and partly as a thank-you to me for last week when I was the only person in town. Tonight was the opening of previews for the new main stage show, so the front of house manager bought her entire staff a round of drinks and the production head people bought the crew a round of drinks and the actors bought themselves many, many rounds of drinks and I didn't get out of there until 2 AM but I made $122 in tips. Thank you, BL!

Now I have to be at the improv performance space at 11 AM and I'm hungry and exhausted but still wired from bartending and caffeine and the impending show. And I need a break as I'm lousy at handling stress like this but I don't have a free night until December 26, so hopefully I'll make it until then.

s-t-r-e-s-s

Note: identifying details in this story have been changed to maintain the thinly veiled identity of the author so she can't get fired again for blogging.

Last night, the Brazillians finished the run of their show at my theater of employment. This meant an open bar sponsored by company management. That meant a lot of very drunk Brazillians. Apparently, these guys are big stars back in Brazil. Here, not so much. Two of them in particular were hitting on everything with a vagina. One is very large and kept groping the girls who work as ushers and in the box office, then kissed BL and my hands and told us we were beautiful when we wouldn't give him another drink 30 minutes past last call. We had to physically force him out of the bar and lock the door. There's something very satisfying about having power over a large, attractive, famousish Brazillian.

Otherwise, work sucked. I had to be there by 11 AM so I could be out of the lobby before the downstairs show opened even though the studio lobby didn't open until 1:30 and the show wasn't until 3. That's a lot of time standing around doing nothing. I got things for Tina and set things up for BL and made coffee. Facinating. Business was decent for a Sunday afternoon and people were very nice, so that part wasn't too bad. I put my stuff away and brought it downstairs and was talking to BL and one of the house managers when the house manager commented on how crazy it was to have a four show day. We knew about the two shows for the main stage, but a second show in the studio? Swell. So now instead of being 30 minutes from going home, I was 30 minutes from having to re-set-up everything and start all over again. This made me very, very cranky. To make matters worse, because we didn't know in advance, I had to drag my carts through the crowd assembled for the downstairs show and then one of the big head theatre honchos saw me and I'm sure at least BL will get in trouble for this, because it's bad planning or whatever. Oh so cranky. I seriously considered doing a shot of something, but was afraid I'd just fall asleep in my ice bucket. So fine. La-dee-da, second shift, getting food, working the bar, 13 hour day that hit overtime for the week even after I had to take Thursday off on account of my puking.

My improv class is doing a show on Sunday, December 17 at noon. Let me know if you want to attend. Saturday we found out who will be in which things for it. I'm doing the taxi cab character game thing (nothing too thrilling) and the alphabet game. I like the alphabet game. It's a two person scene in which every line has to start with the next letter of the alphabet. Very cerebral. The guy I'm doing it with is very good, too. Now I just have to spend the week reading the dictionary, or at least the X section. Maybe I'll try to have all my conversations in alphabet game format. See if anyone notices. That could be funny, but mostly funny for me in my head. I guess that's 95% of my funny, anyway.

Tomorrow I'm going to my parents' to finish cleaning out my old room so it can be painted Wednesday. I wasn't supposed to work tomorrow night, but Tina's got her root canal follow-up appointment or something, so now I'm a terrible daughter again because I'll have to leave by 3:30 and my mom won't be there until 1:30 so we won't get to spend that much time together.

Just remember, you can't spell MstrOessM without s-t-r-e-s-s.

Like Sands Through the Hourglass...

Blech. So I'm vertical and still feeling off in the stomach but I have my mind back and that is reassuring.

Saturday I saw The Pirate Queen with my family. Same guys who wrote Les Mis go after another revolution of sorts with the Grace O'Malley story. The idea was fabulous: it's a great story with pirates and an excuse to use Irish music and dancing. But while the music never stops, it was neither catchy nor brilliant, and unlike Les Mis, they had a very hard time fitting in what they wanted to without it feeling like the story was crammed and rushed and lacked build-up. In fact, the second act seemed more of a let-down than a culmination or arc. BUT... the production value was incredible. The scenery and the dancing and the voices and the most talented ensemble I've seen possibly ever. My mom kept complaining about things like the staginess of the dancing and other aspects that are inherent in a musical, so I said, "Yeah, and that sonnet was too formulaic." I thought I was ever so clever with that one.

