Tag: postaweek2011

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Endings Home improvements Memoir Nature Sentiment

Ready to be moved already

Every morning this week, when I’ve gotten up and come out to the living room, my first thought is always, “We’ve been robbed!”

I mean, I guess yeah, I would say I’m easily amused.

Although…maybe I’m just going a little crazy here and finding amusement where I can.

Also, having taken out almost all of the furniture, and everything off the walls, we’ve found that our apartment is delightfully resonant. Last night I was going on some little rant about something or other, and I realized in the middle of it that I could hear my voice reverberating in the living room. That had to drive someone crazy. Someone besides Drew, I mean.

It also means I don’t want to yell anything from the bedroom to the kitchen, like I normally would, unless I’m okay with all our neighbors hearing it. And, given that one of my priorities in life is to never be someone that other people eavesdrop on disdainfully, it makes for a lot quieter evenings.

Here are three things I’ll miss: the three cats that live around us. First, there’s Black & White Cat who mostly sits in the grass down the hill from our front door.

Then, there’s Backseat Driver Cat. I can’t remember the full story about him. But I’m pretty sure if you’re not looking, he’ll jump in your car while the door’s open, and then make annoying commentary from the back, like, “Why are you getting on the freeway here?” and “Oh…I would have gone to the other McDonalds.”*

Finally, there’s Ghost Cat. Ghost Cat is primarily seen at night in the fog, and is a swift runner. I took a picture of Ghost Cat but when I developed it, there wasn’t anything there and the inside of my camera was all melted. (Wait, that’s basilisks, not ghosts.)

I have no idea who owns any of these cats (well, I mean, Ghost Cat obviously has no owner). But I’ll miss seeing their tails disappear as they run into the bushes to hide. And I’ll miss Backseat Driver Cat telling me to turn on my headlights, even in the middle of the day.

*Sadly I have no picture of Backseat Driver Cat at this point, because once I made the decision to write a roll call of the Cats around here, he stopped showing up. I believe he’s self-conscious about his orange fur.

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Awesome Beginnings Being a girl Dreams Drew Endings Family Memoir Nonfiction Self improvement Sentiment Writing

2011 New Year’s Resolutions: Finis

Now is the time to look back on 2011 and see which of my New Year’s resolutions I accomplished. I’m happy to report that this year went pretty well!

1. Get off of unemployment

In June of 2010 I finished up a contract job at Marin Theatre Company, and I spent the remainder of the year patching together work from MTC, the San Francisco Opera, and reading for Samuel French, as well as supplementing with unemployment. While it wasn’t the tightest things have ever been around here, it was frustrating to be constantly thinking about trying to get enough hours among all the jobs. My number one priority as the year turned from 2010 to 2011 was to get off of unemployment. Which I did, basically right away, when I started subbing in January.

2. Get a career type job

Subbing was very interesting and I learned something, I’m sure. But it was obviously not for me. And like I said before, I was tired of cobbling together a living. My number two priority was to get a freaking real job, with stability and health benefits. Which I did in February! So far, 2011 resolutions are going great!

3. Lose 30 pounds

Oops.

4. Pay off at least one credit card

Oops again. Well, that was a tall order and I might have guessed that it wouldn’t happen.

5. Help Megan to have the best wedding ever

Done and done. I might add, I also helped Liz have the best wedding ever. A good year for weddings!

6. Change everything to my new(ish) last name.

The things I hadn’t yet changed over to my new last name (from my 2009 wedding) were my Mastercard, my gym membership, and three store credit cards. As of this morning I had changed my Mastercard and my gym membership. I planned on just moving this resolution to my “2012 resolutions” list, but then I had this big burst of inspiration, and so I spent some time on the phone this morning calling around and changing the rest of it. 2011 ftw!

I want to mention that every customer service representative I talked to said, “Congratulations on your recent wedding!” when I told them why I needed to change my name. I was too embarrassed to say, “Thanks, it was over 2 years ago.” How time flies.

7. Remember birthday cards for important family members this year

Well, unfortunately I had a couple lapses this year, and for that I am sincerely sorry. I have changed my system because having them in my planner is not working out as well as it used to – I’m just not in the planner often enough. I put the birthdays that keep slipping past me into my gmail calendar so that I’ll get a reminder 2 weeks out, so I can actually get something in the mail in time. 2012 will my card-sending, offending-no-one year.

8. Get a passport!

Thanks to Drew and the scavenger hunt he arranged for my birthday, I am now the proud owner of a passport. And I used it to fly to New York in October, so I know it works.

