Ralphs Adventure

Is this not the cutest kitchen object EVER??? In case you can't tell, it's a single-egg skillet. It's TINY!

I saw this in the middle of one of the random aisles and knew I had to have it. And then I used it to make myself a delicious egg/cheese/bagel sandwich with a side of yummy grapes. I love having food in the apartment!!

I'm a little worried because I have a two-part Chinese final Monday and Tuesday that I have a lot of studying to do in order to do well, and tomorrow's going to be busy. Spider Baby rehearsal 1-4 (which means I need to be able to leave USC around... 12? 12:30? Have to figure that out soon) and then another rehearsal for either KP or my directing class after (things were rescheduled without my knowing and now there's no way to do both... which really screws me over. I'm really, really frustrated). So I have a lot of work to do. I'm probably going to see if I can find a Borders or Barnes and Noble or some place where I can get away from my apartment and study. I'd go to the library, but it's raining and, oddly enough, I'd rather drive some place and stay dry than bike and freeze in the rain. Besides, sometimes the library is too quiet. I enjoy a bit of white noise to keep focused.

First Spider Baby Rehearsal

I had my first rehearsal for Spider Baby today. It went pretty well. Wish I had reviewed the music of the songs we were working on today a bit more. I'd heard them a few times already, but an extra listen or two would have been good. Oh well, will know for next time!

The rehearsal was in a small set of studios, where there also seemed to be a set of auditions for multiple different things, most notably something for kids because of the vast number of children everywhere. I didn't really notice them though--not until I left rehearsal, when I walked smack dab into a hallway full of kids. Anyway, the rehearsal was very quick and straightforward. We got new copies of the scripts, sang through a song, fixed/tweaked things for those who got confused with the parts (AKA the new cast members, like me!), and reviewed a couple times. Then moved on to the next song. Since maybe half the cast is returning from the last time they worked on the show, we didn't all have to learn it from scratch. I was done within an an hour and a half.

I'm looking forward to next week, when we work on the solos and duets! I have a couple of featured numbers. Just need to review the stuff before going in next week, which shouldn't be too bad.

Measurements

I went in to get measurements taken for the Alcestiad. Or, I tried to at least. I got to the costume shop and into the room but alas, the costumer was sick and wasn't in to take the measurements today.

I suppose that when the ASM called me last night to reschedule, she meant because our costumer would be sick today again, instead of what I assumed--that it was rescheduling from last Wednesday's attempted measurements.

But that's OK! I just came home and watched lots of TV instead. Very nice, very relaxing!

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day world!

As a Valentines Day present... here's KP's full set from the ICCA's last night:


Individual song videos will be on YouTube soon.

Yesterday itself was an insane day. Spent from 2:30pm-1am with the KP folks! We met at 2:30 to finalize some costume things (we had several options for vests, some which came from Target and some which were three weeks late coming from China) and went to meet the rest of the group on campus. Warmed up a bit, then sat around in front of Bovard to hear some rules and fun things like that. Then we headed back to our classroom/practice room to relax, warm up and get ourselves ready.

We went last in the entire set of the ICCAs, so we had a long time until our sound check. Like, two and a half hours long. But it went surprisingly fast. Did warm ups, ate some food, practiced dancing a bit and tried to keep calm. Also went on a number of trips to get hot water for our Throat Coat tea. It worked surprisingly well. I've never tried it, but I probably will in the future.

Sound check was rushed because they were running late, but it went smoothly. And we got to watch the first half of the show. Four groups began the evening, and it was fun to watch and consider what they did that worked and didn't work. Then at intermission we went backstage, warmed up and got excited!!

The performance itself was surreal. We've spent so much time this last month preparing for this performance, and in the end it was exciting! We all had a ton of energy, much more so than in rehearsals. So it was exhausting, but exciting.

