Holidays Away...

Holidays away from home are tough on many levels. Part of it's the obvious missing of family members. Part of it, for a foodie like me, is the inability to cook holiday foods with the meager kitchen utensils and amenities I have in my little corporate suite.

There are also smaller problems. The reason I didn't go home for Thanksgiving this year (besides the poor factor) is that I have rehearsals on both sides of the holiday. There's a guilt that washes over me when I take a full day off while rehearsing a show. I worked all day yesterday so that I could take today - a holiday - off, but I still woke up feeling like I should work. Holiday breaks in the middle of a deadline-based gig are horrifying for the workaholic.

There's also an anti-social aspect that sometimes comes sneaking in. There's always a part of me when waking up on a holiday that wants to spend the day in my pajamas watching Christmas movies and eating takeout. I know myself enough, however, to know that if I don't go to my holiday plans I'll regret the lost connections and I'll never truly be able to relax and blow off steam.

A member of our production staff had access to an incredible home this holiday season and so he invited us all over for Thanksgiving dinner. Ten of us showed up. The table was set with real china and crystal, we toasted with champagne, we went around the table (just like my own family's tradition) and told everyone what we were thankful for, and we feasted. My, how we feasted! All of the trappings of a traditional turkey dinner plus a few little extras here and there. I brought pineapple timbale, an old family recipe that dates back to when my ancestors were whalers... It was my own contribution to the family atmosphere.

Afterwards we laughed hysterically while cleaning the kitchen, then collapsed in front of a roaring fire and talked for several hours - until the tall candles on the coffee table burned down to nubs. I sat there and looked around at everyone smiling, red-cheeked, clutching pillows, and thought about this idea of connections that I keep coming back to as I slowly try to figure out this business. We get close so fast in these little 6-week gigs. Everyone I work with is like a member of some sort of strange, dysfunctional family. We keep coming together and falling apart, but if I find these people in another city we'll be right back where we left off.

It's a comfort to know we're all in this together and I'm thankful to have so many people who share in this traveling existance wherever I go.

What else am I thankful for? I'm thankful to have a husband who is so unbeliveably supportive in this crazy career I'm carving out. I'm thankful for a family who loves me no matter how different my world is from theirs. I'm thankful that my career is still growing; that what I'm doing thus far seems to be working.

I'm thankful for life experiences and evenings like this.

Detour

So here I am in Dallas, putting up an operetta that has proved to be a scheduling nightmare. We're done with the show (in a week mind you). Everything is blocked, the dancers are here and fitting themselves in beautifully. They actually flew in from Los Angeles the other night, walked in the door straight from the airport, suited up in their off-the-shoulder sweatshirts, legwarmers and flexible dance sneakers, and ran through this show they hadn't done in months with nary a flaw in their unison. Muscle memory is an amazing thing.

Our singers are all thinkers. They are analyzing their dialogue, asking for changes where things don't make sense, discussing character and audience comprehensibility. Our chorus has learned all of their movements, reactions and moments in three rehearsals. For all intents and purposes, this whirlwind rehearsal period has been pretty successful.

But for me in this moment, it all comes back to making this schedule every day, which has pitfalls and snafus in it that literally make me want to bang my head against the desk. I'm having flashbacks to when I first tried to learn long division. Ask my mother about that joyous experience. I'm not the only one feeling this pressure but it's getting to me all the same. It must be getting to me. I've visited the E.R. three times in the past week with heart palpatations, massively high blood pressure and dizziness/numbness/shortness-of-breath. The doctors at the E.R. (who I've gotten to know well mind you) all think it's major anxiety. I think they're probably right but it's hard for me to accept because I've always seen myself as someone who handles stress well. I've always been the unflappable one; the one who takes everything in stride and then gets things done as needed.

The more I think about it though, the more I realize that my way of working has allowed all of this stress to fill my coffer until it's truly overflowing. My job is to listen to and absorb other people's stress and problems and I think I've finally hit my limit. I've spent the last few rehearsals fighting with an irregular heart beat and an inability to get a deep breath and I think, "geez! What the hell is going on," but if I look back at every confidence I take, every problem I solve, every argument and disagreement I'm privy to, well....I guess it makes sense that my body would finally tell me to stop listening. This is my 7th show in a row and none of them in my home.

So enough about that. I'm going to see a doctor tomorrow with an actual appointment and hopefully I can figure out how to manage this in the few weeks I have left of traveling, living in a hotel room by myself, working on a show at my makeshift desk/kitchen table while watching bad television and eating take-out.

