So, since our leader, President 24%, had his State of the Union the other night, I figured it was a good time to catalog the upcoming few months.  Lots of cool stuff going on.  And unlike Bush, I will not be concerned with human-animal hybrids.

Right now I'm doing "You Can't Take It With You" at the JCC, directed by David Gerrard.  I'm only playing a couple of smaller roles, but it's good because I have a bunch of lines and each time I'm only on stage for about 5 minutes each act.  I think I almost prefer it to a couple of the roles that are on stage for the whole show yet don't have too much more to say.  That goes on in March.

As of now I'm still also doing "Joseph" up at Helen Stairs, but I don't know if I'm going to stay in it.  Besides scheduling conflicts, I'm not a big musical guy and the reason I auditioned in the first place was that I thought a bunch of friends were going to be in it, and all of them ended up in other shows as well, so they've dropped out.  Mira is doing Joseph and I'd love to do another show with her, but we'll see how it works out.  She's a little irritated because the last time she did Joseph, they learned the music and choreography in a week, and they expect the choir to take almost 3 months for this production.  She's a patient kid, but that's pushing it. 

Mira also has an audition today at Seaside up in Daytona for their June production of "Les Miserables."  She loves Les Mis, and that'd be a real hike if she gets it, but it'd be a great opportunity for her and somehow Heather and I would find a way to make it work.

Let's see, what else for Mira?  She's apparently going to be playing the lead in a short film being done over at UCF, but we don't have the details on it yet.  They were supposed to send Heather the script last night.

Tomorrow we're having a few friends over for a Super Bowl party.  Nothing major.  Just an alternative to spending $30 at some sports bar and being surrounded by drunk, obnoxious Pats fans.  (And as my friend Ernie pointed out, "and obnoxious Giant fans too.")

I'm working on a short film for Mira to help promote her a bit, called "A Young Actor's Life."  We're going to be shooting around town the next few weekends, and we've gotten permission to shoot at such places as Theatre Downtown and Infusion Tea.  I've also asked some local actors to help us out, including the awesome Dean Walkuski.  We shot a few scenes from the opening last night with my new Canon HV20 camcorder and I was very pleased with how they came out.  Premiere Pro 3.0 may be a resource hog but it does handle HD video well.

Mira's progressing well in her irish dance as well, she's moving on to hard shoes soon and perhaps she might be starting competitions this year.  She's doing well in school (except for math, where unfortunately she got Heather's "anti-math" mind) and enjoying herself.

She also has her Odyssey of the Mind competition in a couple weeks.

On to the other offspring, where Xander is loving school, already seems to be a big hit with all the female teachers (he gives a lot of hugs), and is now telling us he wants to be a model.  Heh.  And Heather doesn't exactly agree, but I swear that his new Kindergarden teacher looks a lot like Janel Maloney, who played Donna on "The West Wing."

Okay, enough about the kids.

The next few months are going to be really busy.  Lots of events like my friend Paul's 40th birthday this week, my buddy Rizz's bachelor party in Atlantic City in March, and his wedding in New York in April.  For the latter, Heather and I are taking advantage of the weekend and staying in New York for a couple days.  We've got tickets to Spring Awakening and Avenue Q while we're up there.  (Or, and we're also seeing Wicked here in Orlando in April as well.)  One weekend in April I've got tickets to see Springsteen three times in four nights, in Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa.  We're seeing the Yankees take on the Phillies in a spring training game in Tampa.  MegaCon in March.  GOAT's "Twelve Angry Men" later this summer.  Oasis in May.

And of course, speaking of May and GOAT, our show "Amanda's Mix Tape," which I wrote and will be acting in, should be getting off the ground in April so we can be ready for Fringe.   I'm amazingly excited about the project.  Besides the surreal experience of hearing the words I wrote coming to life, it's just an amazing cast full of people who I like and really respect as actors, and I'm really looking forward to working with all of them again and especially Paul as director, who's just one cool dude.

