Houston Day 203 - backstage again

Hey blogworld, sorry it's been ages.  Am psycho busy with Rudolph and Sound of Music (nineteen days straight of shows, with an average of 1.7 shows a day), and Mum's here so I'm hanging out with her in most of my free time.
Mum being here means we've done some touristy things we haven't done yet, like going to the Natural History Museum and the Johnson Space Center (NASA).  The history museum has an exhibit on at the moment about the Civil War.  I learned all kinds of things about it which I didn't know before, and most of which I've forgotten since.  But it made me engage with some of the issues...I mean, I know that slavery is awful, but I think having African-American friends has made it real to me how strange and unthinkable it is that that people group was systematically dehumanised and brutalised, based on a worldview that somehow made that ok...and the economic pressures helped too...  and I know that economic pressures are making slaves of people right now...I don't really know what to do with that.  I guess as someone who is comparatively pretty wealthy, I can use my dollar as my vote.  I'm gonna research more about that.
There was a lot of info in the Civil War exhibit about medicine in the field; more people died from illness in the field hospitals than on the battle field.

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[Mono Chant, Morning Hymn, Alleluia]

[costume change]

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Ok, I'm back.  So at the Museum they had a Civil War amputation kit - a small saw, and different sizes of scissors and knives.  If you got shot in the Civil War you either got left to die or you got whatever limb it was amputated.  Cheery.

Going to NASA absolutely blew my mind.  I was looking at objects that had left this world.  They had a big shuttle, plus spacesuits, and capsules that the astronauts pretty much put on like a large costume and got sent out into space.  One spacesuit was dirty, because of all the dust ON THE MOON.  We got to see the Mission Control Room from the sixties.  The computers in that room? One megabyte large.  No calculators.  People were floating out there in space in lethal conditions with two digital pictures' worth of memory as their support system.  The rest was sheer brainpower.  We sent people to space on ONE MEGABYTE!!!! I don't leave home without Google Maps!!! It's amazing what we can achieve with the right political pressures.

So that's about all right now.  I'm getting more and more unpleasant to be around - way too busy and stressed - will never try to do two shows at once again.  Am feeling very strange about Christmas coming up.  Actually more than anything I'm going to miss Boxing Day shopping with my sisters.  It won't be Christmas without Claire running in the Myer door at 7am mocking the people who fight over the cheap wrapping paper, and then giving in to her inner bargain-hunter and buying the cheap wrapping paper for herself.

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[Lonely Goatherd coming through speaker in our dressing room, Mother Abbess singing along]

[apply lipstick for party scene]

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Houston Day 188 - backstage at Sound of Music

I'm in the nunnery (the female chorus dressing room) sitting on the floor against the mirror.  Three nuns are watching tv shows on their laptops, one is underlining something in a book, another appears to be getting computer advice from a younger postulant, one is skyping her husband, one is fixing her hair, another is reading, and the last is searching through her stuff for something.  And I just skyped Jenn & Drew in Australia! Yay, thanks guys.
Janet leaves tomorrow.  It's been so lovely having her here.  Australia feels closer than it used to.  I'm feeling remarkably well-adjusted and at home at the moment - I think if Janet had come a few months ago it would have been a very different story.  I have enough to do that challenges and stimulates and fulfills me, and a variety of friends - it's not the same as in Melbourne - of course you don't build the depth and breadth of friendship in six months that you do in seven and a half years - but I'm so enjoying getting to know everyone here.  And I accept that Houston's not the world's most liveable city, or even in the top three or wherever Melbourne is, but it's got things that Melbourne doesn't, and above all I'm willing to forgive its shortcomings because I feel at home here now.

Houston Day 187 - Happy Thanksgiving!

....and it was indeed all it's cracked up to be.  Woke up to find Janet watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the three of us spent the morning alternating between laughing and yelling (and, I confess, dancing) in front of the tv, and cooking up a storm.  Janet had also discovered a Thanksgiving playlist on the NPR website, so we cooked to that music, which was mostly just songs about food....including a rap song somewhat bizarrely  all about red beans and rice, and a lovely duet between Louis Armstrong and someone else entitled "All That Meat (and No Potatoes)".

Janet & Lucas choosing beer

The day before, however, involved a very stressful trip to the supermarket to buy all we needed to host the big feast.  The layout of the 11th St Kroger is still not intuitive to me, and there were some pretty frustrating traffic jams, particularly around the baking aisle.  Also, the store had completely run out of pumpkin, so Lucas had to make his pumpkin pie from a tin.

the veggies looked great before I actually cooked them

Like everyone who's hosting their first big meal, I called my mum a couple of times for cooking advice....felt like some sort of rite of passage.  And whilst I enjoyed preparing roast vegetables a la Sue, I screwed them up a bit and they came out burnt and chewy.  But thanks for helping me while you were travelling Mum!

I also got advice from my dad on how to make a good sauce to go with fruit salad.  Fruit salad is apparently a requirement of Bekah's Thanksgiving, and it made me very happy to hear her say "you've totally made my Thanksgiving with this fruit salad".  I've never really enjoyed playing hostess, particularly not when it involves copious amounts of cooking, but I had a great time yesterday! It helped that everyone contributed something, so Bekah made the turkey (well, she cooked it, she didn't make it; that would be strange).  Janet bought us some electric beaters and made a pav for a touch of Australiana...it was great, and went very well with Dad's raspberry sauce!

Janet's pavlova

Christine from Exxon came over too, bearing her family recipe of pumpkin ice cream pie, and Maggie stopped by between other parties and packing for her holiday to bring pecan pie.  The big football games were on, but unless I concentrate really hard on following the game I don't actually have any idea what's going on in American football, beyond the fact that big men in tight pants are rolling around on the ground together.

Maggie, Christine, Nick & Bekah

At last, at last (around 3pm), it was time to eat.  We ran into a little road block when we discovered that we didn't have a good carving knife and no-one really knew how to carve a turkey, but finally we sat down to a feast we could all be proud of! It was a very celebratory day.  I loved it.

Bekah attempting to carve

Maggie helping out

Now I am sitting in a quiet house eating leftover pecan pie for breakfast.  I am very thankful for old friends and new friends, and lovely food, and a lovely house with which to share hospitality.  I am grateful for my family on the other end of the phone, and for every second that I get to feel like I'm at home in this new country.

the end result - a delicious feast!

