Robingate

The one bird that had hatched Saturday is no longer in the nest. Either it matured very quickly and went off to bird college already, or nature took its darker course. Since none of the other eggs has hatched yet, I'm guessing the one that did was premature. I feel a little guilty because whenever I go close to the window to look out, the mother flies away...I'm afraid I made her leave her new chick unprotected and some predator got to it. Do birds eat other birds? Well, they shouldn't.

Occupational Hazard

Often, celebrities of various stature will come by the Second City to watch and show, and sometimes play in the improv set following the show. In recent years, people who have come by include Mel Gibson, Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Martin Short, Keanu Reeves, and assorted others. A few days ago, Second City alum Adam McKay (writer of "Anchorman") was supposed to come by, with buddy Will Ferrell in tow. They ended up not coming, but I found that evening an fitting time to mention to my castmates that I tend to freeze up around celebrities of any level. I think this is one of the few bits of my childhood shyness that remain, along with not liking to use the phone and fear of people in costumes. Anyway, I let my colleagues know that were a celebrity ever to show up, I would most likely be found hiding in the bathroom.

Last night (Saturday), I did not perform in the shows, but instead went to my friend Nicky's wedding in Madison. It was lovely and a lot of fun, and I was glad I got to go. Doubly glad when I got to the theatre tonight and discovered that I dodged the celebrity bullet that is Dan Aykroyd. He didn't play the set, but watched the 10pm show. I know in the future I may not be so lucky, so watch for blog entries in the future describing my various breakdowns and hiding places.

Robin Watch 2005 has yielded one baby bird so far. We saw it just before we left for Nicky's wedding Saturday. It's kind of gross, frankly. I'll try to get a picture but the mother is being (understandably) protective and is wary of paparazzi. There are still three unhatched eggs to go. I'm going to perform a c-section on them if they don't hatch by Wednesday.

New photos

Never fear! There's always something new for my Erdmania readership. If you go into the photos section (right sidebar of front page - it says "Molly flickr photos"), you'll see some wonderful poster designs Colin just sent me. That's right, the Cruise Director of NCL's flagship still makes time for his first Second City cast. These are some photos we shot on our last Saturday there for NCL's STYLE campaign. STYLE stands for Service, Teamwork, and Yes Lead to Excellence. In case you couldn't figure that one out on your own. Anyway, every year they make new posters for it to post in the crew areas, and Colin wanted to use us and lured us with a trip to the Bridge (where Sue's picture with the Captain takes place). It worked!

The images are a little small, but if you click on them you can get a larger view.

Back in Business

Hello to anyone out there who might still be checking in here at Erdmania. I apologize for not writing anything of late, but I've been trying to figure out what to write about. I don't want this to turn into a journal of my day-to-day activities, not only because it would be boring but also because that would leave me very little to talk to people about on the phone or in person. Now that I'm not on the ship, with limited phone and email capabilities, it seems silly to keep you updated on my every move.

That being said, I miss posting things, so I'm going to take a stab at doing something at least. We'll see what happens.

First of all, to sum up the past week and a half since I've been home, it's been great to be back. I've loved getting to see friends and acquaintances again; I don't think I had appreciated all the great people and things to do in Chicago as much as I do now. I also started on mainstage last Wednesday. I was extremely nervous, more so than any time I'd understudied a show in the past, but it's been going well I think. The cast couldn't be nicer or more supportive. I'm really looking forward to working with them all and creating a show with them.

So what else have I been doing? Adjusting, I guess. It's been a little weird having all my stuff and my relatively huge apartment at my disposal once again. I don't seem to remember what I used to do with my free time at home, so I've spent days organizing photos from the cruise, sending a lot of emails, and finding errands to run. People have asked me if I miss the ship, and I do. I think it worked perfectly, that I got to leave at a time when I would still miss it, and that I got to come home to a wonderful new opportunity.

The day I got home, Rich noticed a bird's nest outside one of our living room windows (we're on the 3rd floor). There were 3 little blue eggs in it, and eventually a bird came and sat on them. A few days later, there was a 4th egg, and now we're checking in every few hours to see if the eggs have hatched. I did a little research (see "what else have I been doing," above), and found out that it's a robin (which we figured from the blue eggs, but I just had no idea what a robin actually looked like), and that the eggs take about 12 days to hatch. I've been home for about 10, so it could be any time now. I also read that robins like to eat grapes, cherries, and tomoatoes. We had some tomatoes which I wanted to set out on the window sill, but I was afraid the mother would chirp out some sort of call and my arm would get attacked by a swarm of robins.