This life. This life gives me amazing experiences. Amazing. But I think there's only so much a psyche can take before it needs to regroup, refuel, rejuvenate.

The Stars at Night are Big and Bright!

I arrived in Dallas, Texas this evening. Earlier than I thought actually. The flight I was supposed to be on was hopelessly delayed so they shoved me into an earlier flight. I crossed the arid Southwest in the early afternoon and touched down at DFW somewhere around 6pm. I was glad to get in earlier. The more time I have to settle in, the more comfortable I feel when I wake up and start working the next morning.

The flight was pretty smooth. Arriving in Dallas was a little rockier. Because I was early and couldn't get ahold of anyone at the opera, I ended up, somewhat grudgingly, taking a cab after standing on the curb in a state of semi-disorientation. It's so odd to drive through a completely foreign terrain in the back of a taxi. No matter how many times you've looked at a map, the streets still wind in confusing patterns and all of the directions seem to get switched around. Fortunately, all Midwestern cities hold similarities. We passed strip malls galore, churches, and the "President George Bush Expressway" before finally arriving at my corporate housing. Actually...we didn't even arrive there. We arrived at the apartment building next door. The robust cab driver pulled my three immensely heavy bags out of the trunk, left them in the doorway and drove off. As I watched him go, my eyes dropped down and I noticed the door mat with a completely different name than what I was expecting.

A little old man hobbled towards me with his walker and pushed the handicapped button on the side of the door. As he passed I said "I think I'm in the wrong place," asking him where my hotel might be. "Oh dear, you are in the wrong place," he eked out. "This is an apartment complex. You want to be next door." He hobbled past me pointing and I looked up the hill to the big hotel sign, then grudgingly lugged my 100 pounds of luggage down the street. Everything else had been so smooth and quick. My two bags were even the first ones out at baggage claim. Ultimately it's just not possible for me to have a smooth traveling experience. I've accepted this every time I travel. It gets exhausting.

So finally after a long, disjointed day of travel, a Cuban sandwich and a beer at Cheesecake Factory, and a somewhat delirious shopping trip to the local grocery store, I'm settled in and unpacked and sitting on my couch in my great little apartment. My bag is packed for the morning, my coffee's ready to brew and all of my papers are in order.

Let's get this show on the road.

Briefly

I'm prepping five scores at once right now. Four of them are for San Diego Opera. I start work there in December but I want to have my scores ready to work by the time I walk into prep there. The fifth is this "Merry Widow" I'm doing in Dallas come next week. Prepping consists of adding tabs so I can flip to specific scenes easily, marking in any cuts we are doing, and highlighting each character's vocal line in a different color so I can quickly tell who should be singing what line on any given page. It's a lot of tedious busy work but completely necessary for me to do my job later on.

Incidentally I've been watching a lot of "Law and Order SVU" while madly highlighting and tabbing...

John took me on a Hornblower Dinner Cruise tonight through the San Diego Bay. It was a terrific evening and we both deserved it so much after a whole week of not feeling so hot. We didn't really date much before attaching each other at the hip so it's nice to go out on a bona fide date every once in a while. We dressed up, drank champagne, stood along the railing letting the wind hit us in the face and ate cheesecake. The only thing we didn't do is dance. John doesn't dance. I may have to see about fixing that...

Monday I have to pack for another five weeks away.

I don't wanna. (stamps foot impetuously).

Feu

So I come home from New York and all of Southern California goes up in smoke. It seems to happen that every time I come home from traveling somewhere the weather changes for the worst here. When I came home from Cooperstown we were dealing with record highs and record humidity. The first week I was home was pure misery. Now I come home from the City and the weather is beautiful. John and I travel to San Francisco and have a gorgeous time. On the way back we drive down the coast and hit some pretty smoky air around Los Angeles County. Unbeknownst to us we were driving straight through the beginnings of the Malibu fire. I'm in town for one more week before I go to Dallas Opera and we are dealing with fallout from the Witch and Harris fires. Unbelievable.

Not nearly as unbelievable, I'm sure, as all of this is to the thousands and thousands of people who have been displaced in San Diego County alone. Despite my bitching I am one of the lucky ones. The city has not yet been threatened and we are only suffering from the bad air, hot weather and lack of services due to businesses being closed while everyone figures out where they are going, what they are doing and whether or not they still have a home.

