More worrisome things have been tackled, causing the excitement v. terror balance to swing even more toward excitement.

Our “ReloCube” is reserved, and we have the OK from the apartment building to put it in a parking spot next to the building over the last weekend of the month.

I checked with our car insurance (Allstate), and we’re well-covered on the new car. Also, even though we’ll need to switch to another agent when we move, our coverage is good to go for the long drive and the time it takes to set up residency.

Scott’s heart is lighter, because I found out that there are approximately 3500 open jobs right now at WDW (with current full-time openings in Attractions [ride operators], Monorail, Downtown Disney Ticketing and much more), and tons of apartments to be had. Heck, one lady I contacted wanted me to fill out and fax back an application without even seeing an apartment — they want new tenants that desperately. So we shouldn’t have a problem when we go a-hunting.

After their terrifying vet ordeal yesterday, where they each shed a ton of hair, the cats are incredibly soft and smell really good. Weird how that works.

I took the cats to the vet this morning, to get general checkups and get a health certificate so they can fly. Poor little fraidy cats, they were real champs — they meowed a lot, and did some cowering, but were fairly cooperative with the vet. Nobody likes getting the ol’ rectal thermometer, or the rabies vaccination shot in the haunch.

The vet recommended something called “Rescue Remedy” for the flight — supposedly it will mellow them out enough so it’s not 6 hours of “Mew. Mew. Mew. Mew.” Poor guys. They’re both overweight, with Trouble clocking in at 13.5 pounds and Commie at an impressive 16 pounds. So as soon as we settle in at the other end of this adventure, it’s diet time.

I took them in their old hardside carriers. We have new softside ones for the flight, but I didn’t want to create a negative memory of the new carriers just yet. The new carriers are sitting open on the floor, so they can hop in and out of them at will and get used to them.

They’re mostly back to normal now, and don’t seem to be harboring any specific ill will toward me.

All right … since we’re still kind of on Eastern time, we were up at 5:45 this morning. I tackled the photo editing and commentary, and it’s not even lunchtime. Long story short, even though it was a short trip, we had a fantastic time.

The business portion of the trip went amazingly well. I had two callbacks on Friday: one at 9am for the Comedy Warehouse, and one at 1pm for street actors. Only 6 of us were called back for the Warehouse, which was cozy. We were joined by three Warehouse performers (two of whom I remember from 10 years ago) and a pianist. We ran through some of their games and songs, pretty much standard improv stuff. We mixed it up playing with auditioners and performers, which was nice. The big joy was that since it was a callback, nobody was sucky.

The street stuff callback had 14 people, but it’s a much larger scope show. We did some character warmups in a group, then went in one by one to do some individual character work. Basically, we were given instructions like, “You were once a huge movie star, but now you’re more of a washed-up Norma Desmond type,” and then we had to interact with the guys behind the desk. I was the second-to-last to be called in, so I got to chat with lots of people while we waited. Most of them do several jobs throughout the parks (and over at Universal too) — one, for example, does Cruella DeVil as well as hosting Fear Factor Live.

They told me they’re making some casting decisions in the next couple of weeks, or at the latest by the end of the month. The senior VP made sure I had his card and told me to call him anytime and he’d keep me updated. They also thanked me profusely more than once for coming so far to make the callbacks — it was me, a chick who drove down 15 hours from Indiana, and a bunch of people who already live in Florida.

So we’ll see — they seemed to like me, but who knows. I may be offered something full-time, or part-time, or I may not get an offer at all. But if I don’t get anything at this time, I’m pretty sure they’ll keep me in mind for other upcoming stuff.

After a solid night’s sleep, I’m nearly back to normal. In brief…

Friday we headed out on United, leaving Seattle around 8:45am. With the time change, that put us into Chicago around 2:30pm. We then had to walk quite a ways to the train station, so we could catch the blue line into the city. It was almost 4:30 by the time we got to the hotel, and we found out we had to be at the theater for setup at 5:30. We pretty much dropped off our stuff and headed out, stopping by a joint called Muskie’s on the way for some food. Dougie and I got gyros, which we both thought were pretty darned good.

