Can you hear the people sing?

Um, no. I am a considerate iPodder--considering the earbuds are a half inch away from my cochlea, there's no reason to blast my music--but apparently not everyone feels the same. Like the jerk who sat next to me and who had his music up so loud that I could hear the lyrics, while the second act of "Les Miz" passed me by. Jerk.

Question: What do theatre people do on their days off?
Answer: Laundry.

That's a joke. Really. Yesterday the cosmic forces of the universe aligned and I wasn't needed at the temp job, so I slept in until noon, then did laundry, went grocery shopping, made black bean salad, worked on a play and listened to the first act of Les Miz. And then went to rehearsal. I was really tired most of the day, but at least I started chipping away at the huge sleep deficit that I've been racking up. Today I'm back temping, but I'm up on the 23rd "executive" floor, which is a solo receptionst desk...and very, very quiet. I haven't had a phone call or a visitor in the hour that I've been here. There's no one up here but me and all the magazines the company represents. I'm looking over a stack of them right now, and apparently American has moved on into the trembly-lip, brave face "hero" segment of the mourning cycle, with respects to what happened in Virginia next week. I can't handle these publications trying to co-opt other people's pain right now. They're just leeches.

I have been meditating a lot on these lyrics from "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" lately:

"...there's nothing here to thrill or bring you down."

and also

"The fates are vicious and they're cruel,
You learn too late you've used two wishes like a fool.
And then you're someone you are not,
And Junction City ain't the spot.
Remember Mrs. Lot and where she turned around."

You sort of have to listen to the song to get the wistful nature of these lyrics, otherwise they're kind of brutal. This sort of sums up how I feel about Chicago right now: I'm just ambivalent. There's nothing really exciting here, there's nothing really getting me down here. I just sort of washed up in this city and I'm making the best of it.

This morning as I was walking to the eL, a beagle came up and said hello to me, which was good. Her owner was worried I'd be mad that she put her paws on my legs, but I don't mind at all. Dog fix. Ah. I had a sort-of-fight with one of the guys in the cast yesterday as well, before rehearsal. He was insisting he couldn't be a feminist because he wasn't a woman and I was insisting he could be. I asked him, "Do you believe in equal pay for equal work?" and when he said yes, I said, "then you're a feminist." At which point he protested that that wasn't really a good mark of feminism, but I told him it was one of the basic tenents. Part of me was celebrating that feminism has come so far that people take it for granted women should get equal pay for equal work, and part of me was despairing by how far we have to go. (you have to be a woman to be a feminist? arg.)

I have tonight off, so I'm planning on tripping down to the library again and getting a card and then, hopefully, checking out the biography of John Adams again so I can FINALLY find out how it ends--I'm not entirely certain these "Articles of Confederation" are going to work out, but I'm hoping. Also my roommate graciously netflixed the new "Pride and Prej" so I'm going to do some needlepoint and have tea and watch whatshisface fall badly short of Mr. Firth's Mr. Darcy.