"I Had a Date" and "Is This What It Is Like to Be a Boy?"

The date was mostly very good. The dinner was very nice and the drinks after the movie were excellent. Nice conversation. He was sweet and smart and funny and so was I (I think), and I believe we both generally had a good time at those things--if not a great time. This was a longish date and it totally could've been longer just fine, or that was how I felt.

We however saw the totally wrong first date movie. "Superbad" is very funny but very juvenile and teenage boy raunchy and by raunchy I mean RAUNCHY! Now this would've probably been less weird if we had in anyway known how the other would react to that sort of thing, but we didn't, so there was that kind of awkwardness. The wow this is weird to be watching this right now sort of awkward. Also, not a whole lot of opportunity for really much closeness at all. Not in dirty teenager comedy, maybe should've picked something a little more grown-up even if it would've been less funny. I would've swapped comedy for potential hand holding or something.

However the date recovered from that very well when we had drinks, and I saw him again last night although not in any formal capacity. He goes to see Anna's show, and I decided that if I got to see him, I should totally go under the auspices of "studying my character" which really translated to more seeing of him. I tried to intimate that in a text, but who knows how it came across.

This is where my wonder from the title comes in. I like Sam, and I think I like him a lot, but half the time I am not sure if he at all likes me except that he responds to my texts and comes to the movies with me. Now, I accept that he is a much more shy person than I am, and my spy Anna has led me to believe it has been a while since he really did much dating, but often I can't tell if he really likes me.

Is it this hard to date girls and do all the work? How do you keep asking them out? Is it really this uncomfortable? I am sorry. This is why I always tried to be decisive (even if sometimes I majorly failed) although chances are if my response wasn't enthusiastic, I wasn't interested.

Ugh. Hopefully sometime I will have time to have a date with him that makes some of this more clear. Except moving is taking up all my time. grrrrrr. . .

Ahh packing. . .

How I freaking hate it. Anyone have any spare moving fairies or house elves I could borrow? I really don't want to do it. I don't think mind moving the boxes, but the packing and the unpacking might just kill me. Plus we have a finite window for movng truckness. Seriously, I can't wait for like two weeks from now to happen because then I will have a new place and a cat and all sorts of things will probably have calmed the fuck down.

Seriously, I offer beer to help move. Seriously.

Oh and we have no TV. No new Heroes, no new How I Met Your Mother. God hates me.

Bossiness

I am a bossy person. I just am. And I don't think I can always avoid it. I have been bossy since I was a toddler--it is just way too late to fix it now. Sometimes this bossiness serves me well. It gets shit done, decisions get made. It can help me be productive and efficient at times (as long as I don't use my powers for evil--as my friend Chris would say).

I do try to avoid being bad bossy. By bad bossy I mean so bossy that I bully the people around me into doing what I want. Lately, I have not been sure if I am bullying a few key people in my life. Part of me very much wanted to just make them agree, but the other part also realized that it would be completely unfair to allow them to be swept away by my momentum. My momentum can be pretty overpowering. I acknowledge that when I get going on something, you have to resist me very strongly in order to change my momentum.

And I don't always recognize in the moment when I am being a bully--especially if people seem to just want to go along with me because I care more. I don't think my cares are automatically more important than the cares of those around me just because my cares are often louder. Striking the balance, and figuring out the cares of some of the people in my life who are not very likely to loudly state their own cares can be hard for me. I expect everyone to be able to voice their own cares as loudly as I voice mine, or rather I expect them to be as unable to suppress the voice of the cares as I am.

I don't want to be a bully, but I can live with some of my bossiness. I hope that the people in my life realize that all I need is to be told what they want too, and I will take it into characterization.

First Rehearsal

It is hard for me to be a smart ass without jazz hands.

Now obviously I mean figurative jazz hands. I don't make jazz hand with my actual hands when I am a smart ass, but I do sort of make jazz hands with my voice. I kind of take it up and out, but I am playing a smart ass who serves it way under, and that was a challenge for me in the first rehearsal. Hopefully it will get easier. That was the big thing I came away with at rehearsal, oh and I am playing someone a little more deeply rooted to the earth then I am, but I think I can fix that with appropriate warm-up preparation.