There's also the possibility that the short 10 minute play I wrote for PRT will be produced for their Summer Shorts program at Valencia in July.  I have to work on it a little bit more before I submit it.  And I am also going to submit a science fiction novelette I wrote a couple years ago to Analog or Asimovs, the worst they can do is turn it down, right?

I know I didn't mention Heather a lot, and that makes it sound as though she isn't doing anything, but of course she's busy as hell.  She works for me three days a week helping me run the business, and takes on the strong majority of cooking and taxi duty for Mira and Xander's activities.  She also is the primary helper for homework, all kinds of little kid crises, and has taken on most of the responsibility for helping Mira's career.  Eventually, when Xander gets a little older, I'm hoping she'll have a little more time for her own interests, but she's told me she's very happy right now to be spending her time helping Mira. 

Finally, after being in Florida for 12 years, we're starting to feel like we have some good friends and things we enjoy doing.  I'm really looking forward to the next few months.

I'm not usually a two blogs in one day kind of guy, but we just got back from seeing my grandfather and it just really amazed me.  He turned 98 yesterday.  That just boggles the mind.  Watching him and Xander talk back and forth past each other was kind of fun though, as neither one of them actually pays attention to what the other is saying and yet they still have a conversation. 

I'm not one of those guys who really worries about getting "old."  I do know that I still look fairly young for my age, and quite frequently I still get people shocked that I have a 9 year old daughter and that I'm 37.  The last time was just a few days ago at the readthrough for You Can't Take It With You.  A few years ago I used to still get irritated when people would card me, but I've learned to take it as a positive that I look younger than I am.  As I joked to Sarah, my co-star in our Fringe show this May, if it weren't for my "young" face I couldn't pull off the leading role in the show I wrote.  :)

Cliche'd as it must be, I have to say that it's amazing to think of how the world has changed since my grandfather was born, technologically.  And I wonder what it will be like in 60 years when I reach that age.

And speaking of time passing...today marks the 18 1/2 year anniversary of Heather and I becoming a couple.  Since I'm 37 1/2, that means it's only another six months before we've been together half our lives.  Wow.

Heather and I went to go see "The Sweetest Swing in Baseball" at Theatre Downtown last night and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Probably more than any show we've seen in a while.  A great cast, a great script, and just all around an excellent show. 

We actually also got out to see the movie "Juno" the other day, which if you know us, is quite the rarity.  Again, a very enjoyable time.  Funny movie.  Heather was more taken with the indie chick music soundtrack than I was, but it may grow on me. 

I also headed out to the midnight premiere the other night of "Cloverfield."  No, it's not Citizen Kane, and the characters are interchangeable and the dialogue is occasionally moronic, but, hell, it's a *freakin' monster movie.*  You want to see a monster knock shit over, and the POV of the film, taken from a single person's camcorder as the city is destroyed, is definitely Godzilla-meets-Blair Witch.  But it worked.  Don't go in expecting a masterpiece and you'll be fine, especially if you like monster movies.

Last night was the one year anniversary of my mom passing away.  We had planned to do something elaborate, or at least go out to dinner, but with the kids getting back to school after two weeks off, and everything else that had to be done, we ended up just saying a few words at dinner.

I still miss her.

I don't even know how I got into it, but I just spent the last hour hopping through YouTube watching clips of "The West Wing."  Damn, I'd almost forgotten how good that show was.  I stopped buying the DVD sets after season 3 or 4, guess I should check dvdpricesearch and see who has the best deals on the sets I'm missing.

In the meantime, is this not perhaps the best 6 minutes of television ever?  The end of "Two Cathedrals."  (Although, admittedly, you sort of have to know the show and what came before this to really appreciate it.)  Not only is the music perfect, and the editing fantastic, but the little details blow me away, like Charlie taking off his coat because Bartlet isn't wearing his.  And it makes me miss John Spencer all the more, he was one of my favorite actors.

