quick week recap (recap!)

It's been a nutty week.

I had dress rehearsals every night last week for Little Shop, and we opened on Friday night to a great show with a fantastic audience. On Saturday day John and I grabbed some lunch at the Blue Parrot (we sat outside, very pleasant), we made a quick side jaunt to Verizon where I got a replacement phone as my old one bit it, and then I sent John on his way to study and stuff. I packed for the Minneapolis trip and then got my arse to the theater. On Saturday night, Steve and his friend Joe drove down from north Jersey to see the show (how cool is that?!), and afterwards we went with some cast members to the Washington Street Ale House for some munchies and such. I got home around 12:30-ish.

On Sunday morning I had church in the a.m. (my first time back in what feels like a month) and I was hoping to catch up with Steve and Joe for a turbo-brunch, but I left my black pants at my apartment and had to swing home, which effectively ate up my alottment of brunch-time. (Church gets out at noon, and I have to be at the theater by 1:00, 1:15 at the absolute latest.) Anyhoo, the matinee went well, but I could tell that people's voices were a little tired from having sung every night the previous week. Before the cast did warm-ups, the band and I did a sound check by rocking out to Feed Me -- we cranked it to 11 and I screamed my head off-- it felt so good to be a rocker. :-)   Anyhoo, my folks drove down to see the show and they enjoyed it, and afterwards we went to Iron Hill on the Riverfront to get some much-needed prime rib, which was pleasant and serviceable, but certainly no Harry's. It has left me wanting more, I must say.

Anyway, the Little Shop review came out today in the News Journal. It's positive, so that rocks... though I was secretly hoping for something which talked about the uniqueness of having a chick plant. Oh well. At least he didn't say I sucked. And you know, it's all about me, because I am, as you know, the center of the universe. :-D

Right after dinner I barrelled up 95 to the airport and hopped a plane to Minneapolis to be an extra set of hands for Jeremy, as he was doing some work there and needed some assistance. I was very flattered that he asked me to help, and we were both very happy I was there. I felt super-effective and could really see tangible positive results from me having shown up. I love feeling needed.

Well, more specifically, I love feeling needed by people whom I've allowed to need me. Everyone else can bite my butt, you soul-sucking remoras.   :-D

Anyhoozle, we flew back last night and got in around 7:30-ish, and everything worked out great with the flight coordination, baggage juggling and such. Jerm was really wiped out when we landed (he was in Amsterdam all last week, so he was still somewhat jetlaggy) so I ran to the Supah-Fresh and picked up some groceries for him, as his cupboard was bare. While I was helping unpack groceries, Jim (Jeremy's awesome neighbor) brought over some kitchen stuff he wanted me to have, as he just bought his wife all new pots and pans and silverware, so he gave me their old stuff (which isn't old at all). I was most excited about the silverware, as my current silverware is cruddy half-plastic/half-flaking-metal/ick and I only had service for 4, and some of that stuff has been at Jeremy's for the last 3 years. Anyhoo, I had been thinking about buying new silverware (way low priority), but I'm glad Jim got to me first... their stuff is really simple and delightful and is very close to what I would have picked out for myself anyway. Yay!

everyone I know goes away in the end

I got done with Jerm and Jim around 8:30 and then caught up with John for some dinner at the Corner Bistro. They had this pork tenderloin in a maple blackberry sauce over couscous special that was to die for; John got that and I went with the usual magical steak over sobe noodles. We were both really tired and resonating at super-low frequencies, so conversation was limited and I don't think I understood much of anything. He's in mega-crunchtime mode now, as his big test is coming up in less than a month, he's got another week-long review course in NYC next week he's gonna be out of town for, and on top of all that he's also got to think about sorting out and packing up his apartment and getting his move coordinated. After dinner I drove him home and we just sort of sat in the car quietly for a few. We didn't have much to say, but it did feel kind of good to just sit there and bask for a minute. After he left the car and I watched him walk in his house, it finally hit me... this dude is leaving in 5 weeks and I will never see him again.