In the end we didn't win anything, but it was fun and I think we gave a really good performance. And people seemed to enjoy it, so yay! After the show we took photos and got food at Wendys. Adam was with me, so I dragged him along =). And then went back to one of our house's to relax and watch the video from my camcorder. It was definitely interesting to watch back.

I think we're going to try to record some of the music tomorrow, so we'll have a nice audio. And then... on to new and more exciting things! Hooray!

Lies

I lied. Facebook didn't take 3 hours to upload the video; the screen just froze. It finished uploading by the time I finished that prior post.

Instead, I offer you this little Youtube video. It's the advertisement Google ran on the Superbowl (which I did not see), and it makes me happy. Yay!

Uploading Videos Online

Two nights ago I uploaded a recording of KP's rehearsal run-through of the ICCA set to Facebook video. I'd put a link up here, but it's a rehearsal, so for our eyes only. Sorry :)

Anyway, the video itself was 12:34. How long did it take to upload online?

Three. Hours.

It's in HD, which is probably why. But still. THREE. HOURS!!

And now I'm in the midst of uploading 2 videos from tonight. One is 8 minutes long, the other was 3. The 3 minute one was up and online within an hour and a half. The 8 minute one... well, I started uploading it at the same time as the 3 minute one, and there's still two hours to go.

Needless to say, I'm going to just let it upload tonight by itself and assume it works out. Because I'm not staying up another two hours just to watch it upload.

Ooooooh Facebook video. Sometimes I love you... and sometimes I don't.

The Danger of the Pass/Fail Class

This morning started off well enough. My first class of the day was Writing 340, where we had the first paper of the semester due. Ew. That part wasn't so fun. But the good part was what we did the rest of the class.

We looked at a couple of epically long sentences from a variety of different books. One sentence was about seven lines long. The other one--where "massive" doesn't even begin to cover its length--was about five pages long. It was insane! So for the rest of the class, we practiced writing in a similar style of insanely long sentences, using commas, dashes, colons and semicolons as necessary in order to create a sentence that, although could easily be broken up into smaller pieces, was an extraordinarily long yet grammatically correct, much as this one is--yes, I could have stopped this sentence any number of times using a simple period, but I chose not to, proving a point and showing exactly what we did in class, though I'll admit that the exercise in class was more fun, because the group I wrote my sentence with wrote a massive story about a diner's experience in Denny's (the prompt sentence said "I love Denny's Grand Slam") and how their sad experience in this restaurant eventually ruined the breakfast of champions: The Grand Slam, coupled with a delicious sparkling Cherry Limeade (which I've never tried before, but one of the girls I was sitting was says it's delicious, and I'm inclined to believe her), all because of the frustrating stares of the fellow diners being so cold-hearted as the diner sat sobbing over her food, because her sweet dog Fluffy had died and she was sad-so sad, in fact, that her tears made her bacon extra-salty and essentially ruined her beloved breakfast.

PHEW! That was one sentence, by the way. Anyway, as you can probably guess, the sentence was extremely long and silly, but when we read it in class we got a lot of laughs!! It was exciting, and I left that class feeling pretty happy.

Then I went to Chinese... which is not so happy. I have no idea what's going on half the time in that class, because the teacher isn't always super clear. And I feel like I'm getting singled out at moments because I don't always do all the homework and I don't always put in a ton of effort. Not that I'm not trying at all--I always turn something in and I always try to follow along in class, but sometimes I don't put that much effort into the work--can you blame me? I'm taking it pass/fail, all I need is at least a C- and I'm golden! And it's not that I'm putting in D or even C-level work. So far I've been getting B's or higher on everything, even the half-finished homework. But it's frustrating to feel like they expect me to do more when I just don't have the drive, at this point. I'd rather spend my time on things that matter more, and which will actually affect my GPA. Sure, if I spent enough time studying I could get an A. But I don't really want to, so I won't. So I sat in that class feeling a frustrating combination of "ugh I don't care" and "What's going on?" I'm just ready to be done with Chinese and never have to take another language again. I'm just really terrible at learning languages!