I apologize for the long silence. Thanksgiving at home was lovely: it was wonderful to spend time with the fam, wonderful to eat amazing food, wonderful to sleep, wonderful to see Tuffy, wonderful to celebrate Remus’ birthday by showering her with alcohol, wonderful to cook, wonderful to drive. I had a great time. The last couple days I started to feel sick and by the time I made it back to the city I was quite ill. Spent a few days at work trying not to die, chugging Robatussin (and spilt it all over the inside of my bag; a tragedy). Eventually recovered.

Since then things have been sailing along quite merrily. I’ve been really enjoying work. Now I am fully qualified sales person as well as a fitter. So I split my time between the two, working in the back fitting frames until they need me to help someone up front. Sometimes it’s hard to completely change mindsets and be interrupted, but its ok. I do most of my sales on the weekends, usually it’s pretty quiet during the week and other people help the clients.

I’m still loving my coworkers. They are awesome people and so much fun to be around. I’m closest with the other 4 full-time fitters: David, Justin, Karina, and Jeremy. This is because on any given work day I will be fitting across from one of them and we will get to spend the day talking as we work. David and I get on swimmingly; we have very similar personalities and hit it off very quickly. We spend the days being ridiculous, making up stories and talking about anything that comes up. The other day we outlined a bestselling novel that one of us will write, describing my to-come epic adventure of stealing a camel from the Bronx Zoo and taking it north in a motorboat to freedom in Canada so that we can use it for an experiment to determine exactly how many straws it takes to break a camel’s back. Justin and I don’t get to work together as much, but we are chill, mostly discussing coffee and music. Karina has been stuck in the back working on an enormous project and I haven’t worked with her in forever. But today we shared some amazing caramels that were incredibly delicious. Jeremy has been showing me some cool tricks and framing techniques. His brother is a stage manager, so we talk about theatre, too.

Other important things that have happened since Thanksgiving have included my getting a new bank account and a library card, both much needed and long-awaited. The first book I checked out was Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I hadn’t read in forever and thoroughly enjoyed. David recommended that I try Catch-22, saying that he really enjoyed both, and so I got that one next. And am really loving it. It’s hysterical just like Hitchhikers, though even less linear and more ridiculous if that’s possible. It’s also more cynical and 60’s-ish, but I’m liking it. I’ve been getting lots of weird looks on the subway the last few weeks as I burst out laughing for no apparent reason.

My friend Stephanie and I went to see a play called Looking at Christmas a couple weeks ago and really enjoyed it. It was about Christmas in New York, as a young couple visits all the window displays of the various department stores. It alternates scenes between the couple and scenes of the displays coming to life. It was hilarious and a lot of fun. Since then I’ve been more aware of Christmas in the city; trees are for sale everywhere, there are Christmas lights and wreaths and window displays, last weekend we started playing Christmas music in the shop (which we all regretted soon after because it’s repetitive). I’ve been meaning to visit the department stores and see the tree at Rockafeller Center, but haven’t made it out yet. My Christmas shopping is mostly complete, the majority of my gifts having been purchased online and shipped home in an attempt to make my luggage lighter.

Church and small group have been great recently. Timmy K has been doing a series of sermons on knowing God that have been illuminating and inspiring. Small group is going through his recent book The Gospel in Life, which is an excellent examination of what it looks like to have the gospel be impacting your day to day life in real ways.

My cooking adventures have continued. I made a big pot of chili that I lived on for a while. This past week I made Thai chicken and steak satay, a curry-marinated fried-on-skewers concoction that was quite exciting to make, and an apple pie. Tomorrow I’m planning on my Mexican casserole and pumpkin bread to get me through to the weekend.

For your reading pleasure, this is my favorite passage from Catch-22 so far. The main character, Yossarian is an American Army officer in WWII and is in the hospital:

“All the officer patients in the ward were forced to censor letters written by all the enlisted-men patients, who were kept in residence in wards of their own. It was a monotonous job, and Yossarian was disappointed to learn that the lives of enlisted men were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers. After the first day he had no curiosity at all. To break the monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective. The next day he made war on articles. He reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day when he blacked out everything in the letters but a, an, and the. That erected more dynamic intralinear tensions, he felt, and in just about every case left a message far more universal. Soon he was proscribing parts of salutations and signatures and leaving the text untouched. One time he blacked out all but the salutation “Dear Mary” from a letter, and at the bottom he wrote, “I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.” A.T. Tappman was the group chaplain’s name. When he had exhausted all possibilities in the letters, he began attacking the names and addresses on the envelopes, obliterating whole homes and streets, annihilating entire metropolises with careless flicks of his wrist as though he were God.”

That is all. See you all soon for Christmas!!!

Another week has passed. Since I started my job the pace of my life has picked up quite a bit. It used to be that time was passing slowly and I was able to fully experience each day of living in the city. But now it’s going faster and days are starting to run together a little. I’m starting to drink more coffee again. Some days I feel like I just wake up, go to work, come home, and go to sleep. And then get up to do it again. Working on making that not be the case. I want my job to be part of my life, but not to define my life. I’m trying to get up 2 hours before I have to leave in the mornings, because that gives me time to shower, eat, have devotions, and drink a cup of tea before leaving for the day. Makes me a much happier and more alive person.

The job is going really well. The bosses kindly granted my time off requests for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I’ll be home for a week for each holiday. I’ve spent most of my time fitting frames: putting the mats, art, glass, and frames together and securing them into the frames in a dust-free manner. It’s more complicated than it sounds—I have to push myself to make sure that each piece is perfect and I don’t let anything mediocre get by me. On Monday I started learning sales, so soon I’ll be splitting time between fitting in the back and coming out to the showroom to help clients with orders. The sales process is much more complicated than it was at Michaels; we have a much bigger selection, but mostly it's because the shop runs entirely on a paper system; no computers involved. So the order tickets are written out by hand and have to be very detailed and accurate. It’s a lot to remember and I’m sure I’ll be bugging the other sales people with questions for a while to come, but I’m excited to be branching out from fitting. The shop got really busy right after I started training, and I ended up doing my first sale much sooner than I had anticipated, but it went well and jumping in with both feet cemented things faster than just standing around watching would have done. I’m working extra hours this week to make up for some of the time I’m taking off; so I’m just getting today off and am working Wednesday. It will be good.

On Saturday evening after work I met my friend Stephanie on the Lower East Side to go see Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the Metropolitan, directed by Alex. We went to a fantastic Indian place for dinner, each getting their special which included a complimentary glass of wine, appetizers, soup, entrée, dessert, and coffee. My main dish was a lamb curry, very tasty. The show was fun, it was great to see Alex and the theatre again! It was the first preview, the first time the actors had performed in front of an audience, and it ran 3 hours. When it was only supposed to run 2. It dragged in some parts, the timing will get ironed out over the course of the previews, but overall it was a great show, inventively staged. The script is a typical 19th century piece, with lots of random moments and vignettes and characters that don’t feel like they contribute to the plot, and a wild ending where everything is resolved at once. It was cool to see.

I had a lovely day off today. I slept in until 10am, then cleaned the bathroom, which sorely needed it. After it was sufficiently clean I took a lovely long bath, accompanied by my new bar of soap from Lush (it smells divinely and is a dark turquoise color) and a sandalwood scented ‘bath bomb’; basically bubble bath for the new millennium. :-P For lunch I made pasta. I bought this amazing Italian expensive Tagliatelle yesterday at the Garden of Eden (a gourmet grocery near work) and cooked it today and mixed it with the delicious fresh pesto I made last week from my basil. It was phenomenal; some of the best pasta I’ve ever had.


This afternoon I went downtown to do some shopping, and took a lovely walk through Greenwich Village and Chelsea. Such great neighborhoods; I really love it down there. I bought a coffee travel mug so that I can start making coffee to take to work instead of buying it, bought the new Josh Groban CD Illuminations that came out yesterday (I am listening to it now and quite enjoying it!), and picked up some food at Trader Joe’s. I’m not doing real shopping this week, I just bought enough to get me through Saturday. Hopefully I’ll have eaten most anything that could rot while I’m away by that time.

When I got home I made banana muffins with walnuts while I listened to the CD. And now I’m sipping a glass of wine and writing to you wonderful people. I cannot wait to come home on Saturday and enjoy the holiday and the food and the family. Very excited about it.