Houston Day 185 - signing up to be a mercenary

In between hosting Janet, who's visiting from Melbourne (yay!), Sound of Music rehearsals (I'm backstage now), and Rudolph shows (feel should add something in parentheses....um....it's going well), I'm supposed to be wading through the pile of paperwork and instructions my new agent gave me.
I have a sum total of a half-day's experience in screen work, so right now I'm just looking at "we need a certain type of body on camera" work, which sometimes might include specific skill sets.  You never know when a tv show or movie or commercial will require someone exactly five foot seven who looks Asian and plays classical guitar.  So this means I have to answer long long surveys about my looks and my skills, once for the agent and once for each of the four online casting databases I'm signing up for.  And here are the questions I am asking myself as I answer their questions:
Eternally damnable questions such as what to include...I used to think there was this magic line between professional and amateur, but there's not. I do include my last show in Australia, "Scenes from an Everyday Affair" in my list of professional accomplishments, because I flatter myself that it wasn't just for fun that I rolled around an intimate cabaret venue in my underwear.  Wait, does it make it more sordid if money was involved...? And do you want to know how much money was involved? $5, plus reimbursements for the props I bought.  That's right.
Yet more questions:
1.  Do I tick "wind instrument" if I've already ticked "flute"? Will that mislead casting directors into thinking I play another wind instrument?...coz it would just make me feel better to tick more boxes...
2.  Do casting directors seriously open this online database looking for someone with "whistling skills" as their defining characteristic?
3.  Who or what is "rappelling"?
4.  Why can't my secondary interests be more employable? i.e., why is Latin not listed in the foreign languages?
5.  My only TV experience is with the ABC, but I can't write ABC coz there's an American ABC...so it's the Australian Broadcasting....Company? Corporation? Canoe? No, wait, canoeing is in the "athletic skills" section...
6.  Resume comments section...presumably for me to comment, not the readers...."wow, i seem to have done lots of things that class as "live entertainment"" seems a little inane, so maybe I'll leave that blank.
7.  Who the hell knows their hat size?

...more adventures in the world of my career.  But I smile as I quietly grumble, because I have an agent I like, and more theatre projects and friends in this world than I could possibly have time for.  And also because they're singing "The Lonely Goatherd" right now, and you can't possibly be grumpy about that.

Houston Day 179 - more travels through space and time

Lily Tomlin's character (whose name I forget): Mr Markovski, have you ever travelled through space and time?
Albert: Yes.  No.  Time, not space.  Actually I have no idea what you're talking about.

I <3 Huckabees

Today was a little journey back in time.  I travelled back to the phase of a few months ago, when I was easily confused by all the bright lights, foreign accents, excess of choices on offer and unwritten rules of stores here in Houston.  The United States Postal Service can now join CostCo on the list of unlikely places that have reduced Amy to tears.
When I was young and naive, I thought that things like non-western toilets would be the hardest part of travel.  No.  Squatting near the ground to pee is nothing compared to not understanding instructions, or even worse, the instructions being assumed rather than explicitly given.  This is exactly what happened when I went to Japan and had no trouble with the non-western toilets, but enormous trouble with the western-style toilets with so many buttons, options and things that needed me to understand the instructions.
After breaking the rules at the post office (and wrapping up a package in a manner not inconsistent with a physical comedy sketch), I then proceeded to Bed, Bath & Beyond to purchase bedding for the guests who are staying with us over the next couple of months.  Still distracted by the Great Post Office Fiasco of 2011*, I nearly ran someone over in the parking lot, and then spent waaaay too much time contemplating the aesthetic, financial and allergenic ramifications of setting up the guest bed.  It's been a while since we went shopping for homewares, and I forgot how easily stressed out I am by it! However, I am pleased with the result!
So, Janet, Mum, Lex & Monica, welcome to our home! Come and enjoy your guest bed (not all at the same time, please).  And new Houstonian friends who I now know are now reading my blog, you are welcome to crash anytime.

*hyperbole used for effect

Houston Day 178

Yay, Rudolph went pretty well.  At last the company van is fixed so Tracey, Alice, the cast and the set all travelled together to our first show.  There were some nerves, and some almost-but-not-quite arguments, and some fear that my seatbelt wouldn't let me out (who designs a car and makes one seatbelt with a different mechanism to the rest, which is not at all clear how to operate?), but we got there and got set up in plenty of time.  The audience was a good size and fairly responsive, and when we discovered that the CD had scratches on the last few tracks we carried the rest of the show off a capella.  Ah, touring shows.  Every day, the same show, a different drama :)

Houston Day 177 - Rudolph opens tonight!

New things I have started doing regularly since moving to Houston:
1.  cycling
2.  eating grapefruit
3.  saying "y'all" (and "mum" is slowly gravitating toward "mom")
4.  buying food in bulk
In other news, we've got our first Rudolph show tonight.  This show is incredibly hard work physically.  It goes for less than an hour and we squeeze in about ten dance numbers.  I was afraid that once we put on the reindeer suits (and helmets, and scarves) it'd be so hot and such hard work I might actually faint.  But we did a dress run yesterday, and not only did I not faint, the director seemed fairly happy with it.  Although one of the reindeer did slip and fall over.  I think she's buying herself better shoes today.
So I shall throw my fear out the window, and say, bring it on! I am trying to train myself out of being afraid of things being too hard.  So many problems I have had in my life stem from me freaking out that something might be so hard I can't do it.  Things are allowed to be hard, that's ok.  It's actually rewarding, and it doesn't necessarily mean I can't do the thing that is hard.  It just means I can't do it easily, instinctively and without thinking.  I suspect being an over-achiever at school has something to do with this.  Reminds me of a quote from my favourite book: "A clever person so rarely has to think he gets out of the habit."  Not that I'm saying I'm so clever I don't have to think, but it's just that when I've decided I'm good at something I sometimes get upset if I actually have to put effort into it.  Which is childish, and a waste of time.
Speaking of my favourite book, I have been reading it again over the last few days to alleviate stress.  It's The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (nothing to do with the Tom Cruise movie of the same name).  The premise is that a genius of a single mother is raising her even-more-of-a-genius child on almost no money from a crappy typing job, and worried about him having no male role models, she plays him the movie Seven Samurai all the time.  At age 11 he finally finds out who his father is, and his father is a rubbish travel writer, contemptibly stupid to both mother and child.  There's a line in Seven Samurai which goes: "If we were fighting with real swords, I'd have killed you by now."  And the genius child goes to meet his father, and thinks "If we were fighting with real swords, I'd have killed him: I can't say I'm his son, because it's true."  But then he decides to just pick celebrities or academics who he respects and goes to tell them he's their son, because "a good samurai will parry the blow."  I take that to mean that only someone who doesn't believe the lie is worthy of being his father, but I'm sure there are more subtleties to it that I'll pick up on reading it for the sixteenth or seventeenth time.
I first read it when I was fifteen, and had the same feeling you get when you first read Samuel Beckett or Tom Stoppard: "I'm pretty sure I enjoyed that, but I know I didn't understand all of it."  So it's totally borne a once-a-year rereading since then.  I didn't really appreciate the ending on the first or second read.  It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I picked up how strong the theme of suicide is, and the heartbreaking parallels between the suicidal mother and one of the chosen fathers, who kills himself about three-quarters of the way through the book ("I pointed out that if she were thrown into a tank of man-eating sharks she would not consider it morbid to consider the possibility of exit from the tank").  Only on this reading have I become intrigued about the theme of travel: the kid's biological father is a travel writer, and most of the chosen fathers come to his attention because of interesting expeditions and adventures: a musician who goes to deepest darkest Africa to study drums, a journalist who crosses all kinds of restricted borders and gets imprisoned somewhere remote, a linguist who flies on homemade silk wings over Mongolia, Tibet and China, an astronomer who lives with a tribe in the Amazon for a while and teaches one of the Amazonian kids mathematics.
If you feel like indulging me and enjoying the book with me, read the following lovely passage, which happens just after we meet Father No.2, the charismatic astronomer, who totally believed he was his son until the kid fessed up and told him the truth.
"If I hadn't said anything to Sorabji I wouldn't ever have had to waste time that way ever again.  In the first place I would have gone to Winchester at the age of 12, and in the second place whenever I had a question I could have asked someone who not only knew the answer but couldn't do enough for his longlost son.  ...  I could have stopped wasting time and been the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Prize.  Instead I was going to have to do everything myself.
"I had another look at the Kutta-Jukowski theorem.  It wasn't so much that I knew for a fact that I wanted to win a Nobel Prize.  It's just that if you're not going to win a Nobel Prize you might as well do something else worth doing with the time, such as going up the Amazon or down the Andes.  If you can't go down the Andes you might as well do something else worth doing, such as having a shot at a Nobel Prize.  Whereas this was just stupid.
"I put down my book on aerodynamics.
"Sorabji looked out from the [television] screen with flashing eyes.
"I thought suddenly that it was stupid to be so sentimental.
"What we needed was not a hero to worship but money.
"If we had money we could go anywhere.  Give us the money and we would be the heroes."

