After much ado....

...and much questioning and friendly badgering from friends and family, I am making my return to the blogosphere after an 8-month hiatus. Things have been crazy, what can I say? Let me catch you up to date on the happenings since I left you. It's a lot...but you asked for it! :)

May
As my last post foreshadows, there wasn't much time for a break after all! Between the PTO conference at school (which was awesome), rehearsals starting for Mu's production of Happy Valley (which I stage managed), and meetings for the Xperimental Theatre, the rest of May flew by in a flurry. Not only that, but during one of our X meetings at a local coffee shop I ran into Mixed Blood Theatre's Artistic Director Jack Reuler (who I knew from my days at Mu), who recruited me to fill a part-time development associate position at the theatre over the summer while they were engaged in a staff transition.

June
So, I started with Mixed Blood right away the next month, and between work there and rehearsals for the Mu show, June managed to fill up as well. On the 20th the cast and director and friends and I flew to NYC (after a layover in Indianapolis, in which we spotted Kato Kaelin (sp?) of OJ fame) to do the show on 42nd St. as part of the first ever National Asian American Theater Festival. It was a whirlwind six days, and aside from doing four performances of our show we managed to see one other show, attend the closing night party, see the Twins play the Mets at Shea Stadium, lunch in Chinatown, visit Little Italy, Central Park, Times Square, Roosevelt Island, have Korean food twice and Japanese once, eat Knishes in the Lower East Side, have a champagne brunch in Chelsea, sing Karaoke, and meet up with new and old friends - whew! It was an unforgettable trip!

July
Sam and I kicked off July with a week up north, first at a friend's lake home, and then at his family's cabin. It was heavenly to be able to just completely relax and be lazy. I kept working at Mixed Blood, getting to know the fabulous staff. We celebrated birthdays and weddings and new babies. Sam continued playing on his Monday night softball league, and I started work with Penumbra Theatre, the renowned African American theater company in St. Paul under the guise of the August Wilson Fellowship which I was awarded for the school year. We also spent time with Sam's great uncle Tommy and his daughter Heather who came from England for a short visit.

August
I finally cracked down and starting studying hard for my subfield exams which were to be the first weekend back to school in September. I finished up at Mixed Blood, ramped up work with Penumbra, and kicked Xperimental Theatre activities into high gear. It felt like being back in school full time.

September
...was insane! I know I'm generally always busy, but this was ridiculous! Classes started, and right away the first week I had an Xperimental Theatre show open, the Penumbra show open, a meeting for Senior Seminar (which I am TA-ing), a kickoff meeting for the X, an all-department meeting, and subfield exams - which took the entirety of the 72 hours we're allotted (I wrote 2 ten page papers in three days). As soon as I handed those in, I had to moderate a symposium for the Penumbra show REDSHIRTS. After more classes and meetings and such, the next week we had another X theatre event - a staged reading, and another Senior Sem gathering. Sam turned 30 on the 21st, and to celebrate we had a weekend of events including a Twins Game, the Renaissance Festival, and much card playing at our house, not to mention hosting our out-of-town friends. We finished up the month with a friend's wedding, for which Sam was a groomsman. It's a wonder we survived it all.

October
More of the same - classes, Senior Seminar, Penumbra, and the X. We also had a number of really interesting guest lecturers at school. And, I helped out my mom and sis with their Fall Flea Market at their B&B.

November
Ditto October, minus the lecturers and Flea Market.

December
After more craziness, I completed my third semester of coursework, and am now halfway done with it! Coursework, not the program. (Who knows how long the entire program will take - it will depend on how quickly I can crank out a thesis and dissertation, and how many drafts my advisor will make me do.) And then it was on to the Christmas, and in my family, the birthday rush. Mid-month we attended 5 parties in 48 hours! And that wasn't including a low-key dinner outing at the delicious 112 Eatery for my 30th b-day. We survived the holidays, including 3 family Christmases, and despite the busyness, it felt like we got in good quality time with everyone. Throw in a super-fab New Year's bash, and it was a lovely holiday break!

