Thursday, June 23, 2005

Bleh!

My computer microphone hasn't been working properly lately, and the sound has been going in and out over the last couple of days. Finally, the mic stopped working completely, and the sound's still a little odd. I bought a new microphone, hoping that it was just the mic, but the new one doesn't work either and the sound is still weird, although only sometimes (and it seems to work fine when anyone else is around.. maybe I'm going crazy??). So I asked an online friend, who's a technician, and he said the problem's my sound card. So now I need to buy a new sound card. ARGH!!

Besides my computer issues, school's been kicking my ass this week. Not in work overload, or emotional-ness, but it's just tiring me out. I really need a couple days off- ie. the weekend. I'm really looking forward to visiting with Mom.

Friday, June 17, 2005

An update

Well, let's see...

I've been sleeping in a lot this week, which is my tendency when given several days of free time. I also went and bought a new computer game at a really cheap price, so I've been playing that a lot these last couple of days. I'm also re-reading one of my favourite series of books, The 'Incarnations of Immortality' series by Piers Anthony. I'm on the last book, 'And Eternity'. Then I'm starting in on 'Rhapsody: Child of Blood' by Elizabeth Haydon, the first book of another of my favourite series', 'Symphony of Ages'. I've also been watching a lot of Sex and the City... I finished the 3rd season yesterday and watched a couple episodes of the fourth season today. I really love that show!

But before Sex and the City, I cleaned. I took all the clothes out of my dresser drawers and organized them, putting aside anything I don't really wear any more. Then I put everything back in, neat and tidy. Then I cleaned off the top of my dressers, and my computer desk, and the rest of my room. Then I organized the mess of stuff under the sink in my bathroom, and generally tidied the bathroom up. THEN I watched Sex and the City. :P

Mom might be coming for a visit next weekend... she's working out the flights and getting back to me tommorrow. I'm excited to see her! We're tentatively planning on going to the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) on Saturday, because I have a Two for One Admission coupon for an exhibit on 'Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origins of Flight'.

Then on Sunday (the 26th) Randolph is participating in Toronto's annual Gay Pride Parade!! Woohoo! I finally have an excuse to wear the rainbow fake eyelashes I bought a long time ago because they were cheap and tacky! I'm really excited... I've never seen a Pride Parade, let alone marched in one!

Monday, June 13, 2005

Relaxing

Ah, break. A time to sleep in and relax, as well as catch up on work that needs to be done. I plan on dividing my time between lazing around and sleeping, and doing assorted things that need to be done. Like: organize my dressers and get rid of clothes I no longer wear, organize my computer and get rid of files and programs I no longer need, memorise my three scenes (Kafka in 'Words, Words, Words' by David Ives, a funny one-act play about three monkeys, Kafka, Milton and Swift, caged up with typewriters to write Hamlet; Emilia in Othello, and Witch 2 in Macbeth) and maybe do a little work on my book.

Oh, and finish watching the 3rd season of Sex and the City, which I borrowed from Kharytia. Oh, and return a library book that's due soon, and pick up some I have on hold before they expire and I'm fined for not picking them up. :P

Saturday, June 11, 2005

I'm not used to this kind of weather!

from The Weather Network:

Toronto (Ontario, Canada)

Current Conditions

28°C
Feels like : 38°C
Barometric pressure : 101.56 kPa
Relative humidity : 74%
Wind : 13 km/h SE
Dewpoint : 21°C
Partly cloudy

Short Term Forecast
This Afternoon
31°C
Feels like: 36
Relative humidity: 41%
Risk of thundershowers
P.O.P.: 30%
Wind: 15 km/h S

This Evening
24°C
Feels like: 29
Relative humidity: 62%
Thunder- showers
P.O.P.: 40%
Wind: 5 km/h SW

Tonight
21°C
Relative humidity: 75%
Mainly cloudy
P.O.P.: 30%
Wind: 10 km/h SW

From Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon we expect : close to 10 mm of rain.



Yuck!

Friday, June 10, 2005

TGI-Break!

We did a hip hop class in jazz today, and it was really fun, albeit extremely, depressingly hot and sweaty. (Right now, at nearly midnight, it's 24 degrees! It was at least 30 all day, and our school is an oldschool church with no air conditioning and big stained glass windows, with tiny sections that open (and several of which don't even open at all). It gets miiiiighty hot in there...

Shakespeare was the worst, though. It's in 210, which is the studio on the top floor (technically 2nd floor, 3rd if you count the basement floor as 1). 210 is by far the hottest room in the building, because it's the highest and has the least windows that open. Also, it's above the level of the building next to us and the windows face the west, so we get lots of sun pouring through that stained glass on us the whole four hours of class. Even with two fans going full blast, plus the two ceiling fans, it's still stifling. I almost break out into a sweat just thinking about it...

