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Rehearsals for "String of Pearls" are hitting the exciting point where the actors are mostly off book and we're stringing the scenes together in something like a coherent whole. For this show, made up (like the pearls of its title) of threaded segments that move seamlessly between actor-on-actor scenes and straight-to-the-audience story-telling, the transitions are really important, and rather than plan them all out in advance I've chosen to let them develop through a combination of play, sound and organic necessity (ie, the need for the actresses, who never leave the stage, to get and discard costume pieces, props, etc. as they move from scene to scene). So it's all become a process of moment-to-moment discoveries and inspirations and trying crazy things to see what works, on all our parts. I spend a lot of each rehearsal on my feet, moving around, coaching, prodding, cajoling and asking questions aimed at getting the actors to heighten the urgency, deepen the emotions, and make tentative thoughts and gestures more concrete. Everyone seems to be having whopping good fun and they're doing terrific work, but man, this sort of interactive directing is *exhausting*. I'm getting home at 10-10:30 both wiped and buzzed, and not getting to sleep till well after midnight most nights. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) johnpalmer should be at the airport right about now getting ready to board a plane for the east coast and a visit with his family. When he gets back, he has just about enough time to do his laundry and a little Thanksgiving grocery shopping before I'm on the train north for a nice, long, four-day weekend of mutual cooking, eating, relaxation - and seeing the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of Bill Cain's new play Equivocation, transplanted to Seattle Rep, about which there was much buzz during this year's festival season. Because, you know, directing a play isn't enough theater for me. (-: In between, looking forward to seeing lcohen and pipyn up in Portland this weekend... Work, alas, is fairly grim, thanks to ongoing budget cuts. Classified staff, who have a union to represent them, are already taking furlough days to help cut $5 million from this year's institutional budget; faculty, who don't have a union, are engaged in a campus-wide wangst-fest over what sort of cuts we'll accept, and whether to make it progressive, and how to deal with people (like me) whose salaries are supported with outside dollars that don't get returned to the state treasury if we take a straight pay cut. I'm hoping we wind up with the same kind of deal the classified staff got; it seems only fair, and if I'm going to have a smaller paycheck, it'll be a lot less painful if I also get to work fewer hours. I feel ...:  busy
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johnpalmer and I enjoy playing computer games together, mostly of the RPG variety. We started ages ago with Diablo, moved on to Sacred, and more recently, Titan Quest. They're all fairly shallow kill-monsters, gain-skills, collect-loot games with the added bonus of being able to play in multi-player mode, both on a home network and online. ( Cut for game-geeking )Tags: games, geekery, relationships, romance
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So, I've been thinking about the holiday shopping season, and what a tough year it is for so many of us, and how even those of us who can afford to spend money on gifts may be looking to make those dollars count. And I thought it might be fun, and useful, to ask the assembled ElJay masses to put their virtual heads together and share our suggestions for good things to buy, and good places to buy them. "Good" is pretty subjective, but what I'm thinking about are qualities like: - Good value for the money. Genuine bargains, or things that aren't cheap but are worth the money because of superior quality.
- Good craftmanship: Stuff that looks good, is well-made, and lasts.
- Good values: Socially responsible gift-giving, however you might define that. Green products. Things of good value being made/sold by people who genuinely need the money.
- Good service. Vendors that ship quickly, have great customer service, good refund or exchange policies.
- Good ol' *fun*: Gifts that lift the mood, make people laugh or smile, or generally fill the recipient's heart with delight.