Hey, if you can't once in a while use a Rush lyric to title a blog post, then what good is living?

Now that the first week back from vacation is over, and we've pretty much caught up on all the work we missed, I'm starting to think about the Fringe show we're going to be doing next May.  Six months until then, but since it's the first time I'm doing a Fringe show I'm trying to think of things early.   What kinds of marketing can we do to set up apart from the other 70 shows?  Since we're on the outside stage, with little storage or dressing areas, how do I have to make allowances in the script?  And dammit, how long will I have to keep running back to the script and adding one more joke before I finally let the thing go in April or so and say, "Okay, we're done!"

As JMS once said, "Art is never finished, only abandoned."

Other projects of late: trying to finish up the Mousetrap DVDs (I thought I was mostly done, and then I decided to go back and redo one whole sequence that added a couple weeks to the project), working on a new short 10 minute script to bring to PRT this weekend, cleaning up the front room, getting Mira's new/old bedroom set up, and about 20 other things we're doing within the house.  Oh, and not getting too busy this weekend since we're going away next weekend with Rob and Kaylie.

So, we got back in from vacation yesterday.  Previously, when we'd gone on cruises we'd gotten home on a Monday, which was a real hassle because you'd have a long drive home and then have to get right to work.  Thankfully this time instead of getting back into Ft. Lauderdale, we sailed into Port Canaveral, which was only an hour drive home.  And thanks to our dear friend Louise, who let us park our van at her home a couple miles from the port, we saved $75 on long term parking.

(The only challenging part about the morning was the fact that Springsteen tickets for all 3 Florida shows in April went on sale yesterday morning at 10, but thankfully I had no problems with my Sprint broadband card and was able to log into Ticketmaster from the road while my dad was driving and get tickets to all three shows.)

As for the trip, it was relaxing, although I definitely wish I'd gotten a little more sleep.  But that was pretty much my own fault the last few nights, as I managed to find some fun people to hang out with and spent a lot of late night time chatting and hanging out playing cards.  Got to sit front and center as two of those new friends discovered they really liked each other and tried to figure out how to make the relationship work.  (One of which may be reading this.)  My own life has certainly shown me that relationships are hard work, even when you don't have external obstacles blocking your path, so I wish them luck. 

This was our first Disney cruise, actually the 5th different cruise line I'd been on.  I'd place them above Royal Caribbean (duh) and Princess, but far below Regent and a little below Holland America.  The activities for the kids were great, and definitely the best kids facilities I've seen, but being Disney, there were just too many kids.  I never saw less than 50-75 kids in either the 5-7 room with Xander or the 8-9 room with Mira.  So while they had fun, they were sort of overwhelmed with the environment.  Especially Xander, who we recognized a few days in needed some detox time at least once or twice a day to avoid getting overstimulated.  The adult activities were a lot of fun, although it took me until the last 3 days to realize there were a lot of activites at some of the pubs and lounges that weren't formally scheduled.  I also wish they'd done a better job at making sure some of the activities weren't scheduled during dinner.

I was also a little underwhelmed by most of the service.  A few of the crew members were excellent, going out of their way to make our trip more fun, but the little details seemed to fall between the cracks.  Does it matter in the long run whether it took housekeeping more than three hours to pick up the dirty room service dishes outside our door?  No, but it's part of an overall experience that wasn't as good as it should have been.

I know we were also at a disadvantage, I guess you could say, because the "Disney experience" doesn't mean anything to us and the kids.  Seeing a guy in a Goofy suit by the pool isn't a big deal for my kids, we live 25 minutes from Disney after all.  And character breakfasts?  We can go to one any Saturday morning if we chose to.  So the fact they played Disney music in the halls and ran all the character photo ops didn't mean anything to us. 

