Check out this great new design from my freshman year high school roommate, Karen Hanson! Ain't it pretty? And not just because it's all over pictures of meeeeeee!

It's March! It's almost spring! Winter is almost over! You know, giant snowstorm yesterday notwithstanding.

I keep skipping around thinking, "Spring! I love spring!" but it suddenly occurred to me that now I am a PWA--Person With Allergies, and what spring really means is that all of those damn trees and weeds and things that I am allergic to will be flinging their pollen around, aiming it directly at my lungs and nose and eyes.

It'll be time to start taking those pills again. I mean, I'll wait for the snow to melt, silly to take the allergy pills while trudging across the tundra, but I'd rather not have one of those hideous nights where I can't lie down, or I forget how to breathe, or my eyes are tearing so much, I cannot see, simply because I didn't take my pill fast enough.

I hate taking pills. Vitamins I have never bothered with, and I really need to start taking my cholesterol medicine again, because it doesn't seem like there's a real reason to be taking them, but my allergy pills are instant gratification in a pill, take it, feel better. That's a pill I'm happy to take.

Also in spring? Flies, mosquitos, bugs. While I'm wheezing and scratching my mosquito bites and blowing my nose, I'll be thinking, "Bring back winter!"

So, on Sunday I spent the rehearsal studiously avoiding Mark and he spent the rehearsal following me about and gave me half of his garlic knots.

I think we've worked out a system, I decide that he's just too much work to deal with and he gets much easier. If only I could do it on purpose.

Paul brought in the signs that he and I, as protesters, will be carrying throughout the show. You know, the 450 lb signs. Holy Christ, are they heavy! Especially in the last scene, which is all about the marching back and forth with no rest, and I have weak over-cooked spaghetti arms.

You see, they are many signs in one, because we are protesting many things, so there's a big stick and like six thick pieces of posterboard and heavy rings holding them together, and the whole thing is really remarkably heavy.

We decided not to use them in one scene, and I thought the funniest thing in the world was the fact that Paul is so used to pretending to hold a sign, that when we weren't holding signs he still had his hand up in invisible sign mode.

Anyway, so I got to write all of my signs myself, and do whatever I wanted with them. Arts and crafts! Fun! I had a swell time with the coloured markers, figuring out how best to make the sign match my line. Sometimes it was by copying my line exactly, sometimes by summarizing, and once by drawing a picture. Now, I can't draw, but that didn't stop me! And I even thought to practice on scratch paper before committing to the posterboard. Go me!

I left rehearsal early to go to the last performance of the show, which was just community theatre-a-go-go.

Some of it couldn't be helped, like no audience because of the Oscars and one actress arriving forty minutes after we started because of getting in an accident on the West Side Highway (she was fine, just upset that her biggest role was in the first piece and Le wasn't going to see her do it), but Sean going out and getting programmes at 6.30p for a 7p show when he is in the show and needs to get into his costume and not setting the Apple in the Tree of Life and if I hadn't noticed it and gotten someone to track it down, it would have been a mighty short Garden of Eden story--these things had no reason not to go smoother.

And all of it together? Looked pretty lame. How filled with schadenfreude was I that they got four audience members average per cast member when Vanities got seven? Really pretty full. And my show may not have made the rent, but combined with the other shows in the week, it did. It was a disaster, but at least it wasn't the only disaster. Ha.

But enough of that, because I need to make some money coming up, so everything else needs to do really well.

So, yesterday I dragged myself out of bed at 10.40a and didn't leave the house until 11.40a. I need to leave at 11.15a at the latest in order not to be late, but having gone to sleep at 4a after the Oscars, it was the best I could do.

I called Corey and left a message that I would be late, ran out the door, got in a van right away, took a cab to the theatre, and only was 12 minutes late. About as late as I am ever when I'm running late, so there you go, panicky phone call for nothing.

Then it snowed and snowed and snowed. March is coming in like a lion, you betcha. It snowed for about four hours before it even started to stick, as it wasn't below freezing, but the snow was tenacious, and the flakes just kept getting bigger and bigger, until finally it just had to start sticking, no matter how warm the sidewalk was.

There was the load-out for the big show that closed last night, which meant that I spent the day opening the door for men carrying bits of wall and posts and things out to the dumpster. And that also meant that Jee offered me cool stuff that maybe we could use at the theatre, but God only knows where I'd put them.

They have several full-length mirrors, and I have no room for a full-length mirror, but I want one anyway, so I'm taking one and I called Mark to see if he wants one, and he does. The real problem is the ten 8'x10' red curtains. How can you throw things like that out? On the other hand, where do you store them? I sent an email to Le, if he wants one or two of them, hopefully he'll keep them at his house.

And then I had a night off.

I know that this is the third night or day off in a row, last Wednesday, this Sunday and last night, but it's the last night or day off that I have at all until 4 April. So I enjoyed it.

The song I've been singing all day:

"Glory" from Pippin

Blood is red as sunset
Blood is warmer than wine
The taste of salty summer brine
Steel is cold as moonlight
Steel as sharper than sight
The touch of bitter winter white
Shout it out from the highest tower
Shout it out in the darkest hour
Charlemagne, you lead us on to
Power!

Today's horoscope:
In addition to the fact that every word you utter today will be intense, emotional and evocative, there's something else you should know: You won't let any offense slide, no matter how slight. Be sure you're not overreacting. Friends are important.

One year ago today:
Jesus, who told Marcia Gay Harden that that gigantic beehive was a good idea? She looks rather as though she belongs in the bus and truck company of Hairspray. In the Harvey Fierstein role.

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Last Updated Thurs 3 March 13:23:09 2005