Did I really end my last post with that? I should learn not to tempt fate like that...
I had all the intentions of an easy month. Chorale doesn't pick up again until the 14th (our director is in Paris post-holiday), I'm not currently in a Playshop production, and (although we have a children's concert Feb first) church is low-key now that Advent and Christmas is over.
What was that? I'm IN a Playshop production? How could that be? I didn't even audition!
It turns out that one of the minor characters couldn't commit to her role after all, and now I'm 'Mary Sunshine' in Chicago. So now I have rehearsals on Tuesday nights, Friday nights, and Sunday afternoons. --And did I mention that opening night is a month from yesterday? Eeek!
The hardest part is that this character is neither drunk nor a floozy. I have no personal point of reference to base her on! --teehee.
"She" is, of course, a man.
I think I may have fun with this.....
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Friday, December 7, 2007
Hey, Look! It's been another month!!
My how the time flies when you're... ummm.... ...lazy?
I know that I'm no busier than any other person out there, so I don't really know how the rest of you can manage to keep up with posting pithy bits on a nearly daily basis. Anyway.... here's the past month in a nutshell.
The symphony chorale that I sing with had our fall concert Nov 9th and 11th. It went pretty well. It was a LOT of music. Wayne (our director) picked "Psalms" as the theme. I had missed 3 rehearsals through September and October (due to 'Beauty and the Beast' production) and felt it with this concert. I feel like I missed all of the picky-note-rehearsals for the last half of the concert. Oh well, I got through it all without an unscheduled solo anywhere and that's ALWAYS a good thing!!
Symphony Chorale's Christmas concert was this past weekend. (Benjamin Britten's "Ceremony of Carols" if you're interested.) We had 3 weeks to rehearse it. It was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. Believe it or not, we even got a standing ovation. How weird is that??
This past weekend was also Playshop's production of "Escanaba in da Moonlight". As the business trustee for the organization, I'm in charge of the box office, so I worked it this time. I didn't get to see the show due to people showing up late but I hear it was good.
Now it's all about advent/Christmas music. The chorale has a small group of us (25 voices) that are singing at some local Christmas functions. Our first 'show' is tonight for the local library's Christmas party. Hopefully I've remembered everything I need for the show as I'm not planning on going home before it. We sing at an extended-care / retirement facility on Monday and at a local hospital for the volunteer's Christmas party on Thursday.
I hope that Santa's watching.
This Sunday night, our church is doing our annual Advent service and we've been working on that music like you wouldn't believe. None of it is THAT difficult, but none of it is easy either. Our director (again, Wayne) picks music where not only the key changes, but so does the timing. It's pretty sad when the easiest song to learn is the one we're singing in Nigerian. --I'm hoping that I have no surprise solos this coming Sunday night. At this point, it's a definite possibility.
Then come rehearsals for Christmas Eve. We have two weeks to learn Pergolisi's "Magnificat" along with the rest of the musical extravaganza that IS the midnight service on Christmas Eve.
I'll be SO happy when it's finally January.
I know that I'm no busier than any other person out there, so I don't really know how the rest of you can manage to keep up with posting pithy bits on a nearly daily basis. Anyway.... here's the past month in a nutshell.
The symphony chorale that I sing with had our fall concert Nov 9th and 11th. It went pretty well. It was a LOT of music. Wayne (our director) picked "Psalms" as the theme. I had missed 3 rehearsals through September and October (due to 'Beauty and the Beast' production) and felt it with this concert. I feel like I missed all of the picky-note-rehearsals for the last half of the concert. Oh well, I got through it all without an unscheduled solo anywhere and that's ALWAYS a good thing!!
Symphony Chorale's Christmas concert was this past weekend. (Benjamin Britten's "Ceremony of Carols" if you're interested.) We had 3 weeks to rehearse it. It was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. Believe it or not, we even got a standing ovation. How weird is that??
This past weekend was also Playshop's production of "Escanaba in da Moonlight". As the business trustee for the organization, I'm in charge of the box office, so I worked it this time. I didn't get to see the show due to people showing up late but I hear it was good.
