HOT

It’s been way to warm lately. 95 with 50% humidity two days ago. Yesterday was about as hot, but thankfully not as humid. But I bought an air conditioner! So my room is nice and cool! The cats sleep with me. Snippet has decided that my pillow is clearly her spot, and could I please move my head a little to the left? Pidgeon is not a lap cat and doesn’t like that much contact, so she sleeps next to the pillow. I’m a little worried, though, because Jill is staying over tonight, and then working in Jersey with my tomorrow, and she has to sleep in the living room. She doen’t have to. Either I could give up my bed, or we could kick a big enough spot on the floor and drag in the lliving room futon. We’ll see. It might not be as bad today.

Kelli, a friend of mine from my internship, has been in town the past few days. I hung out with her a good amount, which was fun. I’m not so good with keeping in touch, and not always the most sociable person, but I had a lot of fun. On sunday we met up in the evening to see Mike Daisy’s How the Theatre Failed America. It was really, really excellent. Geared, of course, more towards people who work in theatre, but not totally. There was a pretty interesting panel discussion afterwards. The main effect of the whole thing was that I felt really bad. I’ve been neglecting theatre, kind of. In the fall I took all these electrician jobs because they were easy, but then I started feeling like that was soul-crushing, because I was busting my ass for a show I knew nothing about. I need to feel connected to what I’m working on. I need to feel like my time and effort are going towards something, and it was hard to feel that way when I was as rushed as I was. The corporate gigs are okay, That’s just manual labor that pays well. Those were just a little soul-sucking, which is much less painful than the other. And then I got this drafting job. And it’s easy and convenient and I have plenty of money. There isn’t quite time now, but when I get back from Camp, I’m going to hardcore get back into assistant designing. I kind of want to say screw designing my own stuff for a while, I need to assist and get contacts and see how other people do things and work in real theatre for a while. We’ll see how that works out.

Then yesterday Kelli and I wandered around the west village, got gelato, wandered over to the east village, got sushi, wandered up to union square, and then down to the Staten Island Ferry, and met up with someone else I know from working at Berkeley Rep, and we rode the ferry. That was fun, getting to see New York from a different angle. Govenors Island is pretty cool, they should make it liveable again. I like the SF ferries better, I think, though. In my memory, they’re smaller, and you can stand closer to the water. But this one is free, and that is really hard to beat. We wandered down the street a bit, and saw a burger place that turned out to be fantastic. LIttle 4 oz burgers that were really good, fantastic fries, and root beer floats. And the three of us were fed for $22. It was about 9 or 9 30 then, and I was pretty tired. They wandered up to South Seaport, and I headed home.

Kelli’s moving here in October, and moving into an apartment that a mutual friend of ours has held onto, and sublets. When I moved out here, I wanted to live there, but the guy subletting wasn’t leaving till june, and I got there in december, and when june rolled around, I had forgotten. In fact, I forgot until Kelli mentioned it. SO now she gets to live on the upper west side (in a great, great spot, for 650 a month, 300 sq foot studio. Dang. So now, the plan is since she’s only planning on staying here a year or two (though you never know), I get the place after her. Woo! I’m excited about that. I like my apartment now, but eventually I want to live on my own and such. And this timing is pretty perfect.

This week/weekend I’m doing the dance recital in jersey. Easy stuff, easy work. Jill and I are loading it in tomorrow, and then I runt he show friday and saturday, and then tear down on monday. It pays me way too much for so little work. Granted, last year I was all responsible and came out multiple times to see rehearsals and such, far more than I needed to. This time I will have seen none, which is a little awkward, mainly for the big pieces that will have internal cues. Oh well. It will be nice to be doing something involving dance again, even on this scale. I hope the house lighting system hasn’t gotten worse. It was barely tolerable last year.

I need to get up and go to the drafting job that I’ve been ignoring.

Oh, also, random bummer, I only got 300 for my stimulus refund. Because apparently I got too much money back in general tax refunds. Laaame. But still, it’s 300 bucks I didn’t have before. But still. Laaame.

