Raring to go!
I finished my rarewomen assignment! Woo! It will be unveiled with the others sometime this weekend over on AO3.
I wrote a drabble to celebrate. That hasn't happened in a while.
Title: Conundrum
Characters: William & Drusilla in 1880
Prompt: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Click here to go to the story.
Yeah, babes! I'm back! To stay! All the multitude of projects that have been eating my time and my brain are back to the normal simmer, rather than a rolling boil. Rather an unpleasant mix of metaphors there, isn't it? Oh well.
This is what's been going on with me:
McDiva's college search.
That's mostly it. I may have gotten over-involved. We toured schools in Oregon, Washington, Southern California, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, and New Jersey. She ended up applying to five theater conservatories and one ultra-alternative liberal arts college. They were all pretty interesting, and I thought she'd be happy at any of them. It was a good assortment of private, public, big, little, urban and not-so-urban. The whole process was exciting and stressful.
She was accepted to five of the six, including her first choice. Naturally, it's the most expensive and it took a couple of months to work out the finances. Now that the school and the great state of California have ponied up, it'll be doable! It is also the closest to us - 5 hours by car. I'm relieved. The winner:
California Institute of the Arts, aka CalArts!
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the crickets. *ahem* It's an art school that was started by Walt Disney back in the 1960s. It has schools of Art, Dance, Film/Video, Music, and Theater, in addition to academic classes it calls Critical Studies. It has about 1,000 undergrads at any given time and a list of alumni that makes me drool. Not surprisingly, it is best known for its amazing animation program, which has turned out just about every American animator you've ever heard of AND Tim Burton. It's the school that built Pixar, pretty much. McDiva will be in the Design & Production program of the School of Theater, which has an avant garde reputation. She's excited that a recent graduate is the costume designer for Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, and Shakira. That's the kind of work she'd like to do. Oh, and everybody there refers to their art discipline as their "métier". Hee.
It was hard to turn down some of the other programs. They had some pretty special offerings, and some people who were extremely kind to her. I didn't expect to feel so torn up about it. She had all these opportunities, and while I know she made the right choice, those specific opportunities aren't going to present themselves in the same way again, you know? This was a real, life-changing decision for her. Deep breaths.
Oh, and that 5-hour car ride to get her there? Would be easier if we had a car anymore. My ancient minivan gave up the ghost in January, and we've been doing fine without. It's not that hard in the city. I telecommute from home, MiAmor works about 12 blocks away. We have public transit, official and unofficial car sharing options, and we can rent a car if we need to go out of town - which is what we've been doing for the last couple of years anyway, since the van was so old. It's not like the days when McDiva had lessons and playdates all over town, or when MiAmor was self-employed and driving to a different site every day. Then we actually used two cars, though even then we shared one of them with our neighbors on the weekends. I'm feeling very European these days.
The run of Spamalot at McDiva's school was indeed silly and quite excellent. Those kids have tremendous pipes! The musicians were ridiculously good, and the sets, wigs, and costumes were amazing. She made a whole bunch of things and also designed some outfits for the Sir Lancelot Dancers that were deemed envelope-pushing enough that the boys' parents had to sign release forms before they could wear them. I was so proud. It's up on YouTube. Let me know if you want the link.
We had a lovely family vacation/college visit excursion to NYC last month. So. Much. Fun. We went to galleries and museums, saw excellent street art, attended Kinky Boots, tried and failed to get rush tickets for any previews of Hedwig and the Angry Inch (the now Tony-nominated gal who plays Yitzhak is an alum of McDiva's high school), ate yummy food, and saw lots and lots of my sister and her family, including #1 Niece and Nephew! We also hit the Strand Bookstore a couple of times and did a ton of thrift shopping. That is mostly McDiva's thing, although I did find a garment we now refer to as my "frock". It's...feathery, puffy, and sheer. It's not as bad as it sounds. We stayed with a dear friend who had just moved back from Buenos Aires and explored Brooklyn with him and his boyfriend. We took another friend's kid out to dinner one night, for which she was charmingly grateful. She's a penniless NYU freshman, so far from home, you see. She gave McDiva a tour of her dorm and was a wealth of advice: "bring mattress pads" being the most emphasized.
There's been other stuff, like the bloody raccoon massacre of April, but I've taxed your patience long enough, I think.
Oh! Started a Buffy rewatch last week with the family. We just finished "The Puppet Show". Season One is always better than I remember. Even "Never Kill A Boy on the First Date" had some great stuff in it, in spite of introducing the Annoying One. It might be the last rewatch as a family, so I'm cherishing it. *sniff*
This entry was originally posted at http://rebcake.dreamwidth.org/33399.html. Please comment here or there using OpenID.
