No posting on Friday doesn’t mean the show was shit. Friday passed in a bit of a mushy haze, Saturday was spent travelling back to Austin and yesterday was unpacking, laundry and wasting time reading websites and blogs. So a recap.

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It’s almost over. Tonight I’ll be performing the 10 minute piece that I’ve created over the past two weeks. Tomorrow, Erik will be showing the animation clip he’s been working on. Then it’s a long night of drinking and maybe another visit to the karaoke bar, before we have to leave Saturday morning. I’m ready to go home. We need to get the dog from her vacation home and hope she can act as excited to see us as we’ll be to see her. I can’t wait to sleep in the same bed as Erik and eat something other than salad. I want to watch television for the first time in two weeks and get back into exercising, rather than just wearing exercise clothes and pretending.

But I don’t want to say goodbye to everyone here. Not everyone, there’s probably a few hundred people here that I won’t have too much trouble separating from. But for my little group of 12 writer/performers and our guest artists, this is going to be hard. Got to stop being so mushy. I blame the classical music I’m listening to. Changing it to punk. Then I can happily hate everyone, including myself.

Show review sometime tomorrow.

I’m not sure what’s happening to me. In the past couple of days I’ve told my group I feel ‘very connected’ to them, I sang/shouted (We are the Champions) in a karaoke bar before I’d finished my first drink and most horrifying of all, I’ve started enjoying improv. I’ve been here almost a week and I’m already dreading the end. I’ve played characters that scare me and amaze me. I’ve learned African dances and sung Aboriginal songs. I’ve watched some incredible performances by our guest perfomers. And I’ve started working on a solo show that I’m both excited about and overwhelmed by. I blame the mask exercise, I think there was a bit of voodoo mixed up in that. There’s no way I could have enjoyed playing my masked character without it.

The writing is hard. Every conversation opens up a new way of looking at my characters and expanding the piece. I keep thinking that in someone elses hands, this could be brilliant. On Monday, we’re supposed to have the first read-throughs of our scripts. At this point I’ll be reading three mediocre blogs.

Fortunately it isn’t all good. I really can’t bear to spend time in my prison cell/room. I’m feeling too lazy to exercise. And the food remains reassuringly bad. That’s the motto for Fresno State University – ‘when everything around you is changing for the better, you can always go to the cafeteria.’

I’ve been here three days. My cynicism is running at an all-time high. I’m trying to keep it under control but it’s hard to stay really open to all the new things we’re doing when the voice in my head is yelling ‘oh come on, this is a load of old wank’.

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So I’m here in Fresno, California, or ‘frisco for those of my friends who prefer to believe that’s where I am. Or that ‘frisco is an abbreviation I would ever use.

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The last time I was this much of a hypocrite it was the Funnniest Person in Austin contest back in April. After rubbishing it and refusing to take part, I went ahead and did it and was as mediocre as I’d suspected. But now I’m no longer doing stand-up (lets see how long this lasts) I had to find another way.

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Went to Central Market (Austin grocery store) this morning. CM is now printing its paper bags with the following message:

‘I am a brown paper bag. More than likely I’ll end up under your kitchen sink with a few of my friends. I might get cut up and wrapped around an old textbook, or just stuck under something messy. It would be nice if someone made me into a kite. I’d like to be a kite. But whatever happens, I will never forget the day I carried groceries home from Central Market.’

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I’ve been spending a lot of time in coffee shops this week because there’s construction work going on daily in our building. New people moving in and deciding that the best way to make the place feel like home is to rip up and replace the existing hardwood floors. This requires the use of a jackhammer from 9am to 5.30pm and a lot of Mexicans. In the brief lulls, there’s still the soothing sounds of next door’s screaming baby and the 24 floor apartment block going up outside our window. I really shouldn’t complain, I’ve brought it on myself. If you dislike most people, hate noise and inane small talk then you probably shouldn’t choose apartment living.

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We watched the series finale of The Sopranos on Sunday. Better bloggers than I, or me, have dissected the final scene and ranted and raved about how David Chase screwed us over and is clearly un-American. As if that’s a bad thing. I’d imagine HBO took a fair amount of abuse along with the subscription cancellations. And I now have an hour less of TV to watch every week. Although Hell’s Kitchen is back on and Gordon Ramsey’s a fat bastard too so it all balances out. Erik and I were in step with the rest of America – he cursed the cable for going out when the screen went to black without the usual music and I poured another glass of wine and laughed and read the message boards.

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I got an email yesterday.

Hi Maggie, I like your photos on your website, see you can wear makeup!! You should dress more like this on stage. Tracy S.

I know, I too was surprised that it wasn’t from my mother.

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