AMAZING

There's this amazing thing in New York... maybe in other parts of the country as well, who knows?! It's called "wash & fold". You take your multiple loads of laundry - which have been piling up since you moved over 2 weeks ago, to the extent that doing it yourself seemed quite overwhelming - to a laundromat. And then you LEAVE it there. And the next day, you pay only a few more dollars than it would've cost in quarters to do a dozen loads yourself, and you pick it up. When you get it home and open the bags... THIS AMAZING GIFT is what you see: the laundry is folded. It is arranged by item - towels together, undergarments together, shirts are almost pressed into a perfect fold. It is even vaccum packed.

This is definitely an indulgence along the same lines as the mani/pedi... really wonderful when you really need it.

THEATRE & MOVIES... AND NO VACATION

Read this GREAT ARTICLE about the Artistic Director at The Vineyard. Makes me miss that theatre! I love those people and their inspiring work...

THE TIN PAN ALLEY RAG opens tonight.

I'm so proud to have been a part of making this first-ever musical at the Laura Pels Theatre happen... not to mention the amazing fact that it's already a huge success with our audiences (even before opening!). And I'm equally excited to be able to put more energy into the shows coming up this fall... it's been a long, challenging and rewarding road to get from TIN PAN's first rehearsal to tonight's celebration. Break a leg, everyone!

SERENDIPITY

In addition to being a fun (but always overly crowded with tourists) spot in NYC, serendipity is a very cool thing. According to dictionary.com, serendipity is "an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident". According to me, serendipity is when two friends that you absolutely adore finally get a great apartment that they absolutely adore... which happens to be just a few blocks from where you now live... and which also happens to have a parking spot available... which is lovely because you're about to get a car... and now you'll have a safe place to park it every day.

Serendipitous, indeed. Now if we could only get some frozen hot chocolate... mmmm!

MOVING DAY!

Here we go!  At least we'll have this awesome couch to sit on when we're exhausted from the moving :)

LOVE SONG

When we write love songs, do we write them for the person or for the love?  And when the person is gone, is it the purity of the love itself that remains? 

DAY DREAMING

When something is going on in my personal life that excites me, it's often hard for me to keep my mind on work between the hours of 10am and 6pm.

Today (hence this blog at 4:04) my mind is swirling with the "To Do List" of moving.

I'm moving apartments this weekend. Back home to Astoria, the neighborhood I fell in love with when I first moved to New York almost 7 years ago, the neighborhood I've been trying to get back to for a while now... and it's finally happening. Not to mention that the apartment is beautiful and the partner with whom I'll be sharing this home makes me happy every minute of every day.

There's the Con Ed to set up and the addresses to change. There's the finishing touches of cleaning the old place so we can get our full security deposit back. There's the packing and the packing and the packing. There's the U-Haul rental and the sly persuading of friends to help load and unload. And there's the excitement. And the impatience. And the knowledge that in less than a week, we'll be in the new place... if not completely settled, then at least well on our way.

ART vs. BUSINESS

The struggle between art and business is partly what drew Todd Haimes, the Roundabout artistic director, to the play [THE TIN PAN ALLEY RAG]. “I’m not sure which perspective is correct,” he said. “Sometimes art can be commercial, and sometimes being a martyr doesn’t serve anybody. Who’s to say that ‘God Bless America,’ ” which Berlin wrote, “isn’t as great as ‘Treemonisha?’ ”

Mr. Haimes said he faces these questions when he’s programming the Roundabout’s season and that engaging the company’s 42,000 subscribers sometimes means eschewing untested work in favor of proven titles. While the company does produce smaller productions of new plays — including this year’s “Distracted,” a comedy about the attention-addled Internet age, and 2007’s “Speech & Debate,” a dark high school romp — the company’s mainstage slate generally features stalwarts like “Waiting for Godot,” “Hedda Gabler” and “Pal Joey.”

“Does that make our work any less valid, or is it just valid in a different way?” Mr. Haimes asked. “I constantly get into this argument.”

READ THE FULL NY TIMES ARTICLE ABOUT "TIN PAN" HERE

MÅNSTAD

Unloading (and then putting together!) the new couch into the new apartment tonight. Welcome to Astoria, MÅNSTAD. And thank you Ikea - for making such a cool piece of furniture.

THANK GOODNESS

Often times I become aware of an intense need for a respite from New York.  And if I don't get it, I find myself becoming cranky and easily upset and frustrated by small things.  There's a moment when I realize that if I don't get out soon, it will become instantaneously harder to enjoy the city I love.

Thank goodness for this weekend's respite:  a perfect July 4th complete with reading in the sun, scrapple on the deck, lawn work, gangster movies, dinner with mallets against a backdrop of fireworks, and card games into the night.  Top that with an incredible day of perfect weather and enough smiles and laughter to make both my cheeks and sides ache with happiness.  

Ready to come back to NYC - refreshed, relaxed, and full of love.

FULL PAGE

Buy a NY Times on Monday, July 6th to see the better, in-person view of this full-page article on THE TIN PAN ALLEY RAG.

Full. Page. People.

Here's a sneak peak...

NEW MONTH

The first of the month. Like a clean sheet of white paper in a crisp, brand new notebook. I've been a bit lax in my writing lately and the end of June slipped by like a quiet whirlwind... whoosh! And it was gone.

July will bring an Independence Day weekend in Maryland, complete with fireworks set to music; packing up all my belongings to move to the 7th (and final-for-a-while) apartment in 7 years; moving (with which I have a love/hate relationship) back to Astoria where I feel at home; opening the first musical at my theatre, of which I'm extremely proud; and taking a long-awaited trip home to Ohio for some overdue quality time with the family.

All of which is too important not to write about. And all of which will make me very, very happy.