Thanksgiving!

Up early. Getting ready to head to the airport for a Hodges Family Thanksgiving! Wheee!

very tired.

so long, Hartford

Well, that was a quick trip.

After landing in Hartford, it was a very fast sprint to get ready to
tech a show I had never seen. I definitely do not recommend it. It
was only thanks to good planning on my part, a number of old
relationships that I could rely upon, and the fact that the show did
not undergo a radical reversal that I was able to put the show up in
time.

Also, on Tuesday, I started to feel ill. It started with a little
achey-ness, but the aches soon gave way to a cough, stuffy nose, and
more severe aches. I felt myself get sicker and sicker as the week
progressed. Each morning, I'd feel okay, each afternoon, I'd feel
bad, and each evening, I'd start to feel okay again. Mostly. Still,
last night, after we opened the show and went out for a drink, I found
myself shivering in bed, wishing the heater would work more quickly.

Now, it's 9.20am, and I'm sitting in the Hartford airport, waiting for
my flight to DC, which will connect me to LA, home, and Sarah!

in Hartford, in tech

It took a long time to get to Hartford.

On Saturday night, Sarah and I went to a wedding reception for our
friends Chris and Rachel. They got married a few weeks ago in New
York state, but they wanted to throw a reception for their LA
friends. I was an honorary groomsman, and as such, they asked me to
deliver a toast. I read Seamus Heaney's 'Scaffolding,' which Sarah's
dad read at our wedding. I think the poem was a hit.

We got up early on Sunday morning so that I could catch a flight
across the country to Hartford CT, where I was going into tech. When I
reached my layover in Chicago, I discovered that my flight to Hartford
was cancelled. I ended up staying the night in Chicago instead of
getting to Hartford on time. On the plus side, I got to have dinner
with my friend Mandy and her fiance Kevin, so... bonus!

On Monday, my flight left Chicago on time and got me to Hartford in
one piece. I got off the plane and directly shuttled to the theatre,
where I worked for a few hours to get the system sounding right. For
dinner, I got to dine with Denise, who stopped off on her way from New
Hampshire to Brooklyn. That was a nice surprise!

This morning, I got up, ran 5 miles, took a walk in the autumn leaves,
and am now sitting here in a dark theatre, teching a show that I have
never seen before. It's really quite unusual to not have seen the
show before, but here I am, trying to figure it out. Boy, I wish I
had seen a run-through!

so long, earthlink!

After many years of patronage, I've finally cancelled my old
earthlink.net account. If anyone out there is still using vrojr@earthlink.net
as an address for me, it's time to just remove it from your records!

Looking towards the holidays...

It's been a very busy month since school started up. We're in the middle of an unexpected staffing emergency at the U, so there's a bit of additional headache there. Our students are coming down with H1N1 (or, as they call it: Pig Aids), so I would say that 5-10% of the drama department is somehow ill. Many are at home on bed rest.

Plus, I've been up to my eyeballs in keeping up with classes and an outside project. I'm headed to Hartford this weekend to spend six days working on Shakespeare's R&J, an adaptation of, well, Romeo & Juliet.

Sarah had a hiatus week last week from Cougartown, and her last day of Cougartown was this past Monday. She had Tuesday through Thursday to recharge herself, for today she headed back to work on '24.' It shoots pretty far north, so she'll be renting a room up there for the work week.

Last night, we bought plane tickets to KC for Thanksgiving. We'll arrive in time for dinner on Thursday, and be back sleeping in our bed by Saturday night. Still, though, it will be nice to see the Hodges/Short family.

I'm taking my fancypants camera with me to Hartford. Hopefully I can catch some autumn!