- The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt, p378

One day I will learn how to pronounce all the foreign words, whip out my American and English accents, and do the audiobook recording.  Ah, a new career goal.

Houston Day 174 - bye Tom & Huck, it's been real swell

...for the most part, although the beginning of the process was frustrating in the extreme.  And then there were some other hiccups too...a couple of times kids in question time asked where Huck Finn was, and Shemica had to come up with a better answer than "well, honey, that actor was fired".
The best thing about Tom & Huck, aside from doing a fun show with fun people, is that it got me follow-up gigs with Express Theatre.  Rudolph (Christmas show) opens on Tuesday, and we start rehearsals for Freedom Train (black history month show) in January.  I'm feeling quite at home at Express now.
One thing, not just at Express but everywhere, that is becoming easier is the language barrier.  I know geographical variations of English are such a tiny language barrier compared to my friend Kristen who just up and moved to China a few years ago, but it has been a bit of a cause of stress, particularly because it took me by surprise.  A couple of things that have made me feel better are: 1) the knowledge that the one kid at Hope Stone who I can't understand frequently baffles the other teacher too and 2) the discovery that the African-American vernacular is considered by some linguists to be technically a creole or a dialect distinct from other kinds of English (thank you Wikipedia)...so it's possibly forgivable that I sometimes struggle to understand the conversation when I'm the only white person in the room.  It's kind of similar to talking to some of Dad's Scottish neighbours.  A couple of the folks at Express are very sweet and take care to 'translate' for me so I have learned some new words & phrases, including one which I won't share because I don't know how to spell it.  I've taught them some Australianisms too.  This week's lesson was the difference between "chookas" and "choccas".  I was explaining "choccas" as a shortening of "chock-a-block", which was met with a blank look, and the realisation that the word is an abbreviation of an already colloquial term.  Really, Aussies, sometimes we go too far.
Nick & Bekah came to our last show today, which was really thoughtful.  I hadn't asked them to come, because being childless adults they're not really the target audience, but Bekah insisted on coming to support me.  She's a great friend!
So the post-show blues have exactly twenty-one hours to do their worst before I go to my next rehearsal.  I think I can handle that.

Houston Day 172 - Lucas' birthday!

At Hope Stone again.  It provides a lovely rhythm to my week.  Before the teens get in I check in the very little kids for their class, and today when I got here the professional company was rehearsing, so I got to watch that too.  I treasure this hour every week, of quiet community in a creative space.  I feel so welcome, even though I'm only just getting to know everyone here.
Lucas is 30 today! ...which also means that it's been exactly a year since he got the job offer.  I remember it so clearly - I used to have four-hour breaks between teaching shifts in Cranbourne, and he called me and sang "America" from West Side Story to break the news.  Then he took the day off work, drove to Cranbourne, and we stared at each other in shock for a few hours.  I think we can say it's been a successful year since then.  It was definitely hard to go....a friend of mine was prepping a show about new beginnings and asked me for some thoughts for stimulus material for her dancers, and I wrote something like
Before I can go
I must first leave
And pray that it is worth it
Worth it? Hard to say so far.  I think so.  Even the depressing bit, when I was unemployed and bored and cried a lot for a few months, has I think passed, and had its lessons, etc., etc., etc.
Today is a very busy day for me, so while Lucas will be enjoying dinner with twelve new friends at a gorgeous restaurant near our place tonight, I will be at rehearsal.  But we celebrated last night - we went to a Peruvian restaurant together.  It was in a kind of industrial, unattractive area of town, which really showed me a way that I've changed that I dislike...I was getting inwardly critical of the place just because of the area, when in Melbourne the coolest restaurants are amazing gems of beauty and class behind a dingy alleyway front (think Panama Dining Room, or just about anywhere on Smith St).
Oop, gotta go & start drumming with the teens.  See y'all later.  (Yep, that's something I say now :) )

Houston Day 170

Shut up.  Eating Tim Tams in front of the telly is a totally acceptable way of spending my morning, thank you.

In other news, I have an agent! :) Her name is Cyndi, and she's the head of an agency called Pastorini Bosby, which seems to be the best/biggest/only agency in town.  I really like her - I met her last week and felt like I could be really honest with her, and she encouraged me to ask lots of questions, and she listened to me, and told me things I found really informative, including about the unions, which play a much bigger role here than in Australia.  So agents here in TX don't deal with theatre work, just screen and voiceover.  There's not that stranglehold on information that exists in the Melbourne theatre world, where you won't even hear about the good theatre auditions unless you have an agent.  In fact, I have been emailing someone at a theatre company in Austin about work there and she sent me an update recently saying, hey, you should be aware we're having auditions in January.  I love it.
Anyway, meeting my new agent was a really positive experience.  Very happy.  She wants me to do some more screen acting training, because I need to learn how to turn off the children's theatre habits.  So, I will enroll in something after the New Year, and between that, Hope Stone and hopefully some other form of paid performing work (opportunities in the pipeline but not definite yet), don't think I'll have time for Ragtime.  :( Pretty much my decision was made when I turned up to Sound of Music choreography rehearsal last night, and it was like I had never learnt the chore, my memory of it was that bad.  When I do multiple shows, one of them suffers, I have just discovered.

