welcome back!

Man, what an eventful summer it has been. For anyone who knows me, you know that I’ve been living/working in Bloomington/Normal, Illinois for the summer as an ASM/Stage Manager at a Shakespeare Festival. I can’t even begin to tell you how crazy the last three months have been. I’ve learned so much about myself, on both a professional and personal level. I’ve grown exponentially as a stage manager, and I’ve become a much more independent person. Moving out of my parents’ house in the next few weeks is a good thing.

Aside from becoming a better stage manager and becoming much more confident as a professional, the most significant part of this summer, I’d have to say, has been the personal life side. I feel the need to write out everything that has happened in the last (whirlwind) month so that I can both process it and remember it. Bear with me, it could be long winded, melodramatic, or who knows what.

Also, I’ll start typing tomorrow since I’m getting ready to jump in the shower so I can go to a baseball game with my dad and my aunt.

ring me on the alexander grahm bell

Man o man has it been an eventful last few days. Here's a partial list of tag lines for stories to be told. If you're interested in any of it, let me know and I'll be happy to excite/bore you with the details:

1. reuniting with a a certain friend
2. almost killing someone
3. sharpie-ing someone's enTIRE leg and arm.
4. fire and flowers
5. almost killing someone
6. 6 shows at the civic, including stellar jokes from myself and my spot op during the last show :)
7. almost killing someone
8. seeing my boyfriend, John Krasinski, in Leatherheads
9. choosing to keep the back up dvd player
10. almost killing someone
11. changed first impressions from snot nosed shits to really fun to talk to
12. almost killing someone
13. closing the show at the civic and people there

and now i sleep.

nice, nice, nice

Today was a good day. I feel like I bitch about things so often (on here and elsewhere), and I know it gets old.

But today was good. I had a great time at the Civic-while the train painting is on hiatus, I helped Greta with some seriously awesome light hanging and genie using. It was awesome. Work was uberfun for one reason or another. My good stories (ok, I think they are good) were actually good today and loved (or maybe people just had had a break and so their tolerance for deeter stories had been emptied to be refilled now, whatever I'll take it). There was plenty of joking and making fun of to go around. My favorite of which is:

Caroline talkign with Melissa about coloring her hair (in regards to upcoming production). She then says "But I'm not going to, because I have a special visitor coming, I don't want to risk anything." And we all just kind of pause. She's standing by the cabinets and (unbeknownst to me) takes a sip of her diet coke, I'm sitting at the surger (not using it, no way, id blow it up) and (apparently) as she takes the sip I say, half joking-half kidding, "what, your period?" and everyone about dies. Caroline does the almost spit out her coke thing. It was fantastic. Not cuz I was funny, I don't mean this in the 'gimme attention' sort of way, i just mean that it was just a generally funny thing that we all bonded over. Gawd, I sound like an idiot.

Plus, people in my ICS class were bitch about our work load (which is actually isn't much, and I'm the first to complain about work loads), so our professor eliminated one project (by giving us the choice between the two, and one of them is the one I was most dreading), and making our 3 required intercultural campus events extra credit. sweet.

Plus I didn't have rehearsal or anything. The one bad thing about today was the working on scheduling of costume fittings for the opera. There aren't words for the frustration it causes. Don't get me wrong, I love stage managing and all it entails, but this was intense. I literally spent about 3 hours straight working on it. I know it doesnt sound like osmething that would take that long, but trust me. lists of names and emails to compile, figuring out who's who, and other things. gah.

So instead of climbing into bed to watch movies at 7pm as planned, I;ve been scheduling...and now it 1245. damn. and ive been up til at least 3 every night since getting back to school. balls. oh well. it was still a good day. Also, I did the paperwork to get my SMC license plate :)

insisting that faith and honor...

