The holidays have come to a close and I’ve got a slew of photos to share from my time in Connecticut, New York City, and Cape Cod.

I arrived back in the States three days before Christmas and dove right back into things — a long overdue dentist appointment, a doctor visit, and my parents’ holiday work party. Then disaster struck on the evening of December 23rd and I spent all of Christmas Eve in bed with a stomach virus.

I woke up on Christmas day feeling a thousand times better, but that wasn’t enough to convince my parents I was healthy enough to visit my 95 year old grandmother. My mom snapped this photo of Grandma opening gifts and sent it to me:

So I spent the morning doing laundry and waiting for their return. Such a bummer! We finally opened gifts around 3pm, at which point it started to feel like Christmas, albeit the weirdest one on record.

Here’s my loot — books, The West Wing, and some new travel clothes to replace my threadbare duds from the past year.

And my sister got me this pretty travel-themed pouch from the Etsy Renegade Craft Fair in LA, among other things. I love it.

And then we moved on to Cape Cod, where we consumed the following meals…

The Veal Orleans — my favorite dish at the Jailhouse Tavern in Orleans:

This is a cod and lobster dish from Land Ho (or as my family calls it, Land Whore) in Harwich:

And some Christmas cookies baked by my Aunt Chris:

And we got to catch up with cousins! This was such a treat.

I went for a walk with my parents and their adorable puppy, Bijou, at Breakwater Beach in Brewster (that is a lot of B’s). As you can tell from the length of our shadows, it was late in the day.

The sweetest pup — love her!

My mom and dad:

And I found a new-to-me coffeehouse! After wandering around Chatham in the cold, I came across the Chatham Cookie Company and it was the perfect place to sit down with a latte (and yes, a cookie) while editing photos.

And the best coincidence happened on my first visit. An older gentleman came in to play the piano, as he does most Sunday afternoons. Afterwards I thanked him and we chatted for a few minutes… and it turns out he was the executive producer of two soap operas in New York in the 1960s — Secret Storm and Love of Life. WHAT ARE THE ODDS?! He even knew my old boss, Paul Rauch, a legendary soap producer. Such a small world.

Anyways, this place has a warm and relaxed vibe — the owner, Susan, is very kind, and let me snap a few photos.

I’ll wrap up with my New York City visits… I went three times (!) in the final week of 2013. Here’s what I saw…

Fun Home at the Public

This is the last subject you’d ever expect someone to write a musical about, but it lives up to the high praise awarded by my musical theater-loving friends (Sondheim himself even attended a recent performance). It’s based on the graphic novel / memoir by Alison Bechdel, a lesbian cartoonist, who looks back on her childhood years and reflects on her relationship with her closeted father who committed suicide shortly after she herself came out in college. Her family ran a funeral home, hence the title “Fun Home.” We are presented with three versions of Alison — an adult in the present, a college freshman in the 1980s, and an 8 year old kid. The narrative of the younger Alisons plays out in the same space, interweaving with the present, and in less deft hands the storytelling could be confusing — but director Sam Gold has staged this masterfully. Tony nominee Judy Kuhn and Tony winner Michael Cerveris (nearly unrecognizable in a comb-over wig) are excellent as Alison’s parents. Similarly, Sydney Lucas and Emily Skeggs impressed the heck out of me as Small Alison and Medium Alison. Music by Jeanne Tesori, book and lyrics by Lisa Kron. It’s been extended through January 12th and is well worth checking out.

Big Fish on Broadway

I thoroughly enjoyed Big Fish. Yes, it has its weaknesses (the production closed three days after I saw it), but I was so moved by the story that I can only think about this show on favorable terms. It follows the plot of the movie, chronicling the relationship between a larger-than-life father approaching death and his down-to-earth son eager to learn more about his dad’s past before he goes. We are treated to Susan Stroman’s cinematic staging of far-fetched tales involving mermaids, giants, and witches. But my favorite part of the show was absorbing the astounding abilities of two-time Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz, one of my favorite stage performers, and the silky-voiced Kate Baldwin. There’s nothing like watching true theater veterans do their thing on stage, and in the case of Big Fish it’s absolutely worth the price of admission. Plus I was weeping by the end of the show (as was nearly everyone around me) so the creative team did something right to trigger such a strong response.

The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence at Playwrights Horizons

This is another show widely recommended by my theater friends and I’m so glad I caught it. It’s a little tough to explain but I’ll give it a shot — the show cuts back and forth between multiple timelines, with three actors playing approximations of the same characters across each timeline. The Watson character in each story is alternatively fiction and factual — as the sidekick to Sherlock Holmes, as the assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, as a super computer who become a Jeopardy champion, and as a modern-day tech repair guy looking for love. As the stories intersect, we’re reminded of the interconnectivity of humans and the need to reach out regardless of how far technology advances. I’ll refer to one of the play’s best lines, “It’s our fate to be bound up with one another, isn’t it? We are all born insufficient, and must look to others to supplement our strength. That is not our weakness, it is the first condition of human life. Why, the very success of the telephone is evidence of this need. If we did not rely upon each other so deeply, our nation would not now be strung like a vast, glittering web with eight million miles of connecting wire.”

The Last Two People On Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville presented by Classic Stage Company

I saw this show on closing night (New Year’s Eve) and tickets were originally quite high, but they released a few seats on TDF the day before and I snagged one for $30. It’s a two person show — part revue, part who knows what — starring Mandy Patinkin and theater artist Taylor Mac. This was my first time seeing Mandy perform in person and to say I was stoked would be an understatement. And Taylor Mac’s reputation precedes him; I’ve been curious to watch him on stage for some time. I’ll quote the show description from the press notes because it’s succinct and quite well-worded: “Following a flood of biblical proportions, the last two people on the planet discover their common language is song and dance. Together they chronicle the rise and fall and hopefully rise again of humankind through music that runs the gamut from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Sondeim, R.E.M., and Queen.” It’s SUCH an eclectic mix of songs and I enjoyed each one of them. It made for a very memorable New Year’s Eve.

Here’s a handful of photos from my recent trips into the city:

This is my friend Ed, the script & story coordinator at Young & Restless. It was such a treat to catch up with him in NYC!

I took a covert iPhone shot of the stage at The Last Two People On Earth…

And after the show we went back to my friends’ Brooklyn apartment, which they affectionately dub Neverland.

After playing a couple rounds of Cranium, my friend Sarah took to the piano and played Auld Lang Syne at midnight.

We then proceeded to have piano bar! It’s a regular event in this household where they sing show tunes into the wee hours of the morning, with Sarah accompanying on piano. She is an extremely gifted sight reader.

We sang from She Loves Me, Xanadu, Little Women, and Songs For a New World until around 1:30am. I can’t imagine a better start to 2014 than that.

Happy 2014, everyone!