Hope Junkie in Flight

Though I'm not going to lie, the little green keyboard is really little...

I'm visiting Alan and Beth on Dave's Easter vacation and while Alan was wrapping up some work I decided that I wanted to play with the child-like computer.

It's been really nice having Dave with me, visiting my family the past few days. I wish I didn't have to take him back to his tour tomorrow. Boo. I'm also not terribly keen on the return drive to New York, but I'm hoping to see txtarheel on my way out of the triangle area in the morning. I don't seem to have her phone number, so that may be a problem...

Ok, no more tiny green keyboards for me.

We're just I-95 traveling fools lately - last week I went to Cambridge and Dave went to Shrewsbury. This weekend we're going to the cape (though we're shooting up to Cambridge again before that for dinner and to see my favorite four year old.) Now we're going to Foxwoods tomorrow, which is so far into Connecticut that it may as well be in Rhode Island. Dave's been cast as an extra in a casino commercial, and asked if I'd go along for the ride. May as well, nothing else doing tomorrow. Maybe I'll win some at the slots. (More likely, I'll loose my alloted $20 and then end up reading a book for the rest of the day, but hey, I can dream...) Unfortunately, because it is running so late tomorrow night, we have to come back to NY before driving right back up again the next day. Goofy, but there you are...

I got a random call today about stage managing something in the city in December, which is cool. Probably won't pay for shit, but could be fun anyhow. I do need to make as much money as humanly possible this fall though, so we will see - might be smarter just to freelance on long island, which does pay ok. Still, I'm looking forward to meeting this woman and talking about the project. The only other thing I have in the works that is remotely interesting is a brief stint stage managing a reading in the NYMF at the end of September. Otherwise it's a dull life right now. I've decided to get a part time job at Starbucks, partially for the consistant income, which will help subsidize more interesing yet less lucrative projects, and partially for the health insurance that they offer their part time workers, and their part time workers' domestic partners.

Right now I'm in Cambridge, MA, visiting my friend Dorothy and her son Xander, who just moved here from the LA area and I couldn't be any happier to have them back on the East Coast where they belong! Dorothy just got off the phone with her husband, Chris, who just passed his orals at UCLA, but will not be back until Sunday, and he was apparently bummed that he wouldn't see me, which makes me feel all warm and loved. They are great friends and I am really excited to have them back in my life in a more immediate sense.

Xander is a handful. He's 4, and just as smart and inquisitive and friendly as they come. And active! I've spent all day playing with him, and I'm about to fall over. I'd be less tired if I were in a bad tech! Still, I really like him, and he seems to like me, so I'll probably spend tomorrow doing the same thing before I run home to get ready for Dave's parents coming down for the weekend (Dave is, as I type, on the way to Worcester to do some stuff there before bringing his parents back on Friday.) Someone needs to get there before they do to make sure that the place isn't a wreck in our absence!

We're in Duck right now, at the beach house my parents rent every summer. (Evedently there was a summer wherein they failed to book "Duck House" in time and were forced to go elsewhere, but that was a failed experiment in variety and they were happy to return to this place.) I can't blame them for coming back though - it's a very comfortable house, with four bedrooms (one master, one double bed, one hotel-style with twins and one with two sets of bunks) and a very large upper floor common area, very open, where the kitchen resides. The whole thing is covered in decks, top and bottom, with the obligatory beach house shower below. It's great. Dave and I, appropriately enough, have the hotel style room, Mom & Dad the master, my sister and her newish boyfriend, Brian (or maybe Bryan... not sure about that yet) have the double, and Thomas has his pick of any of the four tiny beds in the bunk room. Shame we can't combine them all into one decent bed for him!

Dave is immersed in Harry Potter now, though he still wants someone to write Hairy Pussy and the Sorcerer's Schlong. I told him that doubless someone already had, and that it might even be Jess. We started out with me reading it to him, bedtime story style, which sounds stupid but was really lots of fun. Try it yourself... He is at least five chapters ahead of where I left him last night though - he started reading it himself on the beach today.

And what a delightful day it was... Hot as Hades - I was sweating, dripping within minutes of laying down on my towel in the sun to read. (Currently trying really hard to get into A S Byatt's Babel Tower right now, because I did love Possesion, but it's slow going.) I waited until I absolutely couldn't stand the head anymore and then ran screaming (ok, it was my inside voice, but still...) into the Atlantic. Yes, boys and girls, a two ocean year for our hero and her geeky sidekick. (Dave described himself as the "geeky sidekick type" when talking to someone about roles he is right for, and I just loved it, because it fit so well.)

Tomorrow will be even better - we went to Kitty Hawk Kites and bought a shiny new kite. I used to have several decent kites, including a very cute stack of deltas that txtarheel made me, but alas, in all the shuffling about, they seem to have gone the way of the dodo. So the new kite is exciting. It's not a particularly impressive kite, as kites go, but it's perfect for traveling, as the leading edge is collapsable and it manages to fit its 5' wingspan into a case about 30" long. And it's red. Tomorrow will be great fun.

Of course, that's assuming the rain stops.