I feel helpless somewhat and can't help thinking in the back of my head that this is all my fault. Why do these things happen only when I come home? Dallas was a last minute gig and I was actually not really looking forward to it since I have been away from home so long. It doesn't look so bad right now as I see the mild temperatures on their weather forcast. Just to get away from the campfire air will be a blessing. I only wish I could bring John and the cats with me.

The picture is of the setting sun from our front porch. It's beautiful and horrifying all at the same time. Interested in helping out? Please follow this link to the San Diego chapter of the American Red Cross and this link to the San Diego chapter of the Humane Society. Many, many displaced horses and other furry creatures : (

Last Night in the City

I started this blog to give insight into this strange, disjointed life that I lead. This world of crazy career, far-away home, coming together and falling apart. Keeping this up is harder than I thought it would be. Partially because there are so many things I want to talk about that aren't always appropriate in a public forum (memoirs someday...when I don't care anymore) and partially because when the most interesting things are happening I become too busy to sit down and write.

We opened Agrippina today. I wasn't sure how to react, as usual, to the end of my work. I loved watching everyone on stage. I got to bow, which is always an exhilirating experience, and I have a great time when I can dress up and mingle. On the other hand, I felt like my foot was partially out the door. I stood around after the curtain fell and watched everyone bustling around. For them this is the beginning of a run and so their priorities in the moment are different. I had a friend tell me I looked sad which was really not the case at all. I was more....well....I think I had already moved on. It's the only way I know how to survive these frequent transitions. To survive living out of a suitcase and leaving people I care about every few weeks.

Because I haven't written in a while and I have to pack now, I'm leaving you with a journal entry from the summer. I wrote this sometime in late July or early August. I don't know why it seems appropriate right now, but I think it reflects my feelings about life and the way I am living it.

I've got major goals right now. For the first time in my life I'm feeling like my future (or the one I want) makes sense. But I think we never stop searching for the meaning behind it all...

I went to the grocery this evening and as I walked back into my kitchen I had this sudden feeling of claustrophobia and panic. I had to get out. I dropped my bag and purse on the counter and jumped onto my roommate’s bicycle, sliding out of my flip-flops, wide-legged jeans flapping against the chain, ballcap pulled low.

I rode around the block and down a side street, over a creek I spent hours peering into on a late, thundery afternoon and into the glassy, gravely driveway of an abandoned factory I’ve been drawn to lately. There was an eerie quiet there. A tree rustled greenly against an old propane tank. A bird flew through the broken panes of glass to a hidden roost in the depths of the decimated building.

I was tempted to ride all the way into the back of the grounds but looked at the falling sun and felt that female twang of fear that comes from being alone and unprotected. That missing father syndrome that women fall prey too when their entire childhood is predicated by an understanding of their comparable weakness.

I peeled out of the loose stone and cigarette butts to ride back up the hill, calves squeezing out every last pinch of oxygen as I passed the boarded up bowling alley, the shingle-free dive with the fish-fry sign flapping about over the front door, and a green house that always has the strains of a sad country song creating a desolate wrinkle in the surrounding airspace.

As I passed the firehouse, origin of a strange, wailing horn Richard and I’d heard several times over the past couple of weeks (turns out it was a call to volunteer firemen throughout the area), I looked up and saw a flock of large birds flying towards me. Hawks. Beautiful brown hawks with majestic, pointed heads and large beaks, riding the wind space over my head. One flew so low I could hear the air compressing downward in a rush of swept-up sound as he flapped his impressive wingspan.

I counted seventeen as I stood over the catch bar of Richard’s bicycle. None making a sound but for the fwoosh of the wings as they picked up speed. The last one to pass was riding on the tailwind of his neighbor as one of his wings was broken, laying at an odd angle when it was fully spread from his back.

I burst into tears. There was something so amazing, so unprecedented about this flock of majesty flying over my head. I didn’t know how to react but to feel the breeze of their flight on my cheeks and let the tears of intense beauty roll down my face and drip off the end of my nose.

It’s those moments that life dawns on you that bring about a yearned-for perspective that sometimes seems just out of reach.

Almost Home

Agrippina opens tomorrow. The picture on the left demonstrates, I think, exactly how this experience has been for me. Lots of good knowledge and moments, some incredible people and amazing talent, but ultimately stressful. That's me drinking a manhattan in Manhattan with members of the creative team after our piano dress rehearsal.

