A Pre-holiday Update (Long Overdue!)

**Note** I originally wrote this on Wednesday, December 13, but for some reason it didn't get posted. So... this is pretty old news at this point :) _________________________________________________________________

Hey folks It's been WAY too long since I've done an update to tell you all what's been happening in Trish and my lives... and I'm sure you've just been breathless with anticipation. Sure ya have.

Right... So, what's been happening lately...

>>Theatre: Trish is still knee-deep in the run of Inspecting Carol at Artists Repertory Theatre. They close on Christmas eve, so her holiday season is pretty much spoken for. If you haven't seen the play yet, get your tickets quick; they're packing the house as the run winds down to its end.

It's a funny play... if you've already seen it, you know that she gets doused with water towards the end (I won't tell you how; don't want to ruin the surprise for those of you who haven't seen the show). Here's something that's not so funny, however; running through the chilly corridors of ART dripping wet gave her a really bad cold a few weeks ago. This of course was passed on to me (and her brother Pete, who's been staying with us). We've been suffering the after-effects of this little bug for over a week; most of the symptoms have gone away, but the cough is sticking with us.

I've got a couple of murder mysteries set for this week. As silly as it sounds, now that I've got a couple of those on my schedule it feels like Christmas :) Trish and I have been working with Wild Bills for over ten years now, and it honestly feels nice to be the entertainment for someone's Christmas party; it kind of makes you feel like you're playing a part in bringing the warmth of the season into someone's life. Plus, we get to work with people who, in some cases, we haven't seen since last year's murder mystery season.

And the money's nice too :)

Still, I think about this from time to time... the holiday season just doesn't feel "right" to me if I'm not working on some kind of performance. It could be a murder mystery, a holiday reading, or a full-blown production... but I need to be involved in something. When Trish and I went to Europe over Christmas a couple of years ago, I felt a nagging lack, because I wasn't taking part in bringing a little holiday cheer to an audience somewhere. Murder mysteries like the ones I'm doing this week help me fill that need; I feel like I'm doing my part to make the season a little merrier.

>>Film Well, Trish is certainly the working actor in our household lately. Aside from her Inspecting Carl run, she's shot parts of two independent films and finished filming a third that she started last month. She also had a great audition for a new Hollywood movie coming up to shoot in Oregon next year starring Diane Lane (she got a call-back, her audition was so good... me, I was starting to get sick the day I auditioned and totally blew it).

Plus, we're both going to shoot an industrial down in Eugene at the end of the week (an "industrial" is an industry term for an instructional, or non-entertainment-oriented film). I'm still trying to keep my finger in the pie... but Trish is outpacing me by a long way.

That's pretty much all I have time to share with you at this point... I'll try and post more later on in the week.

Hope you're all doing well...

-Harold