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what on EARTH has become of me April 16, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : ten-second updates , 2 comments

I’m so sore it hurts to drive.

That’s either really lame, or really badass. I can’t decide.

-@

things that are true! April 15, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : live theatre, misc. adventures, rants & raves , 1 comment

Anyone who claims that technical theatre is not athletic (I’m looking at you, Todd Marble) should experience how sore I am today and think again. Yesterday I showed up for my afternoon crew, which involves hanging around with the lighting grads and staff and clambering around in high places, and got sent over to Cahn Auditorium - the space WAY across campus where Waa-Mu goes up in a few weeks. (I hate Waa-Mu. I think it is in insult to the intelligence of the theatre community at Northwestern. But I don’t mind working in Cahn, so it wasn’t so bad.)

Anyway, I got there and was given a task and immediately wished I’d brought my Stetson hat and whip. I had to take two hundred foot cables, carry them up a ladder, string them across a veritable chasm, feed them through a little tiny hole, shove the ends through two more little tiny holes and feed it all down a 15 foot drop.

Easy peasy, right? Except for the part where I had to string the cable across a chasm. That was a little more difficult. I was supposed to lower myself onto a pipe running across the wall, but I got about halfway down and had a series of realizations: “This pipe is a lot further down than I thought it would be.” “I seem to have let go of the ledge. Hmmm.” “I wonder how far down the floor is?”

It wasn’t very far, but Indiana Jones would not have been proud. It was not a graceful move. (I still maintain that it’s because my mother never took me to ballet lessons in my formative years.)

Anyway, to make a long story short, I fell in a couple of chasms, balanced on a couple of teetery beams right above a couple of chasms, contorted my arms around doors and walls and attempted to defy physics… the list goes on.

The moral is:

I’m sore, and I wanted to complain about it.

-@

alert alert alert! April 14, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : (pointless) humor, ten-second updates , 4 comments

Ladies and gentlemen, beware! Beware the dangers of the disease we’re probably all going to get. If not all of us then DEFINITELY DEFINITELY me.

One of these days I’m going to come down with chloomydia.

But I’m going to love every second of it.

-@

you must read my every asinine thought April 11, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : technophilia, ten-second updates, the photo project , add a comment

And here they are, in no particular order:

  1. I’m really digging WordPress 2.5.
  2. I can’t wait for the weekend. (No, for me 5PM on Friday does not yet count as the weekend. I have to wait until 11:30. Why do I stage manage, again? Can somebody enlighten me?)

Here’s a photo!


Go Leafs! … no?

I wish I could repeat my entire photographic adolescence and development with the right equipment. I’d like this a lot better if I had.

-@

hoooo boy. April 9, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : misc. adventures, rants & raves, ye olde sporte , 4 comments

I don’t have school on Wednesdays, but I sure did learn something: ice and pavement are not the same thing. Brilliant!

Backstory.
Almost two and a half years ago, I fell off a bench and landed pretty squarely on my left knee. I broke neither the bench nor my knee, but the latter did bruise pretty badly and the nerves at the surface were temporarily deadened. The bruise healed up pretty nicely, even considering the fact that a few weeks later I started playing hockey for the first time and found myself on my knees more frequently than my skates.

Fast-forward to a few weeks ago: the nerves in the skin on my kneecap were just starting to heal or regenerate or do whatever it is nerves do. Then I was struck by inspiration! I said to myself, “Self,” I said, “I know what you should do! Throw yourself down a flight of stairs!” “Okay!” said my body in return. “Sounds great!” My feet contrived a way to trip me and down I went, a-tumbling to the bottom of the stairs.

On my left knee. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. I was kissing my nerve endings goodbye.

Long story short, I went to the doctor, they told me I was an idiot and put me in a knee brace. Fast-forward to a few days ago. I was in the Sports Authority shopping for a new bike helmet (because my old one got stolen which is SO COOL GUYS REALLY) and I saw a display of hockey gear on sale, I guess ’cause apparently the season’s over? So that got me thinking about ice skating and how I should probably wear knee pads when I do so, because of this knee thing. So then I was in the rolling sports aisles getting these knee pads and I spotted some rollerblades on SUPER SALE:


Admit it. You’re into them. It’s okay. I won’t tell.

They’re technically roller hockey skates, but they were at a really good price - less than my helmet and set of pads combined - and I don’t know what the difference is between roller hockey skates and regular in-line skates, and I figured I used to play ice hockey anyway. So I bought them.

Over the past few days, I’ve been taking them out around the parking lots behind my building and it’s super fun. So today, I had to drop by school for a quick meeting, and I figured, why not skate there? The reasoning: if the distance between my apartment and school were flat ice as opposed to flat roads, I could skate there easily in about seven minutes.

However, my friends, I will say it again: ice and pavement are not the same thing.

