Tag Archives: New York City

What a relief!

February 17, 2017 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Finally, last night — just mere moments before the airing of the newest episode of Riverdale on the CW — I finished my revisions of Act One of Cleveland’s Burning.

I think I’m happy with it, but I’ll know better once I go over it again here this morning. Last night, however, I was extremely happy with it.

As an aside, I want to say that I really loved how, at least for now, they’ve done away with the pesky problem of pedophilia in Riverdale [Spoiler Aert!!] by simply forcing Miss Grundy to leave town… I guess we’ll see how that pans out. (And, you know, back in the day when I was in high school, they never asked heterosexual teachers to leave town; they basically just told the teenagers who were sleeping with their teachers to “knock it off.” Ah, the 70s! Gotta love ’em!) (If you were a gay teacher, however, your life was essentially over and they would have put you on the front page of the newspaper.)

Anyway. Back to the topic of re-writes. It is a strange phenomenon, and one I go through with every single project I write — I know exactly what I want to say, yet getting it onto the page can take, literally, forever. At first, I go merrily along, typing, typing… And then suddenly, I hit an impasse and wonder how on earth to get words onto the page. I don’t know why that happens, but it always does. It’s not as if I suddenly lose my vocabulary, or my sense of how grammar is structured. I can see what the characters are doing. Yet I just can’t get the words out!

It makes me INSANE.

However, I can look at all my completed, published projects (of which I have many), and see the proof there that the condition is always temporary, so I stick with it, grueling as it is.

What tripped me up yesterday was having my character go into a diner and order a cup of coffee at the counter. It felt wrong. At first, I thought it was the counter attendant’s age — so I changed him from a teenager to a 50-year-old. Then I had my character pay for the coffee with a dime. (In 1963, a cup of coffee cost a dime.) Then I had him leave a tip. Then I deleted the tip because it was taking up precious screen time. But then the neighbor girl puts a nickel in the jukebox! Suddenly all this screen time is being “spent,” as it were, on dimes and nickels. It was really just ridiculous. So I stopped everything and walked away. I flopped down on the bed and read several chapters of Peril At End House, c -1932 by Agatha Christie and all was right with the world again.

So back to the desk I went and I realized that the character is simply at the counter drinking a cup of coffee! For heaven’s sake, just get rid of the counter attendant altogether, along with all the dimes and nickels. And finally, the rest of the scenes came and the act was over! Commercial break time!! Yay.

And last night was a great feeling — to finally finish Act One.

Act One in a one-hour TV drama is the longest chunk. Everything else after this gets shorter and shorter, so I really do feel a great sense of relief. Especially since, this coming Tuesday, a mere 5 days away, the notes for Tea Cozy Murder Club will be coming my way… And the final, final, FINAL edits for the one-woman musical I’m working on with Sandra Caldwell in New York are sitting atop my desk, awaiting my attention…

It’s no wonder I wake-up tired.

Okay!! Have a happy Friday, gang, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing! And, as always, thanks for visiting! See ya!

Okay! Progress getting made

March 31, 2016 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Since tomorrow is April 1st, it looks like it’s only been about 2 MONTHS since I last posted anything here (but what a fine and lively post it was! I hope you all listened to that wonderfully fun song! I am still listening to it in my car.) (Not exclusively — I listen to quite a panoply of Frank Sinatra tunes from the 40s & 50s while driving in my 19 (!!!) year-old car…)

Okay. Many updates occurred while I was absent from the blog. Some of them traumatizing — for instance, any and all developers and private real estate investors suddenly and without warning dropped all interest in commercializing my specific block on my street here in Gahanna.

This means that after keeping me in limbo for 3 and 1/2 years, telling me they were tearing my house down and re-zoning my block for commercial use, and hence my reasonably-foreseeable-future plans of moving back to New York — all of it came to a grinding halt.

It has something to do with City Hall, taxes, other residents, unhappy voters. So now I am basically working around the clock to afford all the many, many repairs this poor house needs to make it livable again.

