commas and ampersands

Things I've done so far this weekend, in no particular order:

• Had lunch, sans kids, with Kat.
  
• Learned (re-learned, sort of) how to drive a standard.
  
• Started watching Arrested Development (halfway through season 1 right now).
  
• Had coffee with murphy987.
  
• Visited Heather (Scott was out of town) and cuddled 10-day-old Martin for a good, long time.
  
• Gone out for dinner with Colin's parents after they picked me up from the airport.
  
• Eaten turkey dinner in High River with Colin's side of the family.
  
• Watched a movie with all three Lowe brothers and their girls... it's pretty rare that we all hang out/triple date like that.
  
• Been reamed out by my mom for not spending enough time visiting them (and for flying in on Thursday but not seeing them until Sunday).
  
  And now we're on our way out for coffee with my sister and brother-in-law, and then out to the farm for dinner with my side of the family. More later...

Of course, now I'm awake and feel like I should be productive. Bah. That's what I get for feeling crappy and sleeping all afternoon. I'll work on something until my laundry's done, and hopefully be tired enough to go to sleep. One more good sleep should knock this cold off, I hope. Right now, it's mostly manifesting itself as a throbbing, consistent headache and a really, really dry nose. I need a humidifier, I think. My nose is so dry that it's painful to breathe.

Anyway. Tomorrow's a holiday. Yay! I work a 4-hour shift, and then I don't work again until Saturday. Kind of nice to not be juggling work and tech for the week. I could have worked a couple of random, bizarre shifts in there, but I'm totally okay with the fact that I'm not working. Hopefully the next 3 weeks will be like that--it'll make it so much less stressful.

Really, the momentum builds from here, and we go straight through tech to opening (10 days to preview, 11 to opening) and then right through the run to Colin's visit (18 days!). It still feels kind of far away, but I keep forgetting that we have another week and a half of tech before we open. It feels like a long tech to me; I'm used to shows with Fire Exit, where we load in on Sunday and open on Wednesday, and the entire tech process is condensed into this really short time period. It's quite the luxury to have 9 days of tech, including dress rehearsals.

Tomorrow, I'm having dinner with Colin's best friend Adam, his wife Angela, and their two boys. They're in SoCal this week, and we found time to get together, which is exciting. I'm really looking forward to it, and I'm really glad they caught me on a day when I'm not sitting in the theatre all night.

I need to do so many mundane things like go grocery shopping, clean my bathroom, buy laundry detergent and toothpaste, finish stripping and refinishing the coffee table... some of them will get done during tech. Others (like the coffee table) won't. I'm not quite sure what I was thinking, starting on that last weekend when I knew I wasn't going to be around or available much. I think I might just have to clean up the dust and put it back for a while, so it's not sitting in the middle of the apartment. It'll be half-finished for a while, but I'll get to it eventually.

It must be tech week; I'm eating crap. I'm seriously craving some vegetables and fruit right now. Something fresh. Or even frozen and steamed. Just... something green and/or leafy and/or juicy. I didn't eat anything today except for a few handfuls of peanut M&M's and some fries. (Wait--I had a bowl of cereal. That counts as healthy, right?) Partly, that's due to absolutely nothing being appetizing because of my cold, but still--that's not healthy. Again, see: need to go grocery shopping. Good grief. It's times like this that I feel like my "I'm a grown-up" card should be revoked.

So, what did murphy987 do?

Well, at the time of posting, nothing. We just wanted to see what you all thought she'd do (and beauty_awake wins for most creative guess).

And, in no particular order, here's a list of what she actually did do during the past two days:

• Made me lose my faith in the Canadian government
  
• Warned us that she was going to spray a bottle of seltzer water all over herself, and then sprayed it all over her shirt, jeans, and the bathroom sink
  
• Spilled the seltzer water all over the bed
  
• Tripped and almost fell, but stuck the landing
  
• Sat on my head
  
• Made warden96's head explode
  
• Did nothing that involved jello
  
• Offered to be my pack horse in getting Christmas presents across the border
  
• Programmed my boyfriend's cell phone number into her phone

(And really, I'm sure she can come up with a list of embarrassing and/or amusing things that I did this weekend, too.)

There was much laughing, quality time with a post-feminist Cinderella and the Justice League, too much junk food, nitpicking the grammar in the sidewalk, and squeeing loudly in public places--and photographic evidence of most of the above, which is all on her camera. So you have to wait for her weekend wrap-up to see them.

