This morning I’ll be on Huntley Community Radio for the second time this week!
Tune into 101.5 FM at 10 a.m., or pop onto the Huntley Community Radio website for the livestream.
And if you missed yesterday’s God of Carnage promotion, listen to the 2 Dudes and The Duchess podcast from Monday!
And now make your reservations for the show — opening night is this Friday!
We’re going on the Huntley Community Radio to promote God of Carnage, and you can listen, even if you’re not in Huntley!
We’ll be on 2 Dudes and The Duchess radio program Monday, July 6 at 10 a.m. and 8 p.m.
You can listen live at 101.5 FM, listen live through the HCR website, or listen later on the 2 Dudes and the Duchess podcast, available on iTunes, Pod Bean, or Mix Cloud. So many options!
In the studio at Huntley Community Radio
In a post a couple of weeks ago I mentioned the new play I’ll be in, and now I’m going full out with some shameless self-promotion: come see my play; it opens on Friday, July 10!
The play we’re doing is God of Carnage by French playwright Yasmina Reza. Reza’s play won a Tony in 2009 and was adapted for film by Roman Polanski in 2011. The characters have been played by Ralph Fiennes, Ken Stott, Tamsin Greig, and Janet McTeer; James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, Marcia Gay Harden, and Hope Davis; John C. Riley, Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster, and Kate Winslet. So the bar has been set pretty damned high.
It’s a funny, brutal, and smart play, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. I play Annette, a mother whose child has hit his schoolmate. I’ve brought my husband to apologize to the parents of the injured child, and the four of us have a…conversation. Of sorts. The pace is fast, the play is only about eighty minutes, and we volley the insults and aggressions back and forth like nasty little grenades.
Our cast, from left: Michael (Jay Geller), Veronica (Shannon Mayhall), Annette (me!), and Alan (Patrick Thompson) — Photo Credit Brian Bieschke
God of Carnage is the inaugural production for The Black Box Summer Theatre at McHenry County College. Typically, the college produces shows during the fall and the spring semesters, but the space is dark over the summer. This year, though, we’re lighting it up!
The director, Kellee Stall, is the founder of Inhabit Theater Company, a company that “makes its stage wherever [they] go: empty houses for sale, warehouses, coffee shops and local businesses.” Kellee directed Our Town at MCC in March 2013, so we already knew that she was talented. Working with her has proven that she works just as well with a small cast as she does with a large one, and as well with an American classic as with a contemporary work.
Kellee gives us post-rehearsal notes: Photo Credit Kate Curtin
This week we’re in promotion mode: we were featured in today’s Northwest Herald, and tomorrow we’re taping an interview for the 2 Dudes and The Duchess radio show.
Northwest Herald “Play” Section — please notice we’re sharing space with Channing Tatum.
You might have noticed that the picture in the paper features three of the four cast members, and that I’m missing. I was kind of bummed about it, so I decided to make a quick adjustment:
There I am! With my nephew Leo, who won’t be in the play, but is super cute.
Opening night is next Friday (July 10), so get your tickets now (now!):
Call 815.455.8746 or email jgeller[at]mchenry[dot]edu for tickets (only $12, what a steal!)
Things are warming up here at Camp Crystal Lake, and this is how we’re celebrating:
I got Trevor a ping pong table for his birthday, and we are planning on becoming Olympic-level master table tennis players. We’ll let you know how that turns out.
They’re back and better than before (I don’t know if this is true, but I’m assuming it is)!
Roo is also waiting.
This year I’m going to garden the hell out of this place. I started with a few seeds this weekend.
My favorite summer outfit (also, my favorite home outfit [also, my favorite outfit, period]) is jeans and a t-shirt. I am currently wearing one of my best shirts right now. It’s one of my best because I got my dad a matching one for Christmas and I’m imagining that he’s got his on right now, too.
Lennie Briscoe Zinged Me And All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt
What are you doing now that the weather is nice?
Trevor has a new job! Yahoo!
He’s the new studio manager and producer at Callie Lipkin Photography, a one-woman studio on the north side of Chicago. He’ll manage the day-to-day operations of the studio, organize locations, stylists, and talent for photo shoots, handle files and invoices, and get hands-on with a bit of assisting. It’s the perfect job for him, and we’re so happy.
The only issue is that there’s a taqueria near the studio and he’s able to get delicious fish tacos, burritos, and tortas whenever he wants to. So, I’m really jealous of this.
Otherwise, it’s perfect.
Callie got Trevor to smile in a picture! She’s my hero.
The weather at Camp Crystal Lake has been a pain in the butt: cold, warm, rainy, sunny, depending on the minute. It’s been boots and scarves one day and bare legs the next.
The rain and mud doesn’t stop Roo from running around like the three-legged maniac that she is, but it does stop me from letting her run wild like the three-legged maniac that she is. Instead, I take her on a lot of short walks and then make her towel off. She spends the rest of the afternoon staring out the window, thinking about chasing bunnies in the rain.
Bunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunniesbunnies
I also baked a cake for Easter. Last year I made a cake and decorated it like a lamb face:
But this year, I figured I’d do a chick–simpler but tastier because I didn’t use a box cake but did a Better Homes & Gardens vanilla cake recipe. And I loaded on the frosting, which didn’t hurt.
These are the lemons I used for my lemon frosting
Pre-baked beauties: vanilla cakes from the Better Homes & Gardens recipe
Perfect!
Assembled…
…and decorated! Peep!
Happy belated Easter–hope you all got a lot of cake for yourselves!
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but it’s pretty cold outside.
Schools have been closed for two days just because of the frigid temperatures. Today we got a couple of inches of snow dumped on us, and it was the kind of snow that was impossible to get rid of: every time I cleared our sidewalks, within minutes the strong wind would blow all of the snow right back into place, in these long, elegant, sloping drifts. I was Sisyphus with a shovel.
Roo loves the snow, but she hates the cold. It might have to do with the fact that when it’s this cold out, I make her wear her jacket and little booties. Otherwise she gets salt all up in her paws and limps around. She’s only got three legs to begin with, so I don’t want to give her any extra trouble. Even though I explain this to her, she is still unhappy with me.
Why do you do this to me?
I will show you my dissatisfaction by running. Ready…set…
GO!
And…she’s outta here
Other than hating the cold, Roo and I have been doing a lot of nothing. After the semester ended in December, I scheduled a couple of “do-nothing” days for myself, and on these two days Roo and I took walks, watched an absurd amount of Doctor Who, and took more naps than is necessary for someone whose days consist of watching Doctor Who and talking to her dog about why there are still so many geese hanging around (thank you to my friend Lisa C., for first bringing this to my attention).
Thankfully, the holidays took me out of that amazingly brain-dead routine and gave me something to do. T. took the week off between Christmas and New Years, and we had some really nice celebrations–we saw both families, exchanged gifts (we both got a lot of books!), watched movies, played Call of Duty (Trevor), and started to knit a purple blanket (Roo [j.k. that was Trevor (j.k. that was me)]).
And now, with a mere nine days until classes start up again for the spring semester, I’ve started to use my brain more, bit by bit. I’ve finished my syllabus, worked on a presentation that I gave this morning for the Crystal Lake Chamber of Commerce, and read some books. Come Monday I’ll be back on campus to get everything else ready for my back-to-school trainings with our three new faculty members on Wednesday. And hopefully I’ll have time to watch a few more episodes of the Doctor.
Stay warm, people. Get some booties on your feet.
We’re spookifying the house this week in preparation of Halloween! The decorations aren’t finished, but here’s what we have so far:
A small grave that someone has been digging up. Probably the rabbits; they’re always up to no good.
This baby might be too creepy for the little kids, so I might wait until dark to put it out. But then again, maybe not.
A zombie gnome rises from the grave.
Some ghosts, hanging around in the front yard.
High five, trick-or-treaters!
Check back later for even more spooky scenes.
How are your decorations coming along?
Happy Labor Day, American people!
Since Trevor and I had spent Saturday getting a grill (see more below), cleaning the house, grocery shopping, and getting ready for the family to come over for a Power-Bork shin-dig on Sunday, Trevor and I celebrated the holiday today by doing a lot of not much. It was great.
After waking up at the too-early-for-vacation hour of 8 a.m., I joined Trevor and Roo and we watched a couple of hours of The Simpsons before I needed a nap, already exhausted from exerting so much energy walking down the stairs, drinking coffee, and positioning myself on the couch. I mean, that’s work, man!
After waking up, I scraped myself together to take a shower and do a bit a school work, but then I had to take a break from that so that we could go down to the beach.
I was sunbathing, so Trevor is really upside-down.
We even roped in our neighbor Pat for an appearance at the end of my Vine video.
T. and I wandered home when we got hungry so we could use our new grill for the second time, and without the help of master-grillsman Sean Power. Trevor was on his own, but I had complete faith in him, and I was right to. I prepped our fish filets,
And T. got to work:
We made Roo wait on the porch, and she wasn’t happy about it.
Let me out. Come on guys. Seriously.
And the food was delicious!
The secret to amazing grilled potatoes? Butter. Like, a bunch of butter.
And now I am going to polish off the rest of the horchata pie that Angelique and Sean brought yesterday from Bang Bang Pie. It was, like, stupid good, and I was thrilled to finally try a pie from Bang Bang since most of their pies have a “leaf lard” (read: non-vegetarian) crust.
We hope you all had a nice holiday weekend, too. And now, off to a short work-week!
Welcome to the new blog–it’s going to be a long transition, but we hope you’ll stay with us!
The Lake Life, Photo by Angelique Power
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