NINE

As you may have read yesterday, I was lucky enough to help out at the call backs for SpeakEasy Stage Company's upcoming production of NINE last night.

I had SOOOO much fun.  The callbacks began at 4pm and things were wrapped up a little bit after 10pm.  We saw close to 40 woman and 3 men.  Considering the amount of people there and the amount of material they'd prepared - I think we made EXCELLENT time. 

There was one group called at 4pm, then at 7:15 another group arrived for an 'all inclusive' (both groups) dance audition.  After the dance audition, the first group was released, and then the second group stayed from 8 until just after 10. 

There were so many great women there, I can't wait to see who ends up in the cast.  Naturally, I have my own cast, selected in my mind, but I look forward to seeing how my cast matches up against the actual cast.

I could watch people audition all day long.  I love every minute of it.  I love working with the directors in coordinating who's coming in when, I love having the opportunity to see various people's take on the same material, and I love being totally surprised by someone's audition.  There's nothing better than seeing someone come in and do something you never thought they'd be able to pull off. Awesome.

However, there are definitely some not-so-great moments about the audition process as well.  It's horrible to watch someone fall apart at an audition and completely 'blow it' (thankfully, there were no catastrophes last night).  Also, it's never easy to give people the 'We're all set with you for tonight, but we'll be in touch!' line.  Thankfully, the people we saw last night were completely professional and although they may have been upset with the news, they all handled it well.  Believe me, I've seen people who don't always handle it well and give you some (or a lot) of attitude on their way out the door.
P.S.  That's never a good idea.  Behaviour like that tends to find it's way back to the people in charge - at least when I'm the one running the auditions.  :-)

I would L-O-V-E to find a way to make a career working at/helping out/watching auditions, but unless I'm ready to either work for free or move to the big, bad, apple - it ain't gonna happen any time soon.
So - until then, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and enjoy the chances to help out when I'm needed.

Have a GREAT day folks!!!
xoxo

Raul Julia & Anita Morris in NINE

(Original Broadway Cast)

Duty calls....

Good day!  The weekend is over, and as you would expect, I'm back at my desk.  Oh joy of joys.
At least I have a job, right?!?!?

The weekend was a ton of fun, which made it all the more difficult this morning to drag myself out of bed and get to work.  However - I'm here, and there are things that need doing, and I must do them. 
But first, a quick re-cap.

Friday night we met up with friends and went to the local fair.  We had so much fun.  We walked around, saw the sights, and I actually went on a few rides!!!  Good times.
Here are a few pictures that Barrie took which I swiped from her blog....as usual.

Here are the 4 of us in line to ride the ferris wheel...

This is us on the ferris wheel. 

We were in car #13...and it went a LOT faster than we thought it was going to.

Yikes. 

The three of us were the only ones that were brave enough to go on a 'scary' ride.

And we screamed the entire time.

If there's a cut-out, I'm in it.

These little things we way too cute not to take a picture of...

Saturday morning we got up and did some stuff around the house, I headed into Boston to drop some stuff off at the SpeakEasy office, and then I went to the softball banquet.
Well, the house/mansion was as impressive as you could imagine, and there were a ton of people there, but nothing too outrageous went on (at least that I was aware of).  There were a few guys there that were clearly 'hired help' walking around in Speedos and dancing on the walls around the pool from time to time.  Surprisingly enough, they didn't really get all that much attention.  It seemed that most of the crowd felt the same as I and had little interest in the over-tanned, over-plucked, over-muscled, show-offs with 'manhunt' written across their chests.  No thanks.  There was a ton of food, the alcohol flowed freely, (literally..all the beer and wine you could drink the entire time we were there) and from what I could tell, a good time was had by all. 

Here's the crowd gathered around the pool:

Here's the crowd IN the pool. 

It wasn't this crowded all day, just later in the afternoon...as you can imagine.

