Long theater day

Yesterday started with a 10a.m. rehearsal, which covered all of Act I.  From there it was off across town to help strike the set for the play I'd done some make-up consulting on.  Then we got to our just deserts - the strike party.  I'd forgotten that this director, a very sentimental soul, gives little gifties to *everybody*, including the person who shows up for one rehearsal during tech week, does a make-up demo, goes home, sends everyone detailed instructions, then disappears.

I got home more than 12 hours after I'd left the house, and put close to 100 miles on the car for the day.  I'm still recovering from the long day, but don't regret any of it.  :)

Got a half a snow day

As I expected, we went in to work (or many of us did; many others opted to take leave) but were sent home around lunchtime.  No pilates class, but it turns out we wouldn't have had class anyway - today was the last day the group fitness classroom was closed for floor refinishing.

I opted not to go to my voice lesson, but my teacher offered an alternative - a lesson via Skype.  It was a little weird, especially as she couldn't accompany me due to the time lag, but we managed to get some good work done.  I still prefer an in-person lesson, but with an audition next week and Yeomen opening in a month, I'm glad I didn't have to miss this week's lesson.

TW fired up the snow blower, with some difficulty, this being the first time we've needed it since the double-whammy blizzard 4 years ago.  He's made 2 passes, one this afternoon and a second after dinner, and the white stuff is still coming down. 

I wonder how much we'll end up with?  Various forecasts have upper numbers of 8-10 inches.  I'm starting to wonder if we'll have a delayed opening at work tomorrow, or if we'll be closed for the day.  I'd love to sleep in, of course, but I have a deadline that I was on track for and more time off will really wreak havoc with that project.  Oh well; if we have a snow day tomorrow, I'll just have to fall back and regroup when I get back to work.  And in the meantime, a snow day would give me a good, solid chunk of time to spend on learning my Yeomen material and brushing up my song for next week's audition.

Please don't send us home too early...

We're under a winter weather warning for tomorrow.  Snow's supposed to start sometime tomorrow morning (after I'm at work, at any rate), with a forecast total of 4-8 inches.  All the signs are there for work to send us home early.  I'm just hoping they don't send us home too early, as I want to be able to get to the lunchtime pilates class at the gym in my building.  If they send us home early, the gym will close early too. :(

I've only had one class with this teacher so far, but I definitely want more.  It's way beyond me right now, but nothing that isn't achievable if I keep at it.  Please don't make me skip a week - my core needs the work-out!

I guess I did pretty well, especially for a maiden effort

The area community theater community (over 30 companies!) has a recognition organization that does our own little awards ceremony every year.  The 2013 nominations were announced last night and, to my shock, I was on the list!  I was nominated for hair design for my November show.  Surprised me because, of the 7 cast members, only 3 had hairstyles that needed any research or special attention.  (The others?  One military cut, one old-fashioned bun, one daughter in pigtails, one daughter in a snood.  No challenges there.)  As I told the cast, though, they had as much to do with it as I did.  After all, while I did the style design and showed them how to achieve them, they were the ones who did the actual styling the adjudicators saw and scored.

This didn't feel like nearly as much work as, say, when I costumed the Pirates I was in a few years back.  I certainly couldn't have styled 3 heads without making the owners of said heads show up as much as 2 hours before curtain.  Since I trained most of them to do their styles (one woman was already well versed in doing period styles), then left them to do their own hair, I really do feel that the cast earned this as much as I did.  I didn't see the other productions that were nominated, so I don't know what we're up against, but maybe Sybil's victory rolls will tip the balance and earn "my" cast an award.  We'll find out at the awards ceremony in March.  Good luck, ladies!

Hmm.  Maybe the awards ceremony would be a good excuse to buy a ballgown... ;)

December birthstone - blue!

Saw yet another FB ad for a mother's bracelet and suddenly decided to look up December's birthstone.  Apparently December babies have 3 choices, all beautiful - tanzanite, turquoise and blue topaz!  Should I decide I want a mother's [piece of jewelry], I've got some pretty great choices for the stone.

End of an era

When I moved in 20 years ago come August, Ed was one of the first neighbors I met.  He seemed much younger than his 60-something years - fit and full of energy, and the block grandfather/mayor.  TW likes to tell of how he went over to borrow a ladder and Ed got it from the back yard, tipped it over the fence, then vaulted said fence to carry the ladder over to our house.  Avid football fan - don't dare call or come to the door during the game!  Always out working in the yard, held housekeys for probably everyone on the block.  Then he started to get sick, to the point where his daughter moved back home to help him.  There were a few ambulance calls that had us all worried for him.  When we got hit with the double-whammy blizzard a few years ago and TW ran his snowblower up & down the block, he also helped shovel a gurney-sized path from the street to Ed's front door, just in case.

Last night Ed died.  No more pain and medical trauma for him, but his caretaker daughter and the rest of his family are grieving, as are the neighbors who were privileged to know him when he was still hale, hearty and friend to everyone.  Rest in peace, Ed, and may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

I thought I was over this cold; not quite yet...

