What do Romeo and a slumber party have in common?

And so the red sun sets, and so I shall attempt to, once again, grace the readers of my blog with an update. And once again, I hope that they comment, because they were much better about it last time.

So really, only two things of consequence have happened the past week or so, minus camp (which I’d rather forget about for the time being).

The first was that on Wednesday, I went to see the Broadway Expressions production of Romeo and Juliet. I went for two main reasons: Katrina was Juliet, and I wanted to compare that cast with the other cast (performing this week; I’m going to see it tomorrow night). I was supposed to go with Sarah, but then it became apparent that she had miscalculated how much school she had to do, and so she was unable to come. I went, therefore, all by my poor little lonesome self.

I’ve decided that Megan has to be one of the most interesting people in the world to be greeted by. Every time I see her, it’s something different . . . sometimes it’s violent, sometimes it’s nice, sometimes it’s downright scary . . . and usually it’s some combination of all three (example: after the dress rehearsal of Beauty and the Beast, she came back stage and came running at me full speed with her arms flung wide). This time, it was a simple, shouted, “YOU!” To which I replied, nodding sagely, “Me.”

After that highly intelligent exchange, I bought a ticket and went and sat down. I read the program (was somewhat frightened to find that Carrie was playing a guy), talked to the Milligans (who were everywhere . . .) for a while, and then talked to Daphne (who sat next to me) until the show started.

The show was very good. The language was a bit hard to follow at first (I’d imagine that’s a pretty common problem with Shakespeare), and it bugged me because at times it would go into verse for no apparent reason and then go right back out of it again a moment later. But the acting was good, the fighting was good, and they were very good at playing dead. Which is good, because with a gunshot like the one they got, Juliet isn’t going to be doing anything else.

Yes, a gunshot. It was set in the 1950s, sort of meant to be a gang war type of thing, I suppose. Most of the characters carried switchblades, and Mercutio and Tybalt were killed by them. Juliet, as I mentioned, killed herself with a gun, and that was too bad, because a knife would’ve been a lot more convincing. The gun kind of went, “pop?” whenever it went off, which left me laughing rather than deeply moved by the emotion of the scene. (I also laughed when Tybalt died, because a muffled shriek came from the back of the audience, where a certain blonde sat gripping her face in terror.)

I was also informed by Mrs. I-Took-A-Shakespeare-Class (Daphne) that “Juliet” is pronounced “Jule-yet,” rather than “Jule-ee-et.” I was not aware of this, so I figured I’d pass this information on to the wonderfully eager-to-learn readers that my blog attracts.

After the show was over, I was sort of drowning in Milligans (I would be talking to one for a while, then they would leave and another would come and take his place), trying desperately to find a way to go talk to Katrina and John and Carrie and other such non-Milligan people from the show that I knew.

In the end, I simply told Josh, “Well, I have to go, and I want to talk to Katrina before I do, so . . .” and mercifully he took the hint. I DID talk to Katrina, although it wasn’t a terribly interesting conversation other than her informing me that she was “E-LATE-d!” I’m still not entirely sure what that meant, but I’ve learned not to question people in situations like that.

I worked my way slowly but surely towards the door, where I encountered and spoke with Carly for a brief time, and then David for an even briefer one. As I was there talking to David, however, Megan came up and sparked what has to be the single most intelligent statement of all time:

Megan: *slapping me* “Stop growing!”
Me: “I’m sorry!”
David: *to me* “I could drive you . . .”

And rest assured, this statement was not in reference to anything that we had been discussing before Megan came over.

So that was that. Then Thursday, camp happened as usually, and I said to myself all the day long, “This is the last day of the week . . . this is the last day of the week . . . this is the last day of the week . . .” And I apologize to the poor kids, it’s just that there’s a certain few that I did NOT miss over the weekend . . . this camp has given whole new meaning to the verse, “And may Canaan be his slave.” (There is a child named Canaan who I wish would respect authority in the way that slaves respect their masters.)

On Friday, dance happened for the first time in a month or so, although nothing terribly interesting happened (except trying to do the tap routine with only half of the class).

On Friday afternoon, Seth showed up at my house to be transported (along with me) to Preston “Vander Flippet”’s birthday party (Vander Flippet is the last name given to the family by David, who can never remember their actual last name). We were the first ones there, and we hung out in Preston and Jordon’s room and insulted their cheap speakers while listening to Johnny Cash. Exciting times.