I shall eat the last Tim Tam, and then maybe do some work before heading off to Rudolph rehearsal in half an hour.  Or maybe I shall just watch SVU.

Houston Day 169 - busy busy busy

It is 5:39am and I have given up on going back to sleep.  Haven't slept very well the past two nights because I am stressed about juggling my busy schedule over the next couple of months.  The Sound of Music Director finally called me on how much I haven't been prioritising that show, with the result that I am missing Lucas' birthday dinner to go to rehearsal :(
This morning's particular worry is the upcoming auditions for a performance of Ragtime at the Miller Outdoor Theatre.  I really want to do it because a) it's Ragtime and b) it's at the Miller Outdoor Theatre and c) the rehearsals are one street away from my house.  Those reasons are all undermined by the $550 participation fee, and the fact that I'm squeezing auditions in between Rudolph shows, Sound of Music rehearsals, and visitors from Australia.  But then, a) it's Ragtime, and b) it's at the Miller Outdoor Theatre.  I think I'll just clarify what the rehearsal schedule will look like, to see if I even can make that work.

Tom & Huck cast - me, Derrick & Shemica

This weekend just gone Lucas and I had a little mini-holiday.  He came to see the Tom & Huck show on Saturday, and then we checked into a hotel in The Woodlands.  Saturday night we went to a fundraiser dinner in Conroe, about an hour away from our place, that Lucas' work friend James had invited us to, for his kid's school.  That was kind of the reason for the holiday - to make a fun weekend of it, rather than just a massive long drive.  Check out the map here.
The Woodlands is a strange beast.  Before we moved here, we were told "if you have kids, you want to live in The Woodlands; if you don't, you want to live in The Heights."  The Woodlands is all a bit perfect, and artificial, and...underwhelming.  Think of Caroline Springs and Disneyland having a baby.  I think I detected more of that stereotypically Texan/conservative American attitude (which is less common in Houston proper).  E.g. 1: the woman we met in the hotel elevator who thinks that travel to anywhere further than Hawaii is not really worth it.  E.g. 2: this mug I saw in a Texas memorabilia shop which assumes that Texan=religious=patriotic=yay military=appalling punctuation.  (O'Lord? God is Irish???)

E.g. 3: the woman I walked past in World Market who "hadn't ever realised that other parts of the world have all these different kinds of food."
But it was really fun to have a weekend together.  I popped my Macy's cherry and bought some new slippers (it's definitely getting colder), and our visit to World Market rewarded us with Tim Tams, interesting beer from Mississippi, Bundy ginger beer, and good curry paste.  Saturday lunch was at a cool Irish pub on the Waterway (which is The Woodlands' less impressive answer to San Antonio's Riverwalk).  Fall here is beautiful.  It's not the same as autumn in Melbourne....for one thing, the weather is consistent enough to make the change of seasons quite a different experience (remember my complaints about three straight months of 40-degree weather?), and for another thing, here the cold doesn't mean grey or wet nearly as much as it does in Melbourne.  So I'm doing things like walking around in the mild sunshine while the leaves change colour wearing warm hats and chunky knit sweaters.  I feel like I'm in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue, or a romantic comedy.  It's rather lovely.

Houston Day 164

Rudolph rehearsals are going fabulously.  We have a full cast, a great director, and the SM sitting in with us from the start.  I really like this director's process.  It's a tight schedule, but she's making time for us to all work creatively as a group, rather than it just being about her directing traffic.
Lucas is in Austin for the rest of the week for a conference so I'm by myself in this big house.  I have enough time today, though, to clean the house to make it feel nice to hang out in! I was going to listen to an audiobook (The Children of Hurin, by Tolkien but published posthumously) or the radio...a fellow National Public Radio fan just called me to say it's really interesting this afternoon, but it seems to be mostly about Greece's economic crisis right now, which I'm sure is a massive concern for many people but I've heard enough about it recently to not care that much....Am I a bad person? Yes.  On that note, I'm playing the bad guy in Rudolph! Unusual for me, so it's a fun challenge.
So clearly no big news happening right now, but life is generally nice.  Fall continues to be beautiful.  I continue to eat too much leftover Halloween candy (yes, we sat out on our front porch feeding candy to small children in costume on Monday!) and make myself feel sick.  Lucas and I continue to be rubbish at housekeeping, but at least we have a great dishwasher these days.  I miss everyone in Australia (well, at least the people I know....well, at least the people I know and like....), and the strategy against homesickness right now seems to be to avoid thinking too much about Australia, songs about Australia, Australian accents, and Christmas in summer.  Because I almost got choked up thinking about Prime Minister Gillard the other day, and that can't be good.

Houston Day 159 - it's my birthday, apparently

in the Miller dressing room

What a fun day.  We had a Tom & Huck show at the Miller Outdoor Theatre this morning, which is a beautiful big theatre kinda like the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.  And to be honest, the dressing rooms with the lights around the mirrors kinda made my morning.
The first genuinely cold day I've seen since we left Melbourne didn't keep too many people away, and we had a meet & greet with the audience afterwards, which swelled my ego nicely.  (You try being humble after crowds of adoring children look at you with those big shiny eyes and say they liked the show.)

Shemica and Alex backstage at Express

After unloading the set and bumping in for tomorrow's show back at Express headquarters, the cast and Sammie went out for lunch.  I think I'm a little bit in love with everyone.  We're working fairly well as a team (albeit with chronic lateness) and having lots of fun in between times.  At the restaurant Alex pulled what is apparently a regular trick of his and pretended it was my birthday so I got free dessert and the wait staff singing at me.  I laughed so hard I couldn't breathe.

Drums for our Music class at Hope Stone

It was nice to blow off some steam at lunch.  Also went shopping with Bekah yesterday on one of her rare days off, so that was nice too.  I feel like I'm working really hard and kind of just keeping it all together....I got home from Hope Stone last night, went up to Lucas and said "What's for dinner? I'm starving!" to which he replied, "Um, I don't know, I'm going out tonight.  Aaron's picking me up in fifteen minutes..." and my brain slowly ticked over...Lucas getting picked up by a friend...for an event I wasn't invited to...meant I was supposed to be busy somewhere else...crap, Sound of Music rehearsal, forty-five minutes away!  But we're at the stage of rehearsal where we're starting to run large chunks of the show, and they didn't get to anything I was in til after I was there, so no-one minded too much that I slipped in half an hour late.  BTW, I just found out I'm understudying Sister Margaretta, which is cool.  But it does mean yet more material to learn, with Tom & Huck still not completely under my belt and Rudolph starting next week....But what am I complaining about.  I love it.  I mean, I hate learning lines, but I love having so much to do.  And I think freelancing suits me well coz I get bored easily.  At last, feeling a little bit more like I belong here.  And the "no day but today" mantra is still reminding me to enjoy each day without having large existential crises all the time and some giant standard of what my life is supposed to be like looming over my head.
I've taken some more photos so you can get some more visual ideas about what my life looks like here! Click this link.

