MischMash

Classic Water

2011-09-06T11:27:00.001-04:00

I had an intensive creative period during the spring.

I was writing and rehearsing for Improv Asylum's Life Before Sext which you can now catch Thursday through Saturday nights at Improv Asylum in the North End. at the same time, I was recording the Explosion Bus web series with Jonathan Katz, which you can start watching on Sept 13th. Also, I had the pleasure of co-writing my second Gorefest script. This time I teamed up with Laura Clark of Improv Boston to create a creepy and disgusting muscial medical horror show entitled Gorefest IX: MASSacre General Hospital. The show opens October 10th but you can already buy tickets online. After such a busy spring, I really didn't do a lot of writing this summer, including, as my brother continues to point out, in my blog(s).

Since yesterday was Labor Day I figured I would reshare my favorite David Berman poem and consider this the official start of my beginning to blog again. Here we go.

"Classic Water"

I remember Kitty saying we shared a deep longing for

the consolation prize, laughing as we rinsed the stagecoach.

I remember the night we camped out

and I heard her whisper

"think of me as a place" from her sleeping bag

with the centaur print.

I remember being in her father's basement workshop

when we picked up an unknown man sobbing

over the shortwave radio

and the night we got so high we convinced ourselves

that the road was a hologram projected by the headlight beams.

I remember how she would always get everyone to vote

on what we should do next and the time she said

"all water is classic water" and shyly turned her face away.

At volleyball games her parents sat in the bleachers

like ambassadors from Indiana in all their midwestern schmaltz.

She was destroyed when they were busted for operating

a private judicial system within U.S. borders.

Sometimes I'm awakened in the middle of the night

by the clatter of a room service cart and I think back on Kitty.

Those summer evenings by the government lake,

talking about the paradox of multiple Santas

or how it felt to have your heart broken.

I still get a hollow feeling on Labor Day when the summer ends

and I remember how I would always refer to her boyfriends

as what's-his-face, which was wrong of me and I'd like

to apologize to those guys right now, wherever they are:

No one deserves to be called what's-his-face.

Explosion Bus

2011-08-16T23:49:00.002-04:00

Hey Everyone!
I recently recorded Season 1 of this new animated web series with <namedropping> Jonathan Katz called Explosion Bus!
Here is a letter from our producer, the one and only Tom Snyder. </ namedropping>.

Explosion Bus

(The world's last animated hope)

Premiering on September 13, 2011 at explosionbus.com

"This exciting new full-length web series will no doubt be referred to, in the future, as the first web series to make grown TV executives cry." - Me (Tom) 2011

Dear Friends,

Twenty years ago, a dream came true when I got to work with Jonathan Katz on our first TV show together. Before then, I would force my wife to watch endless VHS clips of Jon. Five years later, Jon and I were startled to be collaborating with Tom Leopold, often labeled 'the funniest guy in America'. Ever since, the three of us have been inseparable, unless we're apart.

A little over a year ago, production began on Explosion Bus, a 4-season, animated epic starring these two brilliant guys. I created this show, hopefully like no other, expressly for Internet broadcast. Here are a few of its important and unique aspects:

None of the cast, which includes many brilliant local actors, are exposed to the script until moments before their lines are performed. They find out what is in store for their character as the scene develops. Their performances are 'in the instant'.
Our animators, the spectacular artistic director Robert Keough and the smartest artist in the East, Steve Davies, are not given post-production ‘notes’, the bane of an animator’s existence. This is unheard of in the business. (Ask any animator.) Bob and Steve know better than anyone what this world should look like. They are the visual artists.

Back to those local actors, and by local I mean Boston and New York... They all have spent many hours alone in sound booths, without proper ventilation, learning a new meaning of the word 'flexible'. They have each invented their characters, and there ain't a one of them that you won't love. Misch Whitaker, Megan Goltermann, Chris Cook, Jonathan Wilson, Ahna Tessler, Jayson James and Dan Weber have over a billion combined hours of stage appearance, and one of them slightly more.

Explosion Bus also includes amateur and professional performers who audition their acts as part of our animated show. We find them across the land through Craigslist. They are fearless, and generous and talented. We are deeply indebted to these wonderful people, young and old.

Want to find out what it is really all about?

Please visit our web site at explosionbus.com where you will find some fun, pre-launch stuff: trailers, interviews, shopping, etc. And on Tuesday, September 13th at 8:30 PM , it is there that you will watch Episode One of Explosion Bus. We firmly believe that we have the best time slot on the internet!

Til we meet again,
Tom Snyder

Improv: the Cult

2011-04-28T07:18:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading Tina Fey's new book Bossypants.

Fey devotes a large portion of the book to discussing improv. It wasn't until I was reading about the culture she found herself immersed in that I realized NOT EVERYONE DOES THIS. I have been taking my role in the improv cult for granted.

I don't ever assume that everyone went to nursing school. Or that everyone else grew up in West Roxbury. Yet I forget that years of rhyming drills weren't part of everyone else's college experience. I forget that not everyone spends their spare time playing make believe. It's easy I guess, because most of my friends have a unique day job that I know little to nothing about, and then at night they do what I do. Everyone I associate with has the same basic story that I do about finding and falling in love with improv. We don't have to talk about it, because although we went through it separately it was a shared experience. It's just what we all did, and what we all do. I'm not talking about being part of a show-biz social circle, although at there is certainly some overlap. I'm not even talking about belonging to the "theater kid" clique, although I have those groups of friends as well. Improv ingrains itself into you in ways you don't even consciously realize. To quote Tina Fey exactly: "studying improv literally changed my life."

I once posted a piece about what it means to apply the rules of improv in a medical workplace. This was a response piece to Liz Caradonna's blog post about the benefits of having a trainer improviser in the office workplace: Beyond the Funny.

When I joined The Yellow Submarines in high school, I had no way of knowing I was beginning a life long journey down a new way of life. I don't care that it sounds over dramatic to you. It isn't.

The Subs and I watched Whose Line is It Anyway (the British version) and thought "we can do that." So we did- learning and perfecting short form games each week. We went to see shows at Improv Boston and Improv Asylum, idolizing grown ups who had somehow made improv their livelihood.* Still, improv was just a game to me until I auditioned into Mission:IMPROVable at UMass.

My time in Mission was the most serious I have ever been about improv. We rehearsed three times a week. We had a show every Saturday. If you could not make all three rehearsals, you couldn't perform in the show on Saturday. If you missed too many rehearsals a semester, the director would talk with you about your commitment to the group. We hired alumni to come back and give workshops. We raised money and went to Chicago every year on Spring Break to see shows and take workshops at iO and The Annoyance. We did corporate shows, and college road shows during the school year. In the summer time we played at birthday parties for friends, and tried to busk on the streets of Boston.

We used to do a warm up called "Yes, Let's" and the attitude behind the game permeated our performances and our friendships. Want to make up new structures on stage, with a live audience? Yes, let's. Want to try to do an entire show backwards? Yes, let's. We failed sometimes, but that was half the game. the other half of the time we were brilliant. We were fearless in our love of the art.

By the end of sophomore year with only a handful of exceptions, EVERYONE I interacted with on any kind of regular basis was an improviser. My friends. My roommates. The guys I dated. When I left college I was more concerned with what I was going to do for my last show with Mission than I was with any other part of graduating.

My social circles now are slightly more diverse by virtue of my job, but not by much. My involvement in the Improv Boston community as well as my role at Improv Asylum see to that. Plus, most of my best friends from Mission are still in touch, some on a weekly basis.

So I really do forget that not everyone knows how to hold an "object work" coffee cup, and that not everyone ~~knows~~ cares what a "Harold" is. Most of my coworkers during the day won't "mirror" funny voices and don't "yes and," jokes. Instead they laugh and then ask me how my stand up is going and if this is part of my routine.

Sometimes I wonder what I'll do when I eventually move on from Improv Asylum. Until I read Bossypants it was easy to imagine that I might just retire. Try something new entirely. But now I know that even if I took a break from performing for a while (which, to quell any rumors before they start, is not my plan), I would never, ever be able to leave the cult. You take it all with you. Like a language that you never forget how to speak, like your handwriting but when you're not thinking making it neat, like the side you sleep on in your bed when no one else is there. It's just who you are.

Enough

2011-04-27T07:24:00.001-04:00

Interesting coincidence in The Telegraph as I browsed through my Google Reader, catching up on a week's worth of writing from some of my favorites.

I've thought about getting a tattoo on and off for the past few years. One design that I absolutely can't shake is the word "satis." It's Latin for "enough."

I love the word "enough" for its dual connotations. It can mean being comfortably satisfied or can insinuate the breaking point. (Who, while bickering with their sibling, hasn't heard their mother scream "Enough! Knock it off."?) I love the idea of a reminder that I do not need anything more because my cup is full. Satis. I also enjoy the reminder to not put up with a lot of bullshit. "That's enough of that," my little tattoo will remind me. Satis.

And in this recent blog post Stephen Hough voices his love of the word "enough," for most of the same reasons I do.

Maybe we should get matching tattoos, Mr. Hough!

Finding Your Niche

2011-04-26T11:18:00.000-04:00

Today I am going out to UMass Amherst to address the second bachelor students. I went and spoke to the undergrad nursing class in January and it was a huge success. What am I going to talk about? I'm going to talk about figuring out what kind of nurse you are, and creating a role for yourself in the world that fits that person.

My involvement in coming to speak to the school of nursing is the stuff of fairy tales for me. I was well known in the School of Nursing, and mostly well liked. However, since I was not a traditional nursing student, not many of my professors expected I would become a nurse. In fact, when I graduated, they didn't read off a hospital after my name, which is what typically happens.
"J. Jones, Cooley Dickinson, Northampton, Ma. A. Morrison, Children's Hospital, Boston."

For me they read, "M.Whitaker... (loooong pause) will be... will be performing at Improv Asylum in Boston," because I had just made the NXT cast and that's what I wrote on my graduation information sheet.

So when they invited me back to speak to young impressionable students... that amazed me. It still amazes me. I always fantasized I would have a chance to tell my story to people it might matter to. And now I am being given that chance.

Nursing school was difficult. Not because I wasn't great at memorization, cramming, or writing 20 page papers the night before they were due. Boston Latin School taught me all that a long time ago.

No, nursing was difficult because I was trapped between two worlds. Comedy and Nursing. Theater and Medicine. Art and Pragmatism. Doing both made sense to me, but it made little sense to many of my professors.

In fact, I had one clinical instructor who, on a weekly basis would take me aside and ask if I had quit Mission:IMPROVable yet. I hadn't. I had been in the group for four years before she met me, I explained. I planned on doing improv professionally later on, I told her. And so long as it didn't effect my grades, it was really none of her business. Even as I pulled in a steady line of "A"s on my papers, tests and care plans these little side bars continued because "comedy just isn't an appropriate hobby for a nurse."

This is what I looked like sophomore year of Nursing School.
I wouldn't have placed bets on me getting an RN either.

Meanwhile, I was fighting some personal battles. My father had passed away at the beginning of sophomore year and my mother was/ is unable to work. I was newly financially responsible but couldn't qualify for aid because they assuming my mom could throw some of Dad's pension my way, which she couldn't actually afford to do. So I had taken out a loan and was working as hard as I could without quitting improv. Often I was coming to school not having slept at all because I had to work overnight shifts to make money.

One morning, my white sneakers split in half after being on my feet all night. The next morning I pulled on my green high tops and went to my clinical in West Springfield where I was shadowing a school nurse at a local high school. We had been working together for a few weeks and she had already commented that I could relax the school uniform so I went in and everything was fine. The next week I still hadn't replaced the shoes because I needed to wait for my next paycheck. Unfortunately, this was the day my UMass clinical instructor decided to visit me at the clinical site. She took me into the back room, where we let girls who say they have cramps lie down when they want to skip gym.

I stared a a poster on the wall of "100 Things To Do Instead of Smoking," and listened as my instructor told me that I was the reason people don't take nurses seriously. I thought about all the nurses in the world wearing teddy bear scrub tops and tried not to open my mouth. She told me the next time I came in I better have white shoes. I told her the truth. That I couldn't afford them right now.

"Don't you have parents?" she asked.
"I have one," I answered, daring her to go further. Which she did.

A verbal fight ensued. In the end, I won. But not before some terrible things were said on both sides. She insulted my family. I threatened to take it to the Dean. I'm amazed she passed me that semester. But she did. Green high tops, sassy back-talk and all.

Those stories are just two examples. There were a million reasons I hated nursing. I wanted to quit, but I have never been a quitter. I have never walked away from something just because it's hard. I was good at the technical skills, and I got good grades on every care plan. The only thing that was hard, it seemed, was being accepted by other nurses. I just didn't fit in. Maybe it was enough, I thought, just to know I could have gone into nursing.

The person who finally got through to me was Jennifer Foster. She taught Culture and Anthropology. She had traveled the whole world. She wore funky clothes. When I mentioned to her that I was probably leaving the school of nursing she listened carefully and then said simply, "don't." I'm paraphrasing here but she told me, "you don't hate nursing. You hate the culture of nursing school. When you leave here you choose what you want to do, and the people you will do it with. You will find your niche. The nursing world needs more nurses who are like you. Because only you will fill that niche. Don't forget that."

I didn't forget that.

When I spoke to the students last winter I told them that one of the most important things they could do for themselves was remember that they are free to NOT take advice. They do not have to listen to people who tell them to quit something they love. By the same token, they also do not have to listen to me.

Everyone on my path was trying to do something good for me. The woman who hated comedy wanted me to be a successful (and published) psych nurse. She was giving me advice from that lens. The woman who hated my shoes wanted me to be taken seriously, and she was worried I wouldn't be. It made her say some very mean things, but it had originated from a helpful place. But I was free to politely disagree with them. As soon as you figure out that you are free to NOT take advice, life gets a lot easier. It really frees you up to set goals and then systematically pursue them. Or you know, float through life on whimsy like I do, accidentally landing both my dream jobs in one year. Whatever works for you.

I received a lot of emails afterwards thanking me. A lot of students said they were glad someone had the courage to say the things I said. Some of them said they also had been thinking about quitting because they don't feel like they fit the "nursing mold." They felt better now. I felt better too. Telling all the stories about nursing school helped me let go of my anger.

So, I found my Niche. Obviously. But the thing about Niches is that, sometimes they change too. If they didn't I'd still be teaching theater at a Montessori. That was perfect for a while, but then it wasn't anymore. I'm going to add that to my speech today. You have to continue to be aware of yourself, reevaluate your goals and your dreams and then keep carving away at your place in the world. Because for a room full of intelligent, dedicated, passionate people there's absolutely no excuse not to do what you love.

mutated marine life

2011-04-25T07:43:00.000-04:00

For the past month or so, I've started posting riddles for my patients to think about while they're in line for their medications. I write a riddle every morning at whatever medication station I'm working at.
When a bunch of patients have gotten the riddle I change it up.

The other day I wrote,
"It has holes in the bottom, holes in the top, and holes along the sides. But it still holds water. What is it?"

One of my young guys approached the counter.

"It's not a fish is it?"

"No," I told him, smiling.

"Is it an octopus?"

"Since when does an octopus have holes in the top and sides?" I asked.

"A chernobyl octopus!"

So that's the new answer to the riddle. Because "sponge" is a lot less funny.

Happy Easter! love, the 80's!

2011-04-24T07:27:00.019-04:00

I actually have a copy of this commercial on a VHS copy of the stage production of Peter Pan with Mary Martin which aired on NBC one year. I have no idea if it aired every year or what, because once I had it on VHS I watched it approximately every single day for the rest of my life.

Easter Tridium

2011-04-23T10:26:00.000-04:00

Easter is almost here, and that means the end of Lent, for which I am always eternally grateful because Lent is the gloomiest season of all in the church.

I didn't go to church on Holy Thursday this year because I was scheduled for shows. I didn't think I would mind, but I did. Mostly because in the past year I found a church community that takes the feet washing to a new level. That may seem weird and uncomfortable to some people, but it's exactly the hands-on version of Catholic theology that I relate to so well.

"You're not a real Catholic," Jeremy said recently with an air of surprise, "you're like a strange Christian- hippie hybrid." *

I guess I am. It doesn't help (or should I say that it doesn't hurt?) that during Lent this year instead of revisiting The Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales, (as I have done in years past) I instead read:

- If God is Love, Phillip Gulley and Jim Mulholland

- If the Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus, Phillip Gulley

and excerpts from

- The Women's Bible, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Throughout the years I have had periods in which I have taken great comfort and pride in the church. I have also had periods, difficult to shake, where I am embarrassed, ashamed, saddened and troubled by the church. But I've always retained my membership. I've never not been Catholic. The same is true now. Although, now I am more comfortable than I have ever been just defining myself as a Christian-Catholic Hybrid. **

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* This is because I told Jeremy I like to pray in the woods. He doesn't even know about the feet washing.

** If we have to have definitions. Which we don't. Because that's, like, just The Man trying to keep you down. Let's go burn our draft cards. And our bras. And the tip of this joint.

In Print!

2011-04-20T21:48:00.000-04:00

UMass Amherst Magazine was Boston themed this month.
As such, they ran a story by Patricia Sullivan about Improv Asylum.
The piece features me, Norm Laviolette and Jeremy Brothers because we're all hi-larious UMass alumni.
You can check it out here. Personally, I think she captured us perfectly.

Expiration Date

2011-04-19T07:33:00.001-04:00

I bought orange juice in November. I was sick; thought some juice would make me feel better. For some reason, however, I never opened the juice. I never unscrewed the cap, and more importantly, I never popped the inner seal.

This past week I decided to clean out the contents of the refrigerator. As I tossed aside forgotten leftovers and a half rotten bag of spinach, I came across the OJ, tucked in the very back of the fridge next to a tin of maple syrup.

The stamp on the carton read Nov 29 10. Curious, I shook the carton and then opened it up. I poured myself a glass and took a whiff. Orangey. The juice was the color of its parent fruit, without any sign of mold or rot. I drank three glasses of it as I finished the rest of my work. The next day, because I saw no problem with it, I finished the rest of the carton.

My little experiment's results didn't surprise me. I tend to be lax with expiration dates. Unlike the well meaning friend who once tried to dash the pills out of my hand once she saw the Tylenol had expired, I think of the tiny numbers as more of a suggestion than a rule.

This attitude was definitely something I learned as a child. In his copy of "Dad's Own Cookbook", my father found a chart of how long food can last when properly stored. He made a photocopy of it and it hung on our refrigerator as a guideline. The book, which I now have in my own kitchen, has this to say about hot dogs for example:
- opened package: one week
- unopened package: two weeks
- in a freezer and wrapped: 1-2 months

WebMD offers similarly practical advice in this feature article, as well as a guide to interpreting the difference between things like "sell by," and "best if used by" labels.*

On my lunch break at work while trying to get updates about the weather I stumbled on an article on Boston.com's home page about exactly this issue.