Sunday I only had to work the first show and, despite the "final dress rehearsal" being a stop-and-go mess to which I brought E, everyone said the show was wonderful. I had plans to hang out with NBF after work, but this was my only chance to see it as I'd be working (or at my improv class) every other performance until the run ended. NBF said he'd want to see it if with me if I could get comp tickets, so I told him I'd call him to let him know. I got the tickets and left him a voice mail saying as much. BL forgot that I was going to see the show and roped me in to help her at the bar when it was crazy-crowded with people from the upcoming mainstage production and I'd texted NBF with the message "Call me re:food" because I hadn't had time to eat anything and the show was starting very soon and I'd hoped he would pick something up on his way. When he did call me back I was up to my eyeballs in drink orders so I called him back like 2o minutes later and asked how close he was to showing up. "Um...not" was his response. He apparently never got my voice message and when he saw the text thought we were just going to get food when I was done working. But I had actual physical tickets for us and they get very mad if you don't use your comp tickets and I wanted to see the show so I told him to get to the theater as fast as he could ("I'll pay for a cab! Just get here!") and I escaped the bar as they made the first call for seating and ran to get food and scarfed down said food while waiting for NBF to show up and we missed the first 15-20 minutes but he arrived and the show was wonderful and he was being wonderful and I went from homicidal to happy by the time I got home.

Monday I ran errands and slept and watched TV. A too short but necessary break.

Tuesday I worked a double shift. It was a very long day, though not a bad one as I had my first ever shift by myself in the bar (which didn't go so well but I like it quite a bit better) and then BL and I ran errands for work on the clock and got lunch at SUC's sushi restaurant and BL drove me home at the end of the night. About five minutes before the end of the late show's intermission one of the moms from the school that fired me came up to buy water. She was my favorite mom, always really warm and a great parent, and she adored me, too, constantly telling me as much. Apparently, she never knew I'd been fired. She thought I'd just decided not to come back. I managed to get through the story without crying, but as I told her that people that never met me organized a campaign to email and call in for my removal, she said she wished she'd known because she'd have called in my favor. That got the tears flowing. And of course the more she told me I was wonderful and that they were stupid for getting rid of me the more I cried. She got my phone number to babysit if I'm ever not working (I really liked her kid, too).

The fact that I got so emotional made me realize that there's a big difference between getting past something and getting over it. Just a thought.

Then yesterday I had my second double shift in a row because Tina had a root canal Tuesday and was still dead. I'd set everything up for myself the night before and the morning went fine, though I didn't get a chance to eat anything beyond a nutragrain bar and a bag of Sun Chips until almost 5 PM. My stomach was cranky but there's only junk food within quick break distance of the theater so I ended up eating chicken selects while running around making coffee and setting up the bar for BL whose bus passed her by coming from the King Tut exhibit at the Field Museum. My body started falling apart during the pre-show sales, and you know the rest (or you could know it by reading my last entry).

It is good I keep so much soup in the house.

Pig, Dog, Sloth

Apparently I am the "messiest bartender ever." I always have a penchant for pigginess, but I think my spilling and my using the surfaces designated for clean glasses as my "work space" have more to do with my height than my porcine inclinations. You see, we are supposed to pour all drinks on the bar. For normal-sized people, this is no big deal as the bar hits them somewhere lower- to mid-torso. For me, the bar is chest-high. This means I am pouring drinks with my elbows raised up to my ears. It is much less comfortable and much harder to do than were I a few inches taller. Thus, my propensity for spills. The surface at a more natural height for my drink preparations is meant only for clean glasses and the vat of ice. More than once BL has stopped me from trying to prep drinks over the ice vat. Spilling here could be catastrophic (or at least a pain in the ass), and when there is sticky residue around the "clean" glasses, no one is happy. But it's just so much easier. I never used to think of my size as a handicap, but in this job, it seems to be. Aside from the bar height, I have to push these big stupid carts back and forth all the time and they are bigger and heavier than I am and people laugh at me as I struggle past them. The first few times it was funny (little girl, big cart) but now it's just rude and frustrating. If my shoes don't have good treads, my feet slip on the carpeting and the cart goes nowhere. When the carts have to go upstairs, I additionally have to lift them over the rut in the elevator. This frequently results in failure and me getting stuck with the elevator yelling at me and/or crap spilling out on both sides of the closing elevator doors. I hate it. I also seem to sell far less alcohol than the other bartenders. I always suggest alcoholic alternatives to people's drinks, but I'm beginning to wonder if they just don't order booze because I look too young to sell it.

