Houston Day 436 - time differences rear their ugly heads

Just realized I hadn't thought about the time difference and so my flight to London leaves a whole day earlier than I had thought.  Glad I picked up on that minor detail now and not at the airport.  I mean, if I'd thought about it for two seconds I would have realized that arriving in London Wednesday morning means leaving Houston Tuesday night, but I haven't really been in the space to think about anything for two seconds.  Shows closing always messes with my head.

Houston Day 429 - manic at midnight

I was asleep, and then I woke up and I suddenly felt all buzzy and like I had to go for a run or something.  I won't, because it's midnight, although running is something I do these days, a couple of times a week, with my friend Ashley.  So now I'm up, and blogging, and not really sure what's going on.  I think it is the steroids (Mum, I know you'll ask....not a high dosage but forgot to take some earlier today so took them at night and that's why I'm a bit crazy).  Asthma has been playing up....body is a little burnt out from the month.  But on the mend now.
Also, body is a little burnt out from the Pink cast party on Friday night....yes, a little odd to have a cast party before the season's over but some people couldn't do it the final weekend.  I very rarely get super-drunk and party all night but a great cast party is one of the few times I do.  However, I am officially too old to do that and just bounce back the next day :) although I do get super-woman points for delivering two excellent shows on about the same number of hours' sleep.
On a completely different subject, Lucas' new obsession is the game Magic - the Gathering.  It's a thing he did when he was a nerdy teenager and our friend James brought it back into his life at his birthday party last year.  Now a whole bunch of them who play are getting together, and I play it too (although perhaps a little more than I would if Lucas wasn't into it.  No wait, make that way more.)  It's fun, but I'm rubbish at strategy games.  So Lucas slaughtered me with his army of zombies before we went to bed tonight.
Umm, what else is going on....rehearsed today with Express for the Hilltop shows this week.  As always, they're disorganised but a whole lot of fun.  Also had lunch with Adrianna from Pink.  One of those beautiful, long, wide-ranging, honest conversations that left us both feeling refreshed in our souls.  I'm almost sad that she doesn't live in Houston all the time (from a small town in East Texas, and moving to New York in the fall), but that would mean I'm not super excited to see what her journey is.  Also, people keep saying we look alike, so she'd be beating me out for roles all the time if she lived here :)
Speaking of roles, something on my to-do list for when life calms down post-Pink and post-England-trip is redo my audition portfolios.  Which means I'm thinking about what work suits me, what kind of work I'm going for, what are my go-to audition pieces.  I just sent out an email to a whole bunch of people I've worked with in Houston to get their perspective on me, but if you, oh blog readers, would like to do the same, please answer the following questions in short, snappy, incomplete sentences made only of keywords:

1) what roles would you cast me in based purely on my physical type?
2) what subject matter do I communicate really effectively?
3) what colours/flavours/tones do I emit?

I'm sitting in my newly set up home office where I've just put up some photos of some of the shows I've done since moving to Houston.  So if you were going to answer question 1 with reindeer, nun, German-Texan abolitionist or stay-at-home mom who dons pink princess dresses and tiaras in moments of epiphany, thanks but I already have visual reminders that I know how to do those :)

Houston Day 424 - on storms, allergies, old houses, and my current work situation

Well, this summer is totally different to last summer.  Last summer was unusually dry and record-hot.  This summer is still pretty bloody hot (Mum barely went outside at all the whole time she visited us recently!) but it is storming almost every afternoon.  Storms here are something else.  They're more regular, more dramatic, and more likely to end up in flash flooding and even (apparently, although we haven't seen this yet) tornadoes.  I got my first experience of being trapped by water this weekend just gone, when I called my stage manager in a panic because I had tried several roads and couldn't make it to the theatre.  He had other things to worry about, though, because although there was water everywhere there was no running water in the building.  That was an interesting show :) I found a road that was clear, made it to the theatre, and just had to hold on to my pee for several hours until I could get home to a functioning toilet.
We survived the two sixteen-show weeks at Pink, although barely, because I got sick a few days after it stopped.  My doctor tells me I need to consider the possibility that like most people in Houston I suffer from hayfever (usually just generically called "allergies" here) and that until that's under control I'm going to get sick pretty often.  But neither sickness nor work stopped me from enjoying some good QT with Mum...she just came to the show three times so she could see me!
I now have the lovely problem of too much work to allow me to fully rest.  Have had a couple of big auditions in the last couple of days (am still keeping my "Auditions" page updated, for my records, and your interest), and was called in by Express to perform in their Children's Hilltop Theatre Festival at the Miller Outdoor Theatre next week.  Plus Pink goes til the end of the month.  So today I am taking advantage of nothing on my schedule to rest and learn lines for Hilltop.
Lucas and I are enjoying our new house.  It's a bit smaller than our old house (and also older than our old house, if that makes sense).  It's a good size - we like it that it's smaller but has more rooms.  So I get my own office :) and it feels cozier.  Because it's older it has lots more things wrong with it, but I'm trying to pretend that there's no chance of any serious flooding because this house would absolutely not stand it.  Which is, of course, a blatant, breezy lie, but never mind.

Well, back to it.  I leave you with a photo of a doorknob from the Capitol Building in Austin, which Mum and I visited last week.  You will note (because I told you to) the Lone Star on said doorknob.  And if anyone can explain to me why Capitol is spelt with an "o" I would appreciate that.  Cheers.