Ahhhhh....

A few photos from our vacation, a little taste of what we've been up to. More later!

Backstage, Closing Night

The Invitation Saga

The picture above truly captures what I was doing with my free time not that long ago. This was also the state of our dinner table for a good 2 months.

And here is the result of my efforts, my first go at making wedding invitations!

These are for our very good friends Erika and Tyler, who are having a fall wedding (Chad and I are in the wedding party). I'm proud of how they turned out, and the happy couple seem...well, very happy.

I learned a lot of good tricks from this process that will definitely come in handy on future projects, which for the present include a few more smaller things for Erika and Tyler's wedding (menus, placecards, rehearsal dinner invites) and our 2007 Christmas Cards.

Bad at Being a Carnivore

Flowers from my Dad, from Opening Night of "The Underpants"

It's been nice to have some real time at home this past week. I feel like I can relax, thus I am less stressed out, thus happier in general! This past weekend I spent most of my time organizing a couple of our "trouble" areas in the house (pantry, office, linen closet) and even THAT felt soothing to me. We also went to a friend's b-day BBQ party, & had friends Matt and Molly over to watch the first Hawk's Preseason game (which we won! yippeee!). I made slow-cooked, pulled pork sandwiches, which turned out extremely yummy, and were actually very easy. It was my first time buying a big HUNK of meat to make something with. Weird feeling, especially since the carnivore side of this omnivore is bad at being a carnivore.

We've got a busy week and weekend ahead, though, so the rest for the weary ends here. Performances Thursday and Friday night, shooting for a film all day Friday and Saturday, and trekking North to Canada for my cousin's wedding on Sunday. And after that we have strike for Serenading Louie on Monday night. But then our schedules are wide open, and we can begin working on several projects around the house, including re-tiling the kitchen and bathroom floor, putting up new blinds in our bedroom, paint, and de-clutter the place.

But for now, we relax! Today is our 3 year anniversary, and tonight we're going out to dinner at Ray's Boathouse in Ballard, then having a relaxing evening at home with the kitties. Yippee!

The way things are (or the way they were?)

Serenading Louie...

It's been a hectic week of late nights, little time at home, and stress stress stress but it all seems to be winding down now (or should I say "up"?) to opening night, which is tonight! Things are coming together nicely, and I'm proud to say we have a nice little show to put up. It's kind of cool to think that it came from us, from nothing, and has become something special and (hopefully) moving, that wouldn't have been there without us... I must say, though, that I'm greatly looking forward to a nice weekend at home, with little responsibility, lots of rest and the first Hawks pre-season game!

Speaking of which, I've joined on as a contributor to my friend Matt's sports blog, The Zen of Ed Hochuli. Kind of interesting to write about sports! I'm sort of the token female, you know, providing the ladies' perspective and such... check it out if you're interested, Matt knows his stuff and his posts are fun to read (along with the other guys on the blog).

I realize I never really talked about "The Underpants" closing, I think I was kind of wrapped up in moving on to Serenading Louie. We had a good closing weekend with great crowds, and I'll definitely miss doing this play. The character was so much fun, and I felt honored that I got to go on such a fun journey as her each night. When you look close, there are really not too many plays out there with fleshed out, complex, strong female leads in my age range, so doing The Underpants was a real treat. And hard. Cause, dang. She was difficult... but I think that also contributed to how much I enjoyed playing her.

Shows at SecondStory don't really go out with a bang like some other theatres (closing night parties, etc.) They sort of close quietly with everyone moseying off in to the distance like they were in a Western. And you hope you see everyone again, work with everyone but... well that's the paradigm of most theatre friendships. You meet great people and you're the best of friends for 2 months while you rehearse and perform a show, and then they're pretty much gone. It's rare for a friendship to "stick" after a show and evolve into something beyond a professional friendship. It's kind of sad but it's really just the way things are. You can't force them. But when they do blossom into real "outside of the theatre" friendships, they are pretty darn strong because of the passion you share. Here's some irony for you: the people with whom you make these temporary theatre friendships during a show probably get to know more about you than a lot of your friends outside the theatre, because 1.) they are working directly and cooperatively with you every day at rehearsal, and 2.) acting is by nature a very personal process, and you open up quickly with people you're in a show with because, well, you have to.

Anyway, just some rambling thoughts I've had. It's a fascinating world to inhabit, and I'm so used to it I sort of can't see the forest for the trees. So it's nice to step back and make an effort to understand it once and a while.

That's all for now, I'm off to do some work and then get ready for opening night! Wish me broken legs!

Serenading Louie

It's already time for the next show, and I can't believe it! We open next week and run for just 2 weekends (August 10th, 11th, 16th and 17th). Here's a poster for the show, with all the pertinant information:

Hm. Guess there's no ticket info on there. Well, it's $12, tickets are available through BrownPaperTickets.com or at the door.

It's been interesting rehearsing this show, since we're also producing it. It adds so much more to worry about, like marketing, set design, lighting design, costumes, tickets, funding, props, I could really go on and on. But thankfully we've got a great group of people who work hard and all bring their own talents to the table, AND we've really been blessed with donations of time, money and set pieces for the show which makes a venture like this possible on such a small budget!

This weekend will be filled with lots of final preparations for the show, such as driving to Redmond to pick up our set pieces, painting said set pieces, rehearsing, loading everything into the theatre, etc.! Lots to do in a short amount of time, and to top it all off I've been having some pretty serious back pain, craziness at my day job, and a lovely cold. ARg!! But soon it will all be up and running and in the end everything will be juuuust fine.

This weekend is Seafair, and I think Chad and I may try to take our bikes down to Genesee and take a look around. We'll miss the airshow I think , which is a bummer since we had so much fun watching it last year, but the Theatre with a capital "T" calls, and we must answer. :-)

Have a great weekend everyone!