What brings sunshine to my snowy mornings

I know, I know, I know. It's been a week since the inaugural festivities and I owe everyone some inaugural ball updates. It is my sincere hope that that gets done before I bust this joint and leave on a jet plane this weekend.

In the meantime, however, I wanted to share a little ex parte communication I received this morning in my Facebook inbox that I brought a smile to my tired and worn face. (Ex parte, for those of you who don't watch as much Law & Order as I do, occurs when a lawyer takes a motion to the judge without the presence of the other party.)

The electronic audition notice for Full Monty went out a few days ago to the e-mail listserv to everyone and their mom in Baltimore theatre belongs. Since my name was listed as part of the production staff, I wouldn't have been surprised to get a note or two giving me a heads up that certain people would be coming to the audition. I certainly was not expecting something to light up my life like this did, however.

By the by, all names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Subject: hello my favorite sexagenarian!

OK, so I'm going to audition for THE FULL MONTY, and saw your name as vocal director. That doubles the reasons I want to do it (Three main reasons, in no particular order: 1. to work with you again, 2. to work with [insert name of cool director here] again, 3. My lifelong dream to wear tearaway pants). Will you be at auditions? I gotta figure out what to sing....I always do terribly at... auditions.

Speaking of the audition....will we have to show the goods at the audition? I just want to know how much fluffing I will have to do in preparation. HAHAHAHAHA

I laughed so hard I cried. Just when I think I'm sick of theatre (and theatre people more especially), someone reaches out to me and reminds me that there's this group of people in the world with my exact same constitution and sense of humor.

Wino Wednesday

I feel like the title of this blog post is a little bit of a blatant lie tease, because I'm not going to recommend a delicious beverage for you in this edition. No... I'm still too high off of the inauguration to do that, so I'm going to spend the rest of the week providing you all with anecdotes from my inauguration day. Don't worry: this one is booze-related. I send you apologies in advance for hearing tidbits of my story out of sequence, but chronologically this falls closer towards the end of my evening.

I was trying so hard to stay at the ball until Prince Charming Barack and Michelle got there, but word spread pretty early on in the evening that the Eastern Ball would be the last one of the evening they would intend, and they weren't expected to arrive until 2:30 am. Then the Maestro texted me from O's house where he was watching CNN (long story that you'll get parts of later) to inform me that Barack and Michelle were actually expected to arrive at 2 am. Either way, by midnight my stilettos had me feeling like I'd just run a marathon without feet on my ankles and I could barely hold my head up. I had gotten separated for the second time from new inauguration ball friends and decided to just head home around 1:00. One of the many lovely things about being in Union Station was that after I picked up my coat from the check closet, I could walk right out of the ball and onto the Metro. I caught the next (half empty) train towards Bethesda and found myself a nice seat in the corner of the car.

As the train got to Metro Center however, it filled up with attendants from other balls and a couple wound up sitting in the row behind mine. At first, I thought that they were having a domestic dispute in dulcet tones until I started listening closer and realizing that they were both completely plastered on champagne (I would recommend that for this week's installment of Wino Wednesday, but it was $7 a glass and not the Korbel that the Obamas were served for their inaugural luncheon). They were plastered on the cheap inaugural ball champagne and they were arguing over whether she was going to wait until she got off the train to purge the contents of her stomach by way of her esophagus or go ahead and do it right there. Against her date's wishes, she opted to wait as far as she could get her head into the bottom of her handbag. And instead of my inauguration night ending on the high note of Barack Obama sweeping me off my feet and asking me to dance with him at the ball, it ended listening to a woman ralph into her lap two feet away from my head. And then smelling the putrid odor of cheap champagne and stomach acid.

Hey... at least this guy went back to where he came from.

Happy Barack-Obama-is-President-today Day!

I just blog for fun, and I really don't feel that I'm particularly good at it (and that wasn't a neurotic self-deprecating ploy to get you say otherwise, I assure you). Today, however, I feel the need to be serious and articulate, because they're actually publishing what I say in a place where lots of people go to get their Baltimore news.

That's right, ladies and gents... mosey on over to B the site and read about my day. And hope that I don't say something stupid.

Guess who's gonna be belle of the ball.

I had to go down to the District yesterday to pick up our Inaugural Ball tickets in person. We're going to the Eastern Ball at Union Station, which initially gave me mixed feelings. On one hand, I wanted to go to the Mid-Atlantic Ball so that we had the chance of bumping into someone... anyone from Maryland. Someone who might have some distant connection to someone else that we knew in a previous life. On the other hand, I was excited about the venue. While I have no doubt that they'll make the Convention Center as snazzy as they possibly can, Union Station just seems like such a cooler space in which to have a ball. Then Mama Downbeats texted me to inform me that the main act at said ball we're attending is none other than James Taylor, the Maestro's favorite. That sealed the deal. I'm officially electrified to be a part of the inaugural festivities tomorrow.

