12-12-2008

Over the past few days, I've been trying to figure out just exactly how/what I should write on my blog. There are a few events others might find interesting, so I'm going to just list them here.

Thanksgiving Break, Chicago/Tim Meadows
Ice Storm
Rest of Tour
Casey's Show

Alright, so the rest of the tour finished up very strong. Some of our best weeks. At time though, I know my patience was running thin, especially the last couple weeks. Occasionally my correction of a kid's behavior may have been unnecessarily strong or quick. I try to always stay fun in between to try to make up for it. I'm using the break to cool down and re-collect my self. We have a long tour coming up. We have gotten a string of great reviews sent into the office on us though, which is VERY uplifting.

After leaving Spring Creek, NV I headed home for Casey's show. She had already left early, and I finished up our week with a replacement partner. It was a fun experience, and he was a great guy. I enjoyed it muchly. At any rate, I was able to get back to Louisville basically on time. I took an earlier flight, and had a short delay at my layover in Atlanta, but because I chose the earlier flight I very nicely made it into town.

Keep in mind that I have the most horrible travel luck of any person you've ever met. A quick rundown:

Going to London in 2006: My passport arrived a day late, I had to change flights, spend a night by myself in the Louisville Airport before arriving and walking to the hotel alone. My laptop was stolen by the hotel maid on this trip.

Driving to St. Louis in 2008: We hit the biggest ice storm to hit the midwest in 100 years. We were forced to take an evening in the hotel. After we woke up and headed out our car spun off of I-64 onto an embankment. THAT didn't break the car, but it did slide off because it was already broken. After spending that afternoon at my house, luckily we weren't far we took off on a Greyhound to St. Louis that picked us up at 2:30 A.M. (My mother claims the site of the 5 of us running towards the Greyhound when it arrived should be use in future greyhound ads.)

Leaving Missoula for our break this fall: Casey had her ticket from Missoula paid for by Hanover. I had to buy my own out of spokane because it was cheaper. Again, a greyhound trip would get me there. It was 2 hours late. That made me late for my plane. I had to buy a night at the ramada. Out 100 bones. I left the next day. Both planes were late. On the return flight, my plane went up into the air, lost a radio and immediately landed. We got on a different plane.

I'll get to Casey's show in a moment. It was good. On the way back, we missed our flight (my fault). We got onto a later flight on standby, so that was ok. We made it to Salt Lake City around 7:30. One of our bags was lost. We went to get our truck and picked up the bag at Midnight. It was 2:00 A.M. eastern time. We decline our 3 hour drive and stayed in a motel 6 that night, wasting the 70 dollar room I had already paid for in Pocatello, ID. The next day we decided to get a room in Billings, rather than drive a full 13 hours to Glendive, MT. Luckily we made it to our final tour week in Glendive just in time for our show.

That show went well, and we had alot of fun with the kids and the folks in Glendive.

But in Hanover, I got to see the production of Slaying the Dragon, Casey's original play. It was great. The actors did a great job. And everything went really well. Although their ejudication seemed to go very well, they weren't slected for performance at the festival. Though three of them got well deserved Irene Ryan nominations.

I'm really proud of my girlfriend. Her writing has grown, and she is really doing really well. I'm actually lucky to be an aspiring director and actor and be linked with such a talented playwright. We're planting the seeds of mounting her next play in Chicago sometime once we're there.

So, after Glendive was over we headed out on our road trip to Sacramento for our flight home. (Sacramento, because that's where our next tour starts.) I thought it curious that every map service I checked and double checked sent us directly through Yellowstone National Park, but I checked and double checked and assumed the highway went through and it'd be ok. Once we go to the gate, almost running over a caribou, not joking, we saw that our highway was closed, and is closed, every single year from November to April. Its the most popular freaking national park in this country, and the map services don't know their schedule? Grr. So we drove 60 miles back up to the Interstate.

And that's when we hit the snowstorm. Eventually, we ended up in Big Sky, Montana. The highest point in Montana, stranded in a snow storm. We stopped, and paid for a hotel room. A $120 hotel room. We also wasted the $65 hotel room that I'd already bought in Idaho Falls, ID. The next day we drove 15 hours to Reno. Reno was fun. I played in a poker tourney there, lost, but lost with great cards, played well, and learned alot.

We headed to our contact's place in Sacramento, she was nice enough to give us some delicious Chicken Fajita soup, and send us on our way. Unfortunately before leaving I scraped the truck against a small wall near the garage where they were letting us park the truck. It's a big ugly gash, and since its my second scrape, I'll have to pay for half. That makes me sad. But tis life.

And after all this,

I'm so glad to be home, on break. I drove down to Denny's the other night, and it felt great to drive familiar roads. The 2 days that have already passed on this break already make it feel like it's flying by too fast.

If you're around, I hope to see you.