This week I’ve been reading two books: The Autobiography of George Muller and Three Cups of Tea. The Tea book is the true story of an American who is building schools throughout Pakistan. Quite an incredible book so far; fascinating and inspiring. The Muller book is a loan from Mommy and is the story of a German pastor who ran a bunch of schools and orphanages in England in the 1800s based entirely on donations and trust in God. Also very inspiring; it really drives home the fact that God is eager and willing to provide for His people physically when they trust Him. Every page that recounts how God sent the money for things that were needed exactly when it was needed reminds me of all the amazing provision that God has made for me since I moved up here. Same story: He has provided incredibly every single thing I have needed, exactly when I have needed it, and often much more than I need. I feel I have come to know and trust Him so much more since being up here. Having to rely on Him so entirely and directly has taught me so much about how much He loves me and has a perfect plan for me. Yesterday I read a psalm that perfectly describes my situation:

“Lord, you have assigned my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.” Psalm 16:5-11

Well my first week at work went really well. I am really liking the job, the shop, the people, the hours, everything. God has been so good to not only give me a job when I needed one, but give me a job I really enjoy that pays exactly what I was looking for!!!

My schedule is Thursday through Monday, 39.5 hours a week. So far I’ve exclusively been doing fitting; that is, putting the art into the frames with the mats, etc. Eventually they’ll train me to do sales as well, but right now the shop is behind and it’s the Christmas rush, so we’re just focusing on trying to catch up.

I’m really enjoying my coworkers: it’s really cool to be spending significant periods of time with people around again. I’ve gotten used to spending a lot of time by myself, and I actually enjoy it, but it’s good to spend time with people, too. The ones I’ve spent the most time with are:

Karina: she’s from the Dominican Republic and is in charge of inspecting all pieces before they are given back to the customers. She’s been very nice to me, we’ve had a couple good chats about books, jobs, college, etc.

David: he’s from Australia, and reminds me of Phil Joel because of his accent (half the time I’d swear it’s an NZ accent) and because he has long curly hair. We get along well; he likes to tease me about everything from the fact that I think LOTR is the best film of all time to that I’m reading Gone With the Wind (“has he said ‘I don’t give a damn’ yet??”) to the music that I like to the fact that I mumble and talk to myself a lot.

Justin: he’s a musician, mostly bass guitar. He likes to talk about his band, lots of interesting stories, and talk about music in general. We have discussed the sad fact that classically trained musicians are not taught to improvise, whereas jazz musicians are. I wish were better at improv-ing.

Jeremy: my immediate supervisor. Originally from Denver. Very good framer, he makes it look easy. He’s been walking me slowly through how they do different tasks at the shop. We haven’t talked much, but he’s pretty cool.

Deb: works up front in sales. She’s a grad student at FIT studying art management. She’s very friendly and we like to talk at the lunch table.

G: works in the back cutting mats and glass for all orders. Works occasionally as a DJ, loves music and likes to play it loudly while he works. Very friendly.

They are good people and I’m really looking forward to getting to know them better. The only problem I’ve had at work so far has been figuring out when I can get off for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Had a conversation with the boss on Monday about it and have revised my tickets and hopefully will get approval tomorrow. Prayer would be appreciated on that one.

On Saturday night I went to the Follow Me Down cast party, which was at the sound designer Greg’s gorgeous apartment. Seriously gorgeous apartment. I arrived an hour late, but there were still only 2 people there, Greg and Patrick, the playwright. We chatted and Greg mixed us drinks from his incredibly well-stocked bar. He made me a whiskey-based cocktail whose name I can’t remember, but it was delicious. Apparently it’s one of the oldest mixed drinks in the US, enjoyed since before the Civil War, and very popular in the ‘20s. Wish I could remember the name. When more people arrived, most of whom had colds, he made us all Hot Toddy’s, the best ones I’ve ever had. They were seriously delicious. I left the party around midnight so that I could get up for work the next day.

We made a disturbing discovering on Sunday: we have mice in the apartment!!! Only seen in the kitchen as of yet, but they are gross. We’ve found them in the sink, and running on and around the stove. I bought traps and they’ve been sitting out for 3 days loaded with delicious peanut butter, but we have yet to catch any more of the little creeps. Hopefully they will die soon. It’s really gross to think of them scampering everywhere.

Stephanie, the girl who I’m subletting from who’s on tour, is in town this week and she spent a couple nights at the apartment to visit Ashley. So I got to meet her, she’s very nice, and the three of us made a big pot of chili and cornbread Monday night and ate together. It was fun.

So I started an experiment when I was home, based on a New York Times article about long hair. It recommended that the best thing for your hair was not to wash it with shampoo and conditioner, but just to rinse it under hot water and massage your scalp, and allow the natural oils of your hair to keep it soft and glossy. The idea makes intuitive sense to me: it seems reasonable that our hair should be able to keep itself presentable naturally; I mean, what did people do before shampoo and conditioner existed? The article talked about how shampoo strips the natural oils from our hair, and so we have to put in conditioner to restore oils, but these dirty our hair so we need shampoo again: a self-perpetuating vicious cycle. So I’ve spent the last 3 weeks without washing my hair once. I rinse it every couple days, massaging my scalp a few times (which is the most amazing feeling in the world—try it!!). The first 2 weeks it was pretty oiling and felt kinda gross, because it was rebalancing. But now it’s quite nice: my hair is smooth and glossy and clean, without the use of products. And it seems to be less frizzy, even when I brush it. The only thing I miss is the smell of the products; still trying to figure out something to do about that. Not that my hair smells bad; it smells fine, but I miss the lovely scents of shampoos. Any suggestions? In Gone With the Wind, Scarlett rinses her hair with cologne water. I know there’s such a thing as rosewater, too. Maybe I’ll experiment. Not sure where I would get such things, though.

So this week has been focused almost exclusively on getting used to the new job. It’s good to have a regular job again with a regular paycheck. I’m not used to the 40-hours-a-week thing anymore, but I will get used to it again. Same with being on my feet all day. I will adjust. And when I do, I want to start reintroducing good things into my life.

Starting with more design work. I don’t have another show lined up, but I need to spend time again developing myself as a designer, which is the whole point of taking this time off before grad school. I need to draw, to draft, to read, to go see shows, and to do a couple paper projects of shows with full drafting and models that show what I can do. I need to go to museums and galleries and immerse myself in art and culture and everything else that contributes to good design.

I also want to start spending time with/making friends. Making coffee dates or happy hour dates with small group girls and others. Doing things with friends. I’ve started to feel the need again for spending time with people who really know me. Nobody up here really knows me very well; that needs to change. I know it’s a long process, but I do want close friends again.

I also want to start fun social activities that broaden me. I want to get involved in dance classes, after I have a little bit of cash saved up from the new job. Or a yoga class. Or a judo class. Or all three. I want to run again or get a gym membership somewhere that will get me back into regular exercise.

I’ve really enjoyed cooking here. Tuesdays have become my grocery and cooking days. Last week it was poppy seed chicken, French onion soup, and apple pie. This week it’s Thai red curry chicken with rice (a delicious recipe of Eileen’s) and pumpkin bread. And bruschetta from my fresh basil and tomatoes and Italian bread. I’ve been faithfully experimenting with inexpensive red wines (Remus, I finally finished that French one—it wasn’t too bad). I bought more flour and sugar yesterday so I can continue baking every week. I love cooking, just like I love drinking tea or coffee, watching movies, and reading.

I’ve become very good at living on my own and enjoying solo activities, but now I need to include more social activities. And really try to develop friendships and build a community of people here. I know that takes time; it took 3 years at school, but I need to do it. For starters, I’m going to see the play Uncle Tom’s Cabin with my friend Stephanie on Saturday. We’re catching dinner beforehand and will hopefully have a wonderful time. I’m really excited.

Lately

I had a wonderful visit home. My train arrived on Sunday in the early afternoon and Mommy and Daddy picked me up at the metro on their way home from church. We were all together for lunch at home: Daddy, Mommy, Melanie, Remus, and me. It was so good to see them all again, to see Tuffy, and to just be home (it had been about 2 months since I was last there). We had a fabulous hamburger lunch, stuffed ourselves silly. Mommy had to go to her CS Lewis group’s meeting for dinner, so Daddy took the 3 girls out to the Lebanese Taverna in Tysons, which was great. I’d never been, just heard rave reviews, but the food was excellent, very tasty. Again, stuffed myself silly.

Monday I slept in till 11, then spent the afternoon with Mommy, everyone else being at work/school. We went to La Madeleine for lunch, and then wandered around the town center. For dinner we made a feast: beef tenderloin fondue with Remus’ soufflé. And lots of wine. Again, stuffed to the gills. The power went out at the end of the meal, so we sat talking in the dark, lit only by candles, and drinking wine. It was lovely.

Tuesday morning Mommy and I made ourselves some Irish Coffee, which was very tasty, then had a long debate over the effects of slavery as seen/not seen today. We took a walk through the neighborhood and then dashed over to DSW to buy me some new black working shoes. I chose Sketchers, open like heels with Velcro straps. They’re still giving me blisters, but I’m hoping that will pass soon. Tuesday night Daddy, Remus, and I watched Remember the Titans. I can’t recall what we had for dinner.