9. Write!

This was broken down into 5 categories to make it more quantifiable:

  • Script Frenzy in April
  • Submit to Samuel French Off-off-Bway Festival in July
  • Nanowrimo in November (I made the conscious decision to stay sane this November)
  • Blog 100 times over 2011 (the actual number is 168 public posts, counting this one)
  • Look into a Record-Bee column (I actually submitted about four of these)

I’m feeling pretty good about this year! So it’s time to start making me some 2012 resolutions. While I ponder over those and try to make them as specific and achievable as possible…let me know what your biggest resolution is!

Categories
Awesome Beauty Drew Family Fashion Friends Home improvements Love Religion

It’s Christmas in South City!

There’s this neighborhood in South San Francisco, where they must have some kind of agreement or something that you have to sign when you move in, because everyone goes crazy during the holidays. I love it. I aspire to one day live in a place where I’m forced to put up hundreds of dollars of decorations every year so people can come park in front of my driveway and take pictures in my front yard.

Oh, that came out as sarcasm, but I’m totally serious.

Drew, Erin, and I went the other night, but we just drove through and so all my pictures are a little blurry, as Drew was reluctant to stop in the middle of everything and wait for me to get the perfect shot. I had to just magically get it while he was stopped momentarily in the line of cars.

Here are an assortment of – but not all of – those pictures:

The blue house...
...next to the white house
Candy cane fence
One of many Santas riding motorcycles
The best house!

That last house is the best house – it’s one of the first ones you see on your way in and the last one on your way out. It’s the prettiest and the cleanest-looking. There aren’t any weird creepy anamatronics in the windows, and what you can see of the inside of their house is also nice and Christmassy. It’s just the best house of the bunch.

I could have taken my blurry shots and been done with it – and supplemented this blog post with a handmade holiday poem or something – but then last night some of us went out for dinner and on the way back, the one person in the car who you’d expect to be the least excited about Christmas, said, “Ooh! Ooh! Have you seen the neighborhood with the decorated houses? Can we go look at it?”

I mean, that’s just adorable, you have to say yes.

Plus, we had Starbucks, so we were all feeling the holiday spirit.

So we parked and walked around, which means I got slightly less blurry pictures. Although I think that, without a real camera and a tripod, I was never going to get magazine-spread-ready photos. But I mean…cameraphone diaries.

Here are some details I didn’t get during our drive-by visit:

A closeup of the best house, and their tree.
On any other street in any other neighborhood, this house would be amazing. But here, it's like...Okay. What else you got?
I just like the reflection of the house across the street.
A couple years ago, Drew and Erin and I did this, and I had a picture of myself in front of this wreath. Oh yeah, a lot of houses reuse their decorations.
This house goes for quality, not quantity. A real snow globe! These kids were losing their minds!
I just love Nativities.
This is the bear house. They have two of the creepiest trees ever - made all out of bears, held hostage with Christmas lights.
A closeup of the upstairs bear tree...
God knows I tried to take a good picture of us. But I look awkward in all of them. This is the least awkward-looking.
An assortment of characters!
I like the reflections here too
I'm hoping that these people are on vacation or something, and they don't hate their lives.
Mesmerizing
I remember this from last year too. I don't think they're all children. In my head this is a daycare center or something.
Drew likes this tree. He thinks it should be in Downtown Disney or something.
Geese on the roof!

It sure feels like Christmas here – and I can’t wait to see my family tonight and Drew’s family tomorrow! Merry Christmas, all!!

Categories
Beginnings Endings Home improvements

The end of an era

Packing sucks.

Two years and five months ago, Drew and I packed up all out stuff in New York and moved back to California. Since then we have apparently fooled ourselves that we’re minimalist – we are finding that we have A. LOT. OF. STUFF.

Part of that is getting married and getting lots of wonderful wedding gifts. Part of it is trying to get all of our childhood stuffs out of our parents’ houses. And part of it is just the fact that we both like to collect things.

I feel like we’ve been packing and packing and yet it looks like NOTHING has happened in here. I finally just finished packing books. At some point in the last couple years, I have acquired a bookstore. I knew it was getting bad because of the way books were piling up on the shelves on top of and in front of each other. But I didn’t realize it was like, pack for days and have boxes filled with books but still be finding them in random places, bad.

The reason for the packing is that we’re getting out of this apartment – nothing against the apartment itself but it feels like it’s time to move on. It’s starting to feel cramped (see? too much stuff) and there are small annoying things about the complex.

So, we picked out a place in St. Francis Wood, four stories, with a massive driveway and an indoor pool. We move in in two weeks.

Just kidding. (St. Francis Wood is a GORGEOUS neighborhood in San Francisco.)

This place can be yours for $12,000,000!

