Greetings from Charlotte!

It’s a beautiful, sunny morning in Charlotte, though I’m still enjoying it through the window of my hotel room, as I lazily prepare for our first day of auditions here. I’ll just be watching our callbacks all day, so I don’t have to rush around to get to the general auditions when they start this morning. I suppose I’ve achieved something when I get to hire other people to do all the rushing around.

Charlotte is really a lovely city, though I admit I’ve only seen about three blocks worth of it so far. After arriving yesterday, our assistant production manager and I walked over to the theater where they were doing registrations, and there was an Indian cultural festival of some kind going on in the street. Multiple booths with delicious, spicy-smelling food, and lots of women walking around in colorful saris, it was really a nice welcome to the city.

For anyone who might be wondering, I ended up not taking any of the advice I was given on what manga to bring on the plane, though I did try. Our local bookstores and the comic shop were unhelpful in my search for volume 1 of Dororo (though I could get volumes 2 & 3 at one Barnes & Noble), which was what I’d most strongly considered. I’m happy with my choice, though. I ended up getting the first three volumes of Nana (which I’ve meant to read for a long time, finally cemented by Johanna Draper Carlson’s recent review of volume 9), and wow, what a charming series! Now of course I’m wishing I’d bought more of it, but the volumes I had effectively dulled the horror of my two flights yesterday, so I’m very grateful to them.

Time to start rallying myself to the day’s cause. More later, perhaps. In conclusion: Banana Fish. :D