Madness!

I am hoping I can fit my teddy bear into my suitcase for New York City.  Never mind that I just got back from Boston, I am back out again to New York for more "learning opportunities" at the hands of various opera companies.  My newest toy is the new iTouch, which allows me to watch movies, play games and get my iTunes music, but it isn't the best for making blog entries. As a result (and the fact that I don't want to drag my laptop around the city), blog entries will be a bit sparse and short until I get back on the 4th.  To my five loyal readers, I apologize for the lack of writing, and I hope you can stick with me until all this madness is over.  I will try and add short "bon mots" throughout this week, but I still haven't gotten the hang of the iTouch's keyboard, so I can't really compose large paragraphs of material.

Thank you for your patience and for reading my blog!

Black Friday

Well, the Diva is back in Binghamton, and is none too pleased about it.  Not to mention the fact that it poured so hard for most of the trip back that I couldn't see the road very well.  And when I arrived at my apartment, I had to peel my hands off the steering wheel, as I spent most of the trip gripping it in fear.  Always good for someone who hasn't driven in months: a monsoon. However, I still have the car for one more day and I am reveling in not having to take the bus everywhere tomorrow.  Especially when people in the back of the bus tend to pass around malt liquor at 9 in the morning, and get a little rowdy in the process.  Seriously, that happened two weeks ago...must be a harder commute than I thought, or maybe they are just on to something...

And for most people, today kicks off the Xmas shopping season.  I say most people because this is the time of year that my mother and I avoid the malls and stores like the plague, which astounds everyone who knows us.  The reason for our shopping sabbatical is that the Xmas season is when all the shopping "rookies" head out, walking slowly through Saks, gawking at the decorations and generally clogging up the aisles.  And in order to prevent a homicide, my mother and I get our shopping done wicked early and keep the hell out of the way of everyone else.  Yet another reason I dislike the holidays: I am kept away from my beloved stores.  Of course, this is less of an issue in Binghamton, so I am not missing out on much.  

Having worked retail (shudder), I especially feel for all the sales clerks who have to put up with the madness.  It's like people see wreathes and lose their minds.  And those 4 am opening times of your favorite store?  I'm betting the staff had to be there no later than 3:30 am, which totally negates any fun Thanksgiving may hold for them, because they know they have to wake up at the crack of dawn to face down the loonies.  When I was working retail, I was fortunate not to work at the mall, but at a small boutique, where my boss got crankier and crankier as we sold more and more overpriced crap.  I could never figure that one out, but I learned to dread the lines leading to the cash registers.  No matter how fast we were working, or how much we were selling, my evil boss would find some reason to snap at her staff...even in front of customers. Why you would dislike making money is beyond me, but the tension in that store between Thanksgiving and Christmas haunts me to this day.

So I hope everyone gets good deals on all their items today and I will see you back out at the mall after Christmas.  Though I won't go before Xmas, I am a devout after-Xmas shopper....and I am not afraid to throw elbows.

BOSTON!!!!

My mother and I are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, except we are shopping chickens.  You would think we had never seen stores.....which, in my case, is kind of true.  I will return to more posting after Thanksgiving, but I wanted to wish you all a wonderful holiday!

Battling the Big Apple, Take One...

So I had my first audition of the "season" yesterday, and while it wasn't a total disaster (and let me tell you, I have had some disasters), it wasn't the best I could do, which has left me slightly frustrated.  However, they did not throw away my headshot and resume in front of me (and that has happened...some of the people in this business are true assholes), so I don't consider it a complete wash.  But I am pretty sure I will be receiving a PFO letter from these people, so that should be fun to watch for in the mail.  For those of you not up on the "lingo," a PFO stands for "Please F**k Off," which is what these various opera companies are politely telling you in the letter as they explain that they had "many qualified candidates" and that they wish you "the best of luck in the future," but they have no intention of letting you within a mile of their company.  My personal favorite PFO letter is from a particular summer opera program that rubs salt in the wound by stating they "only take the most excellent candidates," and YOU are most certainly not in that category....hope you apply again next year SUCKER!

The audition was at NOLA studios in New York, and for those of you not familiar with NOLA, let me give you a visual: the inside looks like a Cold War bunker, complete with industrial green paint and decaying stairwells.  The bathrooms are so cramped that you have to stand on a toilet to close the door and the hallways are narrow, so you are practically standing on top of your fellow singers.  An added bonus is that the rooms aren't soundproofed, so you can hear everything that goes on inside one of the studios....so you are singing for the judges AND everyone outside.  And I assume that all the opera companies got together and got a group rate, because nearly every program runs their auditions from these studios, and there are sometimes ten different companies running auditions in one day.  This makes for a LOT of miserable singers milling around in the tiny hallways.  And because everyone basically does the same auditions, you start to recognize people, so you start to give each other slight nods as you rack up auditions.  Not really the "bonding" experience I had in mind.

