Sufjan Stevens

It's late, but it's still Wednesday.

I went to Sufjan Stevens' show on Sunday the 18th. I wasn't totally impressed at the time. It was great, but I think his music takes more time to process than the average radio fare, which always means I'll grow to love it more.

You should love it to. Buy Illinois. Heck, buy any of his albums. He makes lovely music.

Monday List

Gah. I'm busy. Sorry.

Show closed yesterday. Disappointing audience sizes. Show was good, though.

Have that big audition tomorrow. Am so not ready.

Going on for one Park Square student matinee because my friend can't do it. Have to learn the show in less than a week.

Stage managing. Why? Because I was asked. *sigh*

Finally got my oil changed. Still need to get tires rotated.

The weather has taken a turn for the cool. I like it. Fall clothes are fun.

I'm hungry now. Do I have anything to eat? Um, tuna, bread, and peanut butter. Yay!

Percolating

My show opens on Thursday. That's kind of scary.

Big audition next Tuesday. I have to sing a gospel song. Eek.

Went to advanced ballet this morning. Couldn't follow some of the combinations, but still felt pretty good about being able to keep up.

Money is really tight these days. That's really scary. I can't temp because my schedule is too unstable. I can't get a regular job because my schedule is too unstable. I can't seem to get any on camera work these days, though. Rock--->me<---hard place.

So much to accomplish today, and I only have about three more hours before I need to leave for rehearsal.

Really want a nap. No time to take a nap.

Need to get off the computer.

Technology moves too fast.

Years ago, when I learned HTML, all you had to know were the basics and you could have a pretty snazzy page. Now you need to know all these programming languages and style sheet attributes and Movable Type and blah blee blah and I just can't keep up.

As you can see, I'm attempting to redesign my site. And now my head hurts. Part of the problem is that I'm not a graphic designer, so I don't have the tools to get what I want, and even if I did have them, I wouldn't know how to use them. A lot of me says, "Just break down and hire someone else to do it!" But I dig my heels in instead and scream, "I can do this! I can learn this! I refuse to give up!" I'm stubborn like that.

So if things look wonky, I apologize. I'm working on it. And soon things will be beautiful, I promise.

PS - I had an extremely lovely phone call yesterday, but the details are going to stay under wraps for right now. I don't want to jinx it. :D

Happy Wednesday!

What a beautiful morning. I woke up later than my alarm intended, but that didn't matter. I was still up earlier than yesterday, and that's the goal. I actually had to pull my blanket onto my bed because I was cold last night, so I woke up toasty warm with a cold nose, just how I like it. Bright sunshine was waiting to get through the curtains. Birds were singing. You know the cliches.

After delaying my actual exit from bed for a few minutes more, I got up and checked email, drank a glass of water, washed yesterday's dishes, and decided today was a perfect day to explore some of Minnehaha Park. (Have a mentioned before the Minneapolis has one of the best park systems in the country? Well, it does. And it shows.) I put on some clothes and my iPod and headed out the door.

The intersection near my new home is busy, but I love it. It makes for amazing people-watching. There are bike lanes running down both sides of the road, there's a stylish coffee shop across the street, and people driving by have no idea they're being watched while they're sitting at the light waiting to turn.

I crossed the street and headed down into the park. A landscaping company was aerating a lawn on my way to the park. They were probably using some soul-killing chemicals, but it smelled really good. Once inside the park I headed toward the house I always see from Highway 55 but have no idea why it's there. It's a yellow two-story with a white picket fence and a cobbled sidewalk leading to it. There was a car parked in the driveway and for a moment I thought that someone lived there. That's a silly thought though, because no one can live in a city park (unless they live there, um, informally). There was, however, a sign on the door proclaiming that the Longfellow House hours were 11:00 am to 4:30 pm. I decided to revisit some day when I wasn't bent on exercise.

The walking path on the west side of Minnehaha Park winds along the cliff above the river. I followed that path. There were a few worn dirt paths leading down to the river, but I didn't feel like possibly falling to my death while alone and exploring places I had no business being in. My favorite spot - and one that will be featured prominently should I ever make a film - was an arbor walkway with green vines covering the entire thing. It looked like a little bit of Tuscany in Minnesota. Someone was shooting their senior pictures in there. Good idea.

The regular walking path ended in an off leash dog park, and I didn't have a dog so I had no business going down there. I could have gone another two miles to Fort Snelling, but my knees weren't having it. So I turned around. On the way back I saw an albino squirrel. That little genetic aberration was beautiful. I hope that being bright white in a forest of green and brown isn't too much of a liability for it: I'd like to see it again sometime.

I smiled and said "hello" to everyone I passed today. I think it was that kind of day. The sun was out, it wasn't too hot, and everyone was in a friendly mood. When you're surrounded by green and water and sunshine and you're doing an activity that's healthy for your body and your mind, how can you help smiling at strangers? I also remember thinking that I hope to live most of my life in a place where smiling and speaking to someone you don't know is the norm rather than the exception. Maybe that's why I've never considered moving to New York.

Now I have to get on to the business of the day - getting heat for the winter, mailing postcards and resumes, showering, learning lines for HPC and Teatro, trying not to spend money. Ciao!

Oh yes.

I remembered what else I wanted to write about.

Thing 1) I saw The Buddha Prince yesterday afternoon and it was fantastic. It was outdoors at Minnehaha Park here in Minneapolis. It was a hot day and during the whole show I thought "They have to be sweating like crazy, running around and jumping like that." But if they were bothered by the heat they didn't let it show.

