You know what sucks worse than moving?

Not moving.

That is to say, packing all your worldly positions up into plastic bags and piling them in the middle of the floor, and then staring at them for ten days, unable to unpack.

This is your life when you have bedbugs to contend with.

Or rather, this is:

It sucks. It sucks balls. I packed everything up before the exterminator came last Friday, and he comes for his second treatment tomorrow morning. So finally, tomorrow I'll be able to unpack everything and set my apartment up again.

But in the meantime, I had to wash and dry every piece of clothing I own. I spent about $50 on laundry and that's not even including dry-cleaning which I haven't done yet, because I can't afford it. All my dry-clean only stuff is still sealed up in bags.

I had to vacuum and wipe down all my books and DVDs and clear all my shelves.

It's been a giant ball of suck.

And I'm broke. Largely because of this. Ex-college roommate and best friend Cate Fricke is in town, so I've been going out, but I haven't been spending money on drinks. And most of my food this week has been Family Meal at work. I've even been stashing leftovers and bringing them home.


Mostly though, we've been doing free things, such as the free movie in Bryant Park. It rained, so we couldn't sit on the lawn, but we managed to get a pretty good spot. We were going to wait out the rain, but all of a sudden, it started to POUR.

We ended up soaked to the bone.

The thing that sucks the most about being caught in a rainstorm that only lasts five minutes: Inevitably you will end up somewhere where the people are not wet, because they didn't happen to be outside for the five minutes of Hurricane George. So they always look at you like you're crazy for being wet.

We didn't end up seeing the movie. Instead we went to a bar. It was fun.

But the trump card of the week was by far Shakespeare in the Park. For those of you who don't know, the play this summer is Twelfth Night starring Anne Hathaway (Oscar nominee and personal hero of mine--She's on my Wall of Inspiration), Raul Esparza (four-time Tony Winner), and Audra McDonald (four-time Tony winner, ass-load of other awards too.)

I have a bit of a history with Raul Esparza.

That is to say, I am in frigging LOVE with him. I took this picture for my friend Evan who was playing Bobby in "Company" up at New Paltz.

He autographed the sign too.

Anyway, I've never done Shakespeare in the Park before. What we did was, we went out to the bar on Tuesday night, and stayed out until about 4am (which is REALLY hard to do when you're not drunk). Then we went to the WestWay Diner and had some breakfast, and then we headed over to Central Park. We got there at 6:30am, and there were already about thirty people on line.

We stayed there until the box office opened at 1pm. By that time there were about 2,000 people on line, including a bunch of New Paltzians. We had a good time. We slept in the sun, and made friends with the people sitting on either side of us. On our right was a really nice guy named Jay. He's a musical theatre professor and he had an adorable dog named Chompers. So we were pretty much entertained for the majority of our massive wait on line.

After we got our tickets we walked back along the line to see how many people were still in line. It was so long! It stretched back so far, I was so glad we got there when we did. Quick nap at home, and we headed back to see the show.

Anne Hathaway really impressed me. I think I read in her bio that she hadn't really done much Shakespeare before, but she handled it really well. And they incorporated music very beautifully in the production. Anne Hathaway has a great voice, and of course the other two leads are Tony-winners. There was this beautiful moment during which The Fool is serenading Orsino (Raul Esparza) and Raul started to sing the harmony. I almost had a heart attack.

The only time I've ever seen him live in "Speed the Plow" and he did not sing. I've only ever heard him on a recording before.

You'd think men singing really high wouldn't be attractive. But it is. As long as they don't go falsetto. Blech.

The rain held off until the very end of the show, not that I would have left it if had started earlier. But it happened during the finale song, the lines of which are, "And it raineth every day." So obviously, the crowd went wild. And the whole cast began to dance, and Anne Hathaway came running out in this beautiful white dress and Raul Esparza lifted her into his arms and spun her and she put her arms out and turned her face up to the rain and it was just GORGEOUS.

Best day.

Tuesday I'm going to Florida for a few days. I'm taking some time to recover my mental health and bank account Post-Bedbug Ordeal, but I am going to be auditioning for Disney while I'm there.