I've been lucky in that this cold has been merely annoying, for the most part, instead of making me utterly miserable.  (Thank you, healthier eating habits!)  However, I'm apparently not out of the woods yet.  Today the chorus at work sang the national anthem at a ceremony this afternoon.  Because of the numbers, I ended up singing melody instead of alto.  Usually that's no big deal, but today the top notes were a real effort; I may even have been a touch flat on the Fs. :(  Fortunately, the other soprano is good and solid (operatic training, thank you very much!), so I just backed off and let her take it. :)

Tomorrow's rehearsal shouldn't be as bad; Dame Carruthers' music sits pretty low, and I think most of what we're working is ensemble stuff anyway.  That's one of the scarier things about having a principal role - no fellow ensemble members to cover you if you're not feeling up to par.

I guess we're the holdouts

I noticed tonight that none of the neighbors' Christmas lights were on tonight.  Ours were on, but that's chiefly because we haven't gotten around to unplugging the timer. That'll probably happen Sunday, when the weather should be halfway decent for that sort of thing.  (It's supposed to rain pretty much all day tomorrow.)

Finally got a lead w/ this company and adjusting to how it feels

As I noted once before, I've worked with this company for years but this is the first time I've been a principal, not an ensemble member.  Friday and yesterday we blocked some of the bigger scenes.  It seemed weird to be singing by myself out in front of everyone else, instead of being blocked with some of my chorus buddies.  (There's one woman in particular with whom I always get blocked when we're in the same show.)  I'm having fun, of course, and enjoying the process of learning how much I can really do (which is why I was sorry to wave off this week's voice lesson), but given that I've had leads with other companies, I'm a bit bemused that it's an adjustment now that I've got a lead with this company.

People have been encouraging.  My one chorus buddy told me the other day that she noticed an improvement between that rehearsal and when I sang the same bit at the read-thru.  It was kind of her to mention it, and gratifying to know the voice lessons with my new teacher are already working.

Tried to dodge it, but no such luck

TW came home from Christmas with a cold, spent New Year's coughing and blowing his nose.  Good thing our friends only planned to stay the one night; I hope they managed to escape the contagion.  I was doing pretty well - made a pot of chicken soup, taking preemptive Zicam, making sure we had plenty of oranges on hand.  By Saturday evening, though, I could tell I was not going to escape the germs, and by last night I could feel it blocking my sinuses.  This morning I got the sore throat and the cold started moving into my chest.  The symptoms aren't too bad so far, so maybe the full-court anti-bug press wasn't a complete waste of time and effort.  If I can continue to keep the worst of it at bay, I'll declare victory and be glad it wasn't as bad as it could've been.  I went ahead and postponed this week's voice lesson to next week, and was relieved when my director called to say tonight's principal rehearsal was cancelled because the principal who's in everything we were going to run tonight had to leave town for a funeral.

As my director said, better I have the cold now than during tech week or, worse, during the run of the show! =:o

Pumpkin vegetable soup

Yesterday I was roasting some pumpkin and decided I didn't have enough for soup so I pulled a second container from the freezer.  Puréed everything, added some veggie broth, then poured into the soup pot in which I'd sautéed onions and garlic in olive oil.  (Because isn't that how so many of the best things start - with sautéed onions & garlic?) We had some old veggies on hand, so those went into the pot too - few potatoes that had started to sprout, a zucchini and a yellow squash that were starting to shrivel, some leftover carrots.  Added some barley because soup is so much better with some sort of grain, whether barley, rice or noodles.

Are you getting hungry yet? ;) TW decided he liked it better without all the extras, but I think it's pretty darn good, especially for a spur-of-the-moment thing.  With any luck, it'll freeze well, too.

Learning a new "language"

I arranged for some dialect coaching, since the director wants Dame Carruthers to sound English and I know I need "professional help" to pull that off convincingly.  Fortunately, I know a professional actor through church who, conveniently enough, is not only English herself but has taught dialect classes.  She gave me several very useful "substitutions", as she called them, that will get me a long way toward my goal of sounding authentically English.  I think the various "o" sounds will present the biggest challenge, but I've got time to get this down.  She's even offered to listen to how I sound once we get into the theater, when the acoustics will change dramatically and affect how I need to produce my sound.

As I told her, all those years I spent sitting in foreign language classes, trying to master the pronunciation so I don't sound so American, are continuing to pay off.

Notes on a first blocking rehearsal

[A little background:  I first worked with this company 20 years ago, but this is the first time I've had anything other than an ensemble part (not counting a "named ensemble member" with a handful of spoken and sung lines).  In other words, with this company, I'm used to being blocked with the rest of the ensemble 99.9% of the time.]

We had our first blocking rehearsal the weekend before Thanksgiving.  Not nearly as painful as such rehearsals so often are, which was nice.  The chorus number we started with went pretty smoothly - not complicated, but enough staggered entrances that it should look animated and not very "director told me to enter when ..."  Sgt. Meryll and I have a tiny bit of business that we may need to get more specific with, but for a first rehearsal, it all went quite smoothly.