The article raised an interesting point - regardless of whether individuals choose to take a risks on an "expired" product or not, is it ethical (or legal) for schools or prisons to use foods which are past their dates.

Ah, So. The rub. I don't mind eating yogurt that's a week past its due date after I spot check it. What's more, after looking at it and smelling it, if I saw nothing wrong with it I would even give it to my own mother! But the question remains: would I want it dispensed sight unseen in a school? In a hospital? In a prison?

There is so much food wasted in this country every single day. In college I waited tables in the dining room of an Assisted Living Home for a while. At the end of the shift, I watched as entire pots of soup, plates of steak, steamed veggies were thrown into the dumpster. I begged the chef to let me take the wasted food at the end of the day to a local Soup Kitchen. "I'll do it myself," I said. "I'll come in on my nights off to pick it up as well." I imagined recruiting friends. We'd truck it over in backseats of our cars each night before the kitchen closed.

He smiled sadly at my idealism and then dismissed it. "We can't," he said. "The food wasn't kept on warmers. It can begin growing bacteria as it cools. As a chef, I simply couldn't allow people to eat that food. If they got sick..." He trailed off leaving me to my disappointment. It was one of my first lessons in the complexity of Hunger as one of those Big World Issues. Some people have more food than they need. Others have none. But sharing might be dangerous, so throw all the pot roast away.

So what about food BEFORE it is cooked? Do we have to throw that away too? Based on the voluntary dates that have been chosen arbitrarily in some cases and conservatively in almost all cases? what about milk in sealed bottles? Meat in its plastic sheath packing? What about canned goods, frozen foods, and rice in closed boxes?

Personally, I am not scandalized by the idea that prisons, schools, or even hospitals use food past the labeled "date," as long as the decisions to use the foods remain informed. Kitchen staff should have a knowledge of basic food safety and access to guidelines about the life expectancy of properly stored foods. They should be empowered by their direct supervisors to question stock based on what it looks like or smells like when they open it. The way anyone would do when cooking for themselves or a family member.

Also in college, under the tutelage of some Freegan friends I learned to harvest foods from dumpsters just after the local super market tossed away the day's produce. To this day, I don't see this as being much different from my Farmers Market strategy.** One of my favorite things to do then was to stake out the Dunkin Donuts on Rt 9 near Spirit Haus.They didn't put trash in with their donuts. Just bagged up the donuts and tossed them away at 11pm. Sometimes they would just hand them off, all bagged up like that. The donuts had reached their "expiration time," and could no longer be sold to customers.

But they were still good. Believe me.

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*At this point I'd like to smugly point out that WebMD says that food which is frozen is "safe indefinitely," which I tried to explain to a roommate recently when he wanted me to toss three perfectly good boxes of veggie burgers.
** The trick is to show up at Haymarket just as things are shutting down. When I've timed it right, I was able to buy bags and bags of fruits for a mere fraction of the price they fetched all day.

My brother always asks me about my blog before he asks about my job.

2011-04-18T19:33:00.000-04:00

My last blog entry is dated March 17th and that makes sense. The very next day my landlord began construction on my bathroom. Since I was staying with friends/ showering at the gym, I did not have a ton of time to update the blog. The renovations took a week, and after that I began using my days off to travel. I hit New York City, Tampa, Sarasota and Chicago all within the past couple of weeks. At a time when I should have been blogging MORE so I could share all the amazing things I've been doing, I scrapped public writing off the priority list altogether in favor of keeping a personal journal.

Je ne regrette rien. Seriously.

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, marking the beginning of Holy Week. Alas, this too means writing may be scarce for the next few days as I try to spend some extra time in contemplation. But never fear, writing will once again be a priority as of next week as I shed my wool coat for a denim jacket and trade vanilla chai lattes for iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts.

Black Velvet Band

2011-03-17T09:57:00.000-04:00

Hidden Falls

2011-03-16T00:04:00.000-04:00

Just a reminder about tonight...
Remember to purchase tickets online for the "Comedy Lab" show.

Hidden Falls: The Musical

Wednesday Nights in March

8pm at Improv Boston

In this 40 minute long improvised musical, actors will create the town of

"Hidden Falls," anew based on audience input at the top of each show.

Through song and scene we'll discover the people who make up the town,

and the dreams and desires that make up those people.

Because it's completely improvised, no two shows will be alike!

Buy tickets online for one or more performances.

Part of Improv Boston's Wednesday night Comedy Lab series.

Director: Steve Gilbane

Piano: Steve Gilbane

Percussion: Jeff Greenwald

Featuring: Jaime Church, Mat Gagne, Don Schuerman, Ben Scurria, Monica Shea, Deanna Tolliver, and Misch Whitaker

House Guest

2011-03-12T10:20:00.000-05:00

In the morning on Friday I lay in bed checking my email until I heard Liz bustling about in my living room. When I opened the door she greeted me with wet hair, clean clothes and a cry of "You're alive! And your hair is..."

My hair was standing on end from the night before. I grunted at her and she replied, "you're out of toilet paper, you know."

I laughed and pointed to a roll I had been keeping in my room. "Secret toilet paper."

She laughed and said, "I should have known. I woke up this morning and went to use your bathroom but I noticed you didn't have any toilet paper. I looked around, figuring you had some in the bathroom and found NOTHING.

"Then I looked for paper towels. None. Napkins? None. Coffee filters?"

"I have coffee filters."

"I couldn't find them. I went through your kitchen, bathroom and pantry wondering where you might have hidden toilet paper, or an appropriate substitute. Nothing.

"And then I thought - well time to take a shower!"

Three Hole Punch at WICF

2011-03-11T13:07:00.001-05:00

"We met in college," is one way to describe what happened at the birth of Three Hole Punch.
Tonight the girls are (literally) back in town and we're going to harness the forces of our collective quirk!
Three Hole Punch has dabbled in sketch, organic bullshit, interactive performance art, and musical improv. But tonight we will bring you our long form, showing off what we do best: making stuff up.

It's all part of the Women in Comedy Festival which continues tonight at Improv Boston's mainstage, Improv Boston's studio space as well as Mottely's Comedy Club.

Check out the full schedule here.

My recommendations:

7pm on the Mainstage and in the Studio: Comedy All-Stars: This is the improv show that Rachel Dratch will be guest appearing in. If it's sold out consider buying half-price tickets to attend the SIMULCAST in the Improv Boston studio.

9pm in the Studio: The United Front of Improv Comedy. Catch Three Hole Punch doing our thang as part of this shared time slot. Also see some of my favorite local comedians in Reunion and Michelle and Micah.

10pm on the Mainstage: Comedy Spectacular includes the rapping improv group North Coast from UCB. (I don't know about you but I haven't heard Rachel Rosenthal rap nearly enough since she left Improv Boston to become a fancy New Yorker.)

Women in Comedy Festival Opens Tonight!

2011-03-09T14:24:00.001-05:00

I am geeking out about the Women in Comedy Festival, and you should too.

Tonight kicks off the first evening of five nights of bold, new comedy from local and visiting artists.

At 7pm tonight join us at Improv Boston for "The Monsters of Improv" to see a double header: Improv Boston Artistic Director Presents back to back with The Women of Improv Asylum.

I'll be performing tonight as a "woman of Improv Asylum," but you can also catch me the rest of the weekend in a couple other sets as well.

But I'm not the reason you should come to this.
You should come to this because the line up is incredible, and that includes both shows and workshops.
The Women in Comedy Festival has multiple venues, so check out the schedule for the entire weekend, and start buying tickets!

And in case you missed the news, the headliners this year include Jen Kirkman, Kurt and Kristen, and Morgan Murphy as well as a special guest appearance on Friday night at 7pm by Rachel Dratch.

How are you not building a time machine to go to there already?

See you all tonight at Monsters of Improv!

Women in Comedy Festival (WICF) 2011 Trailer from WICF 2011 on Vimeo

A Sensation Like Pressure

2011-03-06T08:03:00.000-05:00

Due to some unfortunate events at work and in my family, my writing has been spotty.
Updates will begin again soon.

Meanwhile, I finally broke down and bought a Kindle. For a year I've had friends pushing me in that direction with cries of "but you like to read so much!" So many factors went into this decision, including the realization that I would really love to carry some nursing reference books with me to have at work (yeah, I'm a nerd, get over it), and finally acknowledging just how quickly I go through books when I'm on vacation.

But here's what pushed me over the edge: My friend John blogged about Instapaper. Like John, I already have a Google Reader feed which shows me the latest entries in all the blogs I subscribe to. But Instapaper lets me click a button in my toolbar and archive isolated articles to read later on. I can do this for articles in my Google Reader feed but also for links sent to me through email, or that show up on my Twitter or Facebook feed but that I don't have time to read right away. Then they show up (ad free) on my computer. Then I can drag them onto a Kindle or have them wired there for a small fee. Now I can take it all with me, and I do.

In the meantime please enjoy some suggestions for your reading enjoyment.
You can read them now, or you can Instapaper them for later. (Amazing, right?)

1. Nurse K rants about ER violence and delegation. Nurses everywhere swoon for her logic. Or fear her.
2. My friend Lynn Wilcott wrote this piece on the impending cuts to funding for Planned Parenthood. Dan Savage of Savage Love fame reblogged it because it's so good. Lighthearted but with a serious message.
3. This one's not as lighthearted, but it's a solid medical economics piece that anyone can wrap their mind around. Dr. Atul Gawande discusses how to lower overall health care costs by creating better care for those who use the health system the most.
4. And this one, also from John Perich's blog, I am including with a sly dedication to my "baby" brother who is interviewing for a new job this week. Good luck, kiddo.

Hidden Falls: The Musical

2011-02-28T23:46:00.002-05:00

Everybody! Everybody! I'm in this, so you should come check it out!

When you go to Improv Boston's website click on the Comedy Lab schedule to buy tickets.

Hidden Falls: The Musical

Wednesday Nights in March*

8pm at Improv Boston

In this 40 minute long improvised musical, actors will create the town of

"Hidden Falls," anew based on audience input at the top of each show.

Through song and scene we'll discover the people who make up the town,

and the dreams and desires that make up those people.

Because it's completely improvised, no two shows will be alike!

Buy tickets online for one or more performances.

Part of Improv Boston's Wednesday night Comedy Lab series.

Director: Steve Gilbane

Piano: Steve Gilbane

Percussion: Jeff Greenwald

Featuring: Jaime Church, Mat Gagne, Don Schuerman, Ben Scurria, Monica Shea, Deanna Tolliver, and Misch Whitaker

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* Except March 9th due to programming for the Women in Comedy Festival.

Which you should also come see.

Not The Doctor

2011-02-25T07:04:00.000-05:00

Patient: Why can't I have Flexeril? It's all just pain medication.
RN: Not really. See, Flexeril works in the brain stem and sends signals to your muscles to unclench. You told me your head hurts, which is probably not due to muscle spasms. Tylenol stops your cells from creating these things called prostaglandins. Prostaglandins are protective, your body forms them when there's a problem, but they also cause pain. By stopping them from being created, Tylenol reverses the pain you feel. Like in a headache.
Patient: You're not a doctor.
RN: You're right. I'm a nurse.

(stare down)

Patient: I think I'm having a muscle spasm now. Can I have my flexeril?
RN: (sigh).

The Effect of Ferrets on Blood Pressure

2011-02-24T07:04:00.003-05:00

It is a widely over-cited fact that "pets decrease blood pressure," however before I wrote an entry making any recommendations to switch out a ferret for HCTZ I decided to check my facts. When I searched some online journal databases for studies on animals and BP, the results were disheartening. All of the studies were older than five years ago, and none of them mentioned ferrets.

In the past few minutes, on a related note, I have had to stop typing and put my laptop down in order to prevent Rascal from eating the following things:

1. My leather bound copy of The GLOBE Illustrated Complete Works of William Shakespeare
2. A roll of duct tape
3. My left foot
4. The other ferret ¹

So, I can now tell you from my own qualitative data, that ferrets have a negative effect on hypertension in acute stress situations. Which is fine. I don't need lower blood pressure anyway.³

I haven't been a pet owner in years. And being a ferret owner is a very, very specific type of pet owner. ⁴
Ferrets are simpler than frogs or dogs but way harder than say, my Mom's beta fish, Ceviche. (Although come to think of it, my Mom has never claimed the title of "pet owner" per se, but she technically has been ever since that fateful Mother's Day when Brian and I decided a Japanese fighting fish would be an excellent gift. ⁵)

I get up early and go to bed late so I have time to clean their cage before I leave and when I get home. Ferrets need exercise but you can't walk them or go jogging with them at Fresh Pond, so they have to be allowed to run around and play. Playtime has to be supervised though. Unless you happen to enjoy the types of games that my college roommate's ferrets taught me: What's the Ferret Choking on Now?, How Did The Ferret Get Behind the Shower Wall? and my least favorite - Find the Poop With Your Bare Feet at 2am.
All this supervised exercise time means skipping the gym, dashing home between work and evening commitments, and coming home a little early. Sometimes it even means staying up way later than you expected to, writing a rather pointless blog entry so that the ferrets can play.

But now as I sit on the couch watching Weasel and Rascal slowly curl into one giant ball of Ferret and fall asleep, I do feel my heart rate normalize and my breathing become regular.

Having an excuse to come home has actually been really nice. Having a justification for hours spent relaxing instead of running around from place to place has resulted in some seriously peaceful evenings recently. I actually made dinner one night. And watching them play, and trying to get them to play with me makes me laugh out loud like a crazy person in a really good way.

So although I am (obviously) allergic to them, and although they smell like the locker rooms at the MDC skating rink where I used to hang out as a kid,⁶the little monsters have taught me some valuable lessons about taking a step back from the grind.

My amazing friends are returning home from their two weeks of saving lives in the Dominican Republic. And Weasel and Rascal will get bundled up and get to go back to their triple decker ferret condo. I'm going to really miss them. I'll miss the weird noises they make when I come home, and the way they jump up and down to get my attention when I'm reading. I'll miss playing fetch and tug of war and watching them scratch their backs on the carpet like landlocked otters. I'll miss Weasel curling up in my lap for a nap and Rascal climbing up the wall and dive bombing pillows just to give me a heart attack.

I will not, however, miss them enough to agree to keep them. Don't you even start, Amy.

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1.Seriously, where is the other ferret? ²
2. Just kidding. Weasal is inside an old Hawaiian shirt in the closet. Duh.
3. Last time I checked it was 109/70. The next time I touch a therapy dog I'm going to need IV fluids STAT.
4. Keep the D&D and Comicon jokes to yourself please. I'm just a ferret babysitter.
5. Sorry, Mom. We like to drink together.
6. Keeping it classy, West Roxbury. Actually, I prefer the smell of ferrets. Sorry, Parkway Youth Hockey.

Rennovations

2011-02-23T07:00:00.003-05:00

Mom: But they do have problems. At the beginning of the movie he wouldn't help her pick out the new tile.
Me: That's not a big deal. If he doesn't care she should just pick it out. No one cares about tile. I don't want to marry someone who cares about tile.
Brian: There is a ninety percent chance that the guy you end up with is going to care a LOT about tile.
Me: Just watch the movie.

What Was That Sound?

2011-02-22T07:00:00.001-05:00

I can't believe I dropped the pill.

I am furious.

There is nothing else in this moment besides my fury, because a patient needs that pill and I knocked the medicine cup over and I can't find that pill and it was the last pill in the bottle and the pharmacy is down
two

floors

and the elevator is soooooo slllllooooooow and I have had to pee for over an hour but I have not been given the chance to pee because I have been movingnonstop since the shift started. I am starting to sweat. The hallway is one million degrees. Where the hell is that pill?

I am on the ground, and hidden behind a row of cabinets but above me I can hear the chaos in the hallway. A patient near the elevator bank is demanding to see a case manager. A call bell rings, coinciding with a phone. The bells are discordant. The coffee pot is broken and sounds like a vacuum cleaner choking on a piece of carpet. Mentally I am ticking off at least four other things I need to prioritize before I can leave the unit to visit the rest room. And the highest priority is THIS PILL which I can't find. So do I go to pharmacy now and skip the other three tasks until this one is completed? Or do I move the other three tasks up the queue before leaving the floor to get a replacement for THIS STUPID LITTLE TINY PILL that is so important. So very important and I am a dumb, dumb idiot for spilling the cup.

"Excuse me." There is a patient peering over the cabinet at me. I know him very well.

"Can you open this can?"

He gently lowers the soft drink can onto the counter top using his wrists. I stand and smile before popping the tab and helping him put the can back between his wrists.

"I had good luck today," he says smiling, "I put my money in the machine and instead of just one ginger ale, I got two!"

"I love when that happens!" I say, genuinely. Because, who doesn't love that?

"Well, something was meant to go right!"

He walks away, can between his wrists, earnestly pleased at his good fortune. Because he may not have use of his hands but he has two sodas. In fact, he may never be able to use his fingers again, but he is practically whistling down the hallway because he found something positive to latch onto this morning.
And amongst all the other sounds in the hallway I thought I could hear a new one. It was the sound of my own heart breaking.

I found the pill. And the patients all got their medications. And everything got quiet. And I went to the restroom. And in his bed by the window, a thin man in mismatched pajamas sipped ginger ale through a very long straw and smiled serenely at his fortune.

the cleanest ferret video you'll see today*

2011-02-21T11:06:00.003-05:00

I am ferret-sitting for one of my friends. Weasel and Rascal arrived last Friday in a travel kennel. Amy and I set up their temporary cage, which is a lot smaller than their multi-level home in Amy's house.

She fretted as she unpacked their belongings, "do you think they'll be too cramped?"

"Don't worry," I said with assurance. "They'll have free reign of the living room when I'm home."

I shampooed the ferrets later that day to keep them fresh. Bathing them can't happen too often, but should also not be too infrequent. I remembered that from living with ferrets for part of college.

I did not remember how adorable a ferret's attempts to get dry are.

I also forgot how quickly I bleed when scratched by an angry, wet, animal.

No more baths.

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*Maybe. I guess I shouldn't make too many assumptions about your taste in ferret videos. Sorry, dude.

Allergies

2011-02-18T07:00:00.004-05:00

This is via Nurse Sassy Lionheart, who has now made an appearance on the blog three days in a row,* talking about a patient at her other job:

NSL: It says here you have an allergy to morphine. What kind of reaction have you had in the past?
Walk-In Patient: Well, last time I was in the hospital they gave me morphine and I felt really funny.
NSL: Well that's -
WIP: (completely in earnest) But right after I took it I also smoked a bag of angel dust.
NSL: Excuse me? You smoked a bag of angel dust in the hospital?
WIP: My friends brought it to me, with some booze. But I was on a PCA pump too. So I don't know if it was a true allergy to morphine or not.

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* Really, she should just start her own blog at this point.

Navigating the Labyrinth

2011-02-17T07:00:00.001-05:00

Why is so much of the health care system set up for consumer failure?

