30 and 364/365ths

It's freezing rain right now in the twin cities. A ruthless shock not just to me, but no doubt to the flower buds attempting to push up for the spring. Crappy. And with no where to go (immediately), it's time to catch up on the Blog . . .

So NY was great. Let's see. I left Minny at 11:45pm on Tuesday the 20th aboard the "Megabus" bound for Chicago. Upon boarding said Megabus, I did my best to look intimidating and perhaps even off-kilter, with the intention of keeping a seat to myself. It worked. It's amazing how you can grant yourself a few inches of wiggle room in this world by muttering things to yourself! It was a thankfully uneventful bus ride, spent mostly sleeping the fitful sleep of a big guy on a bus.

Got into Chicago at 6am. It was a foggy morning in the City of Big Shoulders, and I ended up walking several blocks in the wrong direction before getting my bearings straight. Soon enough, I found myself at Dustin and Kelly and Olivia's place. It's quickly becomming appearant who's in charge at that place.

Damn Cute. Olivia has her own ID card for the East Bank Club, so we went. That was great. Plus I took a mini tour of Dirty D's building and office . . . a pretty intimidating adventure. And later that day, I boarded the plane bound for NY.

Got in late on Wed the 21st and cabbed it over to Laura's place. Laura is my friend from Minny-she was the publicist for the Hennepin Theatre Trust, and set me up with a lot of great interviews when I firs started my run here-and then she was hired by Theatre Mogul to help run their publicity. It was kind of her to offer me a room, albeit in the thick of Harlem-way up north. One of my common observations about the city is how tight everything is. Laura and her roommate have a pretty nice 3-bedroom apartment, but it's so tiny! It was a good base of operations however. That night, I slept like a baby.

On Thusday morning, I woke up leisurely and made my way downtown. I love going walkabout in "foreign" places, and I got a good couple of hours in walking around midtown and the theatre district. I picked up a copy of "Backstage"-a weekly trade publication that lists the what'sgoingons in the performance world, as well as all the current auditions. A good tool to have for sure. In the early afternoon, I popped into the TM office and was lucky enough to catch one of their weekly meetings. It was great to get to the office. They are definately working very hard to make this compay work. I also had a long sit-down with Jim to rap about concerns I'd been having, as well as another installment in the get-to-know-you series. All in all, it was a nice and productive visit to the office.

In the later afternoon, I went walkabout down in the Village. I stopped by "The Cage"-a basketbally court famous for it's globetrotteresque streetballers.
I made my usual stop at Gray's Papaya-two hotdogs and a 16oz papaya drind for 2.50. Delicious and frugal.
And I spent the rest of the day mapping out the next couple.

On friday, I again woke up relatively lesiurely and made my way downtown. This was the day of my Strawhat audition, and I realized that I wasn't entirely sure where I was going, so I gave myself plenty of time. Pace University is in South Manhattan (Lower East Side?) right next to the Brooklyn bridge. I could feel going into the audition that many of my fears about it were spot-on. I was one of the elderly . . . most of the folks auditioning were either still in college or recent graduates. No matter. It was still a fun auditon. I'm not going to go into too much boring detail now, but it was a good, though ultimately fruitless experience. Between my audition at 2:30 and my callback at 5:30 (for a theatre in kennybunkport), I went walkabout again through the lower east side and SoHo. I found the Ghostbuster's Firehouse, and checked out ground zero from 9/11. Haunting . . . both of them.

There's more to report, obviously, but I'm starting to lose focus. I've got to leave the blog half-begun and sign off for a while. The gym is calling. Hope you all are doing well. I'd love to see some pics from the shower! Noah-you don't have to post any pictures from your shower, however. Love you guys.