Webmistress News
Here is where I post a sort of update about my life and activities here for anyone who cares to check it periodically. (When you're done here, you can check out site news and find out what's new with this site.) It has slowly come to my attention that well over (well, maybe just barely over, but I can dream, can't I?) FIVE people check this page regularly. Imagine my delight! The internet is a wonderful thing. You can write your opinions and people will read them. I don't know what I would have done in a more private age. Probably found myself a good sturdy soapbox. If you check this, and haven't told me, and want to make me even more pleased with the miracles of the world wide web, you can e-mail me and let me know. So anyway, here's what I'm up to at the general moment:
October 21~ Just emerged from a period of crazy busy-ness, as anyone who tried to e-mail me in the past two or three weeks has found out. Sorry, guys. Just know that if you e-mail me and don't get a reply, don't give up hope on me! It may be that it's coming, but it'll take me a few weeks.
So what exactly have I been up to? Well, first of all, there was the Town Crier Speaks One-Act Festival, for which I both wrote a play and directed another. The one I directed was When Laudwright Takes The Stage, by Dashel Milligan, who wrote the musical I was in last year, Mona. It was tons of fun, and I had an awesome and dedicated cast and a great make-up artist and all sorts of crazy costumes and props. It all came together very well indeed, I think. The show I wrote was directed by the brilliant Jason Moy and starred the amazing Bekka Rosenbaum and the wonderful Tom Vanheuvelen. It was a glorious production as well, and I was basically highly impressed by the entire festival and everyone involved. It was the first production in our new student theatre, which was also exciting, and I actually got to sit in the audience and watch, which was a new experience for me. It certainly kept me busy there, especially because we had no design team, so basically we directors had to do everything on our own--sets, costumes, light designs, sound, you name it. Spent an entire day painting giant psychedellic flowers, among other things. Quite crazy. But incredibly fun. My mom and dad both came out to see the shows as well, as did Valerie, Pam, Coach, and even Sunny, so it was a great experience all around.
Since that ended just over a week ago I've been mostly trying to catch up with the various things I had to put on hold during the last busy weeks of production--homework and the like, as well as getting in some hours for Tech Theatre by stuccoing the gigantic crazy set and running the light board for some finishing focus the other night. And I've actually had some free time to be social, a virtually unheard-of event in my life most of the time. So I went bowling with my Cell Group leader (LEAGUE bowling, quite exciting!) and blacklight ice skating with some supercool people from my Playwrighting class, and got to spend some quality time with my glorious suitemates as well.
Homework isn't terribly stressful this semester, which is nice, but it still rears its head every once in a while. Our next Playwrighting project is a Dream Play, which should be fun, in Tech Theatre we've moved out of lighting and into sets, in Acting we're doing some scenes from Pinter, in Greek we've actually begun translating from Euripedes' Medea--that's straight, unadulterated, Ancient Greek tragic metre, that is. Woooh! And in Ballet we just had our midterm (my only one, and boy was it a toughie... :) and we've started preparing for our final exam, a self-choreographed dance.
Yesterday I actually started delving into the wrighting of the play I mentioned in my last entry nearly a month ago. I already had the scenes pretty well outlined, so it's mostly a matter of getting down some relatively natural dialogue. Which is harder than you might think. I'm on page 12, so finishing in time for the Infinite Monkeys deadline on Friday is looking pretty unlikely. But I also spent a good part of yesterday chatting with one of my fellow Artistic Producers about his script, a satire of a drawing room murder mystery, which was also quite fun, and I'm looking forward to seeing the results of that. I flatter myself that I know something of the genre after so many summer CLUE plays, but we'll see. Next weekend we'll be reading through all the submitted scripts and trying to get it narrowed down to two to bring to full production. At the moment I'm not entirely positive about how many of the people who submitted outlines will be submitting full drafts, or if we'll get any from anyone else. But we do have at least two full length scripts, and both of merit, so no worries. Next week are auditions for the Senior Directed One-Acts, which I might try out for, depending on how much I'm willing to give up my so recently acquired free time, and applications to direct the Infinite Monkeys show go out as well, another activity I may just decide to attempt to partake in. We shall see. I'm also hoping to continue plodding along writing this script of mine, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I can bust out an entire full-length play.
In other academic news, I've figured out what classes I'm taking next semester, as well as which ones I'd like to look at for my semester abroad, which I'm currently very excited about.
Carpe diem, mes amies.
September 24~ Life is wonderful and exciting. :D We just got the assignment for a three minute light plot set to music in Tech Theatre, which should be a really challenging but neat project. My group is doing the song from the credits of Moulin Rouge, which makes me really happy. We're doing scenes from George Bernard Shaw's play Mrs. Warren's Profession in Acting, which are coming along well. In Playwrighting we have our first actual play-wrighting assignment: a middle. In Greek we're reading about the trial of Neaira, and we're really getting to the point where we can just look at a text and read it, which is awesome. And I love Ballet-it's such a nice energizing part to my day.
We had our first deadline for the Infinite Monkeys Festival and currently have five playwrights working on submissions, plus two or three more of us struggling to get stuff ready in time. (That includes yours truly, who had a bit of a brainstorm the other day and got a complete set of character sketches and a scene-by-scene plot outline down on paper. It's not the deep and moving play I wanted to write, which I decided I'd rather wait to attempt until I'm a bit more ready, but it should be a good practise piece. It's mostly about six single people in their late twenties feeling all the typical pressures to be in a romantic relationship, and ultimately deciding it would be better for them to just be on their own for a while until they can accept themselves for who they are. Yeah, cheesy. It's my first real play attempt. There's no other way for it to be.)
The Town Crier Speaks Festival is coming along swimmingly! I've got costumes for four of the six characters in my show from the theatre costume shop, including a vest and blouse I thought I had lost the other day but found today to my immense relief, and we had our first totally off-book run-through today in the presence of the Artistic Director of the festival, who decided to drop in, and he loved it, and it looked great, and got even better as we worked through it, so I'm just really excited about it and it's promising to be a really great show.
So basically all is well in my crazy, theatre-heavy world. Just thought I'd share the joy. Hope you're as contented. My love and well-wishes to you wherever you are.
September 9~ Ooh, so it's been a rather loooong time since I've updated. Quick summer update before moving on to the first week (or so) of school: Michigan was glorious as always, fun times with family, although we missed a few of our members. The CLUE play, which ended up being a one-woman show this year, was certainly fun for me if nothing else, and will soon be posted on the site. The road trip was a wild mass of insanity, with highlights including fry bread and an encounter with a masked avenger, and the lowpoint being Westlake, a town which shall henceforth be disapprovingly referred to as Ojai, and which no one should ever visit. Running Camp was glorious; such a wonderful group of people, and the usual tons of fun and craziness. Saw Pirates of the Caribbean a total of three times, and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it yet. Great movie. Rage against computers for their capacity to totally annhilate a month's work, in my case the fully edited version of the road trip video, but eventually I got that all worked out.
And now on to my exciting adventures since I've returned to school. Thanks to all who hosted me on my long journey northwards: Kate Fox and her delightful roommates, Luba, Ariel, and their operatic kitties, Matt and Sarah, and Coach and Coach Singer. It was an awesome trip of culinary adventures, unusual museums, artistic creations, and outdoor wonders which I will treasure forever. I arrived last Sunday to move in to my wonderful suite: six bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a small kitchen and common area. My suitemates are the loveliest girls imagineable, and my room is just the right size, and the convenience of a kitchen and bathroom right across the hall are indescribable. Classes took some rearranging, and may need a bit more, but at the moment I've frontloaded with theatre and am taking, much to my delight: Acting, Playwrighting, Tech Theatre, Greek, Beginning Ballet, and Deviance & Social Control (which I'm auditing and may be obliged to drop if my schedule gets too crazy.) And if that wasn't enough drama, I'm also directing a play for the student-written one-act Town Crier Speaks Festival, within which a play I wrote this summer will also be performed, and I'm an Artistic Producer of the student-written full-length play Infinite Monkeys Festival, for which I have plans to write a play, as well. AND I've contacted someone at the Museum of Flight to inquire about a possible Playwrighting internship in February, which would be glorious. So, should be a fun-filled semester/year indeed. I'm looking forward with eager anticipation to auditions this Thursday for Town Crier, as I've never been on this side of the table (the directing, I-get-to-choose-who-gets-cast side), and I'm just very excited about the play I'm directing in general. It was written by Dashel Milligan, who, for those of you who have been following my various and most likely rather uninteresting activities for some time, wrote the play I was in last semester, Mona. And directed it. He's graduated, but somehow managed to sneak a play into the festival anyway, and I'm a bit intimidated, but it's a great show with really interesting characters and some intense imagery, and I'm excited to see what I can do with it. Should be a crazy process, though, the auditions, since we'll have six plays of two to seven characters all casting from the same group of people, and there will undoubtedly be conflicts. Nonetheless, I can't wait.