I left there shortly after 6 and headed back to the train to get to my car.  By the way, as I was leaving - a little, red, fox (the animal, not the actor) crossed the street right in front of me.  I was like "Really?!?  Did I just see a fox running across the street in the middle of Brookline?!?!"  It was so odd.  Thankfully, there were other witnesses, or I would have completely thought I was hallucinating.
Anyway - I headed home and met up with Jim at his sisters house, where they were watching 'Nanny McPhee' on the giant movie screen out in their back yard. I watched the end of the movie, then we played a game of Pictionary, and Jim and I went home and called it a night. 

Yesterday was a very relaxing day.  :-)  Jim and I went grocery shopping and then spent the afternoon lounging by the pool.  Later in the evening we showered, changed, went to dinner, came home, watched a bit of the Emmys and then went to bed (early).

I'm leaving work early today to head into Boston and help out with the callbacks for SpeakEasy's winter production of the musical 'Nine'.  I'm sure that every woman in Boston will be there, and I can't wait! I love helping out with auditions and was thrilled when I was asked to help.  So - I'll be here until 2, and then I'm out!!! 

Have a GREAT day everyone!!!

Short Weeks are Nice.

This week has gone by quite quickly, I must say.  Of course, I wasn't here on Monday so that helps - but in addition to that, work has kept me busy so the days go by pretty fast.

Here we are on Friday.  I have a meeting at 8:30, then I have to hightail it to a different building for a 10:00 meeting, and then I'll be back at my desk for the remainder of the day.  Good times.

Jim and I are going with some friends to the local 'fair' tonight which should be FUN.  I hope it is at least.  I haven't been to this particular fair since I was a little kid, so I really have no idea what to expect.  I do know that the people we're going with are fun, and we always have fun getting together with them, so I'm pretty sure it'll be fun.  Fun, Fun, Fun.  :-)

Tomorrow afternoon I'm going to my softball banquet.  For the past 8 years we've held the banquet at Club Cafe in the South End, but this year one of the team sponsors is hosting the banquet at his home (mansion?) in Brookline.  This man happens to be one of the founders/owners of Manhunt.com.  You may have heard of it?!?!!? ;-)  I have absolutely NO idea what to expect.  Of course, the first thing that comes to mind are the pictures I've seen of parties at Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion where there were scantily clad 'bunnies' all over the place serving drinks, etc....but I can't imagine that will be happening at this event.  Of course, I could be wrong.  Maybe there will be some attractive young things serving cocktails and pigs in a blanket all afternoon?  If that's the case, I'm sure they'll all have zero body fat and be manscaped/plucked within an inch of their lives.  No thank you. 
Either way, I'll be sure to have my iPhone at the ready and capture anything worth capturing.

Sunday we have nothing planned, so I'm hoping that it will be a relaxing day by the pool....that would be delightful.  :-)

OK my friends...I'm getting back to work now.  Have a GREAT weekend!!!!!
xoxo 

Check it out!!

Jim has a new post on Jim's Whims!!!  It's been a while since we've had time to film one (as you can tell from reading my blog) but we had a free night this week and managed to set aside some time.

Check it out here.

I apologize for not writing anything exciting, but work is absolutely killing me these days.  It's frustrating, stressful, and making me a tad crazy......but who wants to listen to me complain?!?!?  :-)

In the meantime, enjoy these Dora The Explorer cakes (Seriously?!?!?) from CakeWrecks.com

And this one just made me laugh, so I'm sharing it with you.

Customer: I'd like to order a birthday cake please.
Employee: OK, what would you like us to write on it?
Customer: Happy Birthday
Employee: Anything else?
Customer: Just Happy Birthday

Awesome.

A good soaking...

Hello everyone - I have returned!!!!  :-)

I had a great time 'away' and now it's back to the grindstone.  Sadness.  Appropriately, it's been raining non-stop since Sunday morning.....so, we're now on our 4th straight day of rain.  Gloomy, gloomy, gloomy.
We certainly need the rain, but I don't have to like it!