Yay. Fun times. :)

Awww, yay. So instead of doing my homework tonight, I spent an hour and a bit on the phone with Colin, an hour and a half on the phone with arbitrarium, and a little while on the the phone with Kat.

(And really, it's still early enough that I can finish my homework before I go to bed.)

Yay for lots of phone calls, making me feel loved and like I have a social life! ;)

Man, I feel like such a teenage girl, spending all evening on the phone. Hee. And Cynda inspired me to get the ingredients to make duchessdogberry's pumpkin chocolate chip cookies on Wednesday night. I may as well, in between handing out candy to the complex's kids and watching Knocked Up. Yup, a productive night in store for me... :)

Oh, and--

Happy Birthday, Kat!!!
(Even though you've already gone to bed and won't see this until at least tomorrow, if not later.)

You're the bestest BFF ever!

Ah, that's better. Much better day than yesterday or Monday, I have to say.

This afternoon, I drove down to Laguna Hills to have lunch with Joan and Dale, my aunt and uncle (my mom's sister and her husband), and Don and Milly, longtime family friends. Don and Milly live there; Joan and Dale were in the area for my cousin's graduation from Marine boot camp this weekend. It was supposed to be a "simple lunch", but it was ham and roast beef, mashed potatoes, a really yummy broccoli casserole, jello salad, rolls, chocolate cake, and pie (and an offer of a sandwich when I left), all served in the formal dining room on the good china. :)

( Family and so on... )

Tomorrow, I'm finished class at 12, and I work at 8, so I'm coming home in between to do laundry and pack. I probably should have been doing laundry tonight since I got home from choir, but I didn't, so it'll all have to happen tomorrow afternoon. And then, I work until midnight, and leave at 4 for the airport. Fun, fun times.

Oh, so much fun. I haven't laughed that hard in ages.

Okay, so Kat and I met Vanessa in the summer of 2001. It was at church, and we were at a joint high school/college event, and she had just come to Calgary for the summer from school in Saskatoon. Her parents had moved here during the year, so this was where she'd be staying, but she didn't know anyone.

We invited her over to my house for a sleepover the following night, and even though she was a little afraid we would murder her in her sleep, she came, and the rest is history. That summer, we were inseparable. None of us had boyfriends, we were just out of our first year of college, we had some freedom, and we were all working, so we hung out all the time. The following summer, we hung out a little less, because of boys and travelling, but the foundation had been laid for an amazing friendship.

Fast-forward to 2007. Kat and Aaron are married with two kids. Vanessa and Dave got married last summer and live just outside of Red Deer, where she's a teacher. Colin and I are getting ready to move to California. Our lives have all gone in different directions, and Kat and I don't see Vanessa nearly often enough, but when we do, hilarity ensues. We manage to have one of those friendships where we can always pick up right where we left off, no matter how long it's been. As each of the guys has entered the equation, they've been welcomed into our little circle, and now, with Colin, it's come full circle from that summer of 2001, when none of us had a significant other. Now, we all do, and all our guys get along with each other, as well as laughing at us, laughing with us, and occasionally being completely embarrassed by us.

Like tonight, stealing breadsticks from Olive Garden in Kat's purse, making a mess with our leftover desserts at the Cheesecake Cafe, discussing whose bums belong to whom, playing out a wedding on the mound of mashed dessert, and laughing a whole lot in the meantime. We kind of always revert back to our 19-year-old selves, with a dash more maturity thrown in, and a lot of experiences and life to catch up on every time we're together.



Ah, it's days like this when I wish we all lived closer together so we could triple-date more often.

Tonight, I'm going out for coffee with my friend Melissa, whom I haven't seen since we graduated from high school, 7 years ago. A couple of months ago, we found each other on Facebook and have been talking a bit on there, and I'm pretty excited to see her! (Gotta love Facebook...) Actually, when I moved to Strathmore and started school there in grade 2, she was one of the first friends I made, and we were friends of varying degrees of closeness over the years. She's married now and has a little boy (named Jacob, actually), and she'll be in town visiting her parents, so we're getting together this evening... it'll be good to see her again before I move.

Funny how leaving makes me nostalgic for spending time with people I haven't seen in years--some, I haven't even seen since I moved back from New York, and yet I have this incredible desire to hang out with them now.

It's not that I didn't want to hang out with them; I think it's just that moving like this--relocating like this--instills a sense of urgency in it. There are people that I've been meaning to go for coffee with for ages, and it hasn't worked out, so even though I may not have seen them in a year or more, it doesn't mean that I haven't wanted to. And, in Melissa's case, it's great timing, as much as anything else.