It's funny. I'm so excited to go home, but I'm feeling really sad about leaving New York. Every time I come to work in this city I love it more and more. I've become extremely fond of the Upper West Side. I love meandering along Central Park West from the Natural History Museum to the Dakota. I love noodles at Ollie's on 84th (better than the Midtown location). I love walking through Zabar's, taking in whiffs of cheese, olives and coffee and listening to the hustle on all sides. I love hazelnut or pistachio gelato at Grom and the Civil War Memorial on Riverside. San Diego just doesn't feel the same. The good stuff there all exists inside my house: my husband, my cats, my books, my stuff...

The end of each project is always, always bittersweet, and always for different reasons.

Not Dead Just Working

I've been in New York City for 7 days. That's why I haven't written in what seems like an eternity.

I'm in charge on this production until the 27th. I've put up half the opera in 5 days and am looking forward to slapping the rest of it up before next Thursday. This business works at such a rapid rate.

I'm in love with this opera, so that helps push aside any stress I feel from being the go-to-guy throughout the bulk of the rehearsal process. "Agrippina" is deliciously funny and evil with some of the most gorgeous music Handel ever wrote. We have a lively cast, full of laughter and ideas in rehearsals and ready to jump into any ocean I present to them. That's a lucky fact....and not always normal.

The pic is of me after my first day at City Opera. No rehearsals that day, only a big presentation about the opera, but it felt amazing to kick it all off on the right foot. Now it's just details.

A WHOLE LOT of details.

But still. My director comes in next Thursday and I hand the whole kit and kaboodle over to her. I'll have more time to write then. If I could handle getting the whole thing off the ground myself, I can easily handle being the copilot on the landing.

4 by 4 in 48

These last two weeks have been totally overwhelming with planning for "Agrippina" which is coming so fast and furious I sometimes feel like Indiana Jones running like a madmen in front of that giant stone ball...

Part of the problem is my intense lack of concentration that stems from the first week being so incredibly hot that I couldn't do anything but sit on my couch in front of a fan wearing a t-shirt I'd just removed from the freezer, and the fact that I only get to see my husband for fourteen days and I'm trying to soak up all the home I can before I head to the airport yet again.

To add to all of this, I agreed to perform in a little series that Sushi puts on every second Tuesday of the month called 4x4.

The performance takes place at 8pm at Bluefoot Bar in North Park (corner of Upas and 30th if anyone's interested) this coming Tuesday. A 4'x4' stage is set up in the middle of the bar and ten performers get up in succession and do their thing. We have ten minutes a piece to do whatever we want. Some people talk, some people dance. I'm doing a little of both in a piece I literally threw together called "36,000 Feet." It's about traveling for work. Big surprise.

They say you should always write about what you know...

The cool thing about this performance is that the stage is so small. I have no problem rehearsing in my dining room as the photograph proves. The bad thing is that I decided to do it last minute when I was so blasted busy, but maybe that's good because I won't overthink the piece. We'll see what comes out when I'm finally there and in front of all of those sweaty, intoxicated people.

Otherwise, not much to report. I'm just plugging along, trying not to get run over by stone balls and hoping that everything at City Opera is copacetic. My mantra right now is "October 15th, October 15th, October 15th..."

Summer's End

In twenty minutes I will load my bags into a volunteer's car, lock up this cool, empty house, and head to Albany to fly home to San Diego for two weeks.

Last night was no roommate and no cat - they left right after our closing matinee. The quiet in the house was good closure. Any semblance of sadness I felt about leaving this place was cut by the empty, swept-up air in our once lively household. I sat on the wide porch after dark and it felt like I was sitting in my past.

It's time to move on, go home, reconnect and get ready for the next adventure.

Words on this blog cannot begin to express my joy at finding my home once again.

But leaving these temporary mini-homes always holds a modicum of bittersweet.

Off

My confidence was totally shaken today.

I'm not sure why. I think I woke up this way: a little shaky, tired and emotionally under the weather. I didn't sleep well the night before, then sat in my little wooden chair in the wrestling gymnasium at Richfield Springs Central School, watching the singers work their butts off and I started to feel relatively useless.

It's funny how you can work and work and focus and work, spouting out the ideas, jumping on placement requests and noticing every little things, and then you have one day in a fog and suddenly all of your work feels null.... I couldn't seem to wrap my head around anything that was going on. I felt like I was a step behind everyone else and was at a loss when asked my opinion.

I was opinion-less, which really isn't like me at all.

It's days like these when I feel like an absolute fraud in everything I do. We had a lunch meeting today and I sat through it fidgeting, wishing I could go home, get in my bed, sleep, and wake up again to start over at the moment I folded back my orange corduroy comforter and sat up in this fog of second-guessing .

