Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in amelialynn's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
6:38 am	I’m actually on the plane as I write this but I’m bored with most of what I’ve brought to read so I figured that I might as well type a little post. All in all, we really had a great visit East. It was worth taking the time that we don’t really have yet and we got to do just about everything we’d wanted. We got in a little late on Wednesday so instead of driving all the way out to Schwenksville at night, we stayed in Philly at Micah’s place. There was a party that night at Charlie and Meg’s new place and it was great to see so many people. Charlie and Meg have bought a really great place in South Philly on a really cool little street. It made me kinda wonder if we really needed to move to AZ for what we want to do with the next few years but I do still think it’s right. Since I broke my foot I haven’t been drinking much, mostly because of the pain pills I’m on but partially because of lifestyle changes too. I must have drinking like I usually would because I got really drunk all of a sudden and really hadn’t intended to. I ended up talking about death for way too long with Bill Fagan and while it’s always nice to talk to Bill about anything, I’ve begun to think that I really need to work on some of my death issues. Between Andy’s suicide, Micah’s accident (where I later found out that his breathing actually stopped for a brief time) and some of the family deaths, I’ve developed some issues that I’d hoped would work themselves out. It doesn’t seem they have. That needs to be on my to do list. Thursday was Thanksgiving and we were really all over. We drove from Philly to Schwenksville to see Mom and some of Gus’ family. It turned out to be more fun that I’d thought, not that I thought it would be bad but it was nice to see the families begin to blend. Younger Gus is a really sweet kid. It was really nice to see how well he’s taken to Mom. She’s a great nurturer and she excels when she has someone to care for and it’s nice to see him welcome that. We’re all getting too old for that kind of mothering and there aren’t any grandkids for her so it’s nice to see her with a kid around while we transition into our independence. As tall as he is, it’s easy to forget that he’s still a kid but it’s nice to see. Then we all piled in the car to go to Grandmom’s and see Dad which also went well. It was pretty much just the usual but it was nice to be around everyone. I didn’t mind his jibes as much as some other times. By the time we’d gotten there, the only ones who hadn’t already had a family dinner that day were Grandmom and Vern but we all sat down and ate some more anyway. It was nice. After that we all piled into the car again and went over to Aunt Diane’s to see that group and Grandmom Dunlap. I’d been afraid we were going to miss her but she was still there. It was upsetting to see that she’s having problems remembering things again but it was nice to be with her and talk to her. When she left, it became clear that she wasn’t just saying ‘goodbye’ to me but she was actually saying Goodbye in all it’s finality and I haven’t really been able to process that yet but she seemed really peaceful, if tired. It was all very odd but not as disturbing as I feel like it may become. It’s still just emotionally confusing. Seeing the other family there was nice but a little odd. I felt more awkward than usual around Vince’s family but that was probably more of what I was bringing with me than what they were actually sending out. It was really great to see Meg. I’ve noticed her coming into her own and gaining more confidence in the last year or so. I’m not sure when it started but it’s so wonderful to see. She’s applied to a school in AZ and I really hope she gets in. The town that she’d be living in further north than where we are and the climate there is more temperate which could make for an easier adjustment. It’s also really got a small town feel to it and I think she could acclimate well there. It would give her a chance to continue this redefinition of herself and give her a chance to be everything that people may have told her she isn’t. She could really shape herself there. I’m seeing her as more of the strong woman she’s probably always been and it’s really great. After that we went back to Schwenksville and fell quickly asleep since we’d been going on about 4 hours of sleep from the night before. Friday we were off to Philly for Turkeyfest 14. It’s crazy that it’s been that many years already. Minor bumps aside, the day went great. We ran errands and prepped all day with Micah and it was nice to get that time with him. He’s been a good friend to me and I’m lucky to have him. He brought in a guy from the Wine Institute to run a wine tasting and hired a harpist for a few hours and that was cool. There weren’t a ton of people, maybe 30 or so, but it was still a really good night. This time I didn’t really drink much but Charlie got really drunk and really loud and it was amusing to watch him. Saturday we were up at 7:30 to get ready and on the road for NY. The whole day turned out great even though tons of little things went wrong. One of our favorite Italian places was closed for the day, the 100+ year old pub that we wanted to visit was closed when we had time to visit (and they close forever in Jan). But after all that we went to see the revival of Sweeney on Broadway where one of my students from NYU is playing Tobias and it was amazing. The show itself if brilliant. The cast has been cut down from 30 to 10 and the cast plays all the orchestration so they’re all onstage for the whole show. It’s exciting to then see the music become a character tool for the actors to say what they can’t otherwise say. It’s the best possible production to explain why musicals should exist and this is coming from someone who generally dislikes most musicals. It’s a scary show anyway but the minimal and artistic choices let it do what really good scary movies can do – it makes you fill in blanks which is always creepier than anything they can show you. My student was brilliant. He was great in school and he only got better here. Silly as it may be, I was really happy when during curtain call he noticed me from the house and blew me a kiss and hug and mouthed a Thank You to me as he bowed to me, in front of a standing ovation he so richly deserved. It made me feel like the work I did in NY mattered. After the show we went backstage to his dressing room and visited for a while. It was great to see how he’s living now. He’s personally gotten raves from all biggest critics for his performance and I think a lot of good things are coming for him. It makes me so very happy. After the show we went back to a lot of the places I’d enjoyed most and a few of the merchants told me they’d missed me. Made me feel like a