Now it's all about advent/Christmas music. The chorale has a small group of us (25 voices) that are singing at some local Christmas functions. Our first 'show' is tonight for the local library's Christmas party. Hopefully I've remembered everything I need for the show as I'm not planning on going home before it. We sing at an extended-care / retirement facility on Monday and at a local hospital for the volunteer's Christmas party on Thursday.
I hope that Santa's watching.
This Sunday night, our church is doing our annual Advent service and we've been working on that music like you wouldn't believe. None of it is THAT difficult, but none of it is easy either. Our director (again, Wayne) picks music where not only the key changes, but so does the timing. It's pretty sad when the easiest song to learn is the one we're singing in Nigerian. --I'm hoping that I have no surprise solos this coming Sunday night. At this point, it's a definite possibility.
Then come rehearsals for Christmas Eve. We have two weeks to learn Pergolisi's "Magnificat" along with the rest of the musical extravaganza that IS the midnight service on Christmas Eve.
I'll be SO happy when it's finally January.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Oh the drama.......
This past week has been tough.
Was I busy at work? --No more than usual.....
Was I struggling through another Hell Week with a play? --Nope.
Were Rich and I at each other's throats? --Never.
The inevitable has happened.
Pip and her (now long-distance) boyfriend had a fight and went "on a break". Egad. The tears, the frustration, the heartbreak of it all. I'm SOOOO glad that I'm not 18 anymore.
In the end, the "break" lasted all of four days. He decided that studying on the pre-med track, trying to keep those grades in the A/B categories, being on his own at school, working a part-time job, trying to hang out with friends, and maintaining a long-distance relationship was too much for him to do. Since what he's actually enjoyed learning throughout high school was government, he's switching his major and is hoping to (eventually) teach government/ civics/ history at the high school level. Or possibly run for office someday.
Quite frankly, I had told Pip earlier that he didn't seem like any doctor I had ever known, let alone a SURGEON. (He had been hoping to go into neurosurgery.) I'm not saying that he wasn't smart enough (he is), it's the drive he was missing. I give doctors and surgeons a LOT of credit. In order to serve their patients, the MD misses out on a lot of life along the way. It's a very hard life that they're called to. I wouldn't want that job, nor would I particularly like to be married to one. (Thankfully, I'm not!)
So anyway, now that the tension is soothed home is a better place to be. Pip and Jefe have learned valuable lessons in communication, commitment, and (last but certainly not least) real life.
Thus endeth this week's Afterschool Special, "An Autumn Breakup".
Was I busy at work? --No more than usual.....
Was I struggling through another Hell Week with a play? --Nope.
Were Rich and I at each other's throats? --Never.
The inevitable has happened.
Pip and her (now long-distance) boyfriend had a fight and went "on a break". Egad. The tears, the frustration, the heartbreak of it all. I'm SOOOO glad that I'm not 18 anymore.
In the end, the "break" lasted all of four days. He decided that studying on the pre-med track, trying to keep those grades in the A/B categories, being on his own at school, working a part-time job, trying to hang out with friends, and maintaining a long-distance relationship was too much for him to do. Since what he's actually enjoyed learning throughout high school was government, he's switching his major and is hoping to (eventually) teach government/ civics/ history at the high school level. Or possibly run for office someday.
Quite frankly, I had told Pip earlier that he didn't seem like any doctor I had ever known, let alone a SURGEON. (He had been hoping to go into neurosurgery.) I'm not saying that he wasn't smart enough (he is), it's the drive he was missing. I give doctors and surgeons a LOT of credit. In order to serve their patients, the MD misses out on a lot of life along the way. It's a very hard life that they're called to. I wouldn't want that job, nor would I particularly like to be married to one. (Thankfully, I'm not!)
So anyway, now that the tension is soothed home is a better place to be. Pip and Jefe have learned valuable lessons in communication, commitment, and (last but certainly not least) real life.
Thus endeth this week's Afterschool Special, "An Autumn Breakup".
