Well, I guess I have to take back my last post. The nice assistant manager of my local branch reimbursed me for all the money that was taken, even though the fraud department had no solid evidence of skimming. So essentially, they are taking my word for it that I didn't get a friend to withdraw $2000 from my account, just to screw them over. Cause you know, $2000 is a lot of money to the Bank of Montreal. If everyone skimmed $2000 off their account, the bank would only have about a gazillion dollars surplus at the end of the fiscal year.

But I shouldn't keep taking the piss, the big bad bank actually cared about a small, insignificant customer like me, and gave me my money back. So thanks, BMO. Thanks for caring about the little guy.

Now I will have enough money to fund the 2006 Monster theatre road trip, from Vancouver to Toronto. My hard earned Trickster dollars will go towards gas, food, moustaches, and any other incidentals that come up as Monster Ryan and I trek across this great nation of ours, speculating on the possible life of Jesus between the ages of 17 and 30. No doubt we will encounter some characters with opinions of their own.

Next week I am in a junior high school, helping the kids to create a show about respect. I sometimes wish I could get a little bit more respect for this job that I do. The teachers and parents who see the process and the end result have, I believe, some respect for what I do. They recognize the difficulty of getting 30 kids to do anything as a group, let alone something worth watching. But the people in the "real" theatre community will never quite understand. Even the sympathetic ones. If they think of Trickster, they think of lame school plays about respect, and they don't see, during the day on Wednesday, the kid who turns from class misfit into King of Respectland, or whatever, and the expression that spreads across his face when he realizes that he's actually good at something. People that don't appreciate that aspect of my job will be stunned in 10 years when they get beaten out of a gig by a 20 year old whose life changed when this wacky theatre group came to his school in Grade 6.

This post is all over the place. But then, so is my brain. Soon Trickster will be over. My brain will go back to normal. Whatever that is.