Nov. 30, 2006

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WINTER HAS ARRIVED [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:35 pm

yesterday, JUST YESTERDAY, we were out in the yard, trimming the rose bushes, putting up xmas lights - ok, i didn’t actually do anything lighting-wise, but i watched. and i got many thorns in my hands due to to the rose bushes even though for the most part i was wearing gloves.

but it was SO WARM outside. almost 70.

and then today...today...

they were saying the cold was coming today, we were supposed to have an inch of ice today, followed by SIX TO TEN inches of snow tonight. right now the ice is coming out of the sky, but if it would just get a few degrees warmer, it’d be rain, not ice...i just opened the door and it actually sounds like rain coming down. but i can tell that the street is not pretty.

for the driving. which is the primary point of a street.

and now, now, tomorrow morning will we wake up to TEN INCHESE of snow? it’s supposed to start around three a.m. and continue till noon tomorrow, and i suggested that we stay up and see it start snowing but kevin wasn’t interested and he’s sleeping already.

last night i said to him YOU’VE NEVER HAD A WIFE WHO HAD A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN BECAUSE OF THE WEATHER, HAVE YOU?

he thought that was funny.

I WAS SERIOUS.

why, i ask you, i always ask this when the winter hits, WHY ARE WE LIVING IN THIS ROTTEN CLIMATE?

tomorrow i have no reason to go outside at all, except k. is going to come home and take me to the party for the nutracker, which he is in again this year. so that should be fun. except for the going outside part. but at least i don’t have to drive.

i bought some eggnog tea today. yeah, i know, how could it be EGGNOG tea? the thing is that i adore eggnog and there was a new tea, EGGNOG flavored, or so it claimed.

it didn’t taste like eggnog. i really really tried to use my imagination and believe that it did, but it didn’t.

oh well.

i must think about sleeping now. visions of GREAT BIG PILES OF SNOW ALL OVER THE PLACE.

i think i could deal with winter if there wasn’t any snow on the ground. even if it was below zero and the sun was shining and there was no snow, i could just pretend that it wasn’t actually cold.

goodnight, goodnight, i hope they at least close the city down so nobody has to work tomorrow,

grace (married).


Nov. 29, 2006

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first, [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:29 am

i just have to say that i made some site updates ON MY OWN! WHHOO, MEE! you’ll notice over there on the right that i added the time and date for my UPCOMING SHOW. not to mention that i wrote almost half of the show last night! yes, very very productive.

plus, i’ve been photoshopping more photos, like photos of HAWAII, and if i don’t keep doing that i’ll forget all about everything that we did. luckily i have my guidebook so i can look up names i don’t remember, like this waterfall on kauai, which is called Wailua Falls.



and here’s a view from our balcony there on kauai.



this is another photo of shipwreck beach; i posted another one YEARS ago, so you probably wouldn’t remember. this is the beach that’s right outside the hyatt resort, where we spent a lot of time hanging out at the fabulous balcony bar.



here’s me (in case you didn’t recognize me)in the open-air lobby of the resort. it was such a BEAUTIFUL place.



and as we sat on the balcony as teh sun was setting, a guy came out and blew on a horn and there was some kind of ceremony of lighting of the torches.



ok, i’m on a roll here, now here are some photos of NYC.

this is les paul, who is NINETY ONE, at his show.



this is inside the metropolitan museum.



and this is in central park, after we spent a long time at the met and then walked all the way up to the guggenheim and it was covered with scaffolding and we were too tired to go through the museum so instead i had some soup there. and then we walked back through central park and of course i had to stop and consult a map because as you know i’m all about studying the maps.



as we kept walking, we passed Tavern on the Green, which is an iconic restaurant there in the park, and there were lots of xmas lights so we stopped for another photo opportunity.



and THAT is all i have time for now because today is the VERY LAST WARM DAY THIS YEAR and i must get outside. unless it’s raining, although i guess i could use my umbrella.

ok then, i hope your week continues to progress,

GRACE.


Nov. 27, 2006

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script [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:22 pm

today kevin took my picture, to send in as part of my agreement to do a show at first night.

so that’s done.

but then there’s the actual show, which i must start writing. i was going to do it tonight, but then my family invited me to bernie and betty’s pizza and so i went there and came home and watched “studio 60 on the sunset strip” and i can’t say for sure how i’ve been spending my time since then, but i can only assure you that i’ve been frittering it all away.

but i am definitely, DEFINITELY going to get to sleep at an earlier hour than last night (which was 2 a.m. because i stayed up too late and then read for a while and then for a little more). i need to be outside as much as possible tomorrow b4 i have to go work, because COLD WEATHER IS ENCROACHING. it all goes to hell on wednesday night, according to the weather reports.

i must start writing on that show. i have ideas, but i need to actually write them. 45 minutes worth of stuff i have to talk about.

goodnight then, goodnight,

monday grace.

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SUNDAY NIGHT [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 1:14 am
since we’ve been home i’ve felt a little more...sane...since before we went to NYC. and tonight i assured kevin that i’d be going to sleep at a more reasonable hour, i wouldn’t feel the need to stay up late after we went to work.

it’s now 12:53. so never mind about that.

first of all, gloria ESTEFAN. randy found it extremely funny that i spelled her name SO WRONG.

secondly - i don’t even feel like sitting here at all. except i just watched a show on the travel channel about the Queen Mary 2, and someday i want to travel across the ocean on it. in a cabin with a balcony.

not right away or anything, but someday. i can’t pinpoint exactly why i’ve always thought it would be great to travel to europe on an ocean liner, but i just would. right now i found an outside cabin with a balcony for about $3,600 for two people. that’s not THAT outrageous. it takes six nights. ok, it’s slightly expensive, i guess.

not right away.

i have a lot to write about new york, and of course there are the ongoing photos from hawaii, but right now i need to write about our animals. the cats stayed with mom and dad and had a lovely time with them, and mollie also had a good time at amy and jim’s house.

but this afternoon mollie was here at home lying on the couch, and suddenly honey, the little kitty, jumped up on the couch and looked her in the eye, and then hissed at her, and hissed again, and swiped at her. for no reason at all.

why must she be so mean?

but then tonight i decided that maybe she’s mean because winnie is so mean to her. tonight she jumped up on the chair where winston was sleeping, and she laid down near him and tried to sleep. but winnie started growling and trying to push honey off the chair with his back legs. for no reason.

later, same situation, winnine sleeping, honey jumped up - she laid down and closed her eyes, and pretty soon winnie reached over and growled, biting honey in the back of the head. he continue to do this for quite a while and honey tried to ignore him but clearly it was unpleasant for her, so she finally had to hiss and they fought for a while.

and so now i think i feel bad for honey; she’s just lashing out at poor mollie because of the continuing harassment from winnie.

therapy, they all need animal therapy.

tonight we watched sarah silverman’s movie “jesus is magic;” it’s basically her standup act, and it’s very dirty and funny but also kind of disturbing. but in a less mean-spirited way than borat.

and by the way, the dirty comment that i wrote about in my last post, about what is served on thanksgiving, that’s what LES PAUL, the famous, 91 year-old jazz guitarist, said, not me.

ok, here are a few photos of new york. this first one is right inside macy’s on the monday before thanksgiving. it was so crowded; i don’t want to think about what it must have been like the day after turkey day.




and here’s me in front of one of the floats the day b4 the parade.



and here’s the only photo of the two of us during the trip, the only proof that we were both together. that’s the brooklyn bridge in the background, it’s the day after thanksgiving and right after that we walked across the bridge.



that’s all for now. oh, and here’s a link to our wedding announcement, which was FINALLY in the paper.

WEDDING ANNOUNCEMENT

ok ok ok,

sunday grace.