I know that the absolute minute I get it back to being the sweet little dream house it once was, they will knock on my door yet again and tell me they are tearing it down. But you know what? We’ll just have to see what we see. I can’t live in limbo anymore with a house falling down around my ears.

So.

The one-woman musical I’m working on with the actress in New York is basically done. Yay!! I think the premiere will be in Toronto, though, not New York City. I will keep you posted about that. It has something to do with funding from the Canadian Arts Council. But I can tell you, with complete certainty, that it is a GREAT show!! I am so thrilled to be a part of it.

Now she and I have 3 more plays/musicals to write together. I’m guessing that will keep me busy for a huge number of years. (The actress has been working on the above-mentioned one-woman show for maybe 7 years already. Writing, re-writing, workshopping it, performing it — it won an award in Canada already. Then I came on board to help significantly re-write it about 2-3 years ago. These things really do take forever.)

I have also finished writing my TV movie script for The Tea Cozy Murder Club!! It goes off to the producer in L.A. on Friday. He is excited to read it and I am super-duper excited to send it to him! This is an idea I have been developing for about 4 or 5 years. Now, I need to start writing the novels that go along with the TV movies (there is, at the very least, a series of 4.)

The mystery book series I’m writing with my illustrator friend in Brooklyn is still moving forward (The Miracle Cats and the Case of the Purloined Passport). We had to put it on hold, though, momentarily, until I completed the script for my other project because the producer’s assistant emailed me and asked if I was planning to wait on sending it until after the producer retired….

Anyway, so I finally had to stop juggling everything at once, and write one thing at a time. But now we are back to The Miracle Cats. Here’s the latest illustration. It is “Sister Thomasina”:

"Sister THomasina" aka known as Tommy Cakes! — “Sister Thomasina” aka known as Tommy Cakes!

I am also researching and putting notes together for a one-man play I want to write. I will go over more of those details as it goes along. But I’m very excited about it. It is somewhat connected to my ministry, but I won’t say more than that, lest I send you off on a complete tangent that would be wholly inaccurate.

Now that I’m done with school and staring down several years’ worth of paying off student loans… I am now learning Ancient Greek, and re-learning Biblical Hebrew (which I studied as a child, so a lot of that comes back to me). Anyway, learning them both at once is not really so daunting as it might seem because they have similarities. Sort of. Plus, I am strictly doing it on my own time and at my own pace, so it is really invigorating and fun.

I doubt I will ever learn enough Ancient Greek or live long enough to translate the Septuagint on my own, but we can dream, can’t we??? I’m already planning to write my own version of The Jefferson Bible (my minster at church refers to my plans as The Lewis Bible and it may well be that!). And I fully, fully intend to do this and maybe even publish it online! We shall see…

So, that’s it. That’s it. That’s where I’ve been. It is completely, 100% thoroughly safe to say that I am exhausted. But that’s how it goes sometimes.

Right now, it’s a wonderfully rainy spring morning. The birds are singing outside my window and the many, many cats who live here are planted at the screen door, looking out at the beautiful, wet, singing world. I hope it’s just as peaceful and promising where you’re at today, gang. Thanks for visiting! See ya down the road.

Back to normal around here

January 23, 2016 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

That drawing above was done by my girlfriend in Brooklyn — the one who is collaborating with me on the cozy murder mystery that features my cats. (Bunny, above, is one of the cats in the book, although she is also an actual cat — see posts below.)

My girlfriend drew the picture last night in solidarity with me over Bunny’s recovery. So beautiful.

On that front, it is safe to say that Bunny has, indeed, recovered! Last night, she was ornery, stubborn, and opinionated. In other words, back to her old self! She refused to come up to bed with me and listen to her 528 Hz. tones, and was insistent on sleeping in the living room, down under the coffee table, thank you very much. I was very pleased with the development…

Now all I need is for MYSELF to get back to normal — no, not ornery, stubborn, and opinionated; it would take an Act of God to stop me from being ornery, stubborn, and opinionated! What I need to do is get my energy back and my clarity back and my overall vitality back after Bunny’s brush with death, so that I can get back to my writing projects/deadlines and produce more than, say, one paragraph a day… Plus, the actress in New York City (you remember her, gang, right? We are still working on her one-woman show) — she popped in yesterday via text and asked if I was “ready for more pages”???