Aside from theatre, there's not much to my life at the moment. My classes are great so far. Playwrighting seems to be a bit of repetition of the Theatre Survey class I took last semester, but I should've guessed that. Acting should be a very fun if intense class, and the professor seems very nice. Tech Theatre will be fascinating, because that's the side of the theatre I don't have much experience with at all to date, so I'm looking forward to learning all about it. Greek is fun; there are only four of us in the class, which makes for a very personal atmosphere, which is good. Ballet is a very fun class, and quite energizing, although it requires a lot of coordination and strength I don't have at the moment. Which keeps things interesting. So yes, for the moment, that's essentially my life. It's certainly fun, and I feel like I'm really getting some hands on experience in a lot of different areas of the theater. And that's basically all for now; tune in next time, and in the meantime, as my Acting professor says, make good choices.
July 4~ Happy Independence Day to those in the States, and congrats for being shut of us to the Brits among us. The mad summer of insanity continues. One trip down, four to go. Had much fun in Cape Cod--saw Brighton Beach Memoirs, which was pretty neat, at a playhouse which, in August, will be host to none other than the Keymaker from the Matrix Reloaded, by far the coolest and most worthy character in the movie. Unfortunately, that was too late for me. Sadness! I got the fifth Harry Potter and read through it twice, once for me, once for the website, and have been working like a bee, or something, to get all the post-Order updates going. I wrote a short (10-20 minute) one-act for the Town Crier Speaks Festival which is kind of interesting. Basically it starts off with the lights coming up on a set, and then a silent pause long enough to indicate that something has gone wrong, and then two members of the audience begin to whisper. Eventually, they become too unnerved by the lack of a play, and go onstage to fill the time. Kind of fun. Still doing last editing before submission in August. And I'm working on a full-length play for the Infinite Monkeys Festival in the spring, which, I just found out, I was accepted to be one of the Artistic Producers of! So exciting!!!! That means I'm one of the four people who runs the festival, picks the plays to be performed, and chooses the directors from among the applicants. I'm really looking forward to it; should be great experience for me!
So now it's the random interim between trips, and I'm trying to plan a discussion group for the fifth book, and I just have a few more pages I want to make for the site, and then it'll be on to the play, with maybe a short break to whip up the CLUE 2003 Mystery. Which may end up being a one-woman show this year, because it's such short notice and in order to alleviate the line-learning and rehearsal requirements for my fellow players, my sister and grandmother. Or, if things don't come together, it may not happen at all. Best not to get your hopes up, though, family; I may find time to put something together in the face of all trials. Also, finally discovered, I hope, a program that will work for the editing of our video of the road trip home, which I need to get going on so I'll be free for work on the video of our next upcoming road trip: The Madness Continues. Beware!
June 17~ Well, I'm nearing the end of my period of downtime. Soon the parade of trips and activities will commence, and it will be a rather different story. But for the time being, I've basically been hanging around, getting amazing amounts of stuff done. I cleaned out my entire room, and went through basically everything I own except my pictures, which I'm saving until I get this past year and summer pictures developed. And I helped my sister clean out her room, as well, which was a very interesting process. It appeared to me as though nothing that had entered that room (this includes dishes, waterbottles, candy wrappers, and all manner of random garbage) in the past three years had ever left it. Seriously, four full bags of garbage alone. Not to mention all the clothes she never wears anymore. On the plus side, though, I found pretty much everything I had ever been looking for in her closet. For instance, the recordings of all my favorite shows from my early early years (Rainbow Brite, Charmkins, Care Bears, My Little Ponies, Lady Lovely Locks, etc. for those fellow Babies of the Eighties) which I watched last week with great nostalgia and delight. I started a one-act for the Town Crier Speaks Festival, in the vein of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Waiting For Godot. And saw the Matrix Reloaded two nights in a row, for the second and third times, respectively, and concluded that the fight scenes, which I had previously faulted for being overly long and unnecessarily numerous, were actually somewhat of a relief from the atrocious dialogue. I mean, where was the editor in the whole production process, really? We discussed the movie's faults long into the night over a carton of Dulce de Leche ice cream, and concluded it will all be forgiven provided they answer, in the upcoming Matrix Revolutions, all the questions they raised in Reloaded. We shall find out how they fare in a matter of months.
And speaking of waiting anxiously for sequels, guess what's coming out in only four short days! Well, if you're in any way a self-respecting visitor to this site, you of course don't have to guess the answer to that question, for you not only know the answer (the fifth Harry Potter book) but you already know the title (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) and have probably seen the cover (if not, I've got it posted here) and have either read the publisher's notes and know some very exciting tidbits about the book (also posted here, although sufficiently hidden so that if you don't want to read them, you can still safely visit the page) or have decided you'd rather be surprised and are constantly struggling to prevent yourself from reading them (sorry for tempting you further). So you can understand my eager anticipation. I of course have it pre-ordered, albeit across at a bookstore across the country, where I'll be on the day it comes out. Unfortunately, I won't be able to pick it up at midnight, the earliest possible moment, but will instead have to wait at least twelve long hours more until I'm in the city where I have it ordered. It's a tragedy beyond words, of course. But it can't be helped. Alas.
In news of mixed emotions, I won't be working at the Acting Camp this summer, although next summer looks like a better possibility. This is very sad, as I had been looking forward greatly to the possibility, but it's also nice to know I have three more free weeks of the summer, to add to the otherwise measly fifteen or so more days I'll actually be home this summer. I must say, though, the few weeks bonus I enjoyed at the start of the summer thanks to that wonderful institution they call college were quite amazingly useful and, I hope, well put to use. So.
To look forward to:
May 31~ Home for the summer, at long last! Well, except for all the times I'll be gone over the summer at various locations around the planet (although never, unfortunately, off the planet, which would be very cool). Anyways, I'm back from the road trip, at least. Which was glorious, as expected. Much insanity, including sightseeing, bowling, festivating, singing, dancing, sucking badly at frisbee, very nearly maiming innocent bystanders with the frisbee, random softball game viewing, dining at a real (albeit expensive) diner, screaming out car windows, being asked if we were British, having our pictures taken by random boys out the sunroof of their car on the freeway, constantly forgetting to call one another our secret road aliases, and videotaping excessive amounts of random things, including a large number of red lights. Amazingly, we hardly if ever got lost, found even the most obscure destinations with ease and alacrity, and had no dire mishaps of any sort whatsoever. Overall, a highly successful journey, I must say.
So now, I'm back. And I've had a chance for a few updates to the site, which you can find out more about at Site News. Some fun stuff, including a posting of the new book 5 cover.
And what's the summer plan, you ask, but only because you either don't know me at all or have temporarily forgotten who you're asking, or have a desperate desire to never leave the room you are currently sitting in. Because, as usual, the summer plan is an insane mass of various activities which, when considering simultaneously, would daunt the most hardy of people. Chief among these are the usual trip to Michigan, another to Cape Cod, Running Camp, and the possibility of working at the selfsame Acting Camp I attended three years ago. Also, throw in various recitals and parties my little sister requests my attendance at, 50 plays to read, a few I'd like to write/research, hopefully a road trip to Las Vegas sometime, the video from my last road trip which I'd like to learn how to edit, Harry Potter book five: Order of the Phoenix coming out and the subsequent updates on this site to do, a room I'd like to organize, and an independent study class to plan, shake well, and serve chilled. (I hope--it's so strange and hot and cloudless here, I don't know what to do.) Pretty crazy, but that's kind of the summer norm for me. Ah, well. As usual, should be fun! Never a dull moment, at least. I wish a happy summer to all of you, and I'm sure I'll be updating periodically amidst my various activities. Enjoy the golden days!
May 22~ Wheeeeee! Freedom from school for months on end! Not that school is really such a thing to be freed from as it once was, but still... It's nice to have a break. Finals are now over--two tests (Greek and Astronomy) and two papers (English and Comparative Politics) all done!!! I managed to squeeze the maximum possible amount of learning out of Astronomy, visiting my professor two or three times during finals week to ask random questions, mostly based upon various speculation from God's Debris. At least now he has a whole summer to recover from me. And I packed all my stuff (a rather formidable task, unfortunately) vowing all the while how much less stuff I would bring up next year, and fretting quite a bit about how on earth the contents of two gigantic boxes, a duffel bag, a bin, and a crate would all fit into my trunk. Or whether I would even have a trunk to fit them all into, my car, at this point, still being in the shop. Where it stayed until basically the last possible second Friday evening, everything that could go wrong having, as often predicted, gone wrong. But it all turned out ok in the end, because I got it back and my trunk turned out to be of such vast proportions that it scorned my feelings of doubt as unworthy of it. Seriously, as I packed my stuff into it, the cavernous trunk's interior dwarfing previously enormous loads of random junk, I was composing psalms to my car.