Being as how we're doing this online, I'm kind of partial to online vendors. But if you want to throw in a bricks-and-mortar store, or conventional catalogue house, feel free - just tell people how to find it. I'll start things off below the cut with a few that come immediately to my mind. If you want to play along, add yours in the comments. I'll even unlock the friends-only setting on this post, so feel free to refer others here. Tuck the post in your memories so you can take advantage of it when you're doing your shopping. Who knows? We might start a new holiday tradition. ( Ze cut tag )Tags: "let's go shopping", eljay giftmas, fun
I feel ...:  festive
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... and of my cousin Morris Kight: wordweaverlynn asks what are you going to do to celebrate Harvey Milk's birthday? Me, I'm just going to make a few things explicit: I consider myself queer. But I acknowledge that, as queer goes, I'm just swimming in the privilege of plausible deniability, at least at this point in my life. I am, after all, a woman in a long-term relationship with a man. And I look like somebody's grandma. If people remark at all on my affectional life, it's generally to puzzle over the fact that I'm paired up with someone who's polyamorous, and ask me how that works. But I've spent my life since adolescence surfing the Kinsey scale; I've been known to describe my basic orientation as "mutable." I seem to be drawn to individuals, not types or genders; I've had loving long-term sexual relationships with women and loving long-term sexual relationships with men. Also hot, sweaty short-term relationships, not to mention more crushes than I can even remember. I've never tried to hide these facts, not since coming out to my own mom in my 20s and receiving the best imaginable response ("Oh, when are we going to get to meet her?"). At some periods of my life, I've gone out of my way to identify publicly and politically with the queer community. I spent one memorable election season as the public face and voice of the campaign against one of Oregon's infamous anti-gay ballot measures - in the relatively conservative, some would say redneck community where I live. But it's easy for people, even people who know me failry well, not to know these things about me. It's not that I intentionally conceal it - I'm a notorious blurter, and have no real sense of privacy - it's just that the subject doesn't often come up. So this is me, bringing it up. When I speak for gay marriage, or against hate crimes, it's not just as a sympathetic ally. THESE ARE MY PEOPLE. They always have been. They always will be. joedecker reminds us that, as they waited 30 years ago for a verdict in Milk's murder, Californians are now waiting to find out whether their Supreme Court will recognize them next week as full citizens. They were disappointed before; they may be disappointed again. What they, what *we* won't do is shut up, or go away, or give up. Civil rights movements take generations; this one is rolling along pretty well by those standards. I plan to stick around to watch it succeed. Tags: "i am large, i contain multitudes", politics, queer_as_folk
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... as she goes in for surgery to examine what her doctors think is a benign ovarian cyst - surgery we helped pay for, yay. The doctor bills will continue to pile up. You can still help by buying her music, which is very damned good music you should probably have in your collection anyway. (-: If you're more of the reading than listening persuasion, there's still time to order a very special, limited-time anthology featuring writing and art by the likes of Ari Berk, Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, Seanan McGuire, Mia ( copperwise) Nutick, Catherynne M. Valente, Terri Windling - and s00j herself. But you know, if money's tight, you can still send good thoughts ... Tags: books, health, musicians, s00j
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I slept until 11 this morning. I never sleep until 11, and I wasn't even up all that late last night - 1:30 or 2 or something like that. I blame it on a combination of cold house, warm waterbed and two cats who took turns camping by my side all night, flooding the room with sleepyon particles. Having slept too much, I'm having a hard time waking up, although the coffee is working its magic as I type. Still no further snow down here, and a day of heavy rain has melted what was left. It looks as if yesterday's storm focused on the northern part of the state; in Salem, a mere 20 minutes from here, they got eight inches, and the Portland area got slammed, and looks to keep getting slammed through Christmas week. ( Current highway photos, for comparison )The scary part, for those of us accustomed to maybe 2-3 days of snow, max, in an entire winter, is that the forecast for Portland and the Gorge is showing more of the same straight through Christmas. I wonder how long it'll be before the public works departments exhaust their entire season's supply of road sand and chemical de-icers? OK, time to get a hot shower and get dressed. I've set aside today for memorizing lines for Collected Stories. It's the mental equivalent of scutwork, but it's got to be done.
