A Whirlwind Friday, May 26, 2006 On Monday night May 15, I watched the season finale of "Grey's Anatomy" with some friends from drama school. I knew I didn't want to watch the announcements the next morning, so I went to bed and didn't set the alarm, convinced I'd be woken up one way or another. Sure enough the next morning, my classmate and writing partner Adam Green left me a text message that just had 5 exclamation points. And I thought, "hmmm that's odd" -- still half asleep. And then my phone started exploding, so I got up and checked. The first thing I did was call my parents in San Francisco. I woke them up to tell them, and it was a great birthday present for my mother. They were overjoyed and just wanted to make sure that my name had been spelled and pronounced correctly. I think I said something like, "However Natasha Richardson decides to purr out my name is fine by me." Since then it's been a whirlwind. We had a huge press event the next day where I was shepherded from interview to interview. It's a little nerve-wracking at first, but I settled into it fairly quickly, and relaxed and just tried to be myself. After a while you realize you will get a lot of the same questions, so the answers come more easily. My favorite question was, "What book are you reading now?" And well it's the same 3 books I've been reading for months now, to the extent that I have any time to read any more: A Problem from Hell, America in the Age of Genocide by my good friend Samantha Power, who also gave me The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, and lastly Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt, a very entertaining, self-consciously speculative bio of Shakespeare. I call it the Da Vinci Code of Shakespeare biographies. Tomorrow is the big Tony Nominees' Luncheon, the event I'm looking forward to most. I think it is supposed to be just the nominees, and I've been told actors bring their cameras to take pictures of other actors... I'm excited to meet Ralph Fiennes, whose recent work in The Constant Gardener I so admired, and Ian McDiarmid, as someone who grew up a fan of a certain set of sci-fi trilogies. And I'm especially excited for my friend Jayne Houdyshell for her nomination for Well. She and I did Much Ado About Nothing in Central Park 2 summers ago, and she was phenomenal as Ursula. I played, uh, Messenger Number 1. And of course, I want to meet the other nominees in my category. I think it's important to be supportive of each other, since there is little we can do to affect the outcome, and ultimately we are all in this together. This is certainly one of the headiest and busiest times of my life. All this frenetic activity while still auditioning for readings and commercials, and writing, charting and rehearsing songs with my band for my Joe's Pub gig on June 4. Have to learn the Edgar/Gloucester cliff scene from Lear while getting physical therapy on my knee between shows today. But it beats being unemployed and bored!