I'm blaming everything on lack of sleep.

Went out to dinner with my roommate and took a walk around Cooperstown, which was a welcome respite from thinking about work and life away from home entirely too much. Things will be better in the morning..

Biding Time..

It's the beginning of Memorial Day Weekend and I am NOT in Terre Haute, Indiana, at my family's huge annual reunion. I will NOT be waking up at 5am to pile into a van and caravan to Speedway, Indiana, to sit in the stands at the Indianapolis 500, eat burgers and drink sweet tea, cheer for Danica Patrick and watch the policeman stand on the seat of his motorcycle as it careens through the pits. No looking through binoculars at the checkered flag waving madly or wandering through the muggy caverns beneath Tower Terrace as the cement shakes from the power of 33 cars racing by at 200 mph. I'll miss my cousin's dogs romping through the halls of the Holiday Inn, a double wedding shower for two cousins (also sisters) getting married and hours of watching rugrats romping in the Holidome, their little feet slapping the wet tile as they run to grab on to their mothers.

It's okay. I'm spending the weekend with my husband, with whom I have one more week before I fly away to Upstate New York for a summer at Glimmerglass Opera. He and I have been spending as much time as we can muster together. I've even gone so far as to volunteer my services to him as he conducts interviews for a show about the Old Globe Theater's Summer Shakespeare Festival. The television station he works for is relatively understaffed right now so I like to help where I can, hooking up cameras, unrolling cords, putting together laveliere mics. It's fun to watch John work and even more fun to work with him. The picture above is a small break from our last day of interviews. John is thinking about a lighting problem while I relax against the wall. Lighting is not my forte.

I went to my second dance class this morning. Again with Jean Isaacs. I owe her a debt for getting my butt up and moving. Today I felt much better. I made it through the entire class with no qualms at all and, because I'd done all of the phrases on Tuesday, I could cycle my body easily through the movement without my muscle memory giving way to crazy improvisational seizures. And after it all, I still felt sweaty and energized, my shirt soaked and my face flushed and prickly. I'll be back next Tuesday.

Class was followed by a trip to Office Depot to buy supplies for "Orphee" and a box to send some stuff ahead to Cooperstown. As much as I'm trying to delay my inevitable departure in my mind, it is still coming with great speed and I am forced to address it. The big box sitting in the middle of the living room is now a consistent reminder that I will be separating myself from this little family of mine again.

The cats are curious about the box but don't seem to care much about my impending exit in the least. (As long as they still get fed you know..)

The roses that John gave me last week are starting to wilt and dry. Nothing stays perfect forever.

Living With My Husband...

Days got much better this week. Rehearsals started like a moving train, slow for a few seconds then quickly jumping up to speed. We're into Act II right now and we started on Wednesday. I think this whole show is going to be a hurricane (hopefully not IN a hurricane, however. I already did that).

Our biggest issue is actually the size difference between our theater space in Broward County and our space down here at the Carnival Center for Performing Arts. The set fits beautifully into CCPA (as most sets would...in fact, many would seem swallowed up by its cavernous space), but Broward is going to be a tight, tight fit and will require some very specific choreography backstage to get all of the large groups of people out of giant traffic jams. We had our first chorus rehearsal tonight and the group didn't look as large as I thought, but when we get principals and supers into the mix, we're going to feel quite cramped quickly.

News was very very good today. I got a job that will have me working in San Diego for five straight months, which means I'll actually get to come home and spend time with my husband after each work day. I know that's normal to most people, but I've spent exactly 3 months with my husband since September, and will only have another 2 months before Christmas. 5 months in 16 is pretty sparse.

I'm not complaining. This is the career I chose. I love what I do...will love it even more when I'm directing my own shows, but when the opportunity arises to work in the same place my family lives, I'm going to jump on it. And so I did.

It'll be good to see the cats too, and to walk to the Farmer's Market on Sundays and lay on my own couch and do free laundry and get to use my orange Kitchen Aid mixer and be able to research stuff out of my library of books and do my taxes without having to have package after package sent to me...so many things get missed out of when you live out of a suitcase.

I'm sure the wanderlust will grab at me again once I've been home for a bit. I don't think it will ever go away entirely.