Once the car was packed, I headed down to my ever-patient and hospitable aunt and uncle's for the night and a highly entertaining game of... something with words. I forget. But it was fun, and then I slept, and in the morning it was off to begin THE GREAT ROAD TRIP ADVENTURE: PART ONE (The Fourteen Hour Trek Down The Coast)! Completed, somewhat to my surprise, in one day, with the help of Denny's, several roadside Rest Stops, and Jim Dale reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on tape. I arrived around 8 that night, was joined by my partner in crime, and began part two of my adventure: Hanging Out Reading And Helping People Move And Walking Several Blocks Every Two Hours To Move My Car To Avoid Parking Tickets. A very exciting chapter, I must say. Highlights included some nostalgic sightings of haunts from Acting Camp three years back, driving (not entirely on purpose, which is to say, while utterly lost) over the Golden Gate Bridge, visiting Lubieloo and seeing her old and new apartments, killing my toes on a sharp rock and sitting in the bathroom of San Francisco Conservatory for twenty minutes waiting for them to stop bleeding, mucha fun bonding time with the Fox herself, and (hm, getting past the date this officially started, but that's ok) getting to hang out with Pat, whom I haven't seen since I was last in this fine city. So much excitement! Now it's lotsa packing, which we'll hopefully get done tonight so that tomorrow we can hit the road for the third and final part, the Road Trip Vrai: Journey Home. So much madness planned for that portion, it's hard to stand, but you will have to wait another week or so to hear about it. Until then, mon cherie, beaux reves et belles journees!
May 6~ Writing to avoid the last vestiges of homework in a sort of mini revolt. And speaking of revolts, who wants to read four pages about why military revolutions succeeded in Russia, China, and Mexico but not in South Africa? Well, unfortunately, that paper is the very thing I'm avoiding working on right now, so you don't get to. I can tell you, though, it has to do with the nature of the existing regime, internal support, and external influences...
Anyway, the reason I'm so desperately avoiding the paper is that my mind is already saturated with Comparative Politics thanks to an entire day (yup, that would be yesterday) studying for the exit exam this morning. Not to mention a Greek test, also this morning. Neither of which I got to start on last week, because of a little thing I like to call Mona. Which turned out awesome, if you were wondering. I had an exciting number of family and friends come to see the show, which was VERY cool. The general reaction was positive, with the exception of Bruce, who thought it was a bunch of gibberish. Such is art. (Actually, at times he was right. But that's kind of what you expect from Dashel.) It was a really great cast and crew, and I had a great time despite the rather ridiculous number of hours I spent in the theater doing everything from strike to load-in to dress rehearsals. (Helpful hint: if staple-gunning things to a stage floor that needs to be used for another show the following week (inadvisable) try to keep the number of staples you use under a thousand.)
So we got two tests down today, and all we've got left are the Compoli paper, an English paper on Moulin Rouge, a Greek final and an Astronomy final (man, I'll be so bummed for that class to end!!!). And that's it! Been spending most of last week's non-Mona time (negligible) planning and making reservations for my road trip home with the Fantastic Foxy. Yeehaw! Should be a blast and a half. :)
Other excitement to look forward in the upcoming week and a half: Destress Fest complete with massages, root beer floats, and a whole lotta fun, a fruit basket sent by my family, a play tomorrow night, a Cell Group (that's Cell, not Salad) dinner, a Schiff end-of-year banquet, THE MATRIX RELOADED RELEASED MAY 15 AND A MIDNIGHT TRIP UP TO SEATTLE TO SEE IT AS SOON AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE, trying to maybe start putting together an Independent Study class plan for next semester, and squeezing the maximum possible astronomical knowledge from my professor before the term ends. Classes for next year are still not solidified, but we're still hoping space will open up in Playwrighting and waiting to see how much I'll really get done towards designing my own independent study course...
And, most hilarious of all, heading up to Sedro-Woolley one last time to see Coach play Romeo in the balcony scene in a student-directed Shakespeare Medley at his school. Oh, boy. Should be interesting indeed. And then there's packing, so lots to do, lots to do, and I'll probably update again once I get home. Until then, take nothing for granted (which has two meanings: (1)appreciate everything and (2)question everything) and do what you love. Peace.
April 25~ Although not for long... So late. Rehearsal is just getting longer and longer. I'd be asleep if it wasn't Friday and if I didn't have the room all to myself. But it is, and I do--woohoo! So instead I catch up with the site and e-mail a bit. The whole winding down of the year thing has really been catching up with me. It's hard to believe there's only a week and a half of classes left. And one more week until Mona opens. It's coming along well, but the show itself is three and a half hours, so trying to do a run-through takes a good four or five hours at least. It'll be sad, but also a relief in the amount of extra time every day, to have it done with. Classes are generally going well. Astronomy is becoming cooler by the day, as we finally get into the good stuff like black holes and stellar birth and death and all that good stuff. Greek is glorious as always, especially now that, at long last, we're done with Aristophanes for good. Seriously, the filthiest mind in Ancient Athens and we have to read excerpts from almost every single play he wrote. Anyway. Comparative Politics is good, although I'm definitely reaching the limits of my tolerance for such a historically influenced subject. Also I'm a bit frustrated by the results of a group project, which I tried desperately but in vain to get to go as it should. English will also be nice to be done with, although at least we've started actually doing something that contributes in some way to the improvement of our writing. Which would be peer editing.
I haven't much time for extras beyond classes and Mona, but I'm trying, somehow, in the meantime to figure out summer plans (at the moment the acting camp is still uncertain, but running camp and a trip to Cape Cod with the maternal side of the famille are solidified, and the annual TC trip is up in the air as far as I know, and of course there's the road trip home, which is going to be all manner of marvelous madness, and let's see, 50 plays to read for a class I might not even get into, which reminds me, sorry, this will be a major derailment of the train of thought, but you should be used to that by now, anyway, I registered, which didn't go quite as I had hoped. It turned out that both Directing and Technical Theater were only open to upperclassmen for next semester, and Playwrighting was full, so I'm wailisted for the latter, and in Acting 210 in place of the former, as well as two random Comparative Sociology classes that I'm hoping to replace with Playwrighting and maybe an Independent Study class, which I would be designing, I guess, during all my summer free time, um, right...), also (we were, before the interruption, detailing my extraneous activities) I've been trying to read some random stuff for the play I really am working on, if slowly, and trying to make arrangements to have my car repaired from a minor fenderbender I became unwittingly involved in a week or so ago.
So as you may have gathered, it's been an eventful couple of weeks since I last wrote. There was also the Theater Day at the school where I've been tutoring, which was really great. The kids split up into several groups, designed all their own costumes and sets, and performed plays including The Billy Goats Gruff, Little Red Ridinghood, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and The Boy Who Wanted The Willies. It was really adorable, and a great experience.
I visited Coach last weekend for Easter, which was really great. We had the usual various Astronomy lessons, philosophical conversations, amazing food, and runs through the glorious forests up here, as well as a poetry easter egg hunt and a foray to church. So awesome...
My goodness, I highly apologize for the rambling. I'll leave you with the following reassurance: Quantum physics does, in fact, allow, at least under current theoretical understanding, for the physical possibility of free will (that is, the physical ability to do any of two or more possible things given a certain situation). So all you have to do is supply a method for controlling which of these choices you make. Oh, maybe also a theory of what exactly the "self" is that does the deciding. That, or you're left with the contention that it's all an illusion. And if so, why? Know what you believe. And if you figure it out, even vaguely, e-mail me and let me know! I'm what you might call a collector...
April 4~ This is my rebellion against homework--none today, nope nope! And rehearsal finished three hours early. So maybe I can actually do something productive for once... We picked out our suite this week--second floor, south side, corner suite! Woohoo! I'm pretty 'cited! Movie, play, and Comparative Politics, but that's later this weekend. When it rains, it pours llamas! (Kate Fox, 2003)
April 1~ Well, I've decided to switch my major. I've been thinking about it a lot, and I'm definitely still going to do theater, and I'm still going to take some of the classes, and maybe minor in it, but I feel like there's just not much I can do with that out in the world, and I've always been pretty interested in math, and my Linear Algebra professor has been talking to me about it, and I really think he's right. So I'm going in to talk to my advisor about it later this week. Which will probably be tough, because she's in the theater department and stuff... Ghe. But I really think it's the right thing to do. It's just safer.
In other news, I found out today I got into the upperclassman dorm with my rooming group for next year, which is very exciting, and although this sentence is true if you haven't yet guessed that the entire last paragraph was an elaborate April Fool's joke you don't know me very well at all. Anyway, we pick out which actual suite we want on Wednesday, and then we'll be all set. It's very exciting! I hope I got you good!