Then other people showed up and we went swimming, and had a major war, which I would claim that my team (me, Seth, and Jordon) won, although those who opposed us (Blake, Zack, Preston, and Josh) would say that they won. But since at the end of the battle, my team had four out of the five weapons and were totally destroying them, I’d say that we won.

Then we played Marco Polo for a brief time, in which Jordon and Seth kept tagging one another. Then we went inside and ate, and then we played Cold Apple (they didn’t have any potatoes), Drop the Eraser into the Apple Juice Jar, and Hula Hoop for Longer Than Everyone Else. I completely and utterly failed at all of these games. Although with Cold Apple, I got a crap throw from Jordon which I had to lunge halfway across the room to retrieve, and while I was retrieving it the music stopped, eliminating me and not Jordon. Curse him.

After that happened most folks went out and had an air-soft war, but Seth and I weren’t enthralled by that prospect and instead harassed Kelsey for a while and watched a video of Mrs. Vander Flippet when she was in high school (which was quite amusing). Then Mr. Vander Flippet hooked up his projector and sheet and put some Twilight Zone up on the big screen.

I’ve gotta tell you, I’m not sure I’m a big fan of The Twilight Zone. I saw one a long time ago with Dad that wasn’t scary but sure as heck wasn’t interesting or entertaining in any way, and then I saw the beginning of one here that was funny just because it was made so long ago. It was about this man (William Shatner . . . the other reason it was funny) who thought he saw a gremlin on the wing of a plane, and the gremlin looked basically like a guy with mime make-up in a tail-less beaver suit. But it wasn’t interesting or funny enough to hold my attention.

A while later (after some cake and nighttime swimming with glowsticks and the creation of our own personal whirlpool), we watched another episode . . . one that I actually did watch to the end. And it was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen. It was about this guy who loved to read (and I mean LOVED to read . . . he was obsessed with reading), but who never could because his wife didn’t like him to read at home, and his boss didn’t like him to read at work. He’s kind of a dorky guy, with big Ron Rifkin glasses and dorky hair and all that. So one day he’s at work (he works at a bank), and he goes down in the vault and starts reading the newspaper. The front-page headline reads, “H-BOMB CAPABLE OF TOTAL DESTRUCTION.” Naturally, the instant he reads this, everything starts shaking and we hear a ridiculous explosion. He exits the vault and walks around to find that the H-Bomb was, apparently, capable of total destruction, because nothing else seems in tact. But then he finds the grocery store and, while the store is blown to bits, the food is all perfectly fine, so he eats a little bit and then takes a nap on a convenient couch which he finds right in front of the store.

When he awakens, he wanders around, desperately hoping to find the company of someone. When he fails, he picks up a gun from the local arms salesman and holds it to his head. His finger is tensing on the trigger when he suddenly spies something . . . a fallen pillar reading “Public Library.” The library is no more, but the books are all miraculously unharmed. He therefore spends a long time going through the books and organizing them into piles to read each month. He then sits on the stairs and says to himself, “And the best part of it is . . . now there’s TIME. There’s nothing to stop me from reading them, and I can just read them all the time, for ever and ever.” He sighs contentedly and scratches his face. But in the process, he knocks off his glasses. They his the ground and break.

Meaning, of course, that now he will finally be able to read all he wants, but he is unable to see. He breaks down crying and shouting, “It’s not fair! It’s not fair!” and then it ends.

It was so freakin’ depressing. Like, I had to go and be silly to the point of ridiculousness with Seth just to cheer myself up while the rest of the group watched another one. After that, we hooked up the Gamecube and played Melee for a while. Then we went to bed.

A while ago, however, a devious scheme had been concocted by some devious minds . . . those of myself, Seth, and Ben. We determined to play the good ol’ whipped-cream-in-the-hand-tickled-nose prank on whoever fell asleep first (it was a slumber party). Somehow word of this plan had leaked to the ears of Jordon, who of course leaked it to the rest of the group. As a result of this, Preston got very upset and went and told his mom, claiming that, “She won’t allow pranks.”

Mrs. Vander Flippet, however, turned out to be a very cool person. When Ben went to explain things to her, instead of saying, “No. We will have no pranks in this house,” as Preston had indicated she would, she replied, “Well, you can’t do the whipped-cream thing, because that gets really messy. But if you wanted, you could take the streamers and tie them around people.” So not only did she give us permission to pull a prank, she gave us an idea of what prank to pull.

