What a day. What an evening last night.

I have one whopping big hang-over, which is still with me at 5:30 in the evening.

One amazing thing about last night was all the love and support I felt. I was so utterly devistated when I came home from the office yesterday, with my sad little box of personal belongings. I phoned several people and told them the horrifying news, worried as much as anything else for their livelyhood as designers and directors and actors. I had been in the process of lining up next season, and had offered work to a great number of people, but no contracts had been signed and I had no idea what was going to happen.

I had left a message for R and called me back about an hour later, totally stunned. All he could say was "..... WHAT? ..... WHAT?" I mentioned that I thought I was going to go down to the theatre bar in the evening for a drink, and he said "Screw this evening. Let's go now. I'm on my way to come get you."

It turned into a weird kind a drunken party, as more and more people showed up as the afternoon and evening wore on. People had heard the news and just came down to the bar. Eventually, there were about 20 people there, all shocked and appalled and very angry. A lot of them were talking about how they weren't going to ever go work there again, no matter what. R said he'd rather go get a job at Home Depot.

Jesse, the dear bar-owner, bought all my drinks. Arlene, who is his Aunt and his business partner and does all the cooking and catering, who has herslef just been going through 5 rounds of Chemo for ovarian cancer, tried to lend me money, and offered me some catering jobs for later this month.

My friends Mark cried even more than I did, and just kept saying how awful and wrong it was. And he offered me a Stage Management job for next November/December, on top of the directing gig I already have for his company in January, so a little work is coming in already, thank god. Cause I seriously broke.

The company gave me a grand old severance package of 3 months. After 17 years. And after taxes, since I made so little money anyway, it's not much. And I can't cash it at the moment, because I went to see a lawyer this afternoon and he's going to see if he can get me more money and said I shouldn't cash the cheques. So all I could put in the bank was a little holiday pay and last week's salary. But at least it'll get me by for a couple of weeks, if I'm frugal. They also want me to sign a confidentiality agreement to get the second half of the severance money, but I told the lawyer I didn't want to sign it, and he sais he didn't think theu could withhold the money, since they contractually owe it to me whether I sign or not. So fuck them.

The lawyer was a cool guy. I've never retained a lawyer before and it felt pretty weird. He's young, and kinda hip, and he likes the theatre so he reduced his fee for me and dropped his retainer fee by half, and promised he would bill me for a few hours as possible, probably about 5 in all. Nice guy. He's going to review the paperwork and some case law on the weekend and then I'll meet with him on Monday and he thinks we'll probably draft a letter to the company.

The phone rang off the hook last night and all day today. Last night, I actually talked on the phone until my battery died. People have been calling me all day, since there were brief articles in both papers, and now everyone knows. All just calling the tell me how sorry they are and how wrong it is.

I'm exhusted and I think it's time to curl up on the couch with some bad food and a movie. Thank you all for the kind words and support you've shown me here as well. It's nice to know that for every one of those raging assholes out there, there are so many more good, loving, wonderful people. And I'm so lucky to count so many of them as my friends.

I'm hanging in.