I’m always ready for more pages… I wouldn’t be back to normal if I didn’t have 2, 3, or 4 projects needing 100% of my attention at once.

I’m still waiting to hear back from the new developers about buying my property — which would then lead to my finally moving back to New York (and getting a ticket to see Hamilton post haste!! It kills me that I am not there, seeing shows, gosh dang it!) Writing is the only way to take my mind off of not being there. Although, keeping my thoughts centered on being there, I believe helps pull the experience to me.

Ah well, so back at it around here, gang. Thanks for visiting. Have a terrific, action-packed, super colossal (and perhaps snowy) Saturday, wherever you are!! See ya.

Home again, happy, busier than ever!

July 27, 2015 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Howdy, howdy, gang! YES, I am back home and YES, it was a most auspicious trip to New York, and THANK YOU to all of you who sent me birthday greetings last week! Oh, and YES (!!) I had CAKE!

First, I want to regale you with the riot of flowers that are blooming all over my yard this year. These are Roses of Sharon — taking over, as they are wont to do — because I have lived the entire summer not knowing when (or if) I was going to be packing up and moving away… Alas, I am still here, and the yard has become a veritable jungle of blooming madness (and also weeds).

Multiply all these blossoms on the right by the entire yard — back, front, sides– and you get a tiny idea of how crazy it is around here this summer. I went out to water my little herb garden on the kitchen stoop yesterday and discovered hundreds more blossoms blooming where they had never been before. The other garden gate is so overrun that I have to keep the gate open all the time, or the honeysuckle vines will wind all over it and keep it permanently shut.

Well, it could be worse. I do love flowers.

So! The trip to Rhinebeck was a complete success. We hammered out the version of the script that we will use for the staged reading of Tell My Bones: The Helen LaFrance Story. We also made great progress on notes and a synopsis for the one-woman show I am writing for the same actress “about” Pearl Bailey. (I put it in quotes now because it has become apparent that the Pearl Bailey family won’t release any rights whatsoever for outsiders to use her likeness, so we have to tell her story in a different way now, but it will be even better. Yay.)

My most amazing news is that the actress is forming a production company and asked me to be the writer for it, since we already have 4 theater projects we are working on together, and I COULD NOT be more excited! (Even though Tell My Bones is a screenplay, we are also working on a version of it for the stage.)

The downside is that there was a heat wave in Rhinebeck the entire time I was there and the AC wasn’t working right and there were no fans. Not only did I think I was going to perish in the relentless heat and humidity, I was the only person who was being eaten alive by mosquitoes everywhere we went!!

It’s a good thing so much good stuff was happening. It made it easier to just “deal and get over it.”

Now that I’m back home again, the cats couldn’t be happier. They had to have a cat sitter the whole time I was away and since they are all the proverbial “scaredy cats,” it was not a fun time for them. Hopefully, the next trip I make back to Rhinebeck, they will all be coming with me and we will be moving into our new home…I hope. We shall see.

Okay, on this wonderful Monday morning, I leave you with something wildly upbeat. I dare any of you to have a bad day after listening to this oldies gem!!! Thanks for visiting, gang. See ya!

Off to New York! At least for a few days…

July 11, 2015 marilyn jaye lewis 2 Comments

Yes, gang, I am finally off to New York for about 5 days!! I cannot wait! I will be working on the staged reading of my screenplay, Tell My Bones, with the lead actress and the stage manager, up in Rhinebeck, NY.