Saturday night was the show closing party with open bar for all theatre employees. BL mostly left me to my own devices, cleaning up in back while staying available for my "What goes into a ____?" and "What glass do I put ____ in?" questions. I learned how to make all things martini-related and got decent at estimating liquid quantities quite early on. I also got to invent random drinks for people, which is very fun, though I didn't get so much as a sip myself for fear I'd pass out the second alcohol touched my tongue. We didn't get out of there until 2:30 AM and had to split cabs because the buses no longer ran by the theatre, but I made $50 in tips behind the bar plus $16 in tips from earlier plus 7 1/2 hours of work (a few of which should put me at overtime), so the money was finally worthwhile.

But huzzah! I am on day 2 of my three days off! Yesterday my dog woke me up around 10 to go for a walk, so we went out briefly and I went back to bed. I woke up again around 3. Clearly, I needed the sleep. I took a long hot shower and shaved and moisturized and did all the other beauty regimen things I've been neglecting. E and I went for dinner and drinks and gab to a bar in Lincoln Square and it was lovely except I crashed before 9. Apparently 11 hours of sleep wasn't enough. I was back in my bed and asleep by 10, straight through until this morning.

Today has been dedicated to getting my to-do list to-done. My fridge is restocked with milk and OJ and my freezer is completely packed with frozen dinners for the weeks to come. If I get up early enough tomorrow I'm getting my car's oil changed and all checked out and happy for winter, and no matter what I have to get some laundry done before my double-shift at work on Wednesday. Tonight I fully intend to watch television, which is something I haven't done in weeks. When leisure time is so limited, it's hard to figure out how much to allocate to getting shit done and how much to rest. I need a chart.

benefits

I just discovered the main benefit of working at a bar: if you are not working until close and still have an ounce of energy at the end of the night, you are at a bar and you can drink whatever you want for free. I made a few concoctions that were very tasty and girly and suddenly the world isn't such a terrible place. Also I got to talk with some of the boys I normally just make eyes at from behind the bar. I do not understand the strange power held by Cute Boys, but it is undeniable.

Tina's granddaughter came to work tonight. She's eight and fabulous and helped us out all night. Tina sent her up to the studio theatre floor because the "princesses" run through the lobby fairly regularly during the show and she wanted to see the "princesses." We went back stage and found one of the lead girls and I told her Tina's granddaughter wanted to meet the princesses so she took us into the dressing room and they were all dolled up and friendly (it's a very nice cast) and Tina's granddaughter was completely thrilled. It was really sweet. I like kids. Those of you who've known me for a long time are probably snickering, but shut up. I've grown up and now I like children.

Really bad drag is mostly just sad.

Frozen dinners vary considerably in quality. I've become a big fan of Stouffer's rigatoni pasta with white meat chicken and am also impressed with the Lean Cuisine Baked Chicken. But then the Stouffer's Monterey Chicken and Michelina's Lean Gourmet creamy parmesan chicken are airline food at best. When I come home after midnight and just want something quick, easy, and delicious, how's a girl like me supposed to know the good from the bad before trying them all? Such a complicated existence I lead.

It's OK to be unhappy

I know I can attribute a goodly portion of my depressions past to the feeling that if I'm not happy, I'm doing something wrong or there is something wrong with me. But unhappiness is a perfectly normal part of life, and it stops being so terrible once you learn to accept that it's ok. Like right now, I'm unhappy, but it's ok. My feelings are valid and rational and the thing that's making me so unhappy is likely to not go away for a few more months and so I may be miserable for a few more months. Crying and complaining are healthy reactions.

