I have not forsaken thee

Those of you who check here occasionally for an update and are used to not finding anything new, please don't have a heart attack :)

I am a terrible blogger, I know. My last post was about 6 weeks ago. And that, I admit, was a blatant attempt to get noticed by the makers of Rifftrax and perhaps mentioned by them on Twitter. It didn't work. *shrug*

I have been making a lot of changes lately. Not really sure what's inspired them, maybe just being tired of not enjoying so many things in life and trying to replace those with things I do enjoy. I've been cooking a LOT lately and the more I do it, the more I enjoy it. I've been branching out into different types of cuisine. I cooked, well basically catered, for a friend's tapas party, having eaten tapas exactly once in my life and having cooked tapas exactly zero times in my life. I am finding the more hours I spend in my kitchen, the better my mental health. Even if there is not anything to be cooked, cleaning, washing dishes or organizing ingredients gives me peace. Crazy, I know.

Other stuff is going on. Plans for the wedding progress. I bought a wedding dress this weekend and I'm very excited about it. I am going to have a hard time waiting the 5-6 months for it to come in. But I am very happy with the dress I chose and the overall process of buying it. Success with this makes me eager to move on to the next tasks on the list.

I'm going to be directing a play in December at the Looking Glass Theatre in their Writer/Director Forum. The play is a very cool, Twilight Zone-ish, one-act called Where Time Is Money. I've cast one of the two roles from our super talented pool of theatre interns and am looking forward to open call auditions this upcoming weekend and the start of rehearsals to follow. I've got the good foundation of a fantastic script and two incredibly capable and helpful Asst. Director/Stage Managers, so I'm feeling pretty confident about this show. Details to follow as the show gets closer.

I've reached my goal weight at Weight Watchers. Roughly 6 months later, I am 20-ish pounds lighter. (My goal weight was 22 pound lighter than where I started, I've fluctuated a little since reaching it.) As of yesterday, I am a lithe 131.2 pounds and damn proud of it. When I began my aims were 1) lose weight for the wedding 2) keep it off till the wedding and 3) if possible, keep it off until after my sister's wedding next November. After that, the hell with it. But now that I'm here, I like it and I'll be trying to stay this healthy and thin as long as I can.

Oh yeah. And I'm turning 30 in a couple weeks. Gah. I dunno, I feel like I'm supposed to feel anxious about it. And in a way I kind of do. But in another way, age is just a number, and I'm happy with my life so I will just look forward to celebrating the start of the 4th decade of my life. Plans include family dinner, a joint celebration with Frank (with whom I have in some way shared birthday celebrations for the last 10 years as his is 2 days before mine), a blowout night of rock starring my favorite bands, and recuperating with football on Sunday.

I've been thinking about this blog. (Yeah I know, all that time I spend thinking I could just be updating it.) I'm not really happy with the format. I mean, I started it as a mental health aid, to remind myself of the positives in life during an especially tough time. Blogging, for me, has always been kind of a catalog of "what's been going on with me lately" type of posts and that...isn't that interesting for people who don't know me to read. So I'm thinking about changing up my format. Blogging more frequently but less about myself and more about the things that interest me in life in general. More structured, planned posts instead of my random compose-as-you-type, stream-of-consciousness thought regurgitation. In short, more like (but not exactly copied, of course) the blog of my friend and mentor in most areas of life, Sarah.

See you soon, hopefully sooner than the last time I said that. And don't be surprised if the next post is a different one. I'm hoping it will be better and more satisfying.

The Not-Too-Distant Future

So, my work at FringeNYC allows me to get cheap tickets to participating shows and I had planned to take advantage of that last night, but the show I planned to see sold out.

So instead, I went to Rifftrax Live.

For the uninitiated, Rifftrax is what some of the boys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 are doing now. They make mocking audio commentaries of many modern movies that you can download for a couple bucks and play on an iPod with speakers along with the movie.

Last night, at Rifftrax Live, they did a live riff of the infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space. The guys were on stage live at a movie theater in Nashville and satellites broadcast it to other theaters around the country.

I was racing and I was late because I had to run there from my show. But I made it time to grab a huge Diet Coke and catch most of it. Apparently I missed some Rifftrax-style premovie trivia flashcards that parodied the type of movie trivia you see before the all the previews and commercials at a regular movie. Now, when I got into the theater, it was packed. I inquired about a few single empty seats, since I was solo, but they were all taken so I took a seat on the floor with a bunch of other people. After about 5 minutes, a manager came in and told us we couldn't sit on the floor and we should go to the other theater showing the same show. Way to manage your seating Union Square Regal Cinemas! But anyway, no biggie.