local. We had drinks with friends that night and finally checked into our hotel room well after midnight. Sunday we were back on the road and after major traffic on the turnpike got back to Grandmom’s house to see Dad and the gang a little more. Olivia was there that time so it was nice to see her. She was out on Thanksgiving. It was a little quiet and awkward but not bad. Then we went back to Mom’s to just chill for the rest of the night, which was good because my foot was throbbing and I really needed to be off it. I was also feeling a childlike need to be near her, especially with the health issues she’s been having. It’s been hard to deal with that from a distance. When she left to get Jess from the airport we crashed cause we were really beat. This morning was nice and slow. Pancakes for breakfast with Mom, Gus, Emma and Geoff then back on the road when Mom left for work. We had lunch and gelato with Micah and Howard than we were off to the airport. Which I suppose brings me to this increasingly long post. I’m pretty bored on the flight. I should really wrap this up. I’m feeling really relieved that it turned out to be a good trip since I had some anxiety going into it, with this being the first trip back and what not. I hope everyone else had a good weekend though I imagine things could have been pretty tense with the Grider’s. I hope it went well. Take care and good luck. Talk to you all soon. Amy (Comment on this)
Friday, October 14th, 2005
3:07 pm	Seems about time for some non-foot news. Wednesday night we went to a Dar Williams concert in the back yard of a coffee house in Cave Creek. The town itself is tiny with very little going on so we had no idea what to expect from the coffee house concert. Turns out that they have some bleachers, some seats and a bonfire in the back and a small stage set up under overhanging trees strung with Christmas lights. It was so very cool. The seating was general admission so we were in the front row which was about 3 feet from where she was standing. The whole night was so fun. She chatted a lot for each song and the whole thing felt like she was singing me songs in my living room. It was really great. Our first night in the new apartment was nice. I sat on the couch, we watched TV and ordered pizza. It was really relaxed and that part of what I liked about it. We found out that because of the way the movers loaded our stuff onto the couch, we now have a huge tear along the arm. Geoff’s planning to fight it out with them but with as nasty as the move got around the end of it all, I doubt anything much will happen. Maybe we’ll file a claim with the BBB. We’re having dinner back at Geoff’s dad’s house tonight as a sort of a going away thing. It should be good. We still have a few bags of stuff there to bring home and then I think we’re officially on our own. I’m hoping it will be a good night. I think that’s about it for today. I had a hang nail on the left side of my right thumb so every time I hit the space bar it really hurts. I’m off to type as little as possible. Love ya. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 12th, 2005
4:14 pm	Never a dull moment I fell down some cement stairs yesterday at work and am now on crutches for the next 6 weeks. I’ve sprained both sides of my ankle and the top of my foot. Crutches suck so immensely. My underarms are already terribly sore and I’ve only been hurt for a day. I’m going back to work tomorrow and I have no idea what to expect. My office is at the top of two flights of stairs. We move into our apartment tomorrow, which is on the second floor. No elevator in either case. I think this week is going to hurt a lot. I’ve been hiding in the back room today since we’re still at the inlaws but I decided to watch one of my shows on TV before showering – still in dirty PJ’s, crazy hair and nasty breath, when Geoff’s brother shows up with 3 friends. Yeah, I sure felt like the cool sister in law then. I’ve since hobbled back to the room. We have tickets to a Dar Williams concert tonight and I’m super excited so we’re still going but I’m really worried. My foot is still really painful and I’m really afraid someone will hit it. I’m going to go and try to get ready. One legged shower. One legged hair dry. One legged dressing. Big fun. This will probably take a while. Ugh. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, October 10th, 2005
10:20 am	We have an apartment! We have an apartment. We signed the papers on Saturday. I’m really excited. It’s a nice unit really close to the pool and spa and less than a 5 minute drive from Nina and Ken. It’s probably about a 15 minute drive to Jana and Scott and Brad and Jen. The place has two bedrooms so we can get our stuff out of storage and keep most of it closed off in the second bedroom and only unpack what we really need. There’s also room for guests now which will be nice when Micah and Ryan come out for Christmas. I’m really excited to be back in our own space. That should help a lot. In other news, two of my students from NYU have a glowing review in the NY Times about the show that they’ve been developing since they graduated. It’s so incredibly exciting. The show they’ve done is a really important story and on top of it, they’re just really great people. It’s nice to see good people get attention. Their review and photo (!) is on the front page of the Times and in the Arts section. The review is “Continents Apart, Two Odysseys on Parallel Tracks” and here’s the link: http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/10/10/theater/reviews/10prim.html I’m so happy for them. It’s great to see their success. Geoff is slowly getting better. I think he may be back up to speed next weekend. I’m hoping, at least. I should get back to work but it’s been nice having pleasant things to update. I’m pretty happy. I hope you’re all well. Love ya! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, October 7th, 2005
