Happy belated T-day! Gobble, gobble

Well, I've finally found some time to update. I can't believe how much sh*t's happened since my last non-review entry before Thanksgiving. It's all a nauseating blur. I'll just run down the bullet points.

I flew to Richmond the night before Thanksgiving. It was my first time home in over a year. We released mom from her oven shackles, unbuttoned our pants and went to a local buffet. Why did we never do this before? I mean, you can sleep in, eat all the turkey, ham and trimmings you want and you don't have to clean a single dish. Genius. The rest of the day was spent wallowing in gastric pain and watching really bad TV - a perfect holiday scenario.

Since we lazed around the house all day, we decided last minute to make a Black Friday run to the outlet mall in Williamsburg, VA, which opened its doors at midnight. As it turned out, we were one of thousands of families that thought this was somehow a good idea. Even before we got to the exit, it was stand still traffic miles away from the shops and it was friggin' 12 o' clock at night! When we finally got to the entrance of the mall, all the parking lots were full and barricaded closed. So we had no choice but to turn around and drive back to Richmond. Three hours later and empty handed, we arrived back home. Everyone decided to get up at 4am and head out to the stores. I decided to go to bed and not get up until my bladder forced me.

Since Juan, Val, Trish and Billy (Trish's best friend from Richmond who recently moved to Astoria) had driven to Richmond earlier in the week, I road-tripped back with them rather than fly. The ride was uneventful, unless you'd call a painful case of nearly explosive diarrhea an "event." Soon after getting home, I realized I had gotten some crazy food poisoning or caught a stomach virus. So I ended up missing Sunday's all day tech rehearsal for HSM. I'm not sure what's worse, ten hours of tech or ten hours on the toilet.

Anyway, the rest of the week was spent at my daily 9 to 5 and commuting back and forth to NJ for rehearsals. I would not recommend this schedule for anyone trying to recuperate from illness. One five-show weekend later, I'm finally feeling better. I dropped off 20 pounds of dirty laundry (literally), cleaned all the dishes in the sink and cleared the debris from my living room floor. I'm finally returning to the land of civilized behavior just in time to start rehearsals for our Holiday concert, prepare for Carmen rehearsals and finish up the run of HSM with a six-show weekend. Yippee!!!

Me feeling bloated and nauseous after way too much turkey and stuffing.