Jim and I had a great vacation and surprisingly, it hasn't been all that bad returning to work.
Our time in Maine was so much fun.  I'm not usually a fan of the beach, but we spent the entire day at the beach last Thursday and had a great time.  The water wasn't too cold, and the waves were pretty big, so we were having fun trying to body surf.  :-)
In addition to spending time at the beach, we shopped, we ate, and we drank.  It was so nice to spend time together, just the two of us.  We came home from Maine on Friday and then spent the weekend with tons of friends and family. 
It rained like crazy on Sunday, but that didn't keep our pool party/BBQ from being a total blast.  That's what tents are for, right?!?!  Sure, it would have been nice to have a beautiful, sunny day, but since we didn't have that kind of weather, we made due with what we had, and still had fun.

I'm playing catch-up at work, as well as trying to catch up on my blog reading, so I'm going to keep this one short.
I hope you're all doing well!!!

Happy Wednesday.....stay dry!!!! 
xoxo

 

1/2 Day!!!

My mini-vacation is almost here!!!  I just have to make it through 3 1/2 more hours and I'm FREE!!!

After writing my post yesterday morning, things got a bit better.  I finally was able to get the necessary software downloaded to my PC (although, I was 'computer-less' for 3 1/2 hours) and found out that the set up issue wasn't a set up issue at all!!!  As it turns out, the error I'm receiving is the error that everyone receives when they try and run the same process.  That made me feel better....although, God only knows when that will be addressed, never mind corrected.

I probably won't post for a few days, but please don't forget about me when I'm 'gone'!! 
(as if).

OH - I totally missed it, but I celebrated my two year anniversary of blogging last Friday!  I can't even believe it's been two whole years.  Writing this blog has been a BLAST and I have to thank all of you for reading.
It certainly wouldn't be the same without all of you and you're comments.  THANK YOU!!!

Here are a few pictures for y'all!!

Jim was 'harrassing' Scooter the other night

Finally taking a break

We took Scooter to the beach last night for the first time....he LOVED it!!!

Oh, and before I go......

MANY, MANY, MORE!!!!!!

xoxo

Crabby hat

At my very first job out of college, we had a fun little hat in the shape of a crab sitting around the office.  Where it came from, I have no idea, but whenever one of us was in a bad mood we would put on the crabby hat as a way to let people know that it was not a good day for us.  It lightened things up considerably, and eventually we'd be over our 'mood'.

It looked similar to this, but it had no writing on it......

I need a crabby hat about now. 

I'm losing my mind at work, and I've been here for about 20 minutes. 
Two quick stories. 

I'm trying to get certain software onto my machine.  They need to 'take over' my machine for 3 hours in order to do this.  On Friday afternoon, I logged off (per their instructions) and about an hour after logging off, I received a call from some fella (calling from God only knows where) telling me that he couldn't access my computer because I must have shut it down.  I informed him that I most definitely didn't shut it down, and after a few failed attempts at him gaining access, we gave up and decided to take care of it on Monday.

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon.  I sent him an email saying that I would lock my PC (not log off or shut it down) and once I did that, he could gain access to my machine.  Last week, I'd set him up as an administrator, so he has the power to unlock and take over the machine.  Near the end of my day yesterday, I sent him an email saying that I was locking the machine, and asked him to call me at my desk once he was all set.  Well, about 45 minutes goes by and I decide that he must be all set or else I would have heard from him.
Fast forward to this morning, when I come into work and there's a voicemail from him, which was left about 15 minutes after I walked out the door (making it an hour after I actually locked the PC) telling me that he couldn't get in because the PC was locked.  Even better?!?!  His first attempt at letting me know there was a problem was via email a half hour after I said I was giving him access to the computer.