Friday, November 2, 2007
The Shorn Q-Tip
I always feel kind of bad when I let slip the foibles my family members, so as part of the Parent Bloggers Network's current BlogBlast "Even Beauty Experts Make Mistakes" ( http://blog.parentbloggers.com), it's time to let off one of my own less than stellar moments.
Let me start by saying that I was a child of the 80's.
...I'm lying already.....
I was a TEENAGER of the 80's. ......now I'm not talking the mall-bang-Jon-Bon-Jovi-is-SO-mint late 80's. That era was for wussies. I'm talking the hardcore, punk/'New Romantic", we-just-bought-a-Wahl-and-aren't-afraid-to-use-it 1980's!! I suppose that I could write about the lovely lime-green Mohawk I strutted through the streets of Minneapolis with in my Mary Tyler Moore gone bad phase or my Robert Smith of the Cure black rat's nest that I ended the decade with, but I thought that I'd take y'all WAY back to the beginning of it all.
Grab a cup of cocoa, get settled in your chair, and prepare yourselves.......
My natural haircolor is a dark, dishwater blonde. It's not pretty. My personal opinion is that God gives people this haircolor when he runs out of ink in his special haircoloring markers. It's like a special dispensation to: "Ah, do what you can with it". So, by the time I was in eighth grade, I'd had enough. It wasn't light enough to be a pretty blonde and it had no sparkle like what brunettes have. I saved my babysitting money and in the summer of 1982 I went to Rexall Drugs and bought a box of "Deep Mahogany" Miss Clairol. While my parents were at work one Saturday morning, I transformed myself from drab to ......well..... kind of a 'dark grape' color.
Naturally, when my mom came home, she was furious. She took me to the salon to have the color stripped out of my hair. I remember that it was a long and smelly process and it left my hair remarkably straw-like afterwards. She forbade me from ever COLORING my hair again so long as I lived under her roof.
And I spent the summer babysitting to pay her back for the small fortune she had spent to turn my hair back to it's proper color.
*****If you think that this is the end of the story, just wait! It gets better!!*****
The salon used bleach back then to pull color out of hair. Now bleach doesn't just strip out artificially deposited color, mind you, it removes ALL color. It had taken them a couple of bleachings to pull out Miss Clairol (a tanacious woman, I tell you), then they had to put another color down to take the brassiness out. The color I left the salon with was NOT my natural. It was a deep golden with soft strawberry highlights. IT WAS NOT DRAB.
An awareness struck me. I was forbidden to PUT COLOR INTO my hair, by my mother's edict. However, TAKING THE COLOR OUT was an entirely different beast! And I looked gooood as a strawberry blonde!
So I proudly purchased my first bottle of Sun-In. From 1982-1983, I single handedly kept this company in business. Over the course of time (and 2-3 applications a week) my strawberry blonde went all the way to 'Nordic Blonde' without my mom ever remarking about it. Then, in the winter of 1983 I decided that I needed a perm.
***Cue axe-murderer music here***
The stylist asked what I'd used to bleach my hair and I told her of my great Plum experiment. Was it her fault that she just accepted what I'd said? No. I didn't hold any of what transpired against her. It was my own misguided attempt at fashion. God had given me a "Wild" card for my hair and I had overplayed it.......
She wrapped my hair on the perm rods and applied the solution. It stunk, but all perms stink. When the 20 minute processing time was over, she took me back to the sink to rinse it out. I heard a couple of "plinks" as some of the rods slipped out of my hair and I happened to open my eyes to see the stylist gasp as the color ran out of her face. She stopped the water and ran to get help.
When the older woman (the manager, I'm guessing) came over to the sink she shook her head in an "I've seen THIS before" way. She put a stopper in the drain and started filling the basin up with water. She questioned me about the chemicals on my head much like Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition. Under that kind of stress, naturally I broke down like an AMC Gremlin and admitted what I'd been doing to myself. She then explained the damage I'd been doing to my hair and how the perm process does not react well to Sun-In. She then went on further to say that the "plinks" I'd been hearing had indeed been the rollers falling off of my head. However, MY HAIR WAS STILL WRAPPED AROUND THEM.
