Humid McMuggyton

Sweet Jesus, has it been humid out!!!!  We were totally teased last week with a few cool mornings and evenings, but this week the summer is BACK and bigger than ever!
Yikes.
Thankfully I have no hair, but if I did - I'm sure it would be a MESS this week!!!!!
I've been in the pool every night this week (not counting Monday, because I wasn't home) and for those of you that know me well, that says a LOT.  It's been down right oppressive and having the pool has been a huge relief. 
Just to give you an idea of what it's been like - I took this picture last night:

Now THAT'S hot!!!!

Thankfully, we have this to save us.....

Other than the heat, hurricane Earl is heading our way.  According to the latest weather reports, we're only supposed to get some wind and heavy rains, but the Cape could get a bit more severe weather.  Jim's dad is taking his boat out of the water this afternoon, which is very smart - but also kind of sad, since they were planning on taking it out this weekend for one last 'hurrah' before the summer was over.
We'll probably take in our patio furniture and anything else that could potentially blow into the pool - just to be safe.

In other news - today would have been my mother's 71st birthday! As the years go by, and I get older, I can't help but see things from a different perspective.  When my mom died, I was 13 and she was only 46.  Back then, I didn't fully grasp the concept of how young she really was.  Thinking about it now, I realize that I have friends (and a few blog readers....wink wink) who are that age (or older) and I can't imagine losing them at such a young age.  Crazy.
Happy Birthday, Mom.  I hope that you're enjoying a few drinks with the old gang from the neighborhood!

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