gypsygirl

I went by the Friends of the Library Book Sale today and got fourteen books for $19.50! I found a complete Shakespeare in a hard back, three volume set for $4.50. I looked for knitting books but didn't find any (not to say there weren't any there though); lots of cross-stitch, sewing, weaving and all other sorts of crafts, but I couldn't find any knitting. I got a few mysteries, and some straight fiction, and found the two volume set of A. A. Milne poems that I'd had on tape as a child in hard back - those two look brand new!

I do like the Book Sale.

I haven't written in a shockingly long time, but I have an excuse! I've been busy... with my new doggie, Lucy!

I picked her up from the local no-kill shelter in mid-September and since then we've been getting to know each other, doing some training and going for walks every day. She's an Australian Cattle Dog mix. Not sure what the mix is... possibly some sort of terrier or pointer.

Other than that, I'd been working on Children of Eden. It was fun, but I don't think I'll do anymore shows where Tommy is music directing by himself. He's much too vague without Lise. She's got the true teacher instinct (she should; she's a teacher!), so she makes certain that everybody knows everything they're supposed to know ad nauseum. Tommy was all, "I'm going to treat you like professionals, so you just study your music." All very well, except we're not professionals, and not everybody could read music! Still, it ended up being a decent show.

At one point I'd been interested in directing Dial M for Murder, which came after CoE, but I was having health problems around the time the proposals were due and it just didn't happen. I might have auditioned for it, but I learned that Scott was going to be directing A Christmas Carol, so I decided to audition for that instead. I was offered the role of the Plain Sister (in the scene at Fred's house), but around the same time, I got a couple of projects with January deadlines at work and thought it might be safer not to take the part, since I didn't know how much extra time I might have to devote to them. Tonight I got a call from Beth asking if I would please reconsider and take the part of Fred's wife (same scene) as they were having a bit of an upheaval in the show and needed all the people they could get. So... three and a half weeks before opening, I'm suddenly in the Christmas show (panic!). Well, at least it's not a very big part. I'll get to do some carolling in Act I, possibly be a background person in the Fezziwig scene, and then be Mrs. Fred in Act II.

It's talk like a pirate day, mateys!

So I was having a nice bottle of Sweet Leaf Half and Half tea when I happened to glance down at the cap, on the inside of which had been printed a... can it be called a fortune when they're giving you instructions rather than predicting the future? Well, whatever you call it, it took rather more liberties with my opinions than fortunes usually do. The instructions I was given:

Um... sorry Sweet Leaf Tea, I don't like girls (gals?) in that way.

As of yesterday morning, I am completely moved in and settled! Today I've been putting up pictures and mirrors, and I still need a few rugs and a towel rack for the bathroom, but other than that, I'm done, and the rest of this week that I took off from work, I can just rest and relax! I've put some photos of the house on flickr in case anyone's interested (but they're mostly for my mother's benefit).

I've spent the last three days moving into the new house, and I ache everywhere... even my arches ache! Going from a second floor apartment to a third floor room is exhausting. I think, when it comes time to move out of this place, I'm going to hire people to haul everything for me. I'm ok with packing and unpacking, but let someone else do the heavy work. Though, I must admit, I had lots of help yesterday, with all the furniture. There were four of us moving everything out of the apartment, and then two more friends showed up to help move everything into the house. It was nice that we were able to get everything over in one load of the u-haul (plus a few things stuffed in people's cars).

Today I've been putting things away, and I'm no longer feeling as overwhelmed as I was last night, mainly because I got all the stuff I don't use often (camping equipment, suitcases, etc) into storage areas, so there's not as much clutter out in the room. I'm taking all of next week off work, so I'll have plenty of time to finish clearing up. First thing I need to do tomorrow, though, is go to the post office, because I had gotten the wrong house number stuck in my head, and so they're going to be trying to deliver my mail to a non-existent address!

Ooh, and internet connection's already up! Yay!

I've recently been watching the new(ish) series of Miss Marple stories that had been coming out on PBS a few months ago. I really, really like Geraldine McEwan in the title role. She's almost exactly what I always pictured in my mind when I thought of Miss Marple when reading the books. I also came across a biopic of Agatha Christie told mostly by herself, from the perspective of her talking to a therapist after her disappearance/reappearance in 1926, and of interviews with journalists at the ten year anniversary of the opening of the Mousetrap.

Over the weekend I also bought the new Stargate movie. It was fun... had a lot of great stuff that was reminiscent of earlier seasons.

The melodrama ran this weekend. We sold out Friday and Saturday and came very close on Sunday. The audiences really seemed to enjoy it and got into the whole spirit of the thing... Sunday's audience was very vocal with their cheers and jeers, but not so much with the paper wads (there was hardly anything to sweep up during intermission). And they loved Mayor Haggle!

Tonight's the first rehearsal for Children of Eden. Several people from the melodrama are going to be in that too, plus some friends from other shows, so it should be fun. Regan is going to be Mrs. Noah - I think, since Nunsense, she's going to start getting typecast whenever there's a gospel-type song that needs to be sung.

more cat pictures

I've started working on baby projects for T. I've already made a little panda hat. I still need to buy eyes for it, but otherwise it's finished.

The other project is going to be a pullover with a train on it. I found a pattern, and I'm going to change up the colours to make it look like the Hogwarts Express. I had ordered the pattern a couple of weeks ago, but they had run out, and I had to wait for their new stock to come in. It finally arrived at the end of last week. Now I just need some yarn - I have some in my stash that I want to use, in red, black, white, and yellow, but I also need some grey, blue and green.

The melodrama goes up in less than two weeks. I'm not particularly excited at this point, but then, I hadn't wanted to direct to begin with. I wanted to be nice and rested when auditions for Children of Eden came along. Ah, well. We do get to use the theatre space as of tonight, which is a week earlier than we'd expected, so that's nice. Even though we don't get to do any set building as yet (the Children's Theatre are still officially in the space), at least the actors will get a feel for the dimensions and the acoustics.

I went downtown to watch the fireworks last Friday for the first time since coming to live in Waco. The closest I'd come to this before was hanging out with friends in one of the Baylor parking lots when I was an undergrad and setting off some of our own little ground based fireworks and then watching the big display from a distance. It was quite fun. I hung out with Beth and the 92.9 tent; and Eileen came and hung out with us too.

I've just started working on Anne of the Island for LibriVox. I had been working on Mr Hogarth's Will and Angelina, but I just couldn't get into them and I kept procrastinating and not doing any recording at all. I've turned Mr Hogarth's Will into a collaborative, and started up Anne as my new English solo. I feel sort of guilty abandoning Hogarth, especially because no one has shown any interest in it in the nearly two weeks since I turned it collaborative. But I've also started recording more often now that I'm working on a project that interests me. If no one picks up any of the chapters, I'll probably do one here and there just to keep it alive. Oh, and for the first time since, I think, my second project, someone beat Ans to signing up to PL one of my English solo projects!

I'm still working on Angelina too (more enthusiastically since I started Anne). Spanish is so under-represented in the catalog, that I feel it's my duty to contribute as much as possible, both in solos and collaboratives. I've currently got three collaborative projects going - part 6 of Aesop's Fables, Jose Martí's La Edad de Oro, and I took over part 2 of Don Quijote from Gesine when she needed some time off. Angelina is only the third solo Spanish work in the catalog, and one of the other two is mine as well.