Good Morning!

Well, it's 6 a.m. and I'm finally rested and awake and ready to tackle writing a journal entry.

Last night was really weird. I just couldn't keep my eyes opened. I missed the end of Lost. Thank goodness for our DVR. It's hard enough to keep up when you watch it week to week, but to skip a week is unthinkable.

I'm not sure why I was so sleepy,but it probably had something to do with the murder I committed that morning. You see, I killed myself. It was this very weird dream where I was slowly smothering myself to death, holding my hands over my mouth and pinching my nose closed. Somehow I was in one body and I was also in this green body that I was killing.

There might be something deeply psychological in all of that, but I figured out what ws going on when I woke up and couldn't breathe. I thought it might be springtime allergies (sorry, all you snow folks, but we have blossoms starting to pop out around here --

-- Punxsutawney Phil's California cousin apparently didn't see his shadow around here.)

But by the end of the day there was a cough starting too, so I still don't know if this is allergies or not, but it did at least explain why I dreamed I was suffocating.

The murder happened around 4 a.m. and somehow once you've been killed at 4 a.m., it's difficult to get back to sleep, so I got up to start working on my article, which was due today. I worked on it off and on all day and finally finished it up this morning. Almost exactly a year ago, the editor asked us to take a 50% pay cut for these articles, saying that she was sure the economy was going to pick up and she would be able to restore our full salaries within a year. Well, we all know how that economic "upturn" went. We are apparently going to be getting a note from her soon about salary, but I'm not expecting to be getting a return to my old salary.

So let's look at how much time it took me to write this article. I spent an hour interviewing the director, I went to rehearsal for an hour and a half and interviewed several of the actors, it took me a day to transcribe all of the interviews (of course if I could take better notes I wouldn't have to do that, but I take rotten notes and must rely on a recording). And then writing the article itself, with lots and lots of interruptions, took the better part of a day.

My salary at the end, when it's published? $25. I'm half-way expecting to be asked to pay for the privilege of having my stuff published next year!

Peggy asks me why I do it, and I guess I do it because I like the writing. I like meeting the people that I interview. I always go through the tortures of the damned, afraid I'm going to sound like an imbecile (and sometimes when I play back the recordings, I do!) but it's my creative outlet ... and then, of course, there are all those free tickets to all those stage shows.

So I'd probably do it for the fun of doing it, without being paid at all, but I'm glad that at least I get something for it.

One thing I did yesterday that had nothing to do with work was to take time out to watch an old movie, Interrupted Melody, the story of Australian soprano Marjorie Lawrence. It starred Eleanor Parker and Glen Ford and I remember loving that movie when I was a kid. It made me want to sing opera and I skreetched songs at top volume each night when I was washing the dishes until my mother begged me to stop singing.

I had never seen the movie shown on TV before, and had tried once to get a DVD, but it hasn't come out on DVD (though there is a VHS version, apparently). I still enjoyed the story, though overly sentimental, of this young Australian girl who made it to the top of her field and then had her career cut short by polio. I probably saw the movie during the height of my hypochondriac period, when I was convinced I was going to get polio and perhaps that was one reason it had such an effect on me.

I had to laugh at the start of the movie, which opens on a sheep ranch in Australia. There is the mother, the father, two brothers and Marjorie and all of them have different accents, only one of which seems to be someone trying to use an Australian accent. Eleanor Parker doesn't even try changing her American accent.

But it was fun seeing it again and I still enjoyed it, for all of its typical 1950s feel.

Today I have to get caught up on Lost and everything else I missed while dozing last night, as well as put together a "boef en daube" for our French dinner tomorrow night.