They did the best that they could, of course, but the Sun-In had broken down the proteins in my hair so badly that once the perm solution opened the cuticle, there was nothing left to the hairstrand. I lost all of the rollers on my head save for the three in the very front. I guess that that was God's way of showing a little mercy to the stupidity of (wo)man.
I left the salon with a bald head (perfect for a northern Iowa great plains winter!), bangs resembling an exploded Q-Tip, and a note to my mother stating that I hadn't gone into the salon asking for this particular outcome.
Oh yeah, I was grounded.
This BlogBlast is sponsored by Harper Collins and the new beauty guide by Nadine Haobsh, "Beauty Confidential". ( http://www.beautyconfidentialthebook.com).
What's YOUR beauty don't? Share it with the world, link the above sites, and you might be a winner!
Let me start by saying that I was a child of the 80's.
...I'm lying already.....
I was a TEENAGER of the 80's. ......now I'm not talking the mall-bang-Jon-Bon-Jovi-is-SO-mint late 80's. That era was for wussies. I'm talking the hardcore, punk/'New Romantic", we-just-bought-a-Wahl-and-aren't-afraid-to-use-it 1980's!! I suppose that I could write about the lovely lime-green Mohawk I strutted through the streets of Minneapolis with in my Mary Tyler Moore gone bad phase or my Robert Smith of the Cure black rat's nest that I ended the decade with, but I thought that I'd take y'all WAY back to the beginning of it all.
Grab a cup of cocoa, get settled in your chair, and prepare yourselves.......
My natural haircolor is a dark, dishwater blonde. It's not pretty. My personal opinion is that God gives people this haircolor when he runs out of ink in his special haircoloring markers. It's like a special dispensation to: "Ah, do what you can with it". So, by the time I was in eighth grade, I'd had enough. It wasn't light enough to be a pretty blonde and it had no sparkle like what brunettes have. I saved my babysitting money and in the summer of 1982 I went to Rexall Drugs and bought a box of "Deep Mahogany" Miss Clairol. While my parents were at work one Saturday morning, I transformed myself from drab to ......well..... kind of a 'dark grape' color.
Naturally, when my mom came home, she was furious. She took me to the salon to have the color stripped out of my hair. I remember that it was a long and smelly process and it left my hair remarkably straw-like afterwards. She forbade me from ever COLORING my hair again so long as I lived under her roof.
And I spent the summer babysitting to pay her back for the small fortune she had spent to turn my hair back to it's proper color.
*****If you think that this is the end of the story, just wait! It gets better!!*****
The salon used bleach back then to pull color out of hair. Now bleach doesn't just strip out artificially deposited color, mind you, it removes ALL color. It had taken them a couple of bleachings to pull out Miss Clairol (a tanacious woman, I tell you), then they had to put another color down to take the brassiness out. The color I left the salon with was NOT my natural. It was a deep golden with soft strawberry highlights. IT WAS NOT DRAB.
An awareness struck me. I was forbidden to PUT COLOR INTO my hair, by my mother's edict. However, TAKING THE COLOR OUT was an entirely different beast! And I looked gooood as a strawberry blonde!
So I proudly purchased my first bottle of Sun-In. From 1982-1983, I single handedly kept this company in business. Over the course of time (and 2-3 applications a week) my strawberry blonde went all the way to 'Nordic Blonde' without my mom ever remarking about it. Then, in the winter of 1983 I decided that I needed a perm.
***Cue axe-murderer music here***
The stylist asked what I'd used to bleach my hair and I told her of my great Plum experiment. Was it her fault that she just accepted what I'd said? No. I didn't hold any of what transpired against her. It was my own misguided attempt at fashion. God had given me a "Wild" card for my hair and I had overplayed it.......
She wrapped my hair on the perm rods and applied the solution. It stunk, but all perms stink. When the 20 minute processing time was over, she took me back to the sink to rinse it out. I heard a couple of "plinks" as some of the rods slipped out of my hair and I happened to open my eyes to see the stylist gasp as the color ran out of her face. She stopped the water and ran to get help.
