An open letter to my friends and family:

I’ve been delinquent with emailing and correspondence in general ever since Christmas. It has been a mixture of busyness, desk swapping, and laziness. This should catch you up with my exploits.

From this point on I will try to do better. My apologies.

Christmas was fun, however brief. Rick and I drove down to Lancaster on Christmas Eve. One little addition to the trip this time was our furry bundle of joy, Paiwacket. Believe me, I weighed the pros and cons of taking a cat 400 miles away from home. At the time this seemed like our only real option. Well it turned out to be a disaster. He ended up having panic attacks (seriously, panic attacks!) and so I had to cut my trip short and return home with him a few days later. Christmas it self was nice though. The tree was dwarfed by the gifts surrounding it (Rick’s nieces made out like bandits!) and my mom, sister, and brother-in-law joined us later for more gifts and dinner. My dad couldn’t join us as he had to stay home nursing a rumbly tumbly.

The next day we drove to Ventura as Rick was to give a talk to a Ventura atheist group. About forty people showed up, and his talk was well received, Q&A lasted about 25 minutes, and we sold around 15 copies of his book. I stayed with my mom that night and Rick was driven home by his sister.

The day after I met up with my friend, Amanda, in the San Fernando Valley for tea. We went to the Guilded Rose Tea Room, which, ironically, is situated directly across the street from Pinecrest, the elementary school Amanda and I attended and where we met. Amanda had never been to tea before so I thought it would be fun. It was fun. Visits with Amanda are always fun but I can’t give a wholehearted thumbs up to the Tea Room. The food was ok but mainly it was over crowded, loud and too hot. I was sweltering, I can’t imagine how Amanda (being extremely pregnant at the time) felt.

That night I went back to Rick’s parents and the next morning Paiwacket and I drove back home, that was December 28th. Rick stayed down south to hang out with family and friends until January 8th. I didn’t go back to work until January 2nd, so I had six days off and spent them mainly by myself, without doing very much at all.

We’ve had a few bad movie nights with our new friends, David & Dana. We all revel in really bad movies; connoisseurs, if you will. So we’ll get together at one of our apartments, eat food, drink alcohol, and shout out jokes and/or snide remarks at the screen. Dana has a particular love of movies about or involving zombies. Man, the stinkers we’ve watched! Great fun!

On January 18th I took a class on the duties and laws governing Notary Publics and at the end of the class (6 hours) took a state exam. About a week later I was informed that I passed! Hey, I hadn’t taken a test in years so I wasn’t sure. But I passed with a 93%. So this Tuesday I had my fingerprints taken at the local Police Department. Once my background check is completed (them coppers got nuthin on me!) I will jump through a few more bureaucratic hoops and eventually receive my Notary Public commission. My employer is paying for this so everything I do on their behalf will be for free otherwise I can charge. My boss doesn’t even mind if people come here to the office. Sweet! I expect tens of dollars to be rolling in post haste!

Part time job: I finally quit! As you probably know I’ve had a job as a substitute House Manager at a prominent regional repertory theatre. This job I have hated since almost immediately upon hire, for various and sundry legitimate reasons. (I’m keeping this ambiguous for the internet. Plus I don’t think it a good idea to burn a theatre bridge.) January 29th was my last performance with them. So long, and thanks for all the fish, y’all!

Birthdays: There were so many since Christmas. Though I’m pretty sure all were acknowledged HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO:
David- December 26th
Victoria- January 13th
Amanda-January 15th
Lisa- January 21st
Hazel- January 25th
Me-January 30th
Dana-February 2nd
And a very special happy birthday to Amanda’s new little one, Emily, born on January 24th of this year.

Play: Far be it from me to have only one job at a time! I’m stage managing Noel Coward’s “Relative Values” at Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond. We held auditions for it between January 22nd - 25th. Something new this time, I’m going to be on stage as well! I have a small part as Alice, a rather dippy, star-struck maid. Don’t bother to haul your cookies up to the area to see it if you’re only interested in seeing me in a show. As I said, it’s a small part. I only have three small scenes. We’ve just completed our second week of rehearsals and things are progressing nicely. Lots more work remain.

More babies: My boss is now on leave. She is having twins so she requires three months of bed rest before her three months of maternity leave. We threw her a baby shower that turned out to be quite a lot of fun. I’m still glowing from the compliments! Anyway, while she’s away I get an office! Sweet. I also finally got a new computer at work, so that’s another reason I’ve not been online much this week. I’ve been a nomad until now, having no permanent workstation of my own and any second I had for personal stuff went to the play.

That pretty much brings us up to date! Valentine’s Day is on Tuesday so Happy Valentine’s Day one and all! I have lobby duty at Masquers next Friday for the show that is currently running. Umm, oh and I’m going to try to visit Winita on the 18th, but I haven’t heard back from her yet. NUDGE!

Talk to you later!
Love,
Me