Everybody in the Club Rock On

It's only 43 degrees outside right now! Given, it's the middle of the night and earlier this afternoon the temperature was close to 70, but still. Cold(ish) weather! I'm wearing my favorite lounge-around-the-house sweater right now, this big blue cashmere thing I inherited from my brother several Christmases ago when he opened it and immediately decided the cable pattern makes it "too gay". I love it, though, it's so cozy. Definitely one of my top five favorite items of clothing. And Jose is curled up with his head on my chest. He likes the sweater, too.

Anyway, I have plenty to talk about, which is why I haven't been updating lately. Haven't you all realized yet that I only write when I have absolutely nothing of interest to say?

So, Rocky. I completed my lobby display on Tuesday afternoon about three hours before the show opened. It came out pretty good, if I do say so myself. My thesis committee members gave it their seal of approval and the director seems pretty thrilled by it, and that's all that really matters. Well, and the fact that I'm pleased with it. That matters, too. My parents are flying in to watch the show tomorrow night, and my siblings, my sister's boyfriend, and my Adopted Mexican Brother Gus are all coming to watch, too, so that should be fun. Since I'm still having a hell of a time describing exactly what I do as a dramaturg (I've now had about three conversations with my mother in which she says, "So you're the director?" and I have to say, "Um, no...") I'm glad there are at least tangible things like the lobby display and my name on the front page of the program to show everybody. I mean, there's a lot more to it than that, but if that's what people can understand about my job, well, at least that's something. And eventually in the spring there will be a thesis to read, but that's the beauty of my thesis topic: everyone can watch the show and go, "Oh, okay, cool" and then nobody has to feign interest in a 1oo-2oo page document. Haha.

Oh, and the show has been incredibly popular. We sold out every show but one last week, and by yesterday we'd sold out the entire rest of the run. Which is great and all, but last night was hell, though, because there somehow ended up being several double sold seats and no way for me to fix the problem since the show was sold out. It was frantic, people were angry, and there was nothing I could do about it. I hated everyone by the time last night was over. Luckily I was able to trouble shoot as much as possible and I decided on a few things I can do the rest of the week to hopefully avoid similar problems, so we'll see. Tonight went much, much smoother and I'm hoping Friday and Saturday will go okay as well. I'm supposed to watch the show with my family tomorrow night but I may not be able to actually go in and relax until intermission if front of house is as hectic as it has been the past couple of nights. I did already watch the show with a full audience on Tuesday night, though. Matthew came into town for the night and I watched with him, Claire, and Amanda. Afterwards we went to Applebees for drinks and dinner and because I was still dressed in my Rocky Horror outfit and telling anyone that asked, "Oh, I just came from my other job" I think half of my coworkers now think my other job is "prostitute". Awesome.

In other exciting news, Kymberli bought a plane ticket to Las Vegas today. YAY! Chelsea and I are supposed to go up there a couple of days before Christmas for our cousin's wedding (have I already talked about this?) and Chelsea decided to bring her boyfriend and since I'm not in a relationship (unless by "relationship" you mean "strange lingering undefinable thing with an ex that is almost certainly a bad idea because it's ultimately nothing and he's a bit of a man whore right now but at least I know exactly where I stand at the moment and we're actually getting along really well as friends right now so why quit?") I invited--okay, begged--Kymberli to come to Las Vegas to hang out with me. And she actually is!!! I'm so excited!! I didn't mind the idea of being there with just Chelsea and her Mike too badly (yes, her boyfriend is named Mike), especially since a lot of my relatives will be there. But having Kymberli there with me will be much, MUCH more fun, plus I don't have to be in a lonely hotel room by myself. Yes!

Finally, the Ohio trip went great. I had a good time hanging out with Amanda and Dr. C., Ohio/West Virginia is surprisingly beautiful (I don't know what I was expecting, exactly, but I didn't expect it to be as pretty as it was), I met several Canadians that have way stronger Canadian accents than my favorite Canadian, Richie, and my paper presentation went fine. Better than fine, actually. It was supposed to be a panel of three people but only two of us ended up actually being there, so I was a bit stressed when I realized our question and answer session would be longer than the norm since we had all the time that would have been taken up by the third paper. And then all three of the people Amanda and I had secretly been making fun of all weekend ended up being in my session. One of them was this guy Dr. C pointed out who had been staring at me in sort of a creepy manner during the conference luncheon, one of them was a guy who asked really difficult questions in each session seemingly in an attempt to throw presenters off on purpose and not because he was actually interested in the paper, and the third one was this senile old man. Fortunately Difficult Question Guy directed his difficult question to the other panelist and left me alone, Creepy Guy wasn't that bad after all, and Senile Man made such a stupid point that I was able to just reply, "Well, that's not within the scope of this paper, and at any rate I disagree with you" and that was that. My paper sparked some interesting discussion, and afterwards I had several people come up and tell me it was an "excellent" paper, so I feel pretty good about it. And Amanda and I were by far the most stylish people at the conference, which is of course the most important part. Ha.

Anyway, I'm gonna get some sleep so I can get up and go to the outlet mall tomorrow morning. I've pretty much exhausted my imagination making up slutty/sexy Rocky costumes from items already in my closet, so I've turned it into an excuse to use some birthday money at Victoria's Secret. And possibly Hot Topic, although I kind of hate Hot Topic. Yeah. Good night.