Good Clean Fun

The Intro. to Drama class play wrapped up just fine. The parents enjoyed it Thursday night and the entire middle school came over on Friday for a matinee performance.  They were a rambunctious and reactive audience, in a good way, thankfully. They laughed at all the parts which I had assured my students were indeed funny. My students approached me with trepidation afterwards because they had skipped five pages ahead at one point (right over a key blocking sequence that set up the entire ending of the show), only to be pulled back to that part later by the senior I had filling in for one of the missing narrators prompted them to do so (how she came to be onstage is a whole different story).

"Did we do okay?" they asked.

"You did great!" I exclaimed.

"But we skipped..." they trail off, imagining me docking their final exam scores for their mistake.

"And the audience didn't have a clue. You kept going and they didn't even know that anything was wrong! That's exactly what you're supposed to do."

They collectively sighed in relief and then got to work cleaning up the lettuce and shaving cream before they missed their buses.

We'll do a better post-mortem on Monday in class. This group is so very novice that they need that assistance in processing this past week a lot more than usual. And then, as usual, we'll strike everything, set things up for the next play, and then celebrate the glory that is us.

I thought about coming out to Salt Lake for the weekend. My parents were up there to meet the new family members and I was struck by a sudden strong missing-my-SLC-friends-ness that had me looking for last minute plane fare deals. By the time I had cleaned up the show Friday and was heading down the mountain, though, I had a rotten headache and a strong urge to do things that required very little planning or stress.

Instead, I went to the temple Friday night and treated myself to a trip to Rumbi's, one of my favorite SLC restaurants (yup, there is indeed a Rumbi's here in Denver, but it's very much out of my way).

Rachel came over Saturday morning with a sick-but-getting-better Jack and we had a day of sister-like fun. We went shopping (Rachel got some very cute dresses), went out to lunch at Panera's, went to Fancy Tiger to ooh and ah over their new fabrics, got frozen yogurt at a new favorite place, ate pizza and watched the new episode of Who at Brian's, and wrapped up the day by watching the first part of the miniseries of Battlestar Galactica back at Rachel's.

Rachel has been talking for a while about getting me to watch that show (she's also trying to get me to watch Star Wars, which might finally happen this summer.) (Did you know that I've only seen one of the Star Wars movies? It's yet another fascinating thing about me!), but she also cautioned me that it's pretty depressing and that it makes for serious geek cred. I trust her recommendations, though, since the other geeky TV shows she's introduced me to make up the majority of my favorite things to watch. (Given my same pattern of then introducing said TV show to you, Jason, you should expect me to coax you into continuing the Battlestar Galactica this summer.)  I happen to enjoy both geek cred and a good show, so I'm looking forward to seeing more of it.

Today, Sunday, I did very little.  I read a book, washed my dishes from the week, did a slew of laundry, and I cleaned out my refrigerator, reducing the contents to little more than salsa, lettuce, a few apples, and six eggs.  Because I've been off omelets since my time at the monastery, I'll have to hie me to a grocery store in the near future.


I also gave in to the temptation Rachel laid for me yesterday.  She told me about this.  I did my own research, thought it over all day, then decided that not having to scoop cat litter was indeed worth $260 to me.  Plus, I love my cat and I do feel guilty whenever I abandon her.  The least I can do is get her a 1960's-version-of-the-future-looking gadget that guarantees her a clean bathroom, right?

I will only be abandoning her once more this school year, I think.  I'll be up at MT for the last half of this week for the Advanced Drama class play, Inherit the Wind.  I do love that play.  It's got some marvelous speeches in it, and I get all sentimental since it was the very first play I was ever a part of (Mrs. Blair - a speaking part as a freshman!).  We'll see how it goes - as of Friday, none of the leads were memorized yet.  I'm also curious to see how the community receives it.  MT is pretty conservative.

No matter what, though, in five days I'll be done with plays for the school year.  I'm definitely ready for that.