My doctor referred me to see another doctor. She made an e-referral, "shared" my e- Medical records, and told me all I had to do was set up an appointment. Technology is great, I thought happily. I had no idea that I was about to enter the scheduling Twilight Zone.
Consider this sentence in a message left on my voice-mail hours after I initially called to set up an appointment:

"Then we'll mail you a questionnaire and when you fill it out and mail it back we will review it and then call you to make an appointment. So call back and let me know if I should send it."

First of all, you'll mail a what? I'm not taking the Pepsi Challenge. I'm going to see a doctor. Second of all, I had already called and left a message in the "scheduling" box. Which I was only allowed to do after I did an intake over the phone with someone from Registration. Clearly, I want an appointment. Send the questionnaire if that's a real thing. Why do I need to call back a third time?

Surely I had misunderstood the voice-mail.

The next day when I called I was told the questionnaire had not even been sent to me yet since they had not heard from me. I asked why I needed to fill out a questionnaire and was told "so we can determine which practitioner you should see." At this point I reiterated that my doctor had submitted a referral for a specific doctor in their practice. "That is the practitioner I should see," I pointed out. The secretary told me I still needed to answer the questions and mail it back. There is no way to fill out the form online. I need to receive it, fill it out, mail it back, and wait for it to be reviewed before I can schedule an appointment.

This is insanity to me. In an age where robots perform surgeries, where computers can play Jeopardy, and where I can have ice cream delivered to my door UNTIL 4AM and pay for it with a credit card, why am I watching my mailbox? Don't they know I am rarely home? That I have two jobs? That I just ran out of stamps? Am I being referred to see Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman? *

As I stood in the hallway at work, trying to let the anger go, it made me think of my patients.

- If I can barely navigate this ridiculous back and forth of voice mails, phone calls and paperwork, how hard must it be for someone without a home? A phone? A voice mailbox? A mail box? Even if a homeless man or woman has a mailing address (and many do), often it is not accessible to them 24/7.
- Add on the fact that seeking help for anything other than acute injury is not going to be a priority for someone on the street, and you have a real barrier to compliance for appointments related to chronic life threatening problems such as diabetes, cancer and AIDs.
- Forget appointments to screen for early signs of disease, such as yearly pap smears for females or colonoscopies for people over the age of 50.
- Plus, when I finally get an appointment I am likely to write it down somewhere, be able to take a (paid) day off from my job and I will drive my car to see the doctor. A homeless man or woman is likely to forget the appointment, or just blow it off due to lack of transportation or the need to be somewhere else at that time (taking care of an infant, standing in line for a bed or food) or in some sad cases, abusing substances to mask physical or emotional pain).

That's why Healthcare For the Homeless programs are so important nation-wide. It's not about cheaper access to services or free care. It's about access to services at all. It's about organizations that can offer rides to the disabled war veterans to get to appointments, or who will help an illiterate woman fill out pages and pages of complicated forms in order to get social security benefits. It's about teams of people who will meet with folks who have been through too much trauma to deal with the type of rejection sometimes faced by patients waiting for care. Just think, I've had to call this woman's office three times so far since my PCP made the referral for me. People with mental health issues, social phobias and histories of being abused probably would not have made the second call, if they made the first one at all.

So as I continue to try to get in touch with Dr. Mike** I am thankful for the structures in place in my life that I often take for granted that will assist in me eventually getting an appointment. And I vow, not for the first time, to do my best every day to address every patient issue that I can, or to put the patient in direct touch with someone who can help them. It can't always happen. Things get busy. Patients get blown off. Especially ones with minor complaints. We triage, we prioritize. But I can try my best.
Because unless I create the care I wish to receive, the system is going to stay broken.

In the meantime, Nurse Sassy Lionheart suggested I just get on my horse and gallop the questionnaire back to the office. You know, to speed things up.

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* Gosh I hope so. And I hope Sully is there. mmmm.. Joe Lando circa 1996.. That helps. No more anger. Only wild and free "courtship feelings." ****
** Not her real name, obv, but I am assuming she, like the real Dr. Mike, will be bold, outspoken and have all kind of new ideas she learned at the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania.***
*** If not, this was so not worth it.
**** No disrespect, of course, to Joe Lando's current wife and children. I am glad it worked out for you all.

Flattery Going Nowhere

2011-02-16T22:52:00.000-05:00

Sassy Lionheart: That's the patient that called Night Nurse No Nonsense 'exquisite.'

Me: Wait what?

Sassy: Yeah, he told her she was exquisite and asked her name.

Me: Ha! You know what he said to me?

Sassy: What?

Me: He told me if it weren't for my stethoscope he would have thought I was a patient.

Sassy: Ha! What did you say?

Me: That we don't have a pediatric department. Do you think he meant I look sick or... homeless?

Nurse Bestie: Your hair is a bit -

Me: Enough.

Housing for Labor

2011-02-15T07:00:00.000-05:00

My role as a provider of health services to homeless men and women does not end the cycle of homelessness. My mission is to provide the best quality health care I can offer to people during a vulnerable time in their lives, whether their non-housed status is chronic or temporary.

Still, my hope for all of my patients is for them to attain safe, stable housing situations. Housing is a huge part of homeless healthcare.

There are many different reasons people become displaced or homeless. Which is why there is no good, solve-all resolution for the problem. But there may be a few approaches that will work on large pockets of homelessness in the US.

An interesting article came my way via Twitter yesterday from the National Coalition for the Homeless.

The full article can be found here. In case you don't have time to read it I'll sum it all up:
In San Jose, there is a community of otherwise homeless people who live intermittently in a tent city near Coyote Creek. They are often asked to clear out. The city organizes a clean up effort (for example, in conjunction with the county jail). Then... they move back in.
But if the US Environmental Protection Agency funds a grant proposed by the city's Environmental Services Department, the Santa Clara Valley Water District and a non profit called Destination: Home, then the creek dwellers may be able to do the clean up work themselves this time, earning housing and job training in the process.
Since my visit to St. Mungo's Nightingale House in London last spring, I have often thought about how important job training and social services are for ending the cycle of homelessness.

The Downtown Streets team, mentioned in the article, has used a similar model to get men and women off the streets of Gilroy, Palo Alto and Daytona Beach in Florida.

Again, because homelessness has so many different causes, the same treatment isn't going to work for all of them. What about elders who can not work? Those who are homeless due to illness or physical disabilities?

Both Richardson and Liccardo say they are fully aware that the program will not end the problem of chronic homelessness, especially for the severely drug addicted and mentally ill.
"We don't pretend that we can save everyone,'' Liccardo said. "But this could be an effective tool in the toolbox."

And I think this is an important thing to note. It's easy to reject ideas because we can see that they don't hold the entire solution within their limits. But when a problem is as multifaceted as homelessness... an entire toolbox full of approaches is going to be absolutely necessary.

Well done, San Jose!

Happy Valentine's Day!

2011-02-14T00:00:00.002-05:00

I know I've mentioned this song before but I can't help it reposting today.

I first heard this song in 2002 at my very first Ed In the Refrigerators show. Actually, I'm fairly sure that first show I saw them do was the release party for the album It Could Happen to You.
Annnd... for those of you who don't know this already, I was a senior in high school and the two guys from Ed In The Refrigerators (Joe and Andrew) were.... 10 and 11 years old respectively.

These two middle school kids playing all their own instruments and singing this little love song made me giggle so much that night that I bought the album. And I still love it. This particular tune has a sticky (almost cloying) melody and laughably straightforward lyrics. (Check out the bridge for both a great example of list-song writing and an impressively aimless knowledge of anatomy).
Above all else, the sentiment is actually rather clever - but you gotta listen all the way to the end to catch the twist.

So... here it is, for your Valentine's Day delight: Heart of Blood.

Audition Notice!

2011-02-11T03:28:00.002-05:00

Improv Asylum is having auditions for their NXT cast!

You can read all the details about it on the website.

I auditioned onto the NXT cast in 2007 with Stephanie Jones while we were still seniors in college performing with Mission:IMPROVable at UMass Amherst. I met some great people, performed with really talented comedians and worked under fabulous directors. After just under two years I was invited to join the mainstage company, where I continue to perform today. If you want, you can contact me to talk to me more about my experience before or after you email Stacey and book an audition slot.

Do it. You know you want to. Do it.

My Job is Weirder Than Yours

2011-02-09T18:05:00.002-05:00

This morning one of the nursing students approached me as I was settling in at the nurses station.

-"Hey - this morning I had a sandwich just like that."

-"It's good," I told him in between bites.

-"So I was eating the sandwich and I found a dead body."

-"You what? where?"

-"I was eating the exact same sandwich, Dunkin Donuts, sausage, egg and cheese -"

-" - this one has bacon."

-"Nice - but,- "

- "I hate frozen sausage patties."

- "Whatever. But as I was walking near ---------and I saw it, the paramedics were stepping away, they were done with him."

- "Oh. So it was attended."

- "Well yeah. But it was so cool because I knew I was a real nurse because I just kept eating my sandwich, you know?"

I stared at him. And finished my sandwich.

Woo and Bieber: Roommates - Episode 4

2011-02-07T14:57:00.003-05:00

Justin doesn't want to use his comp tickets on Woo

Woo and Bieber: Roommates - Episode Three

2011-01-31T14:34:00.000-05:00

The latest in the Woo and Bieber series:

A Moment Is...

2011-01-16T15:56:00.002-05:00

Thank you to Rachel Braidman for leading me to Olive Gold and Wine, and therefore this video today:

One Year Later

2011-01-12T07:11:00.000-05:00

Friday night at 6pm at John Hancock Hall in Boston there will be an event commemorating the one year anniversary for those who lost their lives in the earthquake in Port-Au -Prince.

If you can not attend in person you may want to consider joining in the event through the the web cast.

For more information check out the Partners In Health, Stand With Haiti website.

The Boots Aren't The Woman - Part Two

2011-01-11T07:07:00.019-05:00

Thinking about this lady's boots from The North Face reminded me of something that upsets me a lot when I see or hear it, so I'm going to climb on my tiny soap box for a minute.

I have seen a handful of tweets and status updates in the past few years voicing amusement or outright annoyance at behaviors or appearances that are out of line with how people would like to view the homeless in our communities. Some examples: "the guy asking for money at the bus stop had nicer sneakers than I do!" and "I just saw a homeless guy on a CELL PHONE!" I've heard similar complaints or commentary from friends of friends or new acquaintances.

It's something I'd like to address here for just one second.

People who do not have homes are not required to fit your expectations of what homelessness looks like.

I understand that many people's immediate reactions to seeing signs of stability in a person who has their hand out for scraps is to conclude a disparity. The perceived duality can be off putting. Perhaps some people feel they are being "tricked" into providing for this person who is merely pretending to be impoverished, or who is just too lazy to get an actual job. That might make me angry too. I understand.

But let me offer you some thoughts that may help you to understand why I think it is so offensive to pass judgment on someone's level of need based on their appearance.

1. Everyone loves to donate stuff. Homeless men and women are often recipients of hand outs. Those really nice sneakers that your local pan handler is wearing may very well have come from your neighbor's closet. Or were donated by the family of someone recently deceased. Or were collected in a church clothing drive. For society to want every single homeless man and woman on the street to dress like a Dickens' character all in rags is a little bit silly considering the amount of people who like to donate their stuff to the "less fortunate."

2. Gifts are for everyone. The lady in the first part of this post received boots, really nice boots, from her mother. Her mother can NOT buy her a house, a clean bill of health, freedom from addiction, or the mental capacity for managing her life. But she can buy her a pair of boots to prevent immersion foot or frostbite. Homeless men and women do not have homes, but it doesn't mean they don't have families, or loved ones. Or in some cases - concerned sponsors. For Christmas, for example, this year every single patient at the respite facility where I work was visited by Santa Claus and given one brand new item of clothing and a brand new L.L. Bean backpack. It breaks my heart to think that anyone, seeing someone panhandling while wearing that brand new backpack might think "this person doesn't need help, look at that backpack." The bag was free. The person is still trapped in the cycle of street life.

3. Low income is still income. I know you know. But it bears reminding that some homeless men and woman may be the recipient of some form of disability check or veterans checks. They have as much right to spend their money they way they want as you or I do. If that means skipping lunch until they get a used walk-man so be it. Seriously. They could be using their money to buy things like cigarettes, food, or to pay for a track phone*. There are so many barriers to housing for many members of our society that it would take an entire different post to explain why buying day to day necessities/whims is more practical than going without those things.

I desperately want to break down any argument that if someone is wearing a nice piece of clothing, or carrying a nice purse, or eating a cheeseburger while they are out stemming that they must be manipulating you out of your money. Not because I want you to give them your money. In fact, I do not condone giving cash to panhandlers.** However, I can't sit by silently while I witness stereotypes being propagated about the members of our community who do not have stable housing. Lack of understanding about why people are homeless, or what homelessness looks like is a major barrier to finding an end to the problem.

Our sympathy for the poor should not be limited by some implicit requirement for poor people to look and act the way the middle class expects them to. This is the attitude which keeps the class divide alive and well. If we truly want to end suffering for our fellow humans, we will not require people to prove their pain to us before we offer relief.

So the next time you see someone sleeping outside of the train station, or holding out a cup in the park and they're wearing a super nice coat or they have a brand name back pack let your reaction be thankful and hopeful. Be thankful that in some small way this fellow human being is being taken care of. And be hopeful that if it's you out in the cold someday, someone will give you a super nice coat too. Let's not any of us deny human comforts to anyone, simply because we think they should be wearing their trauma more prominently on their sleeves.

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* The phone thing is also a whole other entry that is partially written out already in reply to someone who once asked me why a homeless person needs to use the phone at all.

**There is a list of things I do condone giving out to panhandlers, which I will be posting soon and will link back to here.

It's Fair

2011-01-10T23:47:00.000-05:00

New Terrifying Patient: The last person who called me by my full name is dead. I shot him.
Me: Huh. Well my name is Michelle and I don't have a gun so I guess you can call me Michelle.
New Terrifying Patient: I like you.

The Boots Aren't The Woman - Part One

2011-01-04T22:47:00.000-05:00

"It's my nurse!" I recognize her voice before I turned around, even though she is stuffing a donut into her mouth with fingers red from exposure to the cold.

"I'm living in an apartment with this guy near -------- .," she tells me after I asked.
"Is it safe?" is my first question.
"No," she says without pausing. "Not really, but it's what I've got for now."

Her voice lowers to whisper and she reminds me of the health condition combo that currently excludes her from staying in any shelter. "It's not their fault," she says with resignation in her voice, "but it's not my fault either. Either way, I can't sleep in the cold so I'm in with him for the winter."

She adds, "we're not having sex or anything like that. He's just a loser."

I nod to assure her that I'm hearing her, wondering what she is editing for my benefit.

"I went to [a shelter] cuz they say I got mail. I thought it was from my Mom, but it's just bills."
I shake my head sadly, but she laughs and repeats the line like a punchline to a great joke, "just bills!"

"She did by me these boots though. My Mom did," she points down and I see that she is wearing North Face Boots. I am relieved. Two fewer frostbitten feet in the ER this winter.

"My family that's how they buy me. Clothes. They buy my love with clothes," she is half joking but her lip trembles.

"No. That's how they protect you from freezing to death out here," I point out. "They do love you." Her face breaks into a smile, although her mouth is still shaking. "Yeah, I know," she answers, and busies herself with the donut wrapper, which needs to be folded up.

She looks good, better than she did when I saw her last. Sober, I think to myself, with a bit of surprise. She has a little bit of makeup on, just foundation and some mascara. She got glasses somewhere and they frame her face well. She's wearing a wool coat, a knit cap and the boots. All, I imagine, gifts from her mother and brother.

On the way home I am struck thinking about her coat and boots. I have really similar boots, just as new as hers, actually. My mother bought them for me for Christmas. Incidentally, my mother also bought my new puffy down coat because she was sick of watching me layer sweatshirts underneath my denim jacket all winter long.

I wonder about her mother, whom I have never met and probably will never meet. I can not begin to imagine how different her situation must be from my own. Her mother sends her checks to the shelter. I take my mother out for lunch on Fridays. And yet...I can't get the image of boots and coats out of my head.
Boots and coats, carefully chosen and paid for. Laid into boxes, or folded into bags. Gifts from women who otherwise might have nothing in common except that they can't stand the thought of their daughters being cold or wet if they have anything to do about it.

MischMash on YouTube

2010-12-30T19:24:00.000-05:00

Well, everyone. One of my performance - related goals for 2010 was to be in more video sketches.
By more, I mean any. So with not much time to spare before that ball drops...

Four Loko:

Justin Bieber: Frozen Yogurt

Blizzards of Blaverly Blace

2010-12-27T22:35:00.000-05:00

Supervisor: "Thanks for coming in and helping."
Me: "I'm going to build a snowman with the patients before I go, ok?"
Supervisor: "Sure, have fun."
Me: "Don't worry, I'm not going to put it on my time sheet."
Supervisor: "Oh no, you should. Mark it down as 'bereavement.'"

thanksgiving

2010-11-25T11:04:00.000-05:00

A long time ago I was given a piece of advice. The person told me, it is impossible to be grateful and upset or angry at the same time.

He was right.

The trick of the thing is to switch gears into gratitude before the anger is so overwhelming that you can't remember to do it. Once you're past the point of no return, you want to be angry more than you want to be anything else. So trying to be grateful will seem laughable to you as you feed your anger with more angry thoughts.

See, clearly, if I had been thinking about how blessed I am to have shelter and indoor plumbing I never would have karate chopped the toilet paper holder.

But this wisdom really does work when you can pull it off. I've headed off countless arguments, not by counting to ten but by quickly remembering to be thankful. Which is a lot easier to do if you make it a point to be thankful for a few minutes every single day. That way you're already in the mindset of gratitude, and you can tap into it whenever you need to.

So today I'm listing the things I'm grateful for.
But I'm also doing that every day... in an attempt to keep my relationships and my bathroom all in one piece.

Shopping with My Mom #1

2010-11-24T16:36:00.001-05:00

We're in Bed Bath and Beyond, browsing pots and pans. Mom wants a new pie crust pan.
I am imagining a life where I need a pie crust pan.

"Oh," suddenly I remember, "while we're here, I need a toilet paper roll holder."

"Like the plastic thing that goes in the wall mount?"

"Yeah. I broke it."

Mom looks up from a rack of pie tins quizzically, "how?"

"I... karate chopped it."

"You karate chopped it." She holds my gaze, silently demanding more information.

"I was angry."

"You were angry." My mother's eyebrows are somewhere near the ceiling where I'm afraid we'll have to call an employee over with a step ladder to get them down. Can I see the blue extra small Snuggie... and Mom's eyebrows?

"We were out of toilet paper."

"You don't think that's how you may have hurt your hand?"