There were some cute bits before the show. They riffed a short called "Flying Stewardess." They brought out Jonathan Coulton to do a couple of songs, including "Re: Your Brains." The crowd was really rude at this point because some of the louder, more obnoxious jerks were heckling through his songs, claiming no one knew who he was and laughing when the broadcast showed fans in Nashville singing along, as I sat there fuming thinking "Dude, people KNOW who Jonathan Couton is! STFU!" They showed a couple mock-commercials (made by the guy who created Something Awful) from mock sponsors, one for a flour and grain expo featuring a very EXTREME announcer and lots of screaming and explosions, and the other for Berry Watch, a security service that monitors and protects the fresh berries in your house :) And the Riffers came out and sang a little song they wrote about Plans 1-8, featuring Mike Nelson on nose flute. And then, MOVIESIGN! (Wait, I'm not supposed to say that now that it's Rifftrax. Nevermind.)

That movie is so, SO bad. Shots cut together that are supposed to be happening at the same time, one in daylight and one at night. Replacing Bela Lugosi in some of the shots with an actor covering his face with his cape. The doorway that gets reused in half a dozen different locations. The terrible writing and acting. The non-special effects. I think my favorite bad part is the graveyard set on a soundstage that is completely unconvincing as a real location. 

The riff was great, from the beginning when they joked about how even the opening title music hurt to the end when Bill Corbett exclaimed "I never laughed at vitamins!" There were parts of it I was laughing so hard I had to make myself laugh silently because I was laughing long after the joke (particularly when the pilot says he saw a flying saucer and his wife said "You mean from 'up there'?" and one of the riffers said "No, from up my ass!") I also loved the way they reacted every time the detective cop carelessly waved his gun around. 

It was nostalgic for me. My dad introduced me to Plan 9, pointing out all the places it was bad before I knew MST3K even existed. He was also a big MST3K fan once he discovered it. The humor was right up his alley, but I think he also appreciated the homemade aspect of it. The people who weren't with me, my dad, and also my fiance who had to work, lent a certain tone to the night, but I had a good time in spite of it (and in spite of the loud, misogynistic jerk next to me who almost got a diet coke bath several times).

So thanks, Rifftrax, for a great evening. I hope you do one again soon, so I can bring my man with me next time. And if anyone from there is reading, PLEASE release last night's riff for purchase on your website, I'd definitely buy it!  

Sometimes You Should

I'm really good at self-denial. 

I guess I can't really say that. If I were really good, I would do it just the right amount, but really I do it too much. It's why I've been so good at Weight Watchers, I never let myself have anything anyhow, it just gives me more rules about how to deny myself more effectively and what to allow myself that feels indulgent but isn't. It's also a source of unhappiness. There are always things we can't afford to give ourselves and in that sense, I'm really good at managing a budget to be able to save money and pay for necessities by denying myself things I want. But sometimes you gotta cut it out.

Recently, I got a coupon for Glarkware, a great funny t-shirt company where I have often ordered gifts but rarely buy things for myself. There were a couple designs I'd had my eye on for a really long time, so I finally decided to order myself a few new snazzy snarky T's. I also encountered an end of season clearance sale at Old Navy while I was sick last weekend and trolled through their website, tossing cheap odds and ends I'd been needing for a while in my cart. All told, I spent ridiculously litte for all that I ended up getting. And when I got it in the mail, when I tried it all on and it all fit, when I realized I could stop worrying about not having certain things that I wanted/needed, it made me really happy. A little retail therapy can be especially beneficial sometimes. PS That coupon for Glarkware is still available. I don't know if it's cool for me to give out the code on my blog but check out their Twitter page to find the code, good till 8/23. 

Too much self-denial can hurt you too. I've been putting off buying new gym shoes forever, even though I've been regularly going to the gym for a year now in shoes that were years old when I started. This morning I paid for it. I twisted my knee in Zumba class because of my crappy old shoes and had to leave in the middle of having a really good time, not to mention how much this will mess up my week depending on how fast it heals. So I guess "buy new shoes" goes to the top of the list and when I get them, I'll be a lot happier to have them. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, by writing this post, I'm denying myself lunch and I need to get a move on! 