Cookies

I’m baking. All day. Not quite. Madeline leaves for seattle in a week (which I greatly disapprove of, I think she should stay here. But Seattle is beautiful in the summer, and she’ll love it, so I suppose that works) so tonight there’s a going-away party for her, starting in Prospect Park, then moving to a bar when it gets dark and/or chilly, and then hypothetically to our house when the bar kicks us out. It will be an adventure. It’s a potluck, and she has no time to make or find anything, and I have all the time in the world (what’s left over after I give up on sleeping) so I made sour cream cookies, and oatmeal-cranberry-walnut cookies. I was stupid and only have one cookies sheet, so it’s going a little slower than it should, but that’s okay. I’m not in too much of a hurry. Aside from the fact that it’s 80 degrees and humid outside, and I have the oven on. THe cats are passed out in fur puddles. Begging for tastes wore them out.

So Sarah is leaving on the 15th, because she’s allergic to the cats. Oops. She had no idea. So the new roommate came by to check it out yesterday. It’ll be interesting living with a guy. Supposedly he likes washing dishes. He seemed like a nice guy, affable and easy. He has a cat, so we’re at the maximum of cats now. It’s 21 pounds and 12 years old. Sounds about to keel over. We’ll see how it gets along with the kittens.

The sour cream cookies are done, and smelling far too tempting. I made them really big, though, so there’s only 27 (the recipe said it would make 60. If I measured them out with a teaspoon. No thanks.) and I can’t snack on those. The second batch of oatmeal just went in. I’m hoping one mroe tray after this will finish it, but we’ll see.

I’ve started readin Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and gotten all inspired to buy local produce and not buy things out of season. Naya and I are going to set up a regular farmers market visit.

Tainted Love just showed up in my itunes. It always reminds me of freshman year of high school when Naya and I and several other friends who I’m no longer in touch with took a photography class at an art studio. I remember dancing around the dark room to that. That was a pretty good feeling, being with friends, and learning something fun and creating and feeling grown up. It seemed like a grown up thing to do, somehow. The whole taking the class thing, and the whole dancing thing.

Cat torture!

I spent my morning torturing Snippet. Lately, there have been a bunch of scabs around her neck. They’re pretty unnerving, but not serious, and she doesn’t seem to mind them. I figured it was from playing too rough, although Pidgeon usually just tries to hold her down and wash her when they wrestle. Then this morning, somewhere in the tussle, Snip lost about a quarter sized patch of fur from the back of her neck, and it was all raw underneath. No good. I don’t understand it at all. All the other wounds are gone, or just about gone, so that’s good, but then this happens. I don’t get it, since Pidgeon really isn’t the aggressive one. You would think that she would be the one with all sorts of scratches from Snippet. Anyway. I used the occasion as an excuse to give Snip a bath. It was a short one, I held her in the tub and splashed water on her for a while, and cleaned the spot. She put up with it very well, though it was clear she really didn’t like it. The amazing part came when she let me blowdry her. The really amazing part was that after all that, and after having neosporin put on it, and me putting a little gauze neckercheif on her to keep her from scratching the spot, she still likes me. She keeps climbing on my lap to take a nap, and following me around. What a sweet cat. I always regret the language barrier, and not being able to explain to them what’s going on, or why I have to do this, and it’ll only be uncomfortable for a minute, or whatever else. But that doesn’t seem to be a problem withe her, she never resents me for things like this, and the vet, that I have to do for her to be healthy or safe. I think she gets it. So now she’s passed out on my knee, with her white bandage making her look like an invalid. She isn’t even trying very hard to take it off.

Yeah, the cats are pretty much keeping me occupied

The cats are really all I have to talk about. Except that a friend of John’s is in town. She lives in SF now, and so we’ve been making plans for when he goes out there when I’m done with Camp. We all went out for sushi tuesday night. Best sushi I’ve ever had. She’s staying at her aunt’s, and there’s a hot tub there. Good people, good food, hot tub, rock band. It was a good evening.

I saw a guy on a recumbant bike the other day, except that he didn’t pedal with his feet. It was the hands. Except that instead if being staggered, like pedaling with your feet, they were together. It was more like rowing.

I’ve been semi-ignoring work lately, which is bad. Though I’m somewhat having to invent stuff to do. Though not totally. I’m mainly just tired of it, and of being on a regular schedule. And I’m in the position of being able to indulge that. Not so good.

There are a lot of cars in my neightborhood with alarms. That go off a lot. It’s unpleasant. Though they do get turned off fairly quickly.