It's been an interesting weekend. Thursday I had to see Actors From The London Stage do "The Taming of the Shrew". Normally, I don't derive pleasure from seeing Shakespeare. I appreciate it. I respect it. I understand it's importance. But I don't actively choose it. Not to mention last time I saw AFTLS ("Hamlet") it was terrible and almost unbearable. And I've never read "Shrew" or worked on anything about it. But I was pleasantly surprised. It was really good. I didn't even THINK about falling asleep (I have been known in the worst of situations to try to fall asleep to make it go faster.) nor did I think about anything else. Also, the guy who came to our class on Tuesday was BEAUTIFUL. So it was alright.

Michaela, my boss, asked, nay, BEGGED me to stage manage the Claricello concert this weekend. Yeah it sucked. We had to be there for more than 5 hours Friday night, for more than 4 hours Saturday night, and then early for the concert today. B O R I N G. Plus the music people here are never very grateful for the work we do. So that wasn't fun. PLUS I had this dream last night that my mom was my light board op (for the real thing, I ran th eboard) and was causing all sorts of prblems with the house lights and it was INSANE. Luckily, not the case.

Last night there was a party. A Gatsby themed party. We dressed up. It was fun to bond with my theatre girls here. The last 2 weeks have been insane with the wedding and comp stuff. ANd some more stupid bull shit with smiley went down this weekend. I've been kinda flying this whole thing with him solo, but it was so nice to have their support and listen to them tell me the things i need to hear. When the party wound down, Xtina, Jacob, Carol, Lauren, and I went to steak n shake. We almost got jumped by a group of gang members.

Today was the concert. Blah. And rehearsal. It was bad. I was way off. Distracted by the stupid Claricello stuff, and being angry with him, and other stuff. So I ended it halfway thru. And was back to my room in time to see The Office win a SAG award.

The last thing of importance is taht this week is the THEATRE MAJOR OF THE WEEK week. And, as SAC rep, I had to plan all the events. Everyone who reads this, please come!!!
Monday--Movie night 6-8pm, Moreau 228. Voting on a movie to watch.
Tuesday--Improv/Acting game night. 6-8 or 9pm. Moreau 232.
Wednesday--Dress as your favorite character from a musical or play--all day, everywhere!
Thursday--Theatre Trivia contest night. Prizes! 6-8pm, Moreau 232. If you have any questions to contribute, I'd really appreciate it.

cue standby

So my "competing" at ACTF went well. I succeeded in not saying "um" 1000 times. I was well spoken (according to Melissa who only says such things if she REALLY means them) and the judges were fairly impressed. So it went well. Good news is that I don't suck at stage management. **PHEW** **Wipes brow** The girl who won the whole stage management competition??? The girl who was right next to me. What to know what her show had??? Te quarterback as well as 2 other starters from the MICHIGAN football team and a horse. YES, you READ RIGHT, a fucking HORSE on the MOTHERFUCKINGSTAGE. WTF???!??!! She was intense. When I arrive to set up my display, all of her crap (which mind you was not finished being put together, at least I came organized and ready to just put up my boards and put down my books) was spread ALL OVER my part of the table. Aren't stage managers supposed to be organized? She also wasn't very nice about moving her stuff so I could set up. Oh well. I'm excited to get the feedback in a few weeks :).

Annaliese came up to me after she presented and said:
So is "stand by horse" kind of like "stand by fly cue balls"?

I guess that needs back story...During Red Herring last year, I had a lot of cues to call, besides light cues, sound cues, and other cues, there were fly cues, which is normal. But there were lots of things to fly: a bed, bar lamps, 2 different signs, and the walls to an apartment. One night, in the middle of the run, I got my tongue tied, and while trying to say "Stand by: fly cue: walls" I thought bed in my head, combined bed and walls, and said "Stand by: fly cue: balls." And it has forever been written down on the SMC theatre quote wall and ingrained into everyone's memories. My mother would be proud.

My first day of classes was uneventful, i had one class. Although it was nice because I thought I'd be the only senior in the Intro to Intercultural studies class (last class for my minor), but there are like 5 other seniors doing the same thing. One of my close friends even. Yay.

Also, I got really sick. Well, not got sick, but continued to be sick so I couldn't attend my first day of my internship. awesome. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.