Houston Day 157 - first school shows! & I'm a dinosaur...

I just took off my visitor pass from Patterson Elementary School and realised it says "raptor" up the top.  I had no idea I was a raptor.  I'm cooler than I thought.
We had back-to-back shows of Tom & Huck at a school in Houston today.  They went pretty well.  The version of the original script that we've cobbled together worked ok, and it was fun watching the kids scream when I told Tom Sawyer "I love you" and kissed him on the cheek.
Working with Express is in some ways similar to Tony Bones in Melbourne and in some ways different.  At Tony Bones, Tony pretty much ran everything - creatively, administratively, on and off stage.  Express has more staff - Tracey the Artistic Director, Pat who is Tracey's boss, Shirley the guest director, Benito the Stage Manager, Sammy the MD, Marshi the costumier and Vincent (aka the alien choreographer), plus a cast of four and Nick & Rita in the office.  This means there is much more opportunity for miscommunication, which is frustrating, but it feels more like being a part of a team, which is life-giving.  It also means that people tend to have a stronger idea about what their role in the team is and their place in the hierarchy, which to me is a relief.  It also makes bump-in and -out much easier on the body! It feels more relaxed at Express, but I'm glad I worked at Tony Bones first so I learned how to snap into hard work mode.  This process has been hard.  There is this reluctance I feel in the team...I guess because we've pulled this show back from the brink of having no cast and almost being cancelled.  We keep giving off subtle signs that it's just too much hard work.  E.g., we're unable to start rehearsal on time.
*     *     *
I wrote the above yesterday and didn't get around to posting it.  Got a call from Benito today to say I'm definitely in the Christmas show, starting rehearsals on Monday.  Hopefully it will be at least as fun as Tom & Huck, and somewhat easier and more organised!

Houston Day 156

I.  Am.  Exhausted.  Seven hours of Tom & Huck rehearsal today.  We finally have a fourth person in the cast, so we've had two days to work on the new version of the show for back-to-back shows at a school tomorrow.  It's fun, and I really like the other cast members, but it's exhausting, like all good shows are! If you're not completely whacked at the end, it's not an interesting show!
In other news, I submitted my new voiceover demo and a video to an agency here in town, and I got in to see them next week! The recommendation from the voiceover coach really helped too- he's with the same agency and he called them on my behalf to make sure I wasn't just an anonymous package on someone's desk.
Tonight we're going to see the dress rehearsal of Fidelio with the comp tickets I earned lightwalking at the opera last week.  And somewhere between now and 9.30am tomorrow I need to go over my lines for Tom & Huck.
I've been kinda homesick the last few days, but it's manageable at the moment.  Sunday we were talking about Christmas and it hit me that I won't be spending it with my mum and sisters, so that was a few tears, and then an afternoon eating comfort food and watching a movie.  There's a song in Tom & Huck that sounds kinda like "I still call Australia home" and it used to make me sing it, but I decided to stop coz it's just too sad & I need to focus on the show, not how much I miss Australia!

Houston Day 155: News from the War Zone

It's been three days since the Mosquitoes declared war on the Residents of Texas.  They're freakin everywhere.  Their attack mechanism is dastardly.  They hide until a Resident walks outside, then swarm around him or her, and even hide on his or her clothing to gain access into buildings (formerly safehouses for Texas Residents, but now falling fast to the Mosquitoes).  In response, residents have been practising the government-mandated swatty-slappy-spinny walk, although this issue has divided the community.  For example, I met two parking garage attendants who used their free hands to practise the swatty-slappy-spinny while forced to work on the frontlines, and yet the guy next to me at the bus stop this morning refused to join me in the swatty-slappy-spinny. You are not cooler than me, guy in black.  And this was after I had already sustained wounds to the neck, face, head, feet, back and legs, including parts of my back and legs covered by clothing.

There is no escape.  Pray for us.

Houston is the fourth-largest city in the U.S., a hub of wealth and the arts, and filled with trees that look lovely on the beautiful sunny days.  And yet, sometimes I feel like I am living in a post-apocalyptic version of far north Queensland.  Tropical bugs and other creatures, almost zero foot traffic, roads of appalling quality, rubbish public transport, and until recently, unbearable heat.  Sigh.  I have heard both good and bad things about Houston, and they are all true.

Houston Day 151

I am blogging on my shift at Hope Stone, listening to the cute three- to five-year-olds in their creative movement class.  One of them just remembered the word "allegro", which I find very impressive.  And one of my teen kids just walked in wearing makeup, which is unusual for her, and it's thrown me and now I can't remember her name.
This morning I was trying to figure out why I was feeling so unmotivated to do anything productive and then realised that I probably have licence to be tired right now, what with a hardcore rehearsal of Tom & Huck (with the alien choreographer) yesterday followed by a dance class last night.  So I took it easy this morning before going to another Tom & Huck rehearsal.  I drove the alien choreographer to his house afterwards...or tried to but missed the exit, so he directed me to Hope Stone and caught a bus home.  I'm catching his vibe a little more now, and I really enjoyed rehearsing with him today.  Now tonight it's off to Sound of Music rehearsal.
I had a good chat to the creative movement teacher before her classes started and she was asking me how I've been getting to know the theater scene in Houston, and I realised that I'm slowly putting faces and names and places to all of those things I read on the internet before I even got here.  It's cementing more and more in my mind that I want to apply for the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Houston, but I need to actually meet the people there before I mentally sign up for it.  Plus I need to look at the tuition fees and figure out if we can afford it.  (Remind me again why Americans dislike economic socialism??? They just love overpriced degrees they have to pay off before they're ready???) The Head of Acting has said he's happy for me to come in and view a class and chat to him about it, but Tom & Huck rehearsals are kind of preventing that at the moment.  Hopefully after next week the show will be up and rehearsals will calm down.