I got a laser pointer for the cats the other day. It’s a big hit. John got Pidgeon to jump at least 4 feet up the wall. It makes them very paranoid though, for a good 10-15 minutes after you turn it off, they can’t relax and keep looking.

I’m uninspired to write today, and I feel like it’s showing. I need a project. I think I’m going to paint my room. I know, I did that when I moved in, and it was a lot easier then, before all my stuff was in place. But I was never totally happy with it, and it’s continued to bug me. I tried to do a fady-up thing, 3 different blues, with the ceiling being night sky. But it turns out that latex paint doesn’t blend so well. And I kind of suck at painting in general. So I’m dissatisfied. I’m thinking now that I’ll redo it to that it’s very neat, and every wall is a different color. I’m not sure if I should change the colors or not. They turned out a lot more oceany than sky, which is kind of cool, but I also have a lead on really nice bird stencil things. So sky would be good. I don’t know. Anyway.

Babbling

So I have breakfast today, and then i go to get out a glass and the milk, because buttered toast with cinnamon sugar makes me thirsty, and for some reason, I’ve been wanting to drink milk lately. This is odd. I don’t like milk 8 months out of the year, but somehow in summer, it’s what I look for. Anyway. The cats have been staring at me the whole time I was eating, and as soon as it looks like I’m preparing something else, they start yelling at me. They have food and water. This is not good enough for my cats. They must inspect everything I’m eating and make sure that they’re not missing out on anything. Pidgeon is particularly load about these things. And gives me big looks of disapointment when I don’t let her drink milk.

Snippet went to the vet for her second round of vaccinations. She was kind of traumatized by the subway, but occasionally would stick a paw through the bars for me to hold, and seemed comforted by that, which was rather unbearably cute. She was very good at the vets, put up with the thermometer up the butt and the bright light in the eyes with remarkable grace. The vet was also extremely good with her, let her walk out of the carrier on her own, was gentle about everything. It was pretty expensive, but for how they treated her, and all, it’s worth it. I need to start brushing them. Pidgeon coughed up a hairball the other day. When I had indoor/oiutdoor cats, they never did that. Weird. Anyway. Enough about cats.

I also saw 2 shows in a week. Naya couldn’t use her Sunday in the Park With George tickets, so I got to see that, and took Madeline. It was technically very impressive, all the projection stuff they did. Though the lighting suffered a little for it. But not many people would think to notice that, I suppose. I ended up really liking it somehow, but none of the songs were really that memorable, and we were both kind of underwhelmed at intermission. The ending was really good, I think. And the whole things was interesting. So, I’m glad I got to see it, and equally glad that I didn’t have to pay for it.

Then John and I had been wanting to see something, so through the magic of craigslist, I got tickets for Wicked. They were really good tickets. About halfway back in the orchestra, on the aisle but not really far over to the side. I saw it in SF before it went to Broadway, but details fade and you forget how things connect, so it was great to see again. The lighting is fantastic. And it’s a fun, well put-together show. We went to the Natural History Museum beforehand, which was fantastic. A lot of it hasn’t changed since he was last there about 10 years ago, but the Hall of Biodiversity, and the Ocean Life room are beautiful and amazing. I like looking at all that stuff. We spent almost 2 hours looking at that, and then went to the planetarium side and looked at the scale stuff, and ate astronaut ice cream. Which is good, but I think you can’t really consider it ice cream. If I were an astronaut, I would constantly crave cold food. And real food in general, I suppose.

Then we went to an ethiopian place in the village for dinner. It was really good. I could eat the bread stuff all day and not get tired of it.

Naya lives near me now! 2 subway stops away. Or i could walk, which takes longer, but it’s a nice walk, along the park. I went and saw Sex and the City with her yesterday. It was pretty good. Silly and such, but I thought it was better than the episodes, and it was fun to watch.

So yes. That’s what I’ve been up to. Lots of leisure. A little bit of work. Not as much work as I should be doing. Hopefully I’ll change that this week. But perhaps not, as I should have left for work almost 2 hours ago, and I’m thinking about taking tomorrow off to do laundry. Which I really should have done yesterday. It won’t take a whole day to do, but I tink I’m going out to get sushi on Long Island tonight, which means being up fairly late. It’s really kind of dangerous to let me have a job where the boss isn’t there for 6 weeks, and I can determine my own schedule. I really should get moving. At least I’m already dressed. That helps.