It’s talk like a pirate day, mateys!
As of yesterday morning, I am completely moved in and settled! Today I’ve been putting up pictures and mirrors, and I still need a few rugs and a towel rack for the bathroom, but other than that, I’m done, and the rest of this week that I took off from work, I can just rest and relax! I’ve put some photos of the house on flickr in case anyone’s interested (but they’re mostly for my mother’s benefit).
I’ve spent the last three days moving into the new house, and I ache everywhere… even my arches ache! Going from a second floor apartment to a third floor room is exhausting. I think, when it comes time to move out of this place, I’m going to hire people to haul everything for me. I’m ok with packing and unpacking, but let someone else do the heavy work. Though, I must admit, I had lots of help yesterday, with all the furniture. There were four of us moving everything out of the apartment, and then two more friends showed up to help move everything into the house. It was nice that we were able to get everything over in one load of the u-haul (plus a few things stuffed in people’s cars).
Today I’ve been putting things away, and I’m no longer feeling as overwhelmed as I was last night, mainly because I got all the stuff I don’t use often (camping equipment, suitcases, etc) into storage areas, so there’s not as much clutter out in the room. I’m taking all of next week off work, so I’ll have plenty of time to finish clearing up. First thing I need to do tomorrow, though, is go to the post office, because I had gotten the wrong house number stuck in my head, and so they’re going to be trying to deliver my mail to a non-existent address!
Ooh, and internet connection’s already up! Yay!
I’ve recently been watching the new(ish) series of Miss Marple stories that had been coming out on PBS a few months ago. I really, really like Geraldine McEwan in the title role. She’s almost exactly what I always pictured in my mind when I thought of Miss Marple when reading the books. I also came across a biopic of Agatha Christie told mostly by herself, from the perspective of her talking to a therapist after her disappearance/reappearance in 1926, and of interviews with journalists at the ten year anniversary of the opening of the Mousetrap.
Over the weekend I also bought the new Stargate movie. It was fun… had a lot of great stuff that was reminiscent of earlier seasons.
The melodrama ran this weekend. We sold out Friday and Saturday and came very close on Sunday. The audiences really seemed to enjoy it and got into the whole spirit of the thing… Sunday’s audience was very vocal with their cheers and jeers, but not so much with the paper wads (there was hardly anything to sweep up during intermission). And they loved Mayor Haggle!
Tonight’s the first rehearsal for Children of Eden. Several people from the melodrama are going to be in that too, plus some friends from other shows, so it should be fun. Regan is going to be Mrs. Noah – I think, since Nunsense, she’s going to start getting typecast whenever there’s a gospel-type song that needs to be sung. 🙂
more cat pictures
I’ve started working on baby projects for T. I’ve already made a little panda hat. I still need to buy eyes for it, but otherwise it’s finished.
The other project is going to be a pullover with a train on it. I found a pattern, and I’m going to change up the colours to make it look like the Hogwarts Express. I had ordered the pattern a couple of weeks ago, but they had run out, and I had to wait for their new stock to come in. It finally arrived at the end of last week. Now I just need some yarn – I have some in my stash that I want to use, in red, black, white, and yellow, but I also need some grey, blue and green.
The melodrama goes up in less than two weeks. I’m not particularly excited at this point, but then, I hadn’t wanted to direct to begin with. I wanted to be nice and rested when auditions for Children of Eden came along. Ah, well. We do get to use the theatre space as of tonight, which is a week earlier than we’d expected, so that’s nice. Even though we don’t get to do any set building as yet (the Children’s Theatre are still officially in the space), at least the actors will get a feel for the dimensions and the acoustics.
I went downtown to watch the fireworks last Friday for the first time since coming to live in Waco. The closest I’d come to this before was hanging out with friends in one of the Baylor parking lots when I was an undergrad and setting off some of our own little ground based fireworks and then watching the big display from a distance. It was quite fun. I hung out with Beth and the 92.9 tent; and Eileen came and hung out with us too.
I’ve just started working on Anne of the Island for LibriVox. I had been working on Mr Hogarth’s Will and Angelina, but I just couldn’t get into them and I kept procrastinating and not doing any recording at all. I’ve turned Mr Hogarth’s Will into a collaborative, and started up Anne as my new English solo. I feel sort of guilty abandoning Hogarth, especially because no one has shown any interest in it in the nearly two weeks since I turned it collaborative. But I’ve also started recording more often now that I’m working on a project that interests me. If no one picks up any of the chapters, I’ll probably do one here and there just to keep it alive. Oh, and for the first time since, I think, my second project, someone beat Ans to signing up to PL one of my English solo projects!
I’m still working on Angelina too (more enthusiastically since I started Anne). Spanish is so under-represented in the catalog, that I feel it’s my duty to contribute as much as possible, both in solos and collaboratives. I’ve currently got three collaborative projects going – part 6 of Aesop’s Fables, Jose MartÑs La Edad de Oro, and I took over part 2 of Don Quijote from Gesine when she needed some time off. Angelina is only the third solo Spanish work in the catalog, and one of the other two is mine as well.
