Home again

The first night of returning home for a break seems to have become grounded in routine, ritual almost.

Upon arriving, I first spend some time greeting my cats, who I miss terribly and who are always happy to see me.

I then proceed to gorge myself on buffalo wings (oohhh, if only Danville were to build a BW3, my life would be complete), and then take a nice loooooong bath and patiently digest. This is usually accompanied by plucking up a book I’ve read a thousand times or so, but still enjoy for the sheer fact that it’s been so long since I had the opportunity or time to read for leisure.

Bedtime seems to always come around 10:00 that first night, as the previous few months rush to catch up with me in a matter of hours.

It is difficult, especially on short breaks, to re-accustom myself to resting. Every 7-15 minutes of every day, I mentally scan my schedule for the day ahead. I suppose it’s conditioning from a busy college schedule, and a way of keeping on top of everything that needs to be finished between the time I wake up and the time I crash to sleep. On break, it is even more difficult to convince myself that there really is *nothing* that needs to be done, and sometimes I have give myself filler tasks to satiate the need to plan (*ping* er..um…do laundry, update journal).

I need this break, I need to rest and let my body and mind knit themselves back into a functioning unit, but I have such a HARD TIME RELAXING! Sometimes I feel like I’m working as hard to chill out as when I’m busy, and I suppose that defeats the purpose.

Anyway, I must be off, I have to hurry up and rest! ^_^

Healing

This weekend, I’m staying in bed most of the day, under the watchful eye of the drama department. The drama department, in spite of the amount of drama that goes on within, is a good group of people, and perhaps the best at taking care of one another. Perhaps it’s just me, or perhaps it’s a running trend among art majors, but I tend to neglect myself at times.

So, for the past two or three weeks, I shrugged off my drama friends’ demands that I go to the wellness center, attributing consistent body pain to “just being sore” from glassblowing or some such, or maybe carrying one too many heavy things, who knows.

It wasn’t until yesterday, when my bones felt like they were on fire, that the drama department took action and forced me to go to the wellness center (Matthew told me that he was calling up Sheldon to say that if I showed up to painting class that day, I was to be sent directly to the student health center, and Jeff made sure I didn’t escape, and walked me over there. I went, got a check up, pulled out of my glass slot for the evening, and have since been watched over and mothered about by Brendan and D Flo and whomever else, to make sure I stay put and stay rested.

As such, I’m sitting and fretting about the work I should be getting done in the studio, but am getting some needed rest. I really think there should be a Drama Department to Art Department caretaker program, because I know *I* really have a tendency to shrug off potential threats of bodily harm. I don’t even realize how bad it is, until Brendan says “when you’re in too much pain to ride your bike there’s something wrong, and it’s not just lifting heavy things.” No wonder there are starving artists, we probably just shrug it off until it’s too late to do anything ^_^;;;

I suppose it works both ways, I tend to have a watchful motherly eye myself, just not for my own sake. Perhaps it’s the entire college environment, to need to take care of each other, so it doesn’t kill us all.

Dawwwww….

They grow up so fast! *sniff*

https://www.wertle.com/gallery/d/665-1/choppi.jpg

According to my brother, little Choppi is doing very well. She likes to run and slide on the wooden floors, and enjoys walking on the piano keys (to which D Flo exclaimed proudly “we taught her that!” when I told him).

She goes to the vet today, I wonder if my brother will put Chopin-Matisse down as her name?

Musica!

D Flo is an awesome composer, and since I feel like showing off other people’s stuff today, I figured a plug was in order. Now, I used to play the piano (still wish I did), so I have the inklings of musical know-how, but the thought of *creating* a piece of music is infinitely perplexing to me (and the thought of how he mulls about in the music lab composing day and night like a phantom is infinitely+1 perplexing to me).

Anyway, here’s an impressive Sonata he wrote, and I can’t for the life of me remember who is performing it! Pity, too, I wanted to give her kudos (D Flo likes to write pieces that will make the fingers of any normal pianist shrivel and fall off, so anyone who can play one of his works has my admiration). Crank it up, it was recorded in an open room, so the volume’s somewhat low. So, with a little title addition by me…

Sonata #1 in D Flo Minor

I feel rather lucky that he said he would write a score for the cartoon I will create for this year’s student film festival. Muahaha!

Stay tuned for further showing off of other people’s stuff…

Free at last

The completion of a good show always brings a wave of intense satisfaction, spiced up with some other emotions that I haven’t classified yet.

Then there’s strike.

Collectively destroying a creation that has taken months of hard work to build within the span of a few hours is always somewhat tingly. It’s like Tibetan sand mandalas, only the destruction process takes much more physical labor than the wind whisking it away, and as such, the crew is by that time too exhausted to experience any meditative catharsis.

It didn’t help, I suppose, that I spent most of this last show curled up in a corner of the booth, crawling to my chair now and then for this or that light cue. It was the culmination of about a week and a half of peculiar body pain, which has been attributed to everything from carrying too heavy of a backpack to other people’s stress. Nevertheless, Jeff was kind to me in my strike duties, and afterwards while picking whether to come in the next day from 12-2 or 2-4 to finish up, Matthew and Squirt shooed me into the “not at all” pile.

