How to fill your e-mail inbox*

1. Click the "like" button on Facebook for a friend's picture of their cute children.

Ta-da! You're done! Sit back and watch the e-mails roll in!


*I was going to call this post "How to Get More Interesting Mail" in honor of the Direct Marketing Association's booklet for people who wish to receive more rather than less junk mail. But Facebook comments aren't junk mail - they're the conversation.

Just like the good old days

The best thing about playing a tiny part in a kid-dominated show is that I have lots of down time at rehearsal. So Karen and Felicity and Julie and I can gossip to our heart's content and I can work on my crocheting*. It all reminds me very much of my days in Gilbert & Sullivan choruses. No one will remember that I was in the show but I'm having a lovely time helping to put it together.


*I am making a scarf or two or three for women serving in Afghanistan, a project that my friend Pam alerted me to.

Understudy

No one prays more for the good health of the star than the under-rehearsed understudy.

Eat your vegetables, Anna, and wash your hands often.

Table for Two

On Friday night I was supposed to meet Dave, a theater friend, for dinner at Fajita Coast. He was scheduled to see The Goat at Silver Spring and I was planning to see The Merry Wives of Windsor at my high school, a block away.

I was running a little late and my friend Laura, one of the cast members for The Goat hit little enough traffic that she decided to have a sit down rather than carry out dinner. So she went to Fajita Coast ....

(This is where that wavy screen that they had back in the old days on sit-coms to denote a flashback kicks in.)

Dave walks in a sees Laura sitting at a table. He and I see each other rarely enough that she fit his mental description for me*, so he plunked down at the table with her and said jocularly "I'll just sit here until you get a better offer. "

"I'm sorry?!"

"Augh! You're not Leta!"

"No, but I know Leta."

So when I arrived a few minutes later, they were still sharing a table, happily chatting away.

If they become friends, they'll have one of the better "meet cute" stories I can think of.


* And I quote - thin and brown haired. Delusional. Flattering, but delusional.

I'm not sure I was exaggerating either

David and I were invited to a gala fundraiser recently. The kind held in Expensive Locations with Open Bars and Important Dignitaries. We would be one of three couples at a table for several couples. I don't have an official link to the organization but the very good friend who invited us does and it is a Very Worthy Organization indeed. I was honored to drink their booze, consume their food, and applaud their Dignitaries.

David is less likely to enjoy these sorts of events than I am, but he is a) a very nice man and b) also fond of the friend who invited us, so he agreed to attend.* But he's a pretty sharp cookie and observed that he thinks the major reason I accepted with such alacrity was the company we would be keeping more than anything else.

"This is just social for you, isn't it?"**

"Well, sure it is. Oh, Honey, as long as we are invited by such good folks, I'd accept an invitation to run through a hail of bullets."


* He may have had other motives, I don't know. I shall not speculate here.

** Usually the correct assumption.

Like Sarah Chalke. Or Dick Sergeant. Or Brian Forster

Andy: You look different. Why do you look different?
Me: I dunno. Maybe because I'm being played by another actress?
Andy: That's very meta of you, but no.

Because it's been raining a lot lately

"Fool In The Rain"
Jones, Page, Plant

Well there's a light in your eye that keeps shining
Like a star that can't wait for the night
I hate to think I've been blinded baby
Why can't I see you tonight?

And the warmth of your smile starts a-burnin'
And the thrill of your touch gives me fright
And I'm shaking so much, really yearning
Why don't you show up, make it all right?
Yeah, it's all right.

And if you promised you'd love so completely
and you said you would always be true
You swore that you would never leave me, baby:
What ever happened to you?

And you thought it was only in movies
As you wish all your dreams would come true
It ain't the first time believe me, baby
I'm standin here feeling blue
Yeah I'm blue

Now I will stand in the rain on the corner
I'll watch the people go shuffling downtown
Another ten minutes no longer
And then I'm turning around

The clock on the wall's moving slower
My heart it sinks to the ground
And the storm that I thought would blow over
Clouds the light of the love that I found

Now my body is starting to quiver
And the palms of my hands getting wet
I've got no reason to doubt you baby,
It's all a terrible mess

I'll run in the rain till I'm breathless
When I'm breathless I'll run till I drop, hey
The thoughts of a fool's kind of careless
I'm just a fool waiting on the wrong block, oh yeah
Light of the love that I found...