And Wednesday I came back to the city. Mommy took me to the metro and I got back to my apartment around 8pm. And collapsed, watching Julie & Julia, and going to bed. Thursday was mostly a re-organize my life day, including applying to a framing job I saw on craigslist. I got a call from the shop in the afternoon to schedule an interview for the next morning. Which I duly went to. And got a call that afternoon calling me back on Saturday for some shadowing, which I went to, and got the job!!! And my first day was Monday. So now I have a full-time framing job at the nicest frameshop I’ve ever been in. God is soooo good. I was getting worried on Thursday and Friday because I was paying my monthly bills and money was getting tight. And God threw this job in my lap. So good of Him, as ever.

My excitement this past weekend was that Remus came to visit! Her bus arrived Friday night, late because of traffic, and we barely made it to our first activity: a Flamenco dance show. I had gotten free tickets through a friend, and we quite enjoyed the show. The woman dancing was very good, but old, which gave an interesting edge to the performance. At first we were both very unimpressed, but with each successive dance the show got better. Afterwards we were both starving, but elected to save our money and head back to my place to eat, about an hour away. But we got back and made breakfast burritos and drank a very-disappointing wine I had bought that day: it was not very good at all, even though it was from France. We talked for a while and then went to sleep.

Saturday we slept in and slowly got going. We went downtown so I could do the shadowing for my job, which ended up taking twice as long as expected. But Remus was very forbearing, and wandered around the neighborhood with my map while I was in there. When I finished we met up and wandered around Eataly, this new mega-gourmet Italian grocery store. It was cool, but insanely packed; almost felt like an amusement park. For lunch we headed over to Little Italy, where I discovered that I do NOT like gnocchi AT ALL (the texture is unbearable); which was sad. I do however, like mozzarella and sausage pizza, and Remus liked the gnocchi so it was ok. After lunch we walked through the Lower East Side to Jujomukti, my favorite tea lounge, where we shared a pot of tea and talked for a while. Then we walked through many meandering paths to Greenwich Village and wandered around there. It’s such a cool area—we liked it a lot. We picked up cupcakes at the Magnolia bakery, and some wine at a wine shop, and then subwayed back home around 8pm for our evening festivities. We picked up food at my grocery, and layed out our dinner: fresh warmed Italian bread with Jarlesburg and Edam cheeses, green pepper and celery with hummus, 3 mangos, and our lovely Chilean wine. We watched The Devil Wears Prada as we ate, the split our 2 cupcakes (chocolate and carrot cake, respectively) into halves, poured ourselves more wine, and watched Rebecca. Remus is still scarred from childhood torture regarding Mrs. Danvers. We finished the bottle of wine, and then proceeded to debate the relative merits of India and China until almost 4 in the morning. At which point we called a truce and went to sleep.

Sunday we got up and decided to spent the remaining time we had together (Remus’ bus left at 4pm) up in my neck of the woods, instead of going downtown. We went to The Cloisters, which is a branch of the Met, an amalgamation of European religious architecture and art, set in a GORGEOUS park right on the Hudson. We could not have had better weather: it was sunny, crisp, and gorgeous. The park was absolutely stunning, the trees were in their fall glory and there were blooming flowers and gorgeous views of the water and the Jersey cliffs. We walked for a bit, then went to a café for breakfast, which reminded me of some Western national park’s lodge. There was a brunch menu that was very overpriced, so we settle on coffee, bacon, and a basket of muffins to split. The bacon was decadent, and there were 6 muffins which we split, also delicious. After we finished we walked up to and around the Cloisters building but didn’t go in due to time. Instead we walked back to my place, grabbed Remus’ stuff and subwayed downtown to where her bus was. We arrived in time to visit a street fair for Remus to make certain unmentionable purchases, and then we stood in line at the bus stop and poof! She was gone. We had such a fun time together: I am so glad that she came up to visit. Other people should, too (hint, hint).

I went to church for the first time in 3 weeks on Sunday evening, then made my way slowly, very slowly home on the trains packed with Halloween revelers. Monday I was up early and headed to my first day on the new job. It was a good first day, nice and easy. I worked 12-6pm, laying into a pile of 50 pieces of art that had to be matted and put into ready-made frames. Didn’t quite finish, but made a good dent in the pile. My coworkers were all very nice and friendly and I found a new coffeeshop around that corner that was very good. After I finished work I went home to eat dinner and then headed downtown again for the strike of my show Follow Me Down. I arrived before the show finished and stood out on the street in the near-freezing weather until people came upstairs to let me in. We worked for about 2 hours, all the actors lending a hand, and got most of the major things done by 1130 when I dismissed them. I then carried my chair and lamp that I had lent the show back home on the subway.

Tuesday I went in to finish strike with the director, but discovered that it was just to be me—she had to work. So I repainted walls and door openings, and swept and moved things to get the theatre back to pristine and empty condition. One of the actors sweetly came in the help me in the afternoon; there’s no way I would have finished without him. We carried doors back to storage and chopped up all our extra wood into disposable sized pieces outside (new experience: cutting lumber with a jigsaw in a subterranean outdoor stairwell in the city). We finished around 430 and I headed home and went grocery shopping.

And then proceeded to cook like my life depended on it. I made a big pot of French Onion Soup, recipe courtesy of Remus. It took forever—like 2.5 hours—to make, but was it delicious. I also made a big dish of Poppy Seed Chicken for lunches at work, and an apple pie. I finished cooking and finally sat down to eat my soup around 10pm. Then I watched about half of When Harry Met Sally, which has been recommended to me forever and I finally was able to stream from Netflix. It was good, but I didn’t think it was as phenomenal as everyone said.

And today I’ve been enjoying my last day off until Tuesday. My new work schedule is Thursday through Monday every week, so weekends have been relocated to Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I slept in this morning, took a lovely shower, cleaned my room, and did various necessary tasks like job paperwork and writing this blog. I just enjoyed a pot of espresso and am about to heat up a bowl of soup. Tonight I’m going back to my Redeemer Bible study for the first time in a couple weeks. Tomorrow it’s back to work for a 9.5 hour day.

I just reread a bunch of the early posts of this blog. It’s funny how different my life was as recently as June, July, and August. I had no idea what was going to happen, was loving my job in Williamsburg, and searching for internships. I was young and idealistic; now I’m old and cynical. :-P Not really, but I do feel that I’ve changed and grown up a lot in the past 5 months. That’s one of the great things about blogs: they capture us as we are at a moment in time. At later moments in time we can go back to reread them and see how we’ve changed.

I’ve been reading Gone With the Wind on the subway this week. Such a fantastic book. Several hundred pages, but so well written that you never get board. I reread Jane Eyre a couple weeks ago, but now I may have to desert my new-found love for Mr. Rochester for an even newer-found love for Rhett Butler. We’ll see. I may do a comparison blog once I finish the book.

Repentance :-P

I must now announce to the world, I am not just happy to see "the fam and Tuffy" tomorrow. I am supremely excited to see Daddy, Mommy, Melanie, Tuffy, AND Remus Lupin. We will have a splendiforous time and I cannot wait!

And now I must run to opening night.

Well the last two weeks have felt more like two months or two years. Lots going on.

My friends from WM came to visit 2 weekends ago. There were 4 of them: Christy, Rachel, Meg, and Meg’s friend Kati who I’d never met but was very nice. They bussed up here on Saturday morning; I met them at their bus at 830. We went and got bagels for breakfast, then headed to the Met for a couple hours. I had never been and was thoroughly awed by their impressive collection. Definitely somewhere I need to spend a lot more time at. We got pizza and garlic roles for lunch, then walked across Central Park and took the subway back to my apartment so they could drop their bags. We spent some time just resting and recuperating, then headed back downtown. We wandered through a street fair on 6^th Ave, bought cupcakes at my friend Stephanie’s cupcake shop, and went to the Lego store. There we had fun making lego people of Dave and Matt from WM, choosing the correct faces, shirts, pants, hats/hair, and accessories. We made a Happy Dave, an Angry Dave, and a Matt. Christy is giving them to them for Christmas.

In the evening we went and saw the closing performance of my show Nance O’Neil. I think they enjoyed it, but there were a lot of yawns because we were all starting to get tired. After the show we met up with Stephanie and Angela (both former WMers) for dinner and drinks. We had to go over to the NYU area to find a place open late enough (it was like 1130), and I nearly got us killed crossing the street, after which jaywalking was outlawed, but eventually we settled on a barbeque joint. The food was delicious, more so because we were all starving, and I enjoyed a beer with my pulled pork, cornbread, and macncheese. After we ate we all subwayed home together and collapsed into well-deserved rest.

