"You twist and whisper the wrong name. I don’t care, nor do my ears. Twist yourself around me; I need company, I need human heat.” ~frightened rabbit

That beautiful song is on the season 2 premiere of Chuck. Which went up on Hulu today. And is absolutely fabulous. The whole episode is amazing, but it especially reminded me of how much I love Casey. He's so tough on the outside, but deep down he's a marshmallow (to steal a Veronica Mars line). His character is fascinating, and Adam Baldwin is brilliant in the role. He can do so much with a simple grunt.

I <3 Gina Gershon. She is hilarious. Check out this video:

See more Gina Gershon videos at Funny or Die

She is currently starring on Broadway in Boeing Boeing, in which she gives a great performance. October 2nd is her last day (as well as Kathryn Hahn's) and I really want to see it again before she leaves, even though I've already seen it twice.

I know I haven't written in a long time; I am just so insanely busy that it's impossible to find the time. And my internet is screwed up. Right now I'm posting from CCNY's library. I know this sounds funny, especially because I didn't usually enjoy going to the library at UR, but I love being back in a college library. It's just so...peaceful. This library is huge and I'm in a tiny study room up on the fourth floor.

I saw a couple of Broadway shows last week. I saw 13 and To Be Or Not To Be.
13 was...interesting. The cast and band consist entirely of teenagers. It's a musical about 13 13-year-olds. I think there are some very talented, hard-working kids up on stage, but the show needs work. I was uncomfortable about some of the subject matter (I don't think terminal illness should be treated flippantly), and I think some of the dialogue is unrealistic for 13-year-olds. The act one finale and the curtain call need to be fixed. It was a free night of theatre, though, so I was glad to see it. I looove Jason Robert Brown (he's the composer of The Last Five Years and Parade), and I did enjoy his score for this show very much.
To Be Or Not To Be was more enjoyable. It's a very funny play about a company of actors living in Poland during WWII. I like how it walks the line between comedy and drama, and the acting was fabulous. I went with my Theatre for Youth class, and beforehand we had a preshow workshop with MTC's Director of Education that was very interesting.
The Broadway Flea Market was this past weekend, which is one of my favorite days of the year. I won tickets to Hairspray and traded them for tickets to The Seagull, so I'm seeing that tomorrow and I can't wait. Kristin Scott Thomas and Peter Sarsgaard are fabulous actors so I can't wait to see them live on stage.

I should write about school, and I have other random fun stuff to write about, but I'm just too tired and pressed for time. Maybe later.

"At least you're not alone, your friends are there too. They're singing, "Happy Birthday"..." ~jonathan larson (tick tick boom)

Today wasn't a bad birthday at all, although it was uneventful. I did have my one requisite crying spurt (I always seem to go through one of those on my birthday; this year it was because of a little thing that probably shouldn't have affected me so much). I had school and then had to go to a 3-hour class, and I have to teach tomorrow, so I didn't really get to celebrate. I'm going out to dinner with my parents, aunt, uncle, and cousin tomorrow night and I'm looking forward to that. I really appreciated all the birthday wishes people sent me; it's such a fabulous feeling to know that people care about me. My friend Karen gave me two big birthday hugs today. Because one just wasn't enough. That made me really happy. I like receiving hugs, even though I'm not very good at giving them.
My kids were very nice to me at school today, and they enthusiastically wished me a happy birthday. One table made me a beautiful birthday card that said the following:

"Dear Ms. B.,
Roses are red, violets are blue, happy birthday to a specil person like u. Happy bday. Your 1 year older and your still look 14 or 15! But Laura thinks you look 28. Well we hope you enjoy your bday. We (heart) you."

How sweet is that?? (Well, besides the part about me looking 28.) And only on the third day of school. I love my kids. Cards like that are the reason I'm a teacher.

"Make a circle in the sand, make a halo with your hand, I'll make a place for you to land. The bus is running, it's time to leave. This summer's gone, and so are we. So come on baby, let's go shut it down..." ~counting crows

Tomorrow is the first day of school. I'm excited to meet my new kids. I'll probably have what is right now my only class (that's a big problem that I won't go into now) for most of the day, which means I need a lot of activities to keep them busy. For some reason, despite the fact that I haven't done much planning yet, I'm not that nervous. On the first day they're usually shy and quiet because they're nervous, so tomorrow I probably won't have to worry about behavior management too much. I just need to make sure I lay down the ground rules and expectations that will influence the rest of the school year.