I wrote a drabble to celebrate. That hasn't happened in a while.
Title: Conundrum
Characters: William & Drusilla in 1880
Prompt: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Click here to go to the story.
Yeah, babes! I'm back! To stay! All the multitude of projects that have been eating my time and my brain are back to the normal simmer, rather than a rolling boil. Rather an unpleasant mix of metaphors there, isn't it? Oh well.
This is what's been going on with me:
McDiva's college search.
That's mostly it. I may have gotten over-involved. We toured schools in Oregon, Washington, Southern California, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, and New Jersey. She ended up applying to five theater conservatories and one ultra-alternative liberal arts college. They were all pretty interesting, and I thought she'd be happy at any of them. It was a good assortment of private, public, big, little, urban and not-so-urban. The whole process was exciting and stressful.
She was accepted to five of the six, including her first choice. Naturally, it's the most expensive and it took a couple of months to work out the finances. Now that the school and the great state of California have ponied up, it'll be doable! It is also the closest to us - 5 hours by car. I'm relieved. The winner:
California Institute of the Arts, aka CalArts!
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the crickets. *ahem* It's an art school that was started by Walt Disney back in the 1960s. It has schools of Art, Dance, Film/Video, Music, and Theater, in addition to academic classes it calls Critical Studies. It has about 1,000 undergrads at any given time and a list of alumni that makes me drool. Not surprisingly, it is best known for its amazing animation program, which has turned out just about every American animator you've ever heard of AND Tim Burton. It's the school that built Pixar, pretty much. McDiva will be in the Design & Production program of the School of Theater, which has an avant garde reputation. She's excited that a recent graduate is the costume designer for Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, and Shakira. That's the kind of work she'd like to do. Oh, and everybody there refers to their art discipline as their "métier". Hee.
It was hard to turn down some of the other programs. They had some pretty special offerings, and some people who were extremely kind to her. I didn't expect to feel so torn up about it. She had all these opportunities, and while I know she made the right choice, those specific opportunities aren't going to present themselves in the same way again, you know? This was a real, life-changing decision for her. Deep breaths.
Oh, and that 5-hour car ride to get her there? Would be easier if we had a car anymore. My ancient minivan gave up the ghost in January, and we've been doing fine without. It's not that hard in the city. I telecommute from home, MiAmor works about 12 blocks away. We have public transit, official and unofficial car sharing options, and we can rent a car if we need to go out of town - which is what we've been doing for the last couple of years anyway, since the van was so old. It's not like the days when McDiva had lessons and playdates all over town, or when MiAmor was self-employed and driving to a different site every day. Then we actually used two cars, though even then we shared one of them with our neighbors on the weekends. I'm feeling very European these days.
The run of Spamalot at McDiva's school was indeed silly and quite excellent. Those kids have tremendous pipes! The musicians were ridiculously good, and the sets, wigs, and costumes were amazing. She made a whole bunch of things and also designed some outfits for the Sir Lancelot Dancers that were deemed envelope-pushing enough that the boys' parents had to sign release forms before they could wear them. I was so proud. It's up on YouTube. Let me know if you want the link.
We had a lovely family vacation/college visit excursion to NYC last month. So. Much. Fun. We went to galleries and museums, saw excellent street art, attended Kinky Boots, tried and failed to get rush tickets for any previews of Hedwig and the Angry Inch (the now Tony-nominated gal who plays Yitzhak is an alum of McDiva's high school), ate yummy food, and saw lots and lots of my sister and her family, including #1 Niece and Nephew! We also hit the Strand Bookstore a couple of times and did a ton of thrift shopping. That is mostly McDiva's thing, although I did find a garment we now refer to as my "frock". It's...feathery, puffy, and sheer. It's not as bad as it sounds. We stayed with a dear friend who had just moved back from Buenos Aires and explored Brooklyn with him and his boyfriend. We took another friend's kid out to dinner one night, for which she was charmingly grateful. She's a penniless NYU freshman, so far from home, you see. She gave McDiva a tour of her dorm and was a wealth of advice: "bring mattress pads" being the most emphasized.
There's been other stuff, like the bloody raccoon massacre of April, but I've taxed your patience long enough, I think.
Oh! Started a Buffy rewatch last week with the family. We just finished "The Puppet Show". Season One is always better than I remember. Even "Never Kill A Boy on the First Date" had some great stuff in it, in spite of introducing the Annoying One. It might be the last rewatch as a family, so I'm cherishing it. *sniff*
This entry was originally posted at http://rebcake.dreamwidth.org/33399.html. Please comment here or there using OpenID.