Nov. 23, 2006

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happy thanksgiving! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 4:53 pm

i’m a little groggy right now because i just woke up from a nap after having a lovely thanksgiving meal at a little italian restaurants a couple of blocks from the hotel. kevin had turkey etc, and i had penne pasta with vodka sauce and chunks of salmon. delicious. cheesecake for dessert. mmmm.

this morning we went to the parade. i woke up at seven to the sound of rain, and outside it was dark and rainy and awful, so i went back to bed for a while. by 7:30 it was slightly less rainy, so at about 8:30 we headed out. at this point the rain had pretty much stopped, but it wasn’t quite 40 degrees outside. we’re staying on 8th Ave here in NYC, between 48th and 49th streets, only a block from the parade route along broadway, but since we had a half hour we figured we’d walk up closer to where the parade started.

we got as far as 65th street and found places in the crowd, which was pretty crowded but probably not as much if it’d been sunny and a little warmer. the parade finally started to go by at 9:10 and it was great and the balloons are so huge. on the news all morning the newscasters were getting in a lather about whether or not the balloons would go, because if it was too windy and if there were too many gusts, they couldn’t. it’s funny how local newscasters are pretty much the same, if they’re in springfield or in LA or NYC, they all get ALL WORKED UP about things and the big city ones don’t seem much more sophisticated than the ones in smaller places. not like on the big major news shows where they’re paid to rein in their overjealousness and act more professional.

anyway, the rain stopped until about 9:30 and then it started raining harder...and harder...and we had umbrellas and finally put them up and lots of other people had theirs up and the woman in front of me who was really invading my personal space anyway kept almost putting my eye out with her umbrella plus the rain dripped off it onto me.

it was impossible to see the big balloons coming down the street once the umbrellas were up, and suddenly there was snoopy looming above us. because of the threatened wind, the balloons were on a very short tether and some of them were literally touching the ground in places. maybe because of the weather, the parade kept slowing down and sometimes stopping and there were large gaps between things. not as bad as the illinois state fair parade, which has had gaps of at least a block and at least an hour in length, but still, gaps.

it was neat to see the giant balloons so close up, and to watch them glide by so slowly.

yesterday we went to the museum of natural history, and kevin liked it the best of anything we’ve seen here, and they were blowing the balloons up on the streets on either side of the museum and we watched that happening for a little bit and that, too, was quite a sight. we did that before going into the museum, and by the time we left, the crowds were ridiculously huge. as we shuffled along with the multitudinous multitudes, there were suddenly a lot of cops and security guys, and then mayor bloomberg passed right by us. our first celebrity sighting.

today in the parade we saw julie andrews and i think we saw gloria estephan although i don’t think i actually saw her but if i did, i definitely got it on videotape. if my video camera isn’t ruined, that is, by the rain that kept raining down on it. we also saw hall & oates, and i definitely got a close shot of them but they didn’t loook anything like the hall & oates i remember although of course since they were popular about...30 years ago? they’re nothing but plastic surgery enhanced representations of themselves.

we saw the radio city rockettes christmas spectatular the night b4 last, and it was dazzling and also a little weird. it lasted an hour and a half, and the first hour and fifteen minutes was full of rockettes in scanty costumes, dancing and kicking and there were some ice skaters and lots of santa claus and a cute number with a stage full of santa clauses and they did a lot with costumes and sets and mirrors and there was even a part where we put on 3D glasses.

and then, mrs. claus and the elves who were played by dwarves and that was a little bit odd, said goodbye to santa and then they sang “wahoo doree” (i know it’s spelled wrong) from how the grinch stole xmas, and then an announcer started talking about the importance and meaning of xmas, and then the last 15 minutes was a reenactment of the bible story. joseph and mary and a bunch of other people marched back and forth across the stage, and mary rode a real horse, and somebody led a couple of donkeys and there were sheep, and then camels...CAMELS??!! we had gotten to the show too late to look at the program so i tried to figure out if these were live camels, which seemed crazy, and i decided they were people in costumes but then the camels were just standing there and they started CHEWING and i decided that they were real.

camels and sheep and donkeys and horses, and this big serious thing with lots of singing of stuff like “hark the herald angels sing” and kevin commented later that the set of the nativity was really good, but i didn’t pay that much attention because i couldn’t stop focusing on all the animals onstage.

it was just odd, after santa and rockettes and dwarves and HOLIDAY FUN, to have the somber and serious ending to the show. i have a very vague memory of reading about this somewhere sometime ago.

we sat very near the back, and i’d like to go again someday and sit a little closer. in order to observe the animals closer. i mean, what if one of them pooped onstage, for example? but maybe they wore diapers? we were too far back to see.

last night we saw “spamalot” and it was very funny and we got tickets in the 6th row because we just walked into the theater the day before and they had these two great seats available for some reason.

and tonight we’re seeing “avenue Q.” we have two and a half hours till it starts, and K. is watching football and there’s a computer room here in the hotel and i’m all alone here, surprisingly enough. a german couple came in for a while, but they’re gone now. you can print things if you want to, and there’s some e-mail here from somebody to some priests and of course i read it because it’s just sitting here, and here’s one line from it:

“just to clarity, the compulsory use of the revised Common Lectionary, unless the Ecclesiastical Authority grants an extension for the use of the BCP lectionary for up to three years, begins on Advent Sunday 2007, not 2006.”

it goes on like this for a while and it seems that it shouldn’t just be lying around for anybody to look at because surely it’s very top-secret religious stuff, if anybody could understand it. there’s also a fax from some religious person in bogota but i can’t read that at all because it’s in spanish.

on monday night i had two and a half beers. if you know me well, you’d know how significant this is because as a rule I HATE BEER. A LOT. but we were at an irish pub and it was some delicious apple lager and it tasted mostly like apple cider.

monday night we saw Les Paul, who is a famous jazz guitarist, in case you didn’t know. he is NINETY ONE years old, and he didn’t play that long but then again he’s NINETY ONE years old. his rhythm guitarist was 69, and seemed sprightly. actually, les seemed quite sprightly himself. at the beginning he talked about thanksgiving, and said “turkey, we’re all going to have turkey, but what if the pilgrims had bobcat, instead...then we’d all be having pussy for thanksgiving.”

the woman playing the bass in his band was young and pretty and blonde and english, and she said she’d written him a song on the plane from ft. lauderdale that day. i kept wondering what kind of interesting life she must lead. it was a nice song, and she was being quite flirtatious with les and he loved that a lot.

i keep seeing lots of dogs on leashes here in nyc, and i’ve decided i don’t like that at all. i guess they’re probably doing OK, but i think it would be bad to be a dog here - do they ever, ever, get a chance to run around? it’d be ok for the little dogs, but some of the ones i saw were pretty big. we walked down to a pier yesterday to look at the aircraft carrier the Intrepid, which got stuck in the mud when they were trying to move it to be repaired, and there was a little dog run there (on pavement, not grass) and a guy was talking on his cell phone, throwing a ball for his little dog so at least the dog got to run free for a while.

having a dog makes me more compassionate about dogs in general.

not having children, however, i think makes me less tolerant of them. at least the THOUSANDS of them that were at the natural history museum yesterday. they’re just so LOUD. and in the women’s bathroom it suddenly occured to me that all that mothers seem to do is spend their time bossing their children around. i heard a woman say to her child, “do you have to go?” i never did hear the child responding, but the mother kept on and on. “are you sure? it’s an hour ride. are you SURE? we’ll be on the subway and on a bus and you can’t go for an hour. are you SURE?” on and on and on like that. if i had been the child i’d have said PLEASE QUIT BADGERING ME.

if i’d had been the child, i’d have had to go.

we went to a FABULOUS burger joint, tucked inside the le parker meridian hotel. on the wall were bumper stickers and writing, and one of the bumper stickers said “forget world peace...visualize using your turn signal.” and another said “i didn’t claw my way to the top of the food chain to eat vegetables.”

they had perfect burgers. i found the place in one of my many searches online for great places to go in NYC. this one was on a list of top 10 places to eat for under $10. i thought i’d found quite a little secret place.

but today as we ate our lovely thanksgiving meal, i listened to a family from north carolina strike up a conversation with a couple of guys from ireland. the mother started telling the men where they should go, and she told them about...the hole in the wall burger joint. she’d looked it up online, as she’d done with the very restaurant we were all sitting in. except she’d been even more thorough than me - she looked up restaurants and then she looked up a restaurant reader review site and she’d tossed out all the places that got any negative reviews at all. on one hand i realized that there was nothing unique about my finding the burger place or the thanksgiving meal, and on the other hand, it was nice to know that there are people out there who are spending even more time than me, obsessively looking things up.

i don’t think i knew about anything at all before the internet.

not that i know that much right now.

one more thing on the wall at the burger joint (and that was its name, i think, by the way) - there was an article from a GQ magazine, july '05, the “20 hamburgers you must eat before you die.” so now i want to look up that article and find the other 19 places.

not right now, though. football watching? hmm, i don’t think so. i can’t take a walk outside right now because i’m wearing kevin’s comfy shoes that look and feel like slippers, and no coat.

i hope you’re having a good thanksgiving, and i appreciate you reading all the way to the end because this is extra-long because right now i suddenly have all this time and many things to write about.

they said it was 60 and sunny in springfield, but i’m still glad i’m here instead.

ok ok ok already,

thanksgiving grace.