Rehearsal was fun though! All my scenes are with Anna, so it was just us and the director and the learning to be a stage manager. That was it, nice and cozy. Sunday I have my first big rehearsal with other people, you know like a week before I perform for the first time. So that is cool. And a little strange, but whatevs.

My date may have to rain check tonight because he has been very sick, and if he is still sick, then a date would not be all that much fun. Anna said he had to leave work yesterday he was so sick, and apparently he is not one of the people who ever leave work, so yeah. I will wait and hear.

Maybe not so much homeless

I emailed landlord of the perfect location apartment this morning, and I should hear back from him soon. We are going to take it. It isn't perfect, but it is in the perfect place, and we get to paint it!!!

This is a huge relief. Seriously, I think I had been making myself ill over this. Soon there will be a housewarming party, and anyone who wants to help paint can.

Also, I have a date tomorrow night. That is all.

BTW

Still fucking homeless. The apartment we looked at was a teeny tiny hole. There was no closet in one bedroom, only the couch would fit in the living room. So not happening. Some hot prospects on Craig's List though, even one close to Pier 1 and close to Fullerton bus. That would work.

Project Success

That's me. I seem to have become a project for my friend Anna because I went and got headshots, so she thought I needed to have them sent to the director of the show she is in. That led to a little cold-read audition last night that led to a part. Yeah, I am in a show. In fact, I am in a lesbian stage soap opera (it is a soap opera that is a play that is in a bar with a new episode every week set in the GLBT community).

I am going to replace another actress who is leaving, and my friend Anna apparently just finagled me a gig where I play her new best friend. So, first rehearsal tomorrow and first show two weeks from yesterday (oh holy fuck I just realized that), plus I don't get a final script until Wednesday. Goody, that will be nice. Thank god I can memorize lines on the bus.

By the way, this is the same Anna who arranged for me to meet the boy she works with because apparently a month or so ago she woke up, took a look at my life, and thought, "I could do this better." Not that I am complaining, it is possible she is doing it better. Now if she could arrange for me to get a much better paying job that works me much less. Hmmmm. . . Just kidding.

Although, now I am glad that I hadn't had time to call and ask the new guy to go to the movies with me on Wednesday because I would've had to stand him up (and that would've been terribly not ok for first date). So, tonight I am going to call him and ask him to a movie on Thursday night because I have decided I am going to be a girl who asks boys on dates. (Really just this one boy).

Sidebar, kind of scared of the part I am getting in the show. Unlike anything I had done in a long time before I took a long time off from acting, must work hard on supressing lame ingenue tendencies as they will fuck up this part. Might have to get all jaguar up in here--actually, that would work awesome! Hmmm...

Seriously?

I am so tired right now my brain has turned to mush and might well give up. However, I maybe found a place to live. It is literally right down the block (we would go from 1242 to 1228) and we might be able to start moving in tomorrow, assuming I don't hate it when I see it (and maybe not even then) and the landlord lets us live there. Please, please, please!

Lesson Learned

That is only to be expected if this is the new CW. After all my dithering last week, I learned a lesson over the weekend that basically told me to shut the hell up (while still seeming like an episode of a TV show).

I had a very eventful weekend that started with a boat cruise and ended with an emergency room visit with some flaming cheese in between (don't worry, none of those things were related).

My friend Anna has been trying to set me up with her friend Sam for some tme--but she has been pursuing this in a way that left me a little worried. Not that she gave me good reason to be worried, it s just that when your friends are trying to set you up they sometimes tell you strange things that sound awful to you but actually are not at all (see the scene from "When Harry Met Sally" where they talk about whether or not having a good personality means a woman is or is not attractive). Sally is attractive and she has a good personality, but you can see where the guys are coming from. Anyway, on boat cruise I meet Anna's friend Sam and for the five seconds he talks to me he seems as nice as you can seem in five seconds. Then he doesn't talk to me again--definitely reaffirming my feelings that I am the scary ogre girl.