When we thought everybody was asleep, Ben, Seth and I went out and ripped down the streamers and such and brought them in to arrange over our victims. Preston, thinking he had won, stood up and announced triumphantly, “I’m not asleep!” He had thought we were coming for him. We replied, “No, but THEY are! Shhh!” So we streamered, toiled papered, glow sticked, and otherwise pranked Josh and Tristan, and Tami actually came out and helped us.

After it was over and Tristan and Josh had both woken up, we sat around a metaphorical campfire and Tami told us stories about her childhood and what kind of pranks SHE had pulled when she was an evil child. She and everyone not part of our team (everyone except Ben, Seth, and me) then planned to prank US in the morning. They planned it in careful whispers, so we couldn’t hear them. They told us that we would be pranked when we woke up.

Little did they know that I’m not a very heavy sleeper, even when I’m really tired. And even if I was (which, in all honesty, I am), you aren’t supposed to put the items you’re pranking with on the face of the victim. I felt something fuzzy brush across my face, and I awoke to find Jordon standing over me with a Barbie doll. “Go away,” I said, “you’ve failed.” Or at least something along those general lines.

Then I heard Tami moving around a while later, and with their dog Buddy’s help (he came barreling into my face at Mach 2), I sat up and smiled triumphantly, knowing that I had escaped en-prank-ment. Ben and Seth, however, were not so lucky. They were adorned with anything that could be found in Kelsey’s room. As you can imagine, this resulted in some quite amusing predicaments.

After we’d all had a hearty laugh at their expense (and Ben had chastised me for not waking up my fellow prankers), we ate breakfast burritos and then played some more Melee. We did this for much of the day, and spent the rest of it in the pool, aimlessly doing pointless stuff.

All in all, it was a fun time, although I was very tired both Saturday and Sunday. And that, basically, was my life this past week.

Oh, and AJ showed up on Sunday night, and I hung out and talked to him for a while about lots of different things. One of which has bearing here.

*Note: Some of you have, no doubt, already seen AJ’s post about this on his blog. If that’s the case, my apologies for making you read about it twice.*

No doubt y’all remember my DT’s . . . Deep Thoughts . . . Delvings into the depths of rational thought, questioning any and all things that came along. No doubt y’all also remember that there were only two of them. Well, they’re coming back. But so that they don’t interfere with the weekly chronicle on this site, I have devoted a Xanga to them. This xanga is http://www.xanga.com/So_Thoughtful. I started it a long time ago as a sort of journal, and then I realized that that was dumb because people could happen upon it and read all sorts of things that I wouldn’t want complete strangers to know about me. So I decided that I’d use it as a “random thoughts blog” back in March, when I did a piece called, “On Cruel and Unusual Punishment,” a (if I do say so myself) brilliant eye-opener about murder and barbershops. I later made a quiz on quizzila.com, and posted the URL on this site for reference.

The last post on the site is the quiz URL in April. That will not be the case for much longer (quite possibly not even by the end of tonight). I’m going to be posting DTs on there (although they probably won’t be so labeled or numbered) as often as I can think of DTs to post. So you should check it out from time to time (the link has been added to my sidebar) when you want insights into the world from a slightly lighter perspective than many are inclined to take in this day and age.

And on that note, I bid thee all adieu.

Comments:
AJ: Okay, maybe water-under-ice cold. Go to Pirates first, it’s better. No.

Stephen1: Ooh . . . that’s brutal . . .

Rae1: Yes . . . well . . . the dive-bombing tree kind of got overshadowed in my mind by the winds, because they were more obvious to me. Hmm . . . well perhaps I just saw a clean episode of Flying Circus then. I saw Flying Circus on TV, AJ and I rented ANFSCD a long time ago and watched the first ten-fifteen minutes, then turned it off. And yeah, I’ve heard good things about the Cheese Shop.

Rae2: Yep. Yay for finally having enough time to actually figure out how to do it. And for finally having a picture worth putting there anyway.

Stephen2: Hm . . . well, I may have been a bit rash. Laughing one’s swords off is definitely a worthy and original endeavor. You’ll have to forgive me for assuming that the S stood for Socks.

Beauty and the Heat

*Rachel voice* Nobody LOVES me! *sniff sniff* A whole two weeks with only two comments from one person . . . well, at least I have Rae . . . drat the rest of you. You’d better comment THIS time, or I’ll start quoting cheesy X-Men lines at you unceasingly. And believe me, you don’t want that.

ANYWAY . . . so the past two weeks and this week so far have been crazily exciting. On Sunday night we rehearsed again, as those of you who read it would have gathered from my last post. I don’t recall Sunday being TOO terrible, but it was still ridiculously hot.

