it's a magical world

Well, this weekend was pretty much a wash. I pretty much spent the entire weekend rewatching West Wing for no apparent reason. No writing, a bit of packing and organizing but not much. Oops. Still, I kind of needed that.

Friday was my last day of work at the Big Gay NPO; I'd been there almost three years. I won't miss it much. Some of the people, maybe, but not the job itself. Being done is a huge load of stress off my back, you don't even know. Granted, now I have moving!stress and oh-god-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life!stress, but still. Totally worth it.

I have less than a week before I leave D.C. Huh. I've pretty much said all my goodbyes to people here; I've been more social in the past couple of weeks than in, like, the six months before that. Figures. But now I've got nothing left but packing. UGH I HATE PACKING. I'm taking it slow, just doing a few things every day. But yeah. This week's practically a vacation for me. Hopefully I won't squander it all away watching more West Wing, but I make no promises.

I did just do a major rewrite on a section of my Reversebang -- I'd been stuck on it for weeks, because I couldn't decide whether to keep the section as is or overhaul it to favor action over character moments, and I couldn't move forward because my decision would significantly affect the next several scenes. But the pacing just sucked, so I bit the bullet and rewrote it, axing out a LOT of Charles/Erik stuff in favor of Erik being an impulsive asshole. Which makes more sense for his character and improves the pacing and keeps the stakes a lot higher, granted, and that was why the section wasn't working before, but still. It's always hard for me to make massive cuts like that. Oh, well, hopefully now I can move forward. There's still a LOT of this fic left to write.

Temperatures in the DC area may reach 100F this afternoon. UGH UGH UGH. Seriously. Today has been canceled due to possibility of heatstroke. >_< And it's supposed to be just as bad tomorrow. I cannot handle this shit.


TV meme continues:

Day 13 - Favorite childhood show

Toss up between Fraggle Rock and Wishbone. I think probably Fraggle Rock stands the test of time better, if only for its freaking amazing intro sequence. But there's just nothing quite like dressing up a Jack Russell terrier in period costumes to reenact classic books. I recall his Cyrano de Bergerac with particular fondness. :D

( keeping track of the rest of the meme )

1. I am making the most amazing Strawberry Cupcakes for my housemate's birthday, you have no idea. I love trying new recipes for baked goods, and I'm adding my own cream cheese icing (from scratch, natch), which I added some of the extra strawberry juice to, and OMG, guys. NOM.

2. I had a surprisingly good evening yesterday. Unexpected good things are awesome.

3. The weather is glorious, so I wandered down to explore the monuments for two hours. DC is a very pretty city. Over the past week or so, I've reached a sort of zen-ish settling-in place here, and I'm fairly certain that barring sudden job acquisition elsewhere, I'm going to stay in the DC area for another year or so. I have friends here independent of my work, I'm starting to build cred in the smaller theaters, and I don't want to move across country to start from scratch all over again. So: DC it is. Now I just need one of the jobs I've applied for to come through.

It's amazing how much more at peace with myself I've become since making that decision. Even job stress doesn't bother me anymore -- I know I can always work box office or something to make ends meet while waiting for a proper job to come through. I'm still on the fence about leaving my field of choice -- I've got a couple of admin assistant positions for non-performing arts organizations bookmarked, but I'm hesitant to give up this quickly. I still have five weeks to find something I want to do first. But gainful employment is kind of key here. Ah, well, we'll see.

4. I'm finally watching Merlin (and Life) now that I've allowed myself new fandoms again. Silly good fun.

5. A certain extraordinarily awesome intern at my theatre (HI!) knitted me a Ravenclaw scarf. Seriously, how awesome is that? TOTALLY AWESOME. I will wear it always -- um, once it's not summer, anyway. :D

6. Meme! I will do a commentary track on any of my stories, like the audio extra on a DVD, talking about what went into it and my general thoughts on it. I've posted this meme before (ages ago), and no one bit then, and probably no one will now. But it sounds like fun, so if anyone's interested, hit me up. Since I'm in a bit of a writing lull while my Big Bang is in beta...

Thanks to Tropical Storm Hanna, who is currently swinging past the the DC area, my roof is now leaking. In three places. All of which are directly over my bed. Waking up on Saturday morning with wet feet: so not fun.

Stupid weather.

In unrelated news, the benefit of having a job in a theater? Many, many opportunities to see shows in other theaters for free or cheap. Like Thursday night, for example, when I got to see the dress rehearsal for Carrie Fisher's one-woman show "Wishful Drinking" at Arena Stage for free. Princess Leia! On stage! She was actually very, very funny, and had some fantastically bitter and witty stories about George Lucas and being haunted by Leia action figures for the rest of her life. I know she's been traveling this show around, so if it makes its way to your area, it's definitely worth seeing. Or if you're around DC in the next month, check it out.

...okay, seriously, NO NEW LEAK POINTS, please! I'm running out of large bowls.

I feel like I should be posting a lot more, but I never know quite what to say. For those of you playing at home, my life is...in something of a transitional stage, to put it mildly. Last month, I moved away after five years building a life in Chicago, and then ran off to Italy for three weeks by myself, and now I'm making a fresh start in Washington, DC, basically on a whim, where I know no one and have nothing but a year-long apprenticeship on the administrative staff of a major area theater. I'm living in a house with the seven other theater apprentices, and again, know no one else in the area, so right now my entire life -- professional, social, whatever -- literally is my job. Which just really started today, and oh my god, this is either going to kill me or be the greatest thing EVER, I have so much work to do and it's in my field of choice and it's amazing, I finally feel like a real grown-up, and I'm quite possibly going to lose my mind because I have five thousand responsibilities and I need to be on top of all of them like yesterday while I'm still trying to figure out where the filing cabinet is. And I can't ever really leave work and go home, because again, I live with my co-workers, although at least we're all in different departments. And we're pretty much each other's entire social circle, since none of us are from the DC area ourselves. It's very Real World. With theater.

So, hi. I'm here! Really! Sort of! Also, desperately need to meet people who don't work with me, please. I know a couple of you live somewhere in the vicinity of Washington...

I'm taking a mental health day today. I called in sick to work and I have no show tonight. This is the first day I've had entirely to myself since early January, and oh, how I've needed it.

Which isn't to say I don't have things to do. I need to make another attempt at hunting down black jeans, because I don't want to have to wear my Nice Black Slacks for every damn show. I tried to find some last weekend, to no avail -- the ones I found, in thrift stores, were all either way too big or too small. Why are these things so hard to find? And I'm a size 8 jeans -- not exactly an unusual size. Then again, maybe that's the problem -- anything in my size has been snapped up already by the many, many other average-sized women out there. I should also go to the gym, and possibly do some grocery shopping. One of my actors has a birthday Saturday, and I promised him baked goods (he requested brownies), and it occurs to me that today may well be the last free stretch of time I have for baking before then. Also, possibly should do laundry, although I'm not in desperate straits in that area yet. There will definitely be at least an episode or two of West Wing in here as well.

I also just had a preliminary phone interview for a theater admin apprenticeship in D.C. Here's hoping. It's not the only apprenticeship/fellowship position I'm currently applying for, and it's not my top choice, but it's a close second. Will find out next week sometime if I get to the next interview stage.