No good can come of this *grin*

Well it was bound to happen at some point. My mother and aunt now read my blog. This should be very, very interesting. I'm not altogether worried about it given that I practically tell my mother everything as it is, and having this blog up means that anyone and everyone can read it.

The only real area of concern is that my target audience thus far has been my friends who are my age, so if I get the urge to curse, be a bit crude, or even simply use terms that are not well known out of the immediate circle of my friends, then I do so. Of course that is not going to change. In the end the one major person I write this for is me and if other people like reading it, so be it. :)

So to Mom and Keke, welcome. This is my blog. I hope you enjoy it, but read at your own risk. You may find it amusing. You may find it enlightening. You may also find answers to questions you would rather not have asked. Thus is the risk of reading someone's journal. Consider yourselves warned. :)

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Latest on the Condo

Well the condo closing is back to being mid-February. No biggie. It turns out the info the realtor had was not entirely correct.

I will likely be having an open house sometime in April once I settle in.

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Congratulations!!

Congratulations to Colin and Kristin on their engagement. It couldn't happen to a nicer couple. Kristin is an incredible woman that Colin was lucky enough to find and hold onto. ;) I wish them the best. An Irish toast to you both:

"May the best day of your past be the worst day of your future."

[BTW, this is what I didn't mention on 11/30 for those that were wondering. They had gotten engaged that evening and I wanted to give them both time to tell anyone they wanted directly before I said anything here on the blog.]

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Countdown to home

Well, I got told Tuesday that my Condo very well may be ready for closing the 3rd week of January, a whole 3 weeks earlier than expected. With that being the target date I'll likely try to close on February 1 to make everything nice and easy for moving out of Elliot's, bills, mortgage etc.

Its exciting and scary to have this get so close to being real. I keep expecting to wake up and find it was all a dream. I just have to hold on a little bit longer.

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Show in 24 Hours

I had a TON of fun with the 3rd Annual Alpha Psi Omega (AYO) Show in 24 Hours, although this one was technically 22 hours.

Here's how the whole thing works:

6pm - Reunion Dinner - dinner and a good time to see all the AYO alumni and time to catch up.
8pm - Convene at the venue location (this time the Little Theatre) and discuss casting. Each actor discusses what they have available for props and costumes. After this the director and writer(s) of each team (3 teams this year) decide who they will take for actors.
8pm - 7am - set, lighting and sound designs are made. set is built and lights are hung.
6:30 am - scripts are due
7am - actors due to the stage to begin work with directors
7am - 12pm - work with directors on readthrough, lines and staging
12pm - 12:30pm LUNCH
12:30pm - 3pm - Stage time
3pm - 5pm - Tech time
5:30pm House opens
6pm ***Show goes up***
7pm Show ends
7:15pm Strike begins
8:00pm Strike ends

All in all a very challenging thing to do. Learning lines in the span of 10 hours is a very intense experience. I certainly can't wait until next year.

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No day but today....

What a day.

First I overslept - I set my alarm to PM instead of AM. Lovely.

Today was the retreat and first meeting of the Greek Life Task Force. I'm on the Membership Development committee. We'll see how this goes.

After this I hung out at the house and then went out w/ Pace, Colin and Kristin to Rent. It was incredible. The sequences for "Tango: Maureen" and "Take me or Leave" were fantastic. Ok, gushing done.

**BEGIN RANT** (potential spoiler alert)
Ok, first off they cut several songs formost of them being "Contact". Given that sex was kinda one of the defining parts of the people's lives I'm a bit upset this was taken out, on the other hand out of all of the songs it was the least character based and was easily removed for ratings without killing the story. Of course it simply makes me appreciate the stage all the more given they can do things that just don't have mass market appeal since people come to the stage instead of needing to sell out thousands of movie theatres.

Other songs removed were:
"We're Okay" - not too important and not missed much - it also conflicted with the altered storyline that lead to "Take Me or Leave Me".

"Christmas Bells" - Again not a huge loss and didn't work with some of the new pacing of the show. They were able to take any necessary plot points and put it back it into the story in spoken word.

