Voice Mail Archives

Moving back to your hometown after fifteen years' absence naturally means encountering nostalgia and memory on a nearly daily basis. You drive to work, and you pass your old elementary school, the first restaurant you worked in, the place where a pick-up truck ran you off the road on your 12-speed bike into a gravel driveway. And that's just the first half-mile.

Damn kids. Last week, it seemed like half the cast of the show I'm stage managing was virulently ill in some way -- strep throat, bronchitis, you name it, they hacked it. Of course, they all came to rehearsal anyway, silly little over-dedicated nibs. So I knew I'd contract something, and since I used to get strep fortnightly as a kid, I guessed it would be strep again, my old buddy old pal.

It's that day in February today.

To: the universe

Today I went to see my shiny new accountant to celebrate Tax Season '05, tally up my points for the last year, and see what I won. Last year having been my very first year as a full-time (to use the term very loosely) freelancer, I was all a-quiver with anticipation, I can tell you.

I went out shopping and random errand-running today, the course of which took me into our bustling metropolis, Hyannis, a place I usually avoid assiduously. But I really needed some of the extraordinarily fantastic tapenade they sell at this one place in Hyannis, really needed it, so I went.

The day after the blizzard (no, there is nothing else I am capable of talking about, and if you had snow up to your eyeballs and more on the way you'd be a little mono-thematic as well) I shoveled our way out the back door to the car. I did not shovel out the front door, for several excellent reasons. Among them:

Snow day!

Right now, a ferocious Nor'easter is bearing down on poor little us again, and they're saying it'll make the last one of three weeks ago look like a summer day. 'Member that last one? The one where I had dueling electric fires in my front yard for two and a half hours? Yeah. Good times. Can't wait for the sequel.

Words have been very very good to me recently.