It's Thursday already. We had a lovely 3-day break from the play and rehearsals. It feels like it's been forever, and yet not. Tonight is the last dress rehearsal, and then we have our three shows over the weekend. I am looking into the different theater groups here in town too. I found one that is doing a production of Peter Pan. Jack loves that story, so I think it would be especially neat for him to be involved. I think the auditions are the same weekend as the auditions in Rantoul though. There are a lot of auditions going on.

After the matinee, we have to head straight to Peoria. I have my third .NET class next week. This one isn't as long, but I don't know how it will go. Eric took the same class as I did last week, but our next round of classes do not match; they are flip-flopped. My very last class is scheduled for the first week of September. I am not sure when he is done. I would love to take a vacation sometime too, but I don't know how realistic that is. And somewhere in there, I have to fit in getting Jack all set for kindergarten and studying for the three exams I will need to take. All for what, I don't know since we already know we won't be getting raises this year. I don't know that we will get them next year either. Hopefully the job market will look better by then if not. Three years without raises is not my idea of a great job.

Buffy is almost over. I guess I should write a little bit about that. Tuesday night was the 20th episode of Season 7, "Touched." I thought it was excellent. A lot of things were said between Buffy and Spike that needed to be said before the show ends. I think we are all agreeing that we don't know *what* on Earth is up with Giles, and that Andrew is hilarious. Consider this dialogue: "He's a breath of fresh air, isn't he? (pause) Thank god I don't breath." *lol* Love it! And then of course, there's the whole "attainathon." Even though I only remember getting into the show towards the end of Season 4 or the beginning of Season 5, I have caught up on everything, and I love the show. Even mom is hooked on it now. You just can't discredit it based on the title or the premise. It has some of the best dialogue, scripts, and character development out there for a television show. Some people may still scoff, but the seven seasons speak for themselves. Only two episodes left, and I am staying spoiler free. I don't want to know a thing about how it ends because I cannot imagine wrapping it all up. It doesn't seem possible to be able to do that in just two more hours (80 minutes considering the chunk they give to commercials). Grr Argh.

Now, Angel we don't know if it is ending, but the part of me that says we can't possibly lose all of Joss' creations in one year says it has to come back. For that reason alone I am scared that it won't be back. The season finale was last night, but I didn't get to see it. I missed last week because of rehearsals, so mom taped it for me. I will be watching both of the episodes while I am at Gma's this week. Rose also brought me the series "Taken" on tape, so I wanted to watch some of that while we are at Gma's too, but I may just have to break down and buy a VCR instead. I am considering buying a combination VCR/DVD player, but all the horror stories I have ever heard about TV/VCR combos keeps me away from that. We'll see.

I just finished writing my first CD review for OpeningBands.com. I can't say it's a good piece of writing, but at least I got it in on time (way ahead of time, actually). It was for a band called Echo3. Apparently, there is more than one Echo3 out there. This group is from Minnesota or Wisconsin or something - not North Carolina. It's a trio of youngsters, not a foursome of older men. ; ) I don't know where this OpeningBands.com stuff will go, but hopefully I will enjoy being involved and learn a few things while I am at it. The review will be in the May 15th issue, as well as a review for Common Ro's "The Big Fear."

Time to get a few more things done before calling it a day. I have pictures from last weekend on my roll of film that is almost finished in the camera still. Hopefully I will be finishing that up soon and posting some. I am considering getting a "real" camera now though - digital cameras may have lost their thrall over me afterall. I want the nitty-gritty, 35mm, lenses, develop your own stuff kind now. I'm crazy, I know. But, hey, I'm just not busy enough yet, right? : )