Yes, this is where I’m moving to when I finally sell this house and move back to New York. If you have never been there, Rinebeck is a real gem. And it is only a commuter-train-ride from the heart of Manhattan. So, for me, after having lived in the heart of Manhattan for over a quarter of a century (!!) and struggled like mad in my halcyon days, this is a much lovelier option as I squeak through middle age.

Rhinebeck, the village... — Rhinebeck, the village…

Rhinebeck, the surrounding town... — Rhinebeck, the surrounding town…

But back to the staged reading… It has been postponed until September, gang, because too many of the actors were already out of town, doing regional theater for the summer. So the lead actress and I, and the stage manager, are going to get all the little production-ducks in a row, so that we can hit the ground running once everyone is back in Manhattan come September.

Meanwhile, I am working like a crazy person, trying to get two weeks’ worth of homework turned in this weekend, so that I don’t have to even think about homework while I’m out of town. Then, the moment I return from New York, it will be my birthday!! That fabulous CAKE time of year!! I will be a glorious 55 years old, gang!! I cannot believe it.

Okay, I gotta scoot. I’m teaching a writing class in about 7 minutes… Have a wonderful, sunny Saturday wherever you are, folks, and whatever you wind up doing! Thanks for visiting. See ya!!

So much stuff going on!

May 21, 2015 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Holy Moly. What a terrifically jam-packed couple of weeks it’s been, and I don’t mean that in the best way. Although, overall, everything is great.

First off — so what did you think of the Mad Men finale? I wasn’t completely sure how I felt, so I watched it twice. I came to the conclusion that each of the characters resolved in ways that were realistic to the characters overall, and that everyone, except Betty, of course, has a reasonably happy ending. More importantly, it felt as if the characters’ lives were going on into a palpable future that we as TV-viewers can only dream about… So even though I felt deflated after watching the final episode, I think that was only because I was sad to see it end.

Although kudos for closing with that killer Coke commercial! I vividly recall sitting in my family room one evening when I was 11 years old and seeing that Coke commercial on TV for the first time. I was blown away by it, as was most of America…

Hands down, the most stressful part of these past couple weeks was when my beloved cat, Doris (photo above) went missing for 8 long days!! She was one of the semi-feral kittens born in my basement 2 years ago and had never been outside in her life. Somehow, she got out and I couldn’t find her and it was beyond stressful and heartbreaking and exhausting.

Through the help of many kind cat rescuers online, I learned how to find and catch a terrified, extremely timid semi-feral cat. I tell you, they hide right under our noses, but indeed, as I was emphatically guaranteed by the professional lost-cat trappers, we can’t see them but they are there! They’re watching us, but are too terrified to come out of hiding until the wee small hours of the morning. The whole adventure was maddening. I was out in my dark backyard, in my red Wellies and my cotton nightgown, at 4 a.m. for several incredibly humid days running, catching glimpses of her but to no avail!!

But I finally trapped her at 5:09 a.m. this past Monday morning — in a humane trap — and brought her back into the fold.

Other more upbeat things: School is going incredibly great. I still don’t know if I can keep up this notion of being back in school with homework to do every single day, but so far, I am loving it. There’s honestly no reason for me to still be in school, I’m already an ordained minister with a degree in Pastoral Ministry. However, for now, it keeps my mind off this never-ending limbo of “when will I move back to NY?”

Appropriately enough, though, through some “miracle,” I am on vacation from school this week. Just in time to take on a new web content client who needed help with new content “yesterday” (it required a ton of research & writing immediately). That was turned in this morning, and now I have to draft two killer 500-word essays for a writer’s lab I seriously want to get into, and the deadline is June 1st.

The staged reading in NYC of my screenplay Tell My Bones: The Helen LaFrance Story is still moving ahead. It is going to happen SOON, gang. As in “the next few weeks.” And — I’ve been asked to be the Narrator, so I will be on stage with the actors, instead of lounging around stress-free in the audience. But I am super excited and I hope all of you can get to NYC and attend!! Yay!!

