Shopping and Frog Juice and Other Diversions

This year's Christmas adventures began with a trip to College Station to pick up my mother and take her to Waco where we had a wedding to attend.  Mom had been back for a week and staying with my sister Rachel in Houston.  We had agreed to meet halfway, so that neither one of us had to drive excessively far in a single day.  The wedding was simple, but very lovely and followed by a trip back to College Station for the night.

Sunday was church and hang out in College Station, then Monday was the trek to Houston.  We had the afternoon and evening with just Rachel's family, then around 9:00 my sister Julie's family arrived.  There will be a few more on Christmas evening, but the stats at the moment are 6 children in the single digits (4 months to 9 years) and 6 adults.  The kids generally get along and there are enough people and activities that they are fairly content (although we are certainly not lacking in tantrums).  Rachel's new house is filled with air mattresses, toys and games (frog juice is a card game), and piles of shoes.  There is of course the occasional game of musical cars as teams are picked for the last minute shopping.  

I've already been called "Rachel" more times than I can count, especially by Julie's husband and the middle niece.  How often has she been called "Sarah?"  Zip.

So the last couple of days I've been immersed in the standard family meyhem, but I love seeing everyone again.  Even if they don't know who I am.

Evelyn

THIS JUST IN:  First time meeting the new niece :)

End of Semester 7

Hello.  Well, it seems that the longer I'm in school, the longer the days get, so I haven't been able to organize my thoughts in a while.  The end of my next-to-last-semester hit like a whirlwind, but there were some great times too.

In five days, I went to four Christmas parties, participated in strike, pulled an all nighter, and had a read-thru for The Seagull.

The Seagull is the next show I'm stage managing and will be my last at Baylor.  We just had the one rehearsal before the break then will hit it hard when we come back so that we'll be ready to open February 9.  The all-nighter was the result of my final sound project and happened (unfortunately) right before our theatre banquet.  

The banquet itself was pretty lame, but the company was good as always.

We stopped by my apartment to lounge for a bit before the after-banquet festivities began.  Anna went paparazzi for a while, then we tried taking pictures together.  We failed several times and ended with this one; not the most elegant, but somewhat picturesque and a pretty good

representation of our friendship :)

Not long after banquet the finals hit, which for me meant two days of essays and projects right on top of each other, then three days off before my last and favorite final.  This was my favorite test for two reasons.  1) I did the math and discovered that I needed a 35 on the test in order to make and A in the class and an 85 to make a 100 for the semester.  Let's just say I didn't lose any sleep over it.  2) The last question on the test was this:

One of Mr. Farris' [our professor's] favorite composers is...
A) Haydn

What more can you ask for?  So with that excruciating test out of the way, I spent the rest of the week cleaning, lounging, hanging out, shopping, and all around spending some rare quality time with the roommate until this past Saturday.  But that's a whole different story.

Black Friday

I have never intentionally participated in a Black Friday and certainly not in the madness waking up at 4am to shove my way through too many people in too small a space.  But midnight--that's a different matter.

This Thanksgiving we heard of a nearby outlet mall that was opening at 12am (actually, some stores opened as early as 10pm).  My sister, Rachel, and sister-in-law, Snow, and I tossed it around for so long that it finally became absolutely necessary for us to check it out.  If it was awful we could leave without putting much of a dent in our schedule and say to each other "remember that time we tried Black Friday and it was a bad idea..." which is of course preferable to that nagging question of "what if?"  We left just before 4am.  

We didn't cover a lot of ground, we didn't buy a whole lot, but we walked out quite pleased with ourselves.  We each left with a few useful purchases and a few indulgances and many laughs over the ridiculous situation and some outrageous merchandise.  One of the best laughs came from our photo booth experience.  Rachel and I had never used one, so we decided that it was high-time we did.  We barely managed to squeeze in -- Snow actually poked her head in from outside the booth -- and took our awkward pictures.  Then we used my camera to take a picture of us outside the booth and it turned out to be more epic than the one inside the booth.  Oh well.  It was still an extremely worthwhile first photo booth experience.