First of all, he has full access to my machine and could have simply hit CTRL+ALT+DELETE and 'taken over' my machine. 
Second of all, he sends me an EMAIL telling me to log off and not lock it.  How did he expect me to see it?
Third of all, he waits for an hour to go by before he calls me to tell me there's an issue???

Needless to say, I sent a not-so-happy email this morning, telling him that I'm going to be out of the office for a while this morning, and we should take care of it then, while I'm around - and I stressed to him that calling me is the best way to get in touch with me....not sending me an email on the PC I just (essentially) turned off. 

Second story - I'm trying to run a specific utility on my machine and I need some adjustments made to my 'behind the scenes' set up.  I opened a ticket with the help desk to have this done, and long story short - they closed the ticket without resolving the issue.  My favorite part is the wording they use:

"This ticket is being resolved without action."

Really?!?!?  Maybe it's me, but that isn't really resolving anything, is it?  I need to call the help desk and speak to someone about it, but I'm just too mad to deal with them right now....plus it's way too early for them, and I'll end up being bounced to the off-shore help desk, which will just annoy me.

Sorry for being such a Negative Nancy this morning....but come on!!!  I wouldn't care so much if I were getting crappy service from some minimum-wage-making teenager at the local Wal-Mart or something, but this kind of crap coming from grown adults - within my own company?!?!?

A*N*N*O*Y*I*N*G

I hope your day is going a lot better.  :-)

I'm off to get some coffee and cheer up....which I know will work......grrrrrrrrrrr.

.

Rainy days and Mondays.....

If rainy days and Mondays get me down, how does a rainy Monday make me feel?!?!?!  ;-)

Actually, I was thrilled to see that it was raining when I woke up this morning.  Our poor lawn is SO in need of rain, and it's been a long time since we've had any rain to speak of. 
Jim is taking the kids to Six Flags today, so for his sake - I hope it's just a passing thing.  We shall see.  Six Flags is quite far from our house, so there's no guarantee that it's even raining there.  For all we know, it could be a BEAUTIFUL day out that way.  Fingers crossed!!!

So, we had a great weekend. The weather was BEAUTIFUL and we had lots of fun.  Originally, we were supposed to have a BBQ on Saturday, but as it turned out, a lot of people couldn't make it that day, so we decided to postpone it until early September.  It's really too bad, because it was an absolutely P-E-R-F-E-C-T day for a BBQ/Pool Party - and I'm willing to bet that it will rain on the day that we end up actually having it.  Just sayin'.  :-)

We had dinner at the Grille on Friday night, to kick off Jim's vacation week, then we spent Saturday by the pool, went for a really long walk with the dog, went shopping, and then met up with K and B for dinner - which was delicious and VERY fun.  Yesterday, we went to my sister's house for a birthday bash to celebrate her son's birthday (he turned 11) - as well as my niece's birthdays.  All three of them (sisters) have birthdays in August.  The oldest and the youngest were both born on the 17th (6 years apart), and the middle girl was born on the 3rd.  It's crazy to see how grown up they are.  They'll be 16, 13, and 10....and they're all flying out tomorrow (the entire family) for a 12 day trip to Italy (Rome and Tuscany).....poor things.  ;-)

At this point, I'm counting down the days until I get my "mini-vacation".  Jim and I decided that we're not going to go to P-Town after all.  We were talking about it, and figured we might as well take advantage of our time off, and go somewhere over night.  Since we weren't going to find anything remotely decent and/or affordable in P-Town on such short notice, (especially since it's 'Carnival' week) we decided to book a room in Ogunquit for Thursday night.  We'll head up early on Thursday and spend the day there, do something fun at night and then take our time heading back on Friday.  I'm sure it'll be fun!!!

Well friends.....the time has come for me to get 'caffeinated' and get to work.

HAPPY MONDAY!!!

'Vacation' approaches....

Well, not a 'real' vacation, but next week I'm working half a day on Wednesday and then I'll be out until the following Tuesday, so that's a total of 5 1/2 days away from work....which is FINE by me!
Jim is off all next week, so it will be nice to have some time off together.