Tommorrow's my massage, and I'm so excited that I don't know what to do with myself. My shoulder definitely needs some attention, as it hasn't stopped hurting. I have no idea what I did to it, but I hope the massage therapist can fix it tommorrow!

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Catching up...

Monday I performed my movement biography in Movement class, and did really well. A lot of people told me afterwards that they were really impressed by my gymnastics...

We did our 1-minute phone conversation scenes in Film class, and I think I did rather well. I can't bring myself to watch my tape, though, so I'm not sure exactly how I did.

Then Monday night was George Randolph's 50th birthday party- it was on a Monday because that's a dark night at most theatres (dark night means there are no shows that night) so more people would likely be able to come. There were a lot of great performers singing, including The LMT Connection (their guitarist Leroy Emmanuel is absolutely amazing... he's played with Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, John Lee Hooker, Al Green, Dionne Warwick, and James Brown Band to name a few) and jazz saxaphonist Demo Cates. Everyone there looked amazing, and it was such a blast!!

In Voice & Text on Tuesday we talked about the different aspects of character- physiological, sociological, and psychological traits. I didn't sing in MTP, which means I won't be singing for two weeks since next week's our week off.

Today I had my Theory midterm, which I think went really well. Jeffrey picked on us altos for the entire Choral, and we were all getting kind of frustrated by the end. Then Scene Study was cancelled, again, this time because Rosanna is sick. So Meagan, Linda and I went to lunch at Swiss Chalet, then I went back to school and sang through my entire repertoire of songs in a free tutorial room. Then Talia and I met up to go over our tap routine before tap. Everyone performed their combinations, and they were all amazing! Ours went really well, too. Then Natalie put each group with another group, and had each group teach the other half of their combination and vice versa in 15 minutes, then had us perform the new combinations for the rest of the class. It was fun seeing how people meshed two different choreographies together in such a short time.

I got a tax return a couple days ago, so I've taken the chance to book my first ever professional massage, on Saturday. I'm soooo excited, especially since my shoulder is really sore; I'm not sure why. I have an appointment for an hour and 15 minutes, and I'm reeeeally looking forward to it!!

Monday, June 06, 2005

Just a brief note.

Letting you all know that I feel waaaaay better, but I'm way too tired to post much more than that now cause I just got home from George Randolph's 50th birthday party, and I've gotta go to bed.

Sunday, June 05, 2005

To Done

Yesterday I:
-Finished sewing my duvet cover
-Wrote my Voice and Text journal
-Finished up all 10 entries required for my Movement journal
-Did laundry, including handwashing my delicate sweaters and such
-Vacuumed my room
-Cleaned the bathroom

Then I watched Keeping the Faith while Ken and Vasil went to a concert, and when they got back the three of us started watching Boogeyman but ended up stopping it and going to bed cause Ken was asleep and Vas and I were pretty close to sleep ourselves. So far, though, Boogeyman is scary with just the little things that have happened so far, and is neatly setting up the second half of the movie to be either extremely scary or extremely disappointing in its anticlimacticity.

As for today, I met Talia at school to do our tap choreography for Wednesday's class, and after an hour of (very hot!) work, we've completely finished our choreography and, I must say, it looks awesome!! It's challenging enough to be worth doing, but once you get the hang of it it's fine. And we used all of the steps we've learned in class, which our teacher Natalie has told us means bonus points!

Then I came home and read for a bit, feeling sicker and sicker. Now I feel like I have the flu, although I'm not sure if it is that since I did get the flu shot in October/November. I'm really stuffed up and feel ill- the kind of ill feeling where you know you'd feel better after throwing up, but you just can't seem to do it. So my plans for the rest of the evening are to rest up, drink tea, maybe watch the rest of Boogeyman, and go to bed early.

Friday, June 03, 2005

Hurrah!

I just love that feeling on Fridays right when you finish your last class (or when you get off work...) and you know you have the whole weekend ahead of you. It's the best!

Jazz this morning was cancelled because they wanted to film the Choral singing 'Come Sail Away' for the promotional video they're making for the school. We were all squished together on the stage and I'm a little sick with a sore throat, so I wasn't having the best of times.

Then after a long break with much conversation in the cafeteria, we had Shakespeare class. We did the usual ritual and games, but then we did a new game/exercise. The class sat on one side of the room, then Peter had one person sit in the middle of the room facing the class, blindfolded. Then two people quietly sat on either end of the room, with the blindfolded person in the middle of them, and made any kind of noise they wanted to make to get the person in the middle to come over to them. We had to make vocal noises- no clapping, stomping, etc- and the only noises that really drew the person towards someone were open vowel sounds, straight from the heart. (Rather than a noise from the brain, completely calculated to interest the blindfoldee. It was really interesting the kinds of noises that would come out of people...