Luckily, my audition was in the morning, so that gave me the rest of the day to play and try to forget the experience.  I was staying by the Natural History Museum, so I popped in while I was waiting to meet my friend Arielle.....and because I am a giant geek.  And they have a pretty decent student admission fee (and yes, I still claim to be a student......of life), so I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon learning all about dinosaurs and life in Africa. It goes without saying that the museum is quite the draw for kids, so I spent a lot of time dodging people that were so small, I didn't see them until it was almost too late.  And kids don't tend to move in a logical manner; they zig when you think they are going to zag, and sometimes they are made to hold hands, and they tend to be stubborn about letting go to let an innocent adult go by.  After I got clotheslined by one of these groups, I learned to look out for these gaggles of kids, and skirted them before it was too late.  

Then I got to meet my adorable friend (and talented photographer who did my beautiful headshots), Arielle, at the Time Warner Center and, after three months of Binghamton shopping, I almost had an aneurysm.  Especially when we went into Sephora, and Arielle had to hand me a paper bag to breathe into.  And did I mention that Godiva was giving away free truffles?  Talk about loving New York!

So now I am heading off to Boston to spend Thanksgiving with my mom and I will update when I can.  Let's hear it for a week without auditions!

 

Hittin' the road...

Tomorrow I am heading off to New York City and then on to Boston for Thanksgiving....because my mother and I like to spend time with our "true" family: Neimen Marcus, Saks and Lord & Taylor.  I will try to post as much as possible, but things may be a bit spotty until I get back on the 30th.  Lord, please help me survive all the traveling I have to do starting now until the end of the year.  Oh, and I would love the new lace Prada bag for Christmas, if you get a chance to talk to Santa.  Thanks very much....Amen and Peace Out.

Wonders never cease....

This past Saturday, I actually cooked a dish for an event that was EDIBLE and DELICIOUS. Two words that are rarely used to describe any food item I make, even if it involves a microwave. Quite frankly, I come from the culinary school of thought that if it isn't microwavable, it isn't worth my time.  But a few of the resident artists were getting together to put on an early Thanksgiving, and we were all instructed to bring a dish that was crucial to our own Thanksgivings with our families.  Of course, I had to open my big mouth and say "I'll make the mashed potatoes...my father and I have a great recipe!"  Though, to be truthful, dad does most of the work and I stand to the side and occasionally add ingredients while he mashes up the potatoes.

Now, I realize some of you may not be impressed that I made mashed potatoes (and not, say, roast beef or duck a la orange), but given that I have never even peeled a potato, let alone mash it, this was a major event.  And these particular mashed potatoes are pretty damn good and involve ranch dressing and cheese.  And everything is better with cheese.  In fact, these mashed potatoes became famous in all my French classes in high school because I made them every year and passed them off as "French potatoes."  Luckily, my classmates liked them so much that they never ratted me out.  But dad was always part of the process...until now.  So he was the first person I called for help.  

You see, my father has always been the big cook in the family, and the spread he puts on for Thanksgiving is famous throughout the Midwest.  This was why, when I called, he launched into helpful hints for the whole meal, not just the potatoes.  He seemed rather disappointed that I wouldn't be involved in the rest of the meal, but I told him it was for the best....no one wanted to die of food poisoning at this particular event.  And his disappointment only grew because I let slip, as he was explaining the right kind of potato to use, that I was planning to get frozen, already-peeled potatoes from the grocery store that you can just "steam and mash." Apparently this is my dad's version of blasphemy against our Lord, the potato, and the line went dead.  I am assuming because he needed to hit his head against the nearest available wall. I was finally able to coax him back on the line to give me the recipe, and I called him about five times from the grocery store in a panic about potatoes and their various forms.

So when I showed up at the event, my stomach was in knots.  What if the potatoes were a disaster?  How would I ever live it down?  What if it was a total tragedy?  Wait a minute, how do I get the outside off this damn potato?  Thank goodness that Anthony and Desiree (our hosts) are fairly expert chefs, so they calmly guided me through the process of peeling the potatoes (and gave me a band aid when I took the top of my thumb off with the peeler), cutting them up and boiling them.  And did I mention that even with an electric mixer, mashing potatoes is no walk in the park?  There was some definite sweating and swearing going on at my end of the kitchen.

In the end, the meal turned out beautifully, and everyone went back for seconds of my potatoes...and I don't think they were just being nice, because they were pretty damn tasty, if I do say so myself.  And because I burned all those calories mashing, I figured I could eat several pieces of pie without consequence.  Gotta love that kind of logic.

Whoops....

R & B artist Estelle has reminded us how important it is to chew your food properly...especially tortilla chips.

*Image courtesy of Mike Marsland/Getty Images