And now, here we are in 2008! For the next two weeks I'm going to try and balance school projects with fun stuff. I hope I can see you all, if I haven't already, before I return for spring semester. I hope your holidays were relaxing, and I resolve to be better about blogging in the New Year! :)

I survived!

Dear readers-who-have-not-forsaken-my-blog-from-lack-of-postings-this-semester,

I am thrilled to let you know that I have officially survived my first year of grad school!!! I am feeling a little delirious this morning after having turned in my last paper yesterday afternoon. My list of things-I-really-want-to-do-and-have-been-putting-off-for-the-past-5-months is overflowing and I feel like a kid on Christmas, not sure which toy to play with first. I think my day may start with a chocolate croissant and latte, and could include a movie at a theater (what's that?) and some organizing and maybe even scrapbooking.

This month and next will still be busy - I'm Stage Managing a show for Mu that we'll be taking to NYC, so that will occupy my evenings and weekends from May 22-June 25; I have a bunch of meetings this week in preparation for next year's Xperimental Theatre season at the U (which my friend Rachel and I are co-Artistic Directing); there's the international PTO (Pedagogy of the Theatre of the Oppressed) conference at the U at the end of May-beginning of June that I'll be involved in; not to mention research projects, baptisms, graduation parties, and prep for teaching and exams next fall. But, that being said, I should still have more free time, especially in July and August, and I can't wait to catch up with you all!

Thanks again so much for bearing with me this year and for your love and support!

I am hoping, now that I have a bit more time, to do some retro-active posting about the year. So, check back!

Yay summer!

Six things that are odd about me

Like Deep in the Heart (another friend in the blogosphere), I am finally responding to a long overdue tag from Melinite (see parentheses above :) So, here goes:

1) I have been bitten by an ostrich. At least, I think I have. That's the story I've replayed in my head millions of times, but like many memories, I don't have any proof of this story's so-called 'authenticity' (a term that I've learned in grad school is debatable in itself...). I was in kindergarten. We took a class fieldtrip to the Como Zoo. I had my hands on a cinder block wall dividing some of the large birds from the throngs of onlookers, and all of a sudden I felt a pressure enclosing one of my hands. I turned around to find an ostrich standing in an awfully close proximity. I'll never know if s/he actually bit me...but I think it's more fun to think s/he did.

2) I have a somewhat unique (read silly and sentimental) and perhaps populist sense of taste when it comes to movies and music. To put it bluntly, I love 80's hairbands and cheesy, light, literal spoofs a la Spaceballs, Naked Gun, and Airplane. A couple of friends recently went to a Journey and Def Leppard concert...and let's just say I was thoroughly crushed to not be with them. I heard something on NPR once about bonding with specific selections from such media when you're around 10-12 years old, which I think might explain it. Though my tastes do expand from these basics, they will always be close to my heart, and never fail to cheer me up.

3) I have a frustrating feeling, in many aspects of my life, of being torn between two or more ideological poles. For instance, often when I'm in class and we're analyzing a text or a production to the hilt, I feel the incredible need to connect it to something practical. And then when I'm doing something practical, I wonder why people aren't analyzing things more. It can be difficult to find that happy medium. I don't know if this makes me odd...but it's just something I've been dealing with lately.

4) Let's talk war wounds for a second. I still have [the scar of] a chicken pock from when I was 3 on my sternum, although you probably wouldn't know it unless I told you. Which now I have. And now you do. So much for any criminal aspirations... AND, Sam and I have the same scar on our chin from stitches when we were kids. We were obviously meant to be :)

5) When I was around 8 (I think) I wanted to be Jane Goodall and live in the African jungle with the Chimpanzees. To this day I get very irritated when people confuse apes (no tails) with monkeys (tails), and chimps are still my favorite animal.

