Reason #5829 why I like going to Starbucks

Every evening, my co-worker and I run out for a treat at Starbucks to get us through the rehearsals and meetings we have to attend every night. There's usually quite a line, and we enjoy a brief break from the office bantering about the day's events and joking about the Marshmallow Dream Bars. (You see, they're really Rice Krispie treats. But if you ask for a rice krispie treat, the barista get's all huffy and explains that they're MARSHMALLOW DREAM BARS... it's hilarious!)

Anyway, as the line we were in made it's way closer to the counter, my co-worker started punching me on the arm whispering "It's DWIGHT SCHRUTE" over and over! I turned around and saw nothing. But after a few more punches, guess who I spotted?
It turns out that Rainn Wilson was standing in line just behind us. Can you believe it?
We love The Office, so we were pretty stoked! That's one exciting thing about living in the city (and just one more reason to love Starbucks)... you never know who you'll run into!

One of my guilty pleasures...

Yesterday my co-worker and I had tickets to My Big Italian Gay Wedding. Have you heard of this Off-Broadway show? It's a comedy that follows the trials and tribulations of a couple trying to throw a wedding... an Italian wedding, no less!
The show was quite funny- do you know why? (It's hard to tell, but this is a picture of the theater...)
Well, remember my hint from yesterday? (New Jersey?)
Guess who were the guest stars in the show for 4 nights?
That's right- The Real Housewives of New Jersey! The ladies, along with two of their daughters, had a limited engagement with the show as a fundraiser for Marriage Equality. As I've mentioned, I'm a Bravo junkie and TRHONJ is one of my guilty pleasures! My co-worker also loves the show, so when the opportunity arose to see the this play with our favorite housewives in the starring roles, we couldn't help ourselves! Our tickets were held for us at the box office, so last night we arrived to the theater about 45 minutes before curtain to pick them up... imagine our surprise as we exited the lobby and saw Caroline, Lauren, Ashley and Jacqueline! We were so excited, figuring that was as close as we would get to them all night.
Boy were we wrong! (Sorry for the picture quality- apparently Dina is just too pretty for my camera to photograph!)
We ended up meeting the cast after the show! The ladies were extremely nice, and we spoke to everyone for at least 5 minutes each! Dina was the show's producer, and we spoke to her at length about her work and how much we missed her on The Real Housewives of New Jersey. She couldn't have been nicer or more interested in speaking with us- no wonder we all love her! Then we talked to Lauren about how funny she was in the play we had just seen, and she told us about how on the TV show her brothers outshine her, but in real life she's hilarious- we were all laughing pretty hard at that! Then Jacqueline ran by and shook our hands before jumping into her limo (apparently Teresa was ready to go and Jacqueline was making her late). And finally we got to see Caroline. She was absolutely wonderful in the play (her hairdos were insane, as you can see)- and she couldn't have been nicer in person. She asked how we felt about the show and thanked us for supporting a cause that meant so much to her!
As you can tell, it was a really fun night! Thanks for stopping by- I hope you have a great weekend!

Game night!

Have you ever played Celebrity? I like to pretend that it was created by my friends at NU, but apparently that isn't so. In any event, a few of my college friends got together last night for a Game Night, where we enjoyed a rocking game of Celebrity.

Here's how WE play. First, everyone is given a few slips of paper- we went with 6 pieces each, but you can do more or less, depending on how many people are playing and how long you want the game to last. Each person takes the time to right a person's name on each slip of paper before returning it to the bowl. But the term "person" doesn't limit you to real people- you can also include characters names, etc. If you're like my friends and I, this is one of the more difficult parts of the game. You want to include really challenging names- especially ones that will make people say "wow- that was a good one".

Once everyone has put their names in the bowl, it's time to pick teams. You can play with just two teams, or more... just so long as each team has the same amount of people. After team names are created (for scoring purposes), it's time to begin the first round. I'm going to rely on Wikipedia for the next instructions:

One team is chosen to go first, and that team selects a player to give clues to the rest of his or her team. Play begins when the clue-giver picks a name out of the bowl- from that moment, he or she has 45 seconds to get his/her team to guess as many names as possible before time runs out.
In the first round, the clue-giver can say anything he or she wants as long as it is not any part of the celebrity's name or a direct reference to the name.
When the team guesses the celebrity name correctly, the clue-giver draws another name from the bowl and continues until time is up or there are no more names in the bowl.
When time is up, the current clue is reinserted into the bowl, since it hasn't been guessed. The team is awarded a point for every name they guessed correctly. The next team then picks a clue-giver and play continues until there are no more names in the bowl. Teams must rotate the clue-giver each round until every member of the team has been given a chance.

I hope this isn't too confusing, because there's MORE! After all the names have been guessed in the first round, the slips of paper are all put BACK in the bowl for round two. This round works the same way, except the clue-giver is now limited to ONLY two words. The words can be repeated many times, but those are the only two words the clue-giver can offer for each name. After all the names are gone through, the third round continues in the same manner, except the clue-giver must remain SILENT and instead acts out the names, just like Charades. After all three rounds, the team with the most points (i.e. the most correctly guessed names in all three rounds) wins.

Since we've been playing a while, here's the most important thing we've learned: Always listen to the clue-giving with the other team(s)! Even if you're not the team guessing, it's smart to listen to the other names that are in the bowl, since chances are you'll come across them in the next rounds.

Last night, the festivities took place at my friend's house. Here are the yummy snacks he made, along with the bowl of names on the upper left corner of the photo. Since there were 12 people playing the game, we had 72 names in the bowl...

As far as the names in our bowl last night, they covered the spectrum. Since there were so many NU people there, some of our clues were VERY Northwestern oriented, including "Willy the Wildcat", "Virgil Johnson" and "Sherrill Milnes" (the later two are professors at NU). Of course, there were the usuals like Buddha, Jack Daniels and President Obama; there were also tributes to the recently passed, including Ed McMahon and Michael Jackson. We had normal celebrities, including Goldie Hawn, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Lily Tomlin, and Wanda Sykes, but those paled in comparison to names like "Nessa Rose" (a character in the musical Wicked), Donna Martin (Tori Spelling's character in 90210), and Donkey (specifically the one Mary rode in the bible, not the character in Shrek). But please don't think we're all fluff- we also had names like Theodore Dostoevsky and Machmud Ahmadinejad.(Yeah, imagine acting THOSE out!)
We had a great time, though I'm pretty sure my friend's neighbors were happy to see us leave... I mean, how long can you take a bunch of people yelling (at the top of the their lungs, since we're all performance majors and NEED to be heard) random names for hours on end?

I hope you're having a good Wednesday so far!