We both look at my wrist, wrapped in an ace bandage for two weeks now for what I've been earnestly explaining away as tendonitis. I type too much at work, I say. Swelling's pressing on my ulnar nerve, I speculate, that's why my pinkie finger is numb. I tell people, it only hurts when I move it a certain way. I'll go get an MRI if it lasts past Thanksgiving.

"You know, I guess that could have been it."

Writing with a capital W

2010-11-11T06:17:00.000-05:00

As you could tell from yesterday's entry, I started keeping a separate blog for my more colorful/sentimental/personal writing.

~~Don't worry,~~

Don't get excited, it won't feature nitty-gritty livejournal type anecdotes with intriguing titles like "Dreams of Horses," or "Finding Rain".* I am likewise, not going to be journaling all my secrets into vague poems punctuated by declarations of my current mood as represented by small animated penguins at the bottom of each entry. **

It's just a place to get back to writer's writing.

For the most part, entries are going to double-post onto MischMash so it doesn't really matter.

But- if you'd like to subscribe directly to a blog that will be free of promotions for my shows, a blog simply rife with obscure adjectives and the wanton use of adverbs, then go ahead and add Misch'd Connection to your Google Reader, follow me on Blogger, or put it in your bookmark list.

I am far too busy to move all my old posts over to the new blog so if you're hankering to re-read something like my ruminations on leaving Japan, you can just search MischMash using the Google powered bar across the top.

Coming soon.. a blog where I just post things and don't explain how or why I'm posting them....

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* Actual livejournal entries from freshman year of college. Yikes.

** The penguin is dancing! That means I'm excited!!

In Memorium

2010-11-10T06:00:00.013-05:00

Posted some pieces I've written for my family up on Misch'd Connection.

Aunt Gin died on 10/10/10, and Uncle Frank died this past week on 11/7/10.
Uncle Frank's services will be held this Friday in Plymouth.

I composed these pieces to share their stories with you, so that I may keep their spirits alive for the rest of us.

My Uncle Frank
My Aunt Gin.

Please keep them, and the rest of my family, in your prayers.

Baby, RN

2010-11-09T21:08:00.001-05:00

This past year I had the challenge and privilege of working closely with the palliative care team at work.
This fall I have faced two deaths in my own family within three weeks.

(Hang tight guys, this blog is about to get reeeeeeal.)

Something that really struck me during this time of grief for my family, was how my role within my family has changed in the past few years. Not only have I had to re-connect with some of my more distant relatives as an adult, as opposed to the child that they remember; now I am also a medical professional.

"I get it, and my daughter - she's a nurse, she understands too," my mother whispered to a tired-eyed RN last weekend. "It's just.. well, be prepared for my aunt to have some... questions. I've been trying to explain things. But can be... difficult." "Difficult" is the word she settles on, with good reason.

Never have I been introduced as a nurse (outside of work) so often. Never have I tried try to see my family through the eyes of a hospital staff. I've settled on these generalizations:

Older Pompeos believe:
Illnesses are mysteries never to be solved, death is not to be discussed, and Doctors are Gods.

Older Paoluccios believe:
Illnesses are weakness never to be revealed, death is not to be discussed, and Doctors are Making Mistakes.

And here I am.
The family's favorite little actress/comedian/writer/photographer and now, three years a BSN, RN.

Fielding questions about medications. De-coding doctor's orders. Interpreting instructions. Wishing I could convince my family that Hospice doesn't mean killing someone. Wishing I could encourage my aunts to ask the doctors questions. Wishing I could discouraging them from picking fights with the visiting nurses.

Silently holding hands at bedsides, leaving to buy everyone a cup of coffee, trying to just be family. Trying to appear intelligent. Trying not to meddle. Trying not to make jokes, for the love of God, Misch don't get nervous and start to make jokes. Save it for the show.

My mother, my ally, who was in the health care field for years, does her best to smooth things over. She is the link between them and me. They've had a longer time to get used to her being a grown up, after all. She has two children of her own, after all. You'd think-

"You're picking on me," she complains to her Uncle Frank when he calls her bedside advice "redundant."
"You're an easy target," he rasps with a smile. She sighs and shrugs at me, then smiles. She's given up for the moment. She'll be the niece for now. It's easier than being the nurse.

Later, when the hospice nurse explains some of the signs of end of life to us, I just nod. I don't explain that I know already. I don't explain that sometimes it's been me running down the list of things to expect, trying to prepare the respite aides and nursing students serving at the bedside of their first palliative care patient.

I just nod. I nod to let her know I am on her side. That we will try to make this death as dignified and peaceful as we can. Because sometimes you're a nurse. And sometimes you're family. And from now on, I am always both.

Free Public Flu Clinics

2010-11-09T07:00:00.002-05:00

Boston Health Care for the Homeless will be holding 2 public flu clinics over the next two weeks. These clinics are open to everyone including patients, staff, volunteers, shelter staff, and family and friends.

(That means you guys!!)

So on your lunch break come visit me at work, get a flu shot, and bring me some coffee.*

Wednesday, 11/10: 10am-7pm at JYP in the main lobby. (That's tomorrow!)

Tuesday, 11/16: 10am-7pm at JYP in the main lobby. (A week from today!)

Jean Yawkey Place (JYP), the home of BHCHP is located at 750 Albany Street, Boston MA

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*Just kidding. Just bring a smile and your sweet supple deltoid ripe for the vaccinating.**
** Although if you wanted to bring me coffee I would never refuse it.

Photos: GoreFest VIII: Cirque du Slaughté - Theater - Boston Phoenix

2010-11-08T14:47:00.000-05:00

For those of you who missed the show, or who just wish they could get one more look at our menagerie of creepy clowns, conjoined bearded ladies, lion lovers and other freaks...

Photos: GoreFest VIII: Cirque du Slaughté - Theater - Boston Phoenix

Thinly Veiled Blog Plugging

2010-11-08T14:20:00.000-05:00

My brother, who has not shown much interest in my life since he was 5 years old and thought my Easy Bake Oven was a garage for his Micro Machines, has reminded me that I have not been updating my blog.
And here I thought only my mother and the HR department at work* were reading this site.

I've been writing, but not publishing, actually. The reason? I haven't been happy with the jumble of nursing, comedy, show promos, personal anecdotes and travel stories that make up the content of my blog.

I'm jealous of blogs with a theme like Rachel Braidman's true-life photos and stories, or Tex's aptly named Weird Nursing Tales. Then there's Carrie Drzik, who has a number of individual blogs including one of my favorites: Carrie Draws Daily. There you'll find her artwork, but you need to travel elsewhere for her music.

I dream of having several specialized blogs one day. But until then, this is where it all comes out.
I guess that's what makes it a MischMash.

Gorefest is over, I'm starting production for a new mainstage revue at Improv Asylum, and I have a ton of things to say about the current political situation. I've been taking photos of leaves, and I want you to know what I think of my new Netflix account. I'm back. Hold onto your butts.**

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* Dear HR, I am handing in my completed credentialing packet tomorrow by the way. Thanks for the deadline extension!
** Dear HR, that is a quote from Jurassic Park and not a threat against any real or imagined buttocks.

an open letter of thanks

2010-10-25T07:09:00.000-04:00

As I reflect on the past week of tech and then opening night for Gorefest 8, I am overwhelmed by just how many people had a hand in making it possible. I am so thankful to everyone and just wanted to share some of the gratitude.

First of all, as anyone who works in this business can tell you, it's incredibly satisfying to watch something like this appear from seemingly nothing. I will never get tired of that "hell" week transformation. One night there's no set, no costumes, and no effects and then over the course of only a few nights we have a fully produced musical with a full band, set, costumes, props and blood. And although it all seems like (pure) magic, it's not. It's the hard work of many, many people. For example, people like Lynn Wilcott. Here's an anecdote that encompasses working with Lynn:

Don: What I'd really like is a big saw for this scene.
Me: Yeah. With two handles, so two people can be using it.
Don: And it should shoot blood.
Lynn: Alright.

Ten minutes later Lynn handed Don a prop saw with two handles that shoots blood.
That she whipped up in the interim.

Lynn: Like this?
Don and Me: Exactly!

And people like Claire Smithney, who costumed this show in dazzling period 1930s traveling circus garb while on a strict budget with NO CAR. And who dealt with updates like this:

Me: Claire, we are missing Melissa tonight. Sejal (our choreographer) is going to step in. Can we costume her before 8pm?
Claire: Of course.

I am so thankful to be working with this group of people. The cast is never tired or discouraged. It's made up of actors who give 100% even in the face of infected wisdom teeth, recent hospital stays and foot injuries (true stories). We have an amazing musical ensemble dedicated to playing even as it rains blood all around them, led by the ever-patient Gorefest musical director Steve Gilbane. Plus we have a running crew as silent as ninjas and crafty as boy scouts who are obsess over keeping the blood flowing so we don't have to.

It has also been an amazing blessing to work with the original Gorefest creator Don Schuerman. From overseeing Brooks and myself during the script writing process to constructing the guillotine and the human cannon for the show, Don is an endless font of positive energy, hard work, and creativity. I have not had many moments where I was as floored as I was when Don asked me to co-direct; and as we toasted to the opening this week, I still can not believe he's not sick of me.

Last but not least I would like to thank Improv Boston, the entire front of house staff who enable the show to run smoothly, and all the other casts who make room for out icky sticky mess every year and come out to cheer us on.

Gorefest!

Gorefest continues to run Wed-Sunday at 8pm with 10pm shows on Friday/Sat nights through Oct 31st.
tickets at www.improvboston.com

Gorefest Opens Tonight!

2010-10-21T07:58:00.000-04:00

Gorefest 8: Cirque de Slaughté, (the goriest little show on earth!) opens tonight at Improv Boston in Central Square, Cambridge, Ma.

Last night we had our first (and last) dress rehearsal with "full blood," and the feedback we got from our invited audience was "needs to be bloodier."

Anyone who has ever seen an installment of Gorefest knows that the show gets bloodier and bloodier as the run goes on, due in part to the actors' comfort level with running the effects as well as perfecting the pressure in the shooters and the amount of blood/pus/slime used. Still, Don and I have some tricks up our sleeves for increasing the amount of ooze starting TONIGHT. The Gorefest crew, headed once again this year by Lynn Wilcott will be going all out tonight to make sure you get your fill of splatter.

The show runs tonight through Sunday night at 8pm with 10pm shows on Friday and Saturday as well. Next week we have shows Wed-Sunday at 8pm with 10pm shows on Friday and Saturday again. Get your tickets online at www.improvboston.com and bring your creepy clown repellant.

Gorefest Music Video, the making of

2010-09-28T07:04:00.003-04:00

For the first time in the history of Gorefest, we're creating a music video.
The video features the opening number¹ from this year's Gorefest, Cirque De Slaughté. It was filmed this past weekend under the direction of Matt McLaughlin.
Here's a sneak peek:

>Featuring: (front row) Jenna O'Brien, Jenny Foster (rear row) Natalie Cowell and Deana Tolliver

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1: The Show Must Go On, music and lyrics by Steve Gilbane

Scientific Method

2010-09-27T07:00:00.002-04:00

Johnny Blazes describes hirself as a bricoleur, an artist who uses materials on hand to create new works. And ze has done it again. Blazes has collaborated with local artist/performer Madge of Honor to put together a new monthly show in Boston, the likes of which you will have never seen, and won't be able to see twice.

The show, which is aptly named Hypothesis, is a showcase of all kinds of performers (poets, songwriters, jugglers, burlesque dancers, etc). Here's the catch, each performer is challenged by Blazes and Madge to create a brand new performance piece that is both entertaining and intellectually engaging. The challenge to the artists changes each month.

Last Tuesday, 9/21, the theme was "Reinvention." Performers were asked to perform a classic piece in the first half of the show, a piece they had performed before and that they knew was successful. In the second half, the performers presented a re-invented version of the same work, changing mood, perspective or media in order to bring new meaning to the art.

The night featured performances from Kirby Bits (drag/burlesque), Ben Reynolds (object manipulation), Alicia Greene (poetry and dance), and Simon Rios (singer/songwriter/guitarplayer), and of course from Johnny Blazes and Madge of Honor. After the show the Audio Chemists rocked a dance party until wee hours while guests sipped on fluorescent elixirs.

The show was amazing and I am so glad I went. Each artist's attempt at subverting themselves in their re-invention of their "classic" piece, was met with laughter, gasps, tears, murmured affirmations, and sometimes even outright shouts of delight from the crowd.

Others acts, such as Reynold's unbelievably fluid object manipulation and Johnny's character piece were filtered through a change in mood.

Johnny performed hir classic piece in which ze enthusiastically puts clothes ON to the song "I'm Bringing Sexy Back." In the second act Johnny re-entered in a fit of emotional agony, having been rejected by an unseen partner. Ze followed all of hir original choreography, only this time hir movements were set to "Cry Me a River," and included clown-sized displays of sorrow and despair, which brought both loud "awws," and laughter from the audience.

Other artists took the idea of self subversion to a very personal level. Simon Rios presented a song in the first act that was an open letter to a friend of his who is suffering from alcoholism. And in the second act, Simon sang a song from his friend's point of view. In this imaginary response, Rios took on his friend's voice and accused himself of a laundry list of faults. As he sang the audience listened thoughtfully, and I believe, listened without judging him. I looked around and saw people nodding their heads, wiping tears from their eyes. And when he was finished the cheering shook the Midway.

One of the highlights of the night for me was watching Madge of Honor's re-invented version of a piece I'll call "Bounce." In the original burlesque piece Madge's* tassel-twirling skills are comically rendered in a dance that never gets to progress past the first few measures of the song as the soundtrack continues to reset itself. In the second half Madge performed the same piece, but with an easel holding up a giant pad of paper. On the sheets Madge carefully had prepared an "Inner Monologue" in thick black marker. As the dance progressed, Madge removed sheet by sheet to reveal Madge's thought process. Some of the thoughts were comical, and others were self -disparaging. The crowd got into it, yelling responses to the revelations, and the piece quickly became interactive in a way that challenged the audience to look at their own perspectives on the art of burlesque.

I think this project is a wonderful idea, and I'm not just saying it because Blazes is an old and dear friend of mine. Asking creators to think about what message they are sending in their art produces bold and inspiring new works, that might otherwise not have come into being.

There's no other show in Boston where you will cry as a songwriter bemoans himself for his hypocrisy, and moments later laugh out loud as a drag queen grandiosely gestures towards her tiny, sparkled, limp member.

I can't wait to see what's cooked up in the lab next month.

The next Hypothesis will be tested in October with the theme of "Matter/AntiMatter."

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* Because I do not know which pronouns Madge prefers I am going to refer to Madge as Madge throughout this section so please bear with me.

Canine Connections

2010-09-25T07:33:00.001-04:00

Speaking of Connectors, last Saturday, the 18th, I had the pleasure of attending a show at The Green Briar in Brighton. My friend Cage was opening for Lulu's In Crisis. Cage invited our friend Conor Shanhan to play for part of his set. After Cage played for a few minutes he called Conor up on stage and I watched the two of them raise their pint glasses and smile as they traded places at the microphone.

Cage is a major Connector. He has worked a wide variety of jobs, and lived in, and traveled to many places. He makes friends (and acquaintances) quickly and easily, and keeps contact with them. He's been doing it since before online social networking was a thing, and the existence of MySpace, and now Facebook has only made it easier for him to create fabulous new connections. Cage can sometimes make me look like a hermit by comparison,* but I'm still pretty good.

When I was in The Diary of Anne Frank in 2001 at Riverside Theater in Boston, Cage played Mr. Frank to my Anne. We became very close that year, and he became like a father to me after my own father passed away in 2003. Meanwhile, I had met Conor S. when I was a freshman in college. He was in the sketch troupe, and I was in the improv troupe. By 2005 we would be roommates in a 3-apartment farm house with seven other friends. Now Conor and Cage are friends through me, and this is the second performance gig Cage has arranged for Conor.

Just as I was patting myself on the back for making this obviously perfect introduction, Conor took the microphone in hand between songs and offered an explanation for how he'd come here.

And I started to laugh.

He recalled how a really special spirit had aligned him and Cage. He had lived with me, and I lived with... a beagle. Lucy was actually one of Cage's two beagles. After Christmas that year Cage gave me the beautiful gift of sending her to live with me, to chase away the Pioneer Valley Winter Blues.

Lucy quickly became the Queen of the house and of our circle of friends. She had many fans who would stop by the house just to say hi, or to ask if they could take her out for a walk. Conor started a facebook group called I Love Lucy, and many of our friends joined in order to upload photos of videos of her. Cage joined the group as well, and identified himself as Lucy's dad. Conor sent a message to him right away, thanking him for allowing Lucy into our lives.

That message was the beginning of many messages back and forth between Conor and Cage. They met in person one time after that, and have been friends ever since.

"Lucy is no longer with us," Conor informed the crowd somberly. "But her amazing spirit lives on. This is for Lucy," and he bowed his head and began a heartbreaking rendition of Tom Wait's "Picture in a Frame."

Later on Cage mentioned to me not for the first time, how talented Conor is. He plans to get Conor a spot playing in Boston more often. Later I saw him introducing Conor to the owner of the bar, and I felt a surge of happiness, and some pride at having a hand in this chain of events.

Then I realized that in this case the Connector was actually a small and gregarious beagle named Lucy.

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* Although his secret seems to be that on Sundays he sometimes refuses to pick up the phone or allow any visitors, preferring to sit alone in his house watching football with his dogs.

** You may have read or heard me refer to Cage as Pim, which is what Anne Frank called her father. This way Dad and Pim each get a name.

Connecting

2010-09-24T07:09:00.005-04:00

Lois Weisburg ran a drama troupe in Chicago in the 1950s. From there, her love of George Bernard Shaw led her to start publishing a newspaper devoted his work, which became an underground weekly. When that paper went under she got a job doing PR for a rehab program. From there she got work at a public interest law firm and then became so aware of some of the issues facing the community that she began lobbying for Chicago's Parks first, and then for the South Shore Railroad. She worked for the government for a while, then quit and ran a flea market stand. She later went on to become the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for the city of Chicago.

Lois Weisburg is one of my new personal heroes. That synopsis of her life is wildly abbreviated. When I am in my 80s, I want the list of things I've done to look like that. I want to start now.

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the way social epidemics (trends in consumerism, fashion, and other aspects of pop culture) come into existence. Along the way he touches upon the critical involvement of three categories of people: Mavens, Salesmen and Connectors.

Connectors know a lot of people. They have "an extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances." *

But, Malcolm points out, Connectors are important because of the may different types of people they know. They do not , for example, just know hundreds of people who do what they do, but they have contacts in many different areas of specialty and niche, and can connect them with great results. As he puts it "by having a foot in so many different worlds, they have the effect of bringing them all together."**

He goes on to point out that "weak ties," or acquaintances, (as opposed to close friends), are more important when it comes to networking and connecting. This was shown in a study by sociologist Mark Granovetter in 1974 called Getting a Job. The reason is, as Gladwell explains, your acquaintances are likely to know people that you don't know, whereas your close friends occupy the same world that you do.