It's official: I hate my job. I was trying very hard not to declare this prematurely, but it has me cranky and miserable. I'm just so tired all the time but without ever feeling like I've done something. There's no sense of accomplishment ever but I go home sore and unhappy, and I feel like I'm stuck, so that makes it even worse. I still like my boss and my crazy co-worker and seeing my cousin, but I'm completely burnt out and it's only been three weeks and I'm counting down the days until January. I feel like I'm always having to do 12 things at once and if I stop to take a breath I won't be ready for whatever thing I have to do next and it gets treated like the end of the world when it's just not that important. I'm selling theatre-goers food and drinks. Big friggin' deal. But from the moment I get there to the moment I leave it's RUN RUN RUN RUSH RUSH RUSH and customers are rude and annoyed and return my plastered-on smile with scowls and a sense of entitlement and leave a mess in their wake and don't tip. And now I'm getting all these promo invitations for things that pay $14, $17, and $25 an hour that I can't do because I'm scheduled to work for $8 an hour and we're already understaffed and I don't want to screw over my co-workers because they, too, are overworked and underpaid and they're the ones I like. And now that I backed out of the promo from last weekend and have to turn down all these offers I'm less likely to get work from them in the future. It just seems ridiculous that I'm stuck working 40 hours a week doing something I hate when I could work like 16 hours doing something I enjoy and get the same money. I know the promo work is inconsistent and can't be counted on, but at least I wasn't crying on the El ride home and unable to do the things I actually care about, like writing. Like I'm almost glad I haven't heard back from the Playboy people because I wouldn't have time to do anything for the article right now. I haven't touched any of it since I started the bartending job. I spent most of today asleep and it wasn't enough. And this whole thing is just so frustrating because I was unemployed for so long and it's good and important that I am making money again but the promo stuff was just starting to make me money, too, and it didn't make me hate my life. And even if the promo stuff made me double the money, my mom is much happier with me having a consistent job. I am not much happier, but when the things that she thinks should make me happy don't, she has a very hard time comprehending the situation. I talked to her on the phone tonight and she started commenting on how I just like complaining because I didn't like being unemployed but I now I'm complaining about my job. I fell apart. But when she tried her standard "Look on the bright side/these are the reasons you shouldn't be glum/I will invalidate your feelings now" thing, I stopped her and said "Can you please just say 'that sucks' and let it be ok that it sucks?" At first she tried to fight me on it, but I reminded her of our conversation the other day about how sometimes things will suck and you'll have to do them and live through them, anyway, and that's OK. You don't have to pretend they're "not so bad" or try to ignore the sucky parts. They are entitled to suck and you are entitled to be unhappy. I don't know if she understood or internalized any of it, but at least she shut up.

I so don't want to have to be at work in 11 hours. Shoot me.

In Decision

I'm scheduled to work at the theatre Thursday and Friday at 5:30 PM and Sunday at 12:30 PM. I make $8 an hour plus mediocre tips. Before I got my November schedule, I said I was available for a promo this upcoming weekend. Saying you're available does not mean you have to confirm if they choose you, so I said I was available. Today while I was at my theatre/bartending job, the promo people called me to say they needed me as an alternate tomorrow through Sunday and could I still do it? I most likely wouldn't have to even go and could get paid for sitting at home. $17 an hour. I checked with BL, since if I ended up needed I'd be late for my shifts at the theatre, but she said it was fine (she's very accommodating) so I called back to say I could be the promo alternate. Tonight I got a voice mail from the promo people saying they needed me. I also got the information for the promotion, which says tomorrow we'd need to be there possibly as late as 10 PM. This would completely screw over my theatre job people, since we're short-staffed as it is. But now that I said I'd do the promo, they're counting on me, too, and screwing them over will seriously hurt my chances of getting work in the future. But screwing over BL etc. is bad because they provide me with the more steady work and income and it's a smaller endeavor and I'm more emotionally attached to them. But $17 an hour. That's awfully hard to turn down for $8 an hour of significantly harder work. So I spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to figure out a way to do both. This would be possible if I made more work for my theatre job people and just prayed that I'd get everywhere I needed to be in the least amount of time. I'd be completely burned out and/or dead by the end of the weekend and my dog might explode and I'd have to postpone any acknowledgment of NBF's birthday for another week, but I'd stand to make well over $600.

I hate this sort of decision--when my psychological and monetary best interests are at odds with eachother and with more utilitarian inclinations. Greatest good for the greatest number of people. How many utils do the theatre people get versus the promo people? How many utils from earning lots of money versus sleeping and having time to socialize? I want to quantify, but it's just not that simple.

So I called BL. After a brief discussion and her trying to figure out how to make it work for me with panic* in her voice, I declared "fuck it" to the promo. It's early in the morning and I'm burning out as it is and the people that would have to take my slack work too hard as it is and I may not always be a good person but this is the "right" thing to do. Even if I am tempted to screw over BL etc. and just skip out on any interfering hours and roll around in my $17 an hour.

