Brief. Or, not really.

This'll be short and sweet, as I need to get in bed.

I had an overnight shoot on Monday and Wednesday nights of this week, and I'm still feeling Wednesday. Thursday morning, after leaving the Target store at 7:00am, I arrived home at 8:15, took an hour nap, and then went to a voice over session, then ballet. I'm glad I got to do the VO, as that's more money that I didn't actually have to audition for, but I should have gone straight home after that.

Ballet wasn't a complete disaster, at least not for the first 30 minutes. But after that things quickly went downhill. After one pretty good round of pirouettes, I fell apart. I got lost and couldn't get my balance or my concentration back. Then we tried a waltzing circly combination, and, once again, I was ok for one round. Then we switched to the left side and my right Achilles tendon somehow found its way between the first two toes of my left foot and I tripped. It happened again and I fell forward onto my hands. At that point I snapped and walked off the floor. The instructor asked if I was ok and I just started sobbing. I walked into the bathroom (quickly) and crouched down in a stall and sobbed, trying to get myself back together. It wasn't that I was physically hurt or really embarrassed, I was simply beyond exhausted and couldn't control my emotions. Then my nose started bleeding. Not gushing, but enough to have to keep swabbing it with toilet paper. I went back into the studio and sat on a chair for the rest of the class, waiting for my nose to stop bleeding.

So, lesson learned: don't dance when you haven't slept enough.

Next week we showcase the environmental play we've been working on since last week. It's silly and fun, and I think the kindergarteners will like it.

Movies: Really want to see Kung Fu Hustle, want to - but not as much - see Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Books: Going to start Confessions of An Ugly Stepsister tonight. It's by the same author as Wicked. Heard it was less political, but still an enjoyable read. I may enjoy the lack of politics. I may not.

Good night.

Fitter, Happier, More Productive

I have an overnight shoot tonight for Target. I'm debating with myself whether I should take a nap or learn my lines. Common sense would say learn my lines, but common sense's younger, lazier sister says that I won't be able to function if I don't get some sleep. I would only be able to get about 45 minutes if I fell asleep RIGHT NOW, as I have to pack up some clothes for the evening, as well as take my hair out of its twists. What to do, what to do.

In other news, I feel like I'm in much better shape than I was just two weeks ago. I feel skinnier and not as cloudy, and I think it has something to do with my lack of constant snacking. Don't get me wrong: eating in between meals is great for your metabolism, as long as you're not eating crap. I ate a whole lot of crap that I didn't need - candy, candy, and more candy - instead of stuff that I did - complex carbs like vegetables, protein, dairy, etc - and if left me feeling bloated and gross. Thanks to Invisalign®, I'm hungry all the time, but at least I'm not eating crap.

Hooray for a Monday update! I'm going to sleep.

Saturday Is A Good Day

My voice is feeling better, thank goodness. I don't think I could have taken much more of the strained vocal cords. Also, my shows have slowed way down and will turn into a trickle by the second week in May, and I am not at all sad about that. I'm grateful for the work that enables me to be an actor full-time, but I've been doing this since October (well, since last year, really) and I'm ready for a break. Exuding the mental energy to do the shows gets harder when the on camera opportunities are more plentiful: my attention is divided, and because the on camera stuff is new, I, naturally, want to focus more on that. Nonetheless, I'll survive until this season ends, even with the major scheduling snafus that have popped up. It's really nice to be wanted.

I was really supposed to write this entry yesterday, as I want to be a M,W,F updater. That's my goal, anyway. And, in the strange way that my brain works, that just made me think of this summer, and how it will be difficult to be a M,W,F updater unless I buy a laptop. Hmmm...I'm slowly digging my way out of debt and I'm considering spending another thousand dollars for a piece of machinery that I don't really need, but want a whole lot. Hm. Hm.

Triffid (my plant) is growing freakishly fast. When I got it, it had four or five large leaves. All of those original leaves have dropped off and died except for one, and that remaining original is about to fall off. However, within the last two months about 10 new shoots have exploded out of the soil, and sometimes they wouldn't be there when I left the house in the morning. And just now I've been sitting at the computer for about two hours, and when I first sat down I looked over at the plant. The leaf that has spent most of the last two months tightly curled has finally opened into a pretty, delicate, light green leaf. When I sat down, the edges of the leaf crinkles were still pretty curled up. I looked back just now and it seems to have expanded by about an inch. Scary. That's why I named it Triffid. My sister was afraid it might reach over in the middle of the night and eat her, but she was still there when I woke up, so I don't think it's to the people-eating stage yet. Maybe just insects and spiders. And even though it frightens me with its rapid growth, I admire its resilience: I'm a noted plant-killer.

Dance was fun today, even though I felt like Super Dunce in tap class. The thing I love about tap is that I completely and totally understand how things are supposed to sound and look, even if I can't do them. I understand immediately. It's just trying to get my feet to do what I intellectually understand is where the problem comes in. It was fun, nonetheless. And ballet was great. Didn't get everything, but had fun with it, anyway.