Then we had rehearsal on Monday, when we finally had the right lighting (well . . . theoretically, anyway) and makeup. But, I’ll let you in on a little secret . . . *whisper* The entire week, I never wore any makeup! Not a bit! And nobody cared! It made me very happy.

The biggest thing I remember from Monday is that the lighting, as they say, SUCKED miserably. Which was distressing to those of us with scene changes. It’s harder than it looks to run up a four-foot platform, place a giant dome on a table (in the dark), then run down the four-foot platform while three people in giant costumes are coming up it . . . all in about four seconds. And of course Wayne, being Wayne, yells out to me and Sarah, “That’s gonna have to be quicker! You have to get it done before the lights come up!” Not realizing that the lights barely even went out . . . *SIGH* Alas.

But then on Tuesday, the public dress rehearsal, they changed it, so not only was the lighting much better, but I didn’t even have to do the scene change anymore *rejoice rejoice* So that was cool.

Tuesday was mildly depressing at the beginning . . . it was the first time I’d ever performed in front of such a huge crowd, so I was starting to get majorly excited, and I got quite a rush from the applause after “Belle.” And then Wayne comes back stage and says, “Alright, reset yourselves, we’re starting the show over.” *cue “GLOOM” appearing above my head* It kind of broke the spell for a while . . . until Gaston, where of course the applause was simply deafening.

The dress rehearsal went marvelously after that, and so we got Wednesday off. Oh, and did I mention that it was ridiculously hot again on Tuesday night? My gosh . . .

But then Wednesday, things really got interesting. I woke up with a bit of a fever, a sore throat, a clogged-up nose, and a cough. Joy. The first time I get to perform in front of an audience of like 6,000, and I of course magically get sick right in the dead of summer that week.

To make matters worse, Wednesday was the only day for a really long time that we’d be able to go to the DMV and get my Learner’s Permit. So I had to sit, sick, in the DMV for an hour and then take a test. I was pleasantly surprised that it was only an hour, but still. It was dismal. And I passed, so I now have my Permit . . . although I can’t use it until I take the first day of Driver’s Training, which probably won’t be until next Friday or so at the earliest. But oh well.

Thursday, I was feeling a little better, but my throat was still dismally sore. Which wasn’t good, because Beauty and the Beast is a musical. Thursday’s show, despite my condition, went brilliantly . . . and, although we didn’t know it at the time, would be the only show that wasn’t fraught with peril . . . (and there, dear brother, is some better foreshadowing for you)

The show went well, but it was still REALLY hot . . . REALLY hot. I think it was around 108° when we started. Great fun.

Friday. Ohhhhh, accursed Friday. It was (I think) 111° at 8, and something happened that has (as far as I know) never before happened at the Bowl: the dimmer switch overheated and actually had to turn off to avoid exploding. As a result of this, for those of you who (like me) have no idea what a dimmer switch is, none of the lights were automated anymore, and had to be operated manually. They also had two positions: “on” and “off.” They couldn’t be gradually brought up or gradually fade out. As a result of THIS, the show was delayed.

As 8:15 came and went, 8:25 came and went, 8:30 came and went, the cast and the audience grew more and more apprehensive. Wayne told us later that they came “within an eyelash” of calling the show, and he was walking up to the stage to inform the audience as best he could about what was going on. As he passed by the grassy area, he heard a little girl say to her mother anxiously, “. . . but they ARE going to perform tonight, right, mommy?” This, he said, melted his ice-cold heart (okay, the “ice-cold” part was me), and he decided that, gosh darnit, we were going to HAVE this show, if we could use only the spotlights to light everything.

And so we did. We had a bit more lighting than that, but it, as they say, SUCKED majorly. As the show went on, things cooled down a bit (the sun going down and the influence of coolant such as CO2), so they added more lights, and by the end we were back to the same as always. But for a while it was miserably lighted and it took the sheer genius of Dustin’s brilliant stein-dance to keep the audience cheering. Well, that and Megan yelling “YEAH!!!” at the top of her lungs after every scene.

Then came Saturday. Saturday was a big day for me, because not only were Mom and Dad coming, but AJ and Rae were coming down from Fullerton and Stephen was coming from Hisperia to see it. I woke up and felt miraculously better, with very little trace of my sickness remaining. Which was cool.

Then I heard it — thunder. I looked outside, and it was cloudy and gloomy. Wayne had told us weeks ago that it has never, in thirty years, rained on a Bowl production. I was afraid that this would be the exception.