He's heading to Six Flags on Monday with his sister and her kids - which will be fun.  I would have liked to have gone, but Monday was the best day for them to go and since there's so much going on at work right now I couldn't take the entire week off.  Jim has gone with the kids a few summers in a row now, and I've never been, so it would have been fun to see it.  The last time I went was sometime around the summer of 1997, and it was still Riverside Park.  I look forward to hearing them talk about how much fun they had at the park (again) and look at all the great pictures from the day (again) and say 'Well, maybe next year you can come too!! (again).
Yes - I'm looking for pity.  :-)

Anyway.....we're planning on spending one of my days off down in P-Town for the day, which will be fun.

OK everyone....I have a lot of work to do, so I've got to go.

Have a GREAT weekend!!!!

Katie's Corner

I may be late to the party, but thanks to Stephen at Are You There, Blog? It's Me, Stephen I am now COMPLETELY obsessed with Alexandra Billings and her series of videos on YouTube called 'Katie's Corner'.  Basically, she does a series of completely hysterical videos 'as' Katherine Hepburn and you all need to go watch them. 
Since I'm at work, and YouTube is BLOCKED, I can't embed a video here, or even directly link to YouTube, BUT if you go to You Tube and search for her channel (alexandrabillings99) or just search for Alexandra Billings + Katie's Corner, you'll find them.

I watched one last night that I hadn't seen before (Katie's Corner Presents How To Make A Christmas Ornament) and at one point I was laughing so hard, I was crying.  You MUST check them out.  She also has one video where she's doing an interview with Judy Garland which is one of my favorites.
I've even watched a few of her non 'Katie's Corner' videos and she is just as funny on her own.
Be sure and check her out.

Things are quiet around here....Jim is feeling a bit better and my work 'stuff' is slowly improving as the various issues I'm dealing with are getting solved.  Baby steps, I suppose.

Have a great day - and check out those videos!!!

So much to do...

Hey everyone!

I'm back to work after yet another long weekend.  We did a ton of fun stuff this weekend (shocking, I know), so I'm going to keep it brief.  At least I'll make an attempt to do so.....

Friday night I ushered at 'The Producers'.  It was a great time, the HUGE orchestra sounded amazing.  It's so rare to hear such a large, LIVE, orchestra these days.....everyone is cutting back and the orchestra is usually the first thing to go - but I'm happy to report that hasn't happened at The Company Theatre!  They were there, and they were amazing.  It was an outstanding job by everyone on and off stage.  I'm still amazed that grown adults have so much trouble finding their own seats, when everything is so clearly labeled - BUT that's a story for another day.

Saturday morning I was up early and heading to the softball fields for....the playoffs. 
We lost both games (which was fine by me) but we played quite well, so I was quite pleased.  The season is OFFICIALLY over at this point and I won't be playing softball again until the Providence tournament in October.  Thank you, Baby Jesus.
After the games, I headed home, had lunch by the pool, went grocery shopping with Jim, and then we headed to Plymouth to meet up with some high school friends of his.  It was quite fun, and a beautiful night to spend down by the water.

On Sunday morning, we got up, relaxed at home for a bit (Food Network!!), and then headed down to Jim's parents cottage for the day.  My dad and Betty met us down there, and the six of us (my parents, Jim's parents, and the two of us) spent the day together.  We chatted for a bit, had some snacks, and a few cocktails out in the backyard, took a walk down to the beach, and then headed out for dinner (which was actually a late lunch).  After we ate, we went back to his parent's place for a bit, then Jim and I took off for home (Jim wasn't feeling well).  We got home and watched some TV before Jim turned in for the night.  After watching a little more TV, Scooter and I joined him up in the LOVELY air conditioned room. 
We all slept like rocks....it was awesome.