Next week gets crazy. I'll try to keep my M,W,F goal, but we'll see how I feel after two overnights, rehearsal, and two auditions.

Ciao.

Just take a potato peeler to my vocal cords; it'll do less damage.

My microphone isn't working. Again. This is the third mic I've had this year. It worked fine on Friday. Today, the belt pack wouldn't turn on. I tried multiple batteries, thinking that somehow the brand new 9-volt I'd put in there had died, but that was not the problem. No, it just refuses to turn on for some mysterious reason.

So, I had to shout my way through two performances in a very large gym. There is no replacement mic to be had from Chicago, and I have two more shows on Friday. I have no idea what I'm going to do or what the boss-types plan to do, but I can't shout my way through the rest of my shows this year. There aren't that many, but I really can't afford to develop vocal nodes or lesions just before a summer of a LOT of talking and singing.

I just got an email from someone in Germany saying that my emails are being sent to their account. They attached a file and I opened it, which might have been very bad. It didn't seem like spam or a nasty virus, but you never know. Anyway, people don't write viruses for Macs anyway, and it was a .exe program if it was a virus, so...I think my computer is fine. I wrote back basically saying "I have no idea what you're talking about" and if they don't write back I'll probably forget all about it.

I should sleep. Audition, a short shoot, and rehearsal loom on the horizon. I should be rested.

Out of It

I have a mild cold right now. I took some Actifed earlier, hoping to be able to make it through ballet without sneezing my head off, and I did, but I was dancing through a cloud, and not in a good, "golden age of Hollywood" kind of way. I felt incredibly dumb, but by the same token I didn't really care because I was so doped up.

In addition to sniffling and sneezing, I've been watching my parents' dog for the week, and thus haven't really been on the internet much. I haven't really missed it, other than itching to check my email in hopes that I'd find out that someone wanted to offer me a starring role in a blockbuster feature film. That didn't happen, of course, because my phone has been extremely quiet this week.

I had five auditions last week. Five. Have I gotten anything from any of them? No. I'm trying to to think too hard about it, because I realize that 0 out of 5 is normal in the acting biz. However, it would have been nice to have gotten at least one. My busy time with HPC is drawing to a close, and my summer job doesn't begin until June. I'll have an entire month with very little income. I won't die or starve, but it'll be cutting it close, especially with the summer job not paying exorbitant amounts of money.

Anyway, I choose not to worry. No worrying about where the money will come from, because it doesn't help the money come any sooner or in greater amounts. The money comes when it comes.

I probably won't update until I'm back in my apartment next week, so I hope that you have a great weekend.

Ciao.

Nesting

It's spring, and I'm nesting. Or, at least, feeling like nesting. I just spent the last hour looking at houses and condos in St. Paul and Minneapolis. I found a lot of beautiful places that I cannot afford, but can nevertheless dream about. There's one that looks like a castle and has ginormous windows. There's another that looks like "Everytown, USA" on the outside and is surprisingly updated on the inside.

But I can't afford these homes. Not yet anyway. Nonetheless, it would be nice to own a piece of property to help ease the tax burden being self-employed has placed on me. If I was a home-owner I probably would have had a sizeable refund this year instead of shelling out money to a government with a ridiculous tax code that places a huge burden on the self-employed lower/middle class.

I digress. But I do want a house. And I won't settle for anything less than nice. Which means renting for quite some time longer.

* * * *

I auditioned for a feature-length film today. Eek! I'm trying to forget about it, because if I think about it too much, I'll start obssessing. But the cool part was that my reputation had apparently preceeded me before I even walked in the room. The director told me that lots of people had submitted my name for the character I auditioned for. None of them told me about it, though, so that was a nice surprise. Some day soon, directors all across the land will be asking for the "Adia Morris" type! Heh.

Crap.

Apparently, I get no refund this year. Unless I've done something hideously wrong (which is difficult with TurboTax), I owe $2323 to the federal government. That makes my head hurt. A lot. I have the money, but it was going to float me this summer to get over not being paid much for eight weeks of work. Now I am without a personally accrued safety net, and it's not cool.

This is the sucky part about being self-employed.

I'm SAG eligible. Not really, though.

Melissa Gilbert wrote me a letter and told me that I'm eligible to join SAG. Because of my principal role in a Pepsi commercial.

Excuse me? I haven't been in a Pepsi commercial. Ever. And if I have, if someone drugged me, propped me up put me in a Pepsi commercial, then I want my $30,000 Pepsi commercial money.

But, obviously, that's not what happened. They mixed me up with someone else, and now I have to write them copious letters saying, "Not me. You guys screwed up. Check your records. Fix this." Etc, etc. I sincerely hope it doesn't take more than one letter, but you know that these things are never easy. Not these days.

So I pretty much have work all the way up until this time next year. It's good, and it's kind of scary to be booked up that far in advance. That isn't to say that I can't do other shows in addition to the school shows that I do, but to have my schedule pretty well established for the next year is weird. I'm not sure what's going to happen when next May rolls around and my HPC shows are done, but we'll cross that (possibly country-spanning) bridge when we come to it.