A cute call

This post is on my new blog, here, but I thought I'd post it on this one too.

My sister-in-law, Leslie, called Scott on his phone yesterday afternoon - but he didn't answer because he had left it at home (we were on our way home from the library). My 2-year-old niece, Sarah Ann, said to her, "Now I talk Aunt Tith." (That's how she pronounces my name.) Leslie responded, "Well, why don't we call Daddy?" But Sarah Ann was adamant. "No. Aunt Tith."

So Leslie called me and told me that Sarah Ann really wanted to talk to me, and I laughed and agreed. I could hear Leslie prompting Sarah Ann's responses in the background. I also got her to sing the ABC song and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", all by herself with no prompting from Leslie.

My niece is so cute.

"And we're going to Disneyland."

So "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged" is over. Finished. Kaput. I have mixed feelings, of course - I'm sad for it to be done, but glad to have my life back. Mostly, though, I'm glad. I'm exhausted and very sore - every muscle in my body aches from the final weekend of the run and Strike after the last show. I'm sure that in a few days I'll start going through withdrawals, but for now I'm very excited to have the Thanksgiving holiday to rest (as much as will be possible with my adorable nieces and nephews jumping all over the place, yelling, "Aunt Tarythe! Aunt Tarythe! Come play with me! Okay, you be It..."). And pumpkin pie...mmm...

The last show went very well. The size of our audiences increased as the show went on and word spread. During the last show we not only had the seating area onstage full (it was meant to be a small and audience-interactive show), but the balcony was holding quite a few more people. It was wonderful.

After the show we had Strike, where the whole set gets taken apart nail by nail, board by board. Costumes and props get put away too. It's quite the process, and usually requires a good amount of people. I stayed to help the stage crew and the Coordinator of Theatre Operations (the big big boss of the department) was so impressed by my hard work that he offered me a job at the theatre! Even though it usually takes a few months for the application and paperwork to go through, he said not to worry - that he would personally make sure the process was "expedited" for me.

In related good news, an adjudicator from the American College Theatre Festival came to judge our show last week and she nominated me for the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship.

Facebook

It's official. Under peer pressure, I caved in and...created a Facebook account. For so long I was proud to not have a blog, to not be on Facebook. And look at me now - 2 years with a blog, 36 hours of Facebookness.

But it's great to be in touch. I went through and found a bunch of people I used to hang out with - at school, work, church, whatever. I did this by going through my friends' friends lists. "Oh I know that person! Add friend? Why yes, please." Click. It's so good to know that now my friendships with these people are official, secure - well, we're friends on Facebook, so our relationship must be stable. Oh, good. Now I can sleep better at night.

It's amazing to me how much time can be spent on Facebook; I think it's going to be my undoing. I should have waited until the end of the semester! I'm also somewhat concerned with how excited I've been to watch my friends list grow, as people accept my request to be their friend on Facebook. It's a great way to realize the superiority you have over other people who don't have as many as you do. :)
"Scott, I have 7 friends!"
"Honey, I now have 21 friends! That's more than you."
"Hey, guess what - I have 56 friends - no, make that 58. It's great being so popular."

It's rather pathetic.

Opening Night

Opening night was on Friday. And it was awesome. We had a great crowd; most of the seats were filled, Scott came to support me, and the audience was very enthusiastic (the play relies very heavily on audience participation, so this is crucial). Towards the end of rehearsals, when you're running the same lines over and over again without an audience there to react to you, it gets frustrating. It's easy to lose motivation when you're reaping no immediate reward. But on Friday, I was loving it. "This is what I've worked so hard for these past couple of months!" I told Ruben during intermission. I love the adrenaline rush that comes from connecting with the audience and seeing your hard work pay off. It makes those long hours and late nights all worth it.

