Tonight is the first rehearsal for Pippin. I’m excited because I really love this show, and both Chelsey and Marchy are going to be in it with me.

I managed to land the one part, Lewis, that I could conceivably play well in the show, so I’m really relieved by that. I mean, I can’t dance well enough to be in the ensemble, so I either had to be a lead or nothing at all. I actually could have been Charles also, because the cast isn’t age-appropriate, but they really needed me as Lewis, and there was another guy who could do Charles almost as well, so he got that.

The important thing is that I love this show, so it’ll be an honor to finally be involved in a production of it.

Have I mentioned how much I hate it when people pick up other people’s phones and read their text messages? My friends have a tendancy to intercept messages I send to other people, and I’ve narrowly escaped getting myself in trouble several times. I just happened, by chance, to not say the wrong thing.

I have this new theory. You know how it always seems like people have crushes on you in waves? They all seem to become interested at the same time, leaving you with a choice?

Well, I don’t think that’s actually what happens. I think that people have crushes at a random pace–someone always likes you, or maybe a few people–not in waves. But then as soon as one person admits their crush, the others admit theirs at the same time. It seems like a wave of crushes, when in fact it’s a wave of confessions.

Last night we wanted to do something spontaneous, so Danny, Chelsey, Stephie, Vicki, Jontiel, Marchy, and I decided to drive up toward Big Bear, in the rain, at ten o’clock, with the intention of building a snowman.

Apparently it hasn’t snowed there in over a week, though, and when we arrived, we discovered that there was none left on the ground at all. In fact, it was a balmy forty-eight degrees in Deer Lick, where we stopped.

Still, the trip was a lot of fun, and now we’re just more determined to go again.

I’m at work. Across the room, a female coworker is having a long, personal phone conversation about her plans for this evening, her opinions of her friends, and a lot of gossip. Meanwhile, in the cubicles next to me, two guys in my department are making fun of her conversation because we can all hear it, loud and clear. I’m trying really hard not to laugh as they imitate her and she remains oblivious.

This week on The Apprentice, the two teams (which are referred to as “corporations,” although I like to think of them as “tribes”) were asked to create advertising campaigns for a private jet rental company. It was amazing to me that one team’s campaign could outshine the other’s by so many orders of magnitude. The women are majorly kicking the men’s asses on this show. They chose a better name for their team (Protégé) than the men (Versacorp), they made four times as much profit as the men from selling lemonade on the first episode, and they created an edgy, daring, effective advertising campaign while the men created middle-school-level crap.

Tonight was pretty cool. Krysta is friends with Rick Cornette, who plays Jamie in The Last Five Years. Long story short, I got to have a piece of Rick’s birthday cake and talk with him backstage about his interpretation of the show. And David knows Kim Huber, so I got to chat with her a bit as well.

In theory, Number Portability was supposed to force wireless companies to provide better customer service (in an effort to keep their customers). Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that AT&T Wireless customer service has gotten considerably worse since Number Portability went into effect on November 24. Quite literally, it was still great as of November 23, and it’s been completely horrid since the 24th. It’s as if they fired half their representatives on that day and only kept the incompetent ones. Every time I’ve called since then, they’ve claimed to do what I’ve asked of them but have neglected to actually do it. And the hold times seem to get longer and longer.

Today was no exception. I was on hold for thirty-five minutes before I could speak to a representative.

“I’d like to remove Multimedia Messaging,” I said. (I had asked them to remove it a month earlier, but when I received my December bill, I saw that they had failed to do so.)

“You’d like to remove Text Messaging?”

“No, Multimedia Messaging. For $2.99 a month.”

“Okay, is that the same as mMode Data? $12.99 a month?”

“No. Multimedia Messaging. $2.99 a month.”

And so it went. Ten minutes later, she had successfully done what I’d asked. I even made her read back to me a list of services still on my account so as to verify that the correct one had been removed. Now I’ll wait till next month to see if she accidentally removed my calling plan or something.

This afternoon I saw the very first public preview of The Last Five Years at the Laguna Playhouse.

And yeah, my ex was there. How apropos.

I’ve been invited to a bunch of different happenings on New Year’s Eve, including Amanda’s concert (which I must attend) and a bunch of parties.

At first I thought I’d go to the concert (which is earlier in the evening) and then party-hop all night long. However, I realized I won’t be happy doing that. New Year’s isn’t about making appearances and cameos. It’s about spending time with the people who will set the tone for the upcoming year.

On other holidays, it’s fun to see long-distance friends who are home from out of town, old friends who are back in touch, et al. Contrarily, I think that New Year Eve’s should be spent with (as boring as it might sound) the people you see every day. They’re the ones who will be with you during the new year, and that’s what you’re celebrating, so it just plain makes sense.

So after the concert, I’ll be at 820, and that’s where I’ll stay all night and all morning.