I had yesterday off, so my friend Amy came over in the afternoon with her three kids to have lunch and go for a swim.  We've been in our house for almost 4 years, and she'd never been over.  Mind you, she lives only 45 minutes away...or less than that.  Oops.  :-)
I spoke to Jim at work in the morning and he sounded like HELL.  Poor thing - he's got some sort of respiratory thing going on and it's making him miserable. Initially, we thought it was allergies, but it's clearly something more.  We were supposed to meet up with our friend Melissa for dinner last night, but we had to cancel because Jim wasn't feeling well at all.  She's got a two children, one of which is a baby (6 months old, or so) and it wouldn't be too smart for us to have Jim over there getting his germs all over everything.  Not to mention the fact that he feels like crap and would have been wanting to go to sleep the entire time we were there.
Anyway, Amy and the kids had a great time at the pool, and it was a blast seeing her and catching up. 
Jim came home from work and pretty much collapsed for the night....he woke up this morning feeling even worse.  :-(  He has to go to work though, because he's on vacation next week and has a ton of stuff to do before that.  Hopefully, that the medicine he took this morning will kick in soon and he'll feel better.

Well, my peeps....that's the news from the street.

Oh - Two fun 'tid-bit's:
1.  I saved a mole from drowning in the pool this morning
2.  The woman who owns the doggie daycare where Scooter goes, found her cat last night after he went missing TWO MONTHS ago!!  Apparently he was living in the woods down the street from her house, and has been living off birdseed from a neighbors bird feeder.  Thankfully, he's home safely and going to the vet today for a check-up.  Keep everything crossed!!

Happy Tuesday..... :-)

White trash.

And when I say 'white trash', I'm referring to the crazy amount of trash that Jim and I have accumulated, yet can't seem to throw out with any sort of ease.

You see, in the town where we live, we can't just put all our garbage on the curbside to be picked up.  Everything that we put on the curb for trash pick-up either has to be in a special town trash bag, or has to have a special 'bulk item' sticker on it in order for the trash fellas to take it away. AND you can only have one 'bulk item' per week.  The bags cost $25 for 10 large bags, and the stickers are $5 for a 'regular' bulk item (couch, chair, etc...) or $15 for appliances (refrigerators, stoves, etc...).  Also, if you plan putting something out there with a $15 sticker on it, you have to call in advance to let them know that it's going to be out there. 
How I miss the days of putting everything on the curb and being done with it!!! 
I will say that, aside from the minor inconvenience of it all, it's a much more pleasant experience dealing with things this way.  In the places I've lived that didn't have special trash bags, trash day was usually a very ugly scene.  Lots and LOTS of trash everywhere and a lot of it didn't necessarily get entirely picked up, so there was a lot of crap left behind.  With the town trash bags, not only does it look 'nicer' when all the trash is out there (pretty, yellow bags all along the curbs) but it seems to cut down on the amount of loose trash that ends up sticking around after the fact.  Having the town bags also forces people to recycle a lot more than they normally would.  Jim and I recycle EVERYTHING we can so that we aren't taking up unnecessary space in the large, town bag.  Thankfully, we don't generate a lot of trash.  We average about 1 tall kitchen trash bag per week, and I can usually fit three of those into one large town bag....so we really only use about one or two a month.  That's not counting the 'BBQ months', when we generate a bit more.   :-)

So.....where was I going with this?!?!  Oh yes!!! 