Sunday we got up and headed down to Brooklyn to visit the Brooklyn Flea Market. It’s enormous and had a lot of cool stuff: furniture, art, books, clothes, everything. Bit pricier than we were expecting though. We got food from an amazing street food vendor: mine was a gruyere and onions grilled cheese sandwich accompanied by cardamom honey iced tea. After the flea market we went back to Manhattan and walked for a while. We went to Pearl (the best art store in the world), through Soho to Strand (the best bookstore in the world). It was a long walk, and the girls’ feet were hurting and generally they were a tad grumpy. My feet have stopped hurting when I walk, so I think I accidentally overtired them. With a bunch of grumps on my hands I chose the only reliable solution I know: food! We took the subway to the Shake Shack, an outdoor burger joint of deliciousness, and Rachel and I stood in the very long line and had a great conversation while the others rested on a bench in the park. After our food, which was great, we tried to go up the Empire State Building, but ended up canning that idea after we saw the $30 price tag. Instead, after a quick stop in H&M for me to buy fingerless gloves, Rachel, Christy, and I came back to my place while Meg and Kati went to see Times Square at night. Stephanie and Angela came up to my apartment to hang out, and we spent a nice evening chatting all together, eating cookies, and drinking wine. Monday morning the girls left early, and I spent time cleaning up the apartment and then delved into my next project: the show.

Follow Me Down has made my last 2 weeks insane. It can be easily divided into 3 segments: homework, shopping, and installation/tech. I spent a couple days on the front end working from my apartment finishing the design and preparing for everything. I have to Technical Director working on the show with me, so in addition to the design and conceptual work I’m also responsible for building, installing, and painting everything. We are a rental at the theater we’re performing in, so we have no scene shop, no paint area, no props storage to pull from, nothing. So I not only had to figure out what I wanted onstage, but then how to build it or where to buy it from, and how to get it to the theater. Pretty much everything had to be purchased and we had to somehow stay within our small budget.

So I spent a few days figuring out how to install doors, pricing lumber and molding, and designing windows and fireplaces and figuring out how to build them quickly and cheaply. All things I’m not used to doing; I think it was good for me, definitely taught me new things.

The next phase was the buying of everything. The director and I were nervous because nothing had been purchase a week before the show opened (because we had nowhere to put it). I headed a trip to a free arts-reuse center with some guys from the cast and brought back a bunch of little stuff, but all the big furniture pieces (rug, couch, tables, chairs, sideboard, etc) remained unfound and unpurchased. The end of the first week I went out to Brooklyn for a day and found a bunch of the stuff at thrift stores and flea markets. But we didn’t have a way to get it back to the theater, and everyone was too busy to come down and help me move it. I went up to Queens the next day to find backups for things, just in case they were gone once we got around to getting them.

So it boiled down to Monday, the day we were allowed to move into the space and the day I had the cast available to work for me. I was very nervous beforehand, about renting a UHaul, driving in the city for the first time, buying lumber for the first time, directing a build, and getting the furniture to the theatre. But God really helped me and the day went beautifully. I woke up insanely early, rented a pickup truck from UHaul, drove to my apartment to pick up the chairs I was lending the show, drove to the lumber store and bought the lumber order, and went to the theatre. The cast was there, and I sent a few of them with the truck to Brooklyn to pick up the furniture I had selected, and set the rest of them to work cutting lumber, painting, and installing doors. We got everything that really needed to be done completed by the end of the day, and the cast was awesome—great attitudes and hard workers.

We ran the show in the space Monday night, our first official tech, and since then I have been working in the space during the day and then watching the techs late into the night. The week started better than I had hoped, but it’s been a little rough more recently. I had been told that I could work during the day in the space (which I needed to get all my notes done), and Liz, the TD at the theater and a WM grad I knew my freshman year, has been wonderful about lending me tools and has been very generous about letting me do whatever I want in the space. But apparently the higher-ups at the theater were not willing to be quite so generous with time or tools. Sarah, my director, got in some trouble a couple days ago when the theater decided that they needed our space for rehearsal that day. I got ousted for a couple hours, and wandered around doing a bit of shopping but mostly wandering, until they let me back in. The next day we got yelled at and told we couldn’t build in the space (which was the point of buying lumber). So the generous situation we had at the beginning of the week has tightened a bit in the last few days and the director has gotten yelled at a lot, which has made the situation a bit stressful. And I’ve lost some of the working time I had counted on in the space to get all my notes done.

But, that’s ok. We are pushing through, and we preview tonight and officially open tomorrow. I’m leaving shortly to finish my last few notes, and then I’ll be done! I’ve learned a lot on this show and have loved the people and think the play is brilliant, but it’s been more work than I bargained for.

Anyhoo, that’s been my life recently. I don’t have time to write about all the stuff I’ve been thinking about, but I will soon. I’m going home for a couple days on Sunday and cannot express how excited I am about that!!! It will be so awesome to see the fam again and Tuffy and everything. I absolutely cannot wait.

Tea and Candles

So I was just talking to Laura on AIM, which was lovely, and one of the themes of our conversation that got me thinking was how the little things in life make such a difference in our emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing.

One big one for me is the amount of sunlight in a day. My mood is infinitely better and more joyful when the sun is in the sky. Days like today, when it's wet and overcast, are much harder. But clearly sunlight is beyond my control.

So other things that make a big difference. Anything that reflects Beauty, I think. Little bits of beauty scattered around your life that you can appreciate and that influence you. I just finished decorating my room and have my walls covered with postcards of Barcelona, family pictures, and quotes that I’ve been collecting through college. The postcards are lovely and inspirational, the family photos remind me of the beauty of having a family and all the wonderful memories we have, and the quotes are all beautiful ways of expressing truths about the world or the way the world should be. Some are Bible verses, some are from writers and such. My all-time favorite is by Jamie Tworkowski:

“We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home.”

I also have candles, recently purchased from the dollar store and already much enjoyed. I’ve been lighting them in the evenings and they have been wonderful. I don’t know what it is, but the combination of the soft light, the smell, and the slight warmth make them inspiring, romantic, and peaceful.

And rituals I think also help our sense of wellbeing. Being from our family, we all know I’m very influenced by food and drink. I have a drinks station set up on my dresser that I’m very much enjoying. There’s a water filter that I pair with my new flower-and-butterfly-painted yellow martini glass, which I love and get a little thrill every time I drink out of it. And then there’s my French press and espresso pot, surrounded by my collection of teas and coffee. This afternoon I’ve been enjoying some of my Barcelonian tea: Jasmine Mandarin Oolong. It’s a lovely and light green tea, with a sweet scent. I added honey and am loving the sweet concoction. It’s also soothing my sore throat.

Yesterday I drank Irish Breakfast. It’s a much stronger, more bitter black tea. A barista at Starbucks the other day had told me that he often adds Cayenne pepper to his tea, so I had to try it. It’s spicy and great for clearing out the sinuses. I think it’s a nice variation that I will try quite often.

And then there’s coffee. I bought some fresh beans yesterday, French Roast, from my grocery. Looking forward to grinding them and brewing a pot. It will have to wait until I’m feeling better (a jolt of caffeine is not what I’m looking for when I’m feeling sick), but I am excited for it.

And espresso is a lovely late afternoon ritual and pickmeup. A nice little tradition that I want to more frequently enjoy. Also dark chocolate. I bought chili pepper dark chocolate and am really looking forward to enjoying the spicy and sweet.

Yesterday I went grocery shopping and then spent some time in the kitchen cooking poppy seed chicken. It was the first time I’ve cooked anything in the oven since I’ve been in the city. And it was so fun and refreshing. I wore my Williams Sonoma blue apron and whipped up a pie pan of deliciousness. Later I ate some with baby carrots and cherry tomatoes.

I think my conclusion is that having a peaceful, well-ordered space (clean and ordered being important detatils) with little bits of beauty scattered around it makes a huge difference. It helps us to enjoy the little good things in life and reminds us in small ways of the beauty and goodness of God. It takes our minds off the big worries we’re dealing with, or at least gives us a better frame of reference to face them.

Good books and music also help. And so I’m off to spend some time with The Black Arrow while drinking some golden-colored Jasmine Mint Ooling from my “Dazzling Designer” mug that Meg gave me for Christmas.

VISIT

Well moving turned out to be more of an ordeal than I thought. Thursday I spent the morning in Starbucks using their free wifi and drinking tea and in the afternoon I went back to the apartment to have lunch and back stuff up to take to my new place. Rachel’s dad arrived in the afternoon to start packing her stuff and I found out from him that she was moving out that night, not on Friday as she had previously thought. Which meant that I needed to move out by that night too. So I sent a quick text to my friend Stephanie asking if I could crash with her that night. She very kindly said yes.