Blown Away

It's really windy tonight. The trees are casting strange moving shadows on the wall in my room and the sound is sometimes overwhelming, reminding me somewhat of a tidal ocean crashing against the side of the house. I feel sturdy in here but with every gusty crash I feel nerves creep in. I don't particularly like extreme weather but am somehow a magnet for it wherever I go.

The picture is Chai, of course, my new best friend. He has taken to lounging lackadaisically on my bed while I'm working. Last night he chased constantly after my papers wherever I set them. He is as perverse and anti-work as any cat I've ever met.

I went to dinner and a movie tonight with people from the opera. We saw "History Boys," the Alan Bennett play-cum-movie about British prep-school boys in the eighties and the long debate over teaching for test scores or teaching how to think. I thought the film was beautiful and raw and sexually/emotionally/ideally edgy in a way Americans can very rarely perform. It makes me wish I'd seen the stage play as I've read in several places that the play runs rings around the film. It's exactly the same cast, so I'm curious how the production transferred (and how it could fall - in some people's eyes - so completely short in the film incarnation).


Rehearsals are going very well. We will finish the architecture of the piece tomorrow or the next day, which is fast work. The arias still need loads of work and the recits are pure hell in their length and specificity, but we are getting there and having a few big laughs along the way. The pic to the left is a constant in most opera rehearsal rooms: cough drops and antibacterial gel. It's unbelieveable how much of this stuff we go through. All performers fear illness in the course of a show, but singers are by far the most paranoid. I think because, while dancers and most actors can perform while they've got a cold, singers really cannot. If a voice is compromised by intense congestion or (heaven forbid) throat pain, the performance is lost. What a precarious place to be. For some, even the suggestion of a throat tickle leads to a hypochondriac fit.

I am feeling homesick right now and hoping this will pass. It's bad to start with that feeling so early in the process. I don't particularly care for pining and wish my heart could go along with my head in its understanding of the makeup of my life. This is what I do - this travel for my work thing. It means that home is tangible but distant and I must find comfort in the little bits of life I carry with me: my sheets, my pictures, my Eyeore mug, my pillow. John and I talk every night (and sometimes day) and the internet is always there.

It's hard to be an emotional person with a job that is so mutable. This life requires hardness and cynicism.

I put up a brilliant cyncial front but I'm really rather soft inside.

United has Done It Again

Greetings from O'Hare Airport in lovely West Chicago. I am sitting in the terminal, waiting for a delayed flight on which I may or may not have a seat.

My flight from San Diego was delayed by 40 or so minutes due to weather issues in the Pacific Northwest. The psuedo-friendly man behind the counter there assured me that I would be able to make my flight in Chicago, as did the cheery, cheeky flight attendant once we sat down. They both told me to hussle myself to the gate; the plane had been notified of my late arrival and it would not be a problem.

Lies, all of them.

They buttered me up by upgrading me to Economy Plus, a crock of bull ploy to make you spend more money with the idea that you would have a better flying experience; a step down from business class, if you will. MY Economy Plus seat was in the front row of the plane, right next to the door. There was a draft at the door that nearly gave my feet frostbite, there was no place to store any of my bags because there was no seat in front of me (I did, I guess, have great leg room), and blankets were stored in the overhead cabin, and the service was no better there than all the way in the back of the plane.

Nice try.

Anyway, the advantage was that I got off the plane first and ran pell-mell down the B Concourse through the United underpass with those eerie neon lights and that annoying United music repeating itself indefinitely in a metallic sort of way, and pell-mell down the C Concourse. I got to the gate 12 minutes early.

They'd given away my seat and closed the doors. There were no more seats available on the flight. Sorry. They shouldn't have told you to run. We never hold flights for people; we're delayed all the time.

Yeah, maybe you ought to do something about that.

He puts me on a flight to Richmond, so I call Virginia Opera and they say they can't pick me up in Richmond because it's an hour away so I can't take the flight. I stand in line for an age, tasting blood in my mouth and wheezing from all the running, and talk to (I must say) a VERY friendly customer service agent who gives me a confirmed seat on a flight tomorrow afternoon but says if I want to fly out tonight I have to fly standby.

So that's where I am. My throat hurting, my feet hurting, screaming children sitting next to me, a lack of nutrients in my body, and no idea where in this huge city of an airport my checked luggage actually is. I'm hoping it's on this next flight to Norfolk.

Happy Holidays! In good news, I had a great holiday with John and we got some really great gifts. The pic is of Monty eyeing the wrapping paper with great suspicion. I was just joyous and am wearing a beautiful necklace to prove it.

Now if I could only get out of this blasted airport.