We have a bunch of stuff that we need to throw out, but unless we shell out a ton of money. we've got nowhere to toss it.  For example, we have a few broken chairs from our old dining room set that need to be thrown out and our options are to either break them up small enough to be stuffed into a ton bag, or slap a $5 sticker each one and put them on the curb.  Neither option is too thrilling to me.  Same goes for the GIANT cardboard box that our TV came in.  Do I spend FOREVER trying to cut it into pieces so it'll fit in the recycling bin, or do I pay $5 to have them take it away?!?!?
Believe me, it adds up. 
What I wouldn't give to have them recall the 'trash laws' for one week....I'd have a full curb and a beautifully empty basement. :-)  

So - that's the current dilemma at home.  We have no town dump to bring things to and are too thrilled at the prospect of paying all that money for stickers.  Jim's dad has a permit to the dump in the town where they have their cottage on the Cape, so that's certainly an option, but the idea of finding a truck and making all those trips is daunting to say the least. I'll certainly keep you posted, as I KNOW you're all on the edges of your seats dying to know how it all turns out. 

Have a great weekend, and thanks for reading my rant. 

Seeing 'The Producers' tonight, softball playoffs tomorrow (then I'm DONE!!!), and a trip to the Cape with my parents on Sunday. 
Hmmmm.....maybe they'll let me fill their car with trash?????    :-)

I got the pool in the morning....

Each morning at some point before I leave for work, I go outside to the pool and take a quick look around.
Originally, it was to be sure that no critters ended up in there over night, or to get some air after dressing for work (we don't have central a/c and the house tends to be QUITE warm as a result).  But it's become something I look froward to each morning.  I LOVE the way the pool looks at that time of day.
It's so calm and crystal clear.  Of course, I have to send a huge thanks to Jim, for endlessly working on it.  :-)

I took this picture this morning before I left for work.  I love how you can clearly see the gradual slant of the bottom, heading into the deep end.  Cool.

Oh, and hip-hip-hooray for California!  I'm sure this is only one step in the right direction, but it's a pretty darn exciting step!!!

Happy Thursday......xoxo

P.S.  I almost forgot!!!  Today is the 3rd anniversary of our parakeet, Junior's passing.  :-( 

He was an AWESOME bird, and even though some people don't think of parakeets as a 'real' pet - he was the one that would have made them believers!!!  He (and Buddy, his cage-mate) used to fight with one another in an attempt to be the first one to the front of the cage each day so they could say hello to us.

While I don't miss cleaning their cage :-), from time to time I still miss hearing their constant, happy chirping throughout the house.  R.I.P. Junior!!!

Junior is the blue one, Buddy is the green one....

 

 

Quiet week...busy day.

This week has been a quiet week, but at the same time - I'm super busy.
Does that make sense? 
Let's put it this way....work is making me crazy, but my 'after work life' is relatively calm.
At work, I'm dealing with a major testing issue (at the moment, I can't do any testing - awesome) and I'm attending a ton of meetings this week, but my social life is relatively quiet.

Tonight, we're visiting with some friends after dinner, tomorrow night I have a softball meeting to discuss my team's upcoming fall fundraiser, and then on Friday night I'm ushering for 'The Producers' at The Company Theatre.  On Saturday, I have softball playoffs, and then on Sunday I'm heading to the Cape with Jim and my parents to spend the day with Jim's folks. 
Other than that, I've got nothing going on.  :-)
OK - now that I've put it all out there, it's not too quiet, but that's OK. 

Last night I found out that another friend of mine just booked a Broadway 'gig'. (thanks facebook!!)
He went to the Boston Conservatory and is super talented.  He was in SpeakEasy's production of 'Bat Boy' a number of years ago, and he and I were in 'Parade' together at SpeakEasy back in 2007.  I'm not 100% sure what show he got, but based on what I've read, I'm pretty sure it's 'Billy Elliot'.  If that's the case, I'm fairly certain he'll be working for a good, long time.  Congrats to him!!!!  It's nice to have talented friends.  :-)

OK readers....I've got coffee to drink, problems to try and fix, and meetings to attend.

Have a great day!!!

It feels like fall...

