Hi, everybody. I've returned from Florida--a day later than planned because, if you must know, I was throwing up on Sunday and didn't feel like sitting on an airplane. The wedding was lovely, though, and--most important--my reading during the ceremony went over like gangbusters. Also, at the rehearsal dinner, I read "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat," which was received well too, once I got past all the pussy in the first stanza. After the third or fourth time I had said the word to only a smattering of nervous laughter, I began to fear I had lost the crowd, but I somehow managed to get them back before the Owl had purchased Piggy-wig's ring, so that by the time the title characters were hand in hand on the edge of the sand and dancing by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon, the audience was entirely in my power.
At the reception, I drank enough red wine to stain my teeth a regal purple and talked for some time to an Australian who, though tiresomely straight, was at least nice to look at, listen to, and lust after. The wine might very well have caused the next day's vomiting, but because I prefer explanations in which I am the victim rather than the cause of bad circumstances, I choose to believe I caught a bug from my three-year-old niece, who had been spewing the contents of her stomach all over the place two days prior.
Unfortunately, she and I were not the only casualties of the weekend. A bridesmaid also succumbed to stomach woes, and, closer to home, my beloved Jack Spade travel bag sustained a tear in the fabric at some point during my travels back home.
Still: rips, bugs, pussies, unseasonably chilly weather (did I mention that?), and straight Australians notwithstanding, it really was a lovely wedding, I promise.
WHILE I WAS OUT:
My review of Lookingglass Theatre Company's Fedra: Queen of Haiti appeared in last week's Chicago Reader.