Monty is turning into the funniest old man.

I watched this British mini-series called Thursday the Twelfth yesterday, and one of the characters was an old man with Alzheimers, and as soon as that was over, that was how I started seeing Monty. He's been stomping around muttering, his cheek scab shiny with Bacitracin, like Grandpa looking for his glasses that he left on top of his head.

What he's been doing that makes me laugh the most is come over to my chair and sit at my feet, glaring up at me. He can't really jump anymore, you see, so he generally sinks his claws into my thigh and hauls himself up, but since he had the puffy face the other day, he doesn't quite have the energy to do so, so he tries to psychically will me to pick him up. "Pick me up!" he thinks at me, all crotchety.

But the second I lean down and stretch my hands towards him he is overwhelmed with the recent memory of my lifting him into my lap in order to wash his face and smear his scab with Bacitracin, so he trots away as fast as his little eighteen-year-old legs will take him. "Argh! No! I do not want you to rub my face! No no no!!!" Then, the second that he gets back to his chair, about two feet away from me, he turns around and goes, "Pick me up! I want to go up!"

The feline version of Ronald Reagan is living in my house.

Sunday we rehearsed with the entire cast all together for the very first time, so in celebration we did a readthrough. I guess it was a first readthrough, though of course we've been rehearsing for two weeks, but it was the first time that John or Geoff heard anything that wasn't their own scenes, so it kind of was one.

We timed the show, and it came in at 2 hours and 10 minutes with no intermission, which isn't bad for an O'Neill extravaganza, but we also found out that we would have to have two intermissions, since the first act ran 45 minutes and what we made into the second act was an hour and a half.

It's a four act play, and generally if you are going to make it two acts, you take the act break between two and three. However, two and three are actually continuous action, and between one and two is when I have to make a costume change, so it looks like we'll take a break between one and two and another between three and four and the whole show will be two and a half hours. Which isn't quite a kill the audience kind of length.

So Philip has to smoke a pipe in the show, or rather he has to futz around with a pipe. Of course, Philip doesn't actually know how to smoke a pipe, so we had Jon come by to be pipe coach.

A couple of weeks ago, Philip actually bought a pipe at Salvation Army--he got it because it looked homemade, perfect for the show. It was a real pipe bowl with a metal stem, it looked pretty period, actually. Well, Jon took one look at it and said, "That's a crack pipe!"

Well, we didn't know! And he bought it at Salvation Army, not at a head shop, who knew? So yes, he's going to get a new pipe, but it for awhile there it was going to be an extremely modern version of Moon For the Misbegotten!

A small Jones reminder! If you haven't voted for it lately, or even if you have, click on it again and vote, won't you? I'm trying to keep my score up, but I think I'm being attacked with some 1s, because it's been going down lately. There are over 1100 votes so far, which means that only 10s and 1s actually change the score, so a few 10s would be cool, if you can find it in your heart.

Lenten entries missed:

Laura is the Kiss My Ass Happy Bunny, missed her hometown, took a day off, learned to argue effectively with Calvin and hung curtains in the bedroom.

Today's horoscope:
Partners need to trust one another instead of trying to hide. Unilateral veto power protects everyone from the consequences of blind impulse. Consider yourself fortunate instead of cursing your luck.

One year ago today:
We all sat and ate and ate and ate, and I don't think that anyone wanted to leave, it was so nice spending the weekend on Wedding Island, who wanted to get back to their lousy lives again, not me!

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Last Updated Thurs 12 June 12:40:09 2003