When we got to the Bowl and had the cast meeting, Wayne said, “I’m fully expecting a hurricane tonight, folks. I woke up this morning thinking, ‘Well, we had the overheat last night, what could possibly happen?’” (And so that my dear mother/teacher won’t chastise me for my ignorance . . .) The man had, apparently, not done his research on the weather. If he had, he would have realized that there ARE no hurricanes in California, and that we are inland far enough that we probably wouldn’t have had to worry about it anyway.

In the end, it didn’t rain, but the wind was a’blowin’ somethin’ fierce. And yet, even with the breeze-that-was-a-wind, it was STILL around 110°. I was with my parents in the audience before the show and AJ called, and one of the first things he said to me was, “It shouldn’t be allowed to get this hot. Seriously, like, there should be a law. This is ridiculous.”

Someone’s (I can’t remember who) comment on the problems we’d been having: “It’s a good thing this is the last show, ‘cause if we had another one, we’d probably summon the apocalypse or something . . .”


The show went very well despite the wind and heat, however, so it was cool. And afterwards, we had a cast party type’a thing which was attended by AJ, Rae, Stephen, and David (as well as the cast, of course). They fed us pizza, there were emotional speeches, an emotional song, and the claiming of steins by the cast members as souvenirs.

Afterwards, we came home and Stephen left, then I hung out with AJ and Rae in our family room for a while (and Jersey, although he was mostly with Rae). We talked about Pirates II, and Stargate, and (mostly) M. Night Shamylan (sp?). Then they left, and I went to bed.

The next day, I joined my family (minus AJ) in going to a much-needed vacation to Palm Desert. My friends (specifically David and Sarah) didn’t understand why in the world we would go to the desert in the middle of the summer. Which is understandable. But you know what? When we got there, and I got out of the car, I said honestly, “Ah, this isn’t too bad . . . no hotter than backstage.”

It was a wonderful vacation. We were in the Willow Creek Golf Resort, which had a little condo-thingy for us to stay in, a pool, and a free arcade. Most of the games in the arcade were pretty bad, although Dad and I played a golf one several times. I’m proud to say that I set a record on that game: I shot a +34, thus setting the record for the worst round ever played on that course.

So basically we spent the week reading (mostly by the pool), swimming, eating out, watching TV, and watching movies. As far as TV goes, I saw for the first time in my life Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I was a bit wary of it, afraid that it would lean more towards And Now For Something Completely Different than Monty Python and the Holy Grail in terms of the humor. It pleasantly surprised me by being very clean and absolutely hilarious. (Guy 1: “I’m here for flying lessons.” Guy 2: “Okay, okay. Get up on the desk.” *Guy 1 does so, obeying all instructions* “Now, flap your arms good and hard. Harder. HARDER! There you go. Now jump!!!" *Guy 1 does so, landing with a crash on the floor* “Wow . . . that was bloody rotten.”) The best part of it was that every time the characters walked by an animal, the camera would zoom in on the animal, and the animal would then explode. It would then (usually) go back to the characters.

As far as movies go, we saw Superman Returns in the theaters, and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, DareDevil, and Sky High in our room. (I won’t review Narnia or Sky High because I’ve seen them both before, but I recommend both of them. Sky High is a stupid comedy but it’s really funny, and Narnia you of course all know about.)

Superman Returns: One of the best superhero movies I’ve seen. The character of Superman isn’t as interesting or as cool as, say, Spiderman or the X-Men, and since he’s kind of all-powerful I could see it getting boring after a while. But the movie was very well-made, very well-directed, and VERY well-acted. If I may, for a moment, compare it to X-Men 3. My initial thought in this area is that Bryan Singer should’ve stayed and done X-3, because then it would’ve rocked. As good as it was, it could’ve been much better. The high point of X-3 for me was Ian McKellan (who I love . . . as an actor, not as a person) as Magneto, and I thought that for sure no villain in superhero movies could ever effectively counter that performance. I was wrong. Kevin Spacey was AWESOME as Lex Luthor, playing him as a fairly likeable guy for much of the movie, letting glimpses of cruelty shine through occasionally, and then at the climax became absolutely despicable. It was a glorious performance. Superman was pretty good, Lois Lane was okay, and I really liked the kid and Richard.

In short, go see it. It’s really good. But if you haven’t seen Pirates II, see that first.

