Oh...Uh...Hi?

*cough* Uh...hello?  Is anybody there?  I wouldn't be surprised if everybody left me for more consistent bloggers.  I mean, it has been over a month since I last posted.  But I swear that I have a good excuse for my absence!  Life has kind of exploded lately.

First, 39 Steps, a show that I assistant stage managed at Baton Rouge Little Theater, opened.  

Me and my good friend Ronald, who played Richard Hannay.

That same weekend, I had the final rehearsals for and the performance of Singo de Mayo, as a part of my musical theatre class at school!  I had such a blast this year.  Look for a blog post about it in the near future.

Singo de Mayo was on a Sunday.  The following Monday, finals week began with a double final day.  Yikes!  Luckily, all of my finals were done by Wednesday, so I got a little break during the day Thursday before 39 Steps started again that night.  We had a show Thursday night, Friday night, TWO shows Saturday, and a matinee on Sunday.

Our stage manager, Mel, and the light board operator, Ms. Ellen.  Saturday was Ms. Ellen's birthday, so we went out for dinner between shows to celebrate!

I wasn't feeling so great after the show on Sunday.  I was nauseous, shaky, and exhausted.  By Sunday night, it had developed into a full blown Summer Flu that was making it's way through Baton Rouge.  I tried to just wait it out to see if it would go away on it's own, but when Tuesday came and I still felt like crap, I gave in and made a doctors appointment.  And it's a good thing I did!  Even though my flu symptoms were on their way out by the time I had my appointment Wednesday morning, the doctor heard rattling in my lungs and ordered me to get a chest x-ray, which showed that I had developed pneumonia!  The pneumonia actually wasn't nearly as bad as the flu.  It just made me really tired.  The timing sucked though, because my brother and grandmother came were in town that same weekend.  I barely had enough energy to even go out to dinner with them!  But I trucked through.  I was still able ASM the final weekend of 39 Steps.

I was still at risk for being contagious until 24 hours after I had taken my first anti-biotic, so I wore a mask my first night back at 39 Steps just to be safe.  I didn't want to risk getting anyone sick!  We needed everyone as healthy as possible for this show!

I also had just enough energy to go the LSU School of Music and Dramatic Arts Commencement Ceremony on Friday.  Why?  Because Chris graduated college (again)!  This was actually Chris's second degree.  He graduated with his music education degree a couple of years ago.  This year, he finished up his music performance degree.  Yep, I got me a smart one. :) Congratulations, Chris!

So proud of him :)

By Sunday night, I could feel the pneumonia fog lifting, just in time for me to start two weeks of babysitting during the day, which I absolutely loved.   After babysitting wrapped up, Summer school began!  But not before a busy Saturday.  Saturday the 2nd began with a rehearsal for an LSU Musical Theatre Troupe performance.  Eight of us had to revamp, edit, and, in some cases, learn completely new parts for musical numbers we did in Singo de Mayo so that we could perform them in Vidalia, La. As soon as I was done with the rehearsal, I drove to Lafayette to volunteer at the Louisiana Speech and Hearing Association Conference, which was such an awesome opportunity.  I served as a session monitor for a class on Vestibular Assessment and Management (which means assessment and treatment of balance and dizziness issues as they relate to the ear).  The target audience for the class was audiologists.  Even though I'm on a speech pathology path in school, I still found this class really interesting (probably because it's so different from what I'm focusing on)!  The speaker was great and I learned so much.  I wish I could have stayed for more of the conference, but I couldn't because I had to go home and get ready for...

...Beaux Arts Ball!  Every year, Baton Rouge Little Theater has a ball to honor and recognize all of the volunteers from the past season!  It's always so much fun.  There's mingling, food (really good food!), dancing, and an awards ceremony. The awards ceremony is kind of like a mini-Tony's awards. They give awards for Best Actor and Supporting Actor in a Comedy/Drama and a Musical and Best Actress and Supporting Actress in a Comedy/Drama and Musical.  The nominees and winners for those awards are chosen by a completely anonymous group of people.  I actually won Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy/Drama a couple years back for my role as Sybil Chase in Private Lives.  This year, 2 cast members from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum won awards, as did 2 cast members from 39 Steps! They also give awards for best Backstage and Front of House Volunteers, of which the winners of both were incredibly deserving. 

A fun addition to Beaux Arts this year was a photo booth.  Photos by Staci set up a fun photo booth and provided lots of props for us to use in the photos.  Thanks to Dow Louisiana Federal Credit Union for sponsoring this (as well as our entire season)!