Nov. 17, 2006

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NOT AN X BOX! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:15 am
they’re not x boxes, they’re SONY PLAYSTATION 3s. and there are VERY VERY FEW of them, which has made people go crazy, as they are wont to do.

there was a story about it on the front page of the paper today (you see how very thrilling and full of news the town is), and there were SIX WHOLE PEOPLE waiting in line at circuit city and they’d been there for 36 hours.

there were definitely more people at best buy, plus all those tents would have made a great photo. the article mentioned the people in line at target, but clearly the journalism wasn’t PENETRATING enough, because they didn’t mention best buy at all.

play station 3’s cost more than 500 bucks.

that is all i have to say.

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FRIDAY morning [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:28 am

and i’m FULL OF ENERGY for all the stuff i need to do...except it’s already 10:30 and i’ve been sitting here for too long, looking up stuff online about NYC and i told myself that i wouldn’t do that anymore because i already have more ideas for things to do than there will be time for.

hawaii! here are some photos of the condo on Kauai where we stayed for a week. it was a really beautiful place, and looked almost as good as the photos from the website. they used a fisheye lens for their photos, so the room looked bigger than it was, but it was still very beautiful, with lots of cool and interesting stuff on the walls and nice antique furniture.

the only downside to the place is the couple staying next door. we went to sleep relatively early on our second night there because we’d been so busy doing stuff during the day, and we woke up because our neighbors had come home and brought guests and the woman kept cackling and they were all making a lot of noise. theirs was the most expensive suite in the place, and i felt like maybe because they were paying so much they felt it was ok to be utterly rude. there were other people in the other suites, and we never heard any of them.

luckily the party didn’t go on all night. they were clearly there for a friend’s wedding, and maybe they had to get up early the next day.

the next night, things apparently hadn’t gone so well for them. this time we woke up to hear the woman screaming I JUST WANTED TO HAVE FUN AT MY FRIEND’S WEDDING, and there was lots of yelling and somebody screamed WE SHOULD JUST GET DIVORCED and somebody else said GOOD, TOMORROW MORNING.

i thought, thank god they’re getting divorced in the morning so we won’t have to hear them anymore, especially the woman whose voice carried the farthest.

but next morning they were still there, albeit very very quiet because they must have stopped speaking to each other. what about the divorce? i wanted to call out to them, and you know, you’re not setting a very good example for married life. but i said nothing.

a couple of nights later there were even more people at the party and all had clearly worked out at least for the moment and people were jumping into the pool and so i finally called the condo manager and she called the couple and soon, once again, the party was over.

thank goodness.

here’s our giant bed which was so high off the floor that i had to try not to fall out.



and here’s the view from the bed, out to the balcony where we spent a lot of time.



here’s me eating a lovely meal that we fixed right there in our room.



here i’m looking down at the little garden area below our room. i’m right next to the pool and jacuzzi, and below is a creek that got really full after it rained.



when we walked down to the garden, this is the view out to the ocean. it is so amazingly lush and beautiful there.



but here - grey and more grey. leaves almost gone from the trees. time to go to NEW YORK CITY, where that won’t matter so much because there’s such a profusion of things to do and see.

last night i read my favorite blog, DOOCE.COM, and she had just been to new york and talked about how her feet were BLEEDING because she wore the wrong shoes. big mistake. i’m going to wear my new running shoes, for total foot comfort. i’m attempting to not take tons and tons of clothes, but so far i’m not doing a great job of paring things down.

i hope your friday and your weekend are good. my friday night is going to be at a cabin concert, the last one of the fall series and the last one, unfortunately. i hope you got to see one, because they’re fantastic and will be sorely missed.

ok then,

morning grace ready to spring into all kinds of action.

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and *poof,* it’s thursday [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:10 am

just four minutes till friday. NO IDEA how that happened.

the cold weather has set in and it’s not even that horribly cold.

YET.

but still, i just want to sit around and drink hot tea and continue to obsessively read this book i’m reading. it’s called “Make Way for Lucia,” by E.F. Benson, and it’s a compilation of all the Lucia books into one enormous volume of 1,119 pages. i’ve read 687 of them by now, and i start reading when i get in bed and i always mean to only read for a half hour but i keep staying up till TWO A.M. which is ridiculously, ridiculously late.

i’ve read all the lucia books, but it was a long time ago and luckily my memory is so bad that i can’t remember the details. i started re-reading it because i was bored and didn’t expect to keep reading, but can’t stop now. i’m kind of worried since it’s now after midnight and i haven’t even started reading yet and i have quite a few things to accomplish tomorrow so i can’t spend the night reading.

the books were written sometime before the 1920’s, because that’s the oldest date i found on the inside cover. they’re all about life in two little country towns in england, and nothing much really happens except that there is neverending intrigue and gossip amongst a small circle of entertaining people.

i want to post some more photos of hawaii but it’ll have to wait. but i’d better hurry because soon there will be photos of new york. but not nearly as many.

remember that hideous keepsake doll i wrote about? while i was focused on that, kevin, it turns out, was looking at some kind of keyboard that you can roll up. he saw it in one of the sunday ads and thought it was at target but we went there tonight and they had no roll up keyboards. perhaps they’re at best buy.

we did go past best buy, and there was a row of tents out in front of the store. kevin says that a new XBox is coming out. how long have these people been waiting? have they been sleeping in the tents, were they there overnight? kevin said they were going to go on sale at midnight, which means that by now the tents have been put away.

i hope they get a lot of enjoyment out of the new xboxes. i can’t think of many (any at all?) things that i’d be willing to sleep in a cold tent in order to purchase.

i must read.

ok then,

grace.



Nov. 13, 2006

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oh yeah one more thing [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:42 pm

i looked through the many many ads in the sunday paper and there’s this one item for sale that is somewhat horrifying. it’s one of those deals where you make three payments or whatever, and usually it’s for something like a train set or some kind of doll or something. but this time it’s a little baby...i don’t even know if it’s supposed to be a doll, i didn’t even look to see how much it cost or anything because it was FRIGHTENING TO LOOK AT. i mean, at first glance it looks like a real, actual baby, the kind that has only been born for a couple of hours yet and is very squishy and kind of deformed looking and WHY WOULD ANYBODY WANT TO PURCHASE SUCH A MONSTROSITY?

i’ll have to look closer next week, when i get my courage up.

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sunny monday......NOT. [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:24 pm

that’s a “borat” inside joke.

cloudy cloudy cloudy all day long. it seemed SO COLD and i wore my great big winter coat and a hat and gloves. but then tonight, for some reason, it didn’t seem so cold and i took mollie for a walk which she was VERY EXCITED ABOUT. and then she was VERY EXCITED AGAIN when i came home and made myself some dinner, and of course i had to give her some because she’s one of the best beggers i know.

kevin alleges that he saw snow coming down at 4 in the morning last night, when he tried to go work out but then realized that the fit club doesn’t open till 5 on monday morning. i guess snow is ok if it happens in the middle of the night and is COMPLETELY GONE by the time i get up.

christmas, christmas, everywhere, at least on tv ads. i watched a show tonight, “studio 60 on the sunset strip” and it’s kind of good, good enough that i’ve watched it almost three times now. i haven’t watched anything else that many times this year. it just doesn’t feel like christmas could be approaching.

oh, and i’m going to be performing at first night again. sadly, this year i’m going to be at the lincoln library, the public one with all the books NOT about abraham lincoln. in the carnegie room, a pretty small and not well-lit room, that is to say, flourescent lighting, yuck. they’re putting all the comics there, for some reason. one of the performances in the big beautiful theater one at the hoogland will be MIMES. i’m being kicked out because of MIMES. TWO PERFORMANCES of mimes.

i didn’t realize that mimes were that popular.