DareDevil: This movie wasn’t nearly as good as Superman Returns. It required more of a suspension of belief than most superhero movies (because it didn’t explain how DareDevil acquired his powers, so I got the impression that he was just a normal guy with sharper hearing than most). As a result of what was mentioned in the parentheses, it seemed as though you had a regular guy — a regular BLIND guy — doing all these incredible things. The high point of this movie was Colin Farrell as Bullseye. Not on level with McKellan or Spacey, but still brilliant in its own way. Because the character of Bullseye obviously has issues, and Farrell played it that way. He didn’t play the character (as I think many would have) as a secure crazy assassin-man who had occasional outbursts of problems, but he played him as a sort of nervous, twitchy, wacko who also happened to be crazy good. (“DareDevil . . . he made me . . . *twitch twitch* MISS.”)

So the movie was a lot of fun, but not great as a movie. If you have the opportunity to watch it, I’d recommend it, but just remember that it’s just basically a mindless action movie. But it has Evanescence, so that’s gotta count for something.

As far as eating, we went to (if I can remember . . .):
~ Red Robin — in Redlands, before we left . . . great burgers
~ Pat & Oscars — AMAZING breadsticks, really spicy wings . . . there’s one in Redlands
~ Mimi’s Café — good bread, good burgers, good meatloaf, good pot roast
~ La Casuelas — Probably the best Mexican food I’ve ever had
~ California Pizza Kitchen — Better than Gourmet Pizza Shoppe, same type of place
~ The Elephant Bar — food from around the globe . . . the burger I had was good
~ The Olive Garden — great Italian food, though their breadsticks are inferior to P&O
~ The Cheesecake Factory — save room for dessert, period
~ IHOP — great omelets

As far as reading, I finished Eragon, got about a quarter of the way through Eldest, read the first few chapters of Theater and Incarnation, and read the entire Essential X-Men: Volume 1.

I’m currently reading X-Men Volume 2, and I feel that there’s a good chance I’ll become mildly obsessed with X-Men. So be prepared for random references to it whenever you’re around me.

We also did some shopping (mostly Mom), and I got an awesome dolphin statue and a fish cup to add to my collection of fishies.

On Sunday, we came home. I just laid around for the rest of the day (after picking up Jersey). On Monday, I was settling in for some serious time-wasting, maybe even some blog-updating.

But then I got a phone call from Tracy. “Hey,” she said, “Are we picking you up for camp today, or do you have a ride?” My response: “Uhhhhhhhh . . . camp?”

She was referring, of course, to the Lifehouse Musical Theater Camp, which I had agreed months ago to be a counselor for. I had forgotten about it, and even having forgotten about it I thought it began next Tuesday. It turns out that this is not the case.

So I’ve spent the bulk of the afternoon of the past two days doing that. MTCs are alternately fun and infuriating. It’s kind of cool to have 30 kids watching you to figure out what they’re supposed to do, and to have stuff demonstrated for them, but it’s also really annoying having to deal with 39 screaming kids for three hours. Especially when one of them absolutely refuses to obey . . .

The most fun thing we’ve done so far (for me, at least), was this: Didi wanted to play a theater game, and she called the counselors together to demonstrate it. The game was entitled “improv.” Basically, we were supposed to improvise a scene, having been given a fairy tale to choose a scene from.

Our (the counselors’) fairy tale was Cinderella. Being the only guy, I was (of course) the Prince. Dimyana was the Queen, Rachael was Cinderella, Tina and Bethanne were stepsisters, and Erin was the stepmother. It was a lot of fun. It actually turned out pretty well, although I utterly failed to waltz (which was not surprising to me).

Then we had the kids do it, in groups of five or so with a counselor in each. I was with a group of five doing The Three Little Pigs. You’d be surprised how hard it can be . . . think about it. Who’s the fifth character in The Three Little Pigs? There’s only four . . . we ended up having a narrator, but it didn’t go so well . . . it was going okay (although there were several long pauses), but then our third little pig said to the wolf, “Okay, come on in.” It’s rare that I honestly want to slap my forehead, but I came darn close to actually doing it there.

The only other thing that’s happened was last night, when Sarah came over. We just hung out, watched Wolf’s Rain and FullMetal Alchemist (which was . . . different), and then I introduced her to MST3K, which she seemed to enjoy thoroughly.

Other than that, nothing to report. *there is a spurt of flame and the smell of brimstone, and Mark is . . . elsewhere . . .*

Comments:
Rae: Heh . . . yeah, Shel rocks . . . that must be interesting . . . and obviously, I’ve already come to your blog.

Freakin’ COMMENT this time, people!