Tech

Yesterday was a long day. Saturday's play rehearsal was canceled due to some scheduling conflicts, so the entire tech weekend was set on Sunday instead. All 12 hours of it. Tech is that wonderful time where all the technical designers, actors, stage crew, director, etc. come together and we try to do the show exactly the way it will be on opening night - with lights, sound, set, costumes, and props. Coordinating all of that is harder than it might seem...even though the first time we ran through the show we went cue-to-cue (which means that we skipped all dialogue that didn't require a costume change, light cue, or sound cue, so we could get timing right) it took us 6 and a half hours to get through the 90-minute show once. And then we did it again. Faster this time, though. :)

It was certainly an entertaining day. We ran into many a problem - actors' pants falling down multiple times, both onstage and off (not mine though, thank goodness), props falling apart in the middle of a scene, a piece of scenery knocking someone (me) in the head, actors not being able to change costumes fast enough and missing their entrances (or coming out with only half of their costume). And we open in 3 days.

How I love the theatre.

death of an Object

I never thought I could get so attached to an object. I've never been the obsessive type. But from the moment I received my laptop the Christmas prior to attending BYU, I was hooked. Addicted. Absolutely entranced. My fascination was bigger than the novelty of it, greater than the coolness I felt owning my own computer. It was an escape; a freedom.

As long as I had my laptop with me, I was never bored. I could always read, write, or design whatever I wanted. There were always settings to be played with: backgrounds, fonts, and colors to be changed, new tricks and shortcuts to discover. "Hmm, I wonder what this so-called 'button' does?" My laptop offered me a chance to have something truly my own, changeable at my will. Nobody could tell me what picture to have on my desktop, or how to organize my folders - the computer wasn't theirs, it was mine. And yet, that something of mine could be shared. I had a commodity, a convenience for others that I was sure could be traded for friendship. I felt so...needed. "Hey T, could I borrow your computer for a minute?" my BYU roommates would ask. I loved saying yes. I relished in the fact that I had something they wanted; not because I felt superior in any way, but because I could provide a service to them. If not for my computer, my roommates might have had to walk all the way to the library! How useful I felt. It validated my existence in some odd way, and made me feel like even though I was a burden to live with, I was at least partly making up for it.

Of course, owning my own computer whilst at college was simply practical as well. No need to spend hours at the library on their computers, and - not that this was a good thing - no need to write papers before midnight the day before they were due. How convenient. I brought my laptop with me to school nearly every day, relying on it for note-taking in my classes. The downside? Sometimes I would connect to the internet and even chat online during class. I know, I know - no need to tell me how much better my grades would have been had I paid better attention and shown up to class more often. I've learned my lesson.

This all has a point, really.

A week ago Wednesday my computer died a terrible death, one of hard drive malfunctioning. Oh how I mourn! The greatest misfortune isn't the now-gone black casing or bright screen or pretty buttons, but the megabytes of data I've involuntarily relinquished. Without a working cd-drive, I never backed anything up. Stories, poems, papers, pictures. All of them gone. Documents of funny things my roommates used to say, songs friends and I wrote, crazy videos we made when we were sleep-deprived and somewhat delirious. A folder on my desktop entitled "Random Folder of Documents to Clean Up the Screen Because Christine Couldn't Handle It Anymore". I kept every email of importance that I ever received, every IM conversation. I loved going back and rereading them, remembering funny things people said. So many memories - 4 years worth - lost. My husband says that we'll just have to make the upcoming years even better and more worth remembering. He's sweet.

The most pressing issue right now is that I'm in the middle of midterms. Not only have papers from semesters at BYU disappeared into oblivion, but midterm and final projects from the current semester are gone as well. I have a lot of work to redo, and my rehearsal and class schedules don't lend themselves to much redoing of work.

The small consolation for this is that on Monday I will get a new computer, with a working D-drive and Windows Vista.

Pumpkin Carving

I just wanted to post a couple of pictures. The other day a couple in our ward invited our newly formed group of young couples to come carve pumpkins at their new (bigger) apartment. I haven’t carved a pumpkin or roasted pumpkin seeds in quite a number of years, but Scott and I have been having a great time hanging out with the other young couples in our ward and decided to go. Here are the results:

Our pumpkin: cleaned out by Scott, carved by me (with the help of a stencil).