The following number is Dame Carruthers with the yeomen.  That was a little weird - me and most of the men's chorus (some of them are "townies").  The director has me blocked downstage for most of it, with the yeomen upstage, and not where I can see them most of the time, which is a strange feeling for someone used to being part of the ensemble, not downstage from them.  As I told the yeomen at yesterday's music rehearsal when we finished rehearsing this number, "I'm not used to having back-up singers!" :D

Maiden attempt at quinoa

Finally got around to making quinoa tonight, using some tri-color quinoa I bought at the "organic" market a week or so ago.  Very pretty stuff - ivory, nearly black, and a sort of reddish-brown.  It smelled for all the world like peanut butter while it was cooking, though of course it didn't taste like it.  I think I either toasted it too long at the beginning or needed to add more water than the instructions recommended, because it was a bit dry and tasted a little scorched.  I may have to try it a few times to get the hang of this.

Unwanted excitement

The Chief and I spent Veterans Day weekend at the cabin.  When we arrived, we started the usual cold-weather opening routine: bring in the groceries, turn on the water and heat.  The propane heater gave him some trouble; first the pilot didn't want to light, then the blower didn't want to start, etc.  The capper was when smoke suddenly started billowing up from the back of the thing, and it's mounted on a wood-paneled wall!  That's when things really started getting exciting - the smoke alarms started going off, as did the alarm system, then the phone rang - the security company checking on us - while the Chief called the gas company to get some "immediate" help.  After we opened all the windows, it took several ear-splitting minutes to dissipate enough smoke for the bells, whistles and sirens to quit, and now it's only 54 degrees in the great room.  Brrr!  Me, I retired to the bedroom, where the baseboard heater slowly warmied the room (64 degrees sure beats 54!) while the Chief showed the gas company guy where everything is.

Turned out the problem was the new siding, or rather, its installation.  The installers didn't account for the additional thickness, so the heater vent no longer fit properly, causing all the problems.  The gas company ordered & installed a new vent pipe, the siding company redid the siding around the vent (it started to melt in one place!), and now we're keeping an eagle eye on that heater when we use it!

Good thing we like turkey!

We got a 10-lb turkey for Thanksgiving, which TW and I shared with a friend from church who had to cancel his travel plans.  We sent him home with leftovers, of course, but still had plenty of turkey for us.  Friday night's dinner was Thanksgiving leftovers (yum!).  Saturday we dined on turkey & dumplings.  Last night?  Home-made turkey soup.  (I love home-made soup!)  Turkey & dumplings again tonight, & tomorrow, too, with enough in the big freezer for 2 more meals at some later date.  Ditto a container of turkey soup.  Yes, it's a good thing we like turkey, given how much of it we have on hand!  After we finish this container of turkey & dumplings, though, I think we'll go for something a little different - fish, or pork chops, or maybe eggplant parmagiana...

Just bought my first leek

I seem to be developing a King Arthur Flour (KAF) company addiction.  Ever since I liked them on Facebook, I keep seeing all these great recipes I want to try.  The latest is for turkey and dumplings, to use up post-Thanksgiving turkey.  Sounded delicious, so that's what's on tonight's dinner menu.

The recipes calls for frozen mixed vegetables, but suggests using "leftover odds and ends" if you like.  One of the veggies they suggest throwing in is leeks.  When I went to the grocery early this morning to pick up a few things, I added a leek to my purchases.  Only problem is, I've seen 'em but never cooked with them.  Thank goodness for the Internet, where I can learn which part to use (the pale part), how to cut them up, and so on.

Between KAF and the Internet, I find I've become a somewhat more adventurous cook.  Doesn't matter if I don't know the first thing about making this recipe or using that ingredient - between the Internet and KAF's wonderful baking hotline, expert instruction is readily available.

Now to clean and prep that leek...

Santa, if you're listening...

I've become a wee bit addicted to King Arthur Flour's sites.  Lotsa recipes to try, but also learning of new kitchen toys, er, tools that I need.  The latest - a bench knife, and a couple of donut pans so I can make their pumpkin doughnuts.  In the meantime, maybe I'll use my mini-bundt pan or a muffin tin until I can get donut pans.

No more squash

I checked my little squash when I got home from work on Friday and was disappointed to see it on the ground; it had fallen or gotten knocked off the vine. :(  I brought it inside, but threw it out yesterday afternoon when I saw it was starting to turn brown.  So much for any hope of getting anything from that attempt at growing my own squash.  It remains to be seen whether I try again next year.

Branching out on the tech side

I've auditioned for lotsa shows since "Daddy's Dyin'" closed in January.  Got a few callbacks, which is always gratifying even though I wasn't cast.  I volunteered to do hair & make-up for one of those shows; set in 1943, I had visions of victory rolls.  That didn't pan out, but I'm still getting a few of the women in period hair, which is fine.  

Today was the first dress rehearsal.  As I told the women I was helping with their hair, today was a "first draft," to learn the specifics of achieving their look, testing it with costume changes and seeing how the colors read under the lights.  There's still some tweaking to do, but the director was happy with how everyone looks, so I'm claiming "victory" in this, my first attempt to do hair or make-up for someone besides myself.