Monday, February 10, 2014

A Rainy Weekend

The forecast said snow. It didn't--we got a rainstorm that made it look like my mom's home in Washington. In the meantime, turns out that northwestern Washington got snowed on. Mother nature, she has her jokes.

The weekend was much like other weekends--very pleasant, and much less productive than I intended from the off. Then again, what's a weekend if you don't mess around and waste time a little bit?

Friday started with harp practice early in the morning, which is when my practice happens most of the time. Nobody likes to get up at 8 in the morning to snag a practice room, so if I go early enough I can have my pick of the harp rooms. I am currently playing a song that has so many pedal changes it makes my head spin trying to get back and forth from my feet to my hands. It's a lot of fun, though--a Scott Joplin style ragtime piece. I think it will turn out after I've had a few more months to wrestle with it.

After I practiced I hurried down to the RB for Adaptive Aquatics. Every week I go down there to play with little kids with special needs from nearby schools. Usually I play in the gym--Gym Kids--but Friday I figured, that since I had more time I could swim. I swam with a little girl named Destiny who was always smiling, was terrified of not having someone to hold on to in the water (even with a life jacket) and who loved squirting other people with guns or rubber ducks. Consequently, my good intentions about keeping my hair dry didn't get very far. Fortunately I only had one class (Performance Studies, in which we played a game and talked about the concept of "Play"), but I was still embarrassed when my hair started to dry funny.

I am in a play at present called "I am Jane." It is the story of Jane Manning James, a black woman who was one of the early saints. Want to know more? KSL will have all the details because at our Friday rehearsal we were interviewed for a radio show! Well, actually it's a radio podcast, but exciting nonetheless. If you want to hear me and the other cast members talk about our characters and ourselves and the play and so on, go to ksl.com and type "Cultural Connections" into the search bar, and click the first link that comes up (KSL podcasting or something like that). On the right hand side there will be a long list of all the podcast shows. "Cultural Connections" is a ways down under the "Sunday Shows" heading. Voila! It was fun to be interviewed--I kept imagining the NPR radio shows I listened to during the summer and felt very important.

There was one downside, though--the dress the director had put me in for rehearsal was owned by a woman who has cats, which meant that I reacted to it. Whoops. I hadn't had the dress on fifteen minutes before I realized that my eyes and skin were starting to itch and I was getting asthma. At first I thought I must have developed a new allergy to muslin or cotton, but turns out its the same old animal hair deal. It was new, though--I've never had an allergic reaction to a dress before. I managed to rub off most of my mascara before the interview was over, which made me look a little less nice and a little more puffy in the face than I had hoped, especially since I had a date right after that. Rats. The date was fun, though--dancing and mocktails--and most of the irritation and swelling had gone down by the time I got there. Whew!

Saturday was busy. Harp practice, a noir mystery movie version of Shakespeare's virtually unknown play "Cymbeline" (I saw a fairy tale version earlier in the week that I liked better, but that's more for another day), and practice again, in which we were taught to sing gospel. I was told a good half a dozen times that afternoon to stop singing like a Mormon. What can I say? Old habits die hard...

Our coach/fellow actor, trying to teach us to sing like Baptists
I hurried home to do laundry, finish some reading very quickly, and throw on my Arab-Israeli dress to go to a birthday party for a friend in my acting class:


Shannon is a Theater major emphasizing in costume design, so she decided to have an ancient civilizations party and went to town tying everybody's toga (or other such garment). She could name each person's style of dress, the country it came from, and the socioeconomic class that would have worn it. I was impressed. We had pizza and cupcakes and talked for a long time--longer than I expected because when I tried to go home I found myself locked out of my apartment (no pockets in the arab dress, so I neglected to bring my keys).

The sabbath was lovely--I fasted (I missed last week thanks to being home for stake conference), gave a lesson on Noah and the Ark and the Tower of Babel, made rolls that didn't rise but tasted fine, and collaborated on a group dinner with my friends up in #22 (Bethany, Audri, and Cami) and a couple of guys. Anything tastes good after fasting, but the spaghetti really was fantastic.

I also got to see Adrianne's baby twins for the first time.






The top two pictures are of Elise, the bottom two are Michelle. They were born in December but just came home last week. Today was their official due date, actually--fun fact. The girls were angels and Adrianne was enamored with them. It made me feel 1) rather old to have a friend with children already and 2) very happy, because I haven't held a baby that small in years.

I then walked home--a beautiful walk both ways, especially because of a really beautiful moon with a huge ring probably caused by inversion. I got back in time to enjoy Disney Sunday (this week's feature was Despicable Me 2) and no-bake cookies at #22.

I never want Sundays to end. I could do with more days like that.

Love you! Ciao!

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