Also, this is a work party for his work, and it turns out Anna may have told half of the people there that she intends me for Sam, and I look pretty good (having dressed and made up to you know be a knockout or at least as close to knock out status as possible--ie I look like my headshots). Sam is the head or someone very close to the head of their IT dept and is a little bit of a nerd, and when I was described as "my goofy friend Heather" I think I was meant to look more goofy and less fashionable then I managed to pull off that night. I was supposed to look more like I regularly do, but somehow I morphed into intimidating hot girl--lord knows how. Anyway, he was a little shy, and I can be overwhelming to shy types. Plus, while on the boat, it seemed like a total bust.

Then we all went to a few bars (including a piano bar because he plays and has his own baby grand and is a bit of a piano nerd). Anyway, then there was talking and later, when a group of us was back at his apartment, there was more talking. This was about the time I learned my lesson. It turns out that sometimes I forget actually can be fairly decisive, and there is a world of difference between wanting to go on a date with someone (this Sam person, if you need an example) and not really wanting to go on a date with someone but somehow feeling you ought to (ie some other case I may have talked about). This especially uncomplicated when all people involved live in the same place. So yeah. There is that. (PS nothing really excited has happened yet, so don't get your panties in a bunch. All that's happened is that I think I am going to ask him to a movie.)

The flaming cheese was at a Greek town restaurant Saturday night, and the hospital was my roommate this morning, although I am pleased to report that she is doing fine. Although we can't seem to find an apartment to save our souls. We thought we had one, but nope. Not so.

But I have an audition tonight. Woo hoo!

Would I be a jerk if. . .?

See, I have this dilemma. A friend of mine here in Chicago seems to be kind of, well, in love with me for lack of a better explanation. A very long time ago, when we first met and before we were friends, we had a fling (and by fling I really mean one night stand). This fling is totally common knowledge amongst pretty much everyone we know because we kind of talk and joke about it constantly.

I was kind of a bitch to him right after it happened because I was a big raw emotional nerve still smarting from a really scarring break-up that happened mere months before and because I didn't really know him and kind of assumed he was just a tool (because nice, good guys were not as useful in my sad little brain as jerks were in getting back at aforementioned ex-boyfriend who had no idea any of this was happening--yeah, I know that makes no sense but it is an accurate representation of what my brain was thinking at the time, I told you I was a hot mess).

Then we got to be friends, and we are both part of the posse that moved from the University of Idaho to Chicago, and that group has formed a sort of family unit here. We hang out a lot, we celebrate family holidays together, and we overlook the fact that some of the people in the group have no love for others of the people in the group (Brian Bush and Angie are the example there), but we just decide to be together in spite of that--just like a real family. Now not all parts of this group spend equal time together. There are the girls who watch silly movies, and no boys come shopping with Schlegs and I (except sometimes Plummer in capacity as gay best friend), and there is the baseball fanatic group, and the football fanatic group, etc. The person who is in love with me and I tend mostly to see eachother only occassionally at the big whole "family" events.

Last spring, I first noticed the, "Hey, I think he might think he likes me!" business, but he had just gotten pretty horrificly dumped by a way serious girlfriend, so I chalked it up to a crush that would soon pass, like over the summer which he was spending in New Mexico. But he is back, and it seems not to have passed. It might have gotten more serious.

Now pretty much all of our friends here would be thrilled if we got together, and he is a good guy and I admit that there is some palpable attraction between the two of us, BUT (and I know you all knew that was coming) here is the thing. If I felt this way about a guy, just a random guy who nobody else really knew, I would for sure pursue it in a casual, "Let's just have fun and see where it goes," sort of way. However, I don't think this guy sees us in those terms, I think that he would see anything starting between us as FOR REALS. We jokingly compare him to a girl (and he once said there is a tiny little vagina in his heart--to defend his tears during "The Notebook"), and in this case it is true--he would play-forward the relationship in his mind (probably to our wedding/happily ever after) like girls are generally assumed to do.

Now, if this was again just a guy, that probably wouldn't give me too much pause, but he isn't just a guy. He is part of my family here, and if we didn't work out (and I am not really feeling this as more then just a for fun thing instead of a massive relationship thing), what would that do to our entire family? I think that would be rough. I also think it would especially suck to be the villain in that piece, and it seems very likely that that is exactly what I would be, so I have chosen the path where I just leave this alone unless I start to feel that I would be interested in giving this a big serious relationship go.