Connectors are important in the spread of social epidemics, professional networking, and - as seen in Weisburg's work - community change.

The Tipping Point was published in 2002, which predates online social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. These sites are in and of themselves a social epidemic (why not orkut?). But, besides that, with the ease of "friending" and "following" so many different people, I suspect that many people may find themselves in the position of being a Connector who otherwise wouldn't have been.***

Regardless, I do believe there are many Connectors out there who would be doing their thing with or without social media technology.

I consider myself a Connector. I have many friends whom I recognize as Connectors. The whole "extraordinary knack of making friends..." thing comes easily to most performers. Plus most performers who also have a day job have the advantage of a foot in at least two different worlds right there. The more odd jobs we do to pay rent, and more strange gigs we take on in the name of love of our craft, the more worlds we can be a bridge to.

Lois Weisburg, Gladwell says, is a "classic connector," because she lived in so many worlds and brought them together. That was the key not only to her success, but to the success of every program and project she launched.
I wonder if, when The Paper went under, did Weisburg stress and angst over whether to start another newspaper or whether to just go for the PR job? Or did the decision come easily to her, the obvious next step?

I have a lot of trouble sometimes deciding whether to identify as a performer or a healthcare worker. But my strength comes from involvement in both these two worlds, as well as the many others I dabble in and visit.

My ability to make and keep connections, and to share connections with others has yielded some wonderful collaborations in my life so far. Modest collaborations, for sure, but the patterns are heartening nonetheless.
I hope to create positive social change by utilizing the energy and power of the multiple worlds I live in, instead of feeling pressured to fit myself into one career path at the moment. With the right forces behind me, maybe I can follow in the meandering footsteps of Lois Weisburg.

And in the meantime, you and I should get a cup of coffee. Text me later.

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*The Tipping Point, page 40
** The Tipping Point page 51; also... you have to have a LOT of feet to be an awesome Connector.
*** Likewise websites like Yelp.com give a voice to people who otherwise would not have become Salesmen. And shouldn't have.

Where is MischMash?

2010-09-10T14:15:00.000-04:00

Honestly, everyone, the real reason I haven't been updating is because this game of Assassins just got so intense for the past week that I have been too busy to write.

How am I supposed to write when I need to be hiding in the backseat of old cars in the North End wearing a Boy George wig?

Last night in an epic show of brute strength my assassin assassinated me, in front of a crowd of seriously useless bystanders.

Some of my friends thanked my assassin because now they can go places with me this weekend without me acting delusional - pointing my water gun at bushes when exiting or entering a building, wearing disguises, obsessively checking over my shoulder at all time et cetera et cetera.

The minute I locked eyes with my assassin was one of the strangest moments of my life. And I do realize I am still talking about a made up game here. Still, for a week straight I had been imagining this person everywhere, and then THERE THEY WERE. I was expecting the moment to come, and it did and it felt like the moment when you're in a nightmare and you realize you're in the nightmare and you know what comes next and you can't stop it. I slapped this person after I got sprayed, that's how shocked I was.

Anyway. Back to my real grown up life now. Have I mentioned yet that I am the wound care nurse at work now? Just while our real wound care nurse is on leave. But still. Wound Care. It's one of my favorite things to do, and I get to dedicate eight hours of my time to it every Tuesday.

Time to put away my water gun and pick up my 35 cc syringe with 18 g needle attached.*

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* I'm a better aim with the syringe anyway. Wound care jokes!

Classic Water

2010-09-06T07:16:00.001-04:00

In honor of Labor Day, my favorite poem by David Berman:

"Classic Water"

I remember Kitty saying we shared a deep longing for

the consolation prize, laughing as we rinsed the stagecoach.

I remember the night we camped out

and I heard her whisper

"think of me as a place" from her sleeping bag

with the centaur print.

I remember being in her father's basement workshop

when we picked up an unknown man sobbing

over the shortwave radio

and the night we got so high we convinced ourselves

that the road was a hologram projected by the headlight beams.

I remember how she would always get everyone to vote

on what we should do next and the time she said

"all water is classic water" and shyly turned her face away.

At volleyball games her parents sat in the bleachers

like ambassadors from Indiana in all their midwestern schmaltz.

She was destroyed when they were busted for operating

a private judicial system within U.S. borders.

Sometimes I'm awakened in the middle of the night

by the clatter of a room service cart and I think back on Kitty.

Those summer evenings by the government lake,

talking about the paradox of multiple Santas

or how it felt to have your heart broken.

I still get a hollow feeling on Labor Day when the summer ends

and I remember how I would always refer to her boyfriends

as what's-his-face, which was wrong of me and I'd like

to apologize to those guys right now, wherever they are:

No one deserves to be called what's-his-face.

Append: Assassins

2010-09-03T15:35:00.001-04:00

The gun I took from the Bucket of Fun had a hole in it and leaked everywhere when I brought it home and filled it up.

After stomping around my damp kitchen, I sucked it up and I drove to Family Dollar outside of Inman Square. I forked over a dollar for three new guns. (And bought some TP on the cheap while I was at it).

Two out of the three new pistols had obvious leaks. I filled up the remaining gun, which I cleverly nicknamed "The Good One," and left it overnight on a table in the living room.

In the morning I shoved The Good One in my "nice" purse. It wasn't expensive and it isn't fancy to look at, but it qualifies as my "nice purse" because every other bag I carry is either a tote bag, or made of hemp, or has fake blood stains on it.

I tucked The Good One in with my wallet, cell phone and keys, feeling like a real dangerous woman. A woman on the edge. A woman ready for action. I was headed to the Watertown RMV to renew my license, a plan I was 100% sure no one else could know about, but in case I was being followed I pretended to get lost*.

After 30 minutes of sitting at the RMV I checked my phone. It was wet. My wallet was wet. My ipod was wet. The inside of my nice purse was wet. The gun... was still full.

I took the gun out of my purse to examine it, ignoring the stares from my bench-mates. I held the gun this way and that. I shook it, alarming the studious man to my right. I rubbed it across my palm from several angles. Streaks of water appeared. The gun has a tiny fault in the seam on the handle. A real slow leak when held the wrong way.

I tried to reposition the gun in my purse. It fell over. I tried to put it in a separate pocket, but that just got my lighter and all my change wet.

Guys, I really might lose this game.

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* By this I obviously mean I got lost on the way to the Arsenal Mall which is INCREDIBLE and I wish I were pretending.

Assassins

2010-09-02T18:01:00.005-04:00

I did some last minute shopping today for a game of Assassins

I want to take a minute and admit that a game involving stalking and being stalked doesn't seem like my "type of thing."
"I don't know," said Jeremy backstage the other day, "it just seems like not your type of thing."

Whether or not it has been, it is now.

Today I was searching for a few last things to complete my arsenal. The item I needed was unavailable at any of the other stores I went to this week, and so on the way home from work today I stopped into the huge CVS a block away from Pizza Stop. I poured over the shelves, frustrated by the surplus of foam and bubble guns and lack of water shooters.

Finally I saw my only option - a bucket of summer themed toys. "15 pieces!" The cardboard insert boasted. "$20 value for only $9.99!"

I carried the bucket around with me as I shopped for other things. I put it back twice. I didn't really want to pay so much for one little piece of equipment. I also didn't want to carry a giant orange bucket of toys home on the bus. I looked at the clock and groaned. Without access to email I had no idea if the game had started. Someone could already be waiting for me at a bus stop or street corner. I needed to finish assembling my offensive and defensive plan. I needed to buy the stupid bucket.

I dumped my mouthwash and hairspray on the counter with the bucket. Two teen aged girls entered the store with a toddler and began comparing candy. Then I grinned.

"Hey. I'm going to buy this bucket of toys. I just want the water gun. Do you think he'd want the rest?" I pointed at the toddler.

They stared at me. I tried to see myself through their eyes, a tiny white lady wearing scrub pants rolled up to the knees and a tank top with a stethoscope hanging out of her shoulder bag, gesturing with a big orange bucket, grinning like an idiot to convey good intentions.

"Uh, sure," the older girl said, shrugging at the younger. They resumed their candy consultation.

I paid for the goods, unwrapped the bucket, removed my prize and turned around. The girls looked confused.

"I literally only wanted this," I said, showing them. The rest is yours."

"Oh!," the younger girl said, understanding for the first time. "Thanks so much!" The two girls bent down and offered first pick of the toys to the toddler.

I pocketed my new hand pistol and caught the bus, jogging.

Boston Improv Festival

2010-08-30T11:26:00.001-04:00

The second annual Boston Improv Festival is taking place September 8th-12th at Improv Boston in Cambridge.

Stay tuned in a few days as I tell you my picks for what to see at the festival.
For now, a shameless plug for myself since I am performing in three shows over the course of the weekend:

1. Three Hole Punch - Shannon Connolly, Liz Caradonna, Stephanie Jones, Amy Koske and I have been delighting audiences with our relationship based long form improv since we met in college. (Thursday 9p)

2. Hidden Falls - Directed by Steve Gilbane, Hidden Falls is a 40 minute fully improvised musical about life in a small town. The audience provides information about our town, and we'll discover the secrets and relationships behind closed doors, while singing about it! (Friday 9pm)

3. Improv Asylum Mainstage- Improv Asylum Mainstage actors take your suggestions and turn them into dreams (and scenes). (Sunday 8pm)

Danny and Annie

2010-08-23T17:29:00.001-04:00

I heard about this animated video from a friend at Improv Boston.

It is the story of a couple, married in 1978 and separated by cancer in 2006.
In 2006 they recorded their story with StoryCorps, and their interviews were combined into the video below.

Listening to Danny and Annie talk about their love and respect for one another reminds me of my grandparents, Ben and Adele, talk about one another. It reminds me of the faith and infinite patience of my friend Veronica as she waits by the bedside of Rob, her fiancé who is recovering day by day from a motorcycle induced coma. It's a testimony to how amazing the phenomenon of love really is. Human beings have a (possibly) unique capacity for experiencing and expressing enduring affection for another person. When the mutual act of giving of self becomes the driving force in every aspect of a shared life, the miracle of that is really obvious to everyone else who comes in contact with it.

Watch the video first (it's a tear-jerker, you've been warned); then for more info check out their story on NPR's website.

Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

spell sheck

2010-08-21T15:38:00.001-04:00

Yet another good reason to double check all my notes before I sign them electronically at work.

This time I (almost) documented that a patient told me:

"I alway shave blurred bison."

Two Weeks Without My ATM/Check Card...

2010-08-18T22:17:00.001-04:00

Money Owed*:
- Ashley (lunch last Tuesday)
- Shannon (cash money for weekend festivities)
- Juimene (lunch on Cobb Salad Day)

Expenses I Would Normally Not Charge to my Credit Card:
- Monthly Bills
- Isolated orders for single small cups of ice coffee at Dunkin Donuts
- A vial of CVS Brand eye allergy relief solution.

How I Did Laundry Last Week:
- bought TP for house and asked roommate to pay me in cash.

Saddest Thing:
A homeless man** asked me if I had any money, and I said I didn't have any cash. And he asked if I would have cash on the way out of the store and I said no, and then explained that the bank still hasn't sent my ATM card to me and they are closed every day when I get home from work. I told him I'm actually really bent out of shape about it. He nodded but I bet he didn't believe me.

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*If I missed you, do speak up please.
** Dear HR, I am aware that given my position in the company I am not allowed to be giving out money to potential/former clients, but as this rule only really applies to homeless people in Boston and the Greater Metro Area I hope you will forgive the implication that HAD I had any money I could have given some to this man who was not in Boston when we met.

Nants inGONyama bagithi Baba!

2010-08-17T07:11:00.001-04:00

The Lyceum Theatre in London

There's not much I can say that critics haven't already said about a show as big and spectacular as The Lion King. It's exciting and moving and vivid. The costumes and puppets are incredible. The sets are inspired. The presentation is altogether breathtaking.
So... I'll drop the pretension and pick up where a diary entry about it may have left off.

In fact, I'll begin by telling you that in a tiny note I wrote to myself* I scribbled "Just saw The Lion King. Incredible.... I feel so alive."

The opening to the show initiated a palpable endorphin rush. As soon as Rafiki (Brown Lindiwe Mkhize) took the stage and opened her** mouth I knew I was leaving my mind behind and going into a magical place.

I had never seen so much as a You Tube clip of the Circle of Life procession so everything about it was a surprise. The sight of so many silky birds looping through the air and the shock of a adolescent sized elephant tromping up the aisle beside me as voices joined in song and the stage morphed into Pride Rock made my ears tingle and my heart pound (in that really good way). Even as I sit here typing this, remembering how actors on four stilts each can look so much like giraffes gives me goosebumps.

Brown Lindiwe Mkhize as Rafiki was absolutely phenomenal. That woman knows how to command a stage. She was able to take focus just by gesturing with one finger, but often would use her entire body to communicate not only Rafki's emotions and intentions, but also to transfer the energy of the whole scene from the stage out into the audience.

As the rest of the show unfolded I was impressed by A) how closely the musical was able to stick to the original Disney movie and B) how much of the original movie I remembered word for word. Seriously, if they had needed a tiny white girl to jump into any of those roles - I was on the ready.***

Most of the places the story strayed were the addition of more songs, which was a net positive for the show overall. However, I could have done without the strange addition of Scar's attraction to/quest for Nala. It was only a small bit in Act Two, and a short song for Scar (George Asprey), but I found it disturbing, distracting and unnecessary. Especially because it was never mentioned again, never followed up on, never really resolved. Plus, in the movie I felt like it was implied that Scar takes Sarabi as his own since she was Mufasa's mate. Isn't that more in keeping with the Hamlet origins anyway?

I digress. so. much.

My favorite song in the musical was He Lives In You, which I promptly downloaded from iTunes and committed to memory. Through some terribly geeky research I found out that He Lives in You was written and performed by Lebo M in a 1995 CD called Rhythm of the Pridelands, and was used in The Lion King II before being adapted for the staged version of The Lion King. The song They Live in You which Mufasa sings to Simba in Act One was adapted from He Lives In You which Rafiki sings to Simba in Act Two. I can NOT believe that this song has existed for years and I only now got around to hearing it.
The staging of the song was also my favorite part of the show. I can't describe it to you well enough. Like John said in his blog, you should really go see it if you can.

At the end of the show, just as in the movie, the opening sequence is mirrored, showing that everything has come around fully in the Circle of Life. This time the kite-like birds and the graceful antelope dancers didn't surprise me, but I was still just as floored. All those voices lifting up in song, the lights creating an African sunrise, the animals swaying to the music sent me into a euphoric state.

It's incredible to me that a musical can create such strong emotions. "I feel so alive," I wrote to myself in my note, and just looking at that sentence right now I remember exactly how I felt. I felt hopeful, and I felt inspired. I felt like I wanted to call my Mom and tell her I loved her. I wanted to dance with strangers and make children laugh. I wanted to hug Brown Lindiwe Mkhize. I wanted everyone I know to see the show and feel how I felt.
I want everyone to feel so alive.
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* I have a habit of dropping myself tiny notes to remind myself of feelings I am feeling when I'm feeling them.
** I thought Rafiki was just being played by a female, and was still a male character the same way Peter Pan is often cast as a female in Broadway productions. However, according to several internet sources director Julie Taymor chose to change Rafiki's gender to female altogether to give the show another strong female character.
*** I have no idea why I can remember every single word to a Disney movie and not remember how to conjugate Spanish verbs, but so be it.

"'Tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation"

2010-08-16T15:45:00.000-04:00

Finally sitting down to write down my opinions of In the Heights last week reminded me that I never wrote about my experiences with theater while I was in London.

When John and I arrived at Shakespeare's Globe I reverted to a fifteen year old English lit geek. I don't remember what John and I talked about in queue because I was memorizing the details of the lobby. I took dozens of photos which I deleted later because although each photo op seemed pressing in the heat of the moment, I really didn't need pictures of the door handles and floor of the (all modern) lobby.

We bought tickets to Henry IV Part One, and although I was disappointed that our plan to see Macbeth had been thwarted by box office sales I agreed with John when he said "you can't really beat seeing Henry the Fourth at the Globe Theater."

Obviously, it's not the original Globe Theater, which burnt down in 1613 and was rebuilt on the same site. The second theater was shut down in 1642 by Puritan rule. This replica is as authentic as possible, built in 1997 (through the efforts of an American actor/director), a mere matter of meters away from the site of the first (and second) Globe Theaters. It was the first building allowed to have a thatched roof after the Great Fire of London.

Original thatched roof or not, to watch Shakespeare performed by some of the world's best known classical actors in a space that aims to duplicate the experiences had by Shakespeare's first audiences, is a treat. We took our place in the Yard with the other groundlings, and I took approximately a gazillion more photos of the intricate interior of the theater as we awaited the start of the show.

My hand touching the stage. I'm in heaven.

The show opened with a flourish of dance and music. All the instruments were period, and played by actors. Mummers with grotesque and exaggerated costume pieces staged a comedic street performance on a platform smack dab in the midst of the groundlings. After a bit of bawdy banter they were interrupted by the entrance of King Henry, sir Walter Blunt and the rest of the King's court who then proceeded to take the stage and dive into the plot.

All the characters were strong. Hotspur (Sam Crane) and his unintentionally comical bursts of temper. Prince Hal (Jamie Parker) with his boyish grin, and torn loyalties to street life and prince-dom. King Henry (Oliver Cotton) with his loving but firm reproach of his son's behavior. In fact, the highly complicated relationship Cotton and Parker created between this famous father and a son very nearly brought me to tears several times. Still one man managed to steal ~~my heart~~ the show.

Every critic has said it in one way or another, but in the event that you're not keeping up on reviews of shows in London right now I'll say it too: Roger Allam was born to play Falstaff. He's exactly what you want in a Falstaff: a booming voice, impossibly expressive face, and dead on sense of timing. Allam's Falstaff doesn't shy away from the parts of his character that are disgusting (binge eating, drinking to excess, lying and thievery to name a few), and still comes off as the lovable, mischievous man we all would gladly share a bar counter with. If only for the stories we could tell later.

The show ends after the Battle of Shrewsbury with all out reveling and a full cast song and dance number, the nature of which made me feel as though I were actually peeking into a tavern window in the 1400s and not standing on concrete in an open air theater with hundreds of strangers.

I would absolutely love to see Part Two. Anyone want to fly to London for a matinée?

a letter

2010-08-11T19:50:00.014-04:00

Today a letter was delivered to the nurses' station. It was addressed to "the nurses and aides" on our floor. The letter was a thank you note for the care we provided to a patient at the end of his life who passed away in the early morning. He had been sick for a long time and chose to be with us for his death, which he knew was coming.
It sounds like typical end of life fare, maybe. The kind of letter you might expect from a family member or close friend of the deceased after a long hospital or hospice stay. But it wasn't. It was from another patient. What is even more amazing is that the two men were randomly assigned roommates. But the second man immediately took to assisting the sicker patient and then at the end, keeping silent vigil at his bedside.