So I packed up a load of dishes and stuff in my enormous and well-travelled suitcase (it’s been all over the US, to the UK, and to Spain!), grabbed my wooden chair that goes with my desk (I decided I had to give up the desk and rocking chair because they wouldn’t fit in my new place, but I wanted to keep the chair), and headed down to the subway. Only to find that my stuff wouldn’t fit through the turnstile. So I climbed back up to street level and headed down to the other subway entrance that had a handicapped gate. Got on the train, transferred at the appropriate points, avoided killing anyone by goring them with my chair, and eventually made it through the rain to the new apartment. Dropped off the chair, unpacked the suitcase and carried it with me back onto the train. Transferred again and got back to Astoria. It was late, the trip had taken about 2 hours.

There was a moving van in front of the apartment—it was the new people already moving in. Rachel and her dad were still there moving out, so I hopped up the stairs into my room and threw my remaining things into the suitcase as fast as I could. It was heavy and bulky, but I dragged it and my backpack and my shoulder bag down the stairs, said goodbye to Rachel, and walked away. Back to the subway. Back through the handicapped gate. Onto the train. Transfer. And ride to Columbia to where Stephanie lives. I called her when I arrived around 1030pm and she met me at the door of her dorm and helped me upstairs. Her suite is very nice and she was hospitable enough to give me the floor of her tiny bedroom. We sat up talking and catching up until past 1am, then both fell asleep.

The next morning I went through the rain to the closest Starbucks and caught up on emails while I ate an asiago bagel and drank a coffee. Around noon I went back to Stephanie’s, grabbed my stuff, and climbed on the subway to head north to officially move in to my new apartment. Caitlin, the girl I’m replacing, hadn’t quite moved out yet, so we sat and chatted for a bit waiting for her friend to come pick her and her stuff up. Then she was gone and I spent a couple hours rearranging furniture, cleaning, unpacking, washing bedding, running to the grocery, and generally getting moved in.

My new room is lovely: quite large with plenty of necessary furniture. It was a bit dirty, so I deep cleaned all the surfaces and swept everywhere. I moved some things around to maximize space and made plans for where all my soon-to-arrive stuff would go. By the evening I was exhausted from 2 days of dragging stuff around, so I collapsed on the couch and watched episodes from the Glee dvds that I borrowed from Stephanie. I was mildly depressed and lonely, but figured it was from the weather and my exhaustion. I fell asleep around 1am, excited to be sleeping in a real bed for the first time in months.

Saturday I slept in and woke up in time to get a call from Daddy saying he was on his way and would arrive in the early afternoon! Very excited by this news and feeling much better, I spent the morning cleaning the apartment. I’ve discovered that I don’t mind my space being mildly dirty as long as it’s MY dirt, but that when it’s other people’s dirt I find it disgusting and it drives me crazy. So I cleaned the bathroom before I took a shower, and swiffered all the floors. I feel much better now that I know surfaces are clean.

After cleaning, I took a brief walk around my neighborhood, picking up a couple things I needed from the dollar store. I wandered around, getting the geography of the streets in my head. My area is nice: it’s definitely a working class area, not as hip or wealthy as Astoria, but that’s perfectly fine. It makes the rent cheap, and that’s what I need right now. As I walked back to my building I was thrilled to see a familiar silver car pulling up in front: Daddy had arrived!!!

I showed him my room and then spent about half an hour unloading the car (I’m so lucky to live on the first floor—it would have been miserable to try to drag everything up stairs). Afterwards we found a parking spot for the car and hopped on the subway to go downtown. It was so good to see Daddy again and to get to talk and just be with him. We had a lovely afternoon: I showed him the theatres where my shows are, although we weren’t able to go inside any of them, we went to lunch at a fantastic restaurant in Little Italy, splitting spaghetti Bolognese and a veal parmigiana with wine, salad, and an espresso for me. The food was amazing and so was the company—it was hands down the best meal I’ve had since coming to the city. After we ate we wandered around Little Italy and Chinatown, bought pistachio gelato and hot almonds from street vendors, and walked up to the Lower East Side to see my other theatre. Eventually it was time to head back north: we were both tired from all the walking and a little overwhelmed from all the crowds. We came back to my room so Daddy could take a couple pictures, then I walked him back to the car and he drove me back to my building, we said goodbye, and he started his drive home.

It was so wonderful to get to spend time with Daddy; I’ve missed him and the rest of the fam a lot, more so now that I’m in a new place that I don’t yet know well. We spent a lovely day together that I am very grateful for.

After he left I spent about 2 hours unpacking the loads of stuff that he brought up here for me. Eventually I got it all to fit and look presentable. I now have a bookshelf of design supplies and similar, a space on my dresser devoted to drinks (currently tea, coffee, and water, but soon to be joined by wine and whiskey), and a bookshelf of tons of books and binders. And my walls are all decorated with postcards, quotes, and photographs. I even have candles that I lit last night. The place is starting to feel more home-y; I think I will be very happy here. I had trouble getting to sleep after I unpacked, so I watched some more Glee and read part of a book. Eventually fell asleep around 130.

Today I slept in again, and have been puttering about taking it easy all afternoon. I’m heading to church soon and will be back up and running again tomorrow, I hope. I fighting not to get depressed and to keep busy and positive and thinking. I’m working to structure my days so that I stay productive. I hope to work in an exercise regimen and daily design challenges to keep myself thinking.

This coming week I’ll have more work on my show, will be looking for a framing job, and will be assisting Jon again with more model building—he emailed me last night as I was packing to say that he needed me again. I’m excited; it should be good. And I am going to start cooking again, now that I have my recipes again. I have been eating breakfast burritos almost exclusively for the last while, but I plan to expand and make poppyseed chicken this week. Hopefully soon to be joined by pumpkin bread, or maybe banana bread. And I will buy cider in the next few weeks. Because it’s FALL and I’m very excited for it!

I feel like I should do a sequel to the previous blog post: literally days after writing it God provided housing and more work!

Housing I got through the Redeemer website: I’m moving tomorrow to an apartment in way north-western Manhattan. The rent is cheap, I get to live with a Christian girl, and I get a huge furnished (!) room with a queen sized bed, dresser, closet, bookshelf, couch, table, and TV through the end of the year. It even comes with sheets, towels, and a laundry basket. God is so incredible; it’s a better situation that I had hoped for.

For my new job, it was another lesson in God’s timing. The evening of final dress for the Drunkard I was thinking about how I would have no work starting the next day. Low and behold I checked my email at the end of the rehearsal and I had an email from a director of a new play asking me if I would design the set for her show! The company is a group of former Columbia students who produce new works and hire under-30 upandcoming artists to work on them. The play is set in Oxford in 1925 and is about a group of students questioning the meaning of life (it’s kind of similar to Dead Poet’s Society; one commits suicide at the end). It’s a good play and the company is awesome—I’m so grateful to have a new show and to get to meet new people. We don’t open until the end of October, so I have lots of time. I’m going to be mainly responsible for finding the furniture pieces we need; not sure how that will work yet, but I know it will work out somehow.

And if that weren’t enough, last weekend I was thinking how I needed some money and I got an email from a WM alumni set designer Jon, who I had met with my 2^nd week here to talk. He’s designing The Sound of Music and needed an assistant for the day to build the model for him. So I went to his studio for the day on Monday and built model pieces for him and got paid 150 bucks for it. It was lots of fun, and Jon was very complimentary and encouraging about my work.

So God is taking very good care of me. I’ve had lots of free time recently, since The Drunkard opened a week and a half ago, but it’s been good. After the opening, I went to meet Sarah, the director of my new show, at the theater and we had a good talk, got a basic floorplan figured out, and I went grocery shopping and came home. And proceeded to get very sick: headache, sinus congestion, major chest congestion, and exhaustion. I pretty much just stayed in my room for the rest of the week. I spent a fortune on medicine and lay around watching TV on my computer, building model furniture (which was good prep for working for Jon!), and sleeping, for lack of anything better to do. I watched every episode of Merlin ever made (thanks James for the recommendation; I don’t know what I would have done without it!) and lots of other random episodes. I’m looking forward to getting books sometime soon, because I’m kind of TV’d out.

I was out for about a week, then got better in time to assist Jon on Monday, and since then I’ve been still recuperating, and working on moving. I’m spending time every day practicing my drafting handwriting and drawing, trying to use time while I have time to make myself a better designer and artist. On Tuesday I went to a show called Way To Heaven with members of the Redeemer artists’ small group. It was excellent and afterwards we hung out at an outdoor burger joint called the Shake Shack and talked. It was great to get to know them better.

Yesterday I decided to go job hunting up by where I’m moving to. Instead it turned into an exploring adventure. I started just north of Columbia University, explored that campus (which is gorgeous). And then slowly walked about 80 blocks down the Upper West Side over the course of the afternoon. Saw several now hiring signs which I may go back to. Went to starbucks for coffee and pumpkin bread. Wandered into several cool stores, including a couple gourmet groceries. Went to a skincare place called Lush which is amazing and hippyish and fantastic and I hope to buy things from when I have money (Remus check it out there’s one in Tysons too).

