Southern California

the last few weeks have been a complete blur. a few blanket opinions...the highway system in SoCal is RIDICULOUS!! you hear about all those highspeed chases through the downtown LA area, but i can't see how that is ever possible with traffic topping off at 15 mph. no wonder there's so much smog. hundreds of thousands of cars just idling there on the endless stretches of highway 24 hours a day. yikes. if i never drive in that part of the country again, i'll be a happy gal. :)

also, the weather. scarily perfect...all the time. everyone is tan and happy. although the level of intelligence of the people we dealt with seemed to be sub par, i won't hold that against the entire state...but it is kinda scary the number of people who smile because they have no idea what's going on. :)

ok, specific towns...

anaheim, ca

so close to disneyland and yet i couldn't go! alas!! we were quite literally right next to the theme park. but we didn't get in until 4pm, and the park closed at 8pm and because the misers running the seemingly "happiest place on earth" didn't have any ticket cheaper than $65...i didn't go. that kinda money to ride 2 rides and smile like a spaz at the mouse? no thanks. :) but we did get to see the fireworks show which went off right above our best western hotel. it was pretty cool.

San diego, ca/ tijuana, mexico

we were also only in san diego for a day, and since we were so close to the border, i decided my time would be better spent making a run for it. scot, ashley, and i hopped in the van, and took off for the border. we parked on the US side, held hands and made a dash for mexico. turns out, it's quite easy to get in to mexico. all's ya gotta do is walk across the thick striped line. we bummed around a bit in downtown tijuana...took shots of tequila, chased them with mexican beers, wandered around some more...tried not to stare at the hookers every 8 feet. (i kid you not...every 8 feet there is a girl ready willing and able). we saw a mariachi band,
ate the hell out of some authentic mexican food, and took a mexican cab back to the border. now contrary to the lack of traffic going in to mexico, there's a ton of traffic trying to get out of mexico. we made the joke that now that everyone's gotten wind of the democrats political victory, everyone's trying to get into the US before that big ol' wall get's erected. :)

pasadena, ca

a whole lot of nothing happened in pasadena, and that's the way i like it. it was a weekend, and i embraced my inner sloth. i slept late, barely bathed, ate when i was hungry, slept when i was lazy...went shopping down on melrose, and the sunset strip. also, we made it down to the santa monica pier!!


ashley, beth, scot, meagan and i laid out on the beach, played in the ocean, and a few of us road the rides at the pier. what a yummy delicious weekend!

Sacramento, CA

MEAGAN’S BIRTHDAY

Yay !!! It’s gotta suck to have your birthday fall in the middle of a tiring week, on a 5 month tour. But we and she, made the best of it After the show we ate the best meal of our lives at the brewery down the street. And of course, we drank the hell out of some yummy yummy beers. Horray for birthdays

interesting side note...apparently, and I’m not supposed to know this, the production office was so fed up with the bullshit of my tour, that they had all of our replacements ready to go, and were ready to fire us all. (But seeing as I don’t believe much of anything I’m told these days, I take this info with a grain of salt.) It seems, from what I understand, that the only thing our former stage manager managed to do was fuck us over. He passed the buck on everything necessary he needed to do, and put all the blame for god knows what, onto the cast. Thanks, dude, I’ll be sure to remember that for next time. But the funny thing is that I find out this information the same day that I get a letter from chamber theatre asking me to return again in the spring, and do all of this over again. Thank you, no. now that we’ve got a new stage manager, ashley, all of the miscommunication has been sifted through, and set straight, none of us are going to lose our jobs, and we have been apologized to from at least a few people from the production office for not getting the correct information from the horse’s mouth. It’s a good start...lets hope it lasts through December

oh, yeah, lanny, you still owe me $5 for that god damned bottle water...

