What I Did in May(ne)

So, admittedly the entry below this one, which I posted the other day, was a bit of a random one, and probably not what you'd expect after a month without a post. But Keagan and I were talking about how one day he's going to college, and he said he thought it was about a hundred hours from now, and I explained that one hundred hours was only about four days, and it was probably longer than that, so he said maybe it was a THOUSAND hours, and I explained that still wouldn't even get him into kindergarten, so I told him we'd figure out the real number of hours when we got home. He suggested we look it up on the internet, which is what we did when we wanted to know how many pores the average person has (he was counting the holes in his body--mouth, ears, nose, etc., and I mentioned that he should consider including pores), so then I had to explain that things were only on the internet if someone had decided to put them on there, and that it wasn't necessarily likely that someone had decided to work out how many hours there are between preschool and college and post it on the internet, but we could figure it out with a calculator. And then Keagan suggested that WE post it on the internet after we'd figured it out, in case anybody else wanted to find it. So, that's what we did.

Anyway, the point is that it's been quite a while since I've actually posted any updates on the course of my life, so I'm going to post a quick summary of the past month. I also have a new philosophical/psychological theory that I'd like to hear people's thoughts on, so I wanted to post that here as well. I'm still trying to work out exactly what the point of a blog is. What do my readers (all three or four of them...) come here to find? Descriptions of my recent activities? Developments of my opinions? My blog, like my journal, has thus far tended to be a strange, disjointed mishmash of these two impulses, mainly because there is a part of me that feels most valued when other people know random details about my life and activities, but there's another part of me that is way more interested in ideas and their development and how people respond to them, and the battle between these two parts of myself is fought in forums such as this one. I apologize to the innocent casualties of this war.

The upshot is that I am going to fill this post with random details, and then I am going to immediately create a separate post with an explanation of my theory. I sense that there may be a couple of my readers more interested in my activities, and a couple more interested in my thoughts, so hopefully my tendency to keep the two separated is helpful to you. Perhaps someday I will learn to use a blog function that makes it possible to view only one or the other type of post. Until then, you'll have to figure it out for yourselves by reading my introductions and getting a feel for a post's upcoming content.

Anyway, what has gone on in my life since I posted last? Well, the Relay-for-Life that I mentioned in a previous post was fabulous fun. I stayed up all night, had fun hanging out with some of my new friends from SPU, enjoyed improv and a late-night showing of Batman Begins, and stayed up all night reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, which is an absolutely fabulous book. Directly afterwards I drove down to Tacoma for a reunion breakfast with all the wonderful folks with whom I went to Mississippi last March. It was great to have one last time all together before many of us took off in various directions for the summer.

Speaking of taking off in various directions, the next day I departed for Maine, to meet up with my family and celebrate my grandfather's graduation from college. It was wonderful to get to spend some quality time with my grandfather (not to mention my mom, sisters, stepdad, and grandmother) during the week while he showed us around what we eventually came to term "The Sparkly State" (seriously, everything in Maine sparkles--the water, the rocks, the dirt, the roads, the plants...it's crazy). And then the rest of my mom's family drove up from Massachusetts, and I got to reconnect with all the wonderful relatives I so rarely get to see. I feel like I actually spent enough quality time with all of them that I'll be able to recognize them the next time I see them, which is always nice. I especially appreciated their enthusiasm as we painted celebratory slogans celebrating Grandpa Fred's graduation on everyone's car windows, aimed bubble guns out the car windows on the caravan ride to the ceremony, provided my grandfather with the loudest, longest cheer of anyone graduating that day, and finished off the evening with a couple of rousing games of Diced Apples to Apples.

Then I returned home to an overflowing e-mail inbox, and by the time I had that relatively under control, it was time for the aforementioned Double Shot Festival of overnight playwrighting. It was a wonderfully insane experience. I was given the initially dubious prompt of "dogwalker," along with a director I had met once before and three actors I met for five minutes in the hallway outside the theatre, and then I was sent off into the night to start writing. Eleven hours later, I returned to the theatre with a ten-page script I was actually pretty happy with (although I wasn't sure to what extent my judgement could be trusted at that particular sleep-deprievd moment). The director seemed to like the script after reading it through a couple of times. And then we put it into the hands and mouths of the actors, and it came alive! It was incredible! I could have gone home at that moment, completely content. But we still had a full day ahead of us to rehearse and prepare for two full productions that evening. The actors did their utmost to memorize my hopelessly wordy, monologue-ridden script and to do it justice in front of an audience. The jury is still out on whether the play actually makes any sense whatsoever, but I'm hoping to get some more feedback on it at an upcoming theatre conference in Alaska. (And if you have any interest in reading it, and I haven't sent it to you already, shoot me an e-mail request for it and I'll send you a copy.) In any event, I learned a lot and had a blast, and have so much respect for the directors and actors and all the other playwrights who devoted so much talent and energy to the process.

(If you want more information on the festival, check out the Tacoma News Tribune's review. This is a review of the first night's shows. Fortunately or unfortunately, the second night of shows, which included my script, does not seem to have been reviewed by anybody. But, the review of the first night is a good one, and it gives you an idea of what the actual experience is like for an audience member.)


After Double Shot I spent a week planning out my upcoming road trip across the country to Princeton, figuring out where I want to stop and what sights I want to see. It was an intense struggle for my J personality to leave my plans as open-ended as it is advisable if not necessary for them to be, but somehow I found a balance, and I am very excited for the adventure. Since then, I've done some more research on grad school programs, fellowships, and applications, spent lots of fun play time with my cousins over here, and actually finally had a couple of people make the trek out here to West Seattle to visit me in my own domain--some girls from church came over for a sleepover the other weekend, and Robby just drove up the other day from Tacoma while on brief leave from Iraq. All of which was very excellent.

I have just been reunited with my laptop after a couple of days getting the fan fixed, which was a painful but necessary separation, and now I can actually do things like watch videos and listen to music on my computer without worrying that it will slow to a halt, or, worse, completely and irrevocably fry its own hard drive.

I've got a few more days in Seattle before I head down to San Diego for a week, which should be very nice, and then from there I go directly up to Alaska for the theatre conference. Then it's another two weeks in Seattle for packing and goodbyes, and I'm off on my Great Cross-Country Road Trip Adventure. Wish me luck! And now, for something completely different (see above).