one other slight problem is that i can’t think of what i’ll possibly talk about. but on the other hand last year i managed to put together a show despite being incredibly, INCREDIBLY depressed for most of the fall. so now that i’m happy perhaps i’ll be able to think of some amusing anecdotes, we’ll see. i guess i need to start thinking about it pretty soon.

coming right up.

i briefly toyed with the idea of wearing my wedding dress for this show, because i imagine i’ll talk about the wedding a bit. but then i thought I CAN’T TAKE THE PRESSURE OF TRYING TO ZIP UP THAT DAMN DRESS AGAIN. at least not right now. maybe for the next show...

because it would be awfully funny, i think, to wear the dress for a show. because i’d be funny AND i’d look like a princess!

i wish hillary clinton wasn’t so gung-ho about running for president. also today it seemed like a bunch of other people are revving up to run. guys who’ve run before; can’t they take the hint the first time? barak obama should win, that’s all i’m saying.

randy suggested that i could talk about politics in my show. this seems like a fairly horrible idea. to me, personally.

i wish i had a photo to put up here tonight, but i don’t. because suddenly and without any warning it’s almost 11:30 and of course time has managed to slip away from me YET AGAIN.

goodnight all.

ok then,

grace (hughes)



Nov. 12, 2006

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more brooks & dunn trivia [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:52 pm

we have an autographed brooks & dunn guitar in our music room. i didn’t know this. did my husband go to a B&D concert? he’s never mentioned it. maybe. or maybe he got it on e-bay.

he has lots and lots of guitars, in case i’ve never mentioned this. LOTS and lots.

it’s not so much a music room right now, it’s more a place with lots and lots of guitars in cases plus other stuff that has no place.

yet.

things will get neater and more organized around here. this office, for example, will not be filled with pieces of paper, many of which don’t even belong to me so i can’t file them or throw them away.

i also just noticed a very large pair of muddy boots. why are there muddy boots in here?

there’s a fabulous “incredibles” neon clock that MH bought me a while ago, and that needs to be put up on a wall somewhere.

somewhere.

organization. it’s going to start happening this week, i can just feel it.

well, you neve know.

it is POSSIBLE, anyway. i could tear myself away from looking at the weather next week in NYC on weather.com, and start cleaning.

*sigh*

soon, soon.

ok ok ok goodnight already and i hope your monday is filled with warm sunny weather and everything good,

grace.

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MORE MOVIES! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 4:03 pm

considering that i hadn’t been to a movie in i don’t know how long, the number of movies i saw over the week was quite remarkable. after “talledega nights, the ballad of ricky bobby,” fairly stupid but also funny, was “marie antoinette,” BORING BEYOND BELIEF. and then on friday night we saw “borat.”

hmm. i went to it because of the funny trailer. and it was funny, in parts...but also over the top. WAY over the top. it seemed that when he went around interviewing people, they had to be actors. (the premise is that the title character is from kazikstahn, coming to america for the first time in order to find out about it in order to make his country great).

when i got home i read about it, and the film’s claim is that most of the people in it, except for borat’s producer or agent, and the very large prostitute, were actual people not acting. i also read that some reviewer, i think the guy from the LA times, compared the actor to lenny bruce and richard pryor, except this guy, sacha cohen, is so mean-spirited. i have to agree to that, but it’s also amazing to hear the kinds of things people will say even though they know they’re being filmed. racist, homophobic, you name it, it was being skewered by cohen.

randy loved it. kevin liked it, as did erica. bev didn’t care for it at all.

i guess i’d recommend seeing it, if you feel that you won’t be totally disgusted at the sight of borat and his producer running around fighting each other and rolling around on the bed completely naked, and the producer is very very obese and i’ve never seen such a gross amount of flesh. they also run down the hallway and onto the elevator and into a meeting of realtors at the hotel.

odd. an odd film.

last night we rented “mrs. henderson presents” and i’m so glad this is the last film i saw during the week because it was GREAT. two thumbs up. judi dench is eccentric and wonderful and very rich and she buys a shut-down theater and turns it into a vaudeville palace in 1937, with the help of bob hoskins (who was the executive producer of the movie), and then she decides that they should have nude women in the show which causes somewhat of a scandal.

it’s fun and funny and intelligent, and there are lots of big numbers with lots of singing and dancing and it’s dramatic and you should definitely rent it.

funny, too, that at one point when they’re trying to coax the women into disrobing, everybody in the theater gets naked - including bob hoskins. mercifully, there’s only a brief shot of him standing there totally naked, and he doesn’t run around or fling himself on top of anybody or anything like that.

that is all for now.

ok then,

sunday grace.




Nov. 09, 2006

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ROGER EBERT IS AN IMBECILE [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:29 pm

i just looked up some reviews of “marie antoinette” and he ADORDED IT. please, roger, get a clue, get a grip. he made this 10-point list of it, and one of his points is:

“Every criticism I have read of this film would alter is fragile magic and reduce its romantic and tragic poignancy to the level of an instructional film.”

FRAGILE MAGIC MY ASS.

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SO INCREDIBLY BORING [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:05 pm

that sums up “marie antoinette.” mom and dad said they were going tonight, the last night it’s playing here in spfld, so kevin and i went, but then mom and dad had to go later.

when the movie was FINALLY over after about 15 days, i called dad and said WHATEVER YOU DO DON’T GO SEE THAT MOVIE.

but i feel that they’ll go anyway. GO SEE BORAT INSTEAD, i called back and told him. WE SAW THE PREVIEW FOR THAT AND IT LOOKS REALLY FUNNY.

they’ll go to marie antoinette. they’re there right now i bet. BORED OUT OF THEIR MINDS.

here’s the plotline - marie antoinette goes to france. she gets married. and then for the rest of the movie, NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENS.

there’s lots of walking around. lots and lots of walking, beautiful places, i mean it’s VERSAILLES (we have a versailles here in central illinois, but we pronounce it “versales.”). beautiful grounds, beautiful chandeliers and furniture and wallpaper. GOOD JOB WITH THE SET DECORATION AND THE COSTUMES. BUT YOU FORGOT TO HAVE A STORY AND SOME DIALOGUE.

sometimes kirsten dunst does talk. ISN’T SHE A GOOD ACTRESS? WHAT HAPPENED TO HER?

she and her co-star, louis xvith, i think it’s jason schwartzman, THEY SOUND LIKE THEY’RE IN A HIGH SCHOOL PLAY. eventually kirsten has a beautiful little girl who HAS A LOVELY FRENCH ACCENT.

kirsten sounds like she lives in VERSALES ILLINOIS.

blegh.

molly shannon and this other actress whose name i can’t remember but she has a really really creepy voice, they’re some of the ladies in waiting or ladies hanging around or whatever, and at first i thought maybe they would provide some INTRIGUE or SOME KIND OF ACTIVITY TO MAKE THE MOVIE INTERESTING IN ANY WAY, but they didn’t.

kirsten has a short affair with some guy and he’s quite handsome but then he gallops away on his horse.

kirsten gets to wear many many many fabulous fancy gowns and shoes and sometimes ridiculously tall marie antoinette wigs. in a scene with her lover she wears nothing but a pair of lovely white stockings with blue ribbons at the top, and she holds a very large fan. but SHE IS UNBELIEVABLY TERRIBLE.

all through the film they eat lots and lots of very beautiful looking food and how come i didn’t see a single woman in the film who looked fat at all, wouldn’t they all be waddling around after doing nothing but eating rich pastries and drinking gallons of champagne every moment of every day?

at the end, and i won’t ruin it for you because I HOPE TO GOD YOU DON’T GO SEE IT, there’s not even any dramatic scene of her being a captive and being beheaded. she and her husband roll away in a carriage and she he asks her something like “are you looking at the view?” and she says “i’m saying good-bye” and then we see a shot of their bedroom (where i think they really only had sex once, perhaps a few times) which is ornate as anything but totally wrecked and the chandelier is on the ground.

AND THAT’S THE END.