So...remember that time we tried Black Friday and it was legendary?  

A snapshot of our photo booth pictures.

Post-photo booth snapshot.

Leaving.  My camera unfortunately only has a date stamp, not a time stamp, but notice that it is the day after Thanksgiving.  Also, notice that Rachel and I are sporting hats that were not in the previous pictures.

   

Frolicking In the Mud

(The sequel to Singing in the Rain)

Also known as Fall Break Pt. 2.  One of the reasons we wanted to revisit Mary Poppins in Houston instead of Dallas is because we had been planning for a month or two to go to a Pumpkin Patch in West.  The long-awaited adventure came after a full week of deluge and five of us made our way to the Pumpkin Patch.  Most anticipated and worthwhile was the corn maze, we split ways early on (my group finding the first dead end) and came to the place where there were three options and three of us.  We decided to each take a path and play Marco Polo to find each other again.  Forget Marco Polo in the pool, the game should only be played in a corn maze.  It was AWESOME.  There were a few other fall activites that we took advantage of -- hayride, rubber duck races, a corn cannon, and a cow train.  

We left for a Dairy Queen dinner then came back after it was dark for a Haunted House which also turned out to be in a cornfield.  Mostly the scariest part of the Haunted House was the mud that we were getting stuck in (Lauren lost one of her shoes for a while) and could no longer see.  We passed an area with a bunch of fake gravestones, at least one of which read "R.I.P."  Cynthia asked what it meant, so we told her 'rest in peace' to which she said, "Oh, I always thought R.I.P. was a really famous dead guy."  The best part; however, was the chainsaw.  Anna had heard it before we went in and was already unhappy about then so when the chainsawer actually passed us, she screamed and ran backward, slipped in the mud, fell over, and pulled Lisa down on top of her.  I'm not sure that's the friend I want around in a dangerous situation.  For a simple family farm, we had a wonderful adventure in my very first pumpkin patch.

The parting of ways at the first crossroads.

Anna had a sausage dog.  As a pig, I find that absolutely scandalous.

The cow train :)

Practically Perfect in Every Way

...or every once in a while.

Fall Break is a random day off in the fall -- but just one.  We all agree that the label is a bit of a misnomer, but a day off is a day off.  For the first evening of Fall Break this year I went with two friends (one fellow stage manager and one actor) to see Mary Poppins in Dallas.  It was not the best adaptation as Mary became unlikeable and the mother, the only character without depth in the movie, became the only character with depth in the play with the exception of Bert who was just as charming as ever.  The production however is filled to the brim with what we call "flash-and-trash" -- essentially a lot of technical tricks and treats with only a fluffy plot to support it.

After the show, we went to the stage door and asked for one of the stage managers.  We chatted with him for a while and asked if we could see the arrangement backstage.  We mentioned that we could come to Houston and he invited us to meet them there and watch a full show from backstage.  

Two weeks later, Cynthia and I ventured to Houston, stopped by my sister's, went to my nephew's t-ball game, then made our way to the Hobby Center.  Both of us sat on headset the entire time and I spent the first act sitting stage left behind the stage manager who was calling the show.  I looked over his shoulder at the calling book and he showed me the screens he watched from a deck of TV monitors that he used to call his cues.  For the second act, Cynthia sat there while I shadowed the stage manager stage right.  He took me through all the checks he has to perform and he showed me a lot of the mechanics for what happens stage right.  In fact, I stood on stage (behind the nursery) during one of the songs.

It was a priceless experience, following the professionals, asking questions, and seeing what it's really like backstage (not that different than us except much more high-tech).  So while the plot may not have been what I was looking for, my Mary Poppins excursion was practically perfect in every way. 

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, Alana!  Hope it was colorful!