That's enough of that rambling. I got 3 1/2 hours of sleep last night because I got home after 1 and went to bed after 2 and then randomly woke up at 6 and couldn't fall back asleep. I was a zombie all day and now I can't sleep again. So I'm drinking a beer. Maybe not the best solution, but I'm sick of coming up with solutions to problems that don't really matter but stress me out anyway. I need better stress-management skills. I've gotten good at stress-avoidance in recent years, but I need to know what to do with issues I can't avoid or defuse. Hmm.

*panic's too strong a word...more like an undercurrent of "oh fuck, well, I'll try my hardest to help Annabell but this will make life significantly more difficult"

un-fussy

I wrote a cranky post last night and then my internet spazzed and I lost it. Probably for the best, since I was migrainey and had to work anyway and was ruing my jump from unemployment to full-time fast-paced new skill set job. A good night's sleep and a fun day of improv class (I was sucking big-time for the first half of class, but usually I'm worst at freeze-tag and today was one of my best freeze-tagging days, so that was encouraging) and the world is back in perspective. It's good to make money and this is the sort of job that will get significantly easier once I'm used to it and don't have to go over the check lists 36 times and run like crazy to get things done in a timely fashion. My tips are already a high percentage of my sales and I like having both the paycheck money and the cash money. I will never go to the ATM again. And I like my co-workers and my boss, which is always important. I just need to stay away from the computer when I come home tired and fussy.

work it, baby

Yay tips. I made lots in tips tonight, even though I was working by the smaller theatre that gets less business. At least for now, I kind of like it better because it's ok that I'm slow and I'm good at being friendly when I'm slow and not so good at being friendly when I'm rushing around trying to do shit like a crazy person. Then I helped BL in the bar again and I officially do not get along with the Bass tap because it just wants to be all heady and I say "NO! Stop that!" and it says "Ha! Fuck you! Have more head!" and I try all of the tricks one uses to diminish beer head and still it laughs and then three more people order Bass drafts and I die a little bit on the inside. Still, it was fun and I'm learning a lot.

Tomorrow I wasn't originally scheduled to work but BL was cutting fruit and instead sliced off the tip of her finger (I feel faint just thinking about it) so she's going to the doctor tomorrow to get pill-berries and newts tails so she can grow extra fingers while the gimpy one heals.

In case I don't already own enough pairs of shoes, I now really need better shoes for work. They must be cute and go with all of my black clothing I must wear (including skirts, because I get very tired of the same two pairs of black pants but I don't really want to buy more black pants and I have many black skirts) and they must be extremely comfortable and I would very much like them to have a heal but that's not a requirement.

My dog is not particularly thrilled with my return to the workforce. When I am home, he is even clingier than normal*. Like he is in my lap right now while I sit at the computer. He used to be content to sit at my feet, but now he paws his way into my lap and then keeps swatting at my hands as I type because clearly I should be giving him every ounce of my attention now that I am home. He's my sweety and I love him very much, but I'd like to be able to check my email and surf the web for porn without claw marks on my wrists.

I hope I'm not getting a migraine. OK, correction: I know I'm getting a migraine, but I hope I can successfully fight it off. I've been having that slightly drunk/disconnected feeling all day where my head just won't retain information and I feel like some of my synapses are firing randomly into space.

Speaking of neurological misfirings, I don't normally have synesthesia, but my parents got me a contact lens case from MoMA and the right lens cup lid is chartreuse and the left lens cup lid is bright orange and every time I look at it, it seems backwards. The right one should be the orange one. I don't know why, but I feel it rather strongly.

Again with the so tiredness.

*if you can ever call my dog "normal"

strange world

Today I worked the Wednesday Matinee shift, also known as "afternoon of the little old ladies who don't tip." Yee-haw. It somewhat sucked, and I was completely out of it. Probably because I was out last night with my boss and SUC at the North Halsted Halloween parade, which was fabulous. Highlights included drag Madonna pushing a black guy dressed as a baby in a shopping cart, two parents dressed up as farmers with their baby as a pumpkin, an impressive Howie Mandell with really atrocious drag briefcase girls (inside the briefcase labeled "Deal" there was a large dildo, and in the briefcase labeled "No Deal" there was a tiny little dildo), and the silhouetted dancing guy from the iPod commercials. Much fun.

I think I need to start dating. Not that my past dating experiences have been so fabulous (for those of you who know the stories, Applebees and "sweet sweet nectar" is all I have to say), but there has to be a better way to deal with this recent crazy boy-lust phase I'm in.