Mira did enter the Talent Show on the last night, and because they didn't have any backing music for the songs she knew the lyrics to, decided to do some Irish dancing.  She improvised a routine to whatever music they found in the DJ booth, and was fantastic.  See, look:



And that brings me to the part where I was disappointed.  The food.  Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a food snob.  I'm basically a steak and potatoes, comfort food guy.  No fois gras on my plate.  But the food, while good, wasn't great.  And for the money Disney charges, it should be.  At least four times the menu described a dish that wasn't what came to the table.  The rib-eye steak I ordered came as a sirloin one night and prime rib another.  The vegetarian gumbo had no vegetables and was basically a tomato puree.  The filet mignon came out as some kind of weird thin cut I'd never seen on a filet.  And they kept burning the damn beef.  I ordered rare every time and had to send it back at least three times because it was medium to medium well.  Finally the dining room manager had the head chef personally prepare me a filet mignon so I could get a decent cut of beef.  (And, to put it frankly, it wasn't anywhere near as good a level of beef as I got on Regent, or even at a place like Ruth's Chris.)

We did have fun on the shore excursions, taking both kids along on a cataramaran ride off St. Maartin, and then just Mira on a kayaking and snorkeling trip on St. Thomas.  Having spent the whole morning kayaking two miles back and forth, my arms were sore for two days.

So, to sum up, a good time, if not a great time, and not looking forward to getting back to work.  But at least we have our weekend cruise with Kaylie and Rob in a couple weeks, and that should be an amazing time, being Regent.

When Heather and I moved to Virginia in 1992, we finally had the opportunity to have our own pets, since it was the first time we'd had our own place that allowed cats or dogs.  We went down to the local SPCA and picked out a grey and black striped dark tiger cat and a cute puppy.  We noticed that the cat was a polydactyl and had 7 claws on each of his front paws.  A little girl walking by looked at his paws and told us, "He looks like he has little mittens!"  So from that moment on, that cat was known as Mittens. 

But the dog wasn't ready to go home with anyone yet, he was too young to be separated from his mother, and so the next day we brought him back.  So Mittens had the apartment to himself for a few weeks.

But we planned to be out of town for a few days in November, and so we decided that Mittens should have a friend to play with.  Heather sent me down to the SPCA with explicit instructions to find a black kitten. 

I traipsed into the kitten room, a section they called "Kitty City," and sat down cross-legged in the middle of the room, surrounded by 25 kittens.  I announced, loudly, "Okay, who wants to go home with me?"  This tiny little speck of a cat, a dark tiger that barely weighed a pound, hobbled over to me, meowed, crawled into the lap, began purring louder than a chainsaw, and went to sleep. 

Yeah, he wasn't a black cat, but there was something about this kitten that I couldn't say no to.  I called Heather up and told her, "I found a kitten." 

"Is it black?" she asked.

"Uh, well....no," I answered.

There was a pause of a few seconds.  "It's another dark tiger, isn't it?" 

"Trust me," I said.  "I'll put a hold on him and you can come down after work and meet him.  He's adorable."

She did.  He was.  And we took that cat home on October 31, 1992.  He was very sick at first, malnourished, and the vet told us that if he had spent another day or two at the SPCA, he might not have made it.  So we quarantined him in the bathroom, nursed him back to health, and a few days later introduced him to Mittens.  We had considered naming him Scout, but Heather remembered that we had decided to name our second cat Hobbes, and so the latter name stuck.

Hobbes and Mittens lived with us in Virginia for three years.  In my last year of law school, Heather moved out to Las Vegas for a while to help out her father as he recovered from a heart attack.  She would send me emails (on GEnie, if anyone remembers that system) that would end with "And give the babies a kiss for me."  Even though she and I were having some troubles getting along long distance, she kept telling me how much she missed the cats.  Especially Hobbes' purr.  So I took a microphone, recorded about 30 seconds of Hobbes purring, digitized it, set the media player on "repeat," and filled up a 90 minute cassette tape with the calming sounds of Hobbes' purring.  I sent it to her without any labeling on it, just a note to play when stressed.  She loved it.

