Remember

The Alamo with the Crockett Motel and the Marriott in the background to give some perspective.

modern hawkers

Weird. Traditionally dressed Indian women hawk cheezy Tourist T-shirts at the mall in downtown San Antonio.

Natural Bridge Caverns

The infamous Natural Bridge.

Puzzled

Shondra works on a puzzle on vacation. I helped a bit now and then.

Gruene Texas

Browsing kitschy stores in Gruene.

At the B&B

Shondra settles in at our bungalow.

Trip to the Hill Country

You'd think we were going for a month!

Alley Goodbye

Grey skies for a melancholy day as I say goodbye to the Alley.

The last Smokey

Mike Bell and I enjoy our last Smoke break together at the Alley Theatre.

It's the end of the "Boring" era of IT at the Alley (almost 7 years) - and hopefully the beginning of the "Bell" era of IT at the Alley. I hired Mike about 2 1/2 years ago and he's moved from being a solid employee to my right-hand man and now to a close friend.

MD Adventure

Just a little trinket from my hour long Human Resources ordeal at MD Anderson.

Treasure Island Cast

Stage Left's production of Treasure Island, featuring my wife, Shondra.

Roscoe

Last night while I was chillin' and watching all the shows my Tivo picked up for me during the week, I heard a knock on my door. It was two of the girls from the neighborhood with the dog you see pictured above. The girls asked if it was my dog, and I told them it wasn't. The dog has a superman dog tag with his name, "Roscoe," and a phone number and address.

It was a local number, so I let the girls use my phone. The girls were both probably around 11 or 12 and they were ridiculous. The taller of the two made the call and got an answering machine. She mentioned they'd found Roscoe and said something about the person coming to get him. Her friend grabbed the phone from her saying "Let me talk to them" and then proceeded to give them completely useless information about the dog being in "my friends neighborhood" and "he's cute." Neither of the girls left their phone number or an address or any contact information whatsoever. Finally, I picked up the phone from them and left my home number.

Then the girls asked if I could keep the dog. I told them I couldn't, but since I'd left my phone number I asked them where they lived. The shorter girl (Neither of them gave me their name) was just visiting the taller of the two. Tall girl said she just lived down the street, but when I asked her for her phone number or address where I could contact them if the owner called, she told me she couldn't tell me. Then I asked if she could just show me her house. She said no.

This really frustrated me. I mean, I know kids should be careful about giving strangers their address and phone number and stuff, but for crying out loud, I'm your neighbor! I don't know if it was the girls I was frustrated with or the society we live in. I mean what kind of world is it where a young girl can't point out where she lives to a neighbor down the street? She says she doesn't even KNOW her own phone number. Now granted, it was about 8pm at night and the girls both had the sillies, but still. This seems to be this recurring thing - a few weeks ago at the Park and Ride, I tried to carpool in with this lady and she told me she only takes women carpoolers. I guess a few rapists and child molesters have ruined it for the whole of male Houstonians.

Oh, Roscoe is fine, by the way. I ended up letting him stay in my backyard last night. I gave him a bowl of water and he's good. I called his owner again this morning to leave a more succinct message and got a call right back. They are coming to pick him up this afternoon.

Hard day at the Alley

Andrew Love takes a break in the lobby of the Alley Theatre Production Center. I couldn't help taking the pic - he was in a public area and I had my camera phone on me. What's actually pretty funny is he saw me taking the pics and forgot who it was who took his photo.

This pic sort of summarizes how I've felt the last week or so since I announced my departure from the Alley to move over to MD Anderson. It's a bit stressful to be on the out getting ready for a new job elsewhere. I'm going to miss Andrew. He's a good guy.

Jamaican Jams

In my last post I talked about being appreciative of present moments. It's become a theme which I have been more aware of lately. Maybe I should blog more often.

Anyway, in that vein, I had a nice drive in to work this morning that I want to relate. One of the things I enjoy about working downtown is that the bus system is designed to get people there quickly. The bus ride from the Park and Ride station near my house is a straight 20 minute trip, non-stop. When I can, I like to carpool in with some other folks heading downtown. To save time, people will drop by the Park and Ride and pick up riders so they can meet the 2 (or sometimes 3) passenger minimum to take the high occupancy vehicle lane in to work. Besides satisfying my desire to be a cheap bastard (bus is $3, carpool is free), it's also a nice way to meet other folks and do a little networking.

This morning I was waiting in line and a young, pretty black woman pulled up in a Toyota 4-Runner. Her sky-roof was rolled back, her windows were rolled down and her stereo was blaring reggae music. She had her hair up in dreads and her face was pocked with some acne. I completely expected her to speak with some Jamaican accent, but I was disappointed when she asked how I was doing with the standard Houston lilt. We hit the road and the windows and sunroof were closed and the A/C went on. We didn't talk much on the way in and I just sat back and enjoyed the ride. To our right (looking South) the sky was dark with clouds and impending rain. To the Left there were patchy clouds and bright sunshine. The reggae music was playing from a disc in her CD changer and it regularly skipped. At first I just thought it was some production choice. The music was facinating - pretty standard repetitious bouncy reggae - but it had all these synth effects in it that sounded like the laser gun audio effects from the original Star Wars movies. It was like some reggae band playing during a shootout between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire.

