econn is not dead. Might be a zombie though. Or maybe she ran away to live among the fairies.
I'd apologize for not posting much, but I figure everyone's used to me neglecting it for extended periods and I dont' think my posting behavior is likely to change.
I tend to go quiet and shut myself away when I'm really stressed, and I've been feeling especially bitter about work lately and not really wanting to post about it because even I don't like to hear myself bitch about it (I get most of my whining out on Twitter lately anyway since it's a more limited audience and something I can just quickly fire stuff at when I'm working instead of trying to calmly compose a full journal post). That's probably why I haven't posted a whole lot. Also because writing posts feels too much like work so even if I get started on one I tend to give up.
Despite that, I actually have been doing interesting stuff and really ought to post about it.
About 2 weeks ago I went to Oak Island, NC for a family vacation. The weather sucked for going to the beach and I was really not looking forward to the trip, especially since I would be the only single person there (I'm one of the lucky people whose parents are still together, and my sister and brother both brought their long-term SO's) but it was better than I expected. My family is a lot more tolerable, even pleasant, now that we're all adults and not living together. I definitely get along better with my brother than with my sister though. We mostly just hung around the beach house, but we did go to the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher one day, and the next day the sun actually came out for a while so my brother, his girlfriend, and I decided to brave the October ocean. Fortunately the water was still fairly warm, although the air was not so getting OUT of the water kind of sucked. Overall a pretty relaxing and pleasant vacation, at least after my major freakout on the first day before I left. We will not speak of that.
Mom put up pictures from the trip here. Hopefully you guys can access that ^^;
Last weekend I went to the Carolina Renaissance Festival in Charlotte in hopes of finding supplies for my Halloween costume. I wanted to be a fairy boy, mostly to have an excuse to use the glitter gel I got at kibarika's birthday party last year. I didn't find the wings I wanted and they didn't have ear tips in the right color, but I did get an archer's cap that made me look like either Robin Hood or Peter Pan in the outfit I was wearing. I also took pictures (some of you have seen these on Facebook already but these are bigger).
OK. Halloween. Our office usually does some kind of costume contest on the workday that most closely precedes Halloween that nobody participates in. This year was the first time there was a theme, which was Zombiepalooza. I was extremely unenthusiastic about dressing up as a zombie because, as I mentioned earlier, I wanted to be a sparkly little fairy boy. Until I hit on the most horribly nerdy idea. I would dress as a zombie process. And I think mayyyyybe 2 or 3 of the people on my flist would even get that. It's a Unix thing, just leave it at that. I got 2nd place and a $20 gift card. Yay stupid puns.
Halloween itself was mostly nice. I did my usual Saturday bike to the market then dance class routine. Got delayed by a random parade near Hillside HS and was a bit bewildered. Some of the farmers at the market dressed in costumes. I bought a pumpkin. Because of the aforementioned delay, I didn't have any time to rest after biking from the market to my dance school and ended up getting dizzy in dance class again :( I was able to rejoin this time though (a few weeks ago I had to leave class early because I was too exhausted to dance safely). I ended up falling asleep after I got home and took a shower, which may have been a mistake. I woke up feeling a bit headachey but decided to put on my costume (I found some cheap wings at the Halloween store that worked) and work on turning the pumpkin into a Jack O'Lantern. I also had a tiny pumpkin left over from making pumpkin bread for the office party so it was a baby Jack O'Lantern. I saved the seeds, which I haven't done anything with yet other than cleaning the pulp off. Ended up having a kid knock on the door while I was carving the pumpkin and I felt bad because I didn't have any candy, so I walked to Kroger in my fairy costume to buy some. ...And didn't get a single trick-or-treater the rest of the evening.
After that I went to a party/swing dance hosted by one of my friends from the Gilbert & Sullivan company. There were pictures. It was fun even though I knew less than half of the people there and had trouble dancing with wings on. But I had to leave kind of early because that headache from earlier got a lot worse and brought nausea and dizziness and other fun migraine symptoms with it too which I'm quite sure I did not extend an invitation to. Fortunately I made it home before I had to throw up. :( Not the most pleasant way to end a Halloween but overall I guess it was a good day.
The next day was All Saints Day at church and therefore kind of a big day. And my choir director gave me a solo communion anthem. It was pretty and suits my voice well, but I REALLY need to work on being able to sustain notes in performance. Mine tend to die out too early from lack of air. Still got a LOT of compliments though so I guess I'm doing something right. I also still sound like an English choirboy and I really hope I don't outgrow that any time soon.
Yesterday was also the sing-through for The Mikado which we'll be performing next year. I got to see kibarika and pseudokiwi, but tribalkittykat was sick :( I'm super excited about doing this show pretty much just because it's set in Japan and I want there to be kimono and nihonbuyou and I know there probably won't be on our budget/skill level but I still want there to be. Realizing though that I don't really want to play any of the named roles and the chorus does even less in this show than in most G&S shows (that I have performed, so that's not saying much). Would rather play a guy as usual, but trying to sing the men's chorus parts was HARD and too much of it was below my range. However I can hit the soprano Bbs with ease. I'm just really not a good fit for G&S I guess.