The group of pumpkins. I think we should go pro, don't you??? :)

Unexpected Call

It was certainly one of the most random pick-ups ever (though definitely beaten out by the Russian who, out of nowhere, flat-out proposed to me on an airplane once). It started in my American History class last Thursday.

"Hey, can I borrow your cell phone for a quick sec?" A guy leaned over to me in the middle of class and asked this in a whisper. "Uh, sure." I said. "Just take it outside to use it."

He did, and came back into class very shortly afterward, handing my cell phone to me with a "thank you". I thought to myself that it must have either been a quick conversation, or he didn't reach whomever it was that he was trying to get ahold of. "No worries," I replied and went back to taking notes.

This morning I received a voice message from a number I didn't recognize. I've been waiting for a call from someone named Dan, who is supposed to fix the huge hole in our roof, and thought it might be him. But it wasn't; it was the guy from history class (whose name I can't pronounce). Apparently his "quick conversation" consisted of him using my cell phone to get my number. I nearly choked on the carrot I was eating when I heard the message, and then burst out laughing.

I debated whether I should call him back right then, or wait until 2:00 when we had class together and talk to him face-to-face. Neither option sounded particularly tantalizing. Hoping for a voice mailbox, I opted for the cowardly technique of calling him. Unfortunately, he answered. The conversation was short and as awkward-less as I could make it; I told him that I was flattered but I was also quite married.

I didn't see him in class today; I hope it wasn't my fault.

The Play's The Thing

I was really nervous about the auditions, but I left feeling like I did pretty well. The question was: is "pretty well" good enough? I went in competing against people of quite varied talent level, and some of them I wasn't worried about. But there was a group of guys who knew the director quite well and had been in the Theatre Department at PGCC for at least 2 years. The other trouble was that the show consists of only 3 parts - 3 male parts. The director had said she was willing to accept females for a mixed-gender cast if she found the right ones.

And I got in! The play is The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged, and it's hysterical. 3 of us do all of Shakespeare's plays in 90 minutes, switching out roles and condensing the plays until there's nothing left but the funny parts.

The best part is that I get to play Hamlet...you can just picture it, can't you? :)

Pride of the Police Force

It had already been a long day. I had taken a Sister in my ward to the hospital at 2:45, and now it was a little past 9pm. We sat in the drive-thru at CVS, waiting for her prescription to be filled. A cop was parked near us, in the small and dark parking lot around the side of CVS that the drive-thru was on. He seemed to be having fun playing with his car - fiddling with buttons and knobs, flipping the lights on and off, and inspecting the decals that said "Police". His buddy drove up. The second cop's car was identical to the first's, but the two officers went through the whole fun process - again - of examining the features of their cars. Their conversation went from their cars, to inappropriate comments about some girl they know named Emily, back to their cars.

"Hey, man, I tried the lights yesterday. I turned 'em on, just to see what people would do, and zhoop, zhoop (imagine this sound accompanied by hand gestures indicating cars pulling over), all those cars pulled over!"
"Yeah, it's great, isn't it?"

The two looked extremely impressed with themselves. The pride of the police force then proceeded to turn their flashing lights on, backed up few steps to admire their handiwork, and began practicing whipping their guns out of the holsters reminiscent of the Old West. I rolled my eyes.

I admit I was tempted to get out of my car and confront the second cop about my feelings on his bragging about his misuse of authority entrusted to him by the city (or county, or state - I can't remember which level of government his car revealed that he worked for). But I didn't - even though I did confront some random guy in traffic the other day and told him I thought he was a jerk (I walked up to his car while he was stopped at a stoplight). But he couldn't arrest me and didn't have a gun.

I doubt that criminals who were in mid-crime last night realized how lucky they were that these two officers in particular happened to be on duty.