The show chronicled the young life of the 14th Dalai Lama and, as the official website says, was designed as a walking play. We started in one location and moved to several different ones as the story unfolded. (My friend Eric played the Dalai Lama as a boy and he was fantastic. I think he got some muscles from all the physical work he did in this show. Or maybe he always had them and I've just never seem his arms. Heh.) It was a great experience for me as I know, or knew, next to nothing about this person who is so important to billions of people. The way the play is scripted asks a lot of the questions that non-Buddhists have and I appreciated hearing some of those answers.

So if you get the chance, go see The Buddha Prince.

The Buddha Prince
September 12th & 13th in Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis, MN at 6 pm
And September 23rd through October 1st in Central Park, NY, NY
Check the website for details

Thing 2) My sister and mother have me hooked on Lost now. I avoid shows that I hear that other people are hooked on so that I won't get hooked on them, too. But my mom bought season one on DVD and we started watching them while my sister was visiting. I was at my mom and dad's house until 1:30 am watching that stupid show. And I know it's going to be all I think about for the next week unless I can get ahold of those DVDs and finish watching them. Grrrr...stupid good show...

Happy Monday!

It's always a bad sign when you sit down to be creative, to flex your writing muscles a little, and all the stuff that you have to do starts flying through your brain at breakneck speed. I was actually excited to spend a few minutes here recapping my weekend, but I can't seem to focus. Ah well. Even though there are many things I know I wanted to write about, the film is the only thing that's coming to mind.

So I shot my scene for the film Yielding on Saturday evening. This is the first feature length film I've been a part of. And even though, as one paper put it, the film is on a "shoe-string budget," I had a good time. Everyone involved is friendly and professional, and after some of the experiences I've had shooting short films I appreciate that professionalism.

We shot at a quadplex apartment in NE Minneapolis. The apartment was nice and really belonged to a graphic designer, but for Saturday we pretended that the lead female lived there. (It's times like these I wish I had a digital camera so I could illustrate my stories, but oh well.) There was no air conditioning and it was HOT. They had a few fans going, but they couldn't be on full blast while sound was recording. We suffer for our art.

I had exactly seven lines. But I had lines. Steve Johnson was my scene counterpart, and our official character names were "Businessman" and "Businesswoman", but I decided that our names were really Ken and Barbie. (I have to confess that before I met Steve I did some digging to find out what "Businessman" looked like. The report was that he was quite attractive. That report was correct, both on paper and in person. Hee.) As people tend to do on shoots with people they've met five minutes before because there isn't much else to do, we gabbed all night. I talked about how fabulous my pants were and he talked about how he had to do a print shoot in the shower with another woman (that he met five minutes before) completely nude.

After they shot us saying our lines at different angles and zoomed around the room of the party scene (for it was a housewarming party), they sent us home. I made off with some goodies from the craft services table and bid everyone adieu. It was a fun way to spend a Saturday night and I can't wait to see the finished product.

I updated my 43 Things. Go see.

Poop on MySpace.

Updating from the cafe across the street. On my mother's laptop. I borrowed it for this week so that I don't starve from lack of internet connection. It's become much noisier in the last half hour. I'm not sure what's so special about 2:00 on a Wednesday, but there are a lot of people here right now. And I've never seen any of them before. Even though I'm the relative newcomer to the neighborhood, I still feel like I should know these people. Or they should know me. Or something.

I signed up for Zenon's scholarship program once again this fall. I'm really excited to get back into classes, even though I'll only be able to take the required four classes per week. I have rehearsal and performances for my current show up until the end of September, and then I'll start stage managing another show immediately after that. I have no idea when that closes (should probably know these things) but I think I'll be booked up in the evening all the way until the end of November. It's not bad to be busy, I would simply prefer to be able to study and be busy with work at the same time.

Speaking of dance, I did some minimal research on a local company here in Minneapolis called TU Dance. Toni and Uri Sands created the company, and Tony teaches an advanced modern class at Zenon on Thursday mornings. I've often come early for ballet and stuck my head into the other studio to watch her class do their last across the floor combination. The energy and the style of dance are what I aspire to do, but I know I have a long way before I get there. Nonetheless, my Afro Modern teacher has been encouraging me to take Toni's class, and I told her that I would once the new session starts.

I have to admit that I'm a little freaked out at the thought of taking an advanced modern class. I know that the worst I can do is fall on my butt, and I've already done that numerous times, so I have nothing to fear from that. I worry, though that the "actual dancers" in the class will look at me like, "What is she doing here? She doesn't belong here," and the thought makes me queasy. However, I'll never get better if I don't push myself, and I also know when to take myself out of an activity or movement, or simplify it if I feel it's going to make me cry if I attempt it. So the moral is: swallow your pride and look silly for a while, Adia.

Ah well, I have to go to rehearsal now. Man, there's never enough time.

This stinks.

I am without internet. I feel incomplete.

See, I moved. And apparently Time Warner has to send out a technician to shimmy up the telephone pole and connect the internet cable. And for that, I have to wait 8 more days.

In the meantime, I've been going to rehearsal and attempting to make my new apartment livable. And did I mention that my new place is fabulous? It's huge. I don't know what to do with all the space. I certainly don't have enough furniture, hence all my clothing that isn't on hangers is in a pile on the floor of my bedroom. The mess kind of stresses me out, but I'm powerless to do anything about it until I buy furniture, and that may be a while: I don't have a lot of extra funds at the moment.

Time to continue checking all the web pages and email addresses that I cannot check at home.