I'm trying to do as many coffees this week as I can, while Colin's working nights. So, last night I had coffee with Heather and it was Janna's birthday; tonight, I'm going out with Melissa; Monday, I think I'm getting together with Alison, another friend from high school; Tuesday, Kat and I are having a girls' night; Wednesday, I'm going for coffee with my high school French teacher... and beyond that, I don't know. Still, I know that there are people I want to see, and this is a good time to do it (and it keeps me distracted from the packing that I should be doing, too!).

And on a completely different note, two days until the breast cancer walk. I'm going to be a mess all weekend. I cry just watching the promotional video and reading the profile pages of breast cancer survivors who are walking. I'm anticipating needing a lot of kleenex, especially during the opening and closing ceremonies of the walk, but even along the way, there are stories of people coming out to meet and cheer on the walkers, and those can be just as emotional as the ceremonies themselves.

I'll write more about that later, though...

Happy Canada Day (plus one)!!

We didn't actually do anything patriotic yesterday, but it's been a good weekend. The weather has been gorgeous, which is all kinds of wonderful, and I've been able to spend more than an hour at a time with Colin (on more than one day at a time), which is even better, and I have a really short (3-day) work week this week, and Colin and I get to go to the Stampede Parade on Friday with Kat and the kids. Yes. Exciting.

Saturday was Laurel and Ken's wedding. It really was beautiful--and everything ran incredibly smoothly, which was a huge blessing, since Dana and I were the ones who would have had to deal with anything that didn't! The only real complication was a mix-up in the flower order, but even that was easily solved. None of the bouquets for the ceremony were missing; just half the flowers for the centerpieces at the reception. Since those were just plain gerberas, though, as opposed to actual arrangements, it was pretty easy to pick some up and have them in time for the reception.

We had fun, though. Colin and Jon (Dana's fiance) helped us set up the reception hall, so that didn't take too long and wasn't all that stressful, and there weren't any big fires to put out during the reception itself, so we were able to enjoy it, rather than running around like crazy women all night.

Again with the "no camera," I didn't take any pictures, but karalianne took a picture of beauty_awake and me, and I'll post that once I'm at home and can upload it. Dana took a picture of Colin and me, too, so if she sends that along, I'll post that.

Jakob has decided that his new puppy (when he gets it later this summer) is going to be named "Uncle Colin". His reasoning? "Two Uncle Colin. One me, one Auntie." He may be talked out of that decision. Superpuppy, the other option, is probably a better name in the long run. Otherwise, it'll be kind of embarrassing to be 12 years old, explaining to his friends why his dog is named Uncle Colin. And apparently, every object in their house might be named Uncle Colin soon. They went to Calaway Park yesterday, and Aaron won a stuffed turtie and a stuffed fish for Jake. The fish's name? "Red Fish." The turtie's name? You guessed it... "Uncle Colin Turtle."

I've got today off, so right now, I'm just hanging out with the dogs. I'll probably head out of here fairly soon, and Janna and I are going out for dinner or something this afternoon/evening.

I feel so boring. I should start packing soon. Keep packing. Whatever. Put my possessions into boxes. That thing. However, it feels a little pointless to be packing when I don't know where I'll be living. The summer is going fast enough, though, that the time will be here before I know it, and I'll regret not doing it now. And regardless of where I'll be living, the moving date is the same.

Anyway. I'm going outside now. It's gorgeous out, and I'm going to go take a walk or something.

( Bling, pseudo-dads, and sunshine )

Ah, sigh. The wedding was very nice--really pretty. I didn't know the bride or groom (the groom was a childhood friend of Colin's), but they knew some of my good friends, so it turned out that I knew a few people there--aside from Colin, Devin, and Lori, that is. We had fun. Good times. A few comments to the effect of, "So, are you two getting married any time soon?", but not too many.

Their placecards were cute--they had just simple little name cards, but since we were there as a couple, our names were both on one card. The colors were kind of an apple green and brown, and each card was leaning up against a piece of fruit as part of the centrepiece--an apple if it was a single name, and a pear if it was a couple. Get it? We're a "pear." Heh. We all had a good laugh over it, and decided that the point was to make it easier to figure out who was worth pursuing to become part of that whatever-it-is percentage of people who meet someone at a wedding.