And speaking of eggs hatching, my step-brother Brent and his wife Kim are the proud parents of Jorja Marie, born on Monday, May 23rd, which of course is Victoria Day in Canada. That poor kid's going to get a lot of joint Victoria Day/birthday gifts as she grows up.

Land Legs

Ok, so I have nothing particularly interesting to report, but I figured I'd wrap all this up by recapping the past 24 hours and the journey back home. We signed off the ship (we being Kevin, Andy, Brian, and myself; Paul and Sue are staying an additional 4 months, if I haven't already mentioned that), and as we were leaving we ran into the new cast on the gangway. So we got to high-five everyone and do the official boatco tag-out. It was nice to see them and see how excited they were.

We got in a van to take us to La Guardia, and had the unexpected "pleasure" of getting a free tour through Harlem en route. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't been so tired, but the driver delightfully mangled various names of people (I love that comedy group "The Kids on the Block," "I loved Gavin Morris from the early days of Saturday Night Live.") and repeatedly bemoaned the obesity crisis in America ("There's another Subway!" "Look, another KFC!").

We got to the airport, got on our flight, and were informed we'd be waiting on the plane for about an hour. I promply fell asleep. We took off late, but miraculously arrived only 20 minutes late...only to wait 45 minutes for our luggage. As fate would have it though, we ran into our boss, Kelly, at O'Hare; he was on his way to Toronto.

Although I had told myself I wouldn't, that I would just relax my first night back, I went to watch the Mainstage show last night. I'm glad I did, not only because it eased my mind a bit about the show and starting on Wednesday, but also because it was really great to see people. It made me very excited about being back and about starting my new job.

I slept for 11 hours last night, and now I'm ready to hit the town for some mundane errands and food that I've missed. And then maybe a nap later.

Dusk of the Dawn

This is it folks, my last post from the Norwegian Dawn. Unless after our final show tonight I feel the need to get sappy, but let's hope that doesn't happen. I have my reputation as a robot to maintain.

I'm all packed up, aside from what I need tonight and tomorrow. In an hour we have to go check our luggage, and it will be locked up overnight. Then we have our last dinner together, where Colin will be joining us. And then our final improv show, and that's it. We sign off tomorrow at noon and fly back to Chicago at 3:00.

Hmm, I wish I had something more profound to write on the eve of our departure, but I feel like I've been writing about leaving for the past three weeks, so I don't know what else I have left to say about it. This afternoon we've been exchanging cd's of our digital photos, which I guess is the equivalent of signing yearbooks.

*****

I never got around to publishing the above post last night; it's now 8:15am Sunday, and I'm finishing packing and doing various sign-off procedures. Our show last night was a lot of fun, and afterwards we went to Star Bar one last time, along with members of our tech crew.

It's time to pack up my computer, so in leaving I'll say thank you for reading this blog for the past 4 months and for taking an interest in my cruise exploits. I hope to have more interesting adventures to write about soon. I hope you'll check in from time to time.

Wrapping up

Fortunately, our second night of improv went much better than the first, due in part to us only doing 20 minutes. I think the client wised up to the fact that people were just not there to see us. That being said, there were a handful of very nice people who sat up front and were very responsive, but they were certainly in the minority. We'll give it a try again tonight and see how it goes.

Yesterday we had the whole day off in New York. To be honest, I've about had my fill of wandering around the city; I know I'll miss it when I get back home, but there's not much left that I want to do there. It was a really nice day though, so I made my requisite trip to Times Square and walked around a bit. I also had pizza with Andy, who has some sort of grudge against my blog, due at least in part to the fact that I don't mention him enough. So there it is, I had pizza with Andy. Then I briefly went in the Virgin Magastore with Andy, but then I left Andy to go back to the ship without Andy. I didn't see Andy the rest of the afternoon, but then I did see Andy at dinner that night. After dinner, Andy brought his DVD of The Office down to the cabin of some people who aren't Andy, and we watched Andy's DVD.

I woke up this morning at 7:30, and though still sleepy, felt the overwhelming need to start packing and doing things I need to do before I leave Sunday. So I did that for a couple of hours, and then went back to sleep from 10 until almost noon. I think in the morning it's not considered a nap, it's just going back to sleep. Or at least I hope so, because that will make it easier to justify when I take an actual nap this afternoon.

