Wicked Women Plus One Guy

Tonight a few of us from CSz are going to dinner and then to see the musical Wicked. I've been looking forward to this since it hit town so I'm very excited. The only bad news is that I stayed up late last night doing some writing and then got up early to run some errands so there's a pretty good chance that I'll fall asleep during the show.

I've turned into one of those people that you see at movies that snoozing before the opening credits have finished. Rance took me to see Harry Potter at Navy Pier's IMAX Theater. It's an amazing theater with a fantastic sound system and a movie I had prepared for by watching all three previous movies on DVD and even reading the book again. Even that didn't stop the sandman from coming in an tossing a cupful of zzzz dust into my face. I missed about half the movie though I tried valiantly to stay awake. My head bobbed to and fro until it finally rested on my right shoulder and I slept fitfully during wizardry duals and Hermione's over pronunciation of her pronouns.

Today I lunched with my mentor here in Chicago. He's got such an amazing future ahead of him out in LA. I sat and shoveled "healthy" nachos in my face as he regaled me with stories about famous people both in front of and behind the camera. The best part is his future is incredibly bright and yet he's still got to pay his bills here in Chicago, so he's doing some work under the table for a friend of his who needed sheet rock hung. It's the stuff great biographies are made of.

Oh, and if you're reading this in Chicago and you ever need a little coffee shop to write or read in please visit Coffee Latika it's near the intersection of Broadway and Belmont. It's quiet and unassuming and if you work on a laptop they provide free Wi-Fi access. I pass both a Starbucks and an always overcrowded Caribou Coffee to get there and am always glad to arrive.

Enough with the heavy stuff

Okay, I'll admit my last blog entry was pretty damn heavy. Let's just all laugh it off and have a glass of kool-aide shall we?

Tonight I'm having my teammates from my IO team "Rumspringa" over for a dinner and game night. I've setup a bracketed tournament of Donkey Konga. I'm just hoping the bongos survive, we've got a team full of pretty big guys. If I were a betting person I'd say either Kevin or Pops will take first prize they just seem like two guys who have beaten a drum or two.

Rance and I will be doing Breakfasts with Santa together this year out at Woodfield Mall. The best part is Rance gets to wear the furry costume this holiday as he'll be portraying the lesser known reindeer, Rocky. It's hard for me to imagine a 6' 5" reindeer not scaring the kids as they try to eat their $7.00 bowl of Trix cereal, but I'll try to hold myself together.

Declan this one's for you

I know, I know, I haven't written forever. I'm not even sure why I stopped, except that I went through a pretty good depression. The enormous question of "What are you going to do with your life?" layed over me like a wet, wool blanket. It weighed so heavy that there were many days when I didn't even want to get out of bed. I've had boughts of depression in the past but I've never experienced such a long dark period without seeing bits of sun trying to break through. And I'm sure the sun was trying to break through but I kept burying myself deeper and deeper into the darkness avoiding any light.

In the midst of all of that I just didn't feel like writing. Truth be told I didn't feel like doing much of anything. Intellectually I knew what I needed to do to shake the dark feelings, but it took so long to put those intellectual thoughts into action. More importantly I needed something to bring inspiration into my life. I had a lot of "stuff" going on but nothing that truly excited my senses. And then an invite to an incredible film acting class came my way and I instinctively knew this was the first rung on the ladder out of the dark.

Sure enough it was two days of intense learning and expectations. It was exactly what I needed and I realized film is another realm that I need to be investigating. I need to be doing the work! And so the work begins. I really do feel like something great is going to come out of all of this.

And yet during all that time life continued. I began working with a children's theater production of "Little Red Ridinghood". My IO team RUMSPRINGA has done some really solid shows. Rance turned 34. And I had medical situations that helped me make the decision to get medical insurance. I was also reminded that I'm very lucky to have some wonderful friends who didn't allow my retreat into the darkness to lick my wounds stop them from checking in to see how I was doing.