Houston Day 150 - my mum's alive and I haven't been arrested

It's cold! What's happening to the Houston I've come to know and love? I think it was hotter in Melbourne yesterday than it was in Houston! Damn you all! I've been secretly gloating while you've all been whingeing about the weather, and now...enter the fall...
I often don't feel stressed, but notice my behaviour as if I'm a very well-informed outsider and conclude that I must be.  E.g, just under a year ago, fairly soon after we decided to move to Houston, I wasn't really feeling anything about that decision, and then I broke a small mirror while cleaning the house, and cried for half an hour.  So, I guess I'm busy enough at the moment, because I've started having bad dreams.  A couple of nights ago I was arrested by the Iranian government because I was behaving in a manner not accepted in an Islamic country (I'll leave that up to your imagination), and last night my mum got stabbed to death.  Still, I so much prefer work stress, manifest in dream-world harm to myself and my relatives, to the kind of bored existential angst that I've been experiencing.  Sorry, Mum.  Hope you don't mind if I text you every morning just to check you're ok.
The Adventures of Tom & Huck is the cause of all this stress.  The company's organisational and communicational skills have left a lot to be desired, but things are picking up this week with the introduction of a plain-speaking, clock-watching, decision-writing-downing Stage Manager.  There's also a new Choreographer, but he often gives me the feeling he's from another planet.  Almost everyone else on the team has worked with him before, and so that's nothing new to them, and apparently they enjoyed watching me "experience" him for the first time.
But each day this week I've reminded myself, "no day but today", and it allows me to try and deal with the challenges of each day without it becoming a question of my whole life's point or worth or success.  It's also caused me to rediscover how crazy I am about my husband.  You know how y'all think Lucas is funny and silly and smart and great to be around? Well, I get that every day! And yes, sometimes he annoys the crap out of me.  We've developed this stupid little bedtime ritual where he turns the dimmer on our bedroom light up and down for about five minutes before we go to sleep, and it pisses me off somethin terrible, but it at the same time it makes me giggle.  It's also thawed the ice on some conflict a couple of times, because even when we're hurt or seriously angry at each other it helps us remember we're really good at laughing together.

P.S.  I'm well aware that I used the phrases "y'all" and "somethin terrible" in the above paragraph.  You try living in Texas and working in about three different accents every day and not becoming some strange hybrid language monster.

Houston Day 148

So far the "no day but today" challenge has made me a little more productive, and less shy about talking to people.  I went and hung out at the crew table at the Opera today instead of hiding away in a corner :)  A large part of the conversation was about how Obama wants us all to be communists, by someone who clearly hasn't experienced how good socialised healthcare is, but other than that it was fun to chat.  And I'm going to sign off really soon so I can get my video submission to a prospective agent done.
The weather is beautiful now.  It's still hot but nice to be outside, and the evenings are actually quite cool....standing outside Jones Hall on Saturday night at 10.30pm was the first time I've been cold while outside for about five months! Lucas and I went for a lovely walk yesterday after our semi-regular breakfast at the Yale St Grill & Gifts, and then I went shopping with Bekah and Janette (a dancer who I've met at Hope Stone and Houston City Dance).  Hooray for Old Navy, and the Whole Earth Provision Company....good shops.  New pants.  Hurrah, coz it's still too hot to wear jeans.
p.s. Thanks to all from Melbourne who send me nice long emails to catch up on things!

Houston Day 147 - "No day but today"

Last night we went to see Idina Menzel perform with the Houston Symphony.  It was at Jones Hall, the Symphony's concert hall, which is an amazing, impressive venue.  So impressive vertically that we exhausted ourselves walking up about eight flights of stairs to get to our seats in the balcony.
The first half (much shorter than a half, really) was dedicated to the orchestra, and they did four pieces - "Baba Yaga", "Funky Chicken", "Javelin" (written for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for the 96 Atlanta Olympics) and "Ride of the Valkyries". I really enjoy orchestral music, and I think we're definitely going to go back to see them! They do a lot of pops stuff as well as classical repertoire.  In a few weeks they're screening The Matrix while they play the soundtrack live.
Idina came out after interval, in a stunning dress, and bare feet.  She sang songs from Glee, and Rent, and Wicked, and The Wild Party, as well as other shows she hasn't been in, and just other random songs she likes, and did lots of patter in between.  Gosh, it must take a lot of self-confidence to just talk and tell stories to thousands of people who've paid at least $50 a pop and not stop halfway through to go, "why the hell am I still talking? I'm sure no one cares".  But she was really funny, and her stories were really interesting.  She also sang some of the songs she and her husband make up to sing to their little son.....backed by this eighty-piece orchestra!
Two of her songs were the highlights of the night for me.  She sang "No Day But Today" from Rent, and later on did "Tomorrow" from Annie as an encore.  I never thought that song from Annie could make me cry, but think about an adult person offering it as a song of hope when she knows that hope is often desperately needed....
"When I'm stuck with a day that's grey and lonely
I just stick out my chin and grin and say,
The sun'll come out tomorrow..."
It was simple, and beautiful.
"No Day But Today" really struck a chord with me as well.  I seriously spend a lot of my time worrying about what I will regret in the future.  At the moment I'm stuck in this angst about my career: what if I never make it? what does making it even mean? when will I be satisfied? what if we have kids and I have to sacrifice my career to them? what if we don't have kids and I regret that? And yet, whilst you can do some things in terms of choices and education (and birth control!), you really can't control your destiny.  The guy who wrote that song died the day before the show opened.  One day he was there, so excited to be working on his first professional show, and the next day he wasn't and the team had to put the show on without him, and his death in a way became a part of the story.  He was in his thirties and no one saw it coming.
So many people who have satisfying, meaningful careers, including my own parents, and a guy named Lafayette who I met at the Opera this week, couldn't have planned them that way from the start.  So many people who have satisfying careers, including Idina Menzel, have times of unemployment and despair and self-doubt.  Since the concert I've had "No day but today" ringing in my head, and I want to let go of the future and the past and live in the now, because I suspect that is what will be most fulfilling.  If today is my only day, I am filling it with art and people.  Hold me to this challenge, please.
Check out the youtube link below if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Houston Day 145

Just a quick post while I'm procrastinating.  Learning lines is so boring, it's the least favourite part of any job.  But, holy mother of god, we're performing tomorrow.  Gah! So Express still haven't found themselves a Tom for The Adventures of Tom & Huck, so tomorrow we're doing an excerpt from the show that will pretty much just be an adventure of Huck and his friends.....
Yesterday I woke up and was sad to not be going to work at the Opera (I don't go back there til next week).  Funny, for a job that I was thinking would just be something to get me out of the house and meeting new people, it's actually really enjoyable! Funny story...they have such a clear chain of command that no one gets to move props except the props crew.  So the other lightwalker was instructed to move a chair and then someone yelled "don't touch it! Props, we need you to come and move a chair!" and she had to wait until the props crew came onstage to move this chair for her before she could sit in it.
Ok, I'm going now to learn my lines.  And at some point I need to finish this video submission to a prospective agent.  I gave myself that goal while I didn't have any work, and now I've got stacks of work and no time to finish the video!