When the older woman (the manager, I'm guessing) came over to the sink she shook her head in an "I've seen THIS before" way. She put a stopper in the drain and started filling the basin up with water. She questioned me about the chemicals on my head much like Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition. Under that kind of stress, naturally I broke down like an AMC Gremlin and admitted what I'd been doing to myself. She then explained the damage I'd been doing to my hair and how the perm process does not react well to Sun-In. She then went on further to say that the "plinks" I'd been hearing had indeed been the rollers falling off of my head. However, MY HAIR WAS STILL WRAPPED AROUND THEM.
They did the best that they could, of course, but the Sun-In had broken down the proteins in my hair so badly that once the perm solution opened the cuticle, there was nothing left to the hairstrand. I lost all of the rollers on my head save for the three in the very front. I guess that that was God's way of showing a little mercy to the stupidity of (wo)man.
I left the salon with a bald head (perfect for a northern Iowa great plains winter!), bangs resembling an exploded Q-Tip, and a note to my mother stating that I hadn't gone into the salon asking for this particular outcome.
Oh yeah, I was grounded.
This BlogBlast is sponsored by Harper Collins and the new beauty guide by Nadine Haobsh, "Beauty Confidential". ( http://www.beautyconfidentialthebook.com).
What's YOUR beauty don't? Share it with the world, link the above sites, and you might be a winner!
Friday, September 28, 2007
From the Depths of Hell Week
Ah, mighty Hell Week...... How you make me want to throw in the towel and never go onstage again.....
I will not let you win.
Although I will whine like a toddler that you are kicking my ass this week.........
Since only two or three people out there ever read my blog (and I have a pretty good idea who you are), you know what I'm talking about. We've had rehearsals for the past two weeks from 6pm to 11pm Monday thru Friday. -Well except for last night and tonight. The call is at 5:30 (until 11pm).
Last weekend our town had a little 'founder's festival' kind of thing, so we had a float in the (three block) parade and a booth on the street. --I was in the booth from noon until 5 on Saturday. I did the parade the past two years and it's not worth my losing my Saturday morning to. Sunday, we had a tea with Belle and the enchanted objects from the castle. I left church early (hoping that God would understand) so that I could sell tickets to the show from noon until 5-ish.
In my spare time, I've been calling around for ushers and soliciting ad's from local businesses for the program.
Oh, and did I mention that our church had a Mass for Breast Cancer victims and caregivers this past Tuesday? I also sang for that (I came to play practice late).
And I managed to work a 42-hour week this week.
I hate to say this, but I'm too old for this shit. Sure, I used to work a 45-hour work week (as a hairstylist/salon manager, no less) and spend my evenings (every night-I kid you not) in bars and nightclubs --never getting home until 3am at the earliest-- but how the hell did I do it?
Dang it! I NEVER should have given up drinking!!
I will not let you win.
Although I will whine like a toddler that you are kicking my ass this week.........
Since only two or three people out there ever read my blog (and I have a pretty good idea who you are), you know what I'm talking about. We've had rehearsals for the past two weeks from 6pm to 11pm Monday thru Friday. -Well except for last night and tonight. The call is at 5:30 (until 11pm).
Last weekend our town had a little 'founder's festival' kind of thing, so we had a float in the (three block) parade and a booth on the street. --I was in the booth from noon until 5 on Saturday. I did the parade the past two years and it's not worth my losing my Saturday morning to. Sunday, we had a tea with Belle and the enchanted objects from the castle. I left church early (hoping that God would understand) so that I could sell tickets to the show from noon until 5-ish.
In my spare time, I've been calling around for ushers and soliciting ad's from local businesses for the program.
Oh, and did I mention that our church had a Mass for Breast Cancer victims and caregivers this past Tuesday? I also sang for that (I came to play practice late).
And I managed to work a 42-hour week this week.
I hate to say this, but I'm too old for this shit. Sure, I used to work a 45-hour work week (as a hairstylist/salon manager, no less) and spend my evenings (every night-I kid you not) in bars and nightclubs --never getting home until 3am at the earliest-- but how the hell did I do it?
Dang it! I NEVER should have given up drinking!!