We’re actually moving a little further down the peninsula, closer to my work. I believe it will be temporary, as we’re both partial to the fog and being closer to the ocean, and this place is on the bay side, where they actually have seasons! I am looking forward to that.

We’re out of here at the end of the month. Two weeks to go! Merry Christmas! Back to packing now.

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Uncategorized

The Correct Way to Work a Holiday Gift Exchange

Alternate title: My Shameful, Gleeful Secret.

Despite knowing about my work holiday party, and the “white elephant” type gift exchange, I didn’t remember to buy a gift until the day of the party. (Also despite browsing at Macy’s over the weekend, picking things up and wondering if they were appropriate for a holiday gift exchange.)

On my lunch break I ran to Target to pick up some boring stuff and also look for a gift. On the drive there I decided to buy a book, because I’ve talked about books with several other people here, and I thought that would be a nice diversion from the numerous bottles of wine that I was sure would be there.

I looked through the book section, but there wasn’t really much of interest. There was a wall of trashy teen romance, a wall of trashy adult romance, a wall of trashy thriller/suspense…and then I saw a single copy of Stephen King’s recent collection of novellas: Full Dark, No Stars.

I know of at least two other people in the office who like Stephen King, and he’s pretty mainstream, so I thought it would be a better gift than, you know, Twilight or The Chocolate Cat Caper or something like that. (Although, I also thought about getting Dollhouse, the book “written” by the three Kardashians.)

So I bought the book and wrapped it in a little bag, and told no one except Jonathan what it was. I deposited it under the tree at the holiday party and waited for the gift exchange to begin.

Soon I started feeling like I needed to leave the party soon – later that night Drew, Erin and I were going to a screening of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – and for a minute or two I wondered if I could get the present back out the door if I left before we started the swap.

But then we all settled down and the fun began, and I’m glad I stayed, because it was super fun. The entire thing (there were around 30 people participating) took about 90 minutes.

I was number 26 in the lineup and I had decided I wouldn’t just select my own gift, even though Full Dark, No Stars was one of the few Stephen King books I didn’t own. When my turn came, I stole a set of balsamic vinegar and olive oil from someone else, and I was very happy with that steal. After all, I could always go back to Target and buy another copy of the book.

In a few more turns, a girl sitting next to me selected my gift, and once she’d unwrapped it, she looked less than enthusiastic. No one seemed to want to steal it either. Perhaps I had completely misjudged this group – and neither of the people who I know like Stephen King were at the party.

In another few turns, the hostess of the party stole my balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and I made a snap decision to steal Full Dark, No Stars. Which I did. That girl opened another present and seemed much happier with it. No one stole the book from me after that.

When I got home, I told Drew the whole story and then displayed the book, and he said, “Well, I guess that worked out perfectly.”

And it did.

Categories
"Other people" Writing

English major annoyances…

…I know I’m not alone in such things.

There’s this commercial on the radio right now. It begins with a woman’s voice:

“Saying the holidays are ‘a little stressful’ is like saying Kim [Kardashian] and Kris [Humphries] were ‘a match made in heaven.'”

Then crazy radio sound effects, then they tell you how you can win a trip to Disneyland which will alleviate some of your holiday stress and give you a much-needed vacation.

My major problem with this is that the two are not compared correctly. The implication is that saying the holidays are “a little stressful” is an understatement. But saying that Kim and Kris were a match made in heaven is not an understatement…it’s just flat-out wrong. (For anyone who doesn’t know – a) I’m jealous of you for avoiding this knowledge, and b) they were married for 72 days before filing for a divorce.)

I have heard this commercial a bunch of times – they’re pushing this Disney giveaway right now – and it’s getting annoying. One of the writers was asleep on the job. There are other ways to sneak in a Kardashian (or any pop culture) reference, if that’s your main goal.

Also, I’m jealous and want to win a Disney vacation.

Categories
Awesome Family Food Theatre

Ideas for Inventions

1. Hard candies / lozenges that DON’T come wrapped in loud cellophane. Invariably, a senior is gonna want to unwrap one during a quiet scene. But what if they didn’t come wrapped? What if you – or any senior – could just reach down and silently pop a sugar-free candy or a Halls into your mouth, without disturbing every other person at the matinee? My answer to this is: the unwrapped hard candy / lozenge. You’re welcome.

2. An app on your phone that will allow you to “send” a text in the past. Picture this: you arrive home late, and it’s totally skipped your mind to text your parents and let them know. But you’ve used your past-text app, and in your texts, it shows that an hour ago you sent a message saying, “Sorry, Mumsie! Am running late. Love you!” But oops! It looks like that message was never delivered! Well, you had no idea because you were driving and not looking at your phone. Voila – family argument avoided. You’re welcome!