"Happy New Year" - Converted to spoken word and edited somewhat to work with some of the altered plot points.

Any and all "Voice Mail" segments are gone and partially converted to spoken word. Some are gone entirely.

"Halloween" - I think entirely gone. Can't remember.

"Goodbye Love" - They actually did have this but stopped after 2 minutes. I think of all the songs removed this one has the most that I missed. It had a bit of an argument between Mark and Roger that really showed a bit more of the flaws in Mark's character, as his weaknesses were less obvious than the rest. Also removed is the title section with Mimi singing "Goodbye Love". For that part I can take it or leave it, although it explicitly puts Mimi into a rehab before "What You Own".

I also missed specifically "Voice Mail #5" which was the round-style voice-mail with all the parents leaving messages looking for their children.

"Finale" - They pulled most of the beginning of this and converted the ATM comment and most of the end of thet song to dialogue with the except of the "I should tell you" reprise.

Damn I didn't realize until now how many songs they pulled or converted to dialogue. 7 major songs, 2 "Tune up" segments plus all 5 voice mails. Of course there's still 29 songs left in the show with those gone.

I think the main problem that can be said of this movie was that it didn't pick a direction. Either it was going to be a fully faithful adaptation of the stage production and make this essentially a filmed broadway show with slightly more realistic sets or it should have just accepted that it was going to be different and really work at that. "Tango: Maureen", "Take me or leave me", and "Take me out tonight" all were wonderful interpretations of the songs and the scenes.
**END RANT**

Wow that was a longer rant than I had expected. Well I'm off to bed. I have one more item but I don't to steal any thunder so I'll mention it later this week. ;)

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The Half-Blood Prince

My god....

I just finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince....

my god....

so unbelievably twisted....

so harsh....

so dark....

This is a children's book????

I am at a loss....

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Nice and organized

Well I have amazed even myself. I have completely cleaned up my room. The floor is clear and vaccumed. The trash is emptied. The clothes are all cleaned. Sheets are cleaned; both sets. My desk has been dusted as has the armoire. I've moved the air conditioners to the side wall so I can actually open up the drawers in my armoire and use them. I've organized all my bills and miscellaneous files and created a folder to take to work to be shredded that contains all 2004 bills and financial statements. My accounts are all reconciled in Quicken.

At this point I don't know what I'm going to do with myself for the rest of the weekend. I'm sure I'll find something to do. :)

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Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!

I had a pretty good day today. My desk in my room is actually clean and organized. I know, I'm shocked too. Tomorrow the room will be attacked. We shall see if I survive.

I went to my Dad's first today and dinner was good. I got an unexpected present today. My Dad and his wife, Lisa, took the two pertinent pages from the New York Show's program (the info about Sam French and the Passing flyer) and framed them for me. It will be temporarily hanging in my office until I can hang it up in my condo.

Off to my Grammy's after my Dad's and that was fun. I had a piece of her cake and it was heaven. I don't visit my family nearly often enough, but I'm so busy its hard, not to mention while an hour drive doesn't seem too far away it requires at least a 3 hour commitment (2 hours round trip driving and an hour of visiting but it's usually about 2 hours). I got to see my cousins Abby and Aidan. Abby looks just like my sister when she was her age. Aidan is such a sweet baby. He got woken up to get ready to go home and he was kinda walking around in a bit of a "i'm so tired" daze and I said "Aidan, come here" and opened my arms to hug him and he turned and opened up his arms and started walking to me. I picked him up and he immediately moved around a bit until he found the perfect comfortable spot and proceded to nuzzle in with his head on my shoulder. I could have melted.

After that I went home and had a few glasses of rum and coke at the suggestion of a friend I was chatting with over IM. It was nice to chat with him for a bit, we don't chat as much as we did this summer as we've both been very busy and I miss it.

Well off to bed.

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In the "home" stretch

Well I've been told I'll close on my condo on or before 2/15/05. Also I stopped by today and they've begun the exterior landscaping and the rear parking lot is almost finished. I'm looking forward to getting my new home. :)

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