01/26/04: five inches high and rising

First off, what ever happened to De La Soul? (Three is the magic number, baby)

Anyhoo, so much to fill you in on-- where to start?

Saturday day I had callbacks for Little Shop of Horrors at City Theater. Got there at 1pm and didn't know anyone there except this cool chick Gretchen Reeder who had the lead in WDL's How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (which I didn't get to see, but I heard she rocked). Gretchen is one of the most beautiful humans I've ever seen in my life, and I even told her that a few months ago. She's just got this brilliant, warm radiance and juicy beauty to her-- she looks like she was drawn by a Disney animator. She's supah-cool. Word!

Anyhoo, so they had me read for Audrey and I was ass-tragic (I have no idea how to be girlie at all), and then later they dismissed a bunch of people and had the remaining folks sing through some stuff. They had me sing "Git It" (the Feed Me song) with the guy I think they're casting as Seymour, and it really, really rocked. As soon as we were done they told me I could go home and that they'd be emailing me to get my schedule and stuff..... so I guess that's a good thing. I'll find out at the end of this week, I think. I'll keep ya posted, but I'm feeling pretty good about it!

After callbacks, I had Knappuccino's, which was the absolute best one to date (thanks to Turner and SteveWe for setting things up whilst I was at callbacks). We had to get more chairs for all the people coming in... I think we wound up adding more chairs 3 or 4 separate times, until finally it was standing room only. Kathy even had to run out and get more food because we ran out-- it was amazing! All of the performers did an excellent, excellent job -- of course they always do, but there was something magical about this night. The audience was just so right there, and we had a huge mix of people, too. I'm so surprised at the great turnout, especially since it snowed earlier that day, Glass Menagerie was going on at the Drama League and there was the 70s bar loop in Wilmington going on. Anyhoo, afterwards, we cleaned up in record time and got to Stanley's where we chowed down and had our share of celebratory frosty beverages. I drove SteveWe home and had a fun conversation about how boys confuse us... and then we complained how it was 1:30 am and we both had to get up for our respective church jobs the next morning.

I was late to church. :-) I'm supposed to be there at 8:55 in the choir stall with my music and vestments all set, but alas, I didn't get there until 9:15. The choir sounded amazing on Sunday, and after church Darryl's piano students of the Church School gave a little 15-minute recital which was very cute. Some of the kids wrote their own pieces, and this one by Lydia Stinson just blew my doors off. Lydia can't be any older than 10, and she wrote this piece that sounded better and was played more musically than most of the stuff the theory/composition majors in my college put out. Very, very cool!

After the recital, Darryl and I went to grab some lunch at the Corner Bistro; I had never been there for lunch, but holycrap, it's AMAZING. I started off with this absolutely righteous black bean soup, and then I had a Cuban sandwich that I seriously wanted to rub all over myself, it's so good-- and that's saying something considering I'm not so much a pork-eater. It came with a small but delighful salad which I devoured. For dessert, we couldn't decide which one of us was gonna get the chocolate cake or the key lime pie, so I went with the key lime and it, as always, was magical. (And Darryl let me have a bite of the chocolate cake, which was absolutely heavenly... and I'm not so much a cake person, either).   Darryl is so damn cool-- I just love him to death and I'm so honored I get to work with him. He's a laugh-riot, pleasantly warped and full of witty repartee. I'm hoping we can hang out more, definitely!   I asked him about the possibility of doing some small ensemble early music repetoire, maybe one on a part music that we do in Cappella Sonora, and he said that the other ringers have expressed interest, and he'd be all about it. I'm gonna bring him the Josquin Ave Maria, Tibi soli peccavi, Nucius' Vinea Mea Electa and maybe even that hellishly awesome 8-part Josquin Ave Maria knock-off by Senfl.

Anyhoo, I got next to no sleep on Saturday night into Sunday morning, so around 2:30ish when I got home from lunch I was gonna take a nap, but of course I made the mistake of checking my email, which led me to write to a friend of mine, and then I went to Amazon, which made me buy some CDs, which made me blah blah blah, so to make a long story short, I didn't take a nap like I wanted to. I am the queen of getting sidetracked, and then I get sidetracked with my tangents off of those sidetracked tangents... so it's a miracle I get anything done.

Chris and I had reservations at Twenty21 in Philly at 7pm, so I got marginally decked out and we left around 6:15. The food was absolutely wonderful, it had a really warm but still lively atmosphere, the service was absolutely terrific and hey, they even validated our parking passes which made it that much easier. I really love Philadelphia. :-)

As we left the restaurant (it was maybe 9:15), we were very happy to see that it hadn't started snowing yet. I'm not sure what time it started finally, but I woke up around 1:15am to get a drink and there was already 2" on the ground. By the time I woke up for work there was probably 4" on the ground and the radio was saying that the plows weren't even gonna get to any of the secondary roads until after lunch. I called into work to see how others fared driving in, and we figured it was just easier if I worked from home. I mean, what's the sense of having this great functionality if I'm not gonna use it? The snow ultimately stopped around lunchtime today; we probably got about 5" overall. We're supposed to get some very delightful freezing rain tonight into tomorrow, with forecasts up to 1/4" of ice... not good. Apparently there's another storm organizing itself to our southwest which could dump additional accumulation on our area-- but they're not sure what it's gonna do quite yet. I've heard reports ranging from "we'll get a dusting" to "we'll get 8 inches," so we'll see. I'm such a nerd, and I love reading the NOAA forecast discussions on line; I get a little rush, like I'm eavesdropping on some top secret conversation or something (you know, a top secret conversation about easily observable conditions posted to a publicly accessible website).

Here's a lame pic taken with my phone-cam outside my back window. (I know, like you've never seen snow before.) All you people in Arizona who bitch about the summer temperatures can bite my hiney. Nobody was ever late to anything because they had to dig their car out of the heat.   :-)

Anyhoo, I am still flying so high from Knappuccino's on Saturday. Can't wait to see how the photos came out. I've been working on the DATs all day and they sound kick-arse. So hopefully I'll have the website updated in a few days. Til then...