Anyway, it was just a cool moment: the heavens undecided about rain, odd reggae music with lasers skipping and popping, and the facinating contrast of a lovely woman with beautiful dreadlocked hair and acne singing along with her favorite songs. It was good stuff.

on the road

Every, every minute.

My bro wrote a great blog entry on his myspace page this Saturday. My grandpa Boring just turned 88 last weekend. He is slowly dying from Alzheimer's.

Thinking about Grandad, I also get kinda scared about my own future. What is it like to have your brain slowly deteriorate on you? What is it like to slowly realize that everyone in your family hasn't gone crazy - it's actually you? Can you even really realize anything?

It's all stages of life, right? The crazy problem with us as humans is that we seldom appreciate the moment we are in while it's happening until it has passed us by. Our American culture seems to revere our 20s - that's where most of the heros of our movies and TV shows fall. And yet in our 20s we wish we were further along in our careers, wish we could find Mr./Mrs. Right...

One of my favorite stage plays is "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder. The play is way overdone by high schools and community theatre. It's relatively cheap to do because it doesn't require much in the way of stage dressing. One of the clear focuses of the play is the preciousness of life in every instant.

I've been thinking of that play lately. The artistic director of the Alley is directing it for some other theatre this Fall, I believe. Anyway, I am reminded how we wander through life waiting for the "good times" to come in the future (or dreading the "bad times" to come). Or we relive or worry about times past. So little of our time is actually spent appreciating and enjoying the present. And really, future and past are not real. Only the present moment has any reality.

I was listening to one of my favorite Christian pontificators, Tony Campolo, as he was discussing death and dying. He tells the story of a man sentenced to die under some oppressive regime. That morning as he was eating his last meal, he savored every bite like he had never eaten before in his life. As he was led out into the courtyard to face the firing squad, he felt the sun shine on his cheek. Everything seemed more clearly defined and crisp. When they pulled their triggers, they realized that all the guns had been loaded with blanks. He survived that day, but he had a new realization of the preciousness of life. On a completely different note, the regime he was under sure had some sick bastards running things.

Regardless of how things are, life is a precious thing. Right now as I write this, I'm smoking a pipe out on the back balcony of the Alley Theatre in downtown Houston on a glorious sunny day. I'll be leaving the Alley at the end of the month to take a job elsewhere and these times - taking smoke breaks with my buddy Mike - will be at an end. Right now I'm enjoying the moment. Life is good. It's all good.

Todd

Independence Day

It's been a long time since I actually wrote something here.

I think I got burned a few years back when I revealed a bit too much and my wife got angry with me. I have to say that trying to keep your struggles and failures all secret and such is a lousy way to live. At least for me. Maybe that's one of the reasons I like the kind of improv we do at Massive. At it's best you are challenged to be real and vulnerable. I share things that are important to me. My flaws. My victories. Mostly these things come out in rehearsals. Sometimes they come out in shows. Audiences are usually clueless when the characters you portray are very close to yourself. They can definitely identify with those kinds of characters, though.

Last night Shondra and I watched "The Garden State." I'd seen it once before and wasn't terribly moved by it, but last night I was. The characters and the story are pretty standard romantic comedy, but it has several moments of very clear honesty and transparency. There's a scene when Zack Braft and Natalie Portman are talking late at night sitting in the bathtub where Zack's mother probably killed herself a few nights before. He's vulnerable and shares some things that he's been learning and thinking. It really hit me hard. I've had several of those kind of moments in my life. Mostly during my adolescence. Those moments when you take a chance and share those ugly parts of yourself that you think no one will ever understand and will probably cause all of your friends and family to disown you. And then the person you are with shares those same ugly parts of themselves with you and you realize that all of us are the same. And you realize that you are not alone.

It's been a long time since Shondra and I have shared those kinds of moments. Early in our marriage I shared my flaws with Shondra and she was hurt by them deeply. As a result I find that there are areas of my life that I hide from her because I'm afraid she will be hurt by them. I'm afraid she won't understand. That deeply pains me. This is the person on earth whom I love the most. The person above all others who I want to share the deepest secrets of my soul. And I find that I can't.

Somehow I think that this is probably a common experience as a marriage progresses. Initially we are so infatuated with each other that we find it much easier to overlook each other's faults. Then as we grow closer those faults begin to really affect us and cause us pain. We lash out at each other and then we no longer feel safe being ourselves with each other.

This is the deepest pain in my life right now. This is the person who I love the most. This is the person with whom I struggle the most to just be myself.