A third, younger homeless man had also been taking care of the man before he passed. The third man had met the older man when they were both patients. Once the younger man was discharged, he continued to call and visit daily until the end.

"It's not friendly anymore," the younger homeless man had once said to me. "It's hard on the streets. Mean. But you see the oldtimers and they're all family. Our generation doesn't have that."

But it seems like at least some of them do. And maybe, just maybe it's never too late to make a family.

light and sweet

2010-08-10T20:14:00.041-04:00

As an early, early, early birthday present Colleen W. took me to see In The Heights. ITH is the brain child of Lin-Manuel Miranda,which means I should not have doubted at all that I would love it. But still, I was nervous.

See, Collen loves the show so much that I was afraid it wouldn't live up to her praise and then I'd be stuck looking for nice things to say about it. "Good... costumes..." I imagined I'd say before pretending to fall asleep for the 4 hour drive home.

But after seeing the show live, I simply can't get it out of my mind. It's been on my ipod nonstop, a dedicated playlist, so I thought I ought to nod to it on the blog a bit. The show is fresh, fun, moving and really catchy.

The multi-level set impressed me
with its depth and detail

Plot wise, the show has just enough principal characters to keep me actively thinking, but not so many that I wasn't invested in the arch of each person's story. Additionally, there are always other characters on stage. Neighbors in windows, strangers walking across the street, other principal characters carrying out their own plot points in street lamp lit pantomime. Watching it, I felt like the constant presence of people on the stage gave the show its own kind of life. It's like the show itself is beating and breathing.

The music, as one would expect from Miranda and Lacamoire is spectacular. Steve Gilbane took the words out of my mouth when he wrote to me that "it pulled off a convincing broadway-latin-rap mix, which I would have thought was impossible." Huge sweeping broadway numbers, heartbreaking "I Wish," and "I Am" songs, and fabulously sexy latin beats. The various musical hooks and themes weave together in sometimes surprising ways to create delightful layering of ideas and emotions (and yes, cultures).

The deliberate repetition of phrases and words throughout the show has a similar effect. Although some of the lyrics stood out as a bit heavy handed ("we're powerLESS, we are POWERless," sing the oppressed residents of Washington Heights when the electricity goes out) all can be forgiven in the far more frequent moments of word play brilliance. A lot of it (and here I'm thinking mainly of the hip hop) comes across as almost improvised. The irregular syntax of the rapping creates a genuine rap battle feel to certain pieces. The dancing follows the dynamic sound, natch, and there's just as much popping and locking as there is salsa, as there is modern movement.

Plus, I'm a sucker for sad songs, "belters", and well-placed foreign phrases with flare. Abeula Claudia killed me every time she took the focus, and sometimes even when she didn't.

As a writer I appreciate that the story doesn't wrap up like a fairy tale. Or maybe I just appreciate that as a person.

As we were leaving, the conductor stood up to stretch and Colleen grabbed my arm. "That's Alex Lacamoire" she hissed. As it turns out, we got to hear the show as orchestrated by the Musical Director himself The music conducted just as it is intended to be played!*

Colleen with Christopher Jackson

Then, outside the stage door Colleen and I got to met some of the cast. I got Courtney Reed's autograph. She usually plays Carla, but I got to see her as Vanessa. Colleen got her photo taken with Christopher Jackson.

Meanwhile, my awareness of Lin-Manuel Miranda and the work he's doing just sky rocketed.

This is him performing "Hamilton Mixtape" with Alex Lacamoire at the White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/lin-manuel-miranda-performs-white-house-poetry-jam-8-8

*Incidentally, (and here a shameless plug) the audiences at Gorefest get the very same privilege!!

an append

2010-08-03T23:35:00.002-04:00

On Monday night I stood outside of The Barking Crab pressing my cell phone to my ear because my Mom had called. I knew if I waited until dinner was over to call back she'd be in bed.

"I just read your blog. Are you sure it was me?" she laughed as she thought about the story all over again.

"I thought it was you..."

"I didn't try to cheat. That sounds like your father."

"Come to think of it, maybe he sang it. But you told me why he was singing it quietly. You knew what he was doing."

We both laughed again, "Yeah that sounds right."

Encore! Encore!

2010-08-02T07:00:00.002-04:00

When I was growing up my parents would often have friends over for dinner.
If the guests brought their own children it meant hours of adventures, ghost stories and pranks. But even when my friends were home with babysitters, these were special nights.

For dinner we'd eat steak tips, or prime rib or some other treat. Sometimes a few of Dad's friends would come over all on one night with their wives and they'd all buy lobsters. But often it was just Dad and Mom and Lenny and Mal, (or Chris and John, or Martha and Marcus, or Sue and George) and we'd eat until no one could eat anymore. When their friends were over there was usually a real dessert. We'd have a pie or monkey bread as though it were Christmastime and not just another Sunday night in July.

After dinner everyone would sit and drink and tell funny stories about when Dad and his friends were younger. Sometimes they'd play poker for nickels and quarters and Mom would say to me and Brian, "Go brush your teeth and we'll be up to tuck you in." Those nights I went without much fuss because card games bored me. Mom and Dad would each slip into my room to kiss me goodnight and I would drift off to sleep to the sounds of Oldies 103.3 on the radio and the grownups laughing as they bet small change in the kitchen.

But some nights after dinner Dad would go to the den and open the closet. That's when I knew to start begging permission to stay up. They were going to play a board game.

I knew how to play every game in that closet: Jenga, Go to The Head of the Class, Battleship, Trivial Pursuit, Trivial Pursuit: Disney Edition, Trivial Pursuit: Genius Edition, Trivial Pursuit: Silver Screen Edition, Scrabble and Taboo. For years, I was never my own player, I was always someone's "helper," but I didn't mind. I'd stay, wearing my Little Mermaid pajamas, sitting on my knees for added height next to Mom or Dad as moths flew against the screen door and the stove clock logged minutes past my forgotten bedtime.
The very best game in the closet was called Encore.

In Encore, when a card is drawn and a word is read off, you need to sing songs that contain the word in the lyrics. You have to sing a seven word phrase at least, thank you very much. Then the other team does the same thing. Both teams battle back and forth until they run out of songs, or time.

For a child, I was pretty good at Encore because even then I had a memory for lyrics above all other things. Mom was even better because she knew more songs than I did.

One night Mom and I were a team together. The word on the card was "brown"; we had already sung one song, the other team countered with a song, and it was our turn again. The other team was happy because no one could think of another song with the color brown in it. The tiny white sand grains in the chintzy hourglass were running out. Then, quietly, almost inaudibly, Mom began to sing, "the old brown mare, she ain't what she used to be..." The other team sighed and shook their heads, now they would have to come up with yet another song to beat us. Mom had sung past seven words but I was so excited at our obvious victory that I joined in at the top of my lungs, "-AIN'T WHAT SHE USED TO BE! AIN'T WHAT SHE USED TO BE! THE OLD BROWN MARE SHE-"

Mom grimaced. Right. Brian was sleeping after all.

"Wait a minute," Mal rejoined, "isn't it 'the old grey mare?'"

Mom smiled pointedly at me, sideways. "That's why I was trying to sing it quietly."

"Oh. I thought it really was a brown mare. It sounded good as a brown mare."

Mom and I probably won anyway. At least that's how I remember it.

Excuses

2010-07-20T00:00:00.000-04:00

What else have I been doing?

Hungry Hungry Hipsters, the newest Improv Asylum Mainstage show is up and running. Which means, thankfully, the intense weeks of multiple- late-night rehearsals are over. Our official Grand Opening Night will be Thursday July 29th, if you want to swing by to toast with us. Otherwise, I really do recommend coming out to see the show at some point this summer, especially if you have never come down, or haven't in a while.

You probably didn't know I was hunting for a new roommate, but I was. David has moved out, which means no more day trips to Ikea.* Joining us in August is Tucker, who I already made sit and watch all of the 1972 movie Cabaret with me and Laura Clark one night when he had just come over to drop off his security check. Afterwards he said he was impressed with the movie's structure and cinematography. And we talked about 1920s Berlin culture. That's how I know this is going to be a devastatingly wonderful match.

In my spare time, instead of writing I have to admit to you I have been spending a lot of time on my back porch or down by the Charles River, reading. Just finished Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. Since that marks the 3rd or 4th nonfiction book I have read in a row I've started in on Lamb by Christopher Moore to shake things up a bit.

Annnd of course, I am still working 36 + hours a week as a nurse during the daytime and loving every minute of it.

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* If this blog weren't so classy I'd put in a sad -face emoticon here, not to let you know I am sad, but in order to acknowledge that the sentence itself is ridiculous.

Slacking Update

2010-07-19T23:59:00.006-04:00

My brother messaged me to remind me that I'm "slacking" on my blog.

So: A quick update in two parts.

Callbacks for Gorefest VIII were tonight. Incredible turnout. Having not seen most of the original auditions I went in blind and was not disappointed. During deliberations over beer and snacks at Tavern in the Square adjectives like "delightful," and "a pure joy to watch" were not thrown around lightly, but were used frequently, nevertheless. After the restaurant started to shut down Steve, Don and I had nearly finalized our list. Hard decisions all around, and some super close calls. Still need to make some adjustments, but the casting will be made public by the end of this week I bet.

I posted last year about how much I love this song. Sejal, the choreographer for Gorefest used it tonight in auditions and reminded me of how freaking amazing it is. The link on the old post is expired, so here it is again for your steam punk zombie pleasure:

PS. I cheated and back timed this post. I was still at Tavern discussing auditions at 11:59pm.

Havin a Summah Playlist

2010-07-12T17:16:00.002-04:00

Recently, local comedian Kevin Harrington told me I needed to watch this clip on Funny or Die because of the Jaws reference in it. Now he frequently asks me if I've bought my summah gum.

Well, I don't have summer gum. Why? Because I hate gum.
I know it's summer because my go-to ipod playlist changes. *

I recently added Mirando a las Muchachas by Mexican Institute of Sound, I Am Not a Robot by Marina and The Diamonds, and He Lives in You, from The Lion King London cast recording.
Like everyone else, I find new favorites every season that will forever and ever remind me of what I was doing this summer, who I was doing it with, and where we all were.

But some songs will ALWAYS be on the playlist, no matter what else changes.

My Summer Playlist Standards

Lazy Bones, Soul Coughing
Lido, Boz Scraggs
Into the Mystic, Van Morrison
Corazone Espinado, Carlos Santana
Could You Be Loved, Bob Marley
Suzanne, Leonard Cohen
Real Love, Mike Doughty
Don't Go (Giving Your Love Away) , Sonia Dada
Hush, Afroman
Treetop Flyer, Stephen Stills
Jungle Drum, Emiliana Torrini
Surf's Up, Brian Wilson
Everybody I Love You, CSN&Y

BONUS: Summer Night Playlists should include the following:
Milky Way Tonight, Crosby and Nash
Summer in the City, Regina Spektor

Any recommendations for a must-adds this summer?

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* And because I switch to my summer lip gloss, duh. (Blistex Fruit Smoothies (variety pack) spf 15 $2.99 at CVS)

or is this how you know you're a nurse?

2010-07-08T10:49:00.000-04:00

Walking down the hallway, it's only 8:30am but I'm already well into my day- stretched out, warmed up, caffeinated, and halfway through a medication pass. But I'm hungry.

"Hey!" The man coming toward me yells. He is in a group of people who are all laughing at a joke. He's leaning towards the woman next to him, and she is looking at him adoringly, but he has inturrupted the moment by addressing me.

He points at me, "I had a great bowel movement! Thank you!"

"Awesome!"

And I mean it.

The Way Life Should Be

2010-07-03T08:18:00.000-04:00

Just a bit of a break from my London stories, as I am vacationing in Vacationland itself this weekend.

I'm at the beautiful home of my friend Ted's parents. To my left is an open window through which I can hear birds waking up the bugs. Directly in front of me is a large picture window, and from there I can see the ocean.

Being able to see the ocean makes me feel as if everything is right in my world.

London: people * places * [things]

2010-07-02T07:00:00.000-04:00

...specifically, things you can't or don't get back home, because that's part of the fun of traveling, right?

As I sit here, to my left is an empty gold wrapper. That wrapper belonged to nothing else but a Cadbury Crunchie bar.

My love affair with Crunchies began when I was in grade school, performing at Irish Step Dancing competitions around Massachusetts. One thing that every feis had in common was a smattering of items for sale, from ghillies to tara brooches, from custom made dresses to fancy bags to carry them in. And then there was UK candy.

Naturally when I was reunited with Crunchies in London last week I was delighted.

"Of course," John said when I asked if I could stop at one of the tiny shops at Heathrow to stock up on my way home.

I grinned.

Tonight, sitting in my small, hot Cambridge apartment letting the chocolate melt off the honeycomb in my mouth before I chomp into the bar it's like I'm ten years old again. I'm sitting on a folding metal chair in the back room of an east coast town hall, the smell of Aquanet mingling with the fresh leather smell of my ghillies, waiting for my mother to take the curlers out of my hair so I can pin my number card to the front of my dress and dance.

Thank you, London, for that.

Another fun example (one of many)?

At a bar/club called Barrio Central in SoHo, John drank a beer from Cuba.

That's certainly not happening over here any time soon. Silly me, I stuck to rum and cokes.

London: people * [places] * things

2010-07-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

So many of the places I visited in London deserve their own entry, and will most likely get them.
Some deserve their own entry and won't get one and I can only hope my memory of them lives on anyway.
Places are never just places though are they? They're really just about people and things only you add in smells and sounds and room tone.

On our first day in London we hopped on and off the Big Bus Tour, so we had eyeballed most of the prominent sights in the city by 6pm. We had photographed Big Ben, gawked at Westminster Abbey, meandered around Picadilly Circus, stood on London Bridge, and wondered at the lions in Trafalgar Square.* It had been a while since we ate at Costa that morning, we tried to find a decent pub. The World Cup was on and we were near London Bridge. The odds were against us, but we prevailed.
We settled on dinner at a pub called Mudlark. It was situated just far enough from the London Dungeon that we couldn't hear any touristy screams, but near enough that on our way there I got my photo taken with two blood-stained actors wandering the streets. (Score!)

At the pub John tried the fish and chips, and I ate delicious steamed veggies with my fingers while I drank a Fosters.** I took a photo at the table because I couldn't get over how casually we were drinking in the shadow of a medieval church.
As we were leaving, a football game was picking up between some of the young men drinking their beers on the street outside the pub. Two men rode by on bicycles. Big Ben chimed.

Oh, London.

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* Later we would return there and witness a celebration that broke out when England beat Slovenia.
This involved shirtless men standing in the middle of the fountain in Trafalgar Square waving flags and screaming while people danced and screamed at the base of the fountain and tourists like us circled the scene wondering why soccer is so popular everywhere else in the world.
** Which meant I was hungry again about an hour later. Brilliant.

London: [people] * places * things

2010-06-30T07:23:00.019-04:00

One of the best parts of traveling is the meeting of new people.

Here are just three examples from this trip to London:

When I asked Sam if I was in the right place he put his arms on my shoulders and called me "love," which confirmed my suspicion that all British people speak like my friend Sally Hull.

Sam, of course, was the gregarious guide of the walking tour we took on Wednesday night.

The event was touted as a ghost tour, and was free with our Big Bus tickets.* The tour actually had very little to do with ghosts and a lot more to do with drinking and shmoozing at the Sherlocke Holmes Pub. After we pounded our ales, Sam led us about casually "I hate big groups of people," he said with a straight face, "so try not to stand like we're a big group of people." At every monument or "haunted" establishment that we hit Sam demonstrated his ability to tie sex into almost anything. He was hilarious and high energy, often having to pause and draw a deep breath after spouting off paragraphs of information. His guidance was spiked equally with jokes at the expense of British history and fond memories of his own grandmother. I was sad to leave him.

Alison Wilkie is a ferociously hip screenwriter who I met in the staff room at St. Mungos. When she isn't writing scripts she is running a creative writing group for homeless people. She is also both an actress and an established stand up comedian. When she found out that I also split my time between comedy and working for the homeless, she put her arms around me and we both laughed like children.

Alison's story is crazy, she's done everything from working as a chicken keeper in Bethlehem to performing as a dancing girl in Milan. She has also been street-homeless in London. Now she uses both her understanding of homeless life and her artistic talents to help others unlock their own experiences.

The 62 year old man from forty minutes outside of London who was my seat mate on the plane ride home is named John. He has a sister who lives in Massachusetts, and he has only recently begun flying internationally to see her. He's been all over New England. "Naught teew diffehrent, then." His accent was so foreign to me that sometimes I had to ask him to repeat things, and sometimes I just nodded and smiled and he would laugh, knowing I hadn't understood him through his countryside dialect.

He was wearing bright socks that didn't match his shirt or shorts, the way my grandpa Ben does.

His were lime green and lemon.

"I have 20 more pairs in my suitcase," he explained. "People say I'm too old and I think, 'too old for what? For fun?'"

He'd been trying to find a pair of American flag socks, but couldn't.

"I wanted to wear one American and one British one for the fourth of July!" he smiled. "One year we went out, and we were in Maine and I put up the American flag on one side and the British flag on the other. People looked, but they know it's a laugh. It's all just a laugh."

Then we traded trivia about wars. You know, like people do.

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*The only reason, I believe, John agreed to accompany me on something called "Ghosts By Gaslight"**
**Despite the distinct lack of ghosts there WAS a gaslight on this tour.

how to get to London

2010-06-29T21:07:00.000-04:00

As the plane touched down on one of Heathrow's runways I was fairly vibrating with anticipation. John, my friend and traveling companion, grabbed our luggage from the overhead compartment. Minutes later I stepped foot, for the very first time, in the airport featured so prominently as a place of true joy and happy reunion in that classic Everyman movie, Love Actually.

It was everything I wanted it to be. Although no one was there to great us personally, I felt as though England and I would become quite good friends. Thus, we began the second leg of our journey - waiting in queue for approximately a kabillion hours in customs.*

By the time we arrived at Victoria Station (rail to Paddington, one wrong train, and then the Circle Line to Victoria) we were both exhausted. My inner excitement hadn't waned, but I needed a caffeine fix to make up for the sleep stolen by the Time Zone Bandit. John doesn't drink coffee, but the traveling had zapped his energy as well. So we checked into the hotel, located an appropriate nourishment vendor, in this case a Costa, and noshed. Coffee for me, tea for John and we were on our way.

Before we bought tickets for a Big Bus,* and sunscreen (so responsible!) we decided to arm ourselves with Underground Passes for the week.

"Do you mind if I ask you some questions, then?" the man behind the counter asked.
I had asked his advice: Oyster Card for the week? Or daily passes?

