Special Treat

My Horoscope for today:

"Let your healthy ambition take over and lead you to a success you deserve -- the time for hiding behind the spotlight so that others can shine in its glow is over! Right now you are totally on the ball and more importantly, you have the eyes and ears of influential people. So stop hiding your abilities and toot your own horn a little bit more loudly than you think is respectable. Otherwise, you will never stand out from the crowd and get the opportunity you have been waiting for."

Not bad. Rather like it. Now I just have to work on bringing it about.

What with the Holidays and taking care of the fur-people at Steve's I have gotten a little bit off of my usual schedule of career activities, practicing and such. So I am trying to get myself back up to speed with what I need to catch up on.

The good news is that I haven't managed to gain any weight in the past couple of weeks. I was sure that I would have gained a couple of pounds because I haven't really been exercising or watching what I have been eating for the past three weeks or so. I am rather pleasantly surprised.









Today as a special treat for myself and for some career inspiration I went to see James Barbours "The Holiday Concert" at Sardi's in the City.

As he fully admits he usually gets cast as the "dark and broody, guy" in most of the Broadway shows he has done. And he does play that type extremely well. Though here in his own show he does let his real personality shine through which is very upbeat and positive. He just seems so at ease performing and making the audience feel like they are a part of "his" family of friends. During the show he had a couple of friends come up and sing. My only real quibble is that when he introduced his "guests" he didn't always say their full name, so for those of us who recognize them but can't remember their names it is a little frustrating. But that is an extremely minor quibble.

Today is sort of being called Black Sunday due to all of the Broadway shows that are closing today after their afternoon performances. One thing that I really appreciated about James' show was instead of being downcast about it he took the more positive outlook of - Okay this is not good but lets make it an opportunity to create our own work. Lets band together and make the best of this. That is very paraphrased but was the basic outlook.

I loved his musical choices and the audience participation for the "12 Days of Christmas" was lots of goodhearted fun. I will never think of that song in the same way again. And next time I will not hesitate for a second in fully joining in.

This was also my first time at Sardi's. What a wonderful place. I want to go back when I can wonder around a little more and really look at the pictures. I didn't realize that there were so many. The food was good and not as pricey as I had imagined. The wait staff was nice friendly and unobtrusive.

Really enjoyed the performance and the performance space. Very inspiring for looking ahead to things that I want to do myself in the future.

I was a little hesitant going up to James after the show - although I did want to let him know how much I enjoyed the performance he is a fellow performer therefore I want him to see me as a colleague not as a "fan". I have the same issue with meeting any actor or singer that I don't know.

In the end I did go up to say "hi" and must admit it did not go as well as I had wished. I said something lame about wanting to work with him in the future and he sort of brushed it off. Which is Okay and it didn't dampen my feeling about the whole experience in the slightest just let me know that my instincts on this topic is correct.

So after this wonderful experience I sort of floated back home. Did some reading and did some goal planning for the rest of this year.

More on that in the days to come.