BUT THAT GOD THAT WAS THE END.

because it was more boring than anything i can recall in a very very long time.

earlier in the week we went to “talledega nights,” and it was the BEST MOVIE IN THE WORLD compared to MA. T. nights was inconsequential and stupid sometimes, but at least things happened, i even laughed a couple of times, and kevin enjoyed it thoroughly because he’s a guy.

i can’t believe we wasted two perfectly good hours seeing marie antoinette.

i came home and vacuumed because i haven’t done so since the party even though i’ve been meaning to and there’s been confetti all over the carpet for over a week now and VACUUMING WAS MUCH MUCH MORE ENTERTAINING THAN WATCHING MARIE ANTOINETTE.

as we ran out of the theater when it was over, there were a few people sitting in the rows in front of us and they remained in their seats. surely they didn’t give one shit about who was involved in that crappy crap? perhaps they had all fallen asleep.

that is all for now. i feel much better.

gh.

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the animals in the garage [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:43 am

we moved the cat food out of the garage so the unnamed animal (midget deer, bunny, possum, or some unidentified beast) won’t keep eating it. now the food is on the dresser in the front bedroom, which seems like not such a great place for cat food, but we were running out of options.

we had thought about trying to capture the mysterious animal(s) in some sort of animal-friendly trap, but we probably would have only trapped the kitties.

as you can see, things are quite thrilling around here.

on our thirday day in hawaii, we flew to kauai and i wish i’d taken a picture of the airport there. the oahu airport is big and international, but the kauai airport is tiny and made of dark brown wood and is in the middle of a field and the ocean is very close by and it’s very quaint and funny.

we drove to poipu beach; our condo was near it. we had a little balcony which in hawaii is called a lanai, and we could see the ocean from it and we spent a lot of time out there.

we drove down the way to the hyatt resort. this is where amy and jim got married two years ago. well, they got married somewhere near the resort, and then they and mom and dad had lunch at one of the hyatt’s fancy restaurants. here’s a picture of it.



it looked really nice and we talked about having lunch there on our very last day in hawaii, but we didn’t end up doing that. it was, indeed, ridiculously expensive - i think the coffee was 12 dollars or something like that.

the hyatt was on shipwreck beach, and here’s one good photo of it.



we came back to the beach another day and saw a couple of guys jump off that very high rock in the background. crazy, definitely.


here’s me and kevin on the grounds of the hyatt. there were lots and lots of people milling around that first night because they we having the weekly giant luau, which we didn’t attend. behind us is a cabana; they were set up all along the beach in back of the resort and you could rent them.



this is one of my favorite hawaii photos. it makes me want to be there right now. kevin took the picture from the hotel balcony overlooking the grounds. on the balcony is a great bar where you can sit and have drinks and food and watch the ocean. we went back there a few times because the view was spectacular. it was never crowded, surprisingly. in the evenings there were different performers playing; sometimes a guitarist, sometimes there was a hula dance. all the entertainment was facing the lobby bar just inside the hotel. there was no door, though, so we could hear it as well as being up close to the ocean view.

paradise, that’s all i’m saying.



ok then,

thursday grace.



Nov. 08, 2006

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i stand corrected [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:54 am
1. christine CARES NOTHING about brooks & dunn. she just knows who they are (doesn’t everybody?). now, a few lifetimes ago i know she liked country music and listened to it, but maybe not B&D. maybe she doesn’t listen to it anymore, i don’t know.

2. the bat was a LOUISVILLE SLUGGER that carrie underwood used to smash the headlights on her cheating boyfriend’s pickup truck or whatever kind of vehicle it was (i know it was red, anyway). kevin e-mailed me this very important information last night in the middle of the night.

randy agreed with me about ronnie dunn looking overly-facelifted. he said that if ronnie didn’t have that facial hair, he’d look like an unattractive woman.

i’ve been researching things to do, places to see in NYC, even though i already have a pretty big list of place i want to go when we’re there in less than two weeks. but i found something different that sounds interesting - at birdland, the legendary jazz place, on monday nights they have something called 'jim caruso’s cast party," and it’s basically an open mike night for anybody who wants to sing, including broadway stars who allegedly like to go there and have fun and sing.

hmm, we’ll see if that really happens, if it’s even possible to get in. the cover charge is a measly 10 bucks, and the club is only a few blocks from our hotel.

one thing is, would we recognize broadway stars if they were singing? because i bet that most people who sing there are going to sound phenomenal, stars or not. it’s like when i lived in west hollywood, and christine and i would walk down the street to the gay bar where they had an open mike and person after person got up and sang incredibly well, and these weren’t stars, they were just performers or wanna-be performers or people who just sang well.

one time at that bar a guy was fascinated in talking to christine and me, and wanted to invite us to one of his homes in palm springs or bel air or at least one other place; they were all listed on his card, which he only gave us after we told him we were a gay couple. we weren’t really a gay couple, of course, but we thought it was funny that he only wanted to be friends with us if we were. heterosexual discrimination.

here’s a photo from our third day in hawaii. FINALLY on to the third day, this is the day we flew from oahu to kauai. before we left we stopped at Kailua Beach, right up the road from our B&B.



on the beach was a japanese couple getting wedding photos taken. they had come to the beach in a huge stretch limo. lots and lots of japanese tourists come to hawaii because it’s close by.



i wore this lei that i’d gotten the night before on the plane because it’s festive and because i didn’t want to pack it.



a guy with a dog was on the beach, and he kept throwing a ball out to sea and the dog kept bounding into the water after it. it made us miss mollie, the best dog ever who is waiting patiently for me to take her running.



actually, the only reason she’s being so patient is because i haven’t mentioned the word running to her, which will cause her to go berserk and try to jump up my leg. no matter how quietly i get her lead and harness out of the laundry room, she’ll hear me and will come running. i’m going to do that now because it’s beautiful and sunny and could be hawaii except for the lack of palm trees and ocean and it’s not 85 degrees outside, but it is in teh 60’s at least.

ok then,

grace looking on the bright side of life this morning.



Nov. 06, 2006

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country music awards [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:08 pm

i started watching the country music awards because i’ve never watched it before and wanted to see what it was like.

lots and lots of music. if you were a big country fan, this would be a great show to watch, i think, because it didn’t seem to be lots of talking and annoying stuff like at many awards shows, it’s mostly just about the performances.

but i just have to say that brooks and dunn are the hosts - i’ve only heard of brooks and dunn because of christine, and i can’t remember anything specific she’s ever said about them, except maybe that she likes them? she saw them in concert? can’t remember. but i have to say that ronnie dunn appears to have had A LOT of plastic surgery. i looked him up and he’s 53 years old and behind the moustache and goatee his skin looks like that of a 20 year-old.

perhaps it’s just the clean country livin' life he’s led that makes him appear so youthful.

some woman singing also first looked very young but then when they zoomed in on her face she looked like she was just trying to look young. her face was much too taut.

i don’t know why i felt that country singers would be any different from any other performers. i mean, they all have to sell their music and IF YOU LOOK OLD AND TRY TO PERFORM YOU WILL CERTAINLY BE SHUNNED AND THEN KILLED.

and nobody will ever, ever listen to you again. or look at you, because WRINKLES ARE WORSE THAN ANYTHING.

i guess it seemed like country singers shouldn’t be all caught up in the whole plastic surgery thing because their songs sound so down-home and stuff.

i did think it was funny that this very hot-looking blonde in a sexy short dress and painfully high heels - carrie underwood? trisha underwood? ok, never mind, i just looked her up - it’s CARRIE underwood and she was the winner on american idol. (at this point randy is rolling his eyes and saying HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW WHO CARRIE UNDERWOOD IS?). anyway, she’s very attractive and she sang this song “before he cheats” and it’s all about how “he” is out with some sleazy cheap woman and so she, carrie, has keyed his pickup truck and carved her initials in his leather seats and smashed up his headlights and one more thing that i couldn’t understand even though this was the chorus and she sang it at least three times.

i just don’t feel that carrie would really have a big problem with a man cheating on her, that’s all i’m saying. and since she’s only about 23, she probably hasn’t had a tremendous amount of dating nightmare experiences.

it’s pretty amazing that she just won american idol in 2005 and now she’s VERY HUGE STAR.

luckily she doesn’t have to worry about plastic surgery YET. give her a couple of years. it’s just funny that she LOOKED so sexy like she could be a model or a movie star but she was singing about smashing a guy’s headlights with a baseball bat, she actually mentioned the specific type of bat but i can’t recall it right now.

as you can see it’s a very exciting monday night here.

when we got home earlier, an orange and white cat was sitting across the street a couple of door down, looking at us. and right across the street another orange cat was looking at us from behind a bush. just staring at us. I FEEL THEY MIGHT BE THE FOOD STEALERS.

but would our cats and our ferocious doggie really let cats in to steal the cat food?

they looked like very serious cats.

perhaps they were shape-shifting deer.

or midget deer dressed in cat disguises.

the country music awards is still on in the other room and it’s been on for two hours already and i wonder how much longer it will go. i also wonder why they had jon bon jovi announce one of the categories. he and his fellow band member I DON’T FEEL LIKE LOOKING HIM UP RIGHT NOW, i think he’s donnie samboca or something like that. and that guy was wearing this shirt that was much too tight and the buttons were straining over his gut and i thought, maybe if you’re successful enough you don’t have to keep up with the plastic surgery. also it helps that he’s not the main guy, like poor jon bon, who has clearly had his face stretched quite a bit.

