Dreams

My dreams are telling me to write. To the point where the dream-me is running a constant narration of what is occuring in my dreams.

Case in point:

Last night's dream was set in Anchorage (I attribute this to being in touch with Anchorage people and my father's recent birthday). I lost my car. Well, I couldn't remember where I parked it, so I cut through the trees towards where I thought it might be. (The trees I cut through were the off-limits forest between the Knowles trail and Lake Hood.)

Before I hit Lake Hood, I ended up in a parking lot where I ran into my mother (who hasn't been in Alaska for well over a decade) and she asked to see my keys to help me sort out where I'd put my car (what make) when we determined that I didn't come in a car, but a plane. She and I wandered about heading towards Lake Hood and overshot it by a bit, ending up near Alaskan Knives and finding a well preserved pre-historic underground native artifact site.

When we emerged from poking around (not touching anything), we were on the other side of La Mex, but in the same location.

I woke before I found my plane. (Which is probably good because I have no idea where I was living in order to require me to come to Anchorage in a float plane.)

But during the entire dream, my mother was telling me that it was okay with her if I wrote my teenaged memoirs (or something to that effect) and that she wouldn't hold any of it against me. And dream-me had constant narration in her head, describing the dance required to negotiate spruce, fir, and alder without being caught by airport security or surprised moose.

My psyche is telling me to write. I'm happy for that, but at the same time, I've never had "GO DO THIS" dreams quite so clearly.

Now to figure out if I should write books, novellas, screenplays, or plays. (Or radio plays, blablabla.) But until then, back to domesticity. I still have washing up to do from last night and preperation for the grocery delivery.

This also means that I have to get in the mindset to actually edit my work. I hate editing.

Accent on Youth

Unlike professional reviewers, I don't have an editor breathing down my neck. (Just a boyfriend.) I also don't get paid, so it doesn't behoove me to be bitchy when something is good or gush when something is bad.

I also don't care if the show is still running by the time I get the review up!

TheBrit and I were in New York to give him some time to see his grandmother. (She passed shortly after he saw her. I'm very glad we went to New York so he could see her.) Accent on Youth came up as an option because TheBrit knows I love seeing shows (though he's not as in love with musical theatre as I am) and suggested that we catch a Broadway show and sent me a short list of what he thought we would both be interested in.

I admit that I am a David Hyde Pierce fangirl. No, he doesn't solve poverty in his spare time (that I'm aware of) but he's an actor of the old school, when it felt like a craft, not an industry.That, and DHP has awesome comedic timing while still being erudite. I love that.

The play consists of one of the standard plotline setups - discovery of young ingenue, love found, love lost, bla bla bla...

It's formulaic. It's ancient. And it is the easiest storyline to write and screw up. This was not screwed up. I liked it so much that I actually want to own the script so I can look at the lines and the stage directions.

The stage opens on a late 1920s/early 1930s New York City brownstone (or so I assume) sitting room. To the left is a double desk (the type where two people sit opposite each other) with a secretary. To the right is a couch, chair, and the ubiquitous wall bar with a decanter of scotch/whiskey/bourbon. Charles Kimbrough (Jim Dial im Murphy Brown) is playing the sidekick/butler. DHP comes on stage from what is inferred to be the bedroom and the audience applauds. (I will comment on this later.)

The play was rife with commentary on the duplicitous nature of theatre/film and how people will say anything to have the sensitive actors think they're loved and impressive and to soothe the egos. And then, out of nowhere seems to come a snide but completely accurate comment about the audience. (I believe it was "theatre would be fantastic if it weren't for the audience" or something similar.) The whole thing was suitably meta and probably broke the fourth wall a little too much for people during the original run in the 1930s.

In a lot of ways, it what your typical May/December romance theme has been since the origins of theatre. It has the additional flavour of the young love theme so popularized in Romeo and Juliet and the like.

Reviewers hated this play. They considered it to be humourless and stilted. The audience I saw it with found it suitably amusing. I liked it. So neener, professional reviewers.

(I secretly suspect that professional reviewers are supposed to hate everything that I'd love and love everything I'd hate. At least in the US.)

Reviews and opinons to come!

Oh man, it's been busy. Aside from not feeling well (apparently, it's a pre-requisite for turning 30 in my body), it's been a constant whirlwind of events here.

So, here's a list of the reviews and posts and whatnot to come over the next few days...

Accent On Youth (play)
Exit the King (play)
Waiting for Godot (play)
Bam-Bou (restaurant)

...I'm sure I'm missing something, maybe The Brit can help me out.