10:23 am	Our server has been down at work for most of the week and the internet connection at Geoff’s dad’s house is frighteningly similar to dial up in speed so it’s been impractical to post. Here’s a brief synopsis of some things I learned this week: Much like crickets, tarantulas are unimpressed when I yell, loudly, at them. They are likely to stay right where they are and wait for me to leave, which I will. It may have been Wednesday night that Geoff and I decided to go out to eat together. On our way out we drove past a tarantula crawling across the road. I made Geoff stop the car because I wanted a picture but after I swung the door open we realized we didn’t have a camera. The only sensible thing left to do was yell at it, which I did. It didn’t really care that I was leaning out of the car yelling “Rwarrrhaaagh! Tarantuala! Rarwgh! Raaaaaaarwgh!” It just sat there. Big let down. Since the ill-fated cricket game, there have been fewer crickets in the house. Those two things are probably unrelated. Probably. I like Geoff more when he can walk. I probably lose some martyr points for that but it’s not like I’d really had that many to being with so the loss doesn’t much matter to me. He’s been to the chiropractor 3 times this week and is finally starting to feel a little better. He’s groaning much less which allows me to like him a little more. I’ll try to make him take it easy this weekend because I do not want this to last much longer. Luckily our weekend plans are pretty mellow. Tonight we’re visiting my niece who has her ankle in a cast and is not enjoying it at all. This is a particularly active 6 year old and I’m trying to think of some stationary activities that will amuse her. It’s a challenge but I’ll try a few places out at lunch. We’re apartment hunting on Saturday and I think we’ll probably end up signing a lease. We should be in our own place my next weekend, which will be great. We may try out a place called Lo-lo’s chicken and waffles. I’ve never had that combination but I know it’s wildly popular among a lot of people so what the hell. We’ll try it. We’re getting together with a friend on Saturday night if Geoff is up to it and Sunday’s still open. Geoff’s parents are out of town this weekend so it will just be us and his brother. That should be good for us. A little quieter than usual. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 30th, 2005
2:54 pm	Mildly boring night last night. My car started overheating again on the way home which was a delight. I was able to get it home but every time I stopped in traffic or at a light the temperature would go up quickly. I got a little work done on the wedding album. We never picked out which shots we wanted for our album and the photographer, quite justly, wants to get our stuff out of her files so we have to do that this weekend. There’s so many shots we love that it’s hard to pick just a few and too expensive to get them all. Geoff’s still in bad shape. Not sure what to expect with that. I’ve been having a really hard time being around Geoff parents lately but I was able to enjoy them more than usual last night and that was nice. I promised Geoff we would go see Serenity tonight and I’m really not looking forward to it. I’m finding that I can do sci-fi with him if I’ve been able to watch my own kind of shows. Geoff’s parents don’t really watch TV and it feels rude to stop actual interaction with them to watch fake interaction on TV so I haven’t really seen much of the show I like. They also have a terrible habit of talking to me whenever I try to watch something or they’ll talk loudly to each other right next to me. It’s strange and it irritates me and then there’s no real reason to watch the show anyway. The only TV that tends to be on is Geoff’s shows which are mostly sci-fi and I’m getting a little fed up with it. The stories are usually so silly and melodramatic. I guess I’m a big logic person and entertainment geared towards men (action films, sci-fi, etc.) tends to be low on logic and big on fantasy. It gets dull. Maybe it will be good to be out though. We’ll see. Our weekend’s pretty booked but I’m hoping to be able to check out a few apartments. We both really need to move into our own place. We’ve made our own rules and supported ourselves too long to stay in this kind of an environment. I like the rules that Geoff and I live by and it’s hard to live with the rules in someone else’s home. It just isn’t natural for adults, in my opinion. We want to have parties. I want to be able to walk around in Geoff’s boxer shorts if I feel so inclined. I miss TV. It’s just time to go. I hope your weekends turn out well. Love ya. (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 29th, 2005
10:54 am	Last night I ran through the entire life cycle of a game in about 10 minutes. I was trying to pack my gym bag for the morning and when I picked up a T shirt a cricket fell out onto the floor and I jumped. That made the cricket jump. That made me laugh so I started chasing the cricket. When you run at a cricket, it tends to just sit there and that’s not a fun game. I tried jumping at the cricket in little hops and found that if I hopped at the cricket and then hopped back the cricket would hop away. It had been a long day with very little laughing and this made me laugh so I hop/chased the cricket around the room for a brief time and justified it as cardio (since I’d blown off the gym that night). Eventually the cricket hopped into the bathroom and that seemed like a valid finish line. I determined the game to be over and felt comfortable that the cricket had probably won. I went back to my gym bag and forgot about the cricket. A little while later I needed to round up my toiletries for the gym and went into the bathroom and felt some dried grass under the arch of my foot when I stepped onto the tile and since grass doesn’t belong in the bathroom I looked down and noticed that, as it turns out, the cricket had lost at the cricket game. It seems that losing at the cricket game is be a very bad thing. I felt very bad and especially unsportswomanly (not a word, I know) since the cricket was still twitching a little and how gross to step on a cricket. It’s like that time I lived with Dennis and he stepped on a mouse with his bare feet and crushed the back half of it and didn’t notice. I flushed the cricket to end it all a little quicker and I now appreciate that the cricket game is only fun if you aren’t the cricket. In other news, Geoff is borderline immobile. He’s always had a bad back but Tuesday it got so bad that he can’t really stand up straight. He tried all sorts of reasonable solutions and nothing worked. Our insurance doesn’t kick in until November so he tried the chiropractor that his dad and Paulette use. The guy took all sorts of x-rays and already knows his father’s back well so he was able to figure out the on of the vertebrae isn’t spaced out enough and his spine doesn’t curve as much as it’s supposed to. Geoff doesn’t remember any one thing that made his back go out but he’s been working out really hard lately and that combined with his stress over the move and not working has probably pushed him over the edge. He got an adjustment and the guy thinks he should be coming in 3 times a week to get it fixed but that’s just too much. Geoff’s going to try twice a week and the guy’s agreed to charge him for only once a week so that’s cool. He spent most of last night hobbling around hunched over and grunting. Not real fun. He says he’s doing better today so we’ll see how he’s doing by tonight. The gym was fine this morning but my trainer didn’t show up. Car trouble. If I had known she wasn’t going to be there I would have definitely slept in because I’ve been really exhausted the last few days but I was already there so I stayed. I did leave a little early and go get a coffee and a bagel. I think Einstein Bagels is a national company so I’ll pass along that if you have a chance, the pumpkin cream cheese there is truly worth a taste. I thoroughly enjoyed it. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 28th, 2005