The trip was hard. Way more fun than walking there, but it took a lot more out of me than I had expected it to. I didn’t think I’d have such an immediate, pressing need to shower when I got home. There was increased friction, there were spontaneous route changes due to potholes in the sidewalks, there were trillions of little tiny pebbles and sticks looking only to bring about my certain death. It was ridiculous, and now I’m tired.

And whiny.

-@

no one is cooler than I am. April 8, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : ten-second updates , 1 comment

Hear me roar! For my mother has commented on my blog. Everybody wave! Hi, Ma!

I feel like I’m one of those six-year-old kids attempting to play football but who notices his mom standing on the sideline with cookies for the team at half time so he stops running to wave and inform her that she should be looking at him only then he gets tackled by the eleven-foot-tall nine-year-old who stayed back like three times and really shouldn’t be on that team at all.

Only hopefully without that tackling bit. What would be the blogosphere equivalent of the gigantic nine-year-old tackle?

-@

PS, Ma, I think I did tell you I had a cat. I got her from the lady in New Zealand who decided not to come back to the States, remember?

tweet tweet! April 7, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : technophilia, ten-second updates , 4 comments

(Notice my new sidebar widget of same name.)

I love Twitter. It’s like blogging, only easier, because I’m limited to 140 words. It’s so low-impact, and yet I’m so addicted. I downloaded a desktop client so I can periodically get other people’s tweets popping up in Growl. I walk down the street and think, “I’m totally tweeting this when I get home”. It’s kind of sad.

But I’m not ashamed.

-@

the possibilities are endless. April 6, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : ten-second updates , add a comment

Someone once told me I was abusing the right to name the animal in my apartment. I denied it vehemently at the time. Now I guess I have realized that it may not have been worth putting my cat through several identity crises and potentially adding to her already evident gender confusion just to be able to say things like “George Foreman puked on my bathmat last night”.

That said, do I regret it?

Not a chance.

Her name, I mean, is what I don’t regret. I’m not psyched about the whole “puked on the bathmat” thing. Naturally.

-@

[update: George Foreman puked not only on the bathmat, but also on her favorite sleeping blanket. And the rug. And my keyboard. The fancy, easy-to-digest kitty food I bought is obviously doing a lot of good.]

I know you’ve missed this.

Posted by Abby T in : the photo project , 1 comment

So here’s a photo:


I really liked this lamp. Shame.

I left a hat on this lamp while it was on. For a few hours. I didn’t realize how well the hat would trap the heat. I melted the lampshade and pretty much busted the lamp. It was a sad day.

What is surprising to me, though, is how much I like the photo that came out of it. I just love how sharp the lines are, and the way the wall fades. It is completely un-doctored, and for whatever reason, I dig it. I dig it deep.

-@

This is my most sincere wish.

Posted by Abby T in : academic pursuits, technophilia, wish list, ye olde sporte , 1 comment

I want a pressure-sensitive keyboard.

I’m not sure they exist. The idea just came to me when I was in the kitchen making a sandwich - literally, sixty seconds ago. I haven’t even bothered to Google the concept yet. But this is what I’m looking for in a pressure-sensitive keyboard: the elimination of the shift key.

This imaginary keyboard of mine would just know when I wanted a capital letter. I don’t think it would take much of an adjustment to learn to hit the first letter of every sentence just a little bit harder. In fact, I’m trying to be conscious of my typing pressure as I write this and I think I do that anyway. Having to hit two buttons for a capital letter adds a rhythm to my sentences that involves a slightly emphasized pressing of the desired letter’s key.

Maybe that’s just me.

This keyboard that I’m envisioning, though, would sense the harder tap and capitalize the letter for me. Maybe it could even have some sort of toggle switch or selection of buttons, so that I could tell it that harder taps should be bold text, instead, or perhaps a little bigger in size.

I think it’d be super cool.

It may seem like I’ve been neglecting this blog lately, but I assure you that is not the case: I have simply been neglecting the entire internet. At one point my Google Reader Watcher was reading in the 500s. I blame rehearsal. I’m rehearsing 5 hours all night, plus another 4 on Saturdays, plus the work I have to do outside of rehearsal for this show. The Bacchae is adding up to about 35 hours a week: almost a full-time job. On top of that, I’m still a student! I’m loving three of the four classes I’m taking this quarter - the three English classes - but the fourth, Intro to Slavic Civ, is unimaginably dull so far, but I’ll survive.

In other news, the Red Sox are losing. Baseball is the only sport I really care about. Though I live in Illinois and until recently all four of my parents were in Manhattan, my Connecticut upbringing has shaped my baseball fan tendencies. I even sprang for the MLB.com Gameday Audio deal this season: I paid $15 to listen to a whole season of baseball games, which is handy since Sox games aren’t aired on TV around here. Moral of the story is, I’m bummed that the boys are 5 runs down and sitting on 4 errors. Rrrrr.

Oh, and lastly: I’m trying to fix the comments thing. By “the comments thing” I mean the fact that the link to leave a comment is at the top of the entry. The problem is that I’m CSS-tarded. I’ll get there eventually, I hope.

-@