Then we did the first passes of our monologues. Mine was okay, but I don't really own my monologue yet (to own your monologue is to really have it memorised 100%, so that it just flows out of you without you having to think. If you own it, you could say it in your sleep.) so it wasn't as strong as I would like. Peter says I need to bring it into my body more, cause I was doing the novice actor arms, where you hold them out, elbows bent, at around waist level and SHAKE them on WORDS you want to EMPHASIZE. Heehee...

Then I dropped some books off at the library, came home, ate leftover macaroni and cheese, read some of my book, and fell asleep for a few hours. Then I got up, and wrote this!

Tommorrow, I refuse to sleep in past 10:30 or laze around all day.

TO DO:
-Finish sewing my duvet cover cause I keep poking myself with pins when getting in and out of bed
-Write my Voice and Text journal from Tuesday's class
-Write an entry or two in my Movement journal
-Type up my song analysis for MTP
-Do laundry
-Handwash my sweater
-Maybe get the vacuum from downstairs and vacuum my room

I think that'll be plenty for tommorrow. Now let's see if I actually get it all done!

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Sisterhood

It was so hot in ballet class that I started to feel a little dizzy near the end. The school's an old building without air conditioning, so it gets mighty hot dancing upstairs in the summer! Otherwise, though, it was a good class.

Shakespeare was a loooong class, and we were all really lethargic and stupid today. We figure it's a combination of heat, stress, and general lack of sleep. We did some work on our monologues and the usual games and exercises.

I went and saw The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants at the theatre a few blocks away, solo (which was an experience all on it's own). It was really good, and I cried, but I've read the book and it was kind of disappointing expecting certain things to happen and having it be completely different. Like the guy who's supposed to work in a forge is instead a fisherman. Or the incident getting between two people is an ancient family feud with murky details instead of one of them accidentally (on purpose?) seeing the other naked. Besides the things they had to change to make it a good movie from a good book, though, it was really good, and I'd recommend it. They left the situation finalized but with enough open ends to have a sequel, since there's a second and third book after this one.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Tuesday/Wednesday

In jazz on Tuesday we did that combination again that I mentioned Friday I was doing awkwardly. I've figured it out so that I'm not awkward at it anymore, but I really don't like it, and it's rather easy. It's the same combination that my teacher's other class, which is two levels less advanced than my class, is doing and it's just too simple. I really don't feel challenged enough in this class, and it's making me frustrated!

Then in Movement we did some discussion and work on dialect and diction. It's amazing how making a small change in the placement of your tongue can completely change a sound. Then we learned the third of the four humours- Phlegmatic/Water. It's really interesting, but it didn't quite hit the big note that Choleric did for me last week.

Then MTP... vocally I felt ready to perform my song, 'I Want To Be Bad', but I didn't feel ready in terms of the acting of my song. Luckily Jeffrey didn't call on me, although I probably would've done fairly well if I had had to go.

Then I came home and did my theory homework for today, which was a tad confusing at first but once I got a hang of it it was pretty straightforward. I also practised naming musical intervals after hearing them played. It's something we need to learn in Theory, and I kept getting them completely off (like thinking it's a minor 7th when it's a major 3rd- which is like the difference between Do and So, to try and put it in uncomplicated musical terms). But after practicing last night, I got 7 out of 10 right, in Theory this morning rather than 1 or 2 as I usually do.

After Theory I had Women's Chorus, and we sang 'We Rise Again' a few times, which we've been working on for a couple weeks now, and sang 'Fernando' from Abba Forever, which we just got last week. Then in Choral we sang 'When You Wish Upon a Star' twice through, which we started last week, and then worked on 'Libia me', that song from La Traviata that we've been working on for a while now. We're still fairly terrible at it, but Bob persists in working it with us despite our suckitude.

I did the first pass of my monologue in Scene Study, which went really, really well. After I went through it once, Rosanna talked through some of the important subtext points with me, then had Ken be my scene partner and had us improvise the scene so that I was using my own words instead of speaking the monologue. I started to cry partway through but it was simply from the emotion of the scene. It was the first time I've cried at Randolph without it being some sort of breakdown or unexpected reaction to something fairly innocuous. As soon as I finished, I came right out of it, wiped my face, and was perfectly fine. It was a refreshing experience after having so many random crying jags at school.

Then, since tap was cancelled today, I went down to the passport office to get mine renewed, and then went to the Reference Library to get some songs and photocopy the scene Rosanna assigned to me today. Since we only have 4 guys in our class, Rosanna's having a girl play the male role in my scene, and Brie and I will choose who'll play which of the two female roles. But when I found the play, it turns out that there are two guys and one girl. I'm thinking either there's another version, or that Rosanna just got confused. Both are understandable, but until I find out what's going on I'm simply confused.