I got a call today for the other Maggie Gallant, the one in New York who continues to flaunt her appearances on Animal Planet as the ‘pet trends expert’ but fails to provide any way for people to contact her. Normally I just get emails through my website – the phone call suggest that her latest PR puff outclasses her recent Pupperware. If I wasn’t such an honourable person, I’d exploit the situation. When I say honourable, I really just mean lazy and unimaginative.

I’m over at Seattle’s Best coffee shop, having successfully frittered away my morning at home. There’s an SUV parked outside, with For Sale signs plastered over it. The back of the vehicle is open and inside there’s some plotted plants and a couple of bunches of flowers. This is clearly the car-selling version of an open house. If they’d also brewed some coffee and left out some cookies, I’d probably have bought it. As it was, I just stole a couple of flowers.

Today started out with some glimmer of productivity. I got up at 5.10am to run with my triathlon group. This was impressive since I went to bed last night at 11.30, after going through 3 glasses of wine and a plate of fries. I then spent 3 hours flicking through the quarterly Queen Fan Club magazines from the years 1977-79. It’s all in the name of research for my new solo show, which I’m planning for Fronterafest next January. It will combine my love of Queen, milestones in history and fascinating incidents in my own life. I may cut this third element, although the juxtaposition of greatness and mediocrity will probably work well for me. The research will take time as I was a member of the Fan Club for 17 years.

I’m on a bit of a writing kick at the moment. Hot Dogs at the Eiffel Tower, my first solo show and the one I was going to file away in the ‘done to death category’, is going up again. It’ll be part of a showcase of solo shows in Austin in early June. This means I get to tinker some more with the script, trying to squeeze in a few more jokes and a couple more awkward lines instead of working on the acting/performing part. I admire my own consistency. In work ethic terms, not my degree of viscosity.

I’ve also been accepted into the solo performers course at the CSU Summer Arts school in Fresno, California. Back to college after 21 years. It’s a 2 week intensive and Erik and I will be there at the same time as he’s taking another animation class. We’ll be sharing a room on campus. They have bunk beds so I’m excited. I’ve always wanted to sleep in a bunk bed, ever since I saw Tom Hanks in Big. Last year, Erik was there and fell out of his bunk bed and onto the desk below while trying to answer an imaginary phone. He should have just let it ring.

I’m not sure how we’ll manage sharing a dorm room. I can see a lot of arguments over who gets to put up the Karl Marx poster and the one from Gone with the Wind with the faces of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan replacing Rhett and Scarlett. I’ll be wearing my ‘Frankie Says Relax’ t-shirt and going to women’s Consciousness Raising meetings with lesbians. Can’t wait to be a student again.