I started to drive home, and my mental cycles were suddenly dedicated to processing/acknowledging how hard I've worked to keep him at an arm's length distance. I'm simultaneously proud of the accomplishment and mortified by the crime. The more I thought about it last night, the more I wondered which of us got the shittier end of the stick. Was what I was doing in the name of self-preservation only killing me more? Nobody likes to say goodbye to a good thing, but will this one be harder / worse than it needs to be? Should I take some sage advice and just kill this thing off now, today, immediately, so he can be free to do what he needs to get done without worrying about fitting me in, and so I can not spend the next month of my life getting even more attached just to have the rug yanked out from under me?

Have I really succeeded in keeping him at an arm's length distance if I'm thinking these things, or have I only succeeded in thinking I've kept him out when in reality I've done no such thing?

I knew what I was getting into at the outset. It's not like he wasn't totally up front about his imminent departure; he told me, and I said it was OK and that I'd like to be along for the ride. Maybe I just was wrapped up in the moment; perhaps I didn't think it through. But even if I had, I know I still would have jumped in. I don't have an ounce of regret. I'm sure what I'm feeling is normal. I just have to be careful about my actions in the weeks immediately following. I have the tendency to make hasty decisions and then figure out my plan of action afterwards, which sometimes is cool and sometimes is not so wise. So I just have to make sure that I come out of this thing with a healthy head, because that's, I think, one of the reasons I got into it in the first place.

I take comfort in knowing that I will do my best to make his life easier in the next few weeks, and we can both leave with at least a really fond memory. It's all good, yo.

Pbbbsssht, like you can plan or make any sense of this shit. None of it is rational or concrete, and as soon as you start thinking about this abstract stuff as such, you're a moron.

Anyway, I wound up driving around for over an hour last night just to clear my head, and then I took a walk when I got home to check out the moon and sort things out some more.

I'm sure that everything's gonna be cool. It always is.

i'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, whaddaya say... 5 pounds...

Today I'm going on a fact-finding mission to my old company, who is asking me to come back for a hand-crafted position just for me, offering prestige, an executive position and upwards of $25K more than what I make today. All of this nice stuff is in exchange for my most precious thing: freedom.

Working at Accenture is dandy, though stressful. Every 30-45 days I have to find a new project to work on, or I could get laid off. This sucks. The nice thing though, is that some of the the positions Accenture has available are "Location Negotiable" which essentially means, work from anywhere with an Internet connection. I could work from home like I do now, I could work from a friend's house in Arizona, I could work from a beach hotel... hell, I could work on the beach proper if I had a wireless modem. While I might not take advantage of it, having it simply available like a safe word is comforting. Knowing me, I might not leave my apartment for the next three months, but knowing I could get up and leave anytime is very attractive. In the last quarter of 2003, I worked out of the Phoenix office a bunch, and worked out of Rob's living room with a golden retriever nose happily in my face. It ruled.

However, leaving Accenture and taking this new job would be the polar opposite: it would mean settling down in Delaware, buying a house, establishing roots and calling this place home. No easy travel, no casual jaunts, no breezy lifestyle of coming and going as I please. It means growing up, making a frikkin' decision TODAY about who and what I want to be. Frankly, all I want to do is teach music and voice somewhere, but I can't support myself comfortably doing that. So I either need to win the lottery or, uh, work in I.T. as a manager of some kind so I can make the money I need to do the things I want to do while I'm not at work.

Staying here is not so terrible. I have friends here, I have a coffeehouse, I'm close enough and far enough from my family so I feel independent but still near; there are good restaurants, Philly and its funky culture is just up the street, Baltimore and DC are just down the road, I love my Cathedral and the squirrels in my ceiling.

I also find that I can be happy just about anywhere, as long as the default season isn't winter. :-)

rockin' the suburbs

Last but not least... I'm seeing Ben Folds tonight at 9pm in NYC. Turns out we have an extra ticket... not sure who isn't coming out of the original gaggle of my brother's friends, but who cares, I have an extra ticket. If you want it, call my cell. I'm leaving for NYC at 5:30pm sharp.

Fortune Teller Miracle Fish today tells me that I am: once again, somewhere between In Love and Indifferent. (We've got a moving tail and a slightly twitchy head.)   argh!

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