6) I am a freak for color coding! The presentation I recently gave for my seminar class included it. My class binders are organized by it. I even got mercilessly teased at Mu about needing to have every different shade of highlighter. Knew I shouldn't have listed that on the Office Max list...

How about you??? I tag anyone else that would like to, to share your 6 oddities!

My favorite season

Hello dear readers. My profuse apologies for my neglecting to post any new updates these past few months. What can I say? It's been an incredibly full time, and after spending days on end reading and writing, sometimes the last thing I feel like doing is writing some more. Even if it is a free form. But, sitting on my front porch this evening, reading (what else?), I felt compelled to grab my notebook and to try and capture the evanescence of the moment on this ridiculously warm and summer like day in late March. Here were the traces and fragments that I gathered:
- The sharp and pleasing 'clink' of a metal softball or baseball bat as it struck ball after ball at a soothing interval in the not-too-far distance, reminding me of my days of summer city softball, and beckoning me to come and play again
- The wafting scent of a gas grill laced with a hint of sizzling meat that I imagine visually streaming past my nose and across my body cartoon-style
- The sun glinting off of the white prison-like structure that is the high school across the street and turning the horizon a baby pink lined with periwinkle clouds and a powder blue domed sky, cut through with the twin white lines of jet fuel as a plane soars upward
- Low-rider cars rolling by, bases pumping, melodies inaudible, fast wheels, loud motors
- Bodies outside, at once full of energy and in no particular hurry to get anywhere
- My next-door neighbors' rottweiler, coming to say hi to me, seemingly exuberant about the warmth and the opportunity to explore the outdoors again
- A ball bouncing on the tennis courts across the street, and later, the bouncing of a basketball as a group of three young guys make their way down the sidewalk
- Short sleeves and bare feet, perfectly comfortable
- A teenage girl's voice reverberating against cinder block
- Geese calling, or are they seagulls? and a whole chorus of varied-voiced birds
- The American flag languorously blowing in the ever-so-gentle breeze, folding back in on itself again and again
- The clink of my neighbors' dinnertime silverware in action
- Newly formed buds on the lilac bushes, only a few short weeks ago buried in four feet of snow
- Energy, life, excitement - spring. My favorite season. How can anybody be seriously expected to be doing schoolwork on a day like this?

Distraction

On a non-grad school note, I am taking up the movie tag challenge as set forth by Made in Korea and Deep in the Heart. Yay! One last bit of procrastination before the real work of the semester starts :) (note - the italicizing here is a little wonky...)

1. Name a movie you have seen more than 10 times. The Princess Bride (I'm with you on this one MiK!), Spaceballs, Clue, Office Space, Best in Show, Naked Gun, Big Trouble in Little China, The Matrix, Top Gun, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1, probably more...

2. Name a movie you’ve seen multiple times in the theater. I don't know that I have, however, I think one of the best experiences of seeing a movie in the theater was when I saw the first Scream. As a kid I LOVED cheesy horror movies, but had never seen one in the theater. Being surrounded by a hundred people screaming in surprise in unison was phenomenal.

3. Name an actor who would make you more inclined to see a movie. I agree with Angie about Kate Winslet (she's my fave), Christopher Guest, Leslie Nielsen :), Julianne Moore (although she's been in a few duds in the past couple of years), Rachel Weisz, pre-craziness Mel Gibson, Matthew McConnaghey (sp?), because c'mon, let's face it, he's dreamy, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, a million more I can't think of at the moment...

4. Name an actor who would make you less inclined to see a movie. Keanu Reeves, most of the models-turned-actress, post-craziness Mel Gibson.