3:33 pm	Little Ms Muffett There’s a decent amount of black widows that get into the house where we’re staying. That’s certainly bizarre but there are tons of bugs that get in so I’ve gotten over it. We usually have about 3 or 4 crickets in our room at any given time and the dog has taken to eating them. For the last 3 or 4 weeks there’s been a spider in the bathroom pretty regularly. It started off sneaky. If I turned on the light it would run off and hide in a corner. I started noticing the web getting a little bigger around the ceiling above the toilet but I didn’t know where the broom was kept so it got to hang out for a while. Spiders get cocky, it turns out, and the web got noticeable as the spider stopped hiding from me so I took the whole thing down maybe 2 weeks ago. The spider had already become attached to our toilet area so the web started coming back. When I’d see it, I’d take it down but it would just pop up again in a few days. I had begun to accept the spider as another part of this unusual chapter in my life. On my way into bed last week I mentioned to Geoff that the spider had moved its web to the right side of the toilet as opposed to the left side that it had been favoring. Geoff went to look and noticed that my pet spider was in fact a black widow. Yeah. I’d been relieving myself, and chatting with, 8 legged death for weeks. Lovely. He squashed it and I’m now mistrustful of bugs. Last night I came into the bathroom to find a new spider very close to a cricket. I started inspecting the spider for the black widow signs I’m now aware of – how the hourglass looks (as opposed to how I’d thought it would look), the white vs. clear web, distinctive designs and so on when I got tired of the whole things and just squashed it. I remembered that I don’t just dislike poisonous spiders, I actually dislike them all. I’m also not interested in taking up a role as spider inspector so from here on out, if I see them, I squash them. Interestingly enough though, the cricket must have noticed because I didn’t hear or see another cricket all night. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005
3:40 pm	Had you given up on me? A brief update since I last wrote: Mom came out to Phoenix for work and we got to visit with her for about a week. We went out to dinner a few nights and then went up to Sedona on the Saturday that she was here. She was a really great sport and was up for anything. We took her to our favorite spot which is behind a crystal shop, down some old concrete stairs, over some loose rocks and then on to bigger wobbly rock to the side of a river. I had only intended to point it out but Geoff went right on along and she followed so we got to sit by the river for a while. It was really nice. Of course, the last time Geoff and I were there we has a little picnic and after polishing off a bottle of champagne I took a poop a little further off and covered it up with a rock but I didn’t show mom that. She would have been grossed out. It’s spectacularly liberating though. If you ever have the option to poop in public, I recommend it. I wouldn’t have thought it, but it’s great. The next weekend Micah came out to visit. He’d been sent to Vegas for a gaming conference and had a layover in Phoenix that he extended for the weekend. Mostly we just hung out, doing relatively little and it felt like when I lived with him again. It was really great. We went to Rawhide, which is like an outdoor Wild West theme park but very small. They have actors due mock gun fights in the dirt streets, for $5 you can have a friend arrested and taken off to jail (the pokey!) and you can also ride a camel. I’m not sure how many camels there were in the Old West but there was one at Rawhide named Willy and he had a big goiter on his ankle and Micah and I rode him. I didn’t learn much about camels but it turns out they’re easily distracted. We took Geoff’s brother Steve with us and we all rode the stage coach together and we rode a little train as well. We had dinner that night at their restaurant where we discussed the Ramones with a woman dressed like a Madame. It was so much more fun that I would have thought. We’re going to try to go back one more time before they move to a new location at the end of October. The normal day to day stuff has been fine, if a little dull. We’re seeing friends but not as much as we’d hoped. It’s about an hour’s drive from where we live to where they live so it’s tough to do on a work night. Geoff and I are both getting up around 5 or 5:30 to go to the gym before work so we’ve been going to bed pretty early which only add to the general feeling of dullness. We’re about at our wit’s end living with his parents so we’ve stepped up our search for a house or an apartment. I’m not sure which way we’ll go. Geoff’s still looking for a job (three months out of work now) so our saving’s has only gotten smaller. We could either take a 6 month lease on an apartment and try to move into a house after that but then we’d waste about $4000 on rent, which would make a nice difference on a down payment or we let Geoff’s dad buy the house we want and we lease it from him for a year. If we do that, he’ll put 10% down but then get about 50% or the profit when we refinance and for a year we’d still technically be living in his house. I’m not sure I can do that. The choices are really only getting harder and I’m getting really tired. I’m partially entertaining the idea of saying Fuck Off to AZ and going back to NY. The culture here is worse. The food is worse. The people are small minded and more Republican than Democrat. Most of the time we’re in Scottsdale, which is the yuppie/trophy wife part of town so most of the boobs are huge and plastic and worn by 55 year old women. It’s like a knock off LA. I’m sure all this will pass but I need to let the vitriol flow for a little bit. My job is fine but dumb. I’m bored a lot. Next month things may get better though because my salary increase and benefits kick in. The salary I negotiated when I took this job was higher than they’d wanted to go so I agreed to take a 90 day delay if they’d go higher at the end of the 90 days. Until then I’ve been working for a wage I wouldn’t have left the apartment for in NY and it’s starting to wear on me. All my griping aside, it’s not all bad. There have been a few astounding sunsets in the last few days. I’ve been going to the gym a lot more than I used to so I have this lovely sense of accomplishment. The seasons are changing so we’ll be done with 100+ degree days soon. Jana’s daughter who’s about 18 months old, of her own volition, toddled over and gave me a big hug the other day and laid on my shoulder for a while. She’s still a little tentative with people who aren’t family so that felt really great. Baby love is pretty nice. All good things are supposed to be hard at first and real rewards aren’t given until big tests are passed and I know that. I know I need to be on the edge of failure to end up with success but this edge of failure part just sucks. I am really ready for something to change. Maybe that means it will. In the meantime, I should go back to pretending to work. I’ve really slacked off today. Bad Amy. Bad. Bad. I hope you guys are alright. Hang in there and I’ll try to talk to you soon. Love you. (Comment on this)
