Happy New Year! It’s been a fairly eventful final week of 2005. We had 2 shows every night at Second City due to the holiday crowds. At the beginning of the week it still seemed easier compare to the previous 9 weeks of rehearsals, but by Friday it was taking a toll on all of us, I think. Last night for New Year’s Eve we did a countdown after our 10pm show and did a 10-minute improv set. It was fun to do total goof-around improv. Ruby, our musical director, has a tradition of buying us a couple of really good bottles of champagne and doing a toast backstage before the countdown. So we got to have a nice little cast moment to celebrate New Year’s, our show opening, and the fact that we were 5/6 of the way through our week at that point.
My New Year’s countdown was a bit sad for me since my Grandma Alice passed away that morning. I had been fortunate enough to have seen her the previous weekend when I went to Dallas. So rather than go on about my other trivial matters from the past week, I’ll mention two of my favorite memories about my grandmother. One, for some reason, she couldn’t stand seeing someone put a napkin in their mouth. So of course at the dinner table the grandkids would do that constantly, evoking the funny face she would make that was a cross between disgust and someone tickling her neck. Two, I always knew when she was coming to visit because we’d have those Keebler Fudge Sticks in our refrigerator. And when we would visit her in El Paso, she’d often serve an afternoon snack of a cold Snickers bar cut up into small slices.
Happy New Year, everyone. I hope everyone has something from 2005 to be thankful for, and something in 2006 to look forward to.