Grammatically Incorrect

Dreary rainy Saturday.  Already done some exercise. eaten alittle breakfast and now I'm hangin' with my husband and listening to 'Wait Wait Don't Tell Me' on NPR and drinking some Irish Breakfast Tea wishing it was Dunkin Donuts coffee.  Surprisingly I'm feeling pretty good today, despite a stressful week.  For the past couple of years during this season an overwhelming sense of dread comes over me with the knowledge that winter will be here soon.  The chemical effect on my every day life is at times more intense than PMS.  But today (even with the inclimate weather) I am given a reprieve from this weird feeling of ennui.  I'm going to embrace it and let it ride for as loooong as possible. 

OH...and I voted early for the first time ever.  I feel pretty damn good about that too!

Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz...

You Are a Joan!

Take Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz at HelloQuizzy

How Racism Works

 What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

 What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

 What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said "I do" to?

 What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

 What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

 What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?

 What if Obama were a member of the Keating-5*?

 * The Keating Five were five United States Senators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senator) accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_scandal) as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_Loan_crisis) of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

 What if McCain were a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

 If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

 This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

 PS: What if Barack Obama had an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter....

 You are The Boss... which team would you hire?

 With America facing historic debt, 2 wars, stumbling health care, a weakened  dollar, all-time high prison population, mortgage crises, bank foreclosures,  etc.

 Educational Background:

Obama:

  Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.

 Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna **bleep** Laude

Biden:

  University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.

  Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

 vs.

McCain:

  United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

Palin:

  Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester

  North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study

  University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism

  Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester

  University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism

Now, which team are you going to hire?

Things I have learned this month:

* If you grow up in Hawaii , raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'

* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

* Name your kids Willow , Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

* If you teach children about sexual predators, you are irresponsible and eroding the fiber of society.

* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant,you're very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America 's.

* If your husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that hates America and advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA , your family is extremely admirable.

So as crazy summer stock goes....we had a rehearsal on Sunday (which was just a read-thru of the play and blocking most of the first Act) and then a day off.  Today we are back at it.  We have finished blocking and after a 2 hour dinner we shall start working.  This is where we all freak out because we so desperately want to be memorized....and we so aren't.  I wish this were Shakespeare.  Then it would be a no brainer...It is rather rustic here.  It is an official village...not a town.  So you can imagine how small and out of the way it is. I will be taking pictures and chronicling my adventures here...NOT that it will be exciting or that I will have too much to say...but because I just NEED too.  So bear with me and thanks for reading. So far...so good!

So the development next door is under way.  The foundation is laid and the bricks have been laid up to the raised 1st floor.  Now they are in a strange holding pattern.  I'm assuming because of the iffy weather.  The developers have asked to use our water and common area electricity and in return pay our entire water and electric bill for as long as they use it.  Well  I told them there would be no easy way to get to a 'common area' outlet without keeping a door or window open thus breaching security.  No.  They want to bring their own electrician in, tap into a conduit in the basement and drill through the foundation and install and outdoor GFI outlet.  Come on.  Do I need this headache.  I shall bring it up at our association meeting tomorrow.....another thing I am dreading with all my heart.  After I get done writing this drivel I have to make up my agenda then call two of my owners who like to fight during these meeting and ask them to hold their tongues and play nice. Adult babysitting.  I have missed two days of work in the past month. One day, due to waking up and the earth receding from our property due to the digging next door and the second day due to our water pipe springing a leak in the basement.  Now these yahoos next door want me to take an additional day so they can tap into our electric? 

Yesterday I woke up to a warm refrigerator and spent my day off shopping online for a new fridge.  Man....they've gotten way expensive.  Our pooped out fridge had some cool features...slide out glass shelves,  crank shelves so you could auto adjust them without removing food, wire bins that tilted out.  No such stuff in this fridge...just a fridge but I'll take it as long as it cools my food. According to my repair guy (who's great by the way) Maytag's suck....but we ended up getting another Maytag because it matches the rest of our appliances in our kitchen.  I'm sure this one's good for at least 5 years and I hope to be far from this condo by then.  Next time I'm buying a Whirlpool.

Tonight I spend about 4 hours in heels ( I work until Midnight) and an evening gown escorting a James Bond look alike around a big corporate party.  Having a slight cold and having this Association Meeting tomorrow doesn't make me happy that I have to stay up late tonight with a bunch of rich drunk people....but mama need to pay for her new fridge.

Luckily, with all this crap going on I have still been able to get to my 3 day a week Pilates appointment.  Unfortunately I can't say that it's helped me tone up or lose weight....but it has helped me focus on me, my body, my breathing for one blessed hour 3 days a week.

I had not intended to have a whole month pass before I wrote another blog...but a lot of life got in the way.  First, I embarked on a journey to my hometown for 2 reasons. One....to be the caregiver of my wonderfully goofy 1 year old nephew as their parents went to a weekend St. Pat’s party at my brother’s alma mater.  Two...I auditioned for an equity theatre in the middle of Missouri called Arrow Rock Lyceum Theatre. 

First off....Arrow Rock is a wonderful place.  Charming. peaceful...who would have thunk it that there could be such a viable theatre in such a place.  There’s hope for American Culture!  I landed the role of Claire in PROOF and better yet I will be directed by none other than my former acting Professor, Kat Singleton.  I am so happy I could pee myself.

