So Tuesday I had an audition for a twenties musical called Good News. It’s about a college football team, and it has a lot of banjo music.

It was a really quick audition. I went in there and sang my song (I sang “Grow for Me” from Little Shop of Horrors), and that went better than I thought it would. My throat has been hurting all week (I have a cold–it’s a symptom), so I was surprised that I sang well. I think my body just knew that it couldn’t be sick for those three minutes. Anyway, after that I waited about fifteen minutes and talked to some people at the auditions and introduced myself, and then we all went in and learned a really easy dance step and ran through it a couple of times so the choreographer could see our dance skills.

And then I went home.

The only person I knew at the audition was the choreographer, actually. I worked with her in a few other shows. She likes me; I’ve done good work for her. That’s a good thing.

I had a few friends who were auditioning, but I guess they auditioned Wednesday instead, ’cause they weren’t there Tuesday.

Anyway, so then Tuesday night I went out with Roger and Goodwin to see The Thirteenth Warrior. It was entertaining, and it had good action-movie action, but other than that it wasn’t a real winner.

Felt like shit Wednesday morning, so I didn’t go into work until noon. That night I went to my grandma’s house for dinner and then helped my brother make some changes to his web site. Exciting, eh?

Anyway, so last night I had callbacks for Good News, and those were fun. I got called back for the part that everyone wanted–the comical lead, Bobby. He’s not the romantic lead of the show, but he’s the funny one, so he’s a very memorable part of the show. I think I might have the part; by the end of the callbacks, only one other guy was still reading for it. And at the very end, the director put us into groups to see what we all looked like together, and he had me standing with the two girls who were up for the two parts that interact most with Bobby.

Bobby likes Tom’s girlfriend, Pat, but Beef’s girlfriend, Babe, likes Bobby.

It’s confusing.

But the cool thing is, Bobby has two romantic interests in the show, so I get to act alongside two beautiful, talented girls. So hey, bonus. Actually, the real bonus is that I had good stage chemistry with both of them. One of them, Jesse, I knew from the previous show, so of course we were great together because we know each other, but I was surprised that the other girl and I got along so well. Masaya (pronounced like “mossy-uh”) and I didn’t even meet until we read together, but we interacted very well. She did a great nasal, high-pitched character voice for the part (sort of like Adelaide in Guys & Dolls), and I did a nasal, nerdy character voice, and when both of us were doing it, the people watching us couldn’t stop laughing. We made the most annoying couple on Earth.

You should have heard us sing together.

Anyway, the callbacks were fun. Everyone was really into it, and we were getting really carried away (which is a good thing at callbacks). It was a total laugh riot, and I’m pretty sure that everyone who made the callbacks will be in the show. Everyone was pretty talented.

I’m crossing my fingers. It’ll be great to do a musical again.

This new mousepad really stinks. I don’t mean “stinks” as in “doesn’t function properly,” but rather, it smells bad.

My coworker Ken gave it to me. It came with an issue of PC World. I’ve been wanting a new mousepad for a while now, because my current mousepad is a little uneven, so the mouse sometimes gets stuck.

So Ken brought me this new mousepad, and I was really excited. It has a nice, flat surface, so my mouse glides smoothly over it. Also, it has acronym definitions (AFK, BRB, IMHO, ROTFLMAO, etc) on it, as well as examples of emoticons and some rules of Netiquette. It’s the ultimate web geek’s mousepad.

But the damn thing seriously smells like rotting vegetables or something. I have never smelled anything as raunchy as this mousepad. Mind you, though, you can’t smell it in the air or anything. The only way you can smell how putrid it is is to either hold the mousepad directly up to your nose or touch the mousepad and then smell your fingers.

The second one is the problem. No one goes around sniffing his or her mousepad all day, but we inevitably smell our fingers anytime we put them anywhere near our faces. And believe me, it’s impossible to not touch the mouse pad. I only have a certain amount of available desk space, so I am constantly shifting my mousepad into more comfortable positions on the desk, depending on how much I’m using it at the moment.

So it’s really annoying. I’m trying not to touch it, and I’m hoping the smell will eventually dissipate, but in the meantime, I have a stinky mousepad.