February to March

It's the last day of February, and the shift to March seems immense.  February connotes quiet, blanketed in cold, a kind of sleep that comes after the excitement of the holidays and the beginning of the new year.  We're calm after being frozen for so long.  The weather won't switch in a heartbeat: the forecast shows no end to the bitter cold.  But March means something new; March heralds the hope of warm weather, at the end of March is April, and March knows all of this.

At the risk of this turning into a cat picture blog, I wanted to post a picture of my cats.  February is the month of Valentine's Day, after all, and their little bodies make a nice heart shape that I couldn't resist posting as an ode to the passing February.



Last night I took the evening off in preparation for a(nother) working weekend.  After my Approaches to Teaching Literature class, I met up with two girls from my cohort for a happy hour.  We talked school and critical thought, we talked television shows, we talked Spring Break.  We ate mozzarella sticks.  When I returned home, I watched the last 2/3rds of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and found myself livetweeting it, all unawares of what I was doing until the end.  Silly, but a nice way to relax my brain after a long week, with a long week ahead.

The next week is going to be immensely stressful.  On top of a larger than usual reading load, I have two papers to write.  They are short, luckily, but sometimes the short ones are the hardest.  The only thing keeping me going as I push through this bitterly cold, overly-stressful week is the thought of Florida sunshine, pineapple Dole Whips, and Disney Magic.  All of that waits at the end.  All of that waits after Chaucer and Middleton, after teaching philosophies and critical readings.

All of that waits for me in March.

Four Years, Cat Video

Yesterday Zan and I celebrated four years together!  We had lunch at Rays to the Third (for our now traditional hamburgers), visited Trader Joe's, and enjoyed walking out in the warm sunshine.  I snuck in a nice afternoon nap, and we finished up the evening with risotto and Robin Hood.  Nothing fancy, but a nice way to commemorate four whole years of being together!

Zan also took the time to make this silly/wonderful video of our cats-- primarily Felix-- as Navi, from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.  Has anyone else played that game?  Were you consistently frustrated by Navi constantly yelling out "Hey!" and commanding you to "Look!"?  If so, you'll like this video.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go ahead and watch it anyway, because you get to see two very cute cats.  And that's always worth it.

Broadway Legends

Last month, while going a bit crazy buying theater tickets, I clicked "purchase" on tickets to "An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin."  And last night, I saw them!

The evening was a bit different than I imagined; I had thought it would be more concert style, where they would sing a song and talk about their Broadway experiences, but there was only a brief moment of that in the second act.  Instead, we were treated to two Broadway greats singing medleys from great Broadway musicals.  The first act told a love story of sorts, using songs primarily from Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Kander and Ebb.  It ended in a hilarious "dance" in rolling office chairs to the song "April in Fairbanks."  The second act began with LuPone singing "Everything's Coming Up Roses" from Gypsy and Patinkin singing "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues" from Follies.  These numbers were very strong, especially Patinkin's.  Then a medley from Merrily We Roll Along, ending with "Old Friend"-- and then the part I had imagined!  Patinkin talked a bit about being cast in Evita with LuPone, and told a few stories about rehearsals and opening in L.A.  Then he sang the entirety of "Oh What a Circus"-- AMAZING.  He's still got it.  His voice sounds just as it sounds on the Secret Garden soundtrack; he's taken really good care of it.  It was a really a stand-out moment for me.  Then LuPone sang the entirety of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," which was obviously a stunning a moment.  How exciting to get to see those two sing such signature songs!!!  The second act ended with a few more medleys, a significant portion from Carousel, and ended with "You'll Never Walk Alone."  Wonderful!

At the end of the evening, leading into "You'll Never Walk Alone," Patinkin quoted Dr. Selden's graduation speech from Carousel, about how he brought us into the world and got us this far, and now we have to go on to find happiness and our own form of success.  It was especially moving to me, having grown up and having been shaped by listening to Mandy Patinkin.  You see, getting to see Mandy Patinkin perform was kind of an emotional moment for me: I've listened to him as Archibald Craven on the Secret Garden soundtrack since I was four years old.  Over the ensuing twenty-two years, his songs have grown to mean more and more to me-- from a child imagining a dollhouse with a hundred rooms per floor in "A Bit of Earth", to a teenager (and now adult) moving to Virginia and dreaming of a life that I will never know from "I Heard Someone Crying." Over the years, I grew to understand an know the heartbreak of "Where in the World" and the deep longings of the "Quartet," and the joys sung about in "A Girl in the Valley" (which I put on a mixed CD I made for Zan when we started dating).

Despite being different than I had expected, I really enjoyed my evening with LuPone and Patinkin.  I do wish they'd had a Sweeney Todd song thrown in, and I would've loved a Secret Garden song, obviously, but regardless, it's a must-have experience for lovers of classic musical theater and a rare chance to see two Broadway legends together again.