5. Name a movie that you can and do quote from. Hmm. See the seen more than 10 times list. Spaceballs!!! ("And what do we have on this ship, a Quisinart???"), any of the Naked Guns or Airplanes or Hot Shots or anything that Pat Proft or Mel Brooks had a hand in creating. The Princess Bride ("Hello. I am Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."), The Goonies (This is OUR time, it's OUR time down here.), Big Trouble in Little China (Hey Egg, how'd you get up there? Wasn't easy!), Office Space (Hey, Peter, what's happening. Mmm, yeah, I'm gonna have to ask you to go ahead and come in on Saturday.) Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail ("Come back here! I'm not finished with you yet!" "Oh what're you going to do? Bleed on me?"), Christmas Vacation ("Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Kiss my ass. Kiss his ass. Happy Hannukah."), Clue, and I'm sure there's more. My sister and I used to torment our parents by incessantly quoting movies that they didn't have memorized. If anyone asks about secret twin languages, we tell them about this. It's not really restricted to twins, but that's about as close as it gets in our case. (And just in case you're curious now, NO, we cannot read each other's minds or feel each other's pain. Although we do sometimes say the exact same sentence at the exact same time...not just when quoting movies :)

6. Name a movie musical from which you know all of the lyrics to all of the songs. t Hmm. I guess I don't watch a lot of movie musicals. The only thing I can think of is Aladdin. Maybe Annie too. Oh, and White Christmas (ooh - probably should add that to the more than 10 times list). I know a lot of lyrics to a lot of musicals, but that's moreso from seeing or performing in them onstage or from listening to them in the car on roadtrips with my dad and stepmom.

7. Name a movie with which you have been known to sing along. See above.

8. Name a movie that you would recommend everyone see. That's a tough question, because I don't know if there's one movie that everyone would like. Maybe Amelie? Or any of the comedies I love so much.

9. Name a movie that you own. The Three Amigos. When my sis and I saw it when we were young we loved it. She bought it for me as an adult, and watching it again I realized that it's really bad. As is Big Trouble in Little China - very insensitive and incorrect and as Angie says cringeworthy.

10. Name an actor who started his/her career in another medium, but who has surprised you with his/her acting chops. The exception to my model-turned-actress rule would have to by Halle Berry.

11. Have you ever seen a movie in a drive-in? Yes! Super fun!

12. Ever made out in a movie theater? Not that I recall...

13. Name a movie you have been meaning to see but that you just haven’t gotten around to yet. Lots. When I go to the video store I generally am in the mood for a comedy or an action movie, so all of the sentimental stuff gets indefinitely delayed. I know I should see them, but don't really ever feel in the mood. Stuff like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Big Fish, that sorta-recent one with Elijah Wood that I can't think of the name of. And then there are the heartbreakers like Schindler's List and The Pianist and Hotel Rwanda and such that I don't know if I'll ever bring myself to see even though I should. I've also never seen Mary Poppins. Can you believe it?

14. Ever walked out of a movie? I don't think so, but I came really close during Pulp Fiction (I went with my mom and stepdad and sister and a friend and I think we were all like...HUH?) and during Meet the Parents which, to me was super awkward and stressful.

15. Name a movie that made you cry in the theater. I'm sure there've been lots, but the only one that's coming to mind right now is Karate Kid II. Hee hee hee. Silly.

16. Popcorn? Yes please. With that fake artery-clogging butter-like food product and salt.

17. How often do you go to the movies (as opposed to renting or watching at home)? Not very often, sadly. We watch way more at home.

18. What’s the last movie you saw in the theater? I can't remember. I saw Accepted, which was surprisingly hilarious and Talladega Nights which was disappointing even going in with low standards.

19. What’s your favorite or preferred movie genre? In case you haven't figured it out yet from my list, I'd definitely have to say comedy. Then action/adventure. Cheesy horror has fallen way down in the rankings since my childhood while chick flicks have risen up considerably from the days when I refused to see them because I did NOT want to cry at a movie. I'd like to watch more independents and foreign films but don't really know much about them.

20. What’s the first movie you recall seeing in the theater? The first movie I saw in the theater was Lady and the Tramp, though I can't say I really remember it...

Good times! Now on to work!