General

Playing an entire musical 4 times in 26 hours (not counting all of the rehearsing in between performances) is something I would not recommend to anyone. My hands still hurt. :( But, I tentatively agreed to do their summer production – I know, I’m a glutton for punishment – because the director promised no more 3-show days. We’ll see.

My whole life feels like one giant countdown right now. I’ve got 1 more rehearsal, 4 more performances, 5 more days until my defense… Someday I’ll be normal again. Well, ok, so I never was in the first place. :D Rehearsal last night went pretty well, and I’m ecstatic that I found this program to help me transpose Edelweiss into whatever key the Captain can sing it in. I was trying to do it by hand, which would have taken me twice as long, and about three bottles of ivory-colored white-out. (I suppose I could’ve just broken down and bought white staff paper, or used a pencil).

…to all moms, grandmas, and moms-to-be! My mom wanted to see Spiderman, so I treated her to the movies. Unfortunately, having the tickets in hand from the night before, we didn’t arrive at the theater until about 20 minutes before showtime. We ended up in the front row, mostly grateful that there was a string of 5 seats together. Who knew that everyone would be taking their mom to the movies?

Hm. That title is a little morbid! My project defense is scheduled for May 21st. I’m almost done! I just have to come up with some sort of intelligent demo/presentation type thing by then – in between rehearsals, I guess. 11 days from now, I will be done – barring any requested changes to the documents I’ve already written. Wow. I’ve been working on my degree since September, 1998 – before I was married. I wonder if Denis will be able to handle not having to share me with school? :)

I spent my entire evening off from rehearsals looking for a black dress. Not too dressy, not too casual, but the perfect black dress to wear for the shows. I found something (not perfect, but good enough) in the very last store I had time to go to. Figures. Then I spent the rest of the night making stuff up to play for the song ending I still don’t have, adding tabs to my 3-ring binder so I could find each song, and in general stressing out. Finally, close to midnight, I went to bed, and sometime after that (I couldn’t see the clock while my head was buried under the pillow) Molly started going nuts. Apparently, there was a rather long, violent cat fight going on what sounded like right outside our bedroom window. Needless to say, I haven’t gotten enough sleep, and the first performance is tonight. Argh.

I’m almost done with my project. I sent drafts of all of my final documentation to my project committee, and I’m just waiting to hear back with comments. Hopefully, they’ll all be good! :) Now I need to set a date for the defense and come up with a presentation & demo. And then? I guess I’d better get to work on my sadly neglected gardens. It is
spring, after all, and the last one that I will ever have to worry about school during.

I don’t feel like being at work today. Not one little bit. I wish I could take an entire week off and do nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I’ve been going non-stop since Jan. 1st, between my master’s project, the cross-stitches, accompanist duties at church, and work. Now that the cross-stitch projects are done, I’m treading a very thin line between wanting to do nothing with that “extra” time and needing to finish my master’s project. I’m so used to not wasting a single minute – I would even cross-stitch in the car (no, not while driving) every morning on the way to work – that I’m afraid when I’m done after the next couple of weeks I won’t be able to be a normal person again…I’ll either become a total work-aholic, or I’ll turn into a couch potato. Bleah. I think I need some sunshine and a weekend off…

What could be better than being woken up by…a woodpecker drumming on your furnace chimney? We heard the noise yesterday, but I actually caught the little bugger in the act this morning. Lovely. I imagine when all is said and done we’ll have a nice little dent in the chimney. Denis suggested we get some sort of decoy to keep the bird away, but from what I’ve read they’re not all that effective. Anyone have any better ideas?

I am so tired right now. Who knew that 22 little (well, some not-so-little) kids could run you ragged in a day? I helped out with the “take your kids to work day” in the office, and somewhere between flipping pancakes and painting picture frames I was ready for a nap. :) If I hadn’t just gone cold turkey on caffiene – except chai, I’m allowing myself one mug of that a day – I would be drowning in coffee right about now. At least the caffiene headache disappeared sometime last evening. That would have made today unbearable! I’m going to go to Wegman’s, pick up something to cook for dinner, make Denis cook it, and dig out an unfinished craft project to curl up on the couch with. So much for working on my master’s project write-up tonight…

The two cross-stitches (for my twin nieces) are finished!!! I don’t think my sister-in-law reads my blog, so I’m posting pictures before I give them away. (Mary, if you are reading this, don’t look!)

(You can click on each image to see a slightly larger image.) Sorry about the image quality – who knew it was so difficult to take pictures of fabric with holes in it. I had to play with them in photoshop just to get them to look decent. :) They really are on the same color fabric, it’s just the way the light was hitting them when I took the pictures. Now, I just have to get them framed, and they’re done!