Musing on a Saturday night

I feel a little bit like Peter from "Jesus Christ Superstar" (technically not blasphemous, since this is a Rock Opera and not the Bible) :

I think you've made your point now
You've even gone a bit too far to get the message home
Before it gets too frightening
We ought to call a halt
And could we start again please?

I think it's hitting me that I'm not going back to London, not anytime soon, anyway. At work on Friday I endured several incredulous stares as I informed my coworker that I a) didn't have a car, b) commuted 45 minutes on the train and c) didn't think the eL was that crowded. Also I called it the Tube by mistake twice. Then today I went grocery shopping and kept looking for things that don't exist over here--like squash and powdered potato and leek soup. I am also terrified that I'm falling back into the American Lifestyle: I've tried to avoid Starbucks for my caffeine fix, but it's not easy. There are no alternatives, and even the free coffee they have in the offices where I'm working is the Starbucks brand. I've bought lunch the past week because it's easier than making it--but then I also have to get dinner, since there's no time to go home between work and rehearsal. I've lost forty pounds in the last year and a half, and I'm looking forward to losing that last twenty, but that's not going to happen if I don't stop eating. I suspect I'm just bored, lonely and stressed. Last night I had a pint of Ben and Jerry's--the whole thing!!--and I sat there looking at the container going "what the hell is wrong with you? Why didn't you just get the little ice-cream cone like you were planning? The whole thing?! You had a huge sandwich for lunch!!" I'd like to think I'm the same person I was when I was overseas, but I don't know why resisting temptation and ham sandwiches is so much more difficult over here. I suspect it's me and not the city of Chicago so much: Chicago has been good to me, I have no real problem with it, the problem is I keep thinking eventually I'll be back where I belong. Only that's not right.

Well, other than being a huge drama queen, everything is going well.Rehearsals are getting more and more interesting. I've been finding it challenging working with this director, as his style is totally different from mine, but we seem to get along pretty well. I will be working at the same place I was on Thursday and Friday all next week, temping as a receptionist in a very cushy place. I went on a spree tonight--after I washed my clothes I took the oh-so-fashionable granny cart up Clarke Street, past all the yuppies having dinner at the sushi places. I went grocery shopping and bought a ton of veggies, which I am going to make into a salad that will do me for dinner for next week. They were also having a special on Healthy Choice meals, so I scooped up a bunch of those. And I bought some leeks: tomorrow's project is going to be turning them into soup. Then, after a production meeting, I'm going to check out a place I found that advertises "The World's Best Scones!" Oh yeah? I'll be the judge of that...