Okay, well, I guess that’s my update for right now. I gotta get crackin’ on those 500-word essays. I hope you’re having a wonderful month of May, wherever you are and whatever’s been going on in your world. Thanks for visiting, folks. See ya!!

I don’t think I can stand it

May 4, 2015 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

That’s right, I’m talking about these last few episodes that are left of Mad Men!!!

What the heck is going to happen?? And why are they screwing around with Joan? And how come Peggy always, always, always seems to just barely have a clue? And, as always: Poor Don!!

My body posture when I watch this show is to sit with my legs crossed and my arms folded tightly across my chest. I should point out that this has been my body posture while watching this show since the summer of 2007. I love all these characters so much and they all just seem like a world full of loose cannons. This morning, when I finished watching Episode 7, I was so relieved to turn off the TV and to go back to focusing on my quiet little life, wherein women are taken a tad bit more seriously — however, I guess if you still look at advertising these days or watch much TV, you’d have to add “but not much.”

Oh well. Only 2 episodes left… Then I hope they release the magnificently designed, boxed-DVD set the very next day.

Okay!!! Guess what I did over the weekend? That’s right. I completed the revisions on my screenplay, Tell My Bones. I was still only able to get it down to about 60 minutes, which is the high end of the time limit they wanted for the staged reading. But we shall see. Maybe it’ll be fine. If not, maybe they’ll tell me what else has to go and I can just chop it off without even looking because, frankly, I can’t see where/how to cut the script down any further and still have it make sense. (But then, I wrote it, and I can’t really see where/how anyone would want to experience anything less than its full 105 pages!!) (But perhaps I am a wee bit biased.)

Anyway, it felt great to get that off my plate and officially on to the next phase of the upcoming staged reading. I have to say, I am starting to feel like this reading is going to run smack dab into me selling this house here in Ohio and having to buy a house back in New York and move. I just get the feeling that all this endless waiting I’ve been doing for so many years now is going to culminate in everything imaginable happening at once.

I can just see me flying into Manhattan, attending the reading, applaud, applaud, applaud, then hop the commuter train up to Dutchess County, look at the house I have my eye on, exuberantly say “I’ll take it!! Where do I sign?” Then hop on a plane back to Ohio, take all my possessions and throw them into a dumpster somewhere, load myself and my many beloved cats into my new (used) Jeep Commander, and head straight back to happily-ever-after-ville!!

Or something like that… Meanwhile, yes, I turned in the script, and all my homework is done for school (for today, anyway), I already taught my writing student this morning, so that’s done, and it is a gorgeous day here today, so I’m outta here!

Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope you have something wonderful going on in your corner of the world. See ya!

Thank you so much, you whackies!!

April 30, 2015 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Okay, again, I have to say I am flabbergasted. (See a similar post down below somewhere.) (It can’t be too far down there since, as you know, I can never seem to post to this blog in any sort of timely fashion anymore.)

I got an email alert from Amazon Kindle that still more royalties were coming my way from a book I wrote years ago. Yay. (Published writing — the gift that keeps on giving!) So that was nice…

AND YET…. In yesterday’s snail mail: My ex-husband in Manhattan had forwarded to me a bunch of royalty statements and a “cheque,” in British Pounds Sterling, from Virgin Publishing in London, that amounted to several hundred US dollars, for eBook sales of a very short erotic story I literally wrote 20 years ago. They recently had it translated into German, and apparently sex still sells, no matter how old, no matter how translated!

What a nice surprise, considering that 99.999% of anything that arrives in my mailbox reflects some sort of “payment due.” I have a hard time processing “payment received” these days.

Anyway, it is amazing to me that these indescribably recycled stories are still selling. As soon as I get back to New York, I will resume writing books in among the screenplays and the plays, but, as I said recently, no erotica, per se. (I say, “per se” because I always found life, in general, to be erotic; it was the publishers who insisted I was writing “erotica.” I didn’t necessarily agree with them all the time.)