In the evening I went to the first meeting of the Redeemer girls’ recent grads small group. About 12 people showed up and they are wonderful. I’m really excited to get to know them all; they seem really sweet and interesting and we all are really excited to study the Bible together and get to know each other. There’s several actors, 2 culinary school students, a writer, a couple fashion industry people, a middle school volunteer, an investigator, and several others. I’m psyched for the group: we spent the evening eating delicious food, introducing ourselves, starting a Bible study of 2 Timothy, and sharing prayer requests. It will be so great to have a group of friends my age in the city who are going through exactly what I am.

Today I’m spending time packing and taking stuff up to my new apartment. Tomorrow I get to officially move in. And Saturday Daddy is driving a carload of my stuff up here. I can’t wait to see him! And it will be great to get more stuff so I can stop living out of a suitcase. So yes, that is my life as of the past few weeks.

I have been sadly lacking in posting in recent days, I know. I will remedy this soon, but for now I just have a short post. I've been ruminating a lot recently on how incredibly God has provided to get me up to NYC and to give me work and housing and everything I need up here. Here's just a short list off the top of my head of these mini-miracles:

-Matt asking me to be his assistant on the Drunkard
-Housing (couch surfing) getting worked out when mine had fallen through
-Rachel's roommate moving out and me getting to sublet her place for cheap out of the blue
-Finding my desk and chair on the side of the road
-Getting the Nance O'Neil design out of the blue
-Getting the TV set painting job out of the blue
-Getting to meet with WM alums and other friends for portfolio reviews and advice
-Finding a rocking chair outside my apartment for my room
-Getting to go to Redeemer small groups and services

God has been incredibly faithful; incredibly so. He has provided me with work, housing, food, everything I have needed. Now I'm looking at needing more work and more housing, but I can trust that God will continue to provide for me, even if it is in ways I don't expect. I'm tempted to worry about my future now, but I believe that I can trust God to be faithful and provide for me, because He always has in the past.

I've been working on my drafting handwriting a little most days, to improve it and keep it up. To do it, I've been copying out favorite Bible passages and favorite hymns. Some of the verses have been incredibly encouraging. Here's a sampling:

Be Still My Soul

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change, He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heavenly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake
To guide the future, as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

It Is Well With My Soul

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

Eileen was heading out of town early Friday morning, so I took my bags with me to work. I worked on the drop and did other little things, and once rehearsal started I left my stuff at the theatre and headed over to Strand bookstore: another legend of New York. Matt had told me that Pearl and Strand accounted for almost all the money that he made in New York. I understand why: Strand is a wonderful new and used bookstore (they say they have 18 miles of books!) with outside stalls of $1 books, a basement with thousands of books by category, a rare books floor, and a floor of entirely art and design books. Which I loved. I could spend soooo much money there, now that I'm moving here I probably will.
As I was browsing at Strand I got a phone call from Matt and gave him an update on the show. I was hungry so I went to a coffee shop for a grilled cheese sandwich. The people at the table next to me were shooting a scene for a film and I enjoyed watching them.

I went back to Strand after lunch and then meandered back to the theatre to pick up my bags and head to the subway. I had arranged to meet Matt's friend Lisa, who had agreed to house me for the weekend, at Radio City Music Hall where she works at 5:30. I got there slightly early, and waited around for about 20 min until she came out. We said hello (I had never seen her, only spoken on the phone the day before) and jumped on the subway to go to Astoria, Queens, where she lives.

Lisa is amazing. She and Matt started in the city about the same time 10ish years ago and assisted a lot of the same designers and worked on shows together. Since then she's become a project manager and designer; right now she's running the preproduction for a huge new show at Radio City Music Hall. But now she's realized that designing is not what she really loves to do so she's going back to school for massage therapy in the fall, while still working her day job. She's incredibly down to earth and friendly. I felt like I had known her for a long time, we clicked immediately and talked all the way back to Queens. I asked her about herself and answered her questions about me. She subscribes to the same philosophy that Matt does when it comes to breaking into theatre: just do it. Don't spend time freaking out about it or worrying that you're not good enough. Just decide what you want to do and go for it; make the phone calls, work for the people that you want to work for. It was inspiring to talk to someone who has made it, and to hear her think that I could make it too if I just tried.

Lisa lives in a beautiful house in Astoria; she's moving to Manhattan now and was still kind enough to host me in the midst of packing up everything she owns. She put me in a room with a very comfortable air mattress (I slept wonderfully all the nights I was there) and gave me keys so I could come and go as I pleased. Once we got home we were both pretty hungry so we decided to go out so she could show me the neighborhood and we could get food. Astoria is lovely, apparently very safe, with lots of great reasonably priced restaurants. We went to a new Italian place and ordered a pizza to go and then went down to the wine store and bought 2 bottles of wine. We discovered that we both tend to buy by the label (whichever wine has the coolest label in the price range we want is the one we buy), but we ended up with good wines in spite of that. Back at the house we sat at the table and ate and chatted and drank wine. Soon Lisa's best friend Sarah (roommate from college and roommate in the city for the first 5 years they were here) came over and ate and drank with us. She was very nice as well; as the evening progressed she and Lisa got into a fairly intense discussion about a guy that Sarah was considering dating that Lisa did not like. It was very clear that they knew each other very well and cared about each other a lot; kind of refreshing actually to see two friends who were willing to argue with each other because they cared so much about each other. The evening was lovely, though, we talked for about 3 hours and then Sarah went home and I showered and went to bed.

Saturday I woke up early and took the subway down to the theatre. There was no rehearsal so I was able to work the full day in the space which was great. I finished the charcoal city drop I had been working on for several days (it looks pretty cool if I do say it myself) and worked on the bar set piece, finishing it up and painting it. Alex and Michael (artistic director and executive producer/lead in the show) were there working too so we had fun talking. I headed back to Astoria around 6pm, where I showered and then went out with Lisa and Sarah. A friend of theirs was having a birthday party at a nearby bar and they invited me along, so I went. We first stopped at a new burger place (it was pretty good) where Lisa described what it was like to have been a vegan and then vegetarian and to recently have started eating meat again. Very interesting.

We walked over to the bar and found their group out in the garden. The friend who's birthday it was ended up being the assistant charge from Juilliard who I had interviewed with back in April. She remembered me and it was weird to see just how small a world theatre is. The group of us sat in the garden and drank (I got a Stella) and talked for a couple hours, then Lisa and Sarah and I left and headed home. Back at the house Lisa and I had a discussion of how it's really only worth it to do theatre if you really love it, and how if you really love it you'll make a way to work in it. Eventually we both went to bed.

Sunday I had decided to take the day off work. I was going to go to Redeemer Presbyterian Church (Tim Keller's church) but ended up sleeping in past their morning services. It was my first time sleeping in since I came to the city, so I was ok with it. Lisa was gone when I got up, she left a note saying that she would be in Manhattan all day with a friend and to call her if I needed anything. I left the house around 10am and went to a bagel shop for breakfast (garlic bagel with cream cheese and coffee....delicious). The day before, Alex, the artistic director at the theatre, informed me that he was concerned that I was working too much and not having enough fun in New York. He was going to a vintage motorcycle show in Brooklyn on Sunday and invited me to come along if I wanted to. I figured that it would be interesting and a new experience so I took the subway over there after breakfast to meet Alex and his friend Leone at the show. Subways run weirdly in the city on weekends, I discovered. A lot of the routes change due to maintenance work and several stations don't get service at all. I had to take a bus down from the subway to get to Brooklyn because the trains weren't running there. It was fairly straightforward; I got slightly turned around when I got off, but then figured it out. When I got to the show, which was a big blocked off street with tents and food and rows of people's motorcycle's from the '70s and '80s (kind of like a farmers' market for motorcycles), Alex wasn't there yet so I just wandered around and looked at all the bikes. They were really cool; I had never spent time looking at one up close before but I discovered that there are several different types and got to see how the machine has evolved from older models to what people ride today.

Alex and his friend arrived after about an hour and we wandered up and down the street chatting and looking at bikes, got beer (they were charging for the water, but the beer and the food were free), and generally had a good time. Alex took these photos and sent them to the production staff for the Drunkard to make them jealous.



