Do I wake or sleep?

After I got back to my apartment with my apples and pumpkin in Saturday, I napped for a little bit before Sami and Silas's party. I TRIED to nap for longer than a half hour but kept getting woken up by growly, hissy kitties tussling in the living room.

The party was fun--I ended up getting there around 10:00 and had some delicious Kielbasa. Interestingly, I ran into Chuck Elliott on the train, who also lives in Astoria. Duncan and I had mentioned him just that day, talking about Iolanthe in the car. He and I chatted for a bit--he says he knows someone who just moved into my bulding, but can't remember what tower she lives in.

I got home around 2:30 and fell asleep HARD--I didn't even turn out all the lights! I was worn out from a long day climbing trees and throwing the football.

Sunday was the day of the baby shower and the Spotlight On Awards. I left my apartment a little after 1:00 to try to get to Hoboken a little after 2:00. I got to the Hoboken terminal at 1:55 in time for the 2:00 bus--which never arrived. The terminal filled up with tons of people--they were backing up the escalator--but no 2:00 bus. It just...never arrived. The one after that was scheduled for 2:20--it arrived at 2:21. God, I hate NJ Transit. They just suck so completely. For my Hoboken friends, how do you guys deal with that? Doesn't that kind of disregard drive you crazy? I ended up taking the PATH back which frazzled my nerves so much less.

I gave Paula a few things for the baby shower. One was some kind of organizer or something--it was on the registry so I got it. Registries are awesome. I love knowing whatever I get is something the person specifically requested. I also bought on impulse a "Baby's First Halloween" bib--I just could not resist. I also brought in a red diaper bag that I got when I did an acting gig for a company called "Meet the Nanny." It was nice seeing Holly and a bunch of other people at the shower--Holly and I chatted for a bit. I commented on the maple tea and the granulated maple sugar (I love maple-flavored things) and Rachel very nicely gave me a bottle of the sugar. I've never even heard of such a thing. How squee!

I got back to my place and began the transformation into Trophy Blonde Bombshell. I wore one of my lil' black dresses, thigh-high black stockings with a black leather garter belt, my Kate Spade black satin slingbacks, and my hair was up. And I had gold and black makeup (gold lips, eyes lightly lined in black) and gold jewelry. I'm nothing if not thematic. I ended up leaving for the Triad at 7:00, only 15 minutes after my projected ETD. I joined Silas and some other people I didn't know as Sami and Mickey wailed on stage. The food spread wasn't that great, actually--an awful lot of sugary processed things like donuts and cookies. I was really craving something more substantial.

The actual ceremony had a LOT of performances (songs, poetry readings, etc.)--a few are fine, they break up the monotony but basically people are there to see if they've won their award, not to listen to some singer whom most of them probably don't know. I sure didn't and I've been doing shows with Spotlight On for years now. Mickey won twice, for Best "Moment" (?), and Best Song--and Sami won for Best Female Singer. Duncan also won for Best Play, for Prince Trevor. We all shouted for that.

At one point, sitting through another song, I let Mickey know I was wearing a black leather garter belt, adding wickedly "...but since we're platonic friends, I know you won't do anything." He said back "You are an evil person." I try, Mickey ;-)

I just puttered around the apartment last night, taking care of a bunch of little things like cleaning Tatia's teeth (she was quite the drama grand duchess about it), trying on dresses for the Spotlight On affair this Saturday, watching all the extras on the Friday Night Lights DVD. The commentary was interesting; the director and the author of the original book did the commentary, and they happen to be cousins. They were both quite funny and articulate and very willing to poke fun at themselves. As I'd said before, the story really shuts out the girls' 2nd-class participation in the system--it hardly shows them at all, and the one girl you remember is the girl who boinks the QB at the party and then swans off. Interestingly both commentators would tease each other about how girl-crazy the other was--they both loved the boinker (who did a great job with the two scenes she had, as much as you could with such a crappy role), and they laughed about how the editor kept cutting to the Carter cheerleaders in the final game. Yeah, they're girl-crazy but they give the girls less-than-short-shrift in the movie. It would've been nice if they'd focused less on the short skirts and at least hinted at their actual story.

I also started to watch an old documentary series about Judaism and civilization (another Netflix DVD). Very interesting--I didn't know that Saul was the first Jewish king. Watched some Real World as well--haven't been able to watch much TV because of Midsummer, it's been nice just relaxing this week, although I've been sleeping through the alarm in the morning. Thank goodness my banker is out of the country this week.

So I decided on a darling little black dress for the Spotlight On dinner. It is very short--I modeled it for Doug via webcam and he wrote "holy jesus thats short." It's a tank dress--no cleavage up top, not tight, sleeveless, and a belted A-line skirt. Haven't decided yet what shoes to wear, because I'm still thinking about accessories. As they say, accessories make the woman.

Sleeping in Tomorrow opened yesterday. We had a final runthrough on Saturday and then a line-through yesterday afternoon before the performance. It went...okay. People got way too flustered because of stupid stuff--people were dropping lines, jumping them, Wael entered from the wrong doorway (on the other side of the stage, even). It's frustrating. And the fifteen minutes in, fifteen minutes out thing is a huge logistical PITA for such a prop-heavy show as ours. And I cannot stress enough how enormously frustrating it is for me to say certain notes 4, 5, 6 times. Wael, AGAIN, anticipate the gnocchi bowl so you're not scrambling to get in place for that pose. Lauren, AGAIN, build "I am a Jewess...I am a Jewess!" and stop smiling so much through "I am a married-to-a-lawyer Jewess"--it interferes with your diction on that line. I really get tired of repeating these notes. *Sigh* I'm so tired. I'm glad the show's up but I'm very tired and looking forward to having some evenings back.

After the show Paul, Jason, Duncan, Heidi, Paula, Dawn, Chris and Wael came over to my apartment for drinks and Jewish food (whitefish salad, tidbits in cream, smoked salmon). Lots of drinks. I was making drinks for a good 15 minutes when everyone first arrived. No one wanted beer, it seemed; everyone wanted margaritas or martinis. My drink maker got a workout. (Props to Jason for helping me out by getting crackers when we ran out.) Tatia didn't really hang out too much with us--I think she was a bit spooked because there were so many people in the apartment.

It was a lot of fun. We had the now-obligatory Ehud-bashing moments, Tatia embarrassed me by drinking out of the toilet bowl (she has plenty of fresh water, she was just misbehaving), I whipped around a picture of me that Peter Gorman shot. At one point we were listening to the BCR of Chess and I said how much I'd love to do that role. Yet another thing I need to produce. You know there's nothing I've done that he'd be ashamed of, in my whole life/Why'd you have to do this to me?...Well, at least she's a good-looking spy... Dawn brought a bottle of flavored gin, flavored with hot peppers or something. It was pretty good. I generally don't care for gin but this had quite a bite to it. Eventually everyone except Paul took off and the two of us hung out and talked about Hair. Paul would like to be seen for Berger, although I see him more as Claude. My apartment is a bit messy this morning, though, and the bottom of one of my martini glasses was broken off somehow (no biggie, I can glue it). Hosting is a lot of work, but I think I'd like to cram in a pumpkin-carving party--this weekend, I guess. *Sigh*

Jordan is coming over tonight with my nude silhouettes.