BOOT in Northampton tonight!

If anyone is in the Western Mass area (413, what up!?) come check out BOOT and Friends. 


 BOOT is Amy "Butts" Koske, Mark Teffer, Scott Braidman and Rachel Braidman.

And the "friends," tonight are non other than yours truly plus Improv Boston's talented and lovely
 Rachel Rosenthal and Shannon Connolly.

I can't wait to get on stage with all these amazing people. You should probably come watch.

The show is at 7pm and costs $5.
Come to the old Dynamite Records space on the lowest level of Thornes Market.
(Use the door that faces the parking lot.) For those of you who didn't hang out in Northampton every weekend for four years or more: directions.

jump start my heart, you.

Friday had been an unintentional marathon of an evening starting with two shows at Improv Asylum followed by drinks at The Field with the cast of Crime Solving Bear 2, breakfast at 2am at IHOP and finally a viewing* of Wet, Hot American Summer for the breakfast survivors at chez moi at around 4am.

I only tell you this because you'd think that Saturday I would have slept all day.
Instead, Saturday morning I woke up restless.

The kind of restless I haven't felt in years, for reasons I will dwell on in a future post.

I tried to watch an episode of Mad Men (I'm still in Season One), and found myself unable to concentrate. I found out my plans in Boston for the night were being deferred to another evening and I only grew more itchy. I alternately cleaned the kitchen and bathroom. I considered and rejected complicated dinner options. I surfed tracks on The Scarlet Pimpernel soundtrack until I'm sure my roommates wanted to hand me over to be guillotined. I switched to The Last Five Years.

Outside the sky was blue, and the tree outside my window, with all its reds and oranges reminded me of Amherst. The first time I listened to The Last Five Years was in Amherst. My trip to Amherst was scheduled for the morning. Man, do I miss Amherst, I thought.
I decided to throw some clothes into a bag for the morning.
Then it was all over.

Once the clothes were in the bag my mind was made up. I began throwing things into the backseat of the car. I felt like a version of myself I hadn't quite noticed gone missing.**

Within fifteen minutes I was in the car belting the words to "I Can Do Better Than That," and cruising in a zen like state*** towards the middle of the state back to a town I've had a love/hate relationship with for years.

The first thing I did at Amy's house was accidentally almost electrocute myself in an incident involving an electric socket in their low set ceiling, and a giant sword. The second thing I did was debate at length about what it would have looked like, and if it would have been appropriate to carve into a gravestone.

The restlessness had dissipated on the road and was replaced with an overwhelming sense of coming home.

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* We all promptly fell asleep, so it was more like a "putting on for background noise."
**Which is a good thing since most of my life demands a lot more discipline than I used to have.
*** only more driving appropriate

Back to Basics

This morning on the way to work I found myself annoyed by two high school girls standing next to my seat. They were having a very loud and inane conversation which mostly involved one of them telling a story and the other one saying, "I know, n****r!" I forgot all about them until the end of my shift when I walked onto a train at Mass Ave headed home and heard someone screeching, "n*****r, do I smell like tuna fish to you?" Seriously. What are the odds?
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I had a lovely weekend, kicked off with my final Faceoff show Friday night. Sunday I worked from 3pm to 7pm and was planing to then take a bus to a train and then a taxi over to Bobby and Claire's for the Superbowl. Instead I was lured astray when Caroline called work to see what I was up to. Caroline is an amazing cook and I hadn't seen her since she started moonlighting at the Pine Street Inn (plus she lives very close by) so I jumped at the opportunity. Joseph picked me up after a short train ride and within 15 minutes I was barefoot on their sofa eating spicy soup and debating Melody on the appropriate use of the verb sup*. Caroline and Joseph taught us all how to drink a Mexican Flag, and then, no sooner were the limes and salt put aside when three flavors of sorbet, a pan of warmed berries and fresh hot chocolate sauce appeared.
On Monday night it was my turn to act as a host. Laura made guacamole, and I heated up some chicken wings and one by one a motley crew arrived to watch Groundhog Day. "I can't believe it's only been a year since we watched this last," Laura complained marveled. Me neither. My brother showed up after the movie was over and I was getting ready to turn in. We stayed up and drank tea and talked about recipes for chicken and how badly we'd like to visit Mexico. (Badly.)
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If the entire weekend was categorized by spending quality time with good friends, Saturday afternoon was perhaps the pinnacle. I had lunch with Liz K., who was one of my my closest friends in high school. Liz is going through a bunch of changes in her life, and when I found out, third hand, I called her up. I was nervous as I drove to pick her up in our old neighborhood; for all I knew we had very little still in common. After all, there were reasons we both drifted from the close knit group we were once a part of. As it turns out, I had nothing to fear. We had a four hour lunch and then decided to attend church together. As I knelt beside her in the large, gothic church of our childhood I felt more at peace than I have felt in a very long time, even in prayer or meditation.

I talk a lot about mindfulness and self awareness, and have written before about how important I think it is to reevaluate your knowledge of yourself and to question yourself often. One facet of this that I can never get enough of is reconnecting with the people who knew you before you were you. When Liz and I were close enough to talk every single day and share everything from Latin translations to boyfriends, I was a different person. And just talking to her about even inconsequential things opened up a lot of insight into who I was then, who I am now and how I got here. Senses reconfigured.
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* We were both correct. It is both an archaic word meaning "to eat dinner," (my stance) as well as a more modern word used in place of "sip" when a fluid is more viscous than water but not nearly a solid (her argument).