"Where do you think you'll be visiting the most of?" he smiled. His English accent was so thick I could have hidden four of Fagen's boys inside.*** I rattled off a list of places, including my intention to visit St. Mungo's.
I told him, "I'm a nurse."

"A nurse!" he exclaimed. Then he lowered his voice conspiratorially.
"I have kidney stones," he said. "I mean, I'm passing one right now.. hopefully today. But you probably don't want to hear all that."

"I've heard worse," I laughed, "go on."
So he did.

Overhearing this conversation, John approached the counter. The man initially mistook him for a doctor, ("you medical folk will have a splendid time!" ) but was just as pleased to find out John is a writer.

Not in the country even four hours and we made a friend. Not too shabby, London.
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* Ah, the romance of the road!
** More on that later...
*** Oliver! jokes!

London, so far

2010-06-25T05:17:00.000-04:00

First off, I emailed my Mom to tell her I got here alright and she never wrote back. So I wrote to my brother, who seems to be updating his status without trouble, but has also not gotten back to me.
I know they're alright (thanks Facebook), but will someone nudge them into letting me know they've gotten my messages?

Fantastic.

I thought I'd get in a quick note or two about the trip so far before I set out on today's adventures.

The window of our hotel room overlooks chimneys and rooftops, and off in the distance we have a great view of Big Ben framed by the London Eye.

As I write it is 10am here, and below me the city is well into her day, double decker buses cruising here and there, and the funny little taxis darting around like bugs. The bell tower is striking, and it reminds me of the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan which I watched about once a week as a child. Seriously.

After two days of exploring the city together (and a night of crazy fun dancing)*, John and I decided to take this day apart.

I have a list of things to do, so I'll be heading out soon. After a day of wandering around one of the Royal Parks I plan to meet up with a staff member at Florence Nightingale House, which is something like our Barbara McInnis House. There I will tour the facilities, and hopefully sit in on The Great Escape, which is one of their most well known homeless rehabilitation programs. I'm hoping to learn a thing or two.

My day after that involves a lot of meandering near the Thames, perhaps revisiting Tate Modern (since I only saw part of it yesterday) grabbing a Crabbies in a local pub (my new favorite drink) and then meeting John at 6pm to go see The Lion King.

I am feeling very, very blessed.

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* More about all that, later on when I'm feeling more narrative.

Happy Father's Day from Improv Asylum

2010-06-19T17:52:00.002-04:00

Fathers Day from Improv Asylum on Vimeo.

Writer /Director: Evan Kaufman

Director of Production, Editor, Composer: Chris Loughran

Produced by Improv Asylum

Featuring: Kirstin Opstad, Evan Kaufman, Matt Catanzano, Kiley Fitzgerald, Dan Faneuf, Misch Whitaker and Richie Moriarty

Behind the Clouds

2010-06-14T13:54:00.001-04:00

I crammed myself into the back of the Number One today, and checked my watch without much hope of good news. Just as I suspected time had not, in fact, started running backwards and I was going to be late to my CPR recertification class.

I reached into my bag to pull out my ipod and found that I had left it along with my cell phone on my bedside table. Sighing, I continued rummaging and came up with some reading material at the bottom of the bag: a folded up bulletin from the 8pm Mass at St. Clem's last night. Father Peter is usually a pretty engaging story teller, so I dug in, searching for his column.

"I know you," the man jammed into the seat next to me said. "You work at McInnis House."

I recognized his face, but not the name he gave me, and we chatted a bit as we rode.
He's doing well, he reported, still in a treatment program, and still sober as a result. "I gained some weight," he pointed out, "but it's better than the lifestyle I was living." He really feels like he's been successful in restarting his life. He asked me to say hello to "everyone over there" from him.

We fell into a comfortable silence. I finished reading Father Peter's column. I looked up and saw that we had a bunch of Mass Ave left to cover.

"I wish it were more sunny out," I remarked.

In the interest of full disclosure, I don't know why I said it. I actually don't mind cloudy days at all. In retrospect, had it been any more sunny out I also would have been upset about leaving my sunglasses on the kitchen counter.

He responded sincerely, "The sun is out, you know." And he smiled.

I know it looks like some Chicken Soup for the Sick Sad Soul written out here, but there was nothing trite about the way he said it. Instead, it was the truest thing I had heard all day.
Why had my go - to space filler in conversation been a complaint anyway?
A soft complaint, but a complaint nonetheless. How often do I do that and not even notice?

"You know the serenity prayer, right?" he asked me. I said I did, but when he paused and I didn't recite it, he recited it instead. We both smiled. He told me to take that thought with me for when my day wasn't going the way I wanted.

"You can restart your day whenever you want," he pointed out.

And I guess, of all people I ran into today, he would know.

Updates on Writing

2010-06-13T22:27:00.003-04:00

I owe you an update. I haven't been writing anything here. But I've been writing nonetheless.

Improv Asylum's newest Main Stage revue opens July 3rd weekend.
We've been jam packing our weeknights with rehearsals so that we can bring you a show that will make you laugh and cry and yell and want to be our friends on facebook. The period of time for sketch submissions ended this past week. Now we have several hours' worth of material to sift through and create a show out of. Throughout June, on Thursday nights at 10pm you (yes! you!) can come watch us try new things out. That means new sketches as well as new improv structures. And because we're not sure how well it works yet... it's all free!

Meanwhile, on the Gorefest: 8 end of things, Mr. Brooks and I finished our very first completed draft of the script on May 28th. On May 30th I met with Steve Gilbane (composer) and Don Schuerman (director) to discuss their suggestions for revisions, and was pleased as punch to find there were not many rewrites needed.

However, our conversation did generate a ton of fun new ideas I wanted to fit into the show.
Since then I have been working to revise the script into what it is now.

While Brooks and I continue fine tuning, Steve has been writing music, Don has been researching plans for guillotine construction (go ahead, you can read that sentence again if you need to), and the lyricists have been coming up with witty rhymes and clever phrasing to fill in all the most dramatic moments in the plot.

If you ever wondered what we writers talk about in our secret meetings, here is an all encompassing snippet:

Me: I don't know how to fix this line about typewriters!!!
Brooks: I'm not sure if it really matters...
Don: It definitely doesn't.
Steve: What if we make it a song?

The second draft is slated to be completed by June 20th.

Pain Scale

2010-06-03T08:32:00.000-04:00

This morning Nurse Sassy Lionheart introduced our unit to a new pain scale.

Depending on what your job it, it's work safe but not very relevant.

But if you work somewhere that it's relevant, it's probably not appropriate.

#10 is my favorite.

April and Chris

2010-05-28T22:55:00.000-04:00

She's getting married tomorrow. To the man she danced with at his senior prom, the guy she used to gush and giggle about with me in Ms. Ryan's computer class. It's like a fairy tale.

I first saw April in my 7th grade gym class. She was wearing a white tee shirt with a cookie on it.
Neither of us were very good at gym. (Thankfully, in a high school built on the high holy virtues of academia, it didn't matter and we were often excused to sit on the side lines and cram for Latin exams.*)

That night, I noticed she was also in the Tuesday night CCD class for all of us public school kids in West Roxbury. I don't remember who approached whom, but we started talking, and soon our desks were pushed together. We lived in the same part of town (separated by The Woods and The Quarry), loved doc martins, fishnet tights, and The Offspring (before and after they 'sold out').
Very quickly, very clearly, we were inseparable.

April and I both kept journals in those cheap, cardboard covered composition notebooks you can get at CVS for a dollar. Every few days we'd trade journals, spending time in class or on the bus reading one another's most secret thoughts. Sometimes we'd write responses directly into the other one's book. Sometimes we'd use the journals to have entire real time conversations in class or study hall.
Because of that, for a long time April and I were like two halves of one mind.

We vacationed with one another's families, referred to one another's parents as "Second Mom," and "Second Dad," had sleepovers, fell in and out of love with different boys, watched The Craft or Empire Records at least once every few months, and created a fantasy story about what our lives would be like as grownups in a notebook separate from our journals, which we also passed back and forth. You know, like all teenage girls do.**

Although we shared a very close core group of friends, April was my closest. In all the time we spent together, I do not remember a single fight.***

During our senior year she and Chris started dating. Chris was a guy she had known she she was eleven, and had hated until recently re-meeting him. I liked Chris, and I liked her and Chris together. They dated until almost Thanksgiving of our freshman year in college, and then - and here's where the fairy tale gets complicated - they broke up.

Unfortunately, by then, April and I had also drifted considerably. I didn't even know that she and Chris had broken up until long after it happened. Through the next five years April and I lived very different lives, separated by geography and newly evolving interests.
While we were both seniors, Chris and April got back together and started dating seriously again.

April and I are also back in touch.
I can barely begin to express how blessed I feel that I will get to be there tomorrow when she and Chris stand up in front of everyone and promise each other the rest of their lives.

Congrats, April and Chris.
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* I don't know how the gym classes are now. But that's how I remember it, at least.
** We figured we both be in a rock band. So the story was about life on the road. And boys.
*** April, you can correct me if I'm wrong here... but nothing really jumps out at me.

New Grad Orientation

2010-05-27T18:04:00.000-04:00

This morning I was taken off my normal team of patients and scheduled to do orientation with a new grad nurse.

"I had plans," I protested weakly, "I told my patients I'd be here in the morning."

But the beauty of a 24 hour job like nursing is that someone else, just as qualified and caring is always there to make sure things go smoothly. So off the unit, to the back room I went with my new coworker and the Computer On Wheels.

We were only a few minutes into a discussion about a pharmacology quiz question* when I realized that this was one of the best things to happen to me all week.

Teaching forces me to examine my own habits and compare the things I do to best practice standards.
And it challenges me to find new ways to explain old knowledge.

I love the chance to say all the things that have stuck with me, passed down from my mentors over the past few years. Plus any and all things that I wish someone had told me sooner.

Still, orientation isn't the whole process. It's obvious to say, but most of the journey from student to professional nurse comes from experience. You have to put your hours in. You have to own your victories, as well as your failures, and make notes and revise your approach accordingly.

I'm no veteran. I am still learning new things every day, and will hopefully never stop.
But when I get the opportunity to spend so much time with a new grad I can't believe how quickly the last three years just flew by. It feels like yesterday I was running to make it to my NCLEX on time, thinking in the back of my head :
it's kind of okay if I miss it anyway because I'll probably fail it and I should have taken a prep course and I can't imagine I'll even get half the questions right and what am I doing trying to be a nurse when I already have such a successful job as a drama teacher and I wonder if I can make that work full time?

Now I'm signing off on someone else's skills list.
And in no time at all, she will be too.

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* Identifying Abbreviations. This section of the Pharm Quiz nearly always sparks a discussion about the obvious disadvantages to using certain abbreviations because they are so ambiguous/easily mistaken for other things.

... only thirty two

2010-05-25T07:11:00.001-04:00

Here is a video that was made about BHCHP.
It has a lot of focus on the building I work, and features a ton of my coworkers and patients.
And the song throughout it, which is an original piece by a patient... well, you'll just have to listen for yourself.

I love my job.

LOST

2010-05-24T08:35:00.001-04:00

This entry is not about LOST.

I never have never even seen a minute of an episode of LOST.
But Liz C. is in town and in the spirit of friendship I now find myself sitting Shannon's house gearing up to watch the very last episode ever.

I was wearing a surgical mask to protect me from cat dander* which I had to take off to eat our order of "Wings". We ordered Wings over Amherst all the time in college and have taken this tiny reunion as an opportunity to munch on chicken together even though Shannon's boyfriend Ted doesn't like the franchise's recipes as much as we do.

As we watch the official LOST recap that is airing right now I am struck by a few things.

First of all, I kind of wish I had been watching LOST all along. I guess I did miss out on a huge cultural phenomenon. Years from now I will have to admit that I didn't watch it and people will look at me the way I look at them now if they say they never saw the episode of Punky Brewster where Cherry locks herself in a refrigerator and almost dies.**

But mostly I am struck by how lucky I am to have the friends I have. I love to sit here by the window in this apartment, a black cat at my feet (a bottle of fexofenadine by my hand), and Liz and Shan on the couch across from me trading jokes about LOST. And in between jokes about LOST, just trading stories.
A minute ago two other close friends who live upstairs stopped by the window behind me and I made faces at their baby. Ted is delivering a rant about season three. We are going to eat ice cream soon. Then I'll put my surgical mask back on.

I'm happy.

I'm not going to understand a single thing that happens in the next two hours. And honestly, when the show starts I am probably just going to sit here and continue working on the script for Gorefest.

But I am glad I came here. I always am.

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*I am not the most stylish person you know, but I am the most fun to take places.
** RIGHT?

Happy Nurses Day!

2010-05-12T07:34:00.000-04:00

Nurse Appreciation Week begins each year on May 6th and ends on May 12th.
Today is internationally celebrated as Nurses Day because it is Florence Nightingale's birthday.

Yesterday at work there was an amazing feast of food for all the nurses. Nurses gathered, not just from our facility but from several BHCHP sites. We chatted as we nibbled on our shrimp kabobs and tried to guess who was who in the black and white nursing school graduation photos.

The spread was prepared by our incredible kitchen staff and was maintained from 12pm to 4pm to bridge both the day and evening shifts. There were tote bags for everyone with snacks and Dunkin Donut giftcards, and in the corner of the atrium two massage stations had been set up.
During the course of the afternoon several touching speeches were given by RNs from the organization, and various staff members were recognized publicly for their work and dedication.

Later on, completely unrelated to the festivities a newly homeless patient said to me, "I'm so glad they brought me here. I know that here you'll take care of me."

It made me feel very appreciated, and made me proud to be a nurse. But there was one more gift, maybe the most affirming of all.

Upstairs in the nurses station there was a vase of roses. Pale pink, with dark edges, and fragrant.

"Did you like the flowers I got for the nurses?"
He was smiling. He had gone to great lengths to get them.
And it was the patient you might have expected least of all.

writing writing writing

2010-05-11T07:02:00.005-04:00

Updating, you may have noticed, has been inconsistent.
The reason for this is that I have recently taken on two major writing projects.

The first is Gorefest.
For those of you who may not know, Gorefest is a gore-filled musical comedy produced annually at Improv Boston at Halloween. Each year has a different theme, this will be Gorefest's eighth year running. As an example, here's last year's description. This year, Don Schuerman, the father of Gorefest, opened up submissions for pitches to the general GF and IB community, and my concept has been chosen!
I am co writing the book with Adam Brooks, and overseeing a small team of amazing lyricists.
The music will be done by the fabulous Steve Gilbane, as it has been in years past.*
We have an amazing production team in place, and emails have been flying back and forth as we start to create the next round of scary, gooey, fun.
Oh, and since everyone's been asking. This year's setting? The creepiest circus you've ever watched.

The other major project is Improv Asylum's new mainstage revue.
We are currently still running "The Best of Improv Asylum," but have started the production process for the next show, to be named at a later date. Our mainstage cast is saying goodbye to three people between now and July, and has taken on several new actors in the meantime. The new cast has been spending our nights down in the theater drilling basics, running laps, bonding over pizza, and coming up with new sketches and new ways to use our improv skills.

I've never had so much writing to do. And I've never been so excited about it.

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*Shameless plug: go to his website and click on "Gorefest" on the left to hear some songs from the past few years. Among them, a song I sang last year about killing everyone. It is definitely not safe for work.

A Mother's Day Post

2010-05-10T00:32:00.006-04:00

My mother is my inspiration, my personal super hero, my teacher, and my safety blanket.
She lets me cry when I need to cry and kicks my butt when my butt needs to be kicked.

The song "Baby of Mine" from Dumbo reminds me of my mother.
...so does anything by Billy Joel or Josh Groban
...so does Kill Bill 2.

Mom has worked as an EMT, a radiology tech and a mammographer.
She is also a gifted writer, a poet and taught me everything I know about staged "gore" makeup.

Mom once helped a half-dead kitten drink water off her gloved fingertips until the Animal Rescue league showed up - even though she doesn't like cats very much.

Mom has presided at several funerals for both hamsters and parakeets.

Mom has made it clear on several occasions that she brought us into this world and she can take us out.

I have danced with my mother in the living room at the end of a long hard week.
I have never turned down her cookies.

I have watched Mom as she battles MS and wins every day.

I watched her pick up all our broken pieces and keep our family together when her husband, my father, passed away.

My Mom is the strongest woman I know.

In this photo, she is about to strap herself to a zip line and jump off the edge, out of her comfort zone. She thought we were going for a hike that morning. But she didn't get mad at me, even when they started handing the helmets out.

I love you, Mom. Here's to all our adventures.. and many more to come.

save some water for the fishies*

2010-05-08T07:12:00.002-04:00

It's officially the end of "Water Week," in Cambridge. No, really.

Ok. So, first, some background. On Saturday, May 1st a huge water pipe in Weston, Massachusetts sprung a leak. The Mass Water Resource Authority was able to supply water for toilets and showers to towns east of Weston by using a back up supply of mostly pond water. This switch in water quality was the cause of a water ban and boil water order for Boston and surrounding towns.

The ban was in effect until midway through the day on Tuesday, May 4th.

I worked on Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday in Boston so I was affected too. However, I was able to avoid boiling any of my own water at home because within the last year I moved to Cambridge, which has its own water supply.

But not only was Cambridge not affected by the water ban across the river, we were actually celebrating how awesome the water here is.
That's right, May 2nd- May 8th was Water Week here in the People's Republic.

Activities included educational modules for school children about the "wonders of water," and a tour of the Water Purification Plant where we get our delicious, clean tap water from.**

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* The title of this post is brought to you by Things My Sixth Grade Teacher Used to Say in a Weirdly High Pitched Sing-song Voice While We Were Trying to Use the Bubblers at School.

** I'm only bragging because the ban in Boston has been lifted. Otherwise this would just be mean spirited.

Dreams of Haiti

2010-05-07T08:49:00.003-04:00

I bade a friend goodbye this morning before she boarded a plane to Turks & Caicos.
She is flying from there to Milot, Haiti.

I am proud. I am envious.

Rx: feline

2010-05-06T17:42:00.001-04:00

"Sam*, can you at least take your antibiotics?"
"I'm not takin' any of 'em. Why should I? You weren't here."

He's had so many head injuries, that he's now a kid trapped in an adult body. His face is scarred and his body is scarred and his liver is scarred, and his heart hurts. Not his real heart. Sam's lonely.

"Sam, another patient needed me," I faltered, weighing HIPPA against his anger.
"It was an emergency, I didn't know how long I would be in the other room when I went in."

"I don't care. You were supposed to be here. You weren't. I'm gonna go smoke."

He doesn't understand waiting in line, or being told he can't do what he wants to do. What he wants to do is drink a lot of alcohol and smoke cigarettes and eat cinnamon buns until his glucose level is unreadable on the glucometer. He tells me the higher the number, the better. "Like basket ball scores."

Before they reach a certain stage in both their mental and emotional development children are unable to think abstractly enough to put themselves into another person's shoes, or to plan for the future, or to delay gratification.