I get a lot of questions at Erdmania Headquaters about whether this blog will continue once I'm off the ship. Right now my thought is that I will keep it for stories or bits that pop up, but not so much as a daily (or, more accurately, semi-weekly) journal. We'll see what happens, but please consider checking in every now and then.

I'll be back once more from the Dawn...stay tuned.

All right, all right, we're leaving!

Hoo boy. Someone out there must have decided that we were having too much fun on the ship and getting too used to our cushy lifestyle and performance schedule, and that the transition back to land was going to be too hard, because after last night's show I think we're all ready to go home. We did our usual half-hour improv show in Spinnaker, but out of the 400 or so people in there, I think 30 wanted to see our show. It was 11:15 at night, after these people had been in meetings all day (this is the charter, which basically consists of a bunch of different companies' bigwigs coming together to talk about how to become bigger bigwigs), so their priorities were as follows:

1. Drink
2. Network
3. Make moves on strangers from other companies
4. Make moves on co-workers
5. Some comedy show that appears to be going on. Or maybe they're just rehearsing. Well, they should get off the stage so I can request "Hey Ya" and dance like the executive I am.

But that's showbiz. Tonight we have another show, but beforehand we're having a group photo taken with the Captain, Colin the Cruise Director, and Rob the Asst. Cruise Director. Then Colin will join us for dinner before we march to our improv deaths.

Tomorrow this first charter ends, and we're in New York all day. A new batch will come on tomorrow evening, and we'll do the same 3 days again, with shows Friday and Saturday.

Better safe than having that one guy do more tv interviews...

It's 2:17pm Sunday, and we're not in New York yet. We had some rough seas Friday night and Saturday, causing the captain to slow us down and change our course. So we're arriving into NY around 4:30pm, as opposed to 9 or 10am, as we usually do. I think had it not been for Rogue Wave '05 a few weeks back, we would have just pushed through, but now everyone here is super cautious, understandably. There was a point yesterday when I did think to myself, "Wow, this is about as bad as it was before the wave," but then I noticed that everything on my desk had not slid under my bed, and I realized it was a relatively calm day.

As I've mentioned, next week is a charter, but it actually doesn't start until Monday. There are two 3-day charters: Monday through Thursday, and Thursday through Sunday. Today was supposed to be a one-night Mother's Day cruise, but due to our late arrival, it's been cancelled. As unfortunate as that is, it means a free night (and most of tomorrow) for us in New York. We're planning a trip over to the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre to watch a show involving some Chicago pals and my Sonic husband, Brian.

Last night was a farewell meal of sorts. We ate at Le Bistro, and it was more or less our last real restaurant meal for the rest of our time here. Because the charter only involves 800 people, they're only using one restaurant for the guests and having everyone else eat in the crew mess. It looks like we (guest entertainers) may actually get to eat with the charter staff in one of the other restaurants, but in any case, our days of Freestyle Dining (tm) have come to a close.

The upcoming week will include four improv shows, a couple of full days in New York, and packing. Stay tuned for details.

My Beautiful Voice

Our last big shows in the main theatre were last night. Fortunately they went well, especially the last one, so we felt we went out on a high note. Next week we'll be doing a handful of improv shows for the charter cruise, so I guess we're sort of weaning ourselves from our cruise routine.

It's been great having Colin back; not just because he's a lot of fun to be around, but also because it's back how it was when we first started here 4 months ago. Coming full circle and all of that.

Tuesday I got back from some Sonic work in New York, and Paul, Sue, and Kevin picked me up at the airport in a rental car (they had rented it to do some other stuff in Orlando that day). We had plenty of time before we had to be back on the ship, so we played some mini golf and made a stop at the mall. Yesterday in Miami we all went over to South Beach for some lunch and a walk around. Today we're at the private island, and I think we're all planning to go over at some point. It's been a while since we've all done stuff together as a full group (other than eating), so it's been nice. Last night after the show we sat around Star Bar and took turns asking questions about the ship and our time here that we all had to answer, like "Where's one place on the ship that you've still never been?" or "What's the most embarassing thing that's happened to you since you've been here?" I've never been to the crew gym, and my most embarassing moment was when a new crew member complimented me on my beautiful voice, confusing me for the woman who sang in the opening night show that week, and I decided to just take the compliment. Later that week I saw her again and it was clear from the look on her face that she realized her mistake. She came up to apologize, but then I had to explain that I knew she thought I was someone else, but that somehow I had decided it was easier to just smile and nod.