And yes, I've turned 30. Oh, my... 30. I suppose it should be scary and bad, but it's really just another year. Or so I keep telling myself. I've compensated for aging by dyeing my hair blue. A friend of mine came over (thanks Emma!) to help me out with the bleaching and dyeing. My hair takes after its owner - certain parts of it were just resistant. I figure that I'll muck around with it when it's time to do the redyeing. Still need to get a haircut done and then the following cut, I'll have them do a professional bleach/strip job and come home and have The Brit goop me up.

However, the dyeing led to two awesome things aside from the blue hair: awesome bacon and pea pasta dinner of numminess and the best tweet that was ever tweeted in the twitterverse. In England. That hour. Originating from the 3rd floor of a building.

"I have lube, Emma, and food. I'll leave it to you to imagine what we'll be up to."

So, my early mid-life crisis has displayed itself in the form of blue hair. I like the front colour better than the back and will probably do that on my whole head for the next time. Or if the back blue washes out before the front does.

I swear, I'll do the reviews soon! Promise!

Weekend menu

I figure this is going to be the best way of keeping track of weekend foodstuffs.

Thursday:
Dinner - Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad

Ingredients:
2-4 chicken breasts
Fusilli pasta
Romaine lettuce
Caesar salad dressing
Parmesan cheese

Recipe:
Take chicken breasts, saute. Boil pasta (some kind with nooks and crannies). Mix pasta with Caesar dressing and chicken. In a seperate bowl, mix romaine lettuce with dressing. Layer plate with lettuce on bottom, pasta on top. Add freshly grated parmesan cheese and croutons (if desired). Nom.

Friday:
Breakfast - Grab 'n go (likely crumpets)
Lunch - Egg salad sandwiches of yumminess (recipe here)
Dinner - Out for Sushi (mmmm sushi)

Saturday:
Breakfast - Pancakes
Lunch - Cold cut buffet
Dinner - Beef stir fry with rice

Sunday:
Breakfast - Eggs Benedict
Lunch - BLTs
Out for Russell Howard show and foodstuffs in Brighton

QotD

It's a little late, but what the hell...

"[Pringles] are like the Hitler Youth of crisps!"
--Sandy Toksvig
Newsquiz, 22.05.09

Packing sucks

And I've been busy.

Insert witty link here and pretend I posted it.

(Translation: leave cool link stuff in the comments.)

17 days and counting...

17 days until I see TheBrit again (yay!) and 23 days until I'm back in London.

Apparently my father wishes to "check him out" and "explain to him that if he screws over my daughter he'll be finding out what CPR is." I think my father has a few latent issues. No matter how amusing he might find it, I don't appreciate the threat to my boyfriend/partner's well-being. Yes, yes, I know he's being Daddy Protective, but still. I'm thirty in a little over a month and the amount of involvement he's had in my life lately has been minimal. (Likely because I am thirty in a little over a month.)

It's strange. I never thought I'd be the one to settle down. I honestly figured that I'd have a string of interesting relationships throughout my life but never really decide to kick it into wedding bells and all that jazz. Now that it looks like that's a possibility (and because he reads this, TheBrit is not allowed to tweak about anything I say about this here. Neener.) I'm figuring out the thing that probably tweaks me most about marriage. My family. Yep. I don't think everyone I'm immediately related to has been in the same room... Ever. And I suspect that I will have a full-on Bridezilla meltdown if they don't all play nice. Eloping sounds better and better and better every moment that I think about it.

We're past the historical need to "blend families" via marriage. There is no business or lineage bonus to this pairing. I am no longer considered chattel merely because of a consequence of sex. Sure, my upper body strength sucks, but I'm a fully capable person in my own right and don't need to be "given away" or otherwise transferred from my household of birth to a future spouse's household. I do not represent the continuation of any lineage (and if anyone's expecting it... Grow a uterus and do it yourself. Mine is not for rent, lease, or sale).

And honestly? I'm going to be 30 (at least) when I finally do get hitched, if TheBrit and I decide that's how we want our relationship to progress. Yeah, I dig his folks and his family. They don't drive me crazy like I'm sure they do to him sometimes. And he digs the ones of mine that he's met. I just really don't need my father to put him through some arbitrary bullshit adversity test. You know what, Dad? He may not be a hunter and a fisher, but we don't need to share every single hobby. I understand that he's a separate and distinct person and what he does with his spare time and money is up to him. We have enough in common that we suit one another quite well. Hunting and fishing are not the day in, day out existences that he and I both value. It's a skill, and should the apocalypse come, he'll learn or starve...

I don't need an alpha male. I really don't want one. (They're boring, they smell, and really, they're just not good people all the time.) What I have is the possibility of a wonderful life with a person that suits me more than I could have imagined in my life, and I'm really fucking lucky. I don't care about what he can't do. I care about who he is and how good of a person he is to me and for me. If you disapprove, then that is your right. But you will be down a daughter, because this person is who I choose to cleave to, not required to as a result of a genetic pairing.