drawn and quartered

The first couple of days of theater critic boot camp have not been terrible, although I would really love to get some honest sleep soon. And eat trustworthy food; I'd forgotten what we ask our young college-living people to survive on. I have this whole post about my goofy colleagues that I can't load onto the single Web-enabled computer available to non-employees of the O'Neill Center. Maybe it's best, as I wrote it at about 5 am after cranking out 600 words on a very strange new musical about junkies.

I may have to to bump up my departure date; I'm getting panicky about making it back to Boston in time to get my flight out of Logan. I hadn't thought about the Convention starting the same day I'm in transit, but apparently everyone's all worried about terrorists and checkpoints and what-have-you. I'll probably look like a terrorist myself by that time, and I am hauling around quite a bit of electronic equipment.

Or maybe I'm just justifying my intense need to get back to a real city, with real food, and with sidewalks and so forth; I'm already getting a little tired of shuttling back and forth through the rain between the Center and the college where we've been housed.

We got into it a little bit yesterday about blogs, interestingly enough; I got the distinct impression that I was the only blogger in the group. People were going on about the temerity of "regular people" (read: non-critics) blogging about shows and possibly lowering the public perception of theater reporting. Oh, please.

The horde returns. Must... find... coffee... This afternoon, we get lectured on Shaw.