Last year my birthday was the first day of school, and I remember going back to my apartment after school and planning like crazy because I used all of the plans I had already made on the first day. Here's my blog entry from my last birthday. It's interesting to go back and read it and see what I was thinking as I began my teaching career. I guess I'm slightly more jaded this year, but I'm still optimistic. I'm more aware of how challenging it will be but I'm up to the challenge.

Yesterday I went to see the Broadway musical [title of show]. I had some misgivings going into it (should they really be allowed to charge that much for a show with such a low production cost?), but I did enjoy it. I won the lottery for a cheap front row seat (which afforded me a perfect view); I wouldn't have seen it otherwise. It's a show for theatre-lovers, which is exactly what I am. Here's my favorite song from the show, A Way Back to Then. I saw Alice Ripley perform this song on Friday night and fell in love with it then. Heidi has a wonderful voice:

Towards the end of the show, Susan (one of the four actors) actually pointed at me, grinned at me, and sang directly to me. That made my day; it is so incredibly cool to connect with an actor onstage.

"He was talking about the theater," said Maladict.
"What's that?"
"An Abomination Unto Nuggan, or course," said the vampire. "It'd take too long to explain, dear child. People pretending to be other people to tell a story in a huge room where the world is a different place. Other people sitting and watching them and eating chocolate. Very, very abominable."
"I would like to eat chocolates in a great big room where the world is a different place," mumbled Lofty sadly.

That's from Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment, which I finished reading last week. I love that excerpt. I love that last line about theater. "I would like to eat chocolates in a great big room where the world is a different place." That's exactly how I feel. I've tried to squeeze in a lot of reading recently while I still have the time. I read a good deal of Terry Pratchett this summer because I love him. I'm also really into Richard Russo right now. I finished the Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls (fabulous) and am now reading Straight Man (which is hilarious).

I can't remember the last time I wrote or what I wrote about. But I haven't written about the beach yet. Last Friday my parents and I drove down to Rehoboth Beach. We stayed there until Tuesday (yesterday). It was nice to spend some time with them. It was nice to eat out every night (even though I'm sure I gained weight). It was nice to have nothing to worry about. It was nice to swim in the ocean. Well, most of the time. On Monday the waves were really, really strong. I got pulled under more than a few times in a very short period of time and got roughed around. I kept trying to make my way out of the ocean and kept getting pulled back under. My mom and I banged our heads together (hard) underwater. I lost my goggles and my mom miraculously found them in the ocean. I scraped the whole back side of one of my thighs on the bottom of the ocean floor; it ended up dripping blood all the way up to the bathroom where I washed it off and stuck some paper towels on it as a temporary bandage. But other than that one bad stretch, I loved the beach.
We also went for a disastrous bike ride that I would rather forget. We rode our bikes to a national park and rode around in there, but it took us a lot longer than we expected to bike there so we decided to try taking a shortcut back. Very bad idea. The "shortcut" was a trail in the national park that led out of the park and back towards town. Except the trail was pure sand. Deep dunes of sand. We couldn't bike, so we walked our bikes, pushing them through the sand. I think it took us about an hour to go one mile. And there were swarms of bugs around us the entire time. It was ridiculous. I was miserable.
Every night at the bandstand there was free live music, which I loved. The bands we saw were great. On Saturday it was The Diamonds, who are a famous group from the 1950's, and they were so much fun. I also enjoyed Jamie McLean, who played the first night we were there, and The Bridge.

Now I'm back in NYC and am being forced back into the real world. Tonight was my first grad school class of the semester. Tomorrow I have another class, and I also go back to my job as a teacher. Teachers start work tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to it. The kids start next Tuesday. My summer wasn't long enough; I hardly had any time off (I took classes the entire time) and it flew by. I have to start waking up insanely early and I'm not ready for it.

"I ran to the window, as fast as could be. I thought you were somebody else, I thought you were me." ~robert palmer

My trend of running into celebrities in the bathroom continues. I went to the Mets/Braves game tonight and ran into Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine herself) in the bathroom (she seemed very nice). That means this summer, in just 3 months, I've encountered Frances McDormand, Ashley Olsen, and Abigail Breslin in line for the loo. I wonder who will be next.

Unfortunately the Braves, who were winning almost the entire game, fell apart in the bottom of the 8th and lost. But Chipper had a good game and I was just glad to see him play at all (he was out the last time I saw the Mets play the Braves), so I wasn't too disappointed.

There was something I wanted to write about, but now I forget what it was. I'm sure I'll remember later.