Jon Satrom

Me chilling with a stone statue of Bob Newhart at the Navy Pier in Chicago

The ferris wheel at the Navy Pier (which we rode and had a great view of Chicago)

The Chicago skyline from the top of the ferris wheel!

Marc and I starting a jug band at a flea market in Kentucky…

A picture of the menu at our hotel restaurant in Chicago where they serve (yes, you read that correctly...) BUTT STEAK!!!!!  “Yes hi, I’d like the butt steak please!”

Hanging out in the giant rollerskate at the roller rink in Kentucky!

Wild Thing!!  Do you love the bright red roller skates?  I felt like I was back in junior high school at the Rt. 100 Rollerskating Rink

Melissa at our first karaoke night of debauchery! 

Jay in pigtails during a sound check at one of the theatres!

Abby playing with her kamikaze balloons that Marc and I purchased for her at the dollar store for random gift giving day on the bus!

Me with Nellie on the day of Nellie’s last performance (aka the day I dumped an entire bag of glitter onto her head during the show!)

The Tom Sawyer Diner!!!! (Which used to be located about a minute away from my house in PA, and is now on 2nd St. in Harrisburg) I was freaking out when I saw it!

Some of the gang out to dinner in Minneapolis at a really nice little place called Trattoria Roma

BOWLING IN GEORGIA!!!

Really beautiful theatre in Colombus, Georgia

Me as a ghost at the pumpkin patch that we went to in Charleston, SC to go through the corn maze!!

Walking through the corn maze with the huge flag that Melissa had to carry so that if we got lost the woman at the front could come and find us! (We did not get lost though!!!)

The end of the corn maze!! We set a new record (19 minutes)…

Me working the Charlie Brown shirt once again for Halloween night!  The whole cast and crew went as the Peanuts gang!

The whole gang dressed up and ready to go out on the town!

Charlie Brown and sister Sally Brown!!

We decorated our company manager’s hotel room door on the day of her birthday!

Our bus all decorated for Halloween courtesy of Me, Marc, and a DOLLAR STORE!

Jay and T-rex wrestling in the toy store

FLORIDA!!!!!!!!

Laura rockin’ the skeeball in the Dave and Buster’s in Jacksonville, FL

Me, the proud papa of a tweety bird in a cage (won with my ticket earnings from Dave and Buster’s) He had a nice spot hanging in my bus seat until he was kidnapped by a cast member and held for ransom!!  Don’t worry though, he’s back with me now… : )

The Shogun Japanese Steakhouse in Macon, Georgia

Tweety’s cage hanging EMPTY after he was stolen!!!!!

The VIP treatment at the NC Blumenthal Center in Charlotte, NC

A shot from the stage at the Blumenthal Center

Aunt Sue and Grandma after the show in Charlotte!!

Me singing karaoke in Schenectady, NY!

Melissa and Tiffany rocking the microphone

Us outside of our theatre in Charlottesville, VA

Marc and I displaying our disapproval over the fact that Dorothy the Dinosaur Dance Party had billing and we didn’t!!!

All of us with our 2 for 1 beers at happy hour at a brewery called Hops in Gainesville, FL

Marta’s birthday dinner in Charleston

Waiting to go into the Haunted Old City Jail Tour in Charleston, SC!

Well, we are just about to have our week off for Thanksgiving and we are currently in Schenectady, NY.  We have been here since Thursday night, and have had a good time because this is actually Marc’s home town so he has been showing us the sights and driving us around in his mom’s van!  We ate a really nice dinner at the Macaroni Grill on Thursday, and yesterday we went to the mall during the day, took a driving tour of Schenectady led by Marc, and then that night we headed out for an evening of karaoke!  We all had a lot of fun.  Tonight, we are heading over to Marc’s parents house for dinner, which we are very excited about.  His mom is making a nice Spanish dinner with rice and beans, empanadas, and platanos!  We are going to pull the tour bus right up to his house.

We’ve had a nice warm few weeks down in Florida and Georgia.  Its been great to be down South as it is starting to get colder up at home.  We had four days in Macon, Georgia and there wasn’t much to do in the town itself, but our audiences were fantastic!  They were huge crowds and very responsive.  The theatre and staff were great too, so it was a pretty fun few days.  We even had a wonderful wardrobe guy who (without my asking) folded the clothing that I wore to the theatre during the show and had it in a nice, neat pile at my dressing room station when i came down after the show.  It was so nice!  After Georgia, we were back down in Florida again for awhile, and I love the sight of palm trees!! (I think i may have already mentioned that).  We had our largest audience to date while we were in West Palm Beach, Fl (over 1700 people!!) It was really cool...It was a huge theatre and all three balconies were full.

We then headed for Charlotte, North Carolina and Aunt Sue and Grandma came up to see the show!  It was really nice of them to make the trip and great to see both of them.  We will be stopping through Winston-Salem sometime in April and are hopefully going to have everyone over to Aunt Sue’s for dinner that night!  Grandma will also be seeing the show again when we come through Fayateville, Arkansas and I told her to bring all of her friends!! 