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Settling.....
I swear to God that's the story of my life. Settling. I want the best, but I settle for what I can afford.
Case in point....
The home computer died the other month. Hubbie and I decided that we were tired of Microsoft and wanted to get an operating system that wasn't so retarded. We wanted a Mac. We saved our money, we hoped, we dreamed.....
Then the water pump went out on the old car (Sherwood). Since Pip will need this to get to and from school (occasionally -- sometimes Hubbie needs it to drive into work), we needed to get it fixed. (($457))
Followed by the State of Ohio letting us know that we'd figured our taxes wrong and needed to cut them a check by the 20th for $89.
There went everything we'd saved for the new computer.
So we settled. We went to Best Buy and bought the cheapest thing we could find. I'm sure that the technology in it is long outdated, but at least it has that new, "Vista" operating system.
In case you're curious -- it sucks.
But now I can pay my bills and balance my checkbook at home again. I suppose that that's a plus.
I don't mean to sound whiny or spoiled. We have a roof over our heads, we eat 3 meals a day (not provided by the government), and from time to time we are actually able to go out and have a little fun. I'm just getting SO friggin' tired of having to settle for second best! (...or third... or that stupid Vista thing...)
We're back to saving for the Mac again, but it's a lot harder when Pip is with us. Especially since the Senior Portrait Industry is just NOT set up for shared children. (Seriously! It's cheaper for each household to buy their own package than it is to split a larger one since they don't allow you to substitute another friggin' 8 x 10 for a useless set of wallets!)
I don't suppose that I could get Pip to settle for a nice picture taken with my cell phone?
Case in point....
The home computer died the other month. Hubbie and I decided that we were tired of Microsoft and wanted to get an operating system that wasn't so retarded. We wanted a Mac. We saved our money, we hoped, we dreamed.....
Then the water pump went out on the old car (Sherwood). Since Pip will need this to get to and from school (occasionally -- sometimes Hubbie needs it to drive into work), we needed to get it fixed. (($457))
Followed by the State of Ohio letting us know that we'd figured our taxes wrong and needed to cut them a check by the 20th for $89.
There went everything we'd saved for the new computer.
So we settled. We went to Best Buy and bought the cheapest thing we could find. I'm sure that the technology in it is long outdated, but at least it has that new, "Vista" operating system.
In case you're curious -- it sucks.
But now I can pay my bills and balance my checkbook at home again. I suppose that that's a plus.
I don't mean to sound whiny or spoiled. We have a roof over our heads, we eat 3 meals a day (not provided by the government), and from time to time we are actually able to go out and have a little fun. I'm just getting SO friggin' tired of having to settle for second best! (...or third... or that stupid Vista thing...)
We're back to saving for the Mac again, but it's a lot harder when Pip is with us. Especially since the Senior Portrait Industry is just NOT set up for shared children. (Seriously! It's cheaper for each household to buy their own package than it is to split a larger one since they don't allow you to substitute another friggin' 8 x 10 for a useless set of wallets!)
I don't suppose that I could get Pip to settle for a nice picture taken with my cell phone?
Friday, August 3, 2007
I Have the Best Friend -- EVER!!
So I got home from work last night and brought in the mail.
There was a padded manilla envelope shoved into the mailbox, but I didn't think much of it. My husband is CONSTANTLY buying books and stuff online and I'm generally bringing one or two of these in a week anyway.
I put it on the counter where he could find it when he got home and sorted through the rest of the junk mail, bills, and college info (Pip gets TONS of "Look at us!" college shit weekly). When I turned back to put the bills in our inbox, I noticed the writing on the package looked suspiciously like Kimba's writing. I looked closer and it was! The envelope was for me!
I tore into the package like Rosie O'Donnell tearing into a package of Ring-Dings and there it was-- an iPod Shuffle. I read the note enclosed. Since she already had a Nano and I was still saving my duckets to buy one of my own, she sent me the Shuffle!
But wait!! It gets better!!!
She charged it and put some songs on it for me!!!!
Thank You Kimba!!!!!! You're the best friend EVER!!!
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