Monday, August 22nd, 2005
10:14 pm	"You can't take a picture of this. It's already gone." nice (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 26th, 2005
10:09 pm	Quick update We're here! We got in on Sunday and have spent the last two days orienting ourselves a little. I start a temp job tomorrow while my agents look for a permanent position for me. I'm hoping it goes well. It should be interesting to see how different temping is out here from NY. We got all our stuff from the movers so that's a victory. We'd had a lot of problems with the price after they picked up our things but it all got worked out. We should be able to pick up our car tomorrow so that will be a huge help. There's tons of details to fill in but I just wanted to say a quick hello to my legions of readers :) before I go to bed. I'll try to write more soon. (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 9th, 2005
1:43 am	Ramblings It’s been a really bizarre two weeks. Now that we’re getting so close to the move, everything is just snowballing. There’s way too much to go into it all and blogs are a strange place for someone my age to pour out too much vulnerability so I’ll condense for all parties involved. The biggest thing that happened for me in the last two weeks is a renewed assurance that I’m doing the right thing for me, and my future family, by moving away. I’d had a lot of guilt in the past month or so about leaving and choosing to have my babies in AZ. My kids won’t know my family as well as they’ll know Geoff’s. I can have some control over the degree of unfamiliarity but it will still exist. I’ve felt selfish and cold and the time we spent at the beach really only made things much worse. I got to enjoy a number of relatives telling me in their own special, but quite clear, way that I’m breaking my mother’s heart by moving and keeping babies so far away. I’ve been really torn up about this. But after a long week or so I’m now back at a place where I have no choice but to do what I know is right. I have peace with that. I’ll fulfill my obligations before I go but I won’t let anyone else’s expectations keep me from spending time with my friends. A lot of things have become clear to me and I haven’t liked a lot of what I’ve seen but it’s better to make choices based on clear information than on hopes of change. I’m doing the right thing and if anyone feels differently, if they feel I’m too far away or breaking any hearts then they can come visit me for a change. I’m through with carrying all the responsibility. I can only take so much guilt. It’s time to start making choices for the future and stop carrying the past. I’m moving on. Geoff’s birthday is on Saturday and he gets to spend it on a redeye flight from Portland coming back from his grandmother’s funeral. Lucky Geoff. He’s really getting the shaft this year. I’ll do what I can for him but all of our money’s going into a down payment so that changes our plans a lot. The stress of putting together this money is getting to be really hard on us. It looks like we’re going to need about four thousand more than I think we’ll have and I just don’t know what to do about that. It really sucks. I’ve been working towards a specific job for most of last week and then I found out it pays about 10K less than I’ll need, so that was a big waste of time. I’ll call the recruiter on Monday to see how her search is going. Oh, I never mentioned the AZ trip. Briefly, the last weekend in June we went out to AZ to interview, look at houses and do a birthday party. I had 4 interviews with job recruiters. The first one was great and I liked her a lot. The second one was fine but she was a little cold and she never replied to my emails about a glitch in her online testing so I’m not terribly impressed. The third seemed fine but her office was chaos so I don’t have a lot faith in her mind. The last one was a disaster. The interviewer was about 7 years younger than I am and asked the most stupid questions – along the lines of “I see you’re with Forrest Edwards now. Can you tell me a little about why you’re leaving there?” “Well, I’m moving to AZ and they’re a NY based company”. “Oh. OK. Now, I see you’re also working with New York University. Can you tell me a little about why you’re leaving there?” I’m not joking. It went on and on. We eventually got around to salary and it turns out the jobs they place pay about 20K less than I’m requesting. To this, she replied, “Well, you know, you’re not in NY. Things are different here.” Because I must not have realized that. Then we went to look at houses and that’s a whole other story. To summarize, it’s going to be very hard to get into this market. The housing market is pricing us out of most of the first time homebuyer programs so we’re being dumped into a tough time. If we wait for the housing market to cool, we’ll loose a decent interest rate on a mortgage so we’re kinda screwed either way. It’s just been a really stressful time and I’ve been really lucky to have my friends to help me through it. Emotional support goes a really long way. On top of it all, the London bombing has been really rough on me. I see those pictures of the people in shock and I remember exactly how that feels. I go to work every day knowing that I may not make it home that night. After a while, you get used to it but you can never get away from it. You adjust. You gain a new perspective. But then you see it again and it all becomes fresh again. What’s worse, it happened exactly how we all know the next NY attack will happen - the subways and the busses. Up here, we’ve all known it since the week after the first attack. From everything the Brits say, they knew it too. It just drives me crazy to hear all these Middle America states, AZ included, talking about their heightened risks. The next hit will not be Arkansas! That’s a pretty safe bet. It’s not even worth getting into but I’ll just say it’s somehow equally comforting and discomforting to be in NY when London happened. I feel like NY, and probably DC, are the only two places that really get what it’s like to live through this. It’s going to be hard to move to place where the 11th happened on TV and not right in front of you. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to pretend it was the same for everyone in the US. It wasn’t. It just wasn’t. My original intention with this blog was to chronicle the end of my NY days but I’m learning that it was never possible. Part of it is that people my age aren’t usually comfortable putting their internal conflicts and changes out there for the world to read. It’s like keeping a diary but leaving it on the kitchen table. I’ve loved being able to put things out there for Amanda and Jess to be able to keep up with my life a little. I’ll keep updating (poorly, I imagine) for exactly that reason but I’m letting myself off the hook on the deep emotional development stuff. I’m aware of my changes and some of them probably wouldn’t translate well to the internet. There’s a line. Ending on a good note, CapoGiro has started selling a few of their gelato and sorbetto flavors in pints at the Whole Foods in Manhattan. I’ve got a fantastic Strawberry Tarragon in the freezer and it’s bringing me great joy. I’ll just ignore the parts where I have to know that I won’t be able to get it in AZ. I should just look at it as one more good thing to eat when I visit Philly. Anyway, I’m off to bed now but I just want to make sure you girls know I love you. Sleep well. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 24th, 2005
9:59 pm	Back in Kansas I am officially back from vacation. My sun burn is peeling. I’m covered in bug bites. Tomorrow we’ll wash the sand out of our clothes. It was such a great time though. It was fun to go from NYC to a tiny island in the Bahamas. The change of pace was great. I am, however, now back to real life. Much less fun than vacation and no fish to play with. I’m temping again which is a relief because I was getting really bored tooling around the apartment with too little to do. Now that my days have some structure I’m sure I’ll start getting more done. Yesterday I’d intended to do laundry and unpack and clean but I ended up watch a bunch of ‘Third Watch’ reruns. The temp job is fine but dull. I’m answering phones for some guy but that’s pretty much it. I work with a girl named Gina and it is the perfect name for her. She is who the character from Joey must be named for. She can't seem to get around telling me how to work any of the programs used by the company or what the mountains of papers on my desk are but I know all about the ghosts that picked on her in New Orleans and the guy down the hall who's been stalked by his birth mother for the last 4 years. The guy who's my 'boss' is a few years older than me and kind of a num-nut. I sent him a phone message today from an angry client. When he got the message he asked me if the guy was nasty. In theatre, I've dealt with all kinds of angry people and this guy wasn't nasty. He was tired and a little beaten down but not nasty. I passed that along and he said "So he was short with you?" so I said "No, not really. He just sounded like he'd had a long day and was pretty tired of it all." He responds with "So he was a little mean?" "No" I told him, "Not really. just pretty beat." "Ah" he says, "So he was curt" as if this would be a new word me. I was through with this doofus and it's only the first day. It may just be easier if I let him think I'm an idiot. Maybe then I can just check email all day and amaze them when I manage to spell my own name. Ah. The joys of temping. It's really funny. Geoff and I saw Star Wars last night. It came out while we were away but there wasn’t a movie theatre on our island so we couldn’t see it until we got back. I liked it but I’m not as much of a Star Wars fan as I should be for someone my age. I liked them and all but it’s not my be all end all. I did like seeing the new series link in to the old series. (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 22nd, 2005
9:14 am	Making friends One last quick entry before we begin to leave. We decided to take a quick before dinner swim last night. We got out in the water about knee high and, because the water is clear, we could see that a little fish was swimming around our legs. I got freaked out because it was about the size of my foot and I had no idea if it meant me any harm. I figure, I'm on it's turf so it's my job to watch my back. Geoff on the other hand was fearless and wanted to play. We swam for about an hour and everywhere we went, the fish followed. Geoff named it Telly. No real reason why. We went deep, he went deep. We went shallow, he went shallow. Up stream, down stream - same story. Some scuba divers that we met had told us earlier that some fish will take to people because they think you're just a bigger fish who will either drop good bits while you're feeding or protect the little fish from bigger fish. We swam with our friend for a while but then it was time for dinner so we went in and he kept following us. I asked him very nicely to go back out to see and told it I was glad we made friend but now he had to go. He did. It was really amazing. Then after dinner we went for another dune buggy ride and lost our buggy keys on the beach. We looked for a very long time and even went back to the room to get my emergency light stick and look again but no luck. Geoff had a dream last night about finding the keys so he went out again this morning and they'd washed up on the shore. He found them on the beach. This is after he lost his glasses in the ocean yesterday and found them a while later. It's really a magic little island. Now we're off to brunch and more buggy rides. I'll try to fill in the spaces when we get back but this has been a really amazing trip. I can't even explain. Not really sure I want to go home. Love you! Amy (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 21st, 2005
1:22 pm	Rainy day It's been raining all day today. We were going to charter a boat and go off to an even more deserted island but now we're not as crazy about the idea. We're starting to recognize people on the island. We're getting a lot of 'Hellos' and 'How's that sunburn coming along?' as we wander around. It's really cute. Today we're going to get another dune buggy and totter around the island. We're going to try some of the take away around the docks where fishermen show up and cook whatever they caught that day. Should be interesting. We ate at a marina last night and thought of dad. One of the listings on the menu was 'You catch it, We'll cook it'. Gotta love that. Last night before dinner we got a drink at the bar in our hotel and mine was of some intensity. It's a rum drink with a special rum, muddled lime and simple syrup - similar to a mojito but the bartender was feeling generous and and mixed hard. I was already hungry after a day of snorkeling so it really went right to my head. As we were on our way to dinner Geoff asked if I was a little tipsy and my response of "Lil bit, Love! Lil bit" warranted a hearty chuckle from a passerby so I felt cool. I had a slice of key lime pie for dessert and I had high expectations from it since we're relatively close to the Keys but unfortunately it had an odd meat aftertaste so we went back to our bar for an after dinner cocktail. I got a much milder drink that time and left happy. Today, on top of the rain and the inability to leave the island, there's also a funeral for one of the locals. She must have been pretty important because the day started off with the high school band playing songs on the dock as mourners in party dresses and big beautiful hats arrived and chartered buggys to scoot around the island all day. The church bells are going off intermittantly and it's all really cool. Apparently she wanted a party when she went and that what she's getting. Good for her. I'm off to our verandah picnic (previously a deserted island picnic but things change). One nice thing about the rain is that it's mostly shut the roosters up. Ha ha! Take that roosters! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, May 20th, 2005