RICHIE sambora, i think that’s his name.

that’s all for my vast musical knowledge tonight.

one more hawaii photo - this is still day two, we’re at the sheraton moana surfrider in Waikiki, we’ve had mai tais and appetizers and watched the sun set at this fabulous outdoor bar and a band is playing.

and then they make an announcement that they’re going to have a wedding vow renewal ceremony, and anybody can come up and participate even if they’ve only been married an hour.

so we did that. it was really really neat. the minister and a lovely women passed out leis to all the couples and he chatted with all of us. there were probably about 30 or so couples, because THIS IS WHERE YOU GO when you’re on your honeymoon or your anniversary. then the woman did a hula and it was a perfect ending to our day.



ok then,

grace.

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the photo [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:41 pm

here we are, 70’s couple.



groovy.

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kevin’s article plus other things [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:35 pm

not a lot of other things, except i’m ridiculously sore today from all the yard work yesterday.

we didn’t get a subscription to the online sj-r yet, but we figured out how to save the article about kevin, and so i’m just going to cut and paste it here for you.

In the Spotlight
Published Thursday, November 02, 2006
Kevin Hughes

· Artistic endeavor(s): Dancer, sword-fight choreographer & fencing instructor, musician.
· Where you might have seen me (or will soon): Dance and character parts with
Springfield Ballet Company (Judge Silberhaus in “The Nutcracker” for a number of years
including this December, and numerous other past productions); The Muni’s "The Wizard of
Oz" (Winkie Guard, Dancing Poppy, Ozzian); playing guitar and singing with local band
Crossroad Flatts; teaching fencing for the Springfield Ballet Company and the Springfield
Fencing Club.
· Day job: Master Sergeant with the Illinois State Police.
Twenty-word (or less) description of myself: Serendipitist, optimist, INFP,
friendly, generous, patient and happier now than I have ever been. (Thank you,
Grace!)
· Behind-the-scenes interests: Running, bicycling, sailing, music, fencing, a 1974
VW Thing.
· Family: Wife, Grace; dog, Mollie; 2 cats, Winnie & Honey.
Time spent in Springfield: Transferred to Springfield in 1989 for work, and I’ve
been here pretty much ever since.
· Proudest onstage moment: I was new to Springfield in the fall of 1990, and Grace
Nanavati asked me to dance in “Pizzazz,” the predecessor to “Rockballet.” I had a partnered dance; the finale was a lift where my partner did a mid-air roll at the top of the lift, and then I caught her. This was the first time I ever did a lift. We performed the lift perfectly for each show. It was quite rewarding, and I gained a lot of confidence.
· Most embarrassing onstage moment: I was dancing a duet piece with an
avantgarde modern-dance company based in Chicago in the late '80s. About halfway through, I completely forgot what I was supposed to do. So, I dropped to the floor on my back, rolled around on the floor for a measure or two until I remembered the choreography, then resumed dancing. Afterward, the choreographer and the other dancer both expressed concerns for my health and sanity because I was rolling around on the floor ...
· Something my colleagues don’t know about me: I was almost painfully shy and
insecure as a child, and Muni auditions terrify me.
· Best onstage experience: SBC’s 2005 production of “Romeo & Juliet.” During a
major sword fight scene, one of the rapiers shattered into five pieces at the height of the action. I tossed my sword to the fighter holding only a rapier handle, and the sword fight continued. It looked as if we had choreographed it that way.
· First onstage experience: I had a one-line part in a play as a high-school freshman in 1970. It was not memorable.
· Something artistic I’d love to try: I would love to make an elaborate gingerbread
house creation with my wife Grace.
· Something artistic I’d never try: Directing (Seems like a lot of hard work.)
· Performer(s) I look up to the most: Henry (Hank) Helton, jazz guitarist; Randy
Dunham, singer; Julie Guttas, dancer and artistic director.
· Influences: My parents took me to see my first play when I was probably 12 or 13. It was Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit,” performed at Timber Lake Playhouse in Mount Carroll. I have been hooked on theater ever since.
· One thing I would change about the Springfield arts community: I would like to
see greater cooperation, support and sharing of talents and resources between the different artistic genres. There is improved synergy of late, but the rewards of even greater cooperation are quite promising.
· Favorite performer(s): Dance, Fred Astaire; comedy, Grace Smith; music, Neil
Diamond (attended New York University on a fencing scholarship).
· Dream production in which to perform: “Wicked.”
· Most important lesson learned: Life is all about exploring possibilities. And the
only failure I face is failure to explore what interests me. I may not be the best, or
even good, at something, but I haven’t failed if I’ve at least tried it.
· Advice for those who’d like to do what I do: Try it. No excuses. If it seems
interesting, try it.
· Why I do it: I like the incredible variety of people and the personal challenge to be
my best.

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kevin’s article which isn’t actually there... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:29 am

i guess that link had a shelf life. it worked when i first put it in. so if you’re dying to read the article, you’ll have to wait till we get the secret information from the paper for accessing it.

why can’t it just be available online like other parts of the paper? why isn’t the whole paper available online anyway?

all the halloween decorations have now been taken down. a very good thing.

last night we went to felicia and mike’s 25th anniversary party and we were supposed to dress like our favorite decade. i can’t say that i really have a favorite decade. i’d have to say that this decade is the best, but there have been large portions of it that haven’t been so great, actually.

and what do we say this decade is, anyway? there are the 70’s and the 80’s...will we refer to this as the “zeros?”

because we ran out of time in planning for the party, we decided to wear whatever we could find. luckily amy had three giant tubs of halloween costumes, and we dug through them yesterday afternoon and found some 70’s stuff that was great. kevin wore a curly blonde wig and a big shirt that she had, and i wore my tiger pants, the one i wore for the last “gracetalk,” and some crazy boots of amy’s. we looked more dressed up than we were at halloween, somehow. kevin was VERY VERY FUNNY in his curly blonde wig, and i’d download the picture of us right now except i don’t want to go to the trouble at the moment. tomorrow, i promise, and that’s actually technically today.

he also wore a pair of jeans that we turned into bell bottoms. i did the hard part of the job including ripping the seams and then pinning the fabric to the jeans and ironing it and i sewed most of them but then ran out of time and had to get ready to go so he finished up.

the idea of sewing is quite appealing; there’s lots of great fabric at the sewing store (I bought black material with red and yellow flames on it) and it seems that one could make something quite nice. if one was very patient.

i’ve been told before that i’m a patient person, and i guess i am in some thing, but sewing isn’t one of them. it makes me swear more than usual. i always stick myself with pins about a hundred times. i frequently end up sewing something together that wasn’t supposed to be sewn together and then have to rip it out.

but because we had very little time to make the bell bottoms yesterday, somehow they worked out ok. and they were worth it, because i’m sure kevin is going to start wearing the jeans all the time.

with the wig, of course.

damn, the wig was funny. it’s suddenly like i married a hippie.

happy monday. i know that many of you have two days off this week, which seems like a very good week, plus it’s supposed to be kind of warm out. it was quite warm today and we did lots of yard work and i may not be able to raise my arms at all tomorrow from all the effort today.

one final thing, i know i’ve written about the cats bringing in various dead or alive animals. now i think we have some kind of creature that sneaks into the garage and eats the cats' food. kevin refilled the cat food dispenser on thursday or friday, and i looked tonight and it’s almost gone. this is a BIG dispenser and there’s no way the cats could have eaten it all. it’s up high so mollie won’t eat it.

what could it be? something small enough to fit through the doggie door, but it’s not a mouse because a mouse wouldn’t have eaten so much food. a flock of mice? a very small deer? a bunny? a possum? wouldn’t mollie have smelled or heard it, though, sneaking in every night?

i have noticed lately that she doesn’t seem interested in waking up for anything.

but today she dug a giant deep hole in the garden because she felt she found something (she didn’t) and then later she tried to nose down into the heating vent because i’m sure she smelled a mouse.

very strange. i’m going to sprinkle flour all around the floor where the cat food sits. of course it’s not like i’ll be able to ascertain what kind of animal it is by the paw prints. but i guess if the kitties leave a trail of flour i’ll know it’s just them. but it can’t be, because so much food keeps disappearing.

miniature deer, that’s my guess.

do deer even eat cat food?

i have to go sprinkle flour now.

ok then,

grace.