Second...my little monkey (aka nephew) Jack.  What a great kid.  He’s such a happy baby.  His parents are so laid back and calm...so so is Jack.  I was with him from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon and he was a handful...no doubt...he’s at his ’drunk baby’ stage. He’s walking but with no control.  So he’d take off and bee line towards every furniture corner imaginable.  We finally had to hide the coffee table....but he made me laugh and coo and act silly.  NOW....many things I learned from this 48 hours.  If I had a kid I would never bathe, never wear makeup.  I’d walk around like a zombie and would look emaciated because I’d never have time to eat.....Sheesh...seriously I was so ready to go back to my quiet existence in Chicago.  I don’t know how people DO it and I only did it for two DAYS.  There is no way I could do that day in and day out....AND work!!!! Ladies I gotta hand it to ya.   But even after all this time has past my heart yearns for my little monkey.  I miss him terribly and I am ever so grateful to his parents (and my parents) for allowing me to care for him.  It was such an honor and a pleasure. Even changing his diapers and rocking him to sleep and feeding him and cleaning up the extreme mess after feeding him.  It was all wonderful.

Moving on.  I get back to Chicago and have more condo woes.  So the development next door decides to start excavating for the new condo.  They dig about a 7 foot hole, proceed to pound steel plates on the east side of the building but only put metal bars and plywood on our side of the building (this is of course to keep the ground from falling into the pit).  Well on this particular Wednesday 2 weeks ago, I get up to go to work and there is a message on my cell and my regular phone from one of the unit owners.  The ground is ’receding’ from our property."  Ummm okay.  I walk outside and sure enough..there’s our fence but nothings holding is up and there is nothing underneath a portion of our sidewalk.  Yeah.  This can’t be good. The guy running the machine next door is standing beside it staring.  "FIX IT..FIX IT NOW.  Call your boss and make sure you’re doing it right."  Anyway it’s a big mess.  They try to dump sand but it keeps sliding back into their pit.  Needless to say I had to take the day off work. Many thanks to my boss for all her understanding and her help.  I was on the phone all day with the Developer, the Alderman’s office, The City of Chicago, an independent structural engineer and when I wasn’t doing that I was weilding a video cam and a still cam taking pictures of the progress of the damage.  So where are we at this point?  The Structural Engineer assured me that the ground could recede all the way to our foundation and it would affect it.  We are going to lose our sidewalk and the Developer made a promise to me, the Alderman and the City of Chicago that he would replace it.  In the meantime we cannot enter or exit thru that side of the building.  They have place plywood sheets over the sidewalk and missing ground so that when it rains there won’t be an avalanche.  I get to followup with them today to see when we get to use that side of the building again.  Next.  That Saturday I’m down in the basement and see a tiny bit of water pooling around the main water pipe that comes into the building.  I follow the trail of water up the pipe to a ’scab’ in the middle of a section of pipe right above the shut-off valve.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  It looks like the pipe is ’bleeding’.  It’s just slowly oozing water.  Well I just touch it with my finger and.....fuck fuck fuck....water in a very ’stallion’ stream shoots out of a pinhole in the pipe.  I run upstairs and call RotoRooter.  I spend my day with wet towels and a mop until RotoRooter shows up only to find out that the guy isn’t equipped with a wrench or a part to fix the problem.  "OK.  What am I supposed to do until you guys can come back and fix it."  I saw visions of myself  on an inflatable bed in the basement...mopping water all night long.  Just then  the plumber gets the best idea ever.  He comes back from his truck with a piece of thick rubber tubing, cuts it into a thin strip, wraps it around the pipe and puts a metal clamp around it.  Voila. A patch.  Then he writes up an estimate for the work that will need to be done.  $950.  Crap.  He said the part would cost $250 alone.  I don’t buy it.  If you ask me RotoRooter overcharges.  He said someone would call me the next day to set up an appointment.  Well by Monday morning...still no call so I called another local plumber and gave him the whole story. He quoted me $400 (he says the part is only about $20) and he would be out on Wednesday morning.  Sure enough.  Prompt, courteous and extremely knowledgeable. The guys from MD Plumbing came out and did a great job.  Turns out our old water valve wasn’t holding and they couldn’t turn off the water from the street so they had to go to plan B.  They installed a new water valve above the old one and got rid of the leaking galvanized pipe. The idiot who installed it originally obviously didn’t realize the effect on electrolysis on putting copper pipe next to galvanized pipe.  So I had to spend another day off of work and the guys charged me $649.  I was very happy about that until I got a bill in the mail for our snow plow service for over $1000.  WTF???? For one month?  Yeah.  We’re not hiring them again.  Attended the AFTRA Local Board meeting and now I’m stressing about the disharmony between SAG and AFTRA and even though I make most of my money thru SAG I gotta tell you I’m siding with AFTRA on this one.  SAG is playing dirty and I don’t like it one bit.  I finally got to spend last weekend finishing tax prep and this week I’m finishing prep for a couple of Shakespeare auditions etc....then it’s off to LA for a little fun and relaxation....hopefully.  It has been a really crappy couple of weeks people!

http://www.shakespeareprojectchicago.org/tiobe.html