Otherwise, rehearsals are starting to swing into my life, I've recently discovered the astronomical cause of all the Earth's mass extinctions, and the sun has made sun-dry appearances throughout the past few days, which are definitely appreciated here, and acknowledged by my entire dorm turning the front lawn into a summer beach party. Complete with barbeque! It's great! Pretty intensely busy with work, but it's all fun stuff so it's not too bad, and the paper I keep procrastinating on keeps getting delayed by the professor anyway, so all is well. Hope the same is true for you! Happy AFD! Go spread the joy of this merry prankish holiday... I mean it!
March 25~ Much excitement at the moment. Spring Break is recently finished, and was quite wonderful. Started it off with a visit to Coach, which was glorious as always. Then I headed home and saw family and friends, went on a field trip with my bittle stistuh, saw Bonbonee (publicly acknowledged as a model traveller!), Lubeyloo, Foxy, Poly, Allimo, Bisl, and Stines, decorated a small square of beachside boardwalk and succeeded in being the subject of yet another random stranger's photographs. I got sick on the last day of break, which I'm just getting over. I've got a bunch of homework this week, trying to catch up after break, but it shouldn't be too bad. Rehearsals for Mona are starting up again. Quite exciting! I've picked out my classes for next semester, which hopefully will work out, but if I have my way I'll be taking Technical Theater, Directing, Greek, Playwrighting(!), and Beginning Ballet, and auditing "Deviance and Social Control." I register for those in two weeks. And I've figured out who I'm living with next year, which is a huge relief. A bunch of awesome girls had a space in their group, so they asked if I wanted to join them, and we've applied for a space in the upperclassman dorm. Hm, that's mostly it. I've been researching for my play, and I still need your comments about selfishness (see second-to-last paragraph of Feb. 12). That's all I can think of for now. Sorry, once again, that it's been so long. If you ever need to talk, I'm here.
February 23~ Well, the show is over, which is sad because it's been such an amazing experience and such a marvelous cast. Closing night was amazing. We sold completely out, threw in some other random chairs, had the best show ever, dropped not a line that I heard (an unheard-of event until last night), got laughs at every funny line and even some none of us considered funny at all, and a huge and vigorous standing ovation at the end. Not one of those where people are like, "Gee, should I stand up? It was pretty good. Uh-oh, other people are standing up, I guess I should too..." but a clearly premeditated "I don't care what anybody else does or thinks. I'm going to stand up!" So that was awesome. Then there was the cast party, which of course just drove me into my typical philosophical questioning of social norms. You can imagine what a hit I am at such events...
I've got a read-through today for the next show (already!), Mona, which I finally read the script of. It's interminable, and philosophical, and wordy, and (hallelujah) in iambic pentameter (it's not so hard... people think because Shakespeare did it, noone else on the earth can possibly...) and basically reminds me in a lot of ways of something I would write. Supposedly we're going to work on cutting it down today. But rehearsals won't start for a couple of weeks, I think, which will, perhaps, give me time to get ahead a bit on my homework, finally read some of the many books sitting on my shelf looking eagerly at me, catch up on this site and my journal, and start writing a new play I'm cooking up. This is it, I think. We'll see. We'll see how much time I'll actually have to work on it, and whether I can get it off the ground. I also signed up to volunteer to tutor kids in reading on my days of minimal class, and found out that the program that runs it is also holding a playwriting group for fourth and fifth-graders that I can come and be a part of too. So fun! So I'm very excited for that, which starts next week. And general excitement about the prospects of free time. Thank you to the ONE PERSON who reponded to my previous inquiries about the self and selfishness... I can see you are all very opinionated and philosophical... :P Really, though, anything you got, fire it off to me, because this is the central key to my new play. I need you!
February 12~ Oops, sorry it's been ages. I won't let it happen again, I promise. I've just become so caught up in school, and theater business, and such. It's been pretty crazy. But c'est la vie, n'est-ce pas? Et c'est une vie tres bonne, je croix. Back to English. Sorry. So, what have I been up to? Well, classes, for one thing, which have been glorious. Greek is crazy as usual, and it's kind of getting to the point where there's no way I'll ever totally understand what's going on, but it's fun, and nice to have a class of people I've known all last semester. English is cool; we've written one paper so far, which was exciting in that it was an opinion paper as opposed to one about a book, which meant I got to ramble on one of my few but highly-developed (ie longwinded) themes (in this case, the fact that even positive and generally accurate stereotypes can be harmful and should be avoided). Now we're watching Citizen Kane, and writing another paper, which I'm avoiding starting by writing this. Oops. It'll get done... Comparative Politics is very interesting, and a well-organized class, even though it does occassionally seem to veer dangerously close to... History! (insert scary evil music in film version) Astronomy rocks, as my roommate would say, my face off. It's fun because there are a few people in my class/lab who are also in my Abdication cast, and it's just crazy. Basically you sit there and listen to the professor, who's very cool and funny, with an expression which switches back and forth between awe and disbelief (verbal translation: "Woah! No way. Woah... No way? Woah. NO WAY! Woah...") Exiting that class I never fail to be surprised that the planet has continued to exist as I always remembered it. And Developmental Psych is very cool. We're finally moving from theories to actual age-by-age analysis of psychological development, and it's so cool. It's also nice to have a class where I can just go and listen and not worry about having to be tested on the stuff later.
So that's school. That, plus homework, take up a good chunk of my life, but that's as it should be. Virtually all the rest of the time is spent, at the moment, in rehearsal. We go up a week from today (eeep!) and I guess we'll be ready. But barely. It's a very cool play, though, and the cast is such an awesome group of people. So it's tons of fun. My character is difficult because she's one of three different sides of the same person, and she's kind of a stereotype of femininity which I try to play nonstereotypically, and to give her some depth, and she's been a queen from age six, which makes for a very specific physicality... It's intense. But exciting.
And I just last weekend auditioned for the Senior Theater Festival, and was cast as a member of the Chorus in a play called Mona, which was written by a senior here who will also be directing and acting in the show. It seems like a very cool show. It's a post-apocalyptic modern-musical with some very strong female characters (hallelujah!), and the sets, props, and, I believe, some costumes will be created entirely out of oragami. So it's very...um... "contemporary", but it seems like it'll be a lot of fun.
Aside from theater and classes and homework there's not much going on in my life. My cell group is trying to find a time that works for all of us, which is especially impossible with my rehearsal schedule at the moment, but we should be starting up again soon. I had a very interesting conversation today at lunch about selfishness and whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. It's a tough question, because it's hard to distinguish between whether you do things for other people purely for their sake or purely because it makes you feel good, and then what do you determine to be the ultimate "good" for the individual anyway? Happiness? Wealth? Or are we eternal beings who needn't worry about current suffering because the vast majority of our existence will be after death in some other place and life? It's just an interesting question. I feel a play coming on... Do YOU, dear impassioned, intellectually curious, truth-seeking reader, have anything to say on the subject? In many ways it seems like the key to existence. Or one of them, anyway...
I'm excited for:
January 22~ Back at school. It took two days of running to seven different classes, but I've finally got my schedule worked out. So I'm continuing in Greek, which is fun although I forgot so much over the break it's scary, and I'm taking Comparative Politics, which seems ok although it's clearly history in disguise, and then I had to switch my English class but it looks like it'll be a good one, and I switched from Classical Acting to Galactic Astronomy, which is going to be AWESOME, and I'm auditing Developmental Psychology Infancy to Childhood, which is also incredibly cool. It'll be a tough schedule, heavy on reading, but really interesting. And rehearsals have started for The Abdication. So it's already pretty busy 'round here. Last night we started watching The Matrix Revisited (a remarkably long series of interviews about various aspects of the movie) in preparation for Reloaded (less than four months and counting!) which was very cool. That's mostly it around here. For the moment, anyway.