So, no cast party for me, but I was instead rewarded with a long-needed recovery sleep of 12 hours exactly. As I woke up, the unusual body pain had been converted to a normal soreness that one tends to feel after a heavy workout (granted, I was half-awake at 10, and had trouble rolling over and opening and closing my hands, but 4 more hours of sleep processed that away). Of course, it does feel like my latissimus dorsi is going to suddenly snap away from my ribs with every movement, but it’s not the sharp, throbbing pain that it has been for the past week.

Today, then, begins the “Day of 10000 things to do to catch up with myself,” starting *sniff sniff* with cleaning my room and doing my laundry.

Will Johnston Can’t Pronounce Silent E’s…

Opening night was a success! The actors were wonderful, the tech ran smoothly, and there was much laughter from the audience (the play is hilarious, but makes you feel terrible later. Our drama department favors those sorts, I’ve been hoping for a comedy, and got one, but not without a slap of socio-political depressive seriousness to go along with it).

I did have one minor crisis. 5 or 10 minutes after the house had opened before the start of the play, I was fiddling to plug in a snake light so that I could see what I was doing up in the booth. By accident, I turned off the power strip…which the lightboard was plugged into. The whole plot went black, and Lyle (sound board op) and I exchanged glances of terror. Frantically, I got the board back up and running, and light back on the stage. Phew! It was good that it happened early, I think there were only a few people in the house by that time.

Otherwise, things went wonderfully! Looks like I may survive the Week of Hell afterall!

And so…

Well, it turns out that no kittens plummeted, though the comp sci kitten may have been bashed about a bit while being dragged back up. I talked to Dr. Shannon and she said that if I don’t turn in my lab on time, it’s not the end of the world. It’s fine, I guess, I’m doing well in that class, one poor lab grade won’t kill me.

To people entering college soon: Talk to your professors often.

In other news, I think the going-ons wore me a bit thin, and I was a little down today. Jeff was a great comfort, though, in my wonders about identity and social place. He told me that I have a better sense of myself than most everyone here, and that was a startling compliment to me. It gave me lots to think about and cheered me a bit. Go Electrician Solidarity!

It was also a cheer-up that Tommy ran around outside with me tonight(morning). The weather was beautiful, the first real autumn day stuck in after a long span of early winter.

All and all, I think I’ll survive the play next week.

Oy! Decisions

I hate it when things get so busy that you *have* to sacrifice one responsibility for another. It’s unpleasant, and is similar to having to choose which kitten you let plummet to its doom, since you can’t hold onto all of them as you struggle to drag them back up the cliff.

The predicament: my comp sci lab, I have to finish it. Options for the sacrifice…

1) Just don’t do it.
–theoretically, I could just turn in my lab unfinished and move on with my life. But, I’ve already missed a second lab which Dr. Shannon has graciously let me make up on my own, I shouldn’t take that for granted.

2) Bail on Jeff
–the big reason I can’t finish the lab is because I have to rush over to the theatre right after class and help hang and focus lights. No way I can bail, judging from last night’s run through, we have oodles to change and fix, and cue-to-cue is at 6. We’ll be working like ants, and I can’t leave Jeff hangin.

3) Painting
–this would be the easiest thing to do, just slip out of painting an hour early. It’s tempting, but my need to work on this current project and my devotion to Sheldon keeps me from doing it.

4) Lunch
–this is starting to look like the best option. That’s strange, too, because normally I’m the first person to give up higher responsibilites to satisfy a need on the base of Maslow’s triangle. However, it might have to be done, and that would not be pleasant.

5) Bail on weekly glass studio cleaning
–and face the wrath of DH and Ken? No way

Stay tuned for updates

Huzzah!

Sheldon (of painting professor fame) is awesome.

Our painting class trecked down to the Speed Museum in Louisville to see an exhibition on 18th/19th century French painters, which was pretty good. Anyway, there’s this one little Cézanne that’s in the permanent collection there. It’s a small thing, of some apples and a plate, not terribly exciting to the average passer-by-er, but Sheldon can go on and on and on and on about it for almost an hour….and does so each time we make a trip to the Speed.

The interesting thing, though, is every time he starts his Cézanne-athon blurb, I learn something new and different. Sheldon is an encyclopedia.

I like looking at paintings, but the lighting and atmosphere controls of museums leech my energy like……..um….like a leech. Which doesn’t do well when you have to rush back to Danville to hang and focus lights until midnight. I haven’t decided when I’m going to do my Comp Sci lab, I need a few extra hours in the day.

Speaking of plays, I think a certain pair of UK kids should wander down here next week to see Joe Egg. I’d feed you and everything ^_^

O.o

I’ve never known anyone to get so panicky over ironing a shirt!

“Will you help me do this?”
“Yeah sure, it’s easy, just take the iron and go chwoo chwoo chwoo and you’re done.”
“Okay okay…AHHH!! IT’S STEAMING!!”
“It’s okay!! That’s normal, that’s okay.”
“But what if it catches fire!”
“It won’t…”
“AHH!! It’s still wrinkled!!”
“Don’t worry, just go over it again..”
“AHHH!!”
“CALM DOWN!! It’ll be fine..”
“Okay okay…phew…alright…..GAHHH!”
“BRENDAN!!”

Anyway, dancing tonight, even though half the campus has the Centre plague. And I finally de-lazified myself and updated my site.