Spring Cleaning

I saw Cirque du Soleil's Totem on Thursday night. SO GOOD! This one may have been my favorite. I don't know. This or Kooza. I love Cirque so much. It sucks that you have to be fluent in French to be considered for any kind of a serious design job there. Sigh. Makes me want to learn French. I am now seriously considering it. Perhaps I'll invest in a Rosetta Stone when I start making a little bit of money. I also wonder if it's possible to get your foot in the door doing graphic design or something on a smaller scale in English and then work your way towards the French haha. I don't know.

Also, in watching Gilmore Girls (particularly the episode in season 5 where Lorelai decides to make a secret "me" space after Luke dumps her) I am reminded of just how badly I want my own apartment. Simply so I can decorate it. And call it my own. And get a cat. I can't even tell you how much I want my own place.

My roommate is away for the weekend and Jason is shooting a wedding all day today so I thought it would be a good day to get a little Spring Cleaning done. Thank GOD. It was getting pretty gross in here. I'm playing the waiting game with my laundry right now. The dryers are crap here so it takes a solid 4 hours for laundry to dry depending on the types of fabric and the quantity of laundry. At least I started it before 7 pm this time - usually I do it in the evening and am waiting until like 1 in the morning for everything to dry properly. Very lame. The only good thing about it is that it's free.

I have a few miscellaneous design things to accomplish today and then I'd like to keep up with the job search or continue work on my website. I also should read a little more so that I am well ahead for when A Game of Thrones airs tomorrow night. I'm excited about it!

Entry number 3 in a reasonable amount of time?!

Unbelievable! But I'm not complaining. I'm not going to make any grand assumptions about how THIS time I will continue to blog forever! Because let's get serious. I only make these promises to break them. I'll take it one post at a time for now, haha.

I decided that tonight I'm going to get a lot of stuff done. Two shots of espresso later, I'm chugging right alone (blogging was actually a task on this list). I decided that if I add some fun things to my lists that maybe I'll feel a little better when I neglect to do some of the not fun things because I can at least say I've done SOMETHING.

I was supposed to get my hair cut today. The costume intern was going to do it but, alas, she had to work. Ah, the theater. So unpredictable... so we're going to try for tomorrow. I'm getting it chopped off again. This concerns me ever so slightly because this girl is not, in fact, a seasoned hairdresser that I've been going to for the past however-many-years and with how short I'm planning to go, it's not like I can put it up in a ponytail to hide any awfulness that might ensue. It is but a leap of faith. I'm too paranoid all the time. Let this leap of faith in the beauty department act as a step toward calming myself down and reaching some sense of paranoid normalcy.

In other news, I find that I keep saying "yes" to small projects. For a few reasons, 1) they sometimes sound fun 2) every career advisor you ever talk to says never to burn a bridge or say no to something that could get you somewhere and 3) i figure if i do it enough, one day, something is bound to pay off. Well folks, I've finally encountered a small pay off. At CENTERSTAGE, interns are allowed to bar tend for extra money - which I do. It just so happens that we were dark last week because we're in between shows so I technically would not have had any bar shifts. However, my bar manager emailed us asking if anyone would like to help him out and bar tend for a rental. A high school was holding a fundraiser at the theater and needed bar staff. So I thought "I could enjoy this week off, OR, perhaps, I could make a little extra money and help a guy out." So I chose to do it. Little did I know, he added automatic gratuity to the $10,000 rental. Meaning, me and the 4 other bartenders split $1300 for just showing up!! Do that math in your head or on a calculator but it comes out to about $250 each - for just showing up - for 5 hours. PLUS our hourly wage of $7.50 PLUS the cash tips we made (which came out to about $55). I walked out of there over $300 richer than when I walked in.

Pay off? I think so.

End.

A Real Entry?

Perhaps.

The stories upon stories of things that have happened since the last time I attempted to frequent this blog are a bit daunting when I sit down to actually update. Perhaps I'll stick to categories for the time being. This shall be my pop culture update.

Where to begin? Movies, TV, or Books? How about that order. Great.

Movies: As we all know, I am not the biggest of movie buffs to the embarrassment of my friends and family who are. When I moved into intern housing here, I found out, dun dun dunnnnn, that I do not have cable - i.e. no TV whatsoever because I couldn't even get the basic channels. We have it in the common room but that means I have to go next door and sit in a big room where there are probably others who are going to come down and change the channel. Annoying. So I invested in Netflix. I figured, "Monique, there are enough movies and TV series you haven't seen and are on Netflix to keep you occupied for 3 internships." So I took the dive. I am pleased with the results.

Movies I've seen during this internship that I hadn't seen beforehand (due to Netflix, current movie releases, and friends' collections - in no particular order):

-The Star Wars Trilogy (and now I feel I must own it)

-The Godfather and The Godfather Part II (Part III should be coming in the mail on Monday)

-Black Swan

-Harry Potter 7 Part 1 (and I can't WAIT for Part 2)

And others that I am surely forgetting but the most exciting movie fact, I think, is that I got ALL THREE extended editions of The Lord of the Rings for $31!! Used, yes, but still. I thought it was awesome. I have until Monday to watch them all and make sure that they're ok haha. We'll see if that happens...

TV Series - So I decided to watch the Gilmore Girls series from beginning to end. I'm on season 5 now. It's very addicting. I know that it's a guilty pleasure. WHATEVER. I love it. Also, I decided that Jason needs to watch Dr. Who (and I am a bit behind myself, unfortunately) so we just recently started from the beginning with that one as well. Hopefully I'll catch up sometime during the upcoming season so I can watch it in real time. So many things to watch!! So little time! It's ok though because I enjoy watching people watch shows and movies that I love. I feel like I'm exposing something wonderful to them haha.

Books - Speaking of exposing people to good movies and TV, I let Jason borrow Kiss Me Like a Stranger (Gene Wilder's Autobiography). And he actually read it! Now I have someone to talk to about it! Because I love it, AH! Since the end of IT over the summer, I've had a hard time committing to books. I started A Game of Thrones, The Lord of the Rings, and Eat Pray Love. I stopped all of them when I got busy. HowEVER, I recently picked A Game of Thrones back up, started from the beginning and have somewhat solidly been reading ever since. HBO is turning it into a miniseries starting April 17 (AHHH) so I have to read quicker! The books in this series (A Song of Ice and Fire) are like 1000 pages a piece; apparently I can't read anything of normal length. My hope is that I will at least be able to read fast enough to keep up with each new episode of the miniseries. I'm almost 200 pages in now. Hopefully I can get to page 300 before the first episode so I'll be a little ahead. We'll see haha.

When I'm finally done reading that, I will have some choices to make. I could move on to book 2 in the series (which I may want to do depending on how book 1 ends). I could quickly knock out Eat Pray Love because its short, lighthearted, and a quick read. AND because it's not mine and I've been holding it hostage for months. I could also tackle Lord of the Rings again - but I don't know if I can commit to that while I'm still in the middle of reading A Song of Ice and Fire.

Meanwhile, I should really be updating my website and applying to jobs. Sigh... so much time, so little to do. Wait. Strike that. Reverse it.