This was my 5th Beaux Arts Awards!  And my first one with Chris!

We brought our friends Mike and Elyse to the ball this year to add to the fun!

Summer school started up this week.  I'm taking my last general education Spanish course (finally)!  I'm really lucky this summer in that I've got a really awesome teacher who actually makes the language interesting and easier to learn.  Spanish really is a beautiful language.  It's just easy to forget that when your being tested on it.

Finally, this past Thursday, I took a trip up "north" with my mom and Chris to perform with 7 other musical theatre students for the fine citizens of Vidalia, Louisiana... in a bank!  We did fourteen musical numbers, including "Anything Goes" from Anything Goes, "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair" from South Pacific, "Seasons of Love," from Rent, and a medley from Jersey Boys (which is such a huge crowd pleaser!).  We had such a great turn out and everyone really seemed to love the show.  Chris played the drums for us and my mom got to fim it.  I'm so glad she got to come :)

Rehearsing "Seasons of Love"

Jersey Silly Boys

All of us with our teacher, the fantastic Terry Patrick-Harris!

"To drum or not to drum?"

I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair!

"Seasons of Love"

So yes, life has been very busy for me lately.  But it's also been very good to me lately.  Sure, there may have been a few inconveniences.  But there has been so much love in my life and I've had so many wonderful opportunities lately!  I'm happy.

I'm not complaining :)

Day 28: Daily Routine

I hate mornings.  Hate. Hate. HATE!

So it's a good thing that today's photo fell on a day that I got to sleep in until 11 :)

So, mornings.  Daily routine.

Wake up.  Snooze.  Curse the sun. Crawl out of bed.

Brush Teeth.  Weigh myself. Shower (sorry, you don't get to see a picture of that).  Isn't this riveting?

Then I turn on Disney Pandora and make myself pretty. (Please excuse my dirty mirror in these pictures.  I accidentally washed it with OxyClean instead of Windex.)

 I can't operate a camer and a hairdryer at the same time.  

 If I'm lucky, I end up looking somewhat like this:

Then I'm off the sell jewelry at my wonderful job!

My goodness, that has to be the most boring blog post I've ever written.  Sorry, guys! 

Here's something really not boring!  My brother is a fantastic musician and made this awesome Christmas album!  I'm so proud of him and I love how it turned out!  You can listen to and download it here!  

Bloggity Bloggity Blog

Tonight, I am cooking myself dinner for the first time in a month and a half.  Nothing fancy, but I figure it's a step up from the Beef Ramen and buttered pasta I've been making for myself.

Tonight I'm making Ranch Chicken.   It's super simple.  So simple, in fact that even though I haven't looked at the recipe since I stumbled across it 6 weeks ago, I was still able to make it.  I took half of a chicken breast, put it in a gallon ziploc bag with some ranch dressing and smooshed it around so that it was coated.  I would have shown you pictures, but ranch dressing is one of those foods that, as tasty as it can be, can look kind of disgusting. Then I transferred the chicken into another gallon ziploc bag with some Italian style bread crumbs and shook it around until it was completely coated.  Put it on a greased cookie sheet, spray it with some Olive Oil spray and put it in a 350 degree oven. 30 minutes later, you have safe-to-consume chicken!

It turned out good enough.  It wasn't as flavorful as I expected it to be and I'm not sure if I like the flavor that the breadcrumbs add.  I may try it again and let the chicken "marinade" in the dressing for a few hours and then use Panko breadcrumbs instead of Italian breadcrumbs.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?  I am fed and I took a step and ventured out of the microwave for the first time in a while. I'm proud of that.  And that's all the really matters, right?

On a completely unrelated note, this cold I'm recovering from has left my Diet Coke tasting like Pepsi.  Cold, you have crossed the line! I am not pleased.

Enough of that! Now it's time for Day 22, Trees!

This picture was taken during my junior year of high school.  My choir took a trip to Spain to sing in several cathedrals.  This picture was from the first night.  We spent 13-ish hours on a plane and then drove 10 more hours to our first city, Sevilla.  We were exhausted and jet lagged, but somehow found the energy to walk around the city for a bit once we arrived.  This tree was near our hotel and was huge!  We never figured out what kind of tree it was, but it was big enough that there was no way we could get a picture of the whole tree or even the whole trunk.  Cool tree.  Cool tree.

And now I leave you with a song I've been listening to a lot lately.  My goodness, I love the Ben Folds Pandora station and the artists it introduces me too.