Queen Victoria was a hit! I made a couple of alterations toward the funny side to the text Lise sent me and got lots of giggles. The worst was Tommy, who kept anticipating parts of the speech and would start laughing before the punch line. I watched the final performance in character and had an awful time trying to keep a straight face, especially when Regan looked straight at me and made a face at me.
I’m going to be co-directing this summer’s melodrama with MB. I hadn’t intended to direct it, because I knew MB wanted to try her hand at directing and thought the melodrama would be a good place to start (as it was for me, two years ago). But for some reason, the board decided they didn’t want a newbie directing by herself, and asked if I’d co-direct with her. As far as they know, I’m directing and she’s watching and learning. As far as we’re concerned, she’s directing and I’m offering moral support and suggestions.
When the new season was announced, I had wanted to direct the Hallowe’en show, Dial M for Murder, but I got sick and wasn’t able to get the proposal in on time. I learned today that a guy I know from a couple of shows this past season is going to be directing. He was kind of a pain in one of the shows, so I don’t think I’ll be auditioning as I’d originally intended. But that’s ok, because I also found out recently that The Cachinnator is going to be directing the Christmas show (A Christmas Carol), and I really enjoy working with him. If someone else had gotten DMfM, I might have ended up working on shows from June – December (not that I really expected to be cast in DMfM, because there’s only one female role).
I finally got around to working on my project for Jana’s baby (about time, since he was born over a month ago!). I had originally intended to make a little dress set out of one of the Baby Dale pattern books, because she’d been told she was having a girl. But then Elliott arrived, and I had to change plans. I decided to make a vest, and I wanted to try some fair isle, but I didn’t like the patterns I was finding, so I made one of my own. I’ve nearly finished it. I just have to do the ribbing on the armholes and neckband. I’ve posted a link to the pattern here: http://www.karenrsavage.com/blog/toddlers-fair-isle-vest/
Lise asked me, even though I wasn’t going to be in the play itself, if I’d like to introduce the play in the guise of Queen Victoria. She said she’d been going to have me do that originally too, so I said yes, because I only have to be at the last two rehearsals (that’s tonight and tomorrow), and I don’t have to be there for the whole thing. So, I spent this past weekend making myself a Queen Victoria costume. I used the blouse pattern I used for my Martha costume for Secret Garden, and the skirt pattern from my Ren Faire costume, only I left the front panel un-gathered. It was a good weekend for it, because JoAnn’s was having its Memorial Day sale, so I was able to get this fabulous black striped brocade quite inexpensively. I also got a bit of lace to put at the collar, and some pewter buttons that look great against the black fabric. I think maybe the sleeves should have been tighter than the pattern called for, but it looks pretty cool anyway. I’m going to put my hair in a low bun, parted in the centre… and I’ll rummage through the costume jewelry at the theatre for some medals and something that might do for a tiara.
I’ve finally found a place I like to move to. It’s a large house near where I used to go to church that’s going to be available for rent for the next five years (I figure by then, if my plan works, I’ll have finished paying off all my debts and will be able to seriously consider buying). It’s six bedrooms and at least four bathrooms (possibly five, but half of the second floor was off limits when I visited, so I didn’t get to see it); enclosed patio, fenced back yard, new appliances, pets allowed. I’ll be sharing with two people (though the main renter hasn’t found the third person yet), and my rent will actually be a little less than what I’m paying now. My area will be the third floor loft, which is one big open area, which I think is slightly larger than my current apartment. My other choice was half of the second floor (two bedrooms and one of the bathrooms), but the bathroom was maybe a metre wide and three metres long, and I much preferred the brand new bathroom in the loft, as well as the loft itself. We get to move in in August. I’m really excited!
Nunsense was a huge success. We had a lot of hicoughs along the way. Our original Reverend Mother had to drop out because of health problems, and the new one, who came in about two weeks into full rehearsals (not counting the week and a half or so of music rehearsals at the beginning), had an awful time getting all her lines down. And by an awful time, I mean that she was still using cheat sheets during the week of dress rehearsals; and she used the cheat sheet for one particular scene throughout the run of the show (and at least some audience members noticed, because friends of some of the other cast members mentioned it). Still, even though we cringed at her performance throughout the run, the audiences seemed to love the show. We had lots of word-of-mouth sales.
Tommy and Lise (mostly Lise, I think) are directing a Gilbert and Sullivan one-act as the first of the summer fund raisers, and I’d originally agreed to be in the chorus in that. Rehearsals started one of the weeks between shows of Nunsense, and the show goes up at the end of this month, so I know I was nuts to agree, but I did anyway. But I dropped out on Monday because I’ve been getting sick on and off for the past month or so, and I think a lot of it is because I’ve been so tired all the time from Nunsense that my defenses are low. I’m kind of sad, because it would have been fun, but I must admit, it’s nice having my evenings free and being able to read for pleasure, and record for LV, and go to bed at 10 (instead of 11 or 12).
Work’s going to be quiet for the next week or so; interim started this week. No (well, very few) students around after graduation on Saturday.
The Civic’s having it’s first ever (in my tenure there) Volunteer Appreciation Banquet this Saturday. Appropriately, or perhaps ironically, they’re also having their annual “let’s clean out the shop” day that morning. Planning on going to both. I hope we get lots done, because it’s a mess back there.