Then we had a really long drive up to Harrisburg, which was made even longer because we got stuck in about an hour and a half of traffic.  We finally made it though, and we didn’t have to perform the next day so it wasn’t too much of a problem.  On our way to Schenectady, the wierdest thing happened!!!  We stopped for lunch in ALLENTOWN, my hometown.  We got off the Hamilton Blvd. exit off 78, which is my exit!  We were about 2 minutes away from my house for our lunch stop and I hadn’t even said anything.  It was purely coincidental, that is just where we happened to be at lunchtime.  We drove right past Dorney Park in the tour bus and ate at the Boston Market over by TGI Friday’s (for those of you who know where i mean!) It was really strange to be right there and have to get back on the bus and keep going to Schenectady!  So we were in both my hometown and Marc’s in one day! 

Well, this past week was a lot of fun because we had some shows get cancelled in Birmingham, Alabama so they rerouted us straight to Charleston which is where our next performance was to be.  So it worked out that we were going to have about five straight days off in Charleston fully paid.  We also ended up being really lucky because we were staying at a Hampton Inn (which is Hilton affiliated and therefore has REALLY comfortable beds).  There was also a 24-hour Waffle House next to the hotel, where we made friends with two of the waitresses (one of whom came to see the show on Saturday with her kids!)

Since we had so many days off, we had a good time looking up activities to entertain ourselves in Charleston.  We also rented a van so we could get around more easily without having to take cabs everywhere.  Everyone just chipped in for the van so it ended up being much cheaper than cabs for the whole week would have been. 

We went through a corn maze our first day in town and we got through the whole maze in 19 minutes and 52 seconds, which the woman who was working there told us was a new record!  Apparently 22 minutes had been the fastest time before us.  We even wasted some extra time in the “pirates treasure” area which turned out to be a whole lot of NOTHING!  That night, we headed downtown with the whole crew to have a great meal at a seafood place called A.W. Shuck’s.  I got the crabcake and stuffed shrimp dinner and it was delicious.  Afterwards, we all went to see a campy show called “The Vampire Lesbians of Sodom” which is a play by Charles Busch.  It was pretty bad, but almost to the point that it was so bad that it was funny and enjoyable.  It was performed by a local improv troupe and some of them were really excellent, but most of them were kinda terrible.  It was in a fun little theatre that reminded me of the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre in NYC and you could buy beer and wine and bring it into the theatre (where there were cupholders to put it in). 

The next night was Halloween and the whole Discover Theater crew dressed up as the Peanuts Gang!  I was Charlie Brown (because I had saved my Charlie Brown shirt from when I played the role in “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown” in high school).  Several of our crew worked very hard on their costumes and had to put them together from scratch so they weren’t pleased that my costume was essentially done before I even started!!) Although, I did need yellow socks and could not find any in the wal-mart so I bought yellow fabric dye and dyed a pair of my white ones.  When everyone was ready, we headed out on the town and went to the Mellow Mushroom, which was having a “Halloween in Hollywood” party.  You had to be dressed as a Hollywood character or figure to get in the door, and we qualified as The Peanuts Gang!  It was a good time and it was fun to see all of the other costumes in the place!!!

We spent many days in downtown Charleston which is a really great little town.  There is an outdoor market where vendors come every day to sell their stuff that lasts for several blocks.  The types of shops and restaurants reminded me a lot of a beach town.  It was a really charming little place.  We had some GREAT meals and I did a little bit of shopping too.  We also took a haunted ghost tour of The Old City Jail, which is hundreds of years old.  It was built on top of an old cemetary and none of the bodies were dug up so legend has it that the jail is haunted.  It was a really interesting tour!!

Our time in Charleston ended with us going back to work.  The rest of the cast had an understudy rehearsal on Friday night, but since I don’t understudy any other character I got to sit out in the audience and watch and videotape the rehearsal to send to our producer.  It was SO bizarre to watch the show and see everyone else playing a different role (and someone else playing my role!) BUT, it was a lot of fun to see and they did a really fantastic job!  Everyone thought it was going to be more of a disaster than it was!  The next day we did two performances at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center.  At the night show, our production manager and lighting designer were there because they live close by.  It was great to see them again, and during the week the crew had worked in the production manager’s studio (which is in Charleston) to fix some things with the props and set.  We were also very pleased to hear that our waitress friend (who we called “J") came to the night show with her children and told our company manager afterwards that she LOVED the show!

We are now in Florida, and it is WARM!!!  I also love seeing the palm trees.  Even though they are everywhere and commonplace down here it still makes me feel like i’m on vacation just seeing them since I don’t see them often!  We pulled into Jacksonville today and we have two shows here tomorrow.  Tonight though, we went to Dave And Buster’s (which for those of you who don’t know is like a Chuck E. Cheese for adults!!) It is games and such with food and alcohol involved!!  It was a lot of fun, and as a result of my ticket winnings I am now the proud owner of a stuffed tweety bird in a cage and two chinese finger traps!! All in all a productive evening I think!!! 

Going to sleep soon sincce we have two shows tomorrow.  Lots of pictures to come soon!!!