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Could everyone (from president-elect Obama to the co-host of NPR's Morning Edition) please stop using "enormity" as though it meant really, really big (as in "the enormity of the task ahead," or "the enormity of this moment in history.") At best, it's sloppy and archaic usage; at worst, it it's just plain wrong. ETA I forgot that my OED access is due to the university's meta-subscription, and that many readers may not be able to follow that link. So here: {dag}1. Divergence from a normal standard or type; abnormality, irregularity. Obs. or arch.
1538 STARKEY England I. iii. 84 The partys in proportyon not agreyng..leue much enormyte..in thys polytyke body. 1647 H. MORE Song of Soul II. iii. III. lxx, The strange absurd enormity Of staggering motions in the azure skie. 1865 MOZLEY Mirac. v. 95 Pure, boundless enormity, then is itself incredible.
{dag}b. concr. Something that is abnormal; an irregularity, extravagance, eccentricity. Obs.
1494 FABYAN VI. cxlix. 135 For his dulnesse and his other enormytes in hym exercysyd. Ibid. VII. ccxxiv. 251 That tyme clerkes..rode with gylte spurres, with vsynge of dyuerse other enormytees. 1577 T. VAUTROLLIER Luther on Ep. Gal. 26 And yet we can not remedie this enormitie. 1687 Death's Vis. ix. (1713) 41 note 4 The Irregularities and Enormities that appear in the Mundane System. 1710 ADDISON Tatler No. 250 {page}1 Enormities in Dress and Behaviour. 1781 J. MOORE View Soc. It. (1790) I. xxxix. 432 Keep the citizens from reflecting on..the enormities of the new form of government.
2. Deviation from moral or legal rectitude. In later use influenced by ENORMOUS 3: Extreme or monstrous wickedness.
1563 Homilies II. Repentance II. (1859) 537 Our natural uncleanliness and the enormity of our sinful life. 1777 ROBERTSON Hist. Amer. (1778) II. v. 138 Stained an illustrious name by deeds of peculiar enormity and rigour. 1863 BRIGHT Sp. Amer. 30 June, The protest..against the enormity of the odious system. 1872 BLACK Adv. Phaeton xxvi. 358 Lecture her two boys on the enormity of telling a fib.
b. concr. A breach of law or morality; a transgression, crime; in later use, a gross and monstrous offence.
1475 CAXTON Jason 134b, Certes Madame sayd yet Jason for these enormytes know that I have left and repudied her. 1549 COVERDALE Erasm. Par. Hebr. 16 Beware that we fal not agayne into our olde enormyties. 1664 H. MORE Myst. Iniq. 10 Provided there be but found a colour for these gross enormities. 1713 ADDISON Guardian No. 116 {page}1 There are many little enormities in the world which our preachers would fain see removed. 1766 FORDYCE Serm. Yng. Wom. (1767) II. xiv. 267 A single look is construed into I know not what enormity. 1842 H. ROGERS Introd. Burke's Wks. (1842) I. 28 The enormities of Debi Sing, one of the worst agents of Indian tyranny. 1879 FROUDE Cæsar xi. 119 Other enormities Catiline had been guilty of.
{dag}3. Excess in magnitude; hugeness, vastness. Obs.; recent examples might perh. be found, but the use is now regarded as incorrect. (emphasis mine)
1792 Munchhausen's Trav. xxii. 93 A worm of proportionable enormity had bored a hole in the shell. 1802 HOWARD in Phil. Trans. XCII. 204 Notwithstanding the enormity of its bulk. 1830 Fraser's Mag. I. 752 Of the properties of the Peak of Teneriffe accounts are extant which describe its enormity. 1846 DE QUINCEY Syst. Heavens Wks. III. 183 The whitish gleam was the mask conferred by the enormity of their remotion. [Mod. ‘“You have no idea of the enormity of my business transactions”, said an eminent Stock Exchange speculator to a friend. He was perhaps nearer the truth than he intended’.] Thank you. Tags: grumbling
I feel ...:  peevish
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