We set up the stage for our show, then went backstage to change. We had a short time slot, something like 37 minutes, so we had to do the abridged version of Reality World. Which is a shame, because it’s magnificent at its full 1.5-hour length. It was a pretty good show, but the venue was smaller than we’d hoped. Still, quite a few other improvisers came to see it, which is always a good endorsement. We packed up our stuff and took it back to the hotel, so I didn’t get to hang around and meet Matthew … thanks for coming, man!

We went back to the theater for various shows, and also had a couple of beers at the nearby bar. I headed home early, before midnight, because I had to be up and back to the theater the next morning.

Saturday I was up earlier than my alarm, because I didn’t sleep very well. Chicago is NOISY! We had the air conditioner on to drown out some of the noise, but there were buses and cars and shouting and honking all night long. People honk their car horns a LOT there. Plus, I just don’t sleep well in hotel beds, so I probably netted 4 hours or so of sleep, and woke up every hour or so. Oh well.

I hit the theater at 10am for my Walt Disney World audition, and was put in the 10:10 group. We went in every 10 minutes in groups of 6. We did a few familiar warm-up exercises in the hallway, then went in and met the two casting directors. One was looking specifically for people to work at the Comedy Warehouse, the improv club on Pleasure Island. The other was a bigger casting mucky-muck, looking for people to fill spots in shows in all of the properties. We did a few short games, including singing a blues line. Our 6 was split into two groups of three — my group did Death By Story, the other answered questions while speaking in synch. I’ve seen enough improvisers audition, I could have told you that three of us would be kept around, and three would go home … and so it was. We were given the official audition application forms, and asked to stay for a callback.

Then we sat and gabbed for two hours. They made it through over a dozen groups, and slowly other people joined us in our little holding area; some were tapped to do more group improv for the Comedy Warehouse, like me. Others were given sides to read for specific shows — two guys got surfer-dude stuff for Turtle Talk with Crash, one guy was doing Captain Jack Sparrow, a girl got Who Wants to be a Millionaire: Play It! hosting sides (I was jealous). Finally, the five of us who were asked to stay for Comedy Warehouse went back in. We sang a hoe-down (in the style of “Whose Line is it Anyway?”) and did a couple of straight scenes, then an Instant Musical. Nothing unfamiliar, so I just relaxed and tried to do my best. They videotaped the callback, so I made sure to be bright and cheery and very attentive to whoever was speaking — hopefully that’ll help me stand out in the background in addition to what I did during my improv scenes.

I got out of there at 1, and lucked out — most of my group was having lunch in the Golden Apple Restaurant, across the street from the theater. We returned to the hotel, and a group of us decided to go downtown. We headed out on the “L”, and walked around the big waterfront park in a growing rain. By the time we found the big shiny bean sculpture, I was soaked. We got back to the hotel around 5, and I decided to just stay in — my work for this business trip was done, and my traveling clothes and shoes were soaking wet. So I watched TV (saw “Zoolander” for the first time) and put loads of clothes on the heater, then went to the Borders next door to grab a book for the trip home (I got Chuck Palahniuk’s “Haunted”).

Sunday morning … Kate’s flight left at 6am, so she just stayed up all night. She came back to the room around 4am and got her bags. Didn’t really wake me up more than usual, since I spent most of yet another night waking up every hour or so and tossing around in bed. 5am? Nah, too early to get up. 5:50? Too early. 6:30? Too early. I gave up around 7:30, got up, showered, finished packing, had some continental breakfast, then met up with Ethan, Doug and Mike at 9. We were going to take public transit back to O’Hare, but ended up taking a taxi instead.

Our flight left a little before noon, and there was a strong crosswind — apparently some others who flew out of Midway had their flights delayed. We got out on time, and made up some time in the air, getting into Seattle around 2 local time. I really enjoyed listening to the “From the Flight Deck” station on the onboard system — it was very cool to hear all of the air traffic and ground control chatter.