Heart Grew Three Sizes

Today, I felt the first stirrings of spring.  The air held a promise and a memory, that feeling of a turning, newness and nostalgia.  After seminar, in the last fading bits of daylight-- a touch of daylight still at six!-- I stood outside talking with my classmates and my fingers did not ache of cold.  Amazing, what a bit of warmth and a bit of sunlight can do: I suddenly felt that all of my work was manageable, and that all of my efforts might not be in vain.  A weight I didn't know I carried lifted.  Though I know we're in for lower temperatures again next week, today the sun shone warmly and the cold did not bite so fiercely, and perhaps this winter will end after all.

Valentine's, Friends, and a Reprise

Valentine's: We don't go all out for Valentine's Day.  Our anniversary is coming up soon, so we usually save our "big date night" for that, and stay in on the all-important holiday of love.  But we do manage to make the day special in some way!  Last year we saw Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters; in Seattle we had a fancy candle-lit homemade dinner.  This year, we dressed up (I even put on make-up!), Zan made me a wonderful pasta dinner, and we marathoned the last few episodes of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.  Plus, Zan got me flowers while at the grocery store buying the dinner supplies. :)!  I love our low-key Valentine's Days.  I also can't believe we're done with Buffy!  Zan insists that now we need to finish Angel (we're at the beginning of season 4, but I got so depressed watching it that we quit and switched to Parks and Rec... which we've totally caught up on), but I'm thinking it's time to make Zan watch all of Veronica Mars, seeing as how the movie is coming out soon and all.

Friends: On Saturday night, we went out for dinner with two of our/my friends.  It's odd, because I've known C&H since I was a child-- C and I went to the same church, and were friends in high school, and H and I worked on school projects together when I was in third grade.  Now H is in my M.A. program!  Crazy!  We had a really great time together, and they were our first guests to the apartment!  It's so strange, like two worlds clashing, but I love having C&H in the area.  It's so nice to have old friends around, who have known you your whole life.  The apartment is really coming together, by the way: we have now, in addition to our rug, coffee table, breakfast bar stools, and couch (!), a regular chair, a make-shift television stand, two end tables, and a dresser!  Whoo-hoo!  Now all we need is a real bed and we'll be in business!  It's beginning to look and feel like a home.

And the reprise: last night Zan and I saw Peter and the Starcatcher at the Kennedy Center!  I saw this show on Broadway a couple of years ago and fell in love with it.  I really, really, really wanted Zan to see it, too.  And, as last time, it was wonderful!  It wasn't quite as magical as it was when I saw it on Broadway, but it still retained plenty of its charm.  And Molly and Boy had great chemistry, and it still got me right in the feels when she said, "It's supposed to hurt, that's how you know it meant something!"  Sigh... I wish I were more like Molly.  Or, since I doubt I'll ever be a Starcatcher (drat the luck!), I wish at least that I could play Molly in a production someday (alas, I have an inkling that I'm too tall).  It's so much fun going to the theater.  It makes me feel like a real human, rather than a "student" human.  It opens up the possibilities of life.  I'm so glad I went ahead and got the tickets for this show.

Long Days and Snow Days

With my schedule this semester, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays are my busiest days.  Although I have class on Thursday, too, all of my readings and work for the week need to be finished by midnight on Wednesday, leaving Thursday morning as a gloriously stress-free zone-- comparatively.  This week, partially because of poor planning on my part (and the fact that it was the run of The Tempest and I had tickets for Mother Courage), and partially because of a double-class on Wednesday to make up for one we missed earlier in the semester, the first three days of the week were very, very long.  Wednesday itself was probably the worst. 

First of all, I had been awake reading until midnight on Tuesday-- after spending all of Tuesday either reading or in class-- and on Wednesday I was up, dressed, caffeinated, and on the bus to campus by 9:40.  And I had a cold coming on.  Once on campus, I read.  I read and I read and I read until my head hurt, and the bright spot of it all was that we had leftover lasagna from an English Department event in the kitchen, so at least I had a very nourishing (and free!) lunch.  Then we had discussion-based class for four hours.  By the time the class ended, the snow had begun.  I grabbed the bus home, then had more reading to do!  Luckily, it was just three short articles.  But after they were read, I had to write a short "blog post" about them for my class.  I finally finished everything around 10:20 PM. 

And at just about that time, a reprieve arrived-- a snow day on the morrow!  Thursday, then, was warm and lazy.  I made pancakes for breakfast.  I drank hot tea.  I had a warm cat on my lap.  I began to read for next week (so as to hopefully avoid another Wednesday like the last!).  I read Happy Birthday, Kit! because it was a snow day and I wanted to have some fun, too.  Zan and I watched an episode of Buffy.  A perfect mix of work and play.  And today, another snow day for Zan, and no class for me!  And Valentine's Day!  Hello Buffy marathon (aren't we just so romantic?)! 

