Rain

It rained yesterday. I never noticed before but I feel like after it rains, everything is in HD. Crystal clear. I loved it. It was absolutely beautiful and I just had to write about it. That's all.

I'm getting too old for this. Why can't people just grow up and get over their shit?

Last night was a great night...until I was driving home from a rather successful rehearsal. One of the cast members called me to let me know that she and her boyfriend (also in my cast) as well as a few other castmates had an altercation with cast members of the other show that's going on at school. It was related to drama between two couples (the one in our cast and one in the other) that were once really good friends and now have grown apart due to one person's dislike for her friend's boyfriend.

I guess what happened (as told by the person who called me) was that she was talking to someone in our cast and answering questions that this person had about why people in the other cast were being rude to her. Well, the boyfriend of the couple in the other show overheard this and must have told his girlfriend because as my cast members were leaving rehearsal, a number of the cast members from the other show were outside waiting for them and started verbally attacking them (I believe the boyfriend of the couple in my cast was called an "oompa loompa." Real mature, I know). Apparently the boyfriend of the couple in my cast was so angered that he needed to be held back by another member of my cast (an innocent bystander, no doubt, but I'm thankful for the military training that he's been through). All of this was occuring while I, the stage manager, and the director were fisnishing up inside and locking up. I had no idea this happened until I was called and I thought that it was weird when a member of the other cast asked me if the director of our show was still around (I'm guessing so she could complain about my cast causing trouble, when she was waiting around to start it).

I'm so sick of this. Every show I do, there's some form of drama between people in our cast. I'm getting too old for this. And every time, it's related to something that happened in the past. This just further's my need to get out of this school. I need to move on, and I'm now working harder to do that. I love theatre and I don't want to give it up, but every time something like this happens, it just makes me want to quit. I love the theatre for the fulfillment I get out of performing to sell-out crowds (that's still kind of surreal to me), and what I get personally out of it: I love making people happy with my performances. But I hate the people sometimes. A lot of them are attention whores and drama queens and I can't stand being around such selfish people. It sickens me (literally, I sometimes can't sleep because of the "drama" that happens, which then weakens my immune system, and makes me get sick. Ugh). I wish there was some way that I could do what I love, but not with the people I hate.

I just wish that these people (some of them are actually older than me, believe it or not) would just grow up and get over what little trivial drama they have with each other. When I told my mom about what happened, she asked, "Are you guys in elementary school again?" Come on guys. My junior high kids in youth group and camp are more mature than you. I don't care if you don't like each other, just grow up and move on. I'm not saying that you have to be best friends, just stop spreading rumors and gossiping about them. No one that matters actually cares about the shit you say. And if you don't like the person/people, then don't talk to them.

Don't get me wrong, some of the people I've met through theatre are some of my best friends. And those friends have been amazing when I've needed their support. But it's only a few people that I can actually trust. And I'm not sure whether or not it's worth it to stay in this theatre department just because of a few people. Ugh. Sometimes, I hate my life.

I may be going to New York!!!

Hooray!!! A much needed vacation may possibly occur during the week of Thanksgiving. I don't want to get my hopes up though because the idea was just presented to me yesterday. My friend Kelly was in the Green Room talking about how she was going to New York yesterday and said that her mom was going to buy an extra ticket for anyone that wanted to go with her. I said I'd go with her and she said, "Ok." We talked about it a little and that was pretty much it. Now there are two things currently in my way of making this a real thing: 1) I'm not too enitirely sure how serious Kelly is about doing this. She said that she wanted to look at colleges and stuff so that makes me think that she is going to do this. But she tends to kind of flake out sometimes. 2) This trip would be the week of Thanksgiving and I don't know if my mom would really like me to be away during a "family holiday" but I'm going to try and explain to her that at least it's not Christmas, which tends to be a bigger event than Thanksgiving. Plus, I haven't been very keen on Thanksgiving in more recent years. I think the effects of my grandmother's death the day before some years ago has to do with that. I'm going to try and talk to her today about it. I hope things go well.

Now, IF I do go I have to come up with a list of things to do while I'm there:
1. Eat at "Famous Ray's Pizza," (apparently that's going to be our first meal there according to Kelly).
2. See a Broadway show (Kelly and I agreed on The Little Mermaid)
3. Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
4. Ice Skating at Rockefeller Center
5. Visit ground zero
6. Statue of Liberty
7. Times Square
8. Empire State Building (Jim said that I should throw a penny off the top, Kelly says it's not possible because of fencing)
9. United Nations (if I'm going to work there one day, I should get used to my surroundings)
10. Kelly wants to look at NYU, and I'm thinking that I do too.
11. Central Park
12. Metropolitan Museum of Art
13. Breakfast at Tiffany's
14. maybe Greenwich Village
15. riding the subway

There are definitely more, but at least this is a starting point. That, and I have to go type an essay now.

New Blog!

For those of you who would like to read the stories of my wacky travels, here's the link: www.travelsinthegreatwidesomewhere.blogspot.com. Hope you enjoy it!

Sleep...

