3 down, 5 to go

Well, we're almost halfway through our run of shows for Seussical, and I am loving every minute of it. Sure, with two shows a day I'm exhausted, but it's still a great feeling. Every night is an hour and a half of pure adrenaline and fun. What's more, I keep having more fun each time we do this. There's really nothing better than finally getting right a part that had been consistently out of tune before. (I can actually play in flat keys now--it's great!) I'll actually be sad when this is all over. Another great part about it is seeing my friends up on stage. I get such a kick out of the few parts that I can actually watch. Adam, especially, is absolutely "amayzing" in his role. I should probably tell him that one of these times...
Anyway. I think my next favorite character might be Gertrude, because I love playing her songs, and I sort of identify with her. In fact, I get more intense playing one song of hers (For You), than I do the whole rest of the show. It's a sweet part and I just really get into it.
You know, in spite of my earlier griping about the pressure and the responsibility involved in playing for this show, I wouldn't trade this week for all the free time in the world. I so need to find a place to play my violin more regularly.

In related news, I had a really good chat with Kirby today. I'm feeling a lot better about my impending project for honors sem, and about the class in general. And about life in general. I'm rather amazed at how much my opinion of Kirby has changed this semester. He's a great man, and I'm glad I went to talk to him today.

You know, this has turned into just a great day in general. I may change my mind later when I have to do my theory homework after the show, but I choose not to think about that right now. I'm going to focus on the fact that very shortly I get to get ready and head over to Jeschke for another show. You know, I think I could be happy just doing shows like this for the rest of my life. Not only is it great to play my violin pretty much every day, but the comraderie we build in the pit and with the cast is just cool.

Well, time to go get ready for the show. Perhaps I'll write again before this run is over.

-Kim

Quiddity (an actual essay for honors sem)

Life is a great big Scrabble game. We don’t have any say in whether we play first, last or in the middle. And we certainly don’t control which tiles we have to work with. Sometimes we get all vowels, and we feel like we can’t do anything of consequence. Other times we’ll have the Q, J and X all at the same time and won’t be able to form a word at all. Even if we can spell one of the big point words like “quixotry” or “quizzing,” there isn’t always a place for it to be played.
We learn to play mean and take a triple-word space with “sad,” in order to keep the next person from playing “joviality” and racking up some major points. We’ve decided that if we can’t do well ourselves, it’s better to make sure no one else can either.
Sometimes in life it can feel like we are the Scrabble tiles ourselves. We may think ourselves to be generic vowels, useful but not special and definitely interchangeable. Some people with inflated egos consider themselves the Q, the highest point letter of them all. But the Q is as much a curse as a blessing, since it is almost impossible to play without a U. Even the most important person needs support to really accomplish anything. Oftentimes, the most valuable letter of all is the S. Simple, unassuming S. It is the most versatile letter in the alphabet and can fill almost any role, whether it be lengthening the word to reach a triple-word bonus or attaching the coveted 7-letter word to an otherwise inaccessible board. But as in life, it’s always the showy, big letters that get the credit and the praise. Go figure.



Check out your handy-dandy Scrabble dictionaries to find the definitions of anything I used that doesn't make sense. Trust me, there is a reason for the title.

Anyway, today I feel a bit like an overused S, and I want to take a nap. Maybe after that I'll feel more like a K, which I think is closer to what I should be. We'll see if anyone agrees with that and can explain why.

Oh, and I'll rant about Seussical in another post. I don't feel like making this one that long. Don't worry, the show will be great. We just have a few things to work out tonight.

-Kim

A day with the monks

Okay, I should be doing homework right now, but since we just ran to get me food from Taco John's, so I'm giving myself until I finish eating to blog tonight.

So Friday afternoon our little band of writers (Dr. Dyer, visiting poet John Poch, Liberty, Dan, Matt and I headed out to Blue Cloud Abbey, which is just over two hours drive north of Sioux Falls. When we drove past Brookings, I excitedly pointed out our water tower to Liberty, and she thought that was funny. We had dinner with the monks that night. They don't speak at dinner, because one of them reads instead. What they were reading seemed rather odd, it seemed to be part of the memoirs of a random monk.

Liberty and I went exploring after dinner and wandered all the way around a little lake. Apparently the water had frozen rather deeply, because there were all sorts of dead fish floating by the shore at the far end. At about that point we had to take a detour through a cow pasture to get around the point of the lake and head back to the abbey. The cows just sort of ran away from us. Do cows constitute an adventure? If they don't, then I don't think we had one all weekend. We sat up a while after the monks went to bed, eating their Fritos and pretzles. ("There's just something about Fritos in a monastery"-John Poch) It's funny how 10:15 can feel like 2:00 a.m. when a building is asleep. I wrote a poem that night that might have potential, but it needs work. I always try to put too much into poems and they end up going twelve different directions at once. So even though the current state is rather rambling, I like the idea and will return to it later.