Anyway, I've got pictures, but Lori took them, so I'll have to wait for her to email them to us before I can post anything.

What else? I'm not sure. I should be asleep right now, but I fell asleep this afternoon between the ceremony and reception. That wasn't supposed to happen, but we were at Colin's, picking something up, and in the time that it took for him to go to the bathroom, I'd lay down on his bed and was completely out--I ended up sleeping for a good hour and a half. In a semi-formal dress. I must have been tired. Of course, if I don't go to sleep now, I'll just perpetuate the cycle for tomorrow, and then I'll be screwed on Monday morning.

I feel like I've been so out of the loop around here for the past few weeks. I just haven't been online much at all. Hopefully this next placement will have more time to be online (and maybe even give me time to pop into the GGMM and HMM during the day!)... I won't know until I get there on Monday, though.

Oh, and Colin's vacation time was approved for the week after Labor Day, which means that I'll be able to move for Sept 1, rather than sometime around Aug 25. It'll make things a lot easier, so I'm really, really glad that they were able to switch that all around. It also means that Colin will still be down there for his birthday, and we'll be able to celebrate then, instead of celebrating early, before he flies back to Calgary.

And for now, that's it. I'm going to bed. 'Night, all.

I'm at Starbucks, ostensibly working on the program and script synopses for the showcase next Tuesday, but I keep distracting myself.

So, in the meantime, some random observations.

• I'm wearing a pair of pants today that I haven't worn in ages. They're a size 8, and they're still slightly snug, especially in the waist. Much better than they were a few months ago, absolutely, but if I was in the store, I wouldn't quite be buying an 8 yet. Which is a little bit problematic, because my size 10 jeans are getting kind of loose (although more in the waist than the thighs), so it's almost time to go down a size, but I'm not quite at a comfortable 8 yet, so I'm waiting a little longer. Maybe by the time I actually do the breast cancer walk (2 months), I'll be there, and I can get some new jeans and capris then. I'm getting there, though.


• Colin and I saw Shrek the Third last night, which was cute, but my one thought through the whole thing was, ( Not really anything spoilery, but I'll cut it just in case )


• I'm totally not getting any work done right now.


• I've still got an hour and a half before I have to go back to Colin's office and meet him, though, so I can keep telling myself that I'll get it done before then.


• Kat's home from the hospital today... still sore, still not feeling great, and she can't lift or drive for 4 weeks, but she's glad to be home. We went to visit her last night, and I think she was pleasantly surprised by that and glad to see us.

Anyway. I think that's it for a public post. Anything else will be flocked, and it'll probably be lots of rambling and stream-of-consciousness writing.

Ah, the calm before the storm. Sort of. A lazy weekend. Ish.

Right now, I'm sitting in Kat's living room with the kids, watching Superman with Jakes while Kayla plays on the floor.

But for the weekend in general, I actually had a bit of a chance to just relax. Yesterday, I still had class and rehearsal, but the rehearsal was actually a vocal rehearsal and costume fitting, so I was just there in case they needed any decisions made, and to approve everything (particularly the costumes), and I didn't have much work to do, which was kind of nice. Then, I even had time for a nap in the afternoon, before I went over to Colin's, which was just as relaxing--we just hung out with his brother and his girlfriend and watched Love Actually.

Today, the choir sang in the second service, so I didn't have to be at church until 10:20, and then we had a potluck lunch, then Colin and I went to the mall to find a birthday present for my sister, and now I'm at Kat's, and once the kids have eaten and are in their jammies, we're going to actually get to go out for dinner, just the two of us, and have a girls' night! Unbelievable!!

Easter's coming quickly, though, and things are only going to get busier before they get slower, so it's nice to have a day (or a weekend, actually) to relax a little and get geared up for the next little while.

And I'll attempt to do the music meme, minus the uploading, but I only have about half my music library accessible right now (since I'm still without a laptop).

F: "Fools In Love," by Inara George.
U: "Unsingable Name," by Mike Doughty.
L: "Lullabye," by Ben Folds Five. Also, "Lullabye," by Josh Groban.
F: "Forgiven," by Deb Talan.
I: "It's Beginning to Get to Me," by Snow Patrol.
L: "Lily Dreams On," by Cotton Mather.
L: "Living in Twilight," by The Weepies.
E: "Espresso My Love," by Divers.
D: "Dice," by Finlay Quay.

Wow, I've got a lot of F's and L's in my name. And I'd post links and explanations, but I can't do that right now, so maybe later. Let me know if anyone wants any of these songs, so I know if I should even bother uploading them. If no one wants them, I won't worry about it.