5:42 pm	Dune buggys and fishies One of the main modes of transportation around the island is golf cart. There's a few trucks and one or two cars but everyone really gets around by golf cart. I like the song 'Little Blue Dune Buggy' so I call them dune buggys. Yesterday Geoff and I had our own little dune buggy and chug chug chugged all around the island. We went to the place that Jimmy Buffet wrote 'Cheeseburger in Paradise' about but I don't really like JImmy Buffet so it didn't have a huge impact on me. But you never know, someday I may like him and then I'll be glad we went. In the meantime, I had a tasty grouper burger there and Geoff had the cheeseburger. We were both quite pleased. We went to the part of the beach where a tree washed up during a storm and has lived there since. We went to all sorts of little restaurants and shops but the power was out on the island so very few were open. Apparently the power often goes out on the island. People just adapt, or nap. We did both. We finally got me a rum cake. I have two favorite things about the Caribbean, other the beautiful beaches and what not - duty free liquor and rum cakes. I could live on the rum cakes and I love restocking the liquor cabinet for around $10 a bottle. Unfortunately, the duty free shops here kinda suck and we hadn't been able to find any rum cake. We even considered going back to Nassau a day early but the ferry off the island on Saturday (only one per day) was chartered by a group so we can't go. Odd. Anyway, the rum cake search continued until Geoff noticed yesterday that one of the first places I'd looked actually had them, they were jsut poorly labeled. Now I'm completely happy. We had a great dinner and then wanted to go on a nighttime buggy ride but when we got to the top of a big hill, the lights died and a stray dog chased us. Yesterday we really just took it easy because the pain from the sunburn was intense. Today, however, we wanted adventure so we went snorkeling. I was unsure about it because my sunburn is still really painful and being in the sun hurts terribly but I don't know when we'll be able to do this again so I just sucked it up and went out. It was awesome. We went to a dock where they take you out about a half hour and drop you in the middle of the water. I panicked a little when I just got in but then it was a blast. We ended up at two different sites and I saw a stingray. Other people saw a turtle but I didn't so I get to hate them just a little. I saw tons of fish and wasn't quite as freaked out by them as I was in St. Thomas. I'm still not crazy about being super close to the coral reefs. I'm convinced a wave will come and send me crashing onto them and they'll gut me or gash my leg open and then the fish will eat me. Geoff likes them though. It's funny. In most things, I'm much more fearless than him but with snorkeling he trumps me every time. He's tough with those reefs and fishes. I give him credit. We snorkeled for a few hours and then came back to the room and read a little. Now we're off for rum drinks and dinner. Maybe even some conch fritters. (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 19th, 2005
12:03 pm	Thursday It's still beautiful here. I think we slept for 12 hours last night. We were finally able to relax and we just collapsed. My sunburn has morphed in a farmers burn today, so that's pretty. I wore my bathing suit top for most of the day yesterday but mid-lunch it got just a little too cold so I put my Tshirt on. All we did after that was finish lunch and wander back to where we're staying but that was enough. In response to Jess' question, I have no cell coverage here. There are also no phones or TVs in the rooms. There's a computer in the library so that's how I'm checking in from time to time. I forgot to mention in yesterday's post that part of what makes this whole vacation so sweet is that when Geoff and I get really busy or really tired or really stressed, I always say that I want to run away with him to a deserted island and just be still. So Geoff, being who he is, found a deserted island - with great food - and took me away. It would be gross if it wasn't so sweet. Today's adventures include searching out some more local food, researching snorkeling trips and possibly getting a boat to an even more deserted island for a picnic. He rocks. The roosters didn't give us to much trouble this morning, so that's good. I'm off to adventure for now but I'll write again soon. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 18th, 2005
9:25 pm	I'm in the Bahamas! Hooray! Geoff and I are in the Bahamas. He swept me away for my birthday and it's amazing. We flew into Nassau and spent my birthday night there. We went to a churasca (sp?) restaurant for dinner. They have one in NY that we haven't gotten to yet. It's basically a mega meat restaurant. I've been craving steak lately. the concept is that you go in. are seated and have access to a salad bar but the main focus is meat. There's a set price, and for that price a man comes around to each table with tons of different kinds of meat roasted on huge skewers and carves whatever you'd like for you at your table. We had sausage and chicken and filet mignon (some wrapped in bacon, some not), lamb and pork tenderloin. We couldn't even get to the pork ribs, the beef ribs and a few other things. There are a few starches on the table to accompany the massive protein and it was really all amazing. Just after Geoff and I sat down and began gorging ourselves, a big party came and sat down a table away from us. There were really noisy so we couldn't help noticing them. It was Jason Priestly (of 90210) and his family. By then end of the night Geoff was muttering about "Stupid Jason Preistly and his ugly shirt". IT really cracked me up. There was a day when I would have died to know that someday I'd be sharing my birthday dinner with JP and low and behold, when it