Think happy thoughts!

Comedic Interlude: Painfully Awesome

A long time ago, I was dubbed "painfully awesome" by a good friend. I forget who exactly came up with this, but if you are this person, please speak up and be recognized :) What this means is that I am awesome, by all definitions of the word, but frequently, so awesome it hurts. Which sometimes means I am super extra-awesome. And sometimes means that I am awesome, but lame at the same time and the contrast of the two in one tends to be painful. Case in point:

SCENE:

Kris and I are in bed watching a movie. We have a small window air conditioner, but without good air circulation, it's not as effective as it could be. We've turned off the fan so we can hear the movie, but are sweating through it. Kris is used to it, he is usually internally too hot, but now even I am uncomfortable.

ME: It's HOT.

KRIS: Oh good I'm glad you think so. I thought you were going to tell me I was crazy like usual.

ME: No, it's effing gross in here. No more movies in bed, it's too long to go without proper temperature control.

***flash forward***

The movie has ended, the fan has been turned on, and the room has cooled down. I am playing solitaire on my phone because I'M AN ADDICT. Kris is trying to sleep.

ME: I should go to sleep. I wish I could stop playing this.

KRIS: I wish I had a lot more fans blowing on me.

ME: (sigh) I'm going to get you a ladder for our anniversary.

KRIS: (leaning away from the INCREDIBLY LOUD FAN whose noise I greatly resent) What?

ME: I said, I'm going to get you a ladder for our anniversary.

(Beat)

KRIS: To what end?

ME: So you can GET OVER IT.

KRIS: ...

...

...

I'm sleeping on the couch.

ME: No honey, I'm sorry. I'm kidding. I know you're hot.

KRIS: Not that. That joke was BAD.

***Fin***

You be the judge. Awesome? Painful? Or, as ever, painfully awesome?

ETA: Another apt conversation from the same night that demonstrates the same quality.

ME: I knew you were reluctant to watch Slumdog Millionaire because you didn't think it could be as good as I said it was.

KRIS: I was reluctant because everyone said that. But I was wrong.

ME: Well I was one of those people and I was right so you know you can always listen to me.

KRIS: Oh yeah, Sahara was a cinematic masterpiece.

ME: IT WAS.

***Fin***

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Has it really been almost a MONTH since I blogged? Wow, I am the slackiest blogger who ever blogged. Lame.

I've been busy. The show I mentioned in my last post has come and gone if you can believe it. I got to work with some really great people and learned a lot, so I call it a win. I can't really talk much about that time, because not much happened in it, other than work and rehearsal. I was in NYC just about every day, ate just about every meal at my desk, went days at a time without seeing my fiance. It was rough. So at the end, last week, I took a week off from work and did something I'd never done with a vacation before: I stayed home and didn't go anywhere. My vacation was:

• dinner with a director and an actress who I loved from a previous show at a swanky awesome Mexican place in the city, getting drunk on sangria and the best guacamole I've ever had
• hitting up a weeknight pub quiz our friend hosts in South Jersey that we wouldn't have been able to attend without using vacation time. Many of our friends were there and it was fun to catch up.
• taking our 11-month old niece to the Cape May Zoo. She's maybe a bit young to appreciate it just yet, but it was nice to take her out somewhere. I'm trying to progress our relationship from supervised visits at her mom's or grandma's house to being able to take her out somewhere on my own, in preparation for my own eventual kids :)
• date night with my honey. Neither of us loved The Hangover like everyone else on the planet, but it's still nice to get taken out and the lowfat chocolate peanut butter frozen yogurt at Lindy Hops can't be beat!
• seeing the Tempest on the outdoor stage and having a lovely fun picnic with Sarah.
• bar night with an old friend who's in town, full of strange reunions of people I haven't seen in a while.
• 2 4th of July bbqs and an awesome fireworks display in Liberty State Park.
• dinner at my folks to see my family, who I realized I hadn't seen all month.
• lots of baseball on tv.
• lots of sleep.
• lots of exercise. Every day, in fact!
• lots of good eating and STILL losing 1.2 pounds :)
• lots of quality time with my sweetie.

So no, I didn't get to go to a beach or visit a distant relative or tour a famous place but I had a damn good vacation anyway.

