Wow. It's been quite a while since I've written anything, eh? Lots has happened and I wish I would have kept you up to date on a more consistant basis as I'm sure it'd have been more complete and interesting than getting the Cliff Note version now. But, that's what ya get. I'll try to be better about updates in the future.

I was very sick for a week or two in mid March. I woke up on March 9 with a fever of 102 degrees. I was conjested, coughing, and had a headache. The fever went down after a day and the symptoms slowly subsided. But I remain congested still. Since I was sick and ran the risk of infecting other people I stayed home. No school, no rehearsals, no fun.

My main problem for a few days was that for some reason a symptom I had was that my taste buds were out of whack. I don't understand it at all. Everything I ate or drank tasted horrible. The problem with that, other than being extremely annoying, was I hadn't eaten much at all and in turn got really weak.

Another big problem was that Julie was coming home at the end of the week and we were supposed to see each other, the first time in years after many months of talking on the computer and phone. We had gotten pretty close over the past several months and were both really looking forward to it. We were also planning on seeing Little Shop of Horrors back at Del Mar, our high school. But here I was lying in bed. I got considerably better though by the end of the week, though still weak and coughing bad, and indeed got to spend time with Julie.

Julie came over that Friday night and got to see Buddy, our pet iguana that she found with my brother Scott during my senior year on a break from Anything Goes rehearsals. She got to see my parents and then we were off to the movies to see Life is Beautiful. We spent a little too much time here and were late to the movie so we had to see She's All That. Horrible movie. But I was with Julie. Not so bad at all. I was dissapointed that we weren't seeing Life is Beautiful as I adore the film and kept telling Julie how wonderful it was for such a long time and now we were finally together and she was going to see it and then we missed it. Oh well. We saw Little Shop the next night and then she went back to UCSB the next day.

This is Julie and me at my senior prom four years ago. This is one of Julie's grad pics from last year. Note the reduction of hair.

I had two big auditions coming up. One was for a repertory theatre company in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco and about an 100 miles north of San Jose, called Summer Repertory Theatre. It's summer stock, they do five shows and cast actors to do three of the five during the season. My audition didn't go over extremely wonderful. It was not one of my best. Oh well, I had another coming up... In my last journal entry I told you I had a callback for The Western Stage theatre company coming up. It went very well and they called me back a second time about two weeks ago. Their company is in Salinas which is about an hour and a half south of San Jose. I went and spent about five hours there singing, dancing, reading for directors.

A couple days later I woke up to a phone call. It was Summer Rep calling to offer me an acting position in their company. Whoa! That's a gig I never counted on getting. But I wouldn't know about The Western Stage for another couple of weeks. I mailed in my contract with SRT yesterday and will be spending eleven weeks in Santa Rosa this summer doing three shows. If you're in Northern California, or will be this summer, think about coming to see me!

After seeing Julie for a little bit when she came back up for the weekend many weeks ago I couldn't wait for her to come back for a longer period of time. That time was spring break and it started a week and a half ago when she finished with her classes and drove back home. It was my break too and that allowed us to spend quite a bit of time together. I am extremely happy to have had the time with her and to let you know that we are again a couple. The show I'm in for school opens and closes later this week but the weekend after, in two weeks, I'll get to go down to visit her and maybe even take her down to LA to see The Last Session. By the way, we did get to see Life is Beautiful and Julie really liked it though I'm not sure she thought it was the best film she's ever seen like I do but that's okay. We also went to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show that my brother is in. Neither of us had ever seen it before, let alone with my brother in skimpy gold hot pants playing Rocky. It was an interesting experience that I'm glad I was able to experience with Julie even though we're both still finding confetti all over the place. She left this morning for Santa Barbara. T minus two weeks and counting...

Aren't we adorable?

I just realized that tomorrow marks a year since I started keeping this journal. I started off very consistant and slowly got less and less. But in the end I've averaged out writing about once every six days. I'll try to write again in less than six...

By the way, I see many people coming in to check to see if I've updated the journal and a good portion of those I see come back time and time again I don't recognize. If you do read this, or check to see how long it takes me to write another, please let me know who you are. It's a good thing.

Apparently Die, Die, Diana has gotten even more press months after the premiere closed here at State. I was just told this morning that we got a mention in the May 1999 Playboy. This gives me a chance to not only buy the mag but let everyone know that I just bought it for the articles.

One more thing, if you've ever wanted proof that there are really weird people out there doing really weird things... check out all the current auctions at ebay for all things "Alf related.

Hey, would you be interested in a radio station that played Broadway music twenty four hours a day?

- mark