When Heather and I got married, the cats came with us to Florida.  Her friend Joanne had always told us that when he had kids, the "babies" would become cats again.  And, indeed, she was right, but the cats were still a part of the family.

Mittens passed away a few years ago from kidney failure, and Hobbes probably thought he'd finally have the house to himself.  But a beagle named Sadie (who ran away) and a ridgeback named Somewhere (who we gave away) showed him that was unlikely.  And a couple of years ago both Xander and Mira got their own kittens, named Cake and Lana, and so Hobbes was once again in a multi-cat household.

Hobbes was quite simply, the ultimate lap cat.  He would sit with me on the couch every night as I watched tv or read a book.  As I headed off to bed, he would hop down off the couch and lead me into the bedroom, jump up on the bed, and meow until I laid down next to him.  He slept at the foot of our bed every night for, I'd guess, the last 3 years. 

Back in August he turned 15.  That's 76 in human years.  He started to slow down a bit.  We noticed that his eye seemed to be bothering him, and after a couple weeks was noticably half-closed all the time.  I took him into the vet and they checked for tumors, kidney failures, blood infections, but nothing showed up. 

The eye closed up a few weeks ago, and it became obvious he was not going to get better.  We did everything we could to make him comfortable, spent lots of time sitting with him, and brought him soft food since he was having trouble eating the hard food. 

Earlier this week it become clear he wasn't eating, even if I brought the food right to him.  When he tried to hop down onto the floor from the bed he would fall, and had lots of trouble walking.  He kept losing his balance.  And yesterday we noticed that his other eye was starting to cloud over, probably a cataract.  So the prognosis wasn't good.

Last night Heather slept on the couch so that Hobbes and I could spend one last night next to each other.  He slept next to my shoulder all night, and when I woke up this morning, he had his paws wrapped around my wrist and was purring. 

You hate to anthropomorphize, but I just felt that he was telling me that it was okay to do what needed to be done. 

Today was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.  I held him all the way to the vet, and looked right into his eye as the end came.  I cried.  A lot. 

He was truly one of the sweetest creatures on this planet, a furry little ball of affection.

Hobbes was a part of this family for 15 years.  And I'll miss him.  We are lessened without him, and all those who met him know what I mean. 

If you're a pet owner, give your little one a hug tonight and tell him what he means to you.  And think of Hobbes when you do it.

(Hobbes is in front, with Cake in the middle and Lana in back:)

Had an audition tonight for the January show at Theatre Downtown, "The Sweetest Swing in Baseball."  The show is about a female artist who attempts suicide and then, when thrown into a psychiatric hospital, pretends that she thinks she is Darry Strawberry because otherwise her insurance won't pay for her care.  It's a really good script, lots of great little moments, and I think it'll be a great show.  It'd also be a chance to work with Fran as my director again, which I would absolutely kill to do.  Callbacks Wednesday, which should be fun because we have conferences with both Xander and Mira's teachers that night.

Finally picked up a HD-DVD player the other day at Wal-mart's big Friday sale.  I hadn't planned on picking one up until the format war shook itself out a bit, but the price was so good it was a no brainer.  Now just have to add a bunch of HD discs to our Netflix queue.

Unfortunately, though I can't bring myself to say it out loud, I don't think Hobbes is going to be with us too much longer.  His right eye has been shut due to some kind of muscle problem for weeks now (we call him "one eyed Willie") and his breathing at times is vey raspy.  Last night for the first time he seemed to be losing his balance here and there.  He hasn't been eating a lot, so we had to bring the food to our bed where he spends 95% of his time sitting or sleeping. 

Hobbes has been with Heather and I over 15 years, we brought him home on Halloween 1992.  I can't imagine not having him around, he's the ultimate example of a lap cap who just loves being with us, his humans.  I'm just trying to spend as much time as possible with him right now since I don't know how much time we have left together.  15 years is a pretty good run for a cat, but he's a good soul, and he deserves more.