I know I update this for my own health so I feel it's time for a little update, even if it's only so I can stop staring at what it was like to turn 23 in AUGUST...

September brought Forever Plaid into my life and I will never be the same. A show like that is why I do theater... or did theater rather... more on that later. If you've never seen it and you appreciate 50's music and a loose plot, you must take part. I could honestly do that show every day for the rest of my life and be satisfied. I never wanted it to end.

But it did end and we moved on to Les Miserables. The title is a severe understatement let me tell you. I'm sure a lot of you have seen it and may love it the way dumb people love Cats, but let me tell you, trying to put a production of this monstrosity in THE ROUND is torture. Most of the people in the cast were lovely, until the 4th week of the run, so it wasn't them that made it miserable. There were a lot of factors involved in making this show one of the worst experiences in my long North Shore history. To say it was the longest month of my life would not be an exaggeration whatsoever.

After we closed Les Miz we were already waist deep in the theater's annual production of A Christmas Carol. If you live in New England and want to see ACC, go to see it at Trinity Rep in Providence NOT at North Shore. Our production has been gradually getting worse over the 20 years the show has been going on. It was adapted by our now-former Artistic Director and even by taking most of the text from the book, the show is still AWFUL. Technically it's magnificent. The fact that a small crew can get all of the elements to work at once is worth the price of admission. And there's pyro, how can you go wrong? It was a long 4 weeks of having to be to work at 8am, but it was soon over and with it my employment at North Shore.

It was a bittersweet end to my stint at NSMT and I left practically unemployed with no prospects on the horizon. After a bit of soul searching I decided that pursuing professional theater as a career wasn't going to be my best move right now, so I started looking for "normal" jobs via Monster & Career Builder. Talk about a draining process. It's now been a month of dead ends and disappointments, but I was offered a job on Friday and I nearly leapt through the phone to accept. Hooray for employment!!

Other than the daunting employment search and the occasional family dysfunction, everything else is actually fantastic. I've been spending time with friends, some old some new and just generally enjoying being 23. I'm also rather taken with a particular gentlemen who always knows how to make me feel better and who I hope to be with for a long time. And yes, my friends & mother all approve

So I guess that's pretty much it...

Oh my art! Ha. My grandfather (with a little coaching from myself) got me the 156 Prismacolor marker set for Christmas so expect some stuff soon. I'm not bluffing this time!!

Until later, deviants.