What a drag it is getting old...

So SP and I just went out to renew our beer stash for tonight's Tigers/Royals game and...well...because we don't have much else to do. So we pile into the van (newly fitted with fresh spark plugs yesterday) and drive the mile or so down the road to the local Marathon gas station where we get all the essentials like beer, Pop-Tarts, and chips and salsa. As we pull in, SP notices that regular gas is listed at $3.99 a gallon. This morning, he says, it was $3.86. 13 cents in less than a day?!?! This country is going to hell.

Not to sound like a grandfather, but I remember in high school being able to fill my little car up with a $10 bill. Now, that amount of gas in a tank might get you a couple of miles. It's crazy. I know this blog isn't about gas prices and how the higher they go the higher everything else in the world goes, but it just struck me as astounding. Besides...if it's $4.00 a gallon in friggin' Battle Creek, Michigan, what does it cost in Chicago? Once again, I'm so glad that I don't own a car any longer. But being in that situation for almost a decade now (good Lord, has it really been that long since I owned a car?!?!) makes me WAY out of touch regarding gas prices. Today's realization about gas prices, admittedly, sort of caught me off-guard.

Just so you know...I have had half an eye on these prices for a few weeks now, lest anyone think that I'm just crazily out of touch with the goings-on of the world. I just haven't said much about it to anyone. Still...WOW!

On the way to the van tonight, SP and I noticed a raccoon climbing into this weird ante-room/enclosed deck-type room at the back of the Delta House. Take a look at this picture...


...at the right of the picture is an enclosed stairway going up to the second floor. That little room is a total mystery to us. I believe that there is access to it from the back two bedrooms up on that floor but I'm not positive. The bedroom on the corner closest to us in this picture is the bedroom belonging to the guy in the last cast (and who keeps his room here full-time from what I can gather, for some reason) who we previously called "Scott". You may remember that this was the guy who woke in the middle of the night to find a baby opossum (what is it with that wacky "o" at the front of the word?) in his room that he had to chase out.

Anyway, I'm convinced that that tiny ante-room/enclosed deck-type room is just totally infested with various woodland creatures. The enclosed stairway that you see in the above picture is walled off at the top of the stairs so who knows when the last time a human was up there. I expect going in there would be a bad idea.

That said...SP and I are toying with the idea of seeing just what's up there. Boredom breeds bad decisions, I suppose.

We didn't have much of an audience for this afternoon's show, which ended up being a fairly good thing. It was more of a pick-up rehearsal than anything. Clearly, some folks hadn't bothered to look at the script over the weekend and it really showed. REALLY showed! But, at least we're getting better at making this thing an "under two hour" affair, which it really needs to be. Sometimes towards the end of the show I can feel the energy of the audience just expire and at that point we just need to blow through it and tie up all the loose ends and let them get out of there. It's a long and confusing show and when the attention span of the house runs out, we gotta figure out a way to cut and run.

We, as a cast, haven't found a way of really noticing when the audience has run out of energy. And that's so important. The last thing we want to do is drag out the last dozen or so pages and have people leaving on a sour note, like it just went on way too long. But people don't seem to be really in tune with what's going on around them while they are on stage and that's a huge problem. This afternoon I actually watched SH during the big group scene towards the end when she is one of three people in charge of leading the scene (I am not so I can afford to pause and look around and take note of things while reacting to what's going on) and it was pretty funny. When she wasn't saying a line, she would just shut down. Her expression would become blank (a really flattering look for anyone but especially her) and she would only "perk up" when it was her turn to speak. Now THAT'S professionalism!!

It's all just an entertaining experience for me. So entertaining that, right this minute, I wish I was at home in Chicago. (---sigh---)