...is perfect for playing lunch hour bocce ball with coworkers. The only thing better would have been sipping wine while we played, mais hélas, we do not live in Europe. My team won 17-13: rock!

The woman tossing the ball is my friend Anne R. We met in grad school. Before working together at the Legal Behemoth, we were coworkers at the Accounting Behemoth. We met our husbands and got engaged & married within months of each other. We've known each other a looooooong time.

~ Friday: Legal Behemoth lets me off early. Our plan to get to bed early in order to hit the road to Indiana early foiled by idiot neighbors shooting off firecrackers from 10:30 until almost midnight.

~ Saturday: eeknight & I oversleep due to aforementioned idiots. We're snared in interstate construction insanity, but manage to get to Evansville by early afternoon where we tour Howard & Shannon's beautiful new farmhouse; visit some bookstores, one of which features VE 5 on the front rounder; have dinner at an Indian restuarant; then take a walk in a nearby forest preserve.

~ Sunday: EEK, Howard, Shannon & friends spend the day gaming. I spend the day reading, napping, eating bonbons, and playing with the family dog.

~ Monday: Back to the OP and some lonely kitties. Picked up some pies at a Amish restaurant on the way home: an apple for the kitty sitter, a cherry for us, and a coconut cream for my mom.

~ Tuesday: Up to WI for a short visit to my fam, back in the OP by 4pm. Aforementioned idiots shoot off something that I'm sure in illegal in Illinois, causing one the the cats to lose bladder control--luckily said cat was in the back bathroom near the box. EEK & I skip the OP municipal fireworks in favor of just being at home. Aforementioned idiots plus numerous other idiots shoot off fireworks until at least 2:30 am--neither we nor the cats are amused.

~ Wednesday: Up at 5am because the Legal Behemoth requires my services. Spend most of the day cranky due to lack of sleep. Hooray for afternoon naps. GQ practice in the evening, followed by a disappointing Bollywood aerobics class. Home in bed by 10:30.

The GQs have been working on cleaning up slow repertoire and last night nearly everyone was called on some sloppiness or other. My isolations have started to suck bigtime on some turn preparations. When the heck did that start happening? (Note to self: drill, drill, drill!) We are discussing changing the format of the practice to all improv and having a separate techniques class on another night, which I think is how things used to be when the troupe first started, back when Gab didn't have to share studio space with a partner. Certainly we need more dancing and less talking. The GQs might as well be called the Chatty Cathys.

Karen, Rachel & I have been talking about renting the studio so we can have some solid dance time and start helping each other improve. The three of us want to push our dancing to a higher level. The problem is finding a time we can all get together. Maybe it'll be easier in the fall.

Gab is urging me to audition for the ancillary dance corps in Strauss's "Salome" at the Lyric Opera (PDF link). I am considering it despite the potential toplessness and/or partial nudity 'cause it's the freaking Lyric! I meet most of the requirements: taller (well, for a dancer anyway), full-figured*, bellydance experience. However, I have no classical or contemporary dance experience other than your basic YMCA ballet class when I was a kid. Gab seems to think that won't be a problem based on info from a contact at the Lyric. I dunno. I 'spose I can call and talk to whoever is casting the dancers.

*Deborah Voigt, the soprano singing Salome, has struggled with weight issues all her life and has made some progress in the past two years--surgery first and then some serious lifestyle changes. The reason for the "taller full figured" dancer requirement is that Voigt and the directors don't want her to be doing the dance of the seven veils surrounded by six waif-like corps girls who will make her look emphatically NOT like a dancer. Rather they want dancers that will resemble Voigt's size and build.

Lots of local peeps have been complaining about hayfever lately. Due to a mild winter and dry spring in the Midwest, this is supposed to be one of the worst allergy seasons in years. I'd been feeling surprisingly good, but being terribly sensitive to tree pollen I knew it was just a matter of time before I too was dripping at the nose and lolling around in misery. Well, today pollen counts hit critical levels for me. I can really relate to the last panel in shadefell's comic, though I haven't used nasal spray. Yet. Ugh, I hate this time of year.

To distract myself I've been playing with Last.fm. I think you should too, 'cause I'm curious to know what y'all listen to. My profile.

eeknight & I will be taking our friend Howard--who's up from Evansville for the Windy City Pulp & Paperback Convention--to Khyber Pass to see Gypsy Queens Piper & Giselle perform tonight. The spicy, ayurvedic food should help my hayfever immensely.

Lastly, another reason to love HPL:

"I, in my own senescent mellowness, confess to an inordinate and wholly unphilosophic predilection for tiny coal-black kittens with large yellow eyes, and could no more pass one without petting him than Dr. Johnson could pass a sidewalk post without striking it."
~ H.P. Lovecraft, from "Cats and Dogs" (.pdf)