I think I may have a mild form of insomnia. For the past few weeks, it's been a rare occassion for me to actually get a full night's sleep without my sleep cycle being interrupted. I usually go to bed around 10:30 or 11...sometimes 11:30 depending on what time I get home from rehearsal. Then I'll wake up around 3am, right around the time my dad gets up for work (he has to be at work at 4). Sometimes, I can get to sleep right away and be ok the next morning but others, I'll stay up for a couple of hours, only to fall asleep for a mere 30 minutes to an hour before I have to be up for work/school. It's been better since last week (I blame that on the fact that I was stressed about my situation with my now ex boyfriend) but it's still not what it could be. I like sleep, it rejuvenates me, but for some reason, I can't get enough of it. Ugh. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep better soon.

needing to vent...

Yesterday was not the greatest day for me. To begin with, at the beginning of this week, I broke up with my boyfriend. And although I still love him, I feel that it was the right thing to do. He's taking it better than I had expected and we will try to remain friends, which is good. I feel bad that I broke up with him over a myspace message but in all honesty, I had no idea when I was going to see or talk to him in order to do it in person so really, that was my only option. But more importantly, I got the chance to express how I was feeling without him interupting me, which is what I needed. He read the message the next day and I feel like he didn't read the letter in its entirety (sp?) because he continued to ask me questions in which the answers were obviously stated (some of them 4 or 5 times) in the letter. Oh well. Although I'm sad about it, I know it was the right thing to do and I'm moving on.

After the whole "break up," I was just not in a good mood (as smoothly as it went, I'm still upset about it). Anything that anyone said or did yesterday just seemed to annoy the shit out of me (I also attribute these little annoyances to PMS but it seemed to be heightened after the events of Tuesday night). Take this girl in my math class:

I have a pretty cool math teacher (for those of you attending GCC, take Hassett, he's really cool!) and the way he takes attendance and checks that we did our homework is by giving us a little quiz in which he takes 2 problems from the homework that we are supposed to copy from our homework onto a blank sheet of paper. We cannot copy the problem from the book, it has to be from OUR homework. If you didn't do the homework or arrive late, you have to write your name on a blank piece of paper. So this girl gets caught copying the problems from her friend/neighbor's homework, NOT hers. The teacher sees this and proceeds to ask her to see HER homework which she does not turn up. He takes the sheet and rips it up and makes it rather clear that if she does it again, she's out of not just his class, but out of GCC (I believe his exact words were, "If I catch you doing it again, I will make sure that you can't get into any California Community College ever again." That's how serious he is about cheating). She, for whatever reason (maybe too much peroxide has seeped into her brain), can't seem to understand that she basically cheated and proceeds to ask why he tore up her homework quiz. After that whole thing was cleared up, it seemed like anything she said in class yesterday was THE DUMBEST COMMENT ALIVE!!! I wanted to punch her in the face every time she opened her mouth. It's like, the teacher would say something like, "2 + 2 = 4," and like 10 minutes later, she would ask, "Is 2 + 2, 4?" It was the most annoying thing ever. I hate it when people don't listen!!! Ugh. Anyway, I just needed to vent that.

On a different note, my dad got beat up by a 2 x 4 this past weekend. This pic is the result of what happened. We have an old house and my dad needed to re-enforce a wall so that we could hang our flat screen TV above our fireplace. The structure he built was perfectly level, but due to our house's age, the wall is not. He was placing the last piece between the ceiling and another piece and on one end, it fit but it was off about half an inch on the other end. He tried to force it into place and when he realized that it wasn't going to work, he pried the piece off and it fell and hit him smack dab on the eye. Now he has a VERY black eye, with about a one inch gash just above the eye. No concussion, just a big black eye. But a few nights later, he showed that piece of wood who was boss...

yesterday...

I took Kelly to the hospital yesterday because she fell and we thought she broke her arm. She's fine, nothing's broken but we went into the room to get discharged and this is what we saw. There's an entire cabinet devoted to vaginal hemorrhaging! Like they have so many people coming in with vaginal hemorrhages that they need to have an entire cabinet ready...I just find that weird.

On a plus side, I found out that I won't be auditioning people today. I'm just responsible for making sure that people are in the right place at the right time. And almost immediately after hearing that, my stomach stopped feeling "weird." You have no idea how happy that makes me. Now, if the show sucks due to crappy casting (which I'm sure it won't based on who I know that's trying out), at least it won't be my fault. Now, I'm trying to decide whether or not I'm going to have a breakfast burrito for breakfast. Decisions, decisions...

Something's not right...

...I can't sleep and my stomach feels "weird." That's the best that I can explain it. Weird...not good but not incredibly bad. But definitely not good. I think it's stress. School starts today, auditions are coming up and I've been told that I'm doing the auditioning. That would be great if I was directing the show, but I'm merely the assistant stage manager...and it's my first experience doing any kind of backstage work. I have a feeling that I may end up helping Kelly (the stage manager) direct the show...which would be ok if either of us had any experience directing or even stage managing. I fear I've gotten myself into some sort of mess. Hopefully everything will work out for the better...