Nov. 03, 2006

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THANK YOU JANET FORD! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:04 pm
janet, who i’ve only actually seen in person one time, has been a loyal reader for a very long time. i’m sure we’ll see each other again somebody. meanwhile, janet e-mailed me today and said YOU CAN READ KEVIN’S ARTICLE IN THE PAPER ONLINE. you have to subscribe to the online edition of the paper in order to be able to read all the stuff in the paper.

so i requested an online subscription but it’s going to take a day or two, but in the meantime she sent me this link so you can read it yourself. too bad there’s no photo, but like i said, i’m going to try to remember to get a copy of the photo.

here’s the article:

Kevin’s article

very sweet of him to mention me so much. my husband, who i’m married to still, after all this time.

and HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVID! my brother is...46? i think. today. we’re going out to dinner to celebrate and then coming back here for cheesecake. i was going to make a carrot cake but we had a cheesecake in the freezer and i figured that if i’m not around cake as much, maybe i won’t feel compelled to eat it all. none of the making and tasting the delicious cream cheese frosting.

BRR it’s cold today. we took a walk at about four in the afternoon and i thought it’d be kind of nice but instead it was cold and i was only wearing one coat, and not a very big one. plus no hat at all.

winter is a 'comin, time to rustle up the cattle.

wouldn’t it suck to be a farm animal and have to spend cold days and nights outside?

besides the whole getting slaughtered thing that happens to so much of them, but let’s not start the weekend on a downer note, ok? because somehow we’ve (i’ve) managed to get through kevin’s first week of being a night shifter. not the same as a shape-shifter.

today at yoga, shirene was there! it was nice to see somebody i knew.

stretchy stretchy soon i’m going to be stretchy like a pretzel.

or at least not as non-stretchy as i’ve been for the last very long time.

ok then, kevin is now playing the harmonica, i’d better go.

friday grace.


Nov. 02, 2006

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MY FAMOUS HUSBAND [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:33 pm

every thursday, in the state journal-register, they have a special column in the a&e section called “in the spotlight.” they feature somebody in the arts. and on tuesday, the arts guy nick rogers called kevin because he wanted him to be IN THE SPOTLIGHT.

so he was, today, a very big celebrity.

the problem is that for some reason “in the spotlight” isn’t in the online version of the paper, so i can’t share it with you.

hmm, could i scan it in? yes i could, if we have a scanner. do we have a scanner? somewhere in the office, is there a scanner? i know there’s a copier and maybe it does other things than copying but that’s all i know it does. tomorrow i’ll have my husband scan it in. if it’s possible. maybe we know somebody with a scanner?

i could type the whole thing into the computer right now, but if it was scanned you could see the very good photo of him that accompanies the column. maybe we can get them to send us a copy of the photo.

and all this newspaper talk reminds me that i must SEND IN THE WEDDING ANNOUNCEMENT. i thought i’d have to write something, but the form is just a boring list of stuff like your full name and your groom’s full name and the time and date you were married. i thought about writing my own announcement because would anybody ever actually care that i graduated from the U of I with an english degree? i don’t see why they would; that long-ago degree has just about nothing to do with who i am in this world.

but then i thought about what i’d like to mention that wasn’t already mentioned, and i guess i couldn’t think of anything that could be conveyed in a wedding announcement. “my dad made a lovely huge wedding bell thing for the yard and it looked great. mollie was a very good dog, and the little boys in the wedding both fell down for no apparent reason while we were all standing up at the front. we got pulled over by a cop on the way to the reception hall because we were driving so slowly with the cake in the back of the van.” none of that would fit anywhere. i’d just like a whole bunch of pictures, to show what a perfectly lovely day it was all around.

i just watched part of an Oprah show and she had this doctor on, this guy i’ve seen before who brings in different body parts and today it was stomach parts only there’s a different name for it and they showed a fat stomach and it was extremely EXTREMELY disgusting and made me want to quit eating altogether.

although after i saw it i found myself compelled to have a piece of homemade french bread with some delicious cheddar cheese dip on top of it. can you explain that? perhaps i’m just very self-destructive.

also, because kevin is working the night shift he was tired this evening we both took a nap. i napped for about an hour and now i’m SO VERY VERY WIDE AWAKE but it’s already almost 11:30 so that doesn’t really bode very well for getting to sleep at a decent hour, or even at all.

not that i’ll still be up at 7:30 a.m. when my husband finally returns.

in this spotlight thing he talked about different things he’s done, and what he does for a living, and stuff, and he listed his family as “wife, grace, dog, mollie, and cats, honey and winnie.” that thrilled me almost most of all. wife, in print.

if i was a really good person, instead of a bad person who watches a TOTALLY DISGUSTING thing on tv about what your stomach fat looks like and then promptly eats something VERY VERY BAD FOR YOU, i’d start cleaning things. we’ve having people over for cake tomorrow night for my brother’s birthday and things need to be much cleaner. i’m keeping the halloween decorations up for one more night because they look cool and it’s only one night and they’re very festive. but there are many messy things like all the dog toys scattered all over the living room floor.

must get busy.

that is, i would if i was a GOOD person.

so no need to actually do anything right now.

i hope your friday is very fine.

ok then,

very alert grace.

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november 2nd [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 7:41 pm

the day before my brother’s birthday. cold and sunny.

more hawaii photos. i feel like i’ve been posting so many of them, but i’m not even finished with the second full day there in hawaii.

we last went to the foster botannical garden, and then drove through honolulu and went to downtown and stopped at the Iolani Palace and here it is.



this is what the guidebook says about the palace. “Iolani means ”bird of heaven"in Hawaiian. it’s the only royal residence on American soil. Built for King Kalakaua in 1882, this stunning Renaissance-style mansion served as a royal residence until Queen Liliuokalani was overthrown in 1893. Later the ill-starred monarch was imprisoned here; eventually, after Hawaii became a territory of the US, the place was used as the capitol building."

Hmm, imprisoning the queen in her own palace. i believe she was overthrown by a revolt of white businessmen, the guys who wanted a better deal for their pineapple and sugar plantations. i might have this wrong, but i know there’s some truth in it.

we didn’t go inside the palace because it was closed and we didn’t want to anyway. here, across the street, is a statue of King Kamehameha Statue and I hope you appreciate all the intricate typing i’m doing here as i have to write down all these crazy hawaiian names.



he was the first king of hawaii. the history of hawaii is interesting, as i recall, although i don’t recall it very well because i read a lot of it on the plane going home and that was the middle of the night. i’d LIKE to read more about it and there’s nothing stopping me except for my pure grace laziness. basically what i remember about hawaii is the native people got screwed by us somehow, which isn’t surprising, now is it?

after all that history, we stopped at a GIGANTIC MALL called Ala Moana because there are millions and millions of slick magazines full of ads for all things hawaiian to buy, and i kept seeing ads for a place called HILO HATTIE; they have them on all the islands, maybe not the very small ones. but anyway this Hilo Hattie was in this RIDICULOUSLY LARGE MALL and we went there and bought many hawaiian things like some cool candles. lots and lots of stuff. it was weird, though, buying souvenirs at the mall.

after that we drove to waikiki, which is just a continuation of honolulu and it was around five in the evening and the traffic was terrible and soon there were many many tall hotels and store after fancy store and this was waikiki and i HATED it.