All that is background to the current dilemma. He has asked me to go with him to the opening of The Crucible at Steppenwolf. It would mean a free ticket to the show as well as an invitation to the cast, crew, important donors opening party because he works in their costume shop and as a member of the greater crew, has earned a spot for him and a +1. Now, he didn't couch this as a date in any way, but this will be the second or third time he has chosen me out of the group of our family and friends to get to do something like this. In fact, the only time he hasn't chosen me, he took Brian Bush when they lived together or he took the now ex-girlfriend, or he took all three of us, and that was before anyone else lived here. Since the others have moved here, and he has lived alone, he only seems to invite me. So, I have a suspiscion that he is using things he knows I will find irresistable to end up on a date-like situation with me. I really want to go, but I don't want to be a total jerk and keep using him in a manner that kind of feels like stringing him along. I really don't know what to do because I feel like I either get to not be a jerk or go to the fancy-schmancy opening. Any sort of help, advice, perspective is totally welcome in the coments.

Food for thought

Heretic. That is the name of an episode of "This American Life" about a preacher from Oklahoma City who attended Oral Roberts University and was a major force in the Pentecostal and Charismatic Evengelical Movement until a few years ago when other evangelicals branded him a heretic because he stopped believing in and preaching hell.

He is a scholarly pastor, and he has studied the books of the Bible in their original Greek and Hebrew. In fact, he has spent a good deal of time trying to trace his understanding of Biblical scripture to their oldest extant versions because he wanted to be sure that his understanding was as accurate as possible. This episode told the story of how that led him to what he calls a revelation from God that a truly loving God would not send anyone to Hell, that there is no Hell. Everyone is saved. And it changed his life. It nearly destroyed his 5,000 people a Sunday church, and he went from being one of the most influential pastors in the United States to one of the least influential pastors in Oklahoma City all because he preached a Gospel of Inclusion.

Hellfire and demons, to God loves everyone. I reccomend you go to the "This American Life" website and find their archive page for the year 2006. In Novemeber (I think) the episode "Heretic" aired, and it is an amazing revelatory story that made me understand a lot more about people of strong faith in my life, and it actually gave me a new and refreshing perspective on faith (No I am not going to go all crazy Bible thumping on you or even on me). Go the page, stream the episode, come on back and talk about it in the comments.

Meet the soon to be member of my family

I don't know whether or not it is a boy or a girl. My friend/coworker Sherry found the teeny little one in her alley last night, and she has been so kind as to hold onto baby kitten until we get a new kitten friendly apartment in October. Yes!!!! I am so excited.

(Although, apparently new kitties are going around, my friends Robyn and Joe just got one too!)

Bad Shakespeare

Last night Chris Plummer and I saw some. It was Cymbeline at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, and it was not good. In fact, it was a good deal like the moneyed Shakespeare productions they make fun of in the Canadian TV show "Slings and Arrows." There was no life in it, there was mostly pretty words and bad, cartoonish characterizations (seriously only an idiot Imogen would've fallen for that Iacomo), and the costume design concept seemed to be color vomited all over the stage. There was some very Caisley-esque flag waving and some cool special effects (which were cool even if really odd in the context of the world of the play, but they were in fact better then watching the story).

Posthumus was good. I actually would've liked to have seen him in a production where the other actors were as good and generous and unencumbered with excessive frivolity, although I wonder how the director allowed him to be so plain--seeing as everyone else seemed to be encouraged to be ridiculous.

Thank God we didn't pay for our tickets (which were in excellent seats--the one excellent thing I can say for the production, although the lighting design was quite good too). I am glad I thanked Holly (my friend who gave me them) before I saw it, so it could sound sincere.

Oh, and for fans of "Gray's Anatomy" the actor who played Posthumus was the pregnant man that Christina and Meredith stole from the psych ward at the beginning of season two (at least, I think that happened in early season two).

It was bad. Chris and I almost inappropriately giggled several times and had to clutch each other at other moments too. In the show's defense, it was their first preview, so it is likely that we saw the show at its worse, but even if it doubly improves by opening, it will still be a bad production.