For the past week or two I've noticed a big change in the amount of sunlight there is coming through the windows when we wake up in the morning...and it makes me a little bit sad.  I've also noticed that there have been a few chilly evenings over the last week or so.  Dum-da-dum-dum....you know what that means!!
I can't believe it's already August 2nd.  Craziness.  Before you know it, kids will be back to school, and the summer will be g-o-n-e. 
Enough of that nonsense!!  There's still plenty of summer left, so I'm not going to dwell on it.  Besides, I love the fall, so I can always start looking forward to that.  :-)

Jim and I had a great weekend!!

Friday night we had dinner at home and then ran out to the mall for a few things.  We had to get his brother a birthday present, and we decided to pick up the stuff we needed so that we can mount our TV on the wall. 
I can't wait to see what it looks like once it's up there.  Not only do I think it will look great, but it will allow us to use the current TV stand/cabinet for storage, which we desperately need. 
After returning from the mall, Jim surprised me with a trip to the movies!!  Yahoo!  We hardly ever go to the movies, so it was a very unexpected surprise.  We went to see 'Dinner With Schmucks' which I really wanted to see.  Exciting!! Unfortunately, we were HORRIBLY disappointed in the movie.  I thought the overall story was cute, but it was a completely unsatisfying movie.  It wasn't nearly as funny as I expected and we were SHOCKED at the amount of times that the microphone was caught in the shot.  Seriously?!?!
It was unbelievable how often it happened.  I'm no film critic, but  that's just poor film making in my opinion.

I'm interested in hearing other opinions, so if you've seen it, let me know what you thought.  If you're on the fence about seeing it, I'd advise you to wait until it comes out on DVD, which should be very soon.

On Saturday morning, we had an 'interview' with a friend of ours who is in school to get his doctorate in psychology. (at least I think that's what he's getting - either way, I know it's a doctorate in something)  Anyway, it's someone that we've known for a long time, but we knew him best back when he was a 'kid'.  When I first met him (we were in a show together back in 1995) I was 23 and he was 16, so it was REALLY weird to see him all grown up and not a teenager anymore.  He's conducting a study of gay men who want to be parents, so we were more than happy to be part of his study.  He came over in the morning and we talked to him for a little over two hours.  It was fun to re-tell our 'adoption story' from the very beginning right up to the present day.  There were a lot of little things that I hadn't thought of in a while, and it was interesting to start from the very beginning and  talk about all we've been through since starting the process.
After he left, Jim and I went grocery shopping and then spent the afternoon swimming and relaxing by the pool.  It was a beautiful day and SO nice to not have anything that we 'had' to do.  Eventually, we showered and met up with a friend for dinner in the South End.  We had dinner, a few drinks and then headed out to Fritz afterwards.  Well, we ended up closing the Eagle, then we headed home and didn't get into bed until after 3am.  Clearly, we think we're 22 again.  :-) 

Sunday morning we slept in, (Gee, I wonder why?) and then headed to Jim's parents place down the Cape to celebrate his brother's birthday.  His entire family was down there and we had a great time.  We sat on the beach and while Jim swam with his nieces; his mother, sister and I did the New York Times Sunday crossword.  It was quite fun.  After a while, we headed back to their cottage for some snacks and present opening - then we all packed up and went on the boat.  We drove across the harbor and docked the boat off the shore of  local beach.  We've been here several times before and it's a great place for swimming.  Yes, I actually swam in the ocean (generally, I'm not a fan of beach swimming).  It's one of the few places I will swim in the ocean.  The water is usually quite warm and there is actual sand, (not jagged rocks) on the bottom, so you don't rip your feet to shreds when you walk.  We stayed at the beach for a while and then headed back to the cottage for dinner, cake and ice cream, and of course, games!  We stayed for a little bit longer and then headed home...exhausted.

Once we got home, we took Scooter for a walk and then pretty much struggled to keep our eyes open for the rest of the night until it was time for bed.  :-)

Another GREAT weekend come and gone.  We've got a pretty quiet week this week, but as usual, the weekends are booked solid with lots of fun and exciting things happening....lucky, lucky, us!!!

Happy Monday!!!!!!