January 19~ Well, today is my last here at home, before I head back up for another semester of madness. It's been an amazing vacation. Since my last update, I have had a deep and wonderful midnight jacuzzi conversation with my Covenant Group, helped the Track team save the pole vault by standing on a street corner convincing people to eat at Don Carlos, worked at my little sister's elementary school (where, if you can believe it, they have even less time for lunch than they did at my high school, where if you brought your lunch to fourth period and sprinted straight to lunch you had enough time to eat approximately three pretzels before the bell rang), freed several minds, at least, I hope, done several wonderful runs, and caught up with all the wonderful people college has tragically separated me from. But I believe my greatest conquest of the break was a recent trip to Disneyland. Mission: free the prisoners of Disney prison. (We did this several years ago, but figured it was probably filling up again and we should probably return to the rescue once more.) Our method this time involved disguising ourselves as Disney characters and thereby infiltrating the park unnoticed. Unfortunately, we were only able to find one costume of a sufficient quality to successfully mislead Disney security. But we were not discouraged, and so, upon entering the park, I slipped into the nearest restroom and donned the garb of the Evil Queen from Snow White. We escaped detection for a good period of time, during which we rode Space Mountain, Autopia (home of the cleverest "cast members," many of whom made witty remarks on my costume), and the teacups, and two mothers asked if they could take pictures of me with their children. Then behind the castle, several men with walkie talkies converged upon us and asked me to please change out of the costume. Apparently, they've "a policy against guests wearing costumes, because it might mislead and distract the children." Having half-expected this, I complied with such pleasant cooperation that they offered to take myself and my companion (the foxy Agent Widow) to the front of the line of any ride we chose. Our first choice, It's A Small World, was closed for renovation, so we settled for Pirates of the Caribbean. The lines weren't very long in general, so it didn't make much of a difference, but nevertheless it was incredibly satisfying to be rewarded for our surreptitious flaunting of a Disney policy. Of course, this foiled our initial plan for the freeing of the prisoners, but like any good undercover liberators, we had a back-up, which involved chatting up one Sean from Innoventions. Our plot was successful, and the Disney Prison is void once more. Next mission: a campaign against the subliminal and not-so-subliminal Disney message that a girl's one goal in life should be finding her Prince Charming. But that will have to wait, and for now, I leave it to you, dear reader, to fight for freedom in your own way. Never let fear get in your way; a smile will calm the wrath of a dozen walkie talkied men.
January 5~ Well, it's the new year! How exciting! I'm in Maui as I write this, actually, which has been really nice despite the isolated nature of it, especially since my sister has brought along a friend this time. But it's been a great trip, topping itself ahundredfold this morning in an amazing journey that began in the car under the pre-dawn stars and continued in a speedy raft as the sun rose over Haleakala, upon which (journey, as opposed to volcano) we saw a possibly birthing humpback whale, a school of half-asleep spinner dolphins, and a 600-year-old lava flow. It was amazing, and exhilarating, and WELL worth the 5 am wake-up call. But I'm ready to retun home, too, to rejoin friends still home from school and see how different the stars are there now that I've learned gazillions of new constellations and continue with the process of (very exciting!) co-writing a screenplay which you'll all be seeing in a theater near you sometime in the near future, provided we can successfully blind a producer to the fact that it goes against every single other movie they have ever and will ever make. And learning my lines for The Abdication, that faux-feminist play. And (again exciting!) completing the application to return to the fateful Acting Camp as employee. And (hallelujah!) two more weeks of winter vacation before I have to return to the, yes, fun, but rather busier than the last, second semester. New favorite star: Capella, the she-goat, in Auriga, the charioteer, straight up and slightly to the north-east in the evening sky of the northern hemisphere. Off the northern shoulder of Orion. See if you can find it! Happy gazing.
December 28~ Home again, for a whole month this time, and isn't it loverly? I've been doing a fair share of reading, so far having ploughed through Spindle's End (which I recommend to Harry Potter fans as a book that influenced the writing of Rowling rather noticably in several instances), The Scarlet Pimpernel (wonderful book), The Count of Monte Cristo (another swashbuckling romance, but darker), Big Trouble, by Dave Barry, to whom I can only recommend staying away from the world of novel-writing or growing up a tad (Sometimes writers who use the craft to exercise power over their own created world dishearten me a bit. Not that I haven't my own agenda...), Peace Like a River (also very good) and the screenplay of The Green Mile, which I've never seen, but would like to. And, you might not, if you know me well enough, be surprised to hear, I've got a screenplay of my own in mind--a kind of bitter attempt at retaliation against the romantic brainwashers of media since, it seems, time began (admittedly a shaken fist at a towering foe). But we shall see if I've the patience. Perhaps with assistance.
Hm, what else? Finals are done, and went well, I can only hope. We'll find out, I guess. Not that I know when. A bit worried about Acting, but that's all. I've been enjoying the chance to see people I haven't for months, people off on their own adventures across the globe, and hope to see a few more before I head back to my own self-appointed realm. At the moment (stalkers begone!) I'm home alone, my family being off and away. But I shall join them soon enough. And it's odd, being alone, when for the past three months I've been living constantly surrounded, with a moment's solitude almost an unheard-of event. It's rather lonely. So I battle off unnecessary fancies and say "boo!" to the bogeymen clustering at the darkened edges where my common sense turns to the badlands of imagination, and I really must get out the pruning shears and show them who's boss. But we'll leave a bit, never fear; it wouldn't do to become a trimmed and pristine country garden with nary a shaded place to crawl into to hide from the world for an afternoon. It simply mustn't become overly cocky, is all. Do you know what I mean? I hope so. For your own sake.
December 16~ Mmmm, a nice weekend visiting back home for a glorious cross country banquet, along with Sammi's recital and Brownie Investiture and decorating the Christmas tree. It was very restful and great to see everybody. Now I'm back for Finals week--four days of writing my Acting final paper and studying for Greek and Linear Algebra and finishing up Christmas shopping and packing and then I'm heading back home for a glorious month of freedom. I'm kind of avoiding getting all that started by doing such things as updating this page, as well as adding a new page: Questions I'd Like to Ask J. K. Rowling, but the work'll get done soon enough. It's funny, after five days in Sunny So Cal hearing the patter of raindrops outside is unexpectedly calming and comforting. Not quite sure why. But I'm looking forward to the time off, which I plan to spend a large portion of reading and writing. I got a letter from Jac, who's my Theater Survey professor this semester and is teaching my Classical Acting class next semester, and it sounds really fun. Plua, Dr. Seuss's Fox in Sox is one of our textbooks. Hee! That's about it for now. I hope you're enjoying your current weather situation, whatever it may be, as much as I'm enjoying mine. The world, you'll be glad to know, is quiet here.
December 8~ Dress rehearsal this morning. It went well, besides the swapping of an Okay, Go On and a All Right All Right Uncle Sam Let's Go. The other one-acts for Tuesday night are weird! It's going to be a disorienting night for our poor audience...
But AFTER THAT, hooray hooray, Coach came down and visited and got a brief tour of campus before we headed off into the great beyond to find...well, we didn't know what, but something glorious, we were sure. Which we reached, despite some unorthodox turns and the definite suspicion that it wasn't a State Park at all but rather an elaborate ply to entrap just our sort of people for scientific research. But if it was, we outsmarted them, and managed to find a very awesome park on a lake with a torpedo storage facility that looked like a church and cool trails and a bench dedicated to an avid birdwatcher and the sound of waves (hooray!) and cool ducks, where we continued in our eternal attempt to uncover the meaning of life (and you think I'm kidding, or exaggerating, but you're wrong) in the form, this time, of a picking-apart of the essence of consciousness and how this differs from and is affected by empathy, and the dual-star-orbit relationship of empathy and politics, and the implications of the reductionist theory of human genetics. Also waffles. But that was later, over crepes (or were they french pancakes?) and soup at the pancake restaurant, and then continuing at a bookshop/ice cream shop/castle which was clearly placed in our path to delay us and prevent us from a potentially dire destiny, which, I'm sure, will sooner or later befall us anyway if we were detected in our purchase of Lemony Snicket: An Unauthorized Autobiography. Then, eventually, perhaps even miraculously, found our way back to the dorm. It was a glorious and fulfilling and wonderful experience. Yay for this state and its beautiful trees and supercool people! I hope everyone reading this has similar people and places that stimulate such persistent and enlightening inspection of the fabric and meaning of the universe. So what do you think? Do we have free will or don't we? No, really. I expect an e-mail of your answer. No word limit.
December 7~ Tech morning for the one-acts, which was fun if useless for our cast as we have no set to change nor lights, much less light cues. But we got to see a taste of the other shows, which was cool. And then I spent much of the afternoon working on Rowling Reveals, a compilations of comments from various interviews with J. K. Rowling that you, Bruce, should definitely check out and give me your feedback on. Anyone else interested is welcome and encouraged to check it out as well, of course. It's so foggy today! It's crazy how foggy it gets up here sometimes. Crazy but very cool.
December 5~ I got cast! Hooray! I'm Tina in The Abdication, but aside from that and the little information I picked up in the scene I read for auditions (which didn't include Tina) that's all I know. My monologue for Acting went well, and our final project for Acting is a Stanislavskian analysis of an assigned character: mine is Bananas, from House of Blue Leaves by John Guare. Fun stuff! I also forgot to mention in yesterday's update the many updates to the site I completed, some of which are quite exciting indeed, and which you can read more about at site news. That's all for now!