San Jose, CA

having missed out on halloween, we decided to do something cool a few days later, so on nov.2 (the NEW halloween), we went to the winchester mystery mansion woohoo The story behind it is this...mrs. Winchester, heiress to the winchester riffle fortune was a very spiritual person. After losing her only child at 5 weeks, and her husband 20 years later, she communed with spirits via psychics. Apparently the spirits reported that dead soilders, who were killed by winchester riffles, took her family, and the only way to appease them was to keep building onto her estate. She was to never stop, and never complete it. She did as she was told, and for 38 years, she kept building on to her house and never had any blueprints made...yikes.


You can imagine how crazy the layout is. There are 40 bedrooms in this 60+ room house, and only 1 bathroom. She had many little rooms she used to spy on her servants. Lots of the rooms have doors leading into walls, and windows with bricks behind them.

There’s a set of stairs that goes down 7 stairs, then up 11. So you’re 3 feet higher on the other side, but still on the same floor. Rooms with 1 entrance, but 3 exits. One such room had a door that if you walked through it, you’d fall straight down into the kitchen sink on the floor below. Crazy shit. Amazingly, the house survived the great earthquake of 1906 that devistated 90% of san francisco, ruined san jose, and was felt all the way up to oregon. It also weathered the other huge quake during the ‘89 world series (you may have seen the tv movie of the week about this event...THE BIG ONE...they still play it on lifetime.)

Oakland, CA

apparently oakland is the hometown of Jack London (of the white fang and call of the wild fame), who knew? London loved the outdoors, and nature, and things in their natural woodsy habitats, so the irony here is that the area dedicated to honoring jack london, is a completely commercialized and paved over outdoor shopping square. Haha.

The venue we played in was noteworthy as well. We played the scottish rites hall It was cool. The performance space wasn’t the best, but there were all these secret rooms and boy oh boy did we explore.

We found the room where all the cerimonial stuff is kept I’m pretty sure we weren’t supposed to be in there, and I’m even more sure that they don’t want women touching their stuff. Too bad, ‘cause we did. :) we also found roof access, and goofed off up there too. Beautiful view.
I went riffling through drawers and found a file from the early ‘70's with legal documents and some guy’s last will and testiment.

San Francisco, CA

unfortunately, we didn’t get to spend a lot of time in san fran. We got in late the night before, and had 2 shows the next day (halloween), and then wham bam thank you ma’am, we were off to the next city. But we did get our new stage manager, ashley So far, so good. She’s a great stage manager, and her first day was ridiculously crazy. she was level-headed, upbeat, and listen to this...she FIXED the stuff that what broken And it only took her a matter of minutes. I guess you don’t realize what you’re missing, ‘til you get it. (So to backtrack a little...) we didn’t get to do anything on halloween proper. But we did make the most of our company meeting last Sunday night. We took care of business in under 5 minutes, and started drinking. The fesitvities were gratiously held in steven and nicole’s hotel room, and they went all out;
Halloween decorations, well stocked bar, (steven the bartender used a very heavy hand in pouring the drinks too) . We all hung out without any bickering, and made a toast to “new beginnings”. Yay!

Fun things in san francisco...






A quick glimps of the golden gate bridge...(small and far away, can you see it through the ugly metal slats?) :)

as well as alcatraz...

I explored downtown a little bit, and snapped some fun shots around city hall...

Reno, NV

weekend in reno!!

reno, as it was described to me, is a seedier, mini version of vegas. so what do you do in a town like that??

dress up...


















went downtown...






















found lots of casinos and gambled...




and finished off the night at a strip club (sorry no photos...they tend not to let you snap shots of the naked ladies). too bad too, it was the best part of the evening. 4 of us went, 2 guys and 2 girls, and the strippers really liked us (i think). they'd throw a conversational comment over their sholders, or between their legs, to us while up on stage doing their poll dances. examples are "god, it's really hot up here, right?" or "i love your hair". of course, as soon as meagan and i headed to the bathroom, they all decended on the boys like birds of prey. when we got back, the boys seemed amused and pleased that this had occured. cute. :)

the next day was laundry day, and low and behold...you can even gamble while doing your laundry!

slot machines and spin cycles in the same room?? what do you even call such a magical place??...tacky. :) i mean AWESOME!!