commas and ampersands

Goodness. I haven't posted a real summary of the weekend yet. I was too busy getting over the cold that I caught from Colin that he caught from Jakob.

It was a busy weekend (surprise, surprise), but a really good way to officially kick off the Christmas season. Thursday night, we went to Rocky Mountain College's Christmas concert (you know, with the whole "small world" thing with the director, who was the director at my church in California last year), and Friday and Saturday, Colin, Mom, and Dad sang in Ambrose's production of Messiah. Saturday afternoon, we went to a baby shower for Scott, Heather, and Martin; Sunday, we went to church in the morning, and then had two rehearsals in the afternoon before heading off to the airport. And somewhere in there (mostly after midnight), we still managed to find time to finish watching the first season of Arrested Development, which we'd started at Canadian Thanksgiving but not finished.

And, of course, there was the time with Kat, Aaron, and the kids, but that's already been well-photographed and posted about. :)

( A review of sorts of AUC's production of 'Messiah' )



Sunday, there was a rehearsal after church for Colin's cantata, which I'm going to sing in, despite only having one rehearsal with them. I've had the music longer than anyone else in the choir (I helped pick it), and I've been working on it on my own, so it'll be fine. After that, there was another rehearsal for the Christmas show at Foothills Alliance, which was my only chance to hear any of that show, since it'll close a few days before I get into town.


By Sunday afternoon, we were both well on our way to catching colds. Jakob, who was coming down with something, was all over Colin on Thursday, and then I think I got it from Colin by about Saturday. I stayed home Monday and slept, and that was helpful--it seems to be running its course really quickly.

And now, we're well into the home stretch of the pre-Christmas rush. I have five written assignments and two presentations to do in the next week, but fortunately, the presentations each correspond with a written assignment, so really, it's only five assignments. Also, a) some of them are already partially done and I just need to finish them up, and b) they're not all full-length papers. I don't think I have anything that will end up being longer than about 8 pages, which isn't bad at all.

Emmanuel Church's Christmas concerts are on the 13th and 14th, so we have our dress rehearsal next Wednesday. Colin has more in the way of rehearsals than I do (although I need to be in on some Borkman rehearsals in the next week, as well). He's finished with Messiah, obviously, but Foothills Lutheran's cantata only has a few rehearsals left, he's heading into tech for Foothills Alliance's show, and he has to finish the design for Steel Mags, which apparently is kind of a train-wreck of a show, in some ways.

I was going to try and keep this entry from being too epic, so I'll post pictures later, as well as a story about Amazon.com. In the meantime, my homework and my pillow are both calling me. The sooner I get to one, the sooner I can get to the other.

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.

I'm so tired.

I think that part of it is that life is getting back into that busy schedule that the school year brings, and, ironically enough, my year in New York was a year of rest, schedule-wise.  I didn't have evening commitments; I had a lot more of that kind of downtime.

So, I think that the "problem" (which isn't really a problem; I just need to balance my life a bit better) has two parts.  One, I'm out of practice in keeping a schedule like this.  These days, I leave the house at 7:15, and often don't get home until 10:15--and that's what my life was like in college, but it's a bit different, since I'm at work for 8 hours, and then rehearsal for 4, and the rest is driving/coffee shop/in between time.  At least, though, I'm at a desk--I'd rather be doing that, where my jobs are a little more varied, than working behind a counter for 8 hours, where it's all the same thing, no variations at all.

But the other part is that last year, when I didn't have as much going on in my "scheduled" life, I got way more involved online--on TWoP, GGMM, reading and writing fanfic, being involved in the GG fandom, in particular.  Now, I'm still just as involved with all that, but I've added all the old things back into the mix.

Or maybe it's just that it's the first week of, well, everything.  Rehearsals and work, most notably.  And it's been a strange, emotional, adrenaline-filled week that's just left me drained.  And it's only Wednesday.  But give me a good night's sleep and a relaxed evening, and I'll be set.  Good to go.  Not so tired.

But these have been a few days when I've appreciated the GGMM more than ever; when I really understand how much we lean on each other.  I keep saying it, but I love the kinds of friendships there, and I love the fact that I go to them with those kinds of issues, because...

It's hard to explain.  The thing with the GGMM is that it's collective and individual, all at the same time.  It's individual in the sense that, of course, we're talking to individual people, and we're each sitting at a computer, talking to each other.  It's collective in the sense that someone will almost always be there, no matter when a crisis hits, and even if they're not, everyone will see it and have the chance to weigh in on the discussion later on.  It's a weird kind of phenomenon that's different from hanging out with friends in person.  Not better, not worse.  It fills a different need within the context of needing people, you know?

Of course you do.  You wouldn't be here if you didn't.  I'm just reiterating what others have said so much better than I have, but it's that sense of realizing an old truth again for the first time and feeling the need to share.