It looks like I just might get to see Kat this weekend! Sunday afternoon, I'm going to get pictures done with the kids, and I don't think either of us has anything on in the evening, so we might get to do something then. Yay! That prospect made my day infinitely better (and I wasn't even having a crappy day to begin with).

Okay. Let's attempt to do a recap of the past week and a half. I've got the afternoon, the forums are relatively slow, and hopefully I can finish this (as long as I go chronologically, so I don't forget anything!) by the time I leave work at 4:30. Let's see how it goes. Hee.

( Saturday: It's warm here! )

( Sunday: Meeting the TWoPpers! )

( Monday: GG-Palooza, day one )

( Tuesday: CalArts Interview, day one )

( Tuesday: GG-Palooza, day two )

( Wednesday: GG-palooza, day three )

( Wednesday: CalArts interview, day two )

( Thursday: CalArts interview, day three )

( Thursday: Going home )

And pictures are forthcoming. They're still on my camera, and since my computer is dead, I'll upload them when I get a chance.

Home. It's cold.

Actually, not quite "home," but close enough. I'm at Kat and Aaron's place (watching their new TV... oooh... aaaaahhhh) tonight, since it's just easier.

I'll catch up online at some point. This weekend, though... Here are the next few days:

Tomorrow, I've got to meet with Heather, pick up boxes from Colin, pack my stuff, and then I get to hang out with pink_hammer! Saturday morning, we've got a production team meeting, and then I'm moving (yeah, again), and then I'm sure Pink, murphy987, and I will do something in the evening. Sunday, I'll go to the early church service, and then head out to Banff with Pink and Murphy. At some point, I'll do my very best to update a) my GG and VM thoughts (because I actually have thoughts to talk about), b) my pictures and discussion of the gg-palooza, and c) the interview and days at CalArts.

It's going to be a busy weekend, and hopefully (hopefully!) I'll be flying to New York in a few weeks, too. I won't know about that until I find out if I got an interview, but I should know about that in the next week (or, hopefully, less). Ah, so challenging to my always-plan-ahead tendencies. Oh well. Sometimes, you've just gotta go with it.

And sometimes, you've just gotta go to sleep. I'm in that strange place in between over-tired and over-energized. The coffee on the plane at close to midnight probably isn't helping, but... oh well. I had some great set-related ideas, so it must have been good for something.

Ack. More later. G'night.

Okay, I'm ready to not have a night at home. It's been a nice week for having slow days at home, but I feel like doing something tomorrow night. Maybe I'll see if anyone's around--I think beauty_awake was out of town, but maybe she's back? I don't know... I'll have to see.

I'm finally getting caught up on Ugly Betty, since I missed a few episodes during the fall. I'm downloading the episodes that I haven't seen yet, and by the time new ones start next week, I'll be all caught up. Seriously, it's a great show; it just happened to be the one that got pushed off my schedule first when I couldn't watch everything I wanted to in a week.

I like having evenings off, but I feel like doing something else. Saturday, though, Kat and I are hanging out, and on Sunday, I'm heading up to Edmonton to spend New Year's with murphy987. I think rehearsals for various things start up around the week of the 8th, but it's just a couple of evenings a week right now.

I've been writing quite a bit this week, though. I've got a one-shot ready to go for tomorrow in gg_watching, and I've been working on another one-shot that got pushed a bit to the side over the holidays. Actually, there are another two on the go besides that, but I haven't even picked them up recently. I'm going to try and finish one at a time.

I had something else I was going to talk about, but I really can't remember what it was. It was a lot deeper than TV and writing fic, though.

I got GG season 6 on sale for $30 today, which I was pretty pleased with, especially since I've got the other five seasons, so it doesn't feel like I'm spending a lot of money to buy the whole series.

And that's it, except that I finally sat down with the manual for my espresso maker and figured it out, so now I've got the coffee maker and the espresso maker ready to go. I have a feeling that mornings will still mostly be drip coffee, though, since I can set that and go, whereas the espresso requires more "babysitting," especially if I'm steaming milk to go with it.

Uhhh... yeah. Could I have any more random thoughts? I don't think I'll keep rambling to find out.

Woohoo!

I bought wiscck a paid account for Christmas, and she reciprocated. That way, we each got the 100 free userpics that come along with the gift account.

Guess what I'm doing tonight? I'm not going to get any sleep at all. Heh.