A couple of other happy thoughts happened this last month:

• WE SIGNED THE CONTRACT WITH THE WEDDING VENUE!!!!! We are getting married on July 25, 2010! Woohoo! The wheels are in motion at last!
• We had our engagment party which was loads of fun and it was terrific to see all our guests. Sorry if you weren't there, the etiquette is to invite only those you're sure you can invite to the wedding and ours will be small so we hope you're not offended.
• Kris, impressed by my example, joined WW all on his own and lost 3.2 lbs. in his first week. YAY HONEY! He aims to lose 30, a totally doable goal by all accounts. I am so happy to have him taking good care of himself.

Hopefully it won't be another month before I have more happy thoughts for you!

Here Comes Summer

Despite what the weather in the NY area would have you think, it is in fact summertime. OK summer doesn't OFFICIALLY start for two more weeks, but once the calendar turns to June, for me, it's all over. It's my favorite time of year and I'm enjoying it pretty well so far. So what's been going on?

• The Forum at the Looking Glass went very well. I really enjoyed working on it and I learned a LOT. I learned a lot about people and theater and how this business works and how different styles and personalities mesh together. I (re-)learned that I can be good at anything I apply myself to. I learned how to set light cues and do a hot patch. I learned how to use GarageBand to create voice overs and sound effects. I learned that when left to my own devices, I will create a 5-page checklist to get organized. I met some really great people and found some really great opportunities and I am really glad I got involved in it.
• Leisure time has been very scarce but I did manage to catch a break, thanks to the lovely Marissa, and find time to attend the Nine Inch Nails concert with Frank last weekend. It was an amazing show as usual. Sad to hear it will be the last for a while. Maybe they will come back through New York before the tour ends (please)?  
• I am now working on another show, as a stage manager. It's a very different kind of project and I think it has something to teach me as well. After that, I am taking a good healthy break and then diving into another project, assistant directing a show at the NY Fringe Festival. More details as they happen. 
• Wedding arrangments have taken a turn for the better. I am NOT going to say anything official until it's 100% signed, sealed, and delivered, but we are much closer to locking in a date/place than when last I posted.
• Schocholautte has a new website up and will be playing their big EP release party this Saturday. Please come out and celebrate with us if you're in the NY area!

Hope everyone's life is giving them as many happy thoughts to think as mine is! :)

I Told You

I said I was gonna be hard to find and I meant it. I've been up to quite a bit.

• Working on plays again has been great. Even when it's tough, long hours or cranky casts or whatever, it's been great. I'm happy. I'm enjoying what I'm doing. I'm learning a LOT. I have a lot of energy. I feel good about my days and when I'm doing something else and it's sucking, I have rehearsal to look forward to. You should come see the shows, next weekend June 4th-7th, at the Looking Glass Theatre.
• From connections I've made at this gig, I have one, potentially two more gigs lined up for the rest of the summer. I'm a little worried I've got too much on my plate, but I think it'll be OK. I'm happy to be making so many connections and impressing people enough that they want to work with me again. I'm also starting to see ways for me to do more, to educate myself more, and to write and direct plays eventually.
• The wedding arrangements are not as set in stone as I would like. We have come as far as choosing a place we like, but we have yet to arrive at a contract agreeable to all parties. It's frustrating. We may have to compromise our plans, which makes me sad, because I feel like a lesser person when I can't have the thing I want because of money. But I remind myself we are getting married and it's going to be great, no matter what. 
• Had a lovely Memorial Day weekend. Had a lot of time off from work and only a little rehearsal. Got to see friends, family, and Kris. Ate a little too much, but whaddya gonna do?
• My dieting kick has...changed. On the one hand, I am still TRYING to do the best I can with WW. On the other hand, being out of the house all day long and sometimes the food options I plan for myself falling through has made this whole process more costly and sometimes not as successful. I didn't weigh myself last week, 'cause I'm afraid I gained. I haven't been able to get to the gym very much and the fact that that bothers me actually makes me pretty glad, at least. My body has changed to the point where it wants exercise. I'm thinking I might have to alter my plans and just go on maintenance for a little while (i.e. try not to gain any, instead of trying to lose more) because my life just might be a little too full for weight loss right now. I have lost 10 or 12 pounds. I want to lose a little more, but that may not be possible right now and I'm pretty happy with what I've done so far.

That's all for now. I will post more, when there's more to know about anything.