December 4~ A glorious week; month, even. Highlighted by a wonderful day. But let's start at the beginning:
Thanksgiving break was beautiful. Saw all the new excitement (and really SAW it, thanks to a plethora of new light fixtures) at my mom's, chatted with Sammi until all hours of the night, etc., at Mom's house. Then headed to Dad's for a Thanksgiving feast with many favorite and long-missed dishes. High school XC state meet the next morning with Lollypop, Bisl, and Chels, and of course Coach Karnopp, which was awesome even if our hotel was 45 miles away and the lights weren't up this year, because we ate with the boys and made fun of a certain poor soul's unfortunate choice to bleach The Hair, and ate yummy ice cream and went to a bookstore and read poetry (Yay Billy Collins!) in the erotica section (well, it was quiet) and WATCHED HARRY POTTER and played Jotto and Spastic Mao (The first rule of Mao is never discuss the rules of Mao. The second rule of Mao is always abide by the first rule.) and watched the boys race and wore shower caps on our heads and, as traditional, pajama pants, and did all other manner of glorious craziness. Got home Saturday night only to be picked up off the street by two DEFINITE strangers in an unmarked vehicle, from whom I took and ate unwrapped sweets, and exchanged gifts and, rather suspiciously, something closely resembling a gray hooded Travelling Sweatshirt and accompanying journal, and got tea and frolicked with at the beach. Next morning I read out back until the sun (What's that big shiny thing in the sky? Aaah, it's hot! So hot! And bright! Eyes not accustomed... Must go inside...) came out, then was rescued (or abducted, it's all relative) and taken to a running shoe-selling establishment of questionable repute, where we terrorized poor Mick (who was very cool) before returning home in time for a yummy ocean-side soup lunch and the trip back to school. A wonderful time had by all, by whom I mean me. (Presumably others as well, but you know what we do when we assume...)
And on to this week, which is busy but incredibly fun. Much rehearsing, both for Senior Theater Festival One-Acts (next Tuesday! There's A Nation! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing at all! Track One! Forevermore! America! America! Freedom! America! All Aboard! Forevermore! (There. For those of you who won't be able to come, close your eyes and have somebody read those last 18 words in your ear as you slowly open them. That's it, in a nutshell.)) as well as for Formicans scenes for Theater Survey. And, suddenly, monologues for Acting (that's tomorrow). Many performances to go see: Five in the next week. And auditions for Infinite Monkeys, the theater festival that rejected (*sniff*) CLUE 2002, and for which I was going to apply to direct, but then didn't. Third time's a charm, yeah? I got called back, so we'll see how those go tonight. Set design presentations for Theater Survey were today, and they went well; I made a fun scale model of stage and set pieces, which pleased me to no end. I'm milking Linear Algebra for all it's worth because I'll never have good old Micheal again (*sob!*), and I think the rest of the class is somewhat less than amused with me. Oops. Turned in my dream play for Survey today, too, which was fun. Fifteen pages. Hopefully that's over two minutes... : P Let's see, what else? Plans to return home again in a week for the XC Banquet! Yay! And a bunch of Sammi's events, which'll be really cool. Classes are winding down, which is fun. Finals shouldn't be too bad. The professor of the Developmental Psych: Infancy to Childhood class has given me permission to audit her class. Yay! Sorry that was rather hyper and hysterical. Sometimes you need information to fly at you rapidfire. Sometimes that's just how life is going. Isn't that great?
Just curious: Is anybody disturbed by the fact that these are becoming longer and longer?
November 25~ Hurrah for Thanksgiving and a well-needed break and going home and seeing familiy and friends! But until then, let's also have a cheer for cool Theatre Survey homework (we'll get back to that) and student-produced theater (student-written, -directed, -designed, and -acted three-hour-long brilliant musicals) and glorious fields of frost and finally getting our parts semi-assigned for There's A Nation. And Linear Algebra test is over and done with, and now all I need to do is write mockery for extra credit. Greek test is on Wednesday, but after that I'm done for the week! All my other classes for Wednesday are cancelled! And we performed our scene for Acting (went pretty well) so all I have in that class for Tuesday is to watch other people perform.
And I registered for classes... Which was crazy, because the Astronomy classes I really wanted to take filled up, and my schedule is pretty well set and inflexible so it's hard to have a bunch of different options. So what I'm signed up for at the moment is Theater History 2, Greek 2, English 101, and Classical Acting. But I'm waitlisted for a Politics and Government class which would fulfill both a core and a prereq for the Study Abroad in London, and if I get into that I'll drop Theater History. I'm also waitlisted for Stellar and Galactic Astronomy, but I'm 16th on that list so it isn't bloody likely, but just in case I do get in I'll drop Classical Acting.
In Theater Survey we're doing design presentations and scene performances, which I've got to work on a bit more, but they're coming along well. And in other theater news, we had this supercool assignment in that class (told you I'd get back to it) to write a dream play. That is, a play that's somebody's dream. They have to have a mythological character of some sort in them, and be at least two minutes long. At the moment mine is fifteen pages and quite odd. But hey, it's a dream play. Hee! It's basically a Dreamer battling with her Vices, except the characters onstage don't speak; they move as though they're speaking but they don't move their lips, and people offstage say the lines, so it's kind of like it's all going on in your head. That's the plan, anyway. It's fun. And I'm so excited to go home and see everyone! But more about that when I get back. Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good night!
November 16~ Wow, sorry it's been a bit. I had an awesome birthday, and was entirely shocked when my mother and sisters materialized in my dorm room early that evening. They stayed for the weekend, which was tons of fun, and we went to the zoo and a museum and the SUB, and had a wonderful time. At least I did. Since then I've been pretty busy catching up with things and doing homework and trying to work out a schedule for next spring and rehearsing for my one-act and my Acting scene (scripted, which is on Tuesday, if you're curious) and trying to finish a play in time for a December 1st playwrighting competition deadline. And if you think that's crazy, you should see the plan for next semester... But I did get a chance to go to see the second HP movie last night, and have put my response to and opinions of it here. So check that out, if you've seen the movie. If you haven't seen it yet, don't read that yet, because it'll spoil some things, but SEE IT! It's so much better than the first one it's crazy. A brilliant work of cinema! Five thumbs up! Eighteen stars! That's all for now. Folks. :P
November 6~ It's raining! It's glorious! I walk around outside giddy. Most of the other people walking around look slightly less giddy. Can't imagine why. Interesting note: back at home, I occasionally walk around in the rain without an umbrella. People find this odd. Now, up here, I delight in carrying an umbrella as I walk around in the rain (I realized today that walking beneath an umbrella is one of the two things (the other being talking in a British accent) I will do given the slightest excuse) and people find THIS odd. People tell me it's not the world that's strange, it's me. I ask them to explain the difference.
November 5~ Hee, it's almost my birthday! How exciting! I've been getting many packages lately, which is definitely one of the most exciting things that can happen. Yay!
In other news, this weekend's retreat with intervarsity was really great. The speaker was awesome--he talked about Crazy Love (God's for us, and ours for God, and ours for others), which was really great. There was also a lot of awesome worship, and small group times. It was nice because I got to get to know a lot of the people better, and I experienced God in some new and awesome ways.
Acting class today was really cool. We did the 007 project, which we've been working on individually for six weeks. We drew the name of somebody else in the class, and then we watched them secretly in class to study their mannerisms. Then today we had to go through a series of activities (entering the classroom, finding a seat, sitting down, getting up and moving to a different seat, interacting with another student, taking notes, raising our hands, something interesting, getting annoyed by something in our environment, and leaving the classroom) using their mannerisms. It was really difficult, because you had to figure out how you do everything and how they do it and how it differed. And then the class guessed who your person was. I was really afraid nobody would guess mine, but they did, which was really good. It was really funny to see the girl who did me. Some of the things she did I recognized as myself, but others I never realized I did. And it was just cool in general to see everyone in the class playing everyone else. It was really great.
Everything else is good. The weather is awesome today. It's cloudy and sprinkling lighlty off and on, and cool but not freezing. Mmmmm! And the leaves are all changing colors! It's glorious. Hope you are having a similar satisfaction with your environment. :P
October 31~ Happy Halloween! I'm the Cheshire cat. It's a pretty sad costume, involving me wearing my (supercool) cheshire cat sweatshirt, but hey, at least it's something. Might be going to a haunted house tonight, which is exciting. For any of you back home, you should go to the haunted house in the theater at school, which is new this year, and about which I'm incredibly jealous because it sounds sooooo cool and they never did it when I was there. I would also like to share a discovery: you can, in fact, eat ice cream with chopsticks. Thank goodness! I'm participating in the chopstick challenge with intervarsity, and we aren't allowed to use silverware at all for the duration of the challenge. But they have the wooden chopsticks in the sub that are stuck together, and they work perfectly for eating ice cream, as well as for spreading cream cheese! Just a little helpful hint. Have a good night! Eat lots of candy!