I left at about 2pm, planning to go to the Met for the afternoon. This was not to be, however. I got to the subway stop I had planned to leave from only to discover that trains were not running there that day. So I was stuck in Brooklyn with little idea of where I was. I found a bus stop, though, and got on a bus that eventually took me over by where Eileen lives, an area I at least slightly knew. There I was able to get the subway back to Manhattan. However, it had taken like 2 hours longer than I planned for, so I ended up just canning the Met idea and heading back to Astoria instead. I was hoping to catch Lisa and see if she could give me comments on my portfolio and then go swing dancing with her and Sarah. When I got back though I got a call from her that she was going to a movie with her friend and probably wouldn't make it home at all that night. So instead I organized my notes for the show and did laundry (Lisa kindly let me use the machines at her house which was great because my clothes were quite dirty since I had to bring so few of them). I was tired and started feeling a bit lonely and depressed because I was by myself. So I went out to wander the neighborhood and find dinner and called Remus and talked for a couple hours. That helped a lot, it was good to hear from her; we hadn't talked since I left for the city. I bought dinner at the grocery store: an Aloe Vera Juice drink (quite good, sweet, Japanese, but has chunks of Aloe floating in it that you have to get used to) and a peach pie, which I ate half of and had the other half for lunch the next day. I went to bed around 11 or midnight and slept very well.

tbc

The Saga Begins

Well so much has happened in the past few weeks that I don't know where to start. Long story short I moved back home from Williamsburg, hung out and unpacked and repacked for a week, spent a couple awesome days with the Chapmans, and went to Nags Head for a wonderful week with the fam. It was all wonderful but I don't have space to talk about it here BECAUSE...

I'm in New York! During the beach trip I was looking for work; part of that entailed talking with Matt about the New York show we had discussed over the summer and seeing if he still needed my help. He did and we arranged that I would spend 3 days in the city right after the beach. I tried to arrange housing for myself with friends but at the last minute that fell through. I was very sad and called Matt the day before I was supposed to leave to tell him that it looked like I wouldn't be able to come after all. He minor-ly freaked out (he told me later that he contemplated throwing his phone off the roof) and told me that he really needed me up here. He made a counter offer that he would find me housing for the first week and get the theatre to pay me more than originally agreed if I would come up to the city for 2 weeks and arrange housing myself for the second week. This all happened Saturday evening. I spent Sunday packing and updating my portfolio (and seeing Todd and Janetta!!) and on Monday at 4:30 am my wonderful sister Melanie kindly sacrificed sleep to drive me to Baltimore to catch the train to Penn Station. I read the script to the play on the way up and once I arrived I took the subway to the theatre. I got a tiny bit lost walking from the station to the theatre, but I called Matt and he sorted me out.

I arrived at the Playhouse at the same time as Dan, a recent MFA-graduate who worked as Charge Artist for the Pennsylvania show that Matt and I did this summer. He just moved to the city and Matt had called him to come work on the show for a couple days. Matt met us both and showed us around the space and gave us a quick rundown of his design. Then we jumped right into it, Dan painting based coats on the back wall and the luaun and Matt and I building frames for sliding panels that are one of the major set pieces. It was strange to be building again; it's been a long time since I've done it but I gradually got back into the swing of things. We worked like crazy for 3 hours until rehearsal started at 1, then stopped for the day. The three of us went out to lunch together to a taco joint (very good, I had a bean, cheese, and rice burrito) and chatted and I got to know Dan better. After lunch Matt and I ditched Dan and went on a walking tour of lower Manhattan. Matt knows the area really well because he did a lot of shows there and went to grad school in the general vicinity. So we walked all over and he showed me all his favorite spots. useful stores to know about, and the general geography of the Lower East Side. We went into Pearl, which is apparently the best art store in the world (Matt had been raving about it to me for months). And he's right, the place is incredible: it's 5 stories tall and chock-full of more art supplies than you could ever imagine, for pretty decent prices. It was kind of like heaven; Matt let me just wander around for a long time. Eventually we headed back toward the theatre, Matt bought us iced coffee because I was fading after being for far too long and he was tired too. Rehearsal was still going on when we got back so we sat out on the roof and Matt talked me through all the particulars of the design. The show is called The Drunkard and it's an 1850s temperance play; it's very interesting. Matt gave me a thumbdrive full of documents to copy to my computer and a couple books of research to memorize overnight and then it was time for me to go for the day.

Matt had arranged that I spend the first several days with the show's stage manager, Eileen. She lives in Brooklyn and so we took the subway back to her place. She was very nice and welcoming, let me sleep on the couch, and invited me along to dinner with her and one of her friends, which I happily attended. I spent a couple hours after dinner going over all the design stuff from Matt and then went to sleep and slept very well.

Tuesday I went in to work by 9am and we worked until 7pm. I spent most of the day out on the roof with Dan cutting profiles for the sliding panels and painting them to look like trees and bushes. It was a little bit awkward because as the asst. designer I was in charge and therefore was supposed to tell Dan what to do; but he has his MFA and I do not so I sometimes felt a bit out of my depth. I got used to being in charge eventually, though, and we ended up getting a lot done. The three of us went to lunch again, this time at a mostly-vegetarian sandwich place. I got a hummus-lettuce-tomato sandwich on a baguette; it was so big I could only eat half of it. Frank, the director, stopped by towards the end of our lunch to say hi and spend a little time talking with me and Dan. He's very nice but very high-energy, almost twitchy, and needs to feel like everyone is working and listening.

After lunch we went back to work, finished painting the stuff outside and then came in to look at the back wall of the theatre. Dan asked Matt about the design, to which Matt responded "Emily has a plan". I didn't, but I immediately came up with one. :-) I spent a couple minutes drawing a rough sketch of a forest scene and then Dan and I sketched it out and painted it. We got the whole thing finished in about 3 hours, it was awesome.

We stopped work at 7 and Matt and I headed uptown to meet his friend Campbell (a professor at NYU that I had met during the school year) for dinner at a delicious Thai restaurant. It was a fun dinner; I didn't talk very much but it was lots of fun to listen to both Matt's and Campbell's stories. Campbell kindly paid for dinner and gave me his phone number to call him later in the week if I needed help at all. He and Matt got me to subway station and I headed back to Brooklyn. I got a bit lost getting back; accidentally got off at the wrong transfer and got turned around, but I got there eventually. Matt had bought me a mini-subway map of Manhattan which then and since has proved extremely useful. I eventually got safely back to Eileen's and went to bed.

Wednesday morning we met at the theatre at 9 again. I was a little early and found Matt sitting outside waiting for us. We sat and chatted a bit while we waited for Dan, then went inside and got to work. I spent the morning working on a 4-piece muslin drop of a city scene. I made a sketch and then started laying the thing out on the roof. At noon we stopped work and went to lunch, to another vegetarian cafe up the street; I got a fruit smoothie cuz I wasn't very hungry. Then we said goodbye to Dan (that was all the time the theatre could afford to hire him for) and Matt and I went back to the theatre. We watched rehearsal for a while, then I made a list of things that needed to get done and talked it over with him. I went out and got coffee for me and Matt and Alex (the artistic director) and chatted with them for a bit (Matt wants to bring a WM show to the theatre next summer), and then I took a walk around the neighborhood to get a better sense of the geography. I was back by 5pm in time for a meeting between Matt, Frank the director, and me to figure out a bunch of set issues before Matt left town and to officially hand over the reigns to me. I took a bunch of notes and we figured a lot of things out. And then it was time for Matt to go to drive back to Williamsburg. I helped him take his stuff outside, said goodbye, and headed back to Brooklyn.

I was feeling a bit down and nervous that night. The meeting with Frank had shown a lot of areas of the design that I was not familiar with and showed that I needed to get to know the script better. I got Chinese food from a take-out place next to Eileen's apartment and spent the evening on the couch going over the design and the script and making a spreadsheet of the show. It was very helpful and I felt much better after doing it. Matt also left me an encouraging voicemail saying he was sure I'd be fine and do a great job, which helped too.

Thursday I went in to work at 9am; Matt had passed on his keys to the theatre to me. I spent the morning mostly working on the drop outside and doing little notes. Alex kindly brought me coffee around 11 and after rehearsal started we had a good chat about everything that needed to happen for the show. I left and went to lunch at the cafe around the corner for a bagel and fruit smoothie and spent time finishing the spreadsheet I had started the previous night. When I finished I came back to the theatre to work more on the drop outside. At 330 we had a production meeting for the staff of the show, my first non-PBK production meeting ever. It went ok, at least for me; though there was some weird back and forth between the director and the costume designer. After the meeting I talked with Alex and then headed over to Blick, another art store, to pick up some more charcoal for the drop. I explored the whole store, bought the charcoal, and then took a long walk exploring the area: SoHo, and the East Village. I called home and talked to the fam for a while as I walked. Then I headed back to Brooklyn and ate my leftover Chinese food before heading to bed.

To be continued....