Help Women Destroy Science Fiction!

From the campaign: "It could be said that women invented science fiction; after all, Mary Shelley wrote what is considered by many to be the first science fiction novel (Frankenstein). Yet some readers seem to have this funny idea that women don’t—or can’t—write science fiction. Some have even gone so far as to accuse women of destroying science fiction with their girl cooties. So to help prove how silly that notion is, LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE's June 2014 issue—our fourth anniversary issue—will be a Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue. And we will also—for the first time in LIGHTSPEED's history—have a guest editor at the helm." 

I'm really excited about this project.  I can't wait to read the science fiction, and-- thanks to reaching a stretch goal-- horror stories written by women!  Although it's been over-funded, it has a final stretch goal at $35,000-- a THIRD issue with a THIRD genre, totally written and edited by women!  So, if this sounds like something that might interest you, go donate within the next three days! 

A Theatrical Weekend

Saturday and Sunday night were both spectacular this week, in theatrical, yet different, ways.

On Saturday night, we had our final performance of The Tempest.  I'm very sorry to see it go, but the last performance was excellent.  I'm really going to miss the cast, crew, and seeing some of my favorite scenes night after night.  After the final performance, we had our GGSS Potluck Party.  I ordered a Wise Guys pizza for my potluck entree and Mike and Kelsey were nice enough to pick it up for me.  I think the pizza was a hit!  And I was happy to have it, since now that I won't be frequenting the law center as often, I'll have no reason to go to Wise Guys... no more sushi or Wise Guys.  Sad day.  But the potluck was lots of fun!  There was mac & cheese with chevre, chili and cornbread, mini-cupcakes, fried rice, cheeses and meats and crackers... amazing!  Then we had directors speeches, crew 'awards', and I received a personalized poster signed by the cast!  I was very moved by it.  I'm so, so grateful that Ben and Sara let me work on this show.  It's been a blast.

Then on Sunday night, I saw Mother Courage and Her Children at Arena Stage starring Kathleen Turner!  I bought the tickets awhile ago, thinking Zan and I could see it, but Zan spent the weekend in NYC (making movies!), so I invited my friend Cara to go with me instead.  We had such a good time!  We ate at Jenny's Asian Fusion by the waterfront; it was very tasty, and-- by ordering only small plates-- very inexpensive.  Then, the theater!  I'd never been to Arena Stage, but the space is beautiful.  It has several theaters within it, and multiple levels.  Mother Courage was presented in the round, but even so I venture to say we had very good tickets.  I really enjoyed the show.  There were a few things about the interpretation with which I slightly disagreed, and the translation was slightly different from the ones I've read before, but overall I give it two thumbs up.  The staging was entrancing, the acting was quite good-- the girl playing Kattrin, especially, was wonderful.  It was also nice to feel like a real human, taking advantage of some of the things that D.C. has to offer. 

Hope everyone else had a good weekend, too!

First Week of February

February is flying!  It's a short month anyway, and it's hard to believe we're a fourth of the way through!  So far, February has been a very good month, although I have to say, I could do without the cold.  And who would have thought that humidity, which makes the heat so much more unbearable, also makes the cold so much more unbearable? When will balmy breezes blow once more? 

But, February has had much good in it so far.  First of all, last Saturday, Zan and I went to IKEA to purchase some furniture!  IKEA was actually tons of fun, in an overwhelming way.  We ate lunch at their cafe (Swedish meatballs, baked fish, mashed potatoes, lingonberry sauce, and two kinds of cake) and spent a few hours browsing through the store.  We ended up with three chairs for our breakfast bar, an inexpensive but efficient coffee table, and a very nice accent rug.  We also got a chalkboard upon which to write menus and messages.  It's very "cafe"-eque, and I think will go well with the Parisian Cafe-themed framed collage my mom made/gave me for Christmas.

Then on Sunday, the Seahawks won the Super Bowl!  I don't really follow football, but I was rooting for the Seahawks in this game, given that I lived in Seattle for a year.  It only seemed natural.  Plus, my dad ended up coming down to watch the first half of the game with us, so he got to see our new furniture and help us out with our overabundance of snack food (our eyes were bigger than our stomachs).

On Monday I got to have very tasty sushi from the Law Center, and with The Tempest closing this weekend, I wanted to really savor it, since I won't be going to the Law Center nearly so often after this.  The Tempest has come together beautifully!  I'm really proud of the show.  We opened on Wednesday night.  We had a tiny audience the first night, but the cast blew me away.  Even from the the run on Monday, they had made the show exponentially better with their opening night energy.  Thursday was a much bigger audience, and again, the cast performed amazingly.