Then I came home and baked the Jack O'Lanterns and tomorrow I will make them into pie.
Okay. I think I'm caught up now.
I tend to go quiet and shut myself away when I'm really stressed, and I've been feeling especially bitter about work lately and not really wanting to post about it because even I don't like to hear myself bitch about it (I get most of my whining out on Twitter lately anyway since it's a more limited audience and something I can just quickly fire stuff at when I'm working instead of trying to calmly compose a full journal post). That's probably why I haven't posted a whole lot. Also because writing posts feels too much like work so even if I get started on one I tend to give up.
Despite that, I actually have been doing interesting stuff and really ought to post about it.
About 2 weeks ago I went to Oak Island, NC for a family vacation. The weather sucked for going to the beach and I was really not looking forward to the trip, especially since I would be the only single person there (I'm one of the lucky people whose parents are still together, and my sister and brother both brought their long-term SO's) but it was better than I expected. My family is a lot more tolerable, even pleasant, now that we're all adults and not living together. I definitely get along better with my brother than with my sister though. We mostly just hung around the beach house, but we did go to the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher one day, and the next day the sun actually came out for a while so my brother, his girlfriend, and I decided to brave the October ocean. Fortunately the water was still fairly warm, although the air was not so getting OUT of the water kind of sucked. Overall a pretty relaxing and pleasant vacation, at least after my major freakout on the first day before I left. We will not speak of that.
Mom put up pictures from the trip here. Hopefully you guys can access that ^^;
Last weekend I went to the Carolina Renaissance Festival in Charlotte in hopes of finding supplies for my Halloween costume. I wanted to be a fairy boy, mostly to have an excuse to use the glitter gel I got at kibarika's birthday party last year. I didn't find the wings I wanted and they didn't have ear tips in the right color, but I did get an archer's cap that made me look like either Robin Hood or Peter Pan in the outfit I was wearing. I also took pictures (some of you have seen these on Facebook already but these are bigger).
OK. Halloween. Our office usually does some kind of costume contest on the workday that most closely precedes Halloween that nobody participates in. This year was the first time there was a theme, which was Zombiepalooza. I was extremely unenthusiastic about dressing up as a zombie because, as I mentioned earlier, I wanted to be a sparkly little fairy boy. Until I hit on the most horribly nerdy idea. I would dress as a zombie process. And I think mayyyyybe 2 or 3 of the people on my flist would even get that. It's a Unix thing, just leave it at that. I got 2nd place and a $20 gift card. Yay stupid puns.
Halloween itself was mostly nice. I did my usual Saturday bike to the market then dance class routine. Got delayed by a random parade near Hillside HS and was a bit bewildered. Some of the farmers at the market dressed in costumes. I bought a pumpkin. Because of the aforementioned delay, I didn't have any time to rest after biking from the market to my dance school and ended up getting dizzy in dance class again :( I was able to rejoin this time though (a few weeks ago I had to leave class early because I was too exhausted to dance safely). I ended up falling asleep after I got home and took a shower, which may have been a mistake. I woke up feeling a bit headachey but decided to put on my costume (I found some cheap wings at the Halloween store that worked) and work on turning the pumpkin into a Jack O'Lantern. I also had a tiny pumpkin left over from making pumpkin bread for the office party so it was a baby Jack O'Lantern. I saved the seeds, which I haven't done anything with yet other than cleaning the pulp off. Ended up having a kid knock on the door while I was carving the pumpkin and I felt bad because I didn't have any candy, so I walked to Kroger in my fairy costume to buy some. ...And didn't get a single trick-or-treater the rest of the evening.
After that I went to a party/swing dance hosted by one of my friends from the Gilbert & Sullivan company. There were pictures. It was fun even though I knew less than half of the people there and had trouble dancing with wings on. But I had to leave kind of early because that headache from earlier got a lot worse and brought nausea and dizziness and other fun migraine symptoms with it too which I'm quite sure I did not extend an invitation to. Fortunately I made it home before I had to throw up. :( Not the most pleasant way to end a Halloween but overall I guess it was a good day.
The next day was All Saints Day at church and therefore kind of a big day. And my choir director gave me a solo communion anthem. It was pretty and suits my voice well, but I REALLY need to work on being able to sustain notes in performance. Mine tend to die out too early from lack of air. Still got a LOT of compliments though so I guess I'm doing something right. I also still sound like an English choirboy and I really hope I don't outgrow that any time soon.
Yesterday was also the sing-through for The Mikado which we'll be performing next year. I got to see kibarika and pseudokiwi, but tribalkittykat was sick :( I'm super excited about doing this show pretty much just because it's set in Japan and I want there to be kimono and nihonbuyou and I know there probably won't be on our budget/skill level but I still want there to be. Realizing though that I don't really want to play any of the named roles and the chorus does even less in this show than in most G&S shows (that I have performed, so that's not saying much). Would rather play a guy as usual, but trying to sing the men's chorus parts was HARD and too much of it was below my range. However I can hit the soprano Bbs with ease. I'm just really not a good fit for G&S I guess.
Then I came home and baked the Jack O'Lanterns and tomorrow I will make them into pie.
Okay. I think I'm caught up now.