October 30~ Tomorrow is Halloween, and I've been so busy I don't even have a costume planned out! And no, Mom, that's not for next year, that's for THIS year! Crazy, I know. So what have I been up to? Plenty of school and homework and such, which has been fun. Linear Algebra continues to get crazier. We now spend about one quarter of the time in this strange but beautifully hilarious parallel universe. I spend a good third of the class cracking up. It's glorious. Lots of random papers for Theatre Survey, which is fun, but a tad annoying because there are like four due this friday. They're not formal or anything and only have to be two pages long, but still. Greek is a participle party. In Acting we've started our new scenes, which are actually scripted with real dialogue, which is exciting! I'm doing a scene called Watermelon Boats in which I and my partner age from 11 to 21 during the ten minute scene. It's pretty cool.
And speaking of theater, I'm finally back in the wonderful world of performance! Hooray! I've spent the past two nights at a series of rather intense auditions for 15 different one-act plays which will be directed by the seniors in the senior theater festival class. The whole audition process was incredibly fun. The first night of auditions was for all the plays, so the fifteen directors sat and watched you read from some random scene. Then the callbacks were for the individual plays, so you'd get called back for some plays but not for others. Then they had this really complex schedule where you'd have 15 or 30 minute time slots to be with a certain director, and they tried to make it so you weren't ever booked for more than one director at the same time. I ended up getting called back for seven shows: Scent of Honeysuckle, The Open Meeting, Tall Tales, For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls, Medusa's Tale, Aria de Capo, and There's A Nation. They were all really fun. I especially liked Open Meeting, and For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls they did at my high school last year. It's a great show. My auditions were pretty nicely spaced out, one every half hour. So when you got to the director, for the most part they had a certain part they wanted you to read for, and they'd give you a page of the script and have you look it over for a few minutes and then read the scene along with someone else who was reading for the other part. I ended up getting cast in the chorus of There's A Nation, which is this kind of odd historical play based during World War II. We have our first meeting tonight, so we'll see how that goes.
Other than that, I've actually been spending a good deal of time working on various updates for this here website, which I hope you've had a chance to notice and appreciate. And I'm currently working on one or two more things for this page. And then I'll go back to my play, which I'm hoping to finish in time to submit it to this competition in December. We'll see. The weather is so awesome! Yay real weather! Yay leaves changing color! And I will leave you with a word of caution: Chalk Processing Center, Danger of Radiation, Radius Five Feet.
October 24~ Sorry it's been a while. I have the hour or so between Groundwork and Anakaio to update this here thing. Let's see if I can keep it that short. Hm. School is well. My classes are maintaining their high level of entertainment. Second Greek test of the year was yesterday, and I feel like it went well. I got my second Linear Algebra test back yesterday as well. It went well. I thought I missed an entire proof, but it turned out the way I did it, while not the way the professor was looking for, actually worked (he thinks) so he only took off one point for saying random stuff I didn't need to. I'm still not positive the proof works at all. But he wrote a note on the test asking me to come see him during his office hours, and then he basically ordered me to be a math major. It was pretty hilarious. I'm thinking about it... It's not looking good.
Acting is fun. We finished our Open Scene, as I said before. Got an A on our comic scene, a B on our serious one, which is what we deserved. And we're starting our Closed scenes. My partner and I are doing a very cool scene in which we age ten years in ten minutes (five years as a time). And today we learned how to waltz. :P Theatre Survey gets weirder daily. But it's a cool class. Unfortunately, my CLUE play wasn't accepted for the Infinite Monkeys Festival. It was a long shot, as many of the jokes, while hilarious, of course, only really make sense to eleven or twelve people on the planet. None of whom were in the judging panel, as far as I know. Too bad. In other theater news, I'm auditioning for yet another one-act festival on Monday. So we'll see how that goes. If it goes badly, that whole math major idea might be looked at in a new light... Not really, probably. But maybe it should be.
I went to visit Coach this past weekend. A highly glorious, hilarious event. Which began on Friday, when I drove up after my LA test to Skagit Valley College, where Coach's team would be racing in their county meet. Nobody was there when I arrived, so I passed the time away delivering a dramatic monologue and, subsequently, an acceptance speech to the crowds of invisible people who always surround me. Also known as myself. Quite entertaining! The meet went well. That night we read The Orange. Yay for poetry! The next morning was the Mt. Erie Road and Trail Race: 2.5 miles of uphill trail. It was cool because they started you one at a time, 30 seconds apart, so although you were racing you were basically running on your own. I didn't perish, which was a plus, and it was a really cool if insanely difficult trail, and I ended up winning my age division. Of course I'm fairly certain I was the only one in my age division. But I got a cool coffee cup! Then we terrorized the Museum of Northwest Art by gazing intelligently at thermostats and "Do Not Touch The Artworks" signs and mocking Rebecca Dobkins, the art critic whose commentaries appeared on the signs by each painting. We sent her a disdainful postcard we purchased in the museum gift shop. Then we went to a bookstore, drank a mocha and a root beer shake, respectively, sat by the fire, and bought poetry. Which we read that night. The next day we went hiking up through and out the top of the cloud cover, and fed birds who perched on our fingers, and babbled about cloud conventions. Coach Singer made a berry cobbler that night, which was one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted. Second only, perhaps, to the bowtie pasta extravaganza Coach and I cooked up for dinner that night. Which consisted of bowtie pasta, orange squash, artichoke hearts, broccoli, chicken, and purple potatoes. It was quite colorful. And surprisingly delicious. Then we read some Bridges of Madison County, by Robert Kinc... I mean, Robert James Waller. Quite possibly the funniest book ever. The next day I didn't have class, it being fall break, so I got to go to Coach's classes and teach his freshmen Ancient Greek and boggle their minds with such comments as "What's the funnest thing about college? Hm, I think the fact that you get to take whatever classes you want. There are so many cool classes!" Heh. Then I ran speedwork (How many did I do? you ask. Well, naturally. A few of them.), had I think my fourth or fifth shake of the weekend, and headed back up to school.
Wheee! Yes, it was as fun as it sounded. Also, I received the LJXC postcards to seniors this week, which was highly exciting as well as a timely solution to my big blank space on the white white wall problem. The Hawaiian man of the day is Ben of the spiky hair, for those curious. And I got a package containing seven layer bars yesterday. So I am entirely content. It was exactly the temperature of a San Diego December yesterday, but everybody thought I was rather odd, on a sunny, cloudless day, to be bouncing off the walls and saying it felt like Christmas.
And a lot of updating of the website today. Fun stuff!
Wow, this is the longest update so far. Sorry. Or you're welcome. Depending on your point of view.
October 12~ Thank you to my mom and my Uncle Bruce for e-mailing and telling me you read this! You guys rock!
October 9~ The relief of the completion of my open scene for Acting and the accompanying freedom of yet another hour in my evening is highly appreciated. The scene went well, I suppose, with a few problems we hadn't anticipated. But they particularly enjoyed our comic scene, and actually laughed, which was unexpected... Otherwise, hm. I started rereading the Ender's Game series, which was a huge mistake because now all I want to do is curl up and read the four books straight through, and then start on the Shadow series, and then Phillip Pullman's Golden Compass and its successors, and I won't be free for many more days of gripping, insighful prose. It's a terrible disease I have. Interferes with my writing dreadfully. But my play is coming along at a reasonable pace, and I'm starting to get an idea of what to write about for an upcoming Children's Theater competition in Missouri, which is due in March. And I recently submitted the Clue Play 2002 to the Infinite Monkeys Festival, and I should find out if they'll be doing my play in a week or so. Which is fun. Otherwise homework is stepping up a bit but not overwhelmingly, and tests in various classes (Greek and Linear Algebra) have turned out favorably. Cell Group has been meeting, and is awesome, as are Lighthouse and Anakaio, which are worship groups. I'm starting Groundwork, which is a class looking at the basic beliefs etc. of Christianity tomorrow. Should be quite cool. Currently working on being present in the moment as opposed to trapped in past or future. And following trains of thought through the Meaning of Life. I'm not sur I can say I recommend it. I feel obligated, at least, to warn that it's a dark tunnel, and if you're riding atop as opposed to within the train, as I prefer, you should duck or you'll be knocked off onto the tracks. Ah, metaphor! Visiting Coach again in another week and a half! Yay! May you find the irony of life humorous, as opposed to fatal. :P
September 27~ All goes well still. The weather's starting to get cooler, which is fun. Busting out the scarf pretty soon. :P Classes are starting to pick up. I got my first paper back in Acting. Did ok. Our open scene for that class is finally coming along. We met with the pedagogue (Acting TA) and she gave us some suggestions. So that's good. I had my first college test today in Linear Algebra. Not too bad at all. Hopefully. We'll see... But I felt like I understood it. Greek is tons of fun. Our first test was supposed to be this wednesday but we've been falling behindf and a lot of people are needing more clarification on stuff, so it won't be until next Tuesday. Have I mentioned what a crazy language that it? Insane. Anyway, Theater Survey... We started reading our first play for that class. The Piano Lesson. Very weird stuff.
