Dec 06, 2009 15:22
My friend R and I went to the City Theatre (Austin) on Thursday night for a Neil Simon play. We didn't enjoy the play that much, but the acting was pretty awesome. We saw almost everything our acting instructor had taught us at work in their performance; so she wasn't lying! :-) For those of you who don't know - heck, I haven't been posting much - I took a six-week acting class (that's one evening per week, three hours, pretty standard for an acting class, it seems) through the State Theatre in October-November. It was challenging, and definitely pushed me outside my comfort zone. It seems there are many different methods for teaching acting, and our instructor's was closest to the Meisner technique. Not sure if I'll take another acting class in the immediate future, though a number of friends and acquaintances have experience with improv, and I wouldn't mind trying that. Having just been to music camp, I am also considering doing something musical, but am going to take my time considering my options (voice lessons? recorder?).
I've decided that on New Year's Day (or around NY's sometime) I want to reread my own LJ. Sometimes when I read even relatively recent posts of mine, they don't sound familiar. Perhaps this means I don't have a well-defined style or something (maybe you can tell me) or that I'm filtering in some way. Well, of course we all filter - to not have appropriate filters means a good deal of social sloppiness, and even when we try things can still be tough. Anyway, I am hoping that the rereading will help ground me and round out my perspective on life, by reminding me of some of the things I've been thinking about (at least those I bothered to, or felt compelled enough to, write about)!
Oh, back to the theatre for just a bit: people can be so rude! About halfway through the first act (about 30 minutes into the play), a man entered the theatre. He reeked of tobacco so strongly that I could smell him before he even got to the row he wished to enter, which happened to be behind us, and he had to climb over several people to sit down, which he did directly behind me and R. It felt like he was hovering over us, because the rows are quite close together, and he had a mighty guffaw of a laugh. A girl to my left (there was one empty seat between us) was doing a fierce leg jiggle (which later I couldn't even emulate, it was so intense!) which shook our entire row of interconnected chairs so distractingly that I finally looked over at her and asked her to stop (she'd been doing it almost non-stop for several minutes at that point). I really think she didn't know she was doing it; she was just excited and into the play, and taking us along for the ride (but then we were not able to get into the play at all - the jiggling was rattling our bones)! She stopped, but later, after the intermission, she briefly broke into it again, and then must have become aware because she ceased almost immediately. A few months back I was at an early music concert, and a girl behind me was rustling around in her purse; I thought for sure that she'd stop once she found what she needed in there, but no, she must have been doing some sort of purse cleaning or rearranging or multitasking, because it didn't stop. This woman continued her activity for several entire pieces (an aria, a sonata of several movements...); why come to a concert if you're not going to pay attention to the music? I was especially dismayed because Jenifer Thyssen was performing, and you just *can't* do that during one of her (awesome) performances. Sacrilege, I tell you!
December's here, and for all the ferocity of the summer (about which I complained bitterly), we are now having an amazing fall. It has been not-too-hot for a month or so now, and this past week has been truly COLD. I've loved it.
My latest fuel efficiency calculation: 40.7 mpg. This is slightly lower than my best (~43 mpg), which I attribute to the fact that some of the driving on this tank (and last, which had a similar mpg calc) did not include the luxury of time, i.e. no hypermiling: for more than a few days I was on call and driving to and from the hospital, and part of the trip (flat, and in the dark) was back from the music camp in Palestine.
Last week I picked up my CSA share. I am finding it overwhelming to pick up any more frequently than every three weeks. The farm hasn't complained, so I will keep doing that... The box's contents: spinach, chard, fennel (1 bulb), kohlrabi (3), butternut (1 sm-med), unidentified salad greens, unidentified bunch greens (dandelion?), 1 bunch radishes (I traded all my hot peppers for a second bunch which someone head left in the trade box), a few sweet peppers. Only after I removed the greens from the radishes did I read that the greens should be left on until the radishes are used. For carrots, the greens should be removed asap, and the carrots stored topless. But with radishes, it's the other way around. The radishes still taste okay (they're the milder, white, almost creamy radishes - yum!) but they are a little soft on the outside after a few days sans greens; I can see that it would've been better to leave the greens on.
Tonight is the first rehearsal for a bellydance performance I'll be participating in in January (1/22/10). I'm looking forward to the challenge and the group performance process!
weather,
theater rudeness,
theater,
winter,
csa,
miscellany