How long do I wait before contacting Playboy again? Or perhaps I do with them what I think I should do in the boy department - go out in search of other options instead of sitting around holding my breath for the unknown. Yes, that is good advice. I should take it.

Crazy shit: just got IMed by Birdie's internet boyfriend* who couldn't figure out who this random name was on his buddy list, and in trying to figure out who I was we discovered he knows my cousin who lives in Colorado! Random!

*not really, but too much to explain otherwise

Straight up, with a twist*

I learned how to bartend! I shadowed SUC's girlfriend (my Boss Lady, henceforth to be called BL) and she taught me all kinds of stuff, like how to make a Long Island Iced Tea and what "with a twist" means and how to deal with the foamy-ass tap and the regular drinks of various cast members and house managers. It was totally fun and she's a great learn-by-doing teacher, which is good because I am a learn-by-doing learner. Earlier in the night I was training with the 54-year-old spunky tough-as-nails grandmother and oldest of 12 children, who his hilarious and cooky as hell. I'm sure she will be a fairly consistent provider of stories because she is a total character. She regularly gets into fights with bus drivers and drinks a bazillion Pepsi's a day and is fascinated by our lesbian co-worker and asks her things like "so do you people have monogamous relationships?" in a genuinely naive way. Oh, there will be stories, I am sure.

It's before 7 AM and I am up because the dog was so itchy/scratchy it woke me up. This is after getting home at 2 AM from work, mind you. He's finally off his antibiotics so I gave him his allergy pill in a bit of hot dog and now he's fast asleep and I'm wide awake. My feet seem to have stopped hurting, which is good because I wore my spiky-healed black boots yesterday and then had to walk a mile in the cold rain to pick up coffee, milk, lemons and limes for the bar (an errand for which I now know better than to volunteer in the future). On my feet all night behind the bars, then another mile back to the El stop at the end of the night because the busses run infrequently at that hour and it was faster to walk than to wait. Spiky heals, I tell you.

Another long night ahead of me, with working again starting at 5:30 and then my improv teacher's band is doing a show at a bar that I'm trying to go to with some of my classmate buddies at 11. On the plus side, I'm definitely more alert (even without coffee, which I'm trying to cut back on again) at this nocturnal job than I ever was when I had to show up before 8 AM. Go go gadget internal clock.

*ok, fine, no twist.

Cell blog (one entry now that I got to a computer)

I miss my computer very much. I'm writing this on my cell phone. I got sick of making nbf check my email for me, so i paid the $5 for phone internet. Slow typing. Lots going on in my life right now. Paul simon was fantastic and my dad was thrilled and really cute and grateful, especially since i "allowed" him to dance. He has no rhythm so the rest of my family won't let him. Amazing how happy it made him.

I have a new job as a bartender at a major chicago theatre. SUC's girlfriend is my boss. She seems fabulous, and my cousin-in-law works there too. I get to see shows while i'm on the clock, too.

In other employment news, I got $400 worth of Nike gear including Nike+ shoes and a running jacket and fleece pants and a hat and gloves. A lot of the girls were on the fashion police thing, too, but mostly brunettes this time. I got made fun of for using the word "impeccable." total flashback to grade school when my vocabulary was a frequent teasing target. I hate that.

TJ & Dave was amazing last night, though Dave was out of town. A guy from the promo training was there and is apparently involved with 826CHI and is on an improv team. Small world. He's also ridiculously gorgeous. I'm still terribly intimidated by excessively beautiful non-stupid people. It's silly but I am. Like the way people get around celebrities, but I save my stammering for unknown Perfects.

After theg show SUC's friend asked TJ some toolish question about "TJ the improvisor versus TJ the person" and I burst out laughing. Mean, yes, but I couldn't help myself. I ended up having a brief conversation with him about migraines. Pretty self-centered of me to care less about celebrity and more about finding another person with my malady, but we determined my self-obsession long ago.

This is a lot to write on a cell phone. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get to a real computer so I can email playboy. I've been thinking a lot about my thing and a weekly or monthly column/blog is probably the way to go. That way i can talk about submissive calls one week and Lyla vs. Annabell another week and tricks to keep guys on the phone another week and the different ways calls end another week and so on. There are more than enough topics.

My computer had best get its butt back here soon.