Houston Day 143

Idina Menzel is performing with the Houston Symphony Orchestra weekend! Hurrah! And I can get cheap tickets because of one of the theatre mailing lists I'm on! Hurrah! This is the kind of thing I was looking forward to about living in the U.S.  :) (It's just occurred to me that some of my readers might not know who Idina Menzel is.  She was the original Maureen in RENT on Broadway, the original Elphaba in Wicked and she does guest spots as Rachel's birth mom on Glee.  Less well-known credits include Kate in Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party.)
Things are going pretty well at the moment.  We continue to enjoy cycling around the neighbourhood, and did the Heights Bicycle Rally a couple of weekends ago with Scott and Maggie and some of their friends.  It was twenty miles around the Heights and downtown, answering riddles and clues about things as we went.
But the main reason things are going well is that I am really busy! I have five half-days of work this week and next with the Houston Grand Opera as a Lightwalker.  If you've ever been through the process of tech for a theatre show, you know there are times when you just need bodies on stage using the props and interacting with the set so that you can see how the light falls on them and tweak them just right.  Well, Houston Grand Opera has so much money they can afford to pay people to be those bodies, allowing the rest of the tech army to do their jobs.  People sometimes use the cast for that, but a) the cast are more expensive if you're paying people, b) the cast have better things to do like rehearsing or resting between rehearsals and c) the cast often confuse the tech process with them rehearsing on the stage and try to make it about them.
My job with Express Children's Theatre has also finally gotten off the ground.  For I while I really felt like they were screwing around with me, calling me at the eleventh hour for rehearsals which never happened.  But we had an honest-to-god rehearsal yesterday, which was really fun, and the guest director, who has worked with them a lot before, said that this was unusual for them in her experience, which gives me confidence.  Two other people have been cast at the last minute, and it's really refreshing working with professionals.  They both slipped into their roles so easily, and the Music Director is so brilliant he just writes the harmonies as he goes, and we got two songs off the ground and sounding great in about fifteen minutes.  I'm still a little wary, but as I get to know these people more I think I'll trust them more.

Houston Day 132 - Go Cats!

Fall is here, and I am wearing jeans for the first time since May! Both the temperature and the humidity have dropped significantly, and it's really lovely to be outside.  The mornings and evenings are cool but not cold, and the daytime is sunny and hot, but temperate enough to actually enjoy being outside for more than a couple of minutes.
Lucas and I went on a bike ride together for the first time ever last night! We rode about twenty minutes to a restaurant we hadn't been to before, then felt awkward coz we got there and realised we had underdressed.  Then later on in the evening we went to a pub called the Firkin & Phoenix, where they were playing the AFL Grand Final.  It was such a fun night! They had Aussie food on the menu (sausage rolls & sauce, yummy yummy), and Cooper's & Boag's in specially (still cheaper by the bottle than you would get it at a bar in Melbourne), and there were so many Australian accents - lots of fun.  It was totally packed with rabid expats, including at least a few vocal Collingwood supporters...although you could pick them before they even opened their mouths :) Nice to be immersed in something good and Australian, although I think if it had been something Australian that I really care about (like the Melbourne Fringe Festival or something, not just the footy!) it would have been too much on the homesickness front.  And I also thought, you know what? I'm glad I'm watching this here and not in Australia, because I do have that sense of feeling richer for having lived in a different place.  During the national anthem, all the Aussies stood up and put their hands on their hearts - it made me smile to think that they'd obviously been overseas long enough to miss their country, because they wouldn't be caught dead doing that back home.

Houston Day 131

Yesterday was a much better day because I had stuff to do! A while ago I got in touch with a voiceover coach here in Houston and yesterday morning he helped me record a demo.  It was really fun.  I also did some accent work and recorded one of the spots in an American accent, and one in an English accent.  I'm thinking about getting a website together, so maybe you'll see it up there sometime soon.  John (the coach) was also talking to me about maybe getting into voiceovers for anime; apparently the U.S. hub for anime is in Dallas and he goes up there fairly regularly for recording sessions.
In the afternoon I had my second shift at Hope Stone.  I checked in the little kids for their creative movement class, assisted in/participated in the drumming class (such a bonus to just get to learn a fun new thing as part of this job!), and then taught the theatre class.  Gayla, the main theater teacher, called at the last minute to ask if I'd be happy to teach by myself because she had to go to a last-minute rehearsal for a dance show she is stage managing.  It was pretty fun!
So that's the challenge: just get some stuff to do! Auditions have slowed down for a little while, and Sound of Music, Express Children's Theatre and Hope Stone between them all aren't keeping me busy enough.  Am seriously thinking about going to grad school; there are some really good universities here in Houston. 

Houston Day 129 - some self-pitying whining

...and we're back in the land of despair.  Not really sure what the point of my life is, not really sure who I am, not really sure what I want to do, and often being blocked or disappointed when I do pursue things I want.  I alternate between feeling really bright and excited about everything I've got going on here, and realising I actually have very little going on here.  But if you tell me I'm just being aimless and I need to get a real job, I'll punch your face in.  I wish I had a real job, and I feel like a massive failure for not having a bright sparkly promising career like so many friends my age have.  And what on earth am I supposed to do? I know it's not strictly true, but I feel like the things I'm interested in and good at aren't really employable.  I'm so ashamed of myself.  And I don't want to be a stay-at-home mum.  I suspect getting pregnant just coz you're bored isn't the best life-choice.
I'm so unhappy here, but I remember my life back in Melbourne and realise that towards the end of my time there, I wasn't really happy there either, and I was just hanging out for this fresh start in America.  It makes me feel like I don't belong anywhere.  I'm just hoping that with a combination of time and effort, I can outrun the huge black hole for periods of time.  And as Janet says, I haven't been here for nine months yet; I haven't birthed my Houston "baby".

Houston Day 128

So I'm finally beginning to feel a bit better.  Yesterday I rode my new bicycle for the first time! I am hilariously awkward when starting, and when negotiating left turns in traffic, but it was fun.  I think I'm going to have to cycle to work on Thursday, which I'm a bit nervous about.  Also went to ballet class last night.  It totally wrecked me.  Hopefully I'll start getting some fitness back soon!
Tonight I'm going to the second rehearsal for a community theatre production of "The Sound of Music".  I'm just in the chorus, which means that I get to sing all that glorious churchy choral music that the nuns sing.  I think the last time I got to sing with a big group of people on stage was two years ago in "The Gondoliers".  Looking forward to it!

Houston Day 127 - on why I am not a dancer

I've had some good thinking time while I've been home sick (and still am- asthma takes forever to return to normal!).  A couple of years ago I read a brilliant book called "What Color Is Your Parachute?" which helps you figure out what you're good at and what kind of job would suit you.  Last week I did a couple of the exercises again, and established my favourite skills to use and the areas that interest me.
Skills:

1. generating new ideas
2. artistic presentation
3. public speaking
4. teamwork
5. extracting important information
6. team building

Areas of interest:

1. spirituality
2. singing
3. drama
4. classics
5. literature
6. music performance

Notice how dance doesn't really make an appearance? Have you, like Lucas, noticed what I've been hiding from, that I actually don't like dancing? I'm glad I've sunk so much time and effort into it, because it's a useful skill to have for auditions and shows, but from now on, I'm taking the pressure off myself.  I take a few classes, because it's good for my fitness and also for my CV, but I am not *a dancer*.  What a relief.

