JANUARY: Started 2003 off at a small party in Rockville, and we barely got the champaign opened and poured into 5 assorted plastic cups for 6 people (the host used the bottle as his "glass") within the very last seconds of the last minute of 2002. SSTG's annual 12th Night party was once again held by Veronica (thanks again Veronica) and as with last year the Roden family made their semi-regular appearance from the wilds of Ohio. This year Veronica had loads of her ribbon winning jams, OK who's got the homemade bread and biscuits to go with it?

FEBRUARY: Well SSTG is doing another premiere, this one is the American Premiere of a British show called Girlfriends by Howard Goodall (who wrote the theme music for Black Adder, Mr. Bean and Red Dwarf). The show is about the women in the British WAAF (Woman's Auxiliary Air Force) in 1941. The SSTG One-Act is back up and I'll be directing it (This Isn't Exactly How I Expected It). We'll be taking it to the MD tournament next month which was originally scheduled for January. And OH yea I took a week off of work round the middle to the near the end of the month, sweeeeeeet! Um AH but the not so sweet part was the Blizzard weather, and my laptop's floppy disk drive dying (sigh! I need to get it repaired or get a replacement floppy drive).

MARCH: Opening night for KATs production of Songs For A New World was outrageous. There were about 65 people 20-30 of which were the teeny-bopper students/fan club of one of the actors in the show it was like an INSYNC concert. They were going nuts. The rest of the performances I attended were tame compared to that one, but closing night the cast got a huge standing Ovation! I couldn't get all the people I needed for the one act so SSTG had to use a different show, Lou Swarda did the Abner the Baseball Monologue a humorous piece about the career of a baseball. He received an Outstanding Actor Award, Congrats Lou! Drat Windows in my Laptop Crashed again and with the A:Drive being out I must take it into a shop to repair the stupid thing.

APRIL: My birthday Month (Hinty, hint, hint) Yippee Yahooie! Well for April Fools day, I updated my website; I gave it a long overdo overhaul (well semi overhaul cause I had overhauled it about a year ago when I made it a framed version). I'm deep busy in rehearsals for KAT's next production Birds of Paradise which I'm only stage managing, it opens May 2nd. You get to read about it in a few moments. That is about it for April.

MAY: Ah it's been awhile since I've updated this. I was so busy this month with Birds that I neglected this review. Let's see the show made some major buckage and KAT is now the proud owners of two brand new modern spotlights. After that show ended I got to run lights for SSTG's US Premiere of Girlfriends closing weekend. Loads of fun there (and I'm not being sarcastic with that statement.) I hear it made major buckage for SSTG, Yea! I've been a major contributor to my friend TJ's Daily Irish News electronic newsletter, so much so that I am now officially the Associate Editor or Assistant Editor or something to that affect. If you've seen my own website lately you'll see an archive of my "Kirk's Knook" column. It's some majorly weird off the cuff stuff. But then that is me in a nutshell, or my nutshell or something.

JUNE: Well membership dues for almost every single theatre group I know about are due the beginning of next month, so once again I'm in the poor house. For SSTG I have taken on the responsibility of Membership Director and for KAT I am still the properties director. For KAT the rep to the WATCH organization dropped the ball so guess who has to pick it up and run with it? That's right I'm now the KAT representative to the WATCH board, which means I have to co-ordinate the KAT Judges and keep on top of them to make sure they view their assigned shows and turn in their ballots. ON a side note, my Mother, Sister and Uncle Charlie are traveling Russia this month for about 3 weeks they return sometime in early to mid July.

JULY: Let's see July started with a bang, KAT held auditions for their August One-Acts, I'm directing one called Places Please! Basically a couple on a date are about to break up when some voices tell them to stay together. The voices turn out to be the director and writer of the couple's scene and they are trying to get the couple back onto the script. It's a nice little 20 minute piece that is so far loads of fun. Mid-month KAT had it's 2nd Annual Fundraising Gala and it brought in some bucks, so KAT is still in the black. OH and the big news on the 13th the British Embassy held its 34th annual Ruby Griffith Awards and guess what, KATs production of Side Show won 2nd Runner up in a Musical! COOL!

AUGUST: Got real busy and didn't get to update this file much. The One Acts went well. At the end of the month I took time off for a real vacation and visited my Friends TJ, his wife Ellen and Keith in Pompano Beach (North Miami) Florida. Most of it was fun time including a day trip to the FL Keys and the southern most point of the continental US in Key West, Watched the Sun Set there and headed back to the Miami Vices. Hmmm the trip was mostly food related though, it seemed like we were always eating or talking about where next to eat.

SEPTEMBER: Not much except trying to get back to normal after visiting Florida. Rehearsals are in full swing for KAT Cabaret and now SSTGs Dancing at Lughnasa. OH yea and my laptop even though I had sent it out for repairs is still funky, the A:drive reads disk directories and opens some document files but doesn't open graphic files from disc, and my DVD/CD-ROM drive doesn't do the DVD part. I might have deleted those files way back earlier in the year when I was trying to save some stuff on the system save D:drive ARRRGGGGHH. OH and Hurricane Isabel knocked out our power for about 2.5 days.

OCTOBER: Laptop crashed again ugh. Not much has been going on at work other than the fact that it sucks. I guess that means I need a new job. Finally caught up with updating a chunk of my website yea! Like anybody really cares.

NOVEMBER: Cabaret, Cabaret, Cabaret, Dancing at Lughnasa, Cabaret. Did sound design for KATs production of Cabaret which had packed houses closing weekend, and juggled that with operating lights and sound for SSTGs production of Dancing At Lughnasa.

DECEMBER: Nothing too spectacular this month. The year has flown by sooooo fast I can't keep up with it. Got no plans for New Years but as with years past I'm sure something will come up at the last moment.

Plans for 2004:

• Try to keep this silly tradition going and keep up with the updating of it unlike this past year.
• Keep juggling between KAT and SSTG [This is a necessity not a desire]

Kirk