Sam is a little like that. Unable to understand why a nurse would not be on time, or why he shouldn't cuss out the doctors, or why he should care about his blood pressure.

Just like a child, retarded emotional development doesn't mean Sam is a bad person. It just means he is where he is. Unlike a child, however, he's not going to progress. His brain is damaged. He may be able to learn behavioral modification - but he's not ever going to reach the next stage. He's stuck.

So whenever Sam is my patient I take my time to remember that and treat him accordingly.

"Hey Sam, you look nice today. I'm sorry I wasn't here for you earlier. Can you take your medications now?"

"No. I'm going to sleep."

Usually it's me who is called in to reason with Sam, some other nurse at her wit's end. Today, I'm the bad guy. Because another patient was vomiting and I was late with Sam's medication cup.

I'm putting out fires. Vomiting, hypotension, dressing changes, patients with frightening hallucinations. Pharmacy's on the phone asking about prescriptions never sent. Due to a "boil water" alert I'm rationing bottled water. I have three patients with persistent elevated temperatures possibly related to their illnesses but much more likely caused by dehydration. I am watching everything.

As I run around, Sam is in the background of everything I do. Standing in the hall. Sitting in the clinic. Riding the elevator. He takes his meds from me, quietly, an hour after refusing them. He says little all day.

Then, as I'm leaving, he's telling a respite aide:

"I had three cats," he said, "named Mud, Mud Junior and Mud the third."
His eyes glow with excitement as he continues, "and I used to feed those cats better than I fed me. King crab. Shrimp. They loved that stuff. I'd go buy it for them."

It is the first time I see Sam smile all day, talking about his cats and how he took care of them. How he loved them and they loved him.

He notices me listening and waves cheerfully, the morning forgotten.

I leave the building deep in thought, wondering how one would word a prescription for a cat.

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*names, diagnoses, and situations have been changed to protect the privacy of patients and staff involved

thank you Mr. Stranger

2010-05-05T07:00:00.013-04:00

Relatively speaking, I only recently became an air traveler. I mean, Japan was my first time on an airplane in about ten years. But since Japan, I am pleased to say I've been flying a lot. Pleased because I really enjoy flying.

I love airplane bathrooms, and airplane seats. I even love airports.

And before anyone asks, I don't know how much of loving airports is organic and how much of it stems from watching Love Actually so many times, but I don't care. All the people, coming together. I like it. I read Up in the Air this past year and found myself wishing I had a job that required that much traveling.

And I realize if I did have such a job I probably wouldn't like it very much. And yes, I do get grumpy during long layovers. I get frustrated that my plane is delayed. I get mad when I can't find a decent cup of coffee. I wish the Wi Fi were free.

But, listen: for me, all that frustration melts away during the take off.

I used to think it was obvious that everyone likes the take off. The way everyone loves sleep. Or breathing. But I guess it's not true, because I have now been on several flights where my seat mate goes to sleep before the plane even takes off. There he is, sitting next to this window, with his earbuds in, and his eyes shut. And me, trying to crane my neck around to see any bit of the landscape between the wing tip and his forehead and nose.

It drives me crazy.

And I know, logically that these are nice people who did not intentionally and maniacally chose the window seat in order to waste the view. I also know that people aren't going to switch out of the window seat before a flight just in case another passenger loves looking out the window more than they do.

But I've been flying for three years now and have still not gotten tired of watching the ground get further and further away. I will gladly give up a window seat for a friend who is also excited about the window seat, or a stranger who has never had a window seat (especially a child). But to sit sidekick to someone who doesn't so much as glance at the world outside the window is agonizing.

On a flight this past week from Chicago to New York I was in the middle seat. The man in the window seat shut the window shade and settled in to read a magazine. Defeated, I took out a book and tried to read.

As the plane began to roll I kept my eyes politely downward, but when we hit the runway and picked up speed I reflexively stared out the nearest window, trying to see something - anything, from my odd angle.

The man noticed me looking and then he looked too, straining with the effort. Then, as if it just dawned on him, he opened our window shade. It was just in time for us both to watch as the ground became a blur and then a patchwork quilt.

I smiled but he didn't look at me. He was looking out the window.

Fish talk

2010-04-29T11:25:00.001-04:00

Since I'm on the road, and didn't bring my computer I went and downloaded an app for blogging on my iPod. We'll see how this goes.

So far I think I actually already posted a completely blank entry using this app. Amazing.

Jen works at Teach For America developing teachers, so she has flexibility in her day time schedule that my other friends out here don't have. Yesterday in between phone meetings about the ACT and emails about standards that need to be met, ("we only have so many instructional days left!") we took a walk along Lake Michigan.

As we walked we discussed our jobs and our lives. Jen was in the middle of explaining something about Chicago Public School curriculum when we noticed a man fishing off a dock. By his feet was a white plastic bag, occasionally flopping a few inches right or left.

Jen winced. "I hate fish."

To our dismay the man proceeded to stomp on the bag to stop the flailing.

"I always forget that you hate fish," was my lame reply as I tried to hurry her past the rest of the fishermen. But it really hasn't come up since college.

In college I suggested a fish for our dorm room, which Jen was obviously adverse to. Instead, for her birthday I bought a lizard. Avie,(named for Avagadro's number) used to get hand fed crickets. Jen's not a squeamish lady. She just HATES fish.

The Lincoln Park Zoo presented more problems. In the greenhouse a small koi pond caused Jen to leave the orchid room, the pelican's dinner dish sent her out of the bird house, and the hundreds of fish sharing space with a tiny asian hippo ruined the entire hippo experience for her. I've known Jen for eight years and never thought about her aversion to fish because it rarely came up. Now we were being stalked by creatures of the deep and shallow.

Eventually Jen had to get more work done so we parted ways with promises to meet for dinner.

I waited for Jen with some other college friends at the restaurant Liz C. had chosen on Belmont. When Jen arrived we finished our order, and awaited our selection of sushi and maki rolls eagerly.

I turned to Jen and raised my eyebrows.

"It's ok, she said, "nothing here looks like fish." She goes out for sushi every Tuesday.

I would have pointed out that the stomped fish in a bag probably didn't look like fish anymore either but my mouth was full of sea creatures.

---------

As an aside, my best friend from high school ALSO hated fish, their eyes, etc. I pointed out this pattern to Jen who suggested flippantly that I blog about it. So now I have.

black bird singing in the dead of night

2010-04-26T06:00:00.007-04:00

It was around 12:30am , and I was returning from my Saturday night shows at Improv Asylum. The shows had gone well, standing-ovation-well actually, but all I could think about was sleeping in preparation for tomorrow's 7a-3p shift. As I walked down my street, talking rapidly on the phone with Jen, about upcoming plans to see her, I had little else on my mind. But as I neared by house I heard fluttering and rasping, and paused the conversation to search for the source.

There, in the middle of the street, lay a small black bird on its back struggling to flip itself over.

Past my initial assessment (clear airway, pulse visible, no open wounds) I had no idea what else to do. I'm a people nurse, not a bird nurse.

I tried to help it flip over by crouching and using the edge of my foot. I got it onto its legs but then a spasmed wracked its frame throwing it onto its back again. It bit at my shoe angrily and I backed off.

"What now?" I asked Jen.

She looked up the number for Animal Rescue while I ran up the stairs to grab a pen to write with. I kicked off my shoes when I entered my apartment out of habit. As I wrote down the number I watched through the window with horror as a cat approached the helpless bird.

"Gotta go!" I hung up the phone and flung myself down the stairs at the cat. The cat stalked off, more disappointed than frightened. The bird eyed me suspiciously and stopped struggling. Playing dead, I thought, smart.

I called the number Jen had given me only to be directed to call the police for an emergency. "Please consider injured animals an emergency," a woman's recorded voice urged. Somehow still I doubted a small black bird counted. I settled for calling the next number listed on the recording: Angell Memorial. The woman who answered the emergency triage phone informed me that she didn't know anyone who would come out for the bird but that if it was clearly suffering, I could bring it to the hospital and they would euthanize it.

The bird at my feet decided I wasn't a threat and began fighting to get up once more. Euthanasia? I felt like I had seen more than one show on Animal Planet where a bird is nursed back to health by wildlife experts, but I was proving to be a poor resource for this case. Still, I couldn't leave it in the street to be toyed with by a cat or hit by a car. Yes. A quiet dignified death would be best. Now where did I put that shoe box?

As I stood there the bird suddenly flipped itself over. It looked right at me and then did an about face and started to walk down the street.

I called Jen back.

"It got up, and I'm now following it. I think it broke a wing, because it's hopping but it won't fly."

"You're following it?"

"Well, yeah." I explained my plan which was to try to get it into a box. If I could bring it to the hospital maybe they could keep it safe until someone could look at the wing in the morning.

"Do you have a box with you?"

I admitted that I did not, but it was trash night so if I followed the bird long enough I was bound to find someone with a bird appropriate container in their recycling.

Out loud the plan sounded less logical. Also, I was barefoot from when I kicked off my shoes.

"You know what, Jen, the bird isn't suffering any more. I'm going home."

"Good plan."

And it was a good plan until I realized that besides removing my shoes when I get home I have two other very, very responsible habits:
Hanging up my keys and,
resetting the lock.

I tried several options for re entry including calling my roommate, and ringing the top floor's doorbell. No success. I even considered sleeping in my car*. Finally, I called Juan, my landlord.
He opened the door in his pajamas and, to make things somehow infinitely worse, a neck brace.
I felt myself blush. "I'm so sorry, I found a bird outside and I came in and then forgot my keys."
And all he said was, "Okay."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* An idea which was immediately dispelled by the less- than- thrilling prospect of having to show up for work the next day smelling like old hairspray, in post performance clothes, eyes ringed with mascara, barefoot.

Improv Asylum Presents Second City!

2010-04-22T17:11:00.000-04:00

I was going to combine this post with another Improv Asylum plug but I have decided it gets its own entry:

After months of hard work and anticipation, Improv Asylum is excited to be producing the first ever run of Second City Boston!

The all original show, "One if by Land, Late if by T," is performed by a cast of stellar SC Chicago actors and also features Improv Asylum's own Kiley Fitzgerald and IA alumnus Micah Sherman! The musical director Brian Dunn also just happens to be IA's former musical director.

That means I can personally endorse this as being chock full of hilarious and talented people.

The show started on April 20th and runs through May 9th at the Wimbley Theater, Boston Center for the Arts.
It's a limited run only so buy tickets today!

very smooth

2010-04-16T07:00:00.000-04:00

The Charge Nurse was holding a nip of Christian Brothers brandy in his hand when I walked into the nursing station.

"I'll take care of disposing of it," Nurse Nightingale joked, pretending to grab at the bottle, "I know exactly what to do with it."

"So do I," joked Nurse Sassy, but I'm not a brandy person myself."

I grabbed the bottle and waved it dramatically. "Let's pour it on the cookies I baked, then we can- "

"Light them on fire?" suggested Sassy.

"Cookies foster," the Charge joked, taking the bottle back.

"We don't even know if it's actually brandy," Nightingale pointed out.

"It looks more like whiskey," Charge said.

"I bet it's Listerine," ventured Sassy.

"Where was it?" I asked.

"In the bathroom on the toilet:" came the answer followed by an agreement that it couldn't be brandy.

"No one would leave a whole nip of Christian Brothers in a bathroom," Nightingale pointed out.

"So Listerine," Sassy said, and then: "You know what? I'll do it, I'll smell that."

Charge handed her the bottle and we watched, waiting. She unscrewed the tiny cap and brought her nose down to the tip of the bottle and immediately pulled her head back.

"Yeah. It's piss."

Marriage Equality

2010-04-14T22:00:00.002-04:00

My friend Steve and his husband Peter are featured in this article today posted on GLAD's website entitled There is Nothing to Fear From Marriage Equality.

When Steve's husband Peter passed away a year ago in March the process of making all the necessary arrangements was smoothed (as much as it can be) by the fact that their marriage is recognized legally in Massachusetts.

Dealing with the death of a loved one is never easy, but the pain and suffering of survivors is only compounded when legal kinship is denied. It's exactly as Steve worded it in his open letter to Ameriblog: "For all the wonderful things that marriage equality does for the living, it maintains our dignity in death. …"

Things like this make me proud to live in Massachusetts. I'm also really proud to know Steve. He shares his story in the hopes that true equality will one day be offered to everyone, and I am sharing it with you for the same reason.

all you need is love, love is all you need

2010-04-13T11:00:00.000-04:00

On the Thursday before Easter known to Catholics as "Holy" or "Maudry" Thursday, the gospel reading for the mass is about the Last Supper. When Luke, Matthew and Mark recount the story of the Last Supper, the focus is on the covenant Jesus speaks of ( "This is My body...This is My blood.").
John, on the other hand, gives us the only account of the Passover meal where Jesus gets down on the ground and washes every body's feet.

Every parish does this next part differently, but in each church after the gospel and then the homily, there's usually some literal foot washing. It's often the priest who washes the feet of some lay ministers. One year at the church I attended at college I was asked to be one in a handful of parishioners to have their feet washed. I sat rigid in my chair as my feet got washed. It felt weird. I hoped no one would ask me about it later.
This year, at St. Cecelia's in Boston, Fr. John closed his homily by introducing the foot washing saying, "For those of you who don't know us, here at St. Cecelia's we don't just wash the feet of the twelve men on the church board." The congregation chuckled knowingly and my mouth opened as I realized what was coming next.

Father John reminded everyone that they didn't have to participate, but he invited everyone who wanted in to ditch their shoes and socks in the pews. I shook my head in disbelief.

As the choir sang and bowls of water were set up, I reflected on the first half of Fr. John's homily. He had pointed out that in the midst of everything else going on with that Passover night Jesus told his disciples to wash one another's feet. "That's it," Fr. John said in his comforting Boston accent, "that's all it comes down to. Washing each other's feet."

He urged us to think about the feet we've washed, literally and figuratively. And to think about whose feet we should wash next. He asked us to think about those in our lives who need to be "scrubbed" by our forgiveness, or our compassion. He implored us to try to "rinse" those around us by being refreshingly positive in every day small talk rather than respond to those around us with sarcasm or negativity.

My thoughts tumbled as I stepped into the aisle and got in line with the other bare foot men, women and children. I thought about the people in my life who need compassion, patience and positive energy the most. I thought about the people in my life who provide me with the compassion and love I need to survive.

Then I couldn't help but start to think about the literal feet I've washed as a CNA and then as an RN. For that reason alone I imagined this ritual was less scary for me than for some of the other strangers in line. (Or the ones sitting with their shoes securely tied on in the pews).
That made me remember about the man who wouldn't let me wash his feet.

As I stepped up to the bowl to have my feet washed by the stranger in front of me, who had just had his feet washed by the stranger in front of him I thought about the people I met in Haiti. I remembered how most of the people doing the "foot washing" in those tents weren't blood relations of the injured or dying patients - they were just neighbors who were responding to the need they saw around them.

After the man at my knee was finished washing my feet he patted them dry with a clean towel. He put it down, and an altar server appeared to refill the bowl and replace the towel. As she did so, the man and I embraced and I thanked him. Then I took my place at the bowl and washed the feet of the next seated stranger. After I dried his feet he thanked me, and hugged me goodbye. I padded back to my seat, struck by a lack of discomfort in the whole thing. Mine and everyone else's too.

"We belong to a church with a ton of hierarchy, huh?" Fr. John had challenged at the top of the homily, "sometimes it seems like people are more interested in getting their feet washed than washing other feet."

He continued, "We have a lot of ways of describing the hierarchy and power and ritual, huh? High mass? Low mass? But no matter how you understand religion, or what parts (pahts) of it are attractive to you... in the end it is all about washing one another's feet."<

That, as it so happens, is actually exactly how I choose to understand religion.

towed

2010-04-12T08:36:00.010-04:00

I didn't notice until Saturday night. And the car ... was gone.
I don't use my car every day, but I do walk by it every day, and I frantically tried to remember when I last saw it. Used it Monday. Saw it ... Thursday. So. Friday. Friday. April. Cambridge. Street cleaning. My car had been towed, and rightfully.
At 11pm, after the shows at Improv Asylum got out, I hopped on a train to a distant station. Unfortunately, that's about all the information I had for how to get to my destination. I had called the lot and the man on the phone was nice, but distracted. "We're... near...a T stop. We're near... [ T stop ].
"Ok..." I started.
"Ok, great!" he chirped. "See you later on!"

After about an hour of walking around in the dark in Somerville encountering several pigeons that I thought were bats, and what was possibly a man breaking into a car, I called a friend. "If I tell you where I am can you tell me how to get where I'm going?" She confirmed that I had missed my destination by a long shot.

I finally made it to the lot. I was exhausted, hungry. My feet hurt. I just wanted my car back.

"Make, model, year?" the man at the desk asked. "Are you sure it's here?"
"I did call -"
The other man behind the counter turned at the sound of my voice. "I know which one it is," he said.
While the older of two men behind the desk sorted through the paper work he also barked a staccato drink order into a walkie talkie. "Light. With. One. splenda."
I waited patiently. The walkie mumbled.
"No," the man said, " splenda. - Here, you talk to him." he pushed the walkie talkie to the younger man.
I pretended to watch the end of the How I Met Your Mother episode on their flat screen tv.

"Yeah I wanted the orange coolata. It's orange," he said into the handheld.
"Coffee?" came the question through the static." No, it's like an iced drink."

The older man sifted through a pile of papers. "Can you tell me again what your license plate is?"
Putting he walkie aside, the younger man said, "I know which one it is," and moved some papers around on the desk.
The walkie buzzed to life again, unintelligibly.
"Yeah, I mean, that's fine too, but I wanted the orange one. And... what do you want?"
" -I just need your credit card, Miss. - I TOLD them. I want whatever that drink is, the iced one and I want it vanilla flavored. Light with a splenda."
"Vanilla?"
"Yeah. Vanilla whatever. Just make it with a splenda. Light. - And can I see your license?"

The younger man spoke into the walkie: "yeah... with a splenda."

The older man: "Light."
Into the walkie: "Life."
The older man: "Light."
Into the walkie: "Life."
The older man: "LIGHT."
Into the walkie: "Oh. Light."

"You're all set now. It's in the first row." I walked outside. I found my car in the second row. And I completely understood the directions I had received earlier over the phone. It all made perfect sense.

100 Beds for Haiti Video

2010-04-05T07:00:00.003-04:00

Here's an awesome video by Daren McKelvey from the YoYoYo 90's Jam fundraiser for 100 Beds for Haiti on March 23rd. The video includes a couple clips of me and Colleen W. talking about Hopital Sacre Coeur.*

YOYOYO 90's Jam: Heal The World Edition w/100 Beds For Haiti from 100BedsForHaiti on Vimeo.

* Be sure to watch for when I can't decide between saying DVT and "deep vein thrombosis," and end up almost saying neither. Then go donate!