kerouac says

UCLA: rained so hard i had to dry my shoes with a hairdryer. did you know they filmed some externals for mona lisa smile (and, like, every college film ever) there? i squelched right past the building.

interviews: went well. i had a good time, and think i was reasonably impressive if not overpoweringly so. i got some great advice right before i left, re: turning the conversation to what the faculty were doing right now, rather than sweating my own stuff. that worked well.

the news: is, no news yet. no one told me i was officially accepted or admitted, and word from the current students is that it's relatively safe to assume acceptance, but that funding decisions get made after the interview weekend. since they don't fund all students equally, and getting in without much funding is sort of the same as not getting in, i'm still on tenterhooks. i suppose the good part is that i think the program is, if not the right place, a right place. the faculty seemed copacetic, the vibe was good, there are people there doing work i like and the students seem very happy where they are.

the drive to riverside: uneventful, although the rental car had no CD player, and i think the point of driving out there was as much about getting to sing in the car (god, how i miss singing in the car) as it was talking to the riverside faculty. and really, i just talked to one, the one who's doing work a little like mine. he looks like peter krause. he surfs. he smokes. he's a drummer. he took me to lunch and then realized he'd had somekind of entanglement with our waitress at a dance club. he's a bad boy rockstar professor. i find these things incredibly endearing, and invited him to the wedding. but i do not think i will be going to riverside, even though i kind of lurve him. in the end, the town is just too small and there are no theatre people there, just dancers and the bad boy rock star video game scholar. not quite enough to make it happen. we'll see, though. never say never, at least not yet.

overall: it appears that california feels right, or at least right enough. i like the west coast, even when it's LA. it was warm, people were laid back, and something about the shortness of the buildings and the lack of old stone and no pee smell made it seem like home even though it doesn't really look like seattle (the inexplicable rain aside). it's a shorter plane ride. it's the same time zone.

i hadn't had time to write about this, but on the evening of mardi gras, my friend rachel and i were harrassed by a group of kids as we made our way to columbus circle. in the middle of town, lots of people around--and these kids, yelling at us and throwing the incredibly dirty snow clods left on the side of the road after the three days of freezing weather following the last snow. there was dirt and ice in my hair, all over my coat, on my bag--i tried to wipe it off, but my hand just kept coming away filthy. rachel looked at me at one point, and we were both really scared. i didn't know what to do. we let them overtake us and they eventually moved on, and we kept walking, but i cried all the way home knowing that where i live being who i am, children will essentially hoot and throw dirt at me and no one will do a thing. i'm sure worse happens both here and in california every day, but--as i've mentioned before--i've never been involved with as much public shaming as happens on the sidewalk/subway/platform in new york. i feel comfortable saying it's not a great place to be me.

which, i found out before i left that i also got into CUNY. so, hmm.

so, what with all the school and wedding and california and all, i didn't really pay attention to the chinese new year. but now my advisor tells me that it is some special golden pig year, and that my red front door is even better feng-shui this year than usual because . . . i don't know, red is more powerful during auspicious times, or something. i got a little lost. and i thought, great! because so much is happening this year. i'm glad it's got some extra juju vibrating around. when i mentioned i was excited to get married in the year of the golden pig, she said, "you should wear a red dress!" well, the dress is already picked out, but now i am seriously considering red shoes because i think white shoes are just fugly most of the time, and i'm really trying to keep the things i buy to wear only on one day to a minimum.

i asked the monkey if he thought it would be hot if i wore red shoes, and he paused so long i actually heard the word "no" come out of the ether before he weakly finished up, " . . . with a white dress? (pause.) well, maybe."

screw you, brown-suit-wearer. but then i found out that this golden pig stuff seems to be mostly about offspring, so whatever.

i still think red shoes would be hot. and very possibly auspicious.

early 2007 has now seen both the T-minus six month mark for the wedding, and my thirty-and-a-half birthday. i suddenly feel like i've been slightly tipped downhill, like momentum is pushing at my lower back. i think i should go back to yoga.

it's one of those days i wish i could just think about the wedding. i don't mean to buy into the "perfect day" crap, but i do get wistful, occasionally, that this is the only time i'll get to do this and i don't get to bathe in it very much. too, the monkey was just cast in a show in a far-away city that will relegate wedding planning to an over-the-phone endeavor during the all-important weeks after i graduate and before we leave for seattle. that's really when i was planning on going medieval on all this stuff; i have seven weeks of no school to be all-wedding all-the-time and i was looking forward to him being part of that. on the other hand, it's my craziness that's putting it off so far, and the monkey can hardly be blamed for wanting to do a little sondheim once in a while. he's also up for a really lovely show very near by that would take place right before; think a good thought tomorrow at 10 a.m. EST.

i know it won't matter what the girls' dresses look like, whether i can find someone to do my hair, whether or not our friends stay in the same hotel, how soon or well i can pin down the music for the ceremony, whether we sit or stand, what the sight lines will be, what i do with my hands. i know this will not make me not married. i curse you, lifetime of women's magazines, for making me think these things stand in the way of my happiness. i also wish the one who is least afraid was around . . . she's a project person, and she managed to make tasks into opportunities when this all happened to her. that's the sort of fun i'd like to be having.

i really only care that appropriate care is taken. that we approach it like the Big Deal--Biggest Deal--that it is. i just hope we have time to do that.

okay. so, i'm going to go to california and freak out about other stuff for a while, and then meet you back here later.

i went all winter until now without getting a cold, except for a tiny psuedo one in october which lasted one day and appears to have been about something else. but it has been really satanically cold here, and what with the show and the commuting and the school and the dayjob, i sort of figured this was coming down.

it doesn't appear to be very virulent. but i am feeling kind of dumb.

we haven't had much time to think about the wedding. i just want it to be fun. the prospect of the big party and the bigger promises hasn't been ruling my existence over the last six months, and so far as i'm concerned, that's as it should be . . . but i really do hope it's fun. i'm not always the best at throwing parties, especially in places where i don't live much anymore. i'm kind of a mole. i am not the person who responds when someone in charge yells, let's get this party started. but i hope people put a little bit of extra go-go in their boots and drink a lot and give us hugs and talk too loud. i hope someone moons someone. i hope there's some make-out. this is what i really want out of the party part of the wedding: incriminating photographs. when i check in with myself about the whole wedding thing, this is where the most unformed of the anxieties lie--my worry that people don't love us enough to be goofy, that the affair will be subdued where we'd hoped for exuberance.

i'll draft some kind of affirmation for that one.

one of the tiny ways in which unpaid theatre in new york is slightly more exciting than unpaid theatre in the regions is that there is always the chance someone a little famouser than you is in the audience. when i got that job that required me to take the F train everyday, i always imagined running into this guy but it never happened. he did, however, see my show on friday night. and when i ran into him in the house i said what may have begun as an appropriate i'm-a-fan hello, and then started talking about my costume underwear. it was loosely related to the content of the theatre piece, but still. perhaps i could have decathected my uncool a little.