The middle of this week was rather stressful; I had a presentation to give in my class on Wednesday, and while I had prepared, I didn't realize until Tuesday what a very large/involved presentation it needed to be.  Thus, Tuesday night and all of Wednesday morning/early afternoon were spent very, very hard at work.  As anxiety-inducing as it was, the sweetness of finishing the presentation and being done with it forever was a lovely feeling--whether it turned out well or not (I always judge myself too harshly with these things, and this professor is hard to read).  Then Thursday, we had what I felt like was a really good, thought-provoking session of Approaches to Teaching Literature.  Academically, a wonderful week.

Thursday was also the cutest day so far this month!  First, we had a mini-baby-meeting for one of the women in my program.  She has a three-month old, and she brought him by campus for the first time.  We had little snacks, and got to coo over the baby, and we gave her an array of baby/children's books to begin his library.  Then, my kitties arrived!  They are so handsome and fuzzy.  Felix kept me awake all of Thursday night, though; he was very stressed out about being in a new environment.  At 6:30 AM (Friday morning) I was in tears from exhaustion. 

Despite the exhaustion, though, Friday was amazing.  I had lunch with my mom at Coastal Flats, then got a new cell phone since the old one was running quite slowly and the screen had cracked.  Plus, I've been due for an upgrade on my plan for about nine months.  Then, I went to our English Department "Girls Night" dinner in Georgetown.  I love these nights.  I love the people in my program.  After dinner, we went up to a bar on Wisconsin and watched the Olympic Opening Ceremonies (I'd like to write more about this actually) and my heart just welled up with happiness.  Then, I went to the Formal Night after-show party for The Tempest, where everyone looked so snazzy and the food was amazing.  All evening my heart just overflowed with gratitude.

Tonight is the closing of The Tempest, then we'll see what the rest of February holds!

Super Bowl Reminiscing

The one thing that really says "Super Bowl" to me is classic Rotel dip with Velveeta.  When I was growing up, my mom would always make Rotel dip for the Super Bowl-- at least, as far as I can remember.  We would sometimes go to Super Bowl parties thrown by my parents friends, where all of the kids would watch Matilda (the film, obviously) or play board games or draw in coloring books.  We would pop into the main room where all of the adults were watching the game to grab snacks-- pigs in a blanket, pizza, salsa and guac, cheeses, vegetable trays, Rotel dip-- then disappear back to our fun.  I never took much interest in the game itself.  I'm one of those that has perennially watched for the commercials.

I remember one year when the St. Louis Rams played, we had my best friend and her family over.  Our parents and her brother watched the game, while Maggie and I sat at the back of the room, half-focused on the television (for the commercials, remember?), and taught ourselves how to do magic tricks with cards.  My mom made Rotel dip.  I think she also made chili and pigs-in-blankets and I'm sure we had many more snacks as well.  Mostly, I remember being really good at card tricks for a few weeks thereafter, before forgetting everything I had learned. 

I think the only year I tuned into the game, but didn't have any Rotel dip, was the year I studied abroad in England.  I remember watching it at the Northamptons with some of my friends.  Because of the time difference, it started quite late at night and ended even later.  I didn't stay for the whole game, and they didn't even have the American commercials.  But we had Ace Hard Cider and chips and dip and a lot of goodwill.  Those were the days.

The year Zan and I started dating we watched the Super Bowl together.  I remember being adamant about having Rotel dip, and I remember that once the game actually started, Zan and I spent most of the time in the kitchen making brownies instead of socializing with my roommate and his friends.  This year, I am armed with Rotel dip, but just for me and Zan.  We also have some frozen pizza, jalapeno poppers, and I might make brownies!  Or maybe Funfetti cupcakes.  Hopefully next year we can have a party, once we have a couch and a working sink in the bathroom.  I think I might make it my duty as EGSA Social Chair to have that party.  Hope everyone else has a fun and tasty night, too!  Happy Super Bowl Sunday!


*Not a sponsored post, by Rotel, Velveeta, or anyone else.  There are just some foods that I associate with certain things, and my top Super Bowl food happens to be a brand name.

Who Wants to be a Producer?

Hey everyone!  Do you wanna be a producer?  Sport a top hat and a cane?  Wear a tux on opening night?  Well, here's your chance!  Kind of.  I wanted to alert you all to a really cool film that my friend, Tom, is making for his MFA thesis at the University of New Orleans.  It takes place in the 19th-century and revolves around a murder and the pseudo-science of phrenology.  He's made an Indiegogo to fund it, and I know he'd really appreciate all the help he can get!  Check it out!