SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING

I was only 9 or 10 when the last government shutdown happened and was not aware of it at the time, so the current shutdown is fascinating to me in a morbid gallows-humor sort of way. It would be more entertaining if many of my friends didn't work for the federal government as "non-essential" personnel. The big problem with "non-essential" is that a lot of it works out to "newer" and hence "lower-paid" and hence "people-who-actually-relied-on-their-paychecks" personnel. Then again, there is a bill in place that will get them paid after this is all over, so I suppose they'll be fine.

What has been most interesting, from a structured negotiation point of view, is the framing that has been done surrounding the shutdown debate. It's all very Roshomon, and I would enjoy it a lot more if it wasn't actively wasting billions of dollars and stopping me from going to all of my favorite museums that I always intend to but never actually have time to go to.

Last Monday I went to Emelie and Nathan's wedding. I've been friends with Emelie now for over a decade, meaning it has been over ten years since she was Sandy and I was Eugene in Woodberry's production of Grease. The wedding was beautiful (perfect weather, great location, and I got to sit with some old friends) and it was so nice to see her and her entire family again. I used to entertain her youngest sister when she was five, and now that sister is in high school and is, in fact, basically the same age that Em and I were when we met. I advised the sister to be especially nice to the people she meets this year, because some of them will likely be at her wedding.

The show is progressing nicely- I don't think that I have been a part of such a uniformly talented cast in a long time. The singing (not from me, but from others) is going to be spectacular. Kelsey and the Kit-Kat girls have bonded and she is starting to be a real theater person (one thing that she told me she would never, ever be).

Mock trial is also going well, though I did make a mistake in the most recent draft of my closing argument. Our case is about a man who has to wear prosthetic legs and who may or may not have murdered his girlfriend because he may or may not have thought there was an intruder in the house, and in the middle of my closing I was rising to an emotional and rhetorical high-point when I yelled "It just isn't reasonable to have that sort of CRIPPLING fear."

This is why we do multiple drafts.