A little bit about me.

Is it time for the quarterly update? If you're in the camp that's curious as to how am I really and not just what shows I'm doingand what cities I'm in, read on.

In some ways I'm still climbing out of a deep dark hole that began when I quit Ramerican Rexpress in 2002. At the time I thought I'd be making a bajillion dollars doing corporate improv trainings, but that turned out not to be true. Yes, I do some, but it turns out I'm terrible at marketing and the demand fell with the economy. Instead, quite quickly the free-spending of the past caught up with me, crashy crashy, brokey brokey, poor Jilly.

The moral is, it's like I noticed the other day as I was practicing pratfalls. Anybody can fall down. The trick is in getting back up.

I spent six months in Chicago in 2003-2004, mostly hungry and cold and on the train to and from my mom's house. I studied improv at IO and Annoyance and did some shows at WNEP and the Second City Training Center. What I learned is, yeah, I'm pretty good at improv, so I went home. Since then things have been on an upswing. I paid the IRS a lot, I owe them a lot more, but they're more thoughtful and polite than you've been led to believe. My folks gave me a laptop so I finally get to write and surf and drink coffee all over town as I always thought I would be. I paid off all my credit cards, there's not a cent left. I'm living indoors and paying my bills. I have an adorable temp job that's ridiculously flexible and fills in when improv lets my pocketbook down.

But that's only money, as for the rest... I'm really happy that I get to go all over the place and teach and perform. I can't imagine any better life than going to improvise with people everywhere. It seems like I'm somewhere else in the country at least once a month and that's a fantastic schedule. Plus I play & teach at ComedySportz and there's HUGE WEDNESDAYS and Resist Butch and whatever goofy side-project. We've taught a couple of Tiny Improv classes; it's hard to get going, but they've been really great. I've been teaching a lot with high schoolers. It turns out they're really great collaborators, and I've realized the selfish benefit of training an army of young improvisors what I believe improv can be. Rock on.

But that's only improv, as for the rest... My brother and sister-in-lawand tiny nephew have moved back to Minnesota for grad school, so I havefamily near again - that feels fantastic, even if we haven't logged the fambily hours that we used to yet.

GODDAMMIT, ARE YOU SEEING ANYONE? the crowd roars, and I continue to be evasive as I don't know what to say.