Okay, new topic! Yesterday, a friend and I saw the movie While We’re Young and it was really good. It was a kind of throwback to the 70s storytelling style of film, where the characters have depth and what happens to them gets complicated. I wish it had been on film instead of digital, but I know, that part of life is long gone. Anyway, it was good! A movie ticket well-spent.

Here’s some awesome news that I keep forgetting to tell you about because now that I am back in school full-time, I am a little bit busy… My award-winning screenplay, Tell My Bones: The Helen LaFrance Story is getting a professional staged reading in NYC, by professional actors, in a professional venue, with professional wine & cheese being served!! Yippee ki yi yay!! I am so excited!

The tricky part is that I have to edit the 90-minute screenplay down to between 45-60 minutes, tops, and since the movie relies heavily on flashbacks within paintings, you can likely see where the trouble lay: Coming up with a linear storyline within a seriously non-linear script. Luckily, I am really good at tearing my hair out. Oops! I meant to say, I am really good at sitting at my desk and staring at a computer screen and going quietly insane. No wait — I meant to say, I am really good at finding the linear flow within the non-linear whole.

However, it does require patience and finding ways to not let your head explode. Sobriety is also key.

As soon as I know the date/time, etc., of the reading, I will let you know and if you are in NYC, please be there!!

Okay, back at it over here! Plus I have to create a Power Point Presentation on Christian Grief Counseling for school it’s due Monday. I can only imagine what that is going to look like, gang. But thanks for visiting!! Don’t let my quandaries keep you from enjoying your day and come back really soon! See ya!

At long last, a day off!

April 19, 2015 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Well, minus the fact that I was working on the play for a couple hours already this morning (and am now done with revisions on Act 1), I have the whole day off! My first whole day off since school started up again, three weeks ago.

I have no idea what I will do with the rest of my day, but I’m going to try to get out and take a walk before it starts raining. Then play the rest by ear.

It’s been an interesting, quasi-stressful week. Taxes, of course, were due. And I always owe taxes. And that ceiling in my sun room, that I wrote about recently, finally came crashing down. What a colossal smell of mold and mildew! And needless to say, what a colossal mess. As of now, I am just leaving it and keeping the room closed off. Depending on what the realtor says about the current timeline for the developers taking over my house, I will either leave the mess for the bulldozers, or get a mask and clean it up myself. I’m hoping for the prior choice, obviously, but I can’t go all summer with mold taking over my downstairs. So we shall see.

But so sad. It used to be my favorite room in the house. I have so many great memories of spending time in that room and now it is a complete, bona fide disaster. Really just so sad.

But I don’t want to dwell on it. I know that a brighter future is on the horizon.

So, yes!! Act One of the one-woman musical is DONE, gang!! Yay!! And it is terrific. The actress has truly done such an amazing job — and had an amazing life. Of course this also means that a quick trip to NYC is looming large, once again, in my future, because we have to work out the staging of a formal reading with the director and musical director. I have no clue what “looming large in my future” really means. I only know that at some point soon I will have to take off and go. Hopefully, that will happen before my housemate moves out on June 1st. Otherwise, I will have to hire the professional cat sitters and I’d much rather not have to worry about that expense, but I guess we’ll see. Naturally, for the 3 months that I was out of school and didn’t have homework to do every single day, the trip wasn’t looming large at all…

I’m thinking that I might actually work on some of my own writing today. It’s been a really long time since I had time to do that. You never know, I might still remember how! (Oh, and the other day, I was invited back to L.A. to pitch my TV pilot to some more producers, but my finances are stalled in limbo until the house sells. However, flattered I was!)

Hey, last Tuesday, my girlfriend and I got a chance to see the Al Pacino movie, Danny Collins. We really enjoyed it. (We were in one of those Fork & Screen theaters, where you get to order dinner while you watch the movie. That was a cool experience! Except that sometimes the waiters talk to you while interesting dialogue is galloping past on the screen and then, of course, you miss it. But it still was fun. If you like Al Pacino and/or John Lennon, I really recommend the movie.) (Not sure why all that became a parenthetical phrase, but there you have it!!)