The next morning we woke up rather early to the monks' 6:30 wake-up and call to prayer. I think the bells were ringing for at least ten minutes before I woke up and actually heard them. In any case, we had an early breakfast and then I spent the rest of the morning in my room. It was a great time with God, but I really don't have time to expound upon it right now. Perhaps I can do it justice in a future post.

At any rate, I've now run out of time and must actually do some homework. One last thing before I go--my phone had a miraculous healing while we were with the monks. I turned it on upon returning to school, and the screen worked again! I guess being in a holy place is good for everything, well, except fish, apparently.

Oh yeah, and I managed to sunburn my face and half of my neck Saturday afternoon when Liberty decided to draw me. It turned out really well--the girl is an amazing artist. But now my face is pink and hurts, so we went to WalMart today to get some aloe vera gel, and I'm much happier now.

-Kim

bad day

Well, I don't know that it was a bad day totally. I mean, I slept through most of it.

Allow me to explain. This morning when I woke up I felt absolutely terrible. I hoped I would be okay after a got some breakfast, but I was wrong. When I got to honors, Kirby told me to go home and sleep. I took some convincing, but he assured me that missing what he was going to say today would not be a big deal. So I went back to bed and ended up missing honors, lunch and choir. I didn't get up until around 3:30, and I still didn't feel the greatest then. After my violin lesson and pit rehearsal I still feel lousy, so I'm going to be heading to bed insanely early. Here's hoping I'll be better tomorrow for the writing retreat.

-Kim

Kim + coffee = ADD

So, tonight after the English Romantics (my night class, which is driving me buggy with papers and general night class-iness) I stopped into Java City and decided to try the new chocolate malt javalanche. Now, I'm really not used to drinking coffee or related beverages, so the caffeine goes right to my head. As a result, I am finding it hard right now to concentrate on any one subject, so this will be a rambling, stream of consciousness type post.

Today was pretty fun. The temps were into the mid-70s for the first time since before winter, so the entire campus was outside as much as possible. After spending much of the afternoon outsid edoing nothing, Sam offered us a ride in her convertable, so we all piled in to enjoy the gorgeous weather. I tell you, it did a number on my hair, and I know my face got some windburn. You know how in movies riding in convertables always looks so glamorous and girls' hair blows back like a model? Well the reality is that the wind comes from about five different directions at once, so loose hair goes pretty much everywhere.

Oh, I managed to break my phone today. It was in the front pocket of my overalls, and I was dancing around the room to the Veggie Rocks CD, and it ended up on the floor. The battery was knocked loose, as has happened before, but this time apparently something else was knocked out of place too. The screen no longer works. the backlight still comes on, but the display is gone. What this means is that I can't call anyone who isn't a speed dial, because I can't see to access my phone book. Hopefully I can get it fixed, but even if I can it won't be done until I go home for Easter. So I get a blank blue screen for the next week or so.

This year, for the first time in a very long time I did NOT enter the school creative writing competition/publication. It feels strange. I mean, that's what I do. I'm Kim--I write stories, I enter contests. I'm not sure what to think about not entering. I mean, I felt like I didn't have anything worth submitting this year. I mean, I've actually done more writing lately, but none of it was right. I've branched into poetry, but I don't know that any of that is something I'd want published around school. Not that very many people read Asaph's Cow, but a lot of the professors do. And wouldn't want Dr. Cole reading something that wasn't quite right, or Dr. Dyer, for that matter. I'd rather have a story again this year, but that just wasn't going to happen. I'm just not good at short stories anymore--all of my ideas are too complex for that. I actually have a new story idea that has nothing to do with my bears. I was going to start working on it, but then I realized that I would need to do some research and have my mom teach ne about sheep. I also need to finish Peridot and Dagron's story so that I can start the sequel and stop it rolling around in my brain, so we'll see how fast any of this goes. The writing retreat this weekend may give me a chance to get through some of that. We'll see. As much as anything else, the retreat will be a nice relaxing time away from the other pressures at school right now.

We've had a couple of pit rehearsals now, and I can tell that this show is really gonna be busy. When Doc gets on our case to play louder (even though we have no idea how to play some of this stuff yet) I have to just keep reminding myself how much fun pit is. When we get with the cast it will be great, even though it gets harder. That's really the satisfying part I guess, doing something that we know is terribly hard and making it sound easy.

Well, I might have had more things to babble about, but I think at this point that it would be more important for me to sleep than to worry about forming coherent sentences.

-Kim