I’m reading the hawaii guidebook as i type this, and this is kind of bad because i keep reading about these places where we didn’t go. but at this point in our day - after driving on the pali highway to honolulu, getting lost, going the pearl harbor, the botanical garden, driving around a lot more, going to the mall - i was tired. i even drank a coffee sample at the Hilo Hattie. kevin found hawaiian coffee to be DELICIOUS and SUPERB and he bought quite a bit of it to take back with him.

i found that it tasted like coffee.

anyway, waikiki is where all the tourism began in hawaii, and it’s going strong. i wanted to go to the Sheraton Moana Surfrider resort, built in 1901, because it was Waikiki’s first resort and because the book claimed that they have the best mai tais anywhere.

but first, we had to park. there was no parking anywhere around at all. i didn’t want to pay to park because WE WERE NOT IN LA.

so we drove past all the hotels and shops and were cruising along by the park by the ocean and we finally found parking and i doubted that we could walk all the way back to the main drag, but kevin said “let’s try,” so we did.

here’s one photo of the beach, and it’s deceptive because there were lots and lots of people around even though the sun was going to set soon. lots and lots of people.



here’s another one that kevin made look like there weren’t people around at all. but they were everywhere, trust me.



as we walked towards the hotel, we passed a restaurant called cheeseburger in paradise. i hope you can see the sign here.



we finally made it to the hotel (not really a bad walk) and it was lovely and they had a front porch with big white rocking chairs and the lobby was very fancy and old. out back was the lovely outdoor bar, with a steel band playing. and even though like i said, the sun was going to set soon, we found pretty good seats and could look out at the surfers and the cruise ship and the sailboats going by. there’s also a large banyan tree where robert louis stevenson used to write.

we ordered the mai tais and they were pretty good, although actually the best mai tai i had was at the airport bar in oahu on the day we left (eventually i’ll have a picture of that but that’s the very last picture i think so it’ll be a while).



we got to keep the plastic souvenir glasses. the drinks were expensive, but they could have been worse, especially considering we were in one of the fanciest hotels in the most expensive part of hawaii and the SUN WAS SETTING.

let’s have a photo of that.



a nice way to end the day.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

more right there in the bar. but i feel that by now you might not have made it this far, so i’ll save it till tomorrow, or at least later tonight.

aloha,

why, again, didn’t we stay in hawaii? grace


Nov. 01, 2006

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one more picture [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:54 pm

this is lucy, who was Tattoo from Fantasy Island for Halloween.

just like every other kid in america.

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hawaii and halloween and everything that starts with h [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:35 pm
hell. colder than hell, but what kind of stupid expression is that?

first, more of hawaii. after spending a lot of time at the arizona memorial at pearl harbor, we drove through Honolulu and it was lots of big buildings and traffic. we went to a botanical garden because it sounded neat. it was called the foster botanical garden, and it was a tranquil oasis in the midst of all the traffic. you could hear the roar of the highway, as a matter of fact, because it was right next to the garden.

here’s me in front of a gigantic tree. we got a little booklet when we went in that told all about the trees and i read all there was to read but of course i remember nothing of it now. i just saw that little brochure around here somewhere the other day, but i’m not about to get up and look for it again because i probably wouldn’t find it and that would make me crazy (not such a short distance currently) and then i’d probably start trying to organize things and put them away and since it’s almost 11 at night it’s really much too late to start that kind of thing.

unless one was going to work right now, which i’m not. i’m thinking about bed pretty seriously, as a matter of fact.

anyway, me in front of tree.



there was a greenhouse that had lots and lots of gorgeous orchids in it. here’s one of the pictures that kevin took.



ok, never mind, i had to go find that brochure because i couldn’t remember that they were orchids. i swear, tonight i feel that all my brain cells are literally washing right out of my head.

so i think that giant tree is the Kapok. in the brochure it says “the most important product of this useful tree is the floss encased within its seed pods. This floss consists of hollow, waterproof filaments and is used for stuffing life preservers, pillows, mattresses and upholstery.”

just so you know. i’m pretty sure this is the tree they’re talking about; there are some blurry photos next to some of the tree descriptions. unfortunately i don’t think we have a picture of a tree i remember reading about but mysteriously it doesn’t seem to be in the brochure which leads me to believe that there was an insert in it and maybe it fell out, maybe it’s in the bedroom but i will not get up and look for anything else. but this one tree, it was another huge one, and its base was so wide that they (i have no recollection of who “they” might be) put prisoners in there. it was used as a cell, and maybe also as temporary housing, but it does sound like i’m probably making that up.

here’s one more lovely photo, i have no idea about this photo at the foster garden except that it’s very pretty.



ok, back to the party. bev asked randy WHY IS THERE NO PICTURE OF ME? bev was very funny on halloween because she wore sunglasses as part of her costume and they were so vital to her look that she never took them off. all these photos look bright because of the flash, but it was actually kind of dark in the house so i don’t see how she managed to see anything.

anyway, this is a great shot of bev and erica.



erica is wearing a lovely and authentic-looking elizabethean gown. i don’t think that’s the correct spelling of elizabethan, but that doesn’t look right either, and i’m just guessing about the time period anyway. old. she told the story of the dress - she had to wear it in a wedding, as a bridesmaid. a little much, maybe, but that’s not the bad part - the bride decided late in the game that she wasn’t going to wear her period costume, and the groom and the groomsmen backed out, too, so it was just the bridesmaids stuck wearing the gowns they’d been forced to have made.

at least it’s a great halloween costume.

bev was that lady maxine, the crabby lady from the cartoons. greeting cards? the funny thing about that is that i don’t think i’ve ever seen bev crabby, i’m not sure that she’s capable of crabbiness. i mean, i’m sure she can be crabby, but always with a smile on her face. she can’t help it. she kept dragging that giant dog around with her, too, and i tripped over it a couple of times.

mollie the dog, by the way - WHERE’S A PHOTO OF MOLLIE? she was good during the party. at first she barked a lot at everybody who showed up, but after a while she realized that EVERY SINGLE PERSON WAS A NEW OPPORTUNITY FOR TREATS. somebody would be sitting there eating and she’d come up to them and just sit quietly looking plaintive and pitiful and adorable, so of course she scored big with the treats of all kinds.

i like this photo of mom and dad and jim. note mom’s GIGANTIC water bottle. i can’t remember where she bought it, i know i was with her but like i said, brain oozing right out of my head, but she fills it all the way up and drinks it all day long. i don’t even think i noticed that night that she was carrying it. mom’s cute mustard bottle won her a prize, i can’t remember which one, maybe cutest costume? no, that was shirene and troy. most creative? can’t remember. dad won most obscure (not that kevin and i were being at all nepotistic in our selection of winners) because he never would say exactly who he was supposed to be.



this is bill and tracy; he was kevin’s best man, she took many great photos at the wedding.



they brought kevin a cute halloween basket filled with good sugar-free chocolates. so i’ve been forced ever since to eat all the sugar-full chocolates, but i’ve almost taken care of all of them. except for the huge handfulls of candy that i passed out to kids last night...was halloween just last night?

ok, i know this is kind of retarded, to have a photo of food here, but you know i love to make and eat food. i made many halloweeny dishes, including pumpkin cheesecake and a coconut chocolate cake that i decorate with green icing and tombstones made out of graham crackers and devilled eggs the whites of which looked like they were bloodshot eyes. i made little name cards out of the leftover placecards from the wedding, and wrote on them stuff like “smashed brains” and “bloody goblin eyeballs.”



steve parker, radio CELEBRITY, was there with his girlfriend jane except i really didn’t recognize her at all because i only remember meeting her once and she, too, kept her sunglasses on all night plus she had that crazy blonde wig.

actually, this picture perfectly captures mollie’s mode of action, waiting for the food to drop into her mouth.



shirene and troy, right b4 they won “cutest costume.” troy (on the right) was in “noise off” with me last February. gee, that was a very long time ago.



and this is karen, proud and rabid cardinal fan. i watched that final game on friday night, at first because i was PRAYING THEY’D WIN because otherwise i knew that people would want to watch the game during the party and that would be incredibly dull and i was contemplating dragging the TV into the bedroom so they could watch in there. but then the game was actually good and i watched all the way to the end.



whew. that’s a lot of pictures for one night. wednesday already, a new month, i bought many fabulous halloween decorations at World Market today that were 75% off, for next year’s party, which is going to be bigger and better than this one was.

goodnight. unless you’re just starting work, in which case, try not to fall asleep and drool at your desk.

ok then,

november and i wish i was back in hawaii right now grace.

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