Okay, I wanna go out and look at the flowers, the sky, the trees — take that WALK before it rains!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope you have a wonderful Sunday, wherever you are. I leave you with Al Pacino!! See ya!

Yes, Holy Week be Upon Us!

March 30, 2015 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Yay. My favorite week of the year, even though “favorite” might not be the best word for describing a crucifixion, let alone the crucifixion of someone so widely missed as, well, you know who…

This is the week that I am more “in” church than “out” of church. I love the solemnity of it, the beauty of it, the pathos of it — and the questions that I ask myself all week long: “How much of this stuff is actually true???!!” Who the heck knows, right? As a minister, I’m supposed to tow the party line & buy it all, but I know it won’t surprise you to know that I question every single solitary thing. But I still love it….

I love it SO MUCH, in fact, that, yes, I am back in school, completing the next phase of my ministry degree. I know I said I was done, but it turned out — I was wrong! I don’t need all this education to be a mionister (that’s Olde French for “minister”), but I still crave that Masters in Divinity, so I am sticking with school, for now. We’ll see how I can manage that once I move back to New York, but for now, I am back in school and loving it.

And also on Spring Break! Yay. Just in time to be at church constantly. So.

Wow, the re-writes of the original stage musical I am working on with that actress in New York City– it is going spectacularly well!! Yes, after several months of pulling teeth, pulling hair — I don’t know; what else can we pull out in frustration? Whatever it was, we pulled it and we are almost done with the revisions of Act One and I still think the show is incredible, gang. It already won one award — these revisions are being done on a grant from the Canadian Arts Council. The play won the actress/writer the Best New African-Canadian Playwright award — something like that. So the lovely world of Canada is paying my wages and will pay my airfare to NYC soon, to work in person with the actress and the music director, and everyone else. (I know, I keep saying I will be going to NYC soon to work on this, and it keeps getting postponed, but, naturally, now that I am back in school, the trip is imminent again!) But I am a big fan of Canada now. Yay! Honestly, what’s not to love??

Okay. Since it has been over a month since you last heard from me: Yes, I was glued to every single solitary episode of Empire! Wow, how addicting! I love Terrence Howard, which was the main reason I tuned in the very first night, but then I was hooked on the indescribably un–Christian immorality of every single character!! Too fun, wasn’t it, gang? Luckily, the first season is over now — making room in my world for the final season of my beloved Mad Men. (I’m hoping they will soon release some sort of gorgeous Boxed DVD set that I can purchase and display prominently, next to the icons of Christ…)

The other thing I waste way too much time on is Miranda Sings. This is why I had to go back to school, gang. It gives me something to do with my magnificent brain besides binge-watch endless 5-minute episodes of Miranda Sings, laughing myself silly. She is just too funny. (I don’t know if I can pick an absolute favorite episode, I have so many, but the one where she gives singing lessons to Pentatonix is right up there, along with the What’s In My Pants Challenge.)

On that lofty note, though, I do want to wish everyone a very blessed Holy Week. Even if you aren’t a big Christ-follower yourself, there is a whole lot about human nature that we can learn from this week. Mainly, that when Christ entered Jerusalem on Sunday, he was already a dead man walking; the same crowds that cheered him on Sunday, had him nailed to a cross by Friday morning… Funny, how the more things change in 2000 years, the more they stay exactly the same, right? Something to ponder, anyway — how the “crowd” will turn on you on a dime.

Okay!! Now that the roof guy has finished patching the enormous hole in my roof and gone home, I’m gonna get my taxes together here. I have a nice little pile of official-looking junk on my desk that I have to make sense out of before I dump it onto someone else’s desk! Yay! (The buck never stops here, folks. Whenever I see one coming, I scoot quickly away!!)

I hope you are gearing up for a fantastic spring. Things simply could not be better over here — I hope it’s likewise wherever you are! Thanks for visiting, gang. See ya!