My b-mum sent me a note before Christmas to let me know she’d sent me a small package by snail mail, but when I got back from CA, it wasn’t there. I was bummed because I thought the neighbourhood vandals had struck again and nicked it off the porch. But! It turns out the post was just really, really slow. Got the package today and had a lot of fun trying to get into her mad packaging (re-using bits of an old amazon box and lots and lots of packing tape!). I’ve been giggling and grinning for the past half hour at one of the items in the package… a Discworld wall calendar. Hee! 🙂
Month: January 2011
Did my first TDL training as lead instructor today. Was really glad the TDL rep was there for the first hour or so, because, true to Murphy’s Law, as soon as we started our first hands-on exercise something went wrong on their server. Took half an hour to find a solution, which, scarily, was to add our training log-ins to their production server.
I bought a Rosca de Reyes (King Cake, to non-Spanish speakers) today, to share with my housemates on the occasion of Epiphany. In Mexico, King Cake is eaten on Ephiphany, which is the celebration of when the Three Wise Men arrived to worship Jesus. Which makes sense to me, with a name like “King Cake”. In the Mexican tradition, whoever gets the slice with the figurine of the baby in it, has to throw the Mardis Gras party later in the year.
Went to CA for Christmas to see the family. Got to see my sister-in-law and older nephew for the first time in a couple of years. They’ve been at work the last couple of times I’ve been by. I decided to drive, as renting a car for the week ended up being about the same price as a flight, and this way I’d have more independence. The day itself was quite nice, though my brother wasn’t able to join us, as he was called away to work. 🙁 So I drove up to Palmdale to pick up my sister-in-law and my younger nephew (older nephew was going to his girlfriend’s… first time for any sort of major celebration!!), as my sister-in-law doesn’t drive on freeways. We also had my mother’s housemate’s son and his family. He and his wife had their second baby four days earlier, so we weren’t sure if they were all going to get to come.
Got to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader while I was in CA. I was both pleased and disappointed. Most of the elements of the book are included in the film (e.g. all the islands they visit), but they’re out of order. And the whole main plot of the film (green mist, seven swords), is entirely new. I enjoyed the film for its own merits, but it’s not a particularly good adaptation, in my opinion.
Working on a new project for Ignatius Press… a critical edition of Mansfield Park; the full text of MP, some contemporary opinions that Austen herself collected, and various criticisms. For Iambik I’m doing a book called Getting Sassy for their Crime collection. It’s about a woman trying to get the money to keep her mother in a nice assisted living facility who resorts to kidnapping a thoroughbred racehorse’s goat companion (the title character, Sassy). Also still working on Sense and Sensibility for LV, though since both of these projects are due quite soon, it’s not getting as much attention as otherwise.
I had been planning on stage managing Barefoot in the Park starting next month at the Civ, but I just heard that the original director has stepped down, and I don’t know if the new guy will want me or if he has someone else in mind. I don’t really mind either way. If I do it, I get a bit of extra cash, if I don’t, and I get a role in My Fair Lady, which comes right after it, I wouldn’t end up doing two shows in a row.