I picked up Metro tickets for tomorrow as well while I was down there in the event that we decided that the Metro was the easiest way to get from point A to point be once entering the DC metropolitan area. Even the non-commemorative version have Obama's face on them. Instant souvenir!

So at any rate, the time is nigh! 24 hours and I'll be on my way to being a part of history. I'll be documenting my day tomorrow with B, Baltimore's free daily. Hop on over to B the site tomorrow to check out their inauguration coverage. And, of course, I'll be doing a wrap up here over the next few days.

Easing on down another road

'Cause there maybe times
When you think you lost your mind
And the steps you're takin'
Leave you three, four steps behind
But the road you're walking
Might be long sometimes
You just keep on steppin'
And youll just be fine

For the past couple of months, I've been doing some soul searching and serious thinking as to what direction I should be heading professionally in the creative realm. I've been playing with some folks down on the other beltway... learning how to teach music that literally just finished being written and laughing my butt off.

Today, I start teaching children how to sing The Wiz. Generally, a day doesn't go by where I don't find myself at least once saying some variant of, "I hate children." The Maestro says I do it for shock value. Sometimes I'm not so sure.

But, I truly am excited to have been given the opportunity to try something new, and to work with a completely unfamiliar group of people. I think that I'll need this concentration of youth and innocence before I start working with naked men in April.



Don't you carry nothin' that might be a load. Come on, ease on down the road...

I bit the bullet!

When I started this blog, my intention to be semi-anonymous was never rooted in an attempt to hide it from people in real life. Nor was I trying to keep my face off the web so that I could bear my deepest darkest secrets. While there are some blogs that I love to read because over-share and impassioned commentary are their specialties, it's never quite been my style. My sole objective when keeping my legal name off of this site and instead going by my musical theatre nickname was to keep this from being the first thing potential employers saw when they Googled my name. Not that I have anything to hide, it's just that it's none of their business. I am also convinced that one day, the Maestro will be elected Mayor of Baltimore, and I don't want the press to use any of this against him. That being said, my mother reads this blog. The Maestro reads as well, and I have it posted somewhere on my Facebook profile. Not only do I not mind when people I know in real life check out Random Musings-- I get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

This should not be seen in anyway as discounting the friends I've made and lives I've been welcomed into on the internet solely by networking with other people from all over who, like me, are addicted to the blogosphere. I do, however, wish that I had more of an interface on the internet side of the world with people I've known in real life first. I can count on my fingers the number of real life friends with whom I'm connected on Twitter. The same goes for blogs in my reader. I don't by any means expect everyone on the planet to keep a blog-- I barely can. But I definitely wish that more real people were on Twitter. For jeeps' sake, I found out about yesterday's Hudson River crash before anyone else I know.

So yesterday I got inspired when I saw the Twitter handle and blog URL in the signature of an e-mail I received from a member of the cast on my current project. Why shouldn't I put myself out there? If I want to interact with people I know in real life online, I should advertise my existence, no? So I just changed my e-mail signature on my personal account to reflect my online persona. I'm betting I'll be surprised at how many people I know are out there lurking on the internets in varying states of anonymity, too. At least that's my hope. I'll let you all know how it goes.

AND! Don't think I don't check my stats on Feedburner. I know there are some Baltimore lurkers out there. Let me know that you've stopped by every now and then. It'll make me straight up giddy, I promise you.

...a little pre-occupied

That's the only way to describe my state over the past few days. You see, Mama Downbeats loves her only child so very much that she called me on Monday and offered me and the Maestro tickets to the hottest party in town. That's right... the Maestro and I will be painting the District red, white, and blue with the Obamas and the Bidens and everyone else who's partying like it's January 20, 2009.

I wasn't planning on going anywhere close to D.C. at all next week. I told the production team I'm working with on my current project not to look for me at all next week because, well, Kensington was just too close to the inaugural festivities for me to even think about venturing there. Heck, Baltimore might be too close to the inaugural festivities, so I'm not even sure if I planned on leaving my house next week.

But then Mama Downbeats called me at work on Monday afternoon with the gift that keeps on giving: the opportunity to get fancy and possibly breathe the same air as our new President. So immediately all of those acrid thoughts I was thinking about D.C. next week flew out of my mind and I screamed YES, WE CAN [go down to Washington for an Inaugural Ball as long as we don't have to pay for it]. (Sorry, I couldn't resist)

At any rate, I have chosen a gown. I've asked the Maestro to wear tails. I've been Tweeting my progress and researching all of the possible methods to get down to that side of the world when they've closed all humankind off from any sort of ground transportation. I'll keep you all updated on how it goes.

And if anyone has any sort of insight as to how to get to the Convention Center on Tuesday night, please throw it my way.