finally happened I just wanted him to hush up. Life is funny. After dinner we went back to our room overlooking the turquoise water to sip a foolishly expensive Dom Perignon but we wanted some dessert. In retrospect, that champagne deserved to be savored on its own but we didn't know. We ordered a chocolate thing and a "guava duff" from the restaurant downstairs. It sounded amazing and tropical but it turned out to be a guava jelly roll with sweet sauce. You never know. This morning we took a super early ferry to Eluthra, which is a super tiny quiet isand off of Nassau. We're staying in this great tiny hotel with a balcony that looks out over the harbor and the pink sand with a big canopy bed in a beautiful big room. There are a few roosters that wander on and off the property and I'm hoping they won't prove to be a problem tomorrow when I'd like to sleep in. For what it's worth, they do that cock-a-doodle-do thing all damn day. We wandered around the island today and there's tons of roosters just wandering free. Today was a really overcast and kinda breezy/cold day so we, like NYers who never see real sun, forgot to put on sunscreen and we're both burnt pretty bad. Ah well. I'm still having a blast. I can't believe how beautiful it is. We ate dinner while watching the sun set over the harbor. There's tiny gecko-like lizards all over that I've taken to calling Wee-Guanas. I like them very much. I'm off now, either to some silly run drink or to sitting on the balcony and listening to the waves. This is a great birthday so far. We have internet in the hotel so I'll try to update. I'm so excited! Love ya! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 22nd, 2005
1:05 am	hello again Well, the girl who had the “accident” with sleeping pills has been in a locked down pysch ward since I last wrote. She was released earlier today. Now she gets to pick if she comes back to the show or not. Apparently one of the therapists think that being barred from the remainder of the run may be too much for her but they also think that coming back may be too much as well. I think she has managed to waste more of my time than any other actor I’ve known. We bought our tickets for the move to AZ today. The best price was for an 8Am flight and I realized that mom will most likely have sold the house by then. I called her to let her know about the tickets and tell her that it would mean that it would only make sense for Geoff and I to stay that last night with Micah in Philly. It felt so awkward. I felt like I was telling her I like Micah more than her. She took it well and actually said that she’s figured out that we won’t always stay with her when we come to visit so maybe she’s actually heard me when I’ve mentioned it before. I thought she was doing one of the willful memory blocks with it. My first thought about that last night was that we could have another all night party, just like the last time I moved to AZ but then I remembered that the house would be gone. It was weird realizing that I’m going to have to have the moment where I leave my family for my friends the night before we go. It makes sense but I know it will hurt mom’s feelings. I feel awful for that but I don’t see another option. Plus, my friends really have earned time. They’ve been my friends for 15 years and I’m only (almost) 30. That’s rare. I know a few of them feel deserted by my move too. It’s hard to just say I’m doing what right for me, and the babies to come, and pretend it isn’t also a slight rejection. Unintentional but still there. Time for me to go for now. I’ll try to update soon. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, April 15th, 2005
10:14 pm	One of those days I’m writing this one during our 2nd performance. I have to bring my computer to the theatre each night to do performance reports but I have a lot of time between cues so I’m stealing a little to write. This has been an interesting morning. I got a call from the department when I got up that one of my actors had a ‘problem’ with some sleeping pills that she’d taken and was admitted to the hospital early this morning. At first she was supposed to be released around 1:00 and would be performing in the show tonight. One of her friends who happens to be a really great guy and is also a member of the cast went up to the hospital to be with her. He was the only one keeping us informed. Of course, later in the afternoon he got a call that his uncle had committed suicide. Yup. Then a few hours later he let us know that the first actor wouldn’t be released today. The doctors decided that they needed to keep her for observation and to make sure she got her rest so she wouldn’t be released until Sunday. This was around 4:30. Our show is at 8:00. We figured out that there was one actor in the cast who could double up and play the missing person’s part. However, she only had a few hours to memorize the role and then we had to do a put in rehearsal before we opened the house to get her ready. No one’s officially saying that it was a suicide attempt but I think it may have been. This girl is so very unstable. I also think she’s at the beginning of what may become a very big drug problem. She has a back problem and on the last show I had her in, she showed up the last two weeks almost constantly high on muscle relaxers. We got to this show and she started in with anti-depressants. She would call me to say how high she was and how she had no idea where she was. When I started to see what was happening, I told her I was concerned and asked if she was OK with all the pills she was taking. She swore she was fine and that was one of the last times she spoke to me. She’s stopped telling me when she’s high so I can only guess now. When the sleeping pills came up today I found out that she’d been high on some of the other pills for our opening night last night. When she gets stressed, her back goes out so she takes the muscle relaxers. But to keep from getting stressed, she’ll take the anti-depressants. But then she’s so altered from the drugs she’s taking, she goes to the sleeping pills to get to bed. And that’s how a problem happens. I’ve never seen an addiction happen before but that’s really what this looks like. Of course, I have no proof so there’s nothing I can do but watch. It’s bizarre. I’ve tried to talk to some people in charge about it but they don’t want to deal with it. Either way, it was a long morning. In other news, after the show tonight I have a Valley of Dolls party to attend with an apartment full of queens in Queens. These are usually great parties. Last time the movie shown was Showgirls. I’m usually the only girl in attendance so I get to revel in the attention of the gay boys. They usually start off apprehensive but if I wear good shoes I can get them to warm to me enough to win them over completely. Here’s hoping for another good night with the boys. (Comment on this)