Surprise!

I am usually such a stickler for saving all things Christmas until after Thanksgiving. So when my mom asked if I'd rather have an early Christmas 'surprise' or wait until Christmas Day and unwrap something from a box, I didn't really have an answer for her. What was this surprise? And why did it have to take place before Thanksgiving? I was really in the dark about the whole thing. I had no clue what my surprise was going to be, but I guess that's the point of a surprise, right?
My mom told me what to wear, and that we were leaving about half an hour after I got home from work on Friday. We drove to Fresno and arrived at the theatre where we had seen Wicked about a year and a half ago. But there weren't any signs outside the theatre. By the time Mom gave the tickets to the guy at the door...I still had no idea what was going on. It wasn't until we walked past a Merch table selling copies of Some Lessons Learned and Let Yourself Go that I realized that we were at a KRISTIN CHENOWETH CONCERT!!! At that point I started crying a little bit. How is it possible that a) I didn't know that Cheno was performing in Fresno, and b) I would be seeing Ms. Chenoweth perform live for the second time!!
Everything about the concert was amazing. She sang a little bit of everything, a couple of her Glee songs, some country, some jazzy, vocally stuff, Popular from Wicked (in English, Japanese and German), of course she did Taylor, the Latte Boy...and then she blew the roof off the theatre with Bring Him Home from Les Miserables...and I cried for the second time that night. She encored with I Will Always Love You, and I never wanted her to stop singing!

Trick-or-Treat!

After weeks -nay- months of deliberation...I have finally landed on a Halloween costume!! I don't think it has ever taken me this long to come up with something. Mostly because when my mom used to sew our costumes, my sister and I had to come up with our ideas pretty early so mom could be sure they were done in time, and this is a habit that has stuck with me even since mom stopped making our costumes. When it comes to dressing up, I have definitely run the gamut, using both my mad sewing skills and my arsenal of dance costumes. I have been pretty much everything from a hobo to a princess, from a sock hopper to a hippie, from a mouseketeer to a drag queen (yes, I was a girl dressed as a boy dressed as girl). Last year I was Sleeping Beauty, but the Brier Rose version. For a brief moment I thought Marge McDougall from Promises, Promises would be fun, but very few would know who I was. Then I kept bouncing between a Harry Potter version of myself (a.k.a. if I were a Hogwarts student), a candy corn (since I already had a yellow skirt), or just 'I dunno' and wear my pink wig and top hat...like an extra from Moulin Rouge or something. Then Saturday, like a bolt of lightening, it hit me. The perfect costume...
Lucy van Pelt!!! I am so excited! I'm sure I could run the risk of people not knowing who I am, but some might, and I will...so I don't care. I got this black wig and I'm working on styling it kinda curly-ish on the ends, I bought socks at Target yesterday that have ruffles on them, and a blue dress with some black buttons and I'm good to go!

Day 01- A show that should have never been canceled

I bet you were expecting me to say Pushing Daisies. I kind of expected myself to say that too, after all, it's the most creative, whimsical show that has ever existed. The wonderfully quirky characters on this show were delightful, and the writing was genius. A 'forensic fairy tale'...it's so novel and innovative. The show was bright, colorful and witty and I do miss it a lot. However, if Pushing Daisies had never been canceled, Kristin Chenoweth wouldn't have been able to do Promises, Promises which means a)I wouldn't have been able to cross 'seeing Kristin Chenoweth on Broadway' off my 'things to do before I die' list; and b)I wouldn't have gone to New York for my birthday. That 36 hour trip was probably one of the craziest things I've ever done...and it was fantastic.
I also could've gone with Ugly Betty, because it too, was an endearingly cute show that probably could've gone longer...but for this category I choose the short-lived FOX show Reunion.
It came on after The OC my Sophomore year of college. This show followed the lives of 6 friends and the things that they have gone through in the twenty years since they graduated from High School. What we find out in the first episode, is that one of them has been recently murdered and (presumably) another one of them did it. The show flashed back and forth between present day (2006) and a different year each episode (the first ep was 1986/2006; the second, 1987/2006 and so on)...but NOT so on, because the show was canceled after 9 episodes, and it took us the first 6 just to find out which friend was murdered. Most of what bugs me about this is that we never find out who did it and why. Yes, the acting was terrible. And the make-up crew had their hands full trying to get these twentysomething actors to bounce between high school/college aged students to their present day 38 year old selves...
I don't even know of anyone besides me and my college roommates that even remembers this show, much less watched it.

There's nothing like a show on Broadway

internet was MIA this weekend...and consequently so was I.
Never fear...here is a mug shots mega-post to fill you in on a weekend's worth of coffee mugs!
My Playbill mug and my Sardi's mug both remind me about how much I love musicals...you really can't beat live theatre. It's so unpredictable!!

Sardi's is this totally cool theatre-goers dream come true restaurant right in Schubert Alley in the theatre district of NYC!!
It's where I had my birthday dinner before I saw:
which was AWESOME. I got to check 'seeing Kristin Chenoweth on Broadway' off my bucket list, and meet her, Sean Hayes, and Tony-Winner Katie Finneran after the show!!
AH-MAZ-ING!!

He loves me not

The Promises, Promises website has this cute little ap that allows one to click petals off of a cyber daisy to determine if the one you love loves you back (a tried and true test that is always accurate)
Things were off to a great start:

Then I got to the final petal and...well:

I suppose I could 'try again' like the clickable at the bottom suggests...but the daisy has spoken, and confirmed what I've known all along.
Well, not that 'Jon' doesn't love me...just not in that way
It's like in one of my favorite episodes of 'Pushing Daisies'(Window Dressed to Kill) Olive & Ned are 'playing fiances', then Ned tells Olive she's been fun to 'try on' and she responds with the best Olive Moment of the series:
"Try On? You try on a sweater at the mall. You try on your best friend's bra and you smile on the inside cause yours are bigger and better. You don't TRY ON a person" She then makes the announcement that Ned never loved her to which he replies "I love you Olive, as a friend"...yep, that seems about right.

On a different note: almost every awesome person I know right now is at camp, and I'm bummed because I have to be a grown-up. Some people run away to join the circus, well camp is definitely the kind of circus I would love to run off an join. I'm so homesick for Jeffery pine trees and a place where I can wear my quirks on my sleeve.

Waiting...

it may seem a little over enthusiastic to be posting again less than 24 hours since my original post...but I'm kinda excited about what I will refer to as a 'blah-g'.
Maybe I'll be the next Julie from 'Julie & Julia' or Betty Suarez from 'Ugly Betty'--maybe this blah-g will be stumbled upon by someone with the power to change my life. Someone who might make a movie about this, launch a sitcom, get me a book deal--who knows? But for that to happen, I think I would have to write about something exciting, and for THAT to happen, I need to DO something exciting.
It has been almost a month since my last great adventure (a two day trip to NYC to see 'Promises, Promises'), and I'm not sure when my next one will happen. So now I'm waiting. Waiting for an adventure. To what? Come find me? Adventures don't come knocking on your door...
I need to figure out a way to make adventures happen for myself. I tried yesterday.
I was going to go the beach, I had a bag packed with beach essentials-hummus and pita chips, spf 45 sunblock, 'A Little Bit Wicked' (K-Chen's bio-a perfect beach read), the People Puzzler (celeb based crosswords...yes, please!) and a floppy hat! I braved an hour long drive down the twisty, turn-y Kanan canyon, actually SAW the ocean for the first time in months (can we say 'worst Californian ever'?) and then promptly made a u-ie and headed back home. The beach was full. No parking, no adventure.

I'm working on it