I'm not usually this kind of girl

Ok, I know how this looks, and I'm sorry. I've never been one of those people who's just ga-ga over babies, so I'm as surprised as you are by the apparently inexorable aww-factor of this sort of thing. (It gets you when you least expect it.)

Good thing there's a website I can turn to when the illicit craving hits...

inner space

This is a picture of my left eye.

The pattern on the right side of the image is called a starburst, and I don't have one in my right eye. (It's not a photographic blemish; it showed up last year, too, along with the wispy clouds around the iris. Neither affects my vision.) My opthamologist is curious to see whether similar patterns are visible in photos of my siblings' eyes.

Is it weird that I think it's pretty?

how to frame a populist argument

Step 1: Call Chris Rock.

It's not like the camel was all that sturdy to begin with.

I'm not sure why McCain's debate cancellation/campaign suspension/VP debate postponement is the thing that finally tipped me into insanity -- frankly, I should have had money riding on something like this -- but I've been checking newsfeeds every twenty minutes all day. I'm constructing rebuttals for something nobody's even willing to argue. This situation is so wackaloon we're all just sitting around rocking and hissing.

Somebody better win this damn election soon or I'm going to lose my job.

You're what?

I showed up for my first day of blocking rehearsals for my upcoming show -- one week after the first full-cast read-through -- and one of the other actors is already off-book. Dude, way to throw down the gauntlet!

as good as it gets

For my birthday, I got:

- a brief cloudburst and glorious rainbow

- fireworks! (thanks, mysterious Bellevue celebrants!)

- a tap dance performed by this dog
- smooches from (or on) 3 babies & 4 kids

- seven birthday cakes and pies
- bourbon, bourbon, and more bourbon

- an all-day party hosted by two darlings:  grilled food, tasty baked goods, limey drinks, and so very very many lovely and charming and amazing and talented people

May such good fortune continue for all of us in the upcoming year!

(pics from CCS and CComte. Thanks, buddies!)

my other new favorite thing

The inimitable RKatz offhandedly asked if I listened to the American Theatre Wing's "Downstage Center" podcasts. I do now, and you should, too. I'm very proud of what I do as a fringe theater actor in the Northwest, but the opportunity to listen to real, live career artists ("What are those, Mommy?") discuss the craft is not to be missed. 

Of particular note: James Earl Jones on the value of education, the "delusion" of race, not being an activist, and how annoying it is that film actors play entire roles off-voice for effect. (Of a talented actor playing an American president on TV, "He whispers. Too. Fucking. Much.")