Categories
Being a girl Nonfiction Not awesome Self improvement

A Victory in Battle

I can trend towards germophobia. I’m much, much better than I was in New York (“oh no germs everywhere!”) but I still wash my hands a lot and I don’t like touching door handles and I take my shoes off at home and I purell everything after putting gas in the car.

But every so often, a lightbulb comes on over my head and I realize some thing I do every day is probably totally covered in germs.

Communal M&M bowl at work, with everyone’s fingers in it all day? Oops. (But come on…cinnamon M&Ms!)

The lock on a bathroom stall – you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to process that this is not just touched by me when I come in with clean hands…but by everyone leaving the stall, who invariably all have disgusting germy hands!

And my latest one, that I really just realized yesterday: Coke cans.

It looks so smug. But I know the truth now.

That lip you drink from, where drops of soda always collect…I mean, who hasn’t grabbed a can of Coke at a picnic and wiped off that part, because it’s dusty or damp with condensation or it’s just a force of habit? But yesterday I realized – that is a part of the OUTSIDE of the can. That part is exposed to the world, to the factory machines, to grimy people handling it, to dogs…maybe licking it? Maybe? Who knows what’s been happening to it in the time it took for this can to get from the factory to the Jolly King liquor store where I bought it?

 On the other hand, I’m also aware that you need to come in contact with germs on a regular basis in order to keep your immune system healthy.
 
So I drank that entire can. And I loved it. And it made me strong.
Categories
Dollars Friends Nonfiction Sentiment Theatre Work

Happy December!

So here’s what’s going on lately around here.

The show I’m working on (not backstage, just marketing) is The Secret Garden. It opens tomorrow. This week was the Invited Dress (Tues) and previews (Wed-Fri). Invited Dress is always rough – particularly at this theatre and this time of year, where the lobby is small and it’s freezing outside, things get really crowded since people start lining up ~40 minutes before the house opens. It’s just a little stressful. So after the show started (and it’s been this way on all the Invited Dresses), Jonathan and I needed to sit in the lobby and decompress. Then we needed to go to Target for some retail therapy.

This weekend I’m working on another reading at Marin – it’s called Silent Sky and is slated to be in their 2012/13 season. I’m excited about it – but it got cut down from the original Wed-Mon schedule to just Fri-Mon, and since I already had a conflict this evening, I’ll just be in Sat-Mon. I’m still excited to get back into the rehearsal hall.

On Wednesday, Drew and Erin and I watched Martha Marcy May Marlene. Depressing! Also, I didn’t like the ending.

Tonight – my prior conflict – a bunch of us Davis alum are taking a little field trip to see a fellow alum’s new theatre company’s debut show: The Last 5 Years. It’s in SF somewhere. I’m pretty sure Drew knows how to find it. This started out as a relatively small gathering but has expanded rapidly to involve about 8 people. A diverse group of people – and we don’t all know each other, which is always fun.

Last night, TheatreWorks volunteered at KQED, answering phones for their pledge drive. Someone dropped out of our group at the last minute, so I enlisted Erin to help. It was fun, except that the phones went down at some point so for the last hour (?) we didn’t really have anything to do.

My last phone call before the phones went down was from this woman who started by launching into a story about how she was watching Frank Sinatra (the program was Sinatra Sings) and how she has always loved him. She wanted to know how she could get his music so she could play it in her house. I explained that the lowest pledge level was $75 and the gift at that level was the CD of his music. Then I had to explain what a CD was. She asked if it was like a tape, and apologized for not knowing, but she is “an 89-year-old woman” and just didn’t know what she had in her house.

After trying to explain CDs –  and a brief foray into explaining the DVD, which was available at the $100 pledge level – she said maybe she should ask her children if she had a CD player, and I agreed that maybe that was a good idea. I told her I would hate to send her the CD if she wasn’t able to play it.

She was totally sweet and very kind, and what I’m praying is that she says to her children, “I want this Frank Sinatra CD and I can get it from KQED if I pledge $75,” and I hope that they either help her do that, or just say, “Mom, if you just want to listen to Frank Sinatra, let’s swing by Best Buy and pick you up a brand new CD player and also his complete discography.” Or something. I just hope they’re not mean to her.

I mean, even if they just hooked her up to YouTube and made her a playlist of songs. Even that would be okay.

Anyway, that’s my week in review. I am currently FREEZING. Okay, now you’re completely up to date.

Categories
Awesome Books Dreams Drew Family Friends Love Memoir Sentiment Theatre Work Writing

Thanksgiving