The trip to Ocean City was lovely. Sunday evening after the show Christy and I drove to Baltimore, arriving around 11pm, to Christy's mom's house to take a load of her stuff home. We spent the night there and left around 10am the next morning to drive the 3 hours to Ocean City. On the way we stopped at a farmer's produce stand and bought fruit: I bought peaches and cherry tomatoes; Christy bought peaches and strawberries. They were delicious and served as our breakfasts throughout our trip. We got to Ocean City around 1pm and went to Christy's great-aunt's house where we were staying. Her great-aunt's daughter and granddaughter were also staying there but they had kindly agreed to let us spend a couple days there too. We dropped our stuff off and headed straight to the beach, just a short walk across the street. The water was glorious; it was fabulous to be in the ocean again. We swam for a bit and then sat in beach chairs under our umbrella and read books. It was in the 80's temperature-wise, so nice that I even felt a little cold after getting out of the water. After our swim we went out on the town for dinner, to a seafood buffet called Phillips. It was very much like Captain Georges' in Williamsburg; very good. I enjoyed it very much but eventually got a bit sick of seafood taste. I had to end my meal with a bit of ribs and mashed potatoes to ensure that I didn't feel sick. After dinner we got on the bus that runs up and down the main drag and went down towards the boardwalk. We stopped at a bar called Seacrets that is apparently THE place to go in OC which Christy had never gone in because she'd never been 21 before. We just walked in to see it and then decided we might go back later. We went down and walked the boardwalk; Christy pointed out all the best places to go and OC traditions. We got ice cream at Dumser's, I got mint chocolate chip dipped in chocolate, it was delicious. We listened to a street violinist playing Phantom of the Opera music and watched an artist creating pieces of art with spray paint which was really cool. We wandered into different stores and then eventually took the bus back towards our house (it took about an hour to get back) and went to sleep.

Tuesday we slept in until about 10 and headed to the beach first thing. We read for a bit, went in the water, read more, chatted; I fell asleep on my chair for a while. It was very nice and relaxing. At about 3 we were hungry so we went back to the house and got dressed. We drove down the strip to the boardwalk, found a parking spot and went to a pizza place that Christy loves. We split a house-special pizza: chicken and broccoli and ham toppings. It was different; I don't think I'll do broccoli on a pizza again, though I'm glad I tried it. We walked around the boardwalk again; Christy bought taffy and popcorn for her family. At around 7 we decided to get a drink somewhere, so we went back to Seacrets to see what it was like. The place is crazy: it's an island-themed, mostly-outdoor bar right on the bay. There are palm trees everywhere strung with Christmas-lights; they have multiple bars, lots of tables, and bands playing. There's a pier that goes out into the water. But the crazy part is that they have tables IN the water. And beyond the tables they have inflatable pool-floats that you can sit on. We went out to an inflatable and climbed on, accidentally bringing a bunch of water on with us so that our previously-dry clothes got pretty wet. We each ended up sitting in a puddle, but it was cool. We waited for a while for a waitress (they came out to the tables and floats in swimsuits) and eventually ordered drinks. I got a pina colada and Christy got a strawberry daiquiri; they were delicious. We eventually left the float and went out on the pier to watch the sun set over the bay. Another funny thing about Seacrets is its reputation: apparently it gets swamped, especially on weekends, and lots of people get very drunk; it is the biggest party spot of the town. So they keep an army of bouncers that they call the "peace police" who check id's and wander around in orange t-shirts keeping order. While we were there a woman in the water with us was either really drunk or just really clumsy and kept falling over in the water. A couple peace policers immediately swooped down, helped her up, and escorted her away. Anyway, after our drinks and the sunset Christy wanted to go back to the house to change her wet pants. So we drove back, changed, and then went out for our dinner around 1030pm. We hit up a Mexican joint across the street called Tequila Mockingbird (clever, right? :-P) and got crab quesadillas, guacamole, and queso. They were delicious but huge and neither of us finished more than half of ours. We went back to the house afterwards, quite tired, and I took a shower and then went straight to bed.

I had discovered a couple days before our trip that Matt and his wife Beth were also going to be vacationing in OC at the same time as us. Christy and I both found that very funny and disturbing; we kept expecting to turn around and find them there or to get seated next to them at a restaurant. But fortunately Ocean City is a very big place and we did not run into them and they were allowed to enjoy their vacation in peace.

We slept in on Wednesday, got up, packed up our stuff and left OC around noon. I got an iced coffee at Dunkin Donuts on our way out of town and then we drove straight back to Williamsburg because we had to get Christy back for the show at 630. The drive wasn't back, only about 4-5 hours, and we got to drive through a few bridge-tunnels. We hit bad traffic coming through VA Beach, but made it back in plenty of time.

Back at the Mills they had a girl from WM name Maryn over for dinner. We had fun chatting with her and ate a delicious meal of 4-cheese pasta and peach and blueberry cobbler. At 11pm I headed over to PBK for the Man for All Seasons photo call. Several members of the production staff were there, including Matt, and we all took pictures of several key moments of the show. I talked with Matt and we arranged to meet the next day for my last day of work: cleaning up the mess we'd made over the summer. Back at the Mill's I watched Jerry Maguire, which I'd been intending to watch for a while. It was fun; different than I expected, but funny.

So Thursday I headed over to PBK around 10am. The design room where my desk is (formerly known as the Fundies room) has a ton of drawers in it. Several of them held my stuff from the past 4 years and then rest of them we slowly filled with Matt's stuff and show-specific design materials. Now that the academic year is about to start again we needed to clear out space for the students to use. So I spent the day making piles of similar things, clearing out my drawers, organizing all Matt's stuff into other drawers, and generally cleaning up. I filled the huge bulletin board in the room with a "what we did this summer" display of lots of the drafting, paint elevations, and sketches from the 3 shows we did for the Fundies students to look at and hopefully get inspired from. The room looked so much better when I was done and I think Matt will know where all of his stuff is after I'm gone (hopefully).

Christy, Moody, and I are on a campaign to eat our way through Williamsburg. We have compiled a list of all the places we absolutely must eat at before we leave town. So Thursday we went to Pierce's Barbeque for lunch, which was delicious, and to Emerald Thai for dinner, also wonderful. Today was Nawab's buffet for lunch and tomorrow I believe is Tequila Rose for margaritas. It's proving to be quite expensive but fun and worth it.

Thursday night I spent organizing my files on my external hard drive. All my theatre photos and files were completely disorganized so I created a folder for each show I've done and moved everything into them and deleted all my duplicates. It took a long time but was totally worth it. I feel so much more organized now. I also spent time writing a letter for Matt: he's asked Christy and me to write letters of recommendation for him for when he applies for tenure. I figured since I'm about to leave I'd better write mine. Around 11pm I received a drunken phone call from my family members who are up in NY at the family reunion. They all sounded like they were having a great time together and were calling members of the family who couldn't make it. It was a bit hard to hear because so many of them were on the phone at once and I had to be quiet in order not to wake the Mills up, but it was fun to say hi to everybody.

Today I spent the morning finishing Matt's letter of recommendation, then headed to Nawab for lunch with peoples. We came back to PBK to meet a group who were heading to Rita's to get ice cream with Drew because he's moving to FL very soon. It was hot out but the ice cream was good. Meg was back in town, back from the beach early, so I got to see her again before I leave which was unexpected but awesome.

After Ritas I went to talk to Matt. He looked through my portfolio one last time and gave suggestions and pointers and we chatted about jobs and my future and all that sort of thing. It was really weird and sad to think that I'm done working for him and won't be seeing him every day and able to wander into his office whenever I want any more. After our talk I loaded up my car with everything that I had in the design room; almost a full trunk of stuff. Drew and Dave teased me that I couldn't leave and that they should unload my car and move my stuff back in. Matt had to leave, so I said goodbye to him, then ran to Kinkos to print off copies of his rec letter for the appropriate people. I put them in the right mailboxes back at PBK and then went to say goodbye to Dave and Drew. They gave me lots of encouraging advice and comments about keeping a good attitude, working hard, working lots of jobs, not getting discouraged, making sure I go to grad school, etc. I hugged them both and then walked out of PBK: graduated, unemployed, and full of great memories. I may wander back in on Sunday before I leave, but that may be the last time I'm in that building, my home, for a long time. It was sad to leave, but I was encouraged and excited too.

Back at the Mills we grabbed a quick dinner and then Chris and Eileen and I drove to Richmond to the mall so that Chris could go to the Apple store and Eileen and I could find her a dress for a wedding they're going to next week. We found a lovely one fairly quickly, bought jewelry and stockings to go with it, met up with Chris and got coffee and then drove back Williamsburg. It was fun to spend time with them; I will miss them a lot after I leave.

So now I have two days left here. I have a list of things to do:
-pack
-return library books
-pay parking ticket
-copy favorite recipes from Eileen
-meet Margaret for coffee
-get Tequila Rose and maybe dinner with Moody and Christy
-say goodbye to people
-load car
-drive home

The summer is coming to an end. I'm sad to leave it behind but more hopeful and excited about moving on that I thought I would be. I'm not really saying goodbye to anyone for good; I know I'll be back in Williamsburg at some point and the theatre world is very small so I fully expect to see and/or work with my people again. It's been a great summer and now I get to move on to the next adventure, whatever that may be.