I went to visit Coach last weekend, which is why I didn't update this then. It was awesome. I got to meet his sophomore class and his cross country team, and we went on many an unbelievably beautiful trail run, ate many a waffle, blackberry, and squirt of whipped cream, read many a poem (and some Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as well), talked into the night, and basically solved all the problems of the universe. I hope you all appreciate that.
The opportunities for spiritual fellowship here are amazing. There's worship and a talk at least two nights a week, bible studies, and I've joined a cell group, which is basically a covenant group, which is supercool. There's a Hope. Well, her name isn't Hope, but she is Hope. It's pretty funny.
I've started writing a full length play. I mostly plan it in Linear Algebra, and then I write it when I get back to the dorm. It's pretty fun. It's a fairy tale with a twist. Hee. I'll put it up when I'm done with it. Unless I'm getting it published. :P Who knows, though. They might put it on here. I could put it on. The opportunities for theatrical creation here are pretty open. Which is great.
I've also been planning my class schedule for the next four years. A bit early, you say? Well, actually I had already done it a year ago, but then I found out you can audit a class a semester here. Which basically means take the class without getting the grade. So no stress, just learning. And you don't have to pay for the course overload. You don't get the credit for it. Who needs credit? I'm going to audit one a semester from now on. People warn me not to overload myself. No stress. No worries. Why am I at college? Oh yeah...
I love you all. If you read this. However, nobody has yet (not a single soul) e-mailed me to say they are reading this. So basically I am writing to nobody. Which is fine, except the lack of a defined audience causes deterioration in the quality and focus of a peice or composition. Not like I'm not used to talking when nobody's listening. Fine then, I'll just go back to writing my play. Heh heh heh... The beauty of an audience trapped, resigned, even paying to listen to me talk for one to two hours. Through many different characters. A schizophrenic tirade. As usual. you just get to see the different characters in this case. So there's some philosophical wax upon playwrighting. To nobody. And scene.
September 15~ So much has happened since I last wrote. Sorry it's been so long... Anyway, classes have started, for one thing. Mine are going incredibly well. Greek is lots of fun. The professor is great, and we're already reading stuff in Greek, and conjugating verbs and such. Theater Survey is supercool. Acting is fun. We're working on this rather frightening open scene where they give us a script and we invent the context and do a funny version and a serious, sad version. Mine is coming along nicely. Linear Algebra is finally starting to be new stuff instead of review, and getting pretty interesting. Cross Country was getting to be too much for me physically and time-wise, and also mentally, and I was reaching a point where I didn't want to run ever again, so I quit the team. I did race once, in bungees, which intimidated me beforehand until I discovered a deep-seated but entirely unexpected love of bungees. They're great. I highly recommend everyone try them at least once in their life. Anyway, now I have more free time to hang out with people and write and read and clean my dorm room and such, which is nice. I also auditioned for some student-written and -directed one-acts, which was a fun process, especially getting to read for this one evil character. I've never really played an evil character, except perhaps if you count Miss Morebucks and the High Priest in church musicals. Unfortunately I didn't get cast. But auditions were fun. Otherwise I've been mostly hanging out with my awesome floormates. Last night we went bowling in downtown Tacoma, then drove up to Seattle, where we walked around and then got gelatto at a random cafe. It was tons of fun. My roommate and I are getting along well. I'm starting to pick up the Wisconsin "o" a bit. She's pretty funny. Whenever she gets bored she either cuts her hair or moves around our furniture. So far we've had three or four different room configurations. The funniest part is that my furniture has stayed in basically the exact same spots the whole time. Right now her bed is behind my dresser. It's weird. But fun! The weather has been nice so far, intermittently sunny and cloudy. Basically all goes well with me. Almost done with homework for the weekend: just have to memorize some Greek vocab. Peace out, rock on.
September 1~ Wow, classes start in just a few days. It's still pretty crazy here. I registered for classes, which was fun. Fortunately I got all the ones I wanted: Acting, Theater Survey, Greek, and Linear Algebra. Should be a party! They all look like really cool classes, and I'm actually rather excited for them to start up. If only because that will mean Orientation is over and every second of the day isn't scheduled away. Not that I haven't been having a blast. I went on a camping trip, which was fun. I met some very cool people and some very frightening spiders. We spraypainted curbs for community service. Today we played miniature golf. Last night there was a dinner and lecture; mine was on Shakespeare and the Globe, and it was awesome. Tonight in an hour there's a midnight breakfast, which should be exciting. There was also a hypnotist, kareoki, and a very hilarious skit. It's been lots of fun. But crazy busy. I've met many super people. I saw the mountain the other day, which was quite exciting. So basically all is well in my world. Hope it's just as good in yours!
August 27~ Well, I'm up at college, and having an AWESOME time! Everyone is very cool, and the campus is gorgeous, and my dorm room is big and bright and beautiful, and my roommate is supercool and supernice, and my Theater professor is awesome, and I race in bungees. Aaaah! It's incredibly busy now, some orientation activity every second of the day, but I'm meeting lots of people. I leave for a camping trip in an hour, which will last a few days, which should be fun. Did I mention my dorm is on the "garden level," aka the basement, which means we can climb right out our window and up a ladder to get out of our room? It's quite exciting. I'm in the outdoor adventures dorm, which is very cool. So yeah, everything is really great. Homesickness hasn't quite set in, although strain of always feeling obligated to meet new people has a little. So here's a question: is anyone reading these? Probably not. Oh well!
August 18th~ It's a very crazy time in my life. I recently got back from Running Camp, before which I was in Traverse City with my family. Traverse City was great, and I got to meet my two new baby cousins, who are adorable, perform the CLUE Play 2002, which I will now post here, and hang out with my supercool grandparents, aunts, and uncles. We had an awesome time, and some very frightening weather. Running Camp was great as well. I got to be a counselor, which meant I got to cook and such. The group was awesome, everybody was totally hardworking and willing to do everything. We played nine trillion games of Mafia. Great camp.
Now I'm incredibly busy packing and finishing things up in preparation for leaving for college. I just talked to my roommate, who's very cool, and I've bought my bedding and sleeping bag and all sorts of fun stuff, so now I'm mostly packing my final stuff, saying goodbyes, trying to get scrapbooks done and organize the stuff I'm leaving at home, and that sort of thing. I leave Friday August 23rd, and the first two weeks look pretty crazy: Orientation and seminars and urban plunge and stuff every second. Classes start September 3rd. So unless I get a final update up here before I leave, I have no idea how long it'll be before I write again. But I'll let you know how college life has begun for me, which will be exciting. Until then, laugh daily for mental health purposes.
July 25th~ I'm between Cape Cod and Traverse City at the moment in this year's edition of How Busy Can Your Summer Be? I have a total of four days in this interim in which to begin packing for college as well as for Traverse City and to do a host of little things I have to take care of. My room is currently overrun with boxes and littered with clothes, picture frames, and other paraphenalia of moving into the dorms in various states of being packed up. I've completed this year's CLUE play, which is incredibly complex and will soon be posted here. I've been fortunate enough to get to spend some time with surrealist bugs Wongo and Zorro, with whom I had an illegal British picnic and messy sundae and painted a vase and pencil cup for my desk at college. The impossible-but-necessary-to-my-mental-health project of the summer is getting all my photos into albums with captions, as well as putting some in frames to take to college. So we shall see how that goes. Upcoming: Traverse City, one incredibly busy day at home to recoup, and then running camp.
* ~ * Back to Potter Storm * ~ *
Everything on this site is copyright 2002 by October. Love is a many-splendored thing; love lifts us up where we belong; all you need is love! To use something from this site, please ask the webmistress for permission first at dragonfyre52@hotmail.com. You MUST have permission to use information from this site!
Various assorted trips still planned with family and friends for the summer, a bonfire regrouping the scattered remains of the seminar program, less than forty left of my fifty plays to read by the end of the summer, a few plays to write on a rather short deadline, many a craft, RUNNING CAMP!!!, weeks and weeks of free time, and then the trip back up to school, moving in to my exciting new place of dwelling, and beginning a new school year. Ah, it truly is the life I lead. Remercie le Dieu toujours. Bonne ete!
* Some excellent theater coming up (Vagina Monologues, and two original student-written and -directed plays in the Infinite Monkeys Festival)
* The commencement of rehearsals for Mona, although I don't know exactly when that will be.
* Some very good films coming up for very cheap (one dollar!) with Campus Films, including Bowling for Columbine, Chicago, Adaptation, Gangs of New York, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Harry Potter!
* Abdication performances!
* Coach Dorman in dinner theater
* A possible volunteer job tutoring elementary school kids in reading, and, of course...
* All of your scintillating comments on the idea of what personal gain/good/happiness is and whether it is our ultimate concern as individuals. Don't disappoint me.
