From Across the Pond

These are my two favorite pictures taken of myself, from the past few years:





The first one was taken by Isobel, the second one features Issy herself, proudly displaying her Limelight production shirt of Pride & Prejudice.

It was her birthday today, and I miss her and the other Dubliners, and so I felt it appropriate to give a shout and a Happy Birthday from across the wide Atlantic.

She is just one of the loveliest, gentlest, and subtly-subversive people I know, and I look forward to another round of tea drinking and book-talking and walking and all those other wonderful things we all do together.

Two More Weeks

If you've been checking this thing, waiting for new posts to appear, then I'm guessing you've been quite disappointed in the past few weeks.

It's that time of year where everything piles up, and I've been busy finishing up one job and starting up another one. All my web time has been going here lately, so much that I've developed a strange pain in my right uppper arm. It hurts to type this, so I'll be brief.

School is gone in two weeks, and then my life eases up a bit, and perhaps I'll have time for writing again. If the arm holds up. I hope so, because I have lots of stories piled up, waiting to be told. I keep thinking about how I left my final adventure in Ireland in limbo, wandering the Wicklow Mountains in perpetuity.

I kind of like it like that, considering what happened next. I think I'll keep us there a bit longer, at the top of Ballinastoe, victorious, before it all went pear-shaped.

One of these days I'll finish that story, and tell you others, including Tales of Two Houses. Until then, I'm still updating in 140 characters or less on Twitter, which is thankfully less hard on the arm and shoulder.

A True-Blue Mom

My mom loves to travel, loves folk music and The Beatles, and can knock a few drinks back like a pro. She was a theatre major in college and to this day wishes she had been able to do more with that.

She worships The Chicago Cubs and hopes Ronnie makes it into the Hall of Fame someday.

She reads the Tribune every day and saves me articles on travel and theatre reviews I might have missed (I am sadly phasing out my paper subscription to the Trib.)

She was never overprotective or overbearing, never judgmental or harsh, and she let me make and live with my own decisions in my life, for better or for worse.

Everything that she is, I am as well. And I love her dearly for it.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.