Houston Day 123

And that's it.  There it is.  Just like I thought it would, having a job has made all the difference.  Today I went to a meeting with a Director and the Artistic Director from Express Children's Theatre, and walked out with a script and a contract, then I went straight to my first session as an intern at Hope Stone.  One has totally shitty pay, and the other has no pay at all, for the moment, but it doesn't matter.  People are relying on me to do the things that I love and can do well, and I have sufficiently oriented myself to this city and country that I have the wherewithal to do that without crying.  I also pulled out of a show because I don't need to give up Christmas in Minnesota just coz I feel the need to desperately cling to every less-than-professional opportunity that comes my way.  Things are looking up.

Houston Day 120

Welcome back home....and now I'm sick.  Not sure if I caught it from Emma, or if it's just that the plane exacerbates my asthma, and no sleep because of jetlag and staying out late with Abby before an early flight makes it worse!
So I've pretty much been staying put at home since I got back.  Apologies to anyone who calls or Skypes for the next couple of days...I'm in no-speaking mode so I can save my voice for a callback audition tomorrow, and also coz talking makes me cough.  But it's been lovely to be back with Lucas.  I came back to a tidy house with bouquets of flowers, and also new bicycles (we've been saying since we moved we'd get some).  And he's just so much fun to hang out with.  The other day he spilt beer on the floor and pointed at it and cried like a little kid....maybe you had to be there.  He's also looking after me very well, and when I reminded him that my favourite thing to do when I'm sick is to get a TV show on DVD and watch it for hours, he went out and bought me the first season of Mad Men.  It's a pretty interesting show! Set in 1960, with much awkward pointed racism and sexism, and 1960s technology.  Favourite quote: "Of course we've only got the one copy.  It's not like there's some magic machine that makes identical copies of things."
I am going to my thrice-weekly dance classes at City Dance though.  It bothers me that I keep finding myself coming up with excuses to miss my classes there....homesickness, injury, etc...and I hate feeling flaky.  I think with dance classes I tend to find excuses not to go coz it's so hard.  But not this time! And tomorrow I have some training at Hope Stone before I start work on Thursday.  Yay!

U.K. Day 14 - Houston Day 116

I've had a lovely few days in London, staying at my fourth cousin Emma's place. Monday evening some rellies came over to hers for dinner - her parents Claire and Paul (my third cousins), her grandad Sid (my second cousin) and her cousins Felicity and Zoe (also my fourth cousins...although every time I see them it is fairly standard for us to have a disagreement about what our relationship is).

Emma was working and also unwell, so Zoe was my guide most of the time. She met me at the airport and on the Tube back to Emma's we talked intensely the whole way. I've only seen Zoe half a dozen times in my life, but we have so much in common that every time one of us visits the other one we just connect instantly. She's a professional choral singer, and her final dissertation in her theology degree was about whether music can convey spiritual truth. We've always had similar interests, even when those interests have changed over time - for example, we were both violists the first and second times we met, and now we're both singers (although because I'm not as classically inclined as she is, and because I don't specialise just in singing, I daresay I don't "count" as a singer very much in her head!)

Tuesday morning Zoe took me out on the town. I'll say it again, I love London. All of the old buildings are spectacular, and there's something wonderful and grounded about being in a place with so much history. America and Australia seem a bit flighty and aritificial somehow by comparison. We went to an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, which was one of those wonderful "this is either a really boundary-pushing, socially perceptive piece of art, or an expensive load of crap" installations. It was in the form of a labyrinth, made mostly out of cardboard and mirrors, and invited the viewer (well, the placards said it did, and I did feel invited) to reflect on themselves, religion and society, and was supposed to have representations of the four major religions. We enjoyed walking around spotting each of them but only found three. Not sure what was going on there. Then we hopped into a peddle boat and talked intensely, non-stop about theology for an hour while we peddled around the Serpentine River, and crashed a few times.

We met Felicity in her lunch break. She studied opera at the Royal Academy of Music and teaches music at a posh girls' school. It's a shame I didn't get to see her more, but like with Zoe I'm sure next time we meet we'll just click again and we'll feel like it's only been a week. Then I went back to Emma's and had a nice afternoon & evening in with her - she works from home for a medical equipment company.

Wednesday I took a tour through part of Buckinham Palace, including an exhibition of the royal wedding dress. Spectacular, fascinating, beautiful. I'm not sure I could say which bits of the tour were my favourite, but I did like the White Drawing Room, which is decorated in white and gold and has a "secret entrance" for the Queen which connects directly to her personal part of the Palace. The royal wedding cake was on display as well, and it's still complete except for the little bit where they cut it...it wasn't eaten at all! I met Zoe for lunch in South Kensington and then went out again in the evening with Abby, one of my best friends from St Andrews, to see Jason Robert Brown's "Parade" at the Southwark Playhouse Vault. They did a great job of the show, which meant that my heart was pretty well shredded by the end. One of Zoe's friends played the lead and she had suggested that I go for a drink with him after the show, but he was obviously exhausted when I introduced myself to him, which is fair enough coz he'd just been lynched on stage. Southwark seems a like fun place. The theatre was built under a bridge, which meant that it was pretty cold and damp.  Sometimes you could see the actors' breath fogging, which was a bit incongruous because the show is set in the American South, which I know from experience is pretty bloody hot. Abby and I went for a walk and a cuppa after the show, and had a really good heart-to-heart, and a good gawk at Tower Bridge. She's been living in London for six months, finding it a bit lonely, working as an interior decorator and set designer. She wasn't into theatre when we were at St Andrews together, but apparently after I left someone liked her drawings once, and then she came to be the only set designer in the whole university! Going to see a show with her was great - I forgot how smart she is, and she'd just notice little things about the show that were so perceptive and really increased my enjoyment of it.
I'm on the plane now, and I'll post this when I get home. I've slept a little bit, which is nice, and I woke up to spectacular views of the northeast coast of Canada. A few days ago I was thinking that I was having such a good time in London that I didn't want to go back to Houston, but I'm looking forward to it now, actually. I get to see (and hug, and talk to) Lucas, and I know I'm going back to my own bed, the rest of my wardrobe, my house which feels like home now, to two new jobs, to warm weather and to roads that can comfortably fit two cars. I enjoy England's soft muted polite loveliness but I also like boldness and colour and friendly, outgoing, forthright people. I've had so much heart connection with old friends these past few days to keep me going in working on my new friendships in Houston, I think.
 
Check out my London photos by clicking here.

U.K. Day 10 - Houston Day 112

A country that has the thistle as its national flower and the bagpipes as one of its trademarks, Scotland has a little grimness about its beauty. But St Andrews is a beacon of light and loveliness. Six years ago I spent a semester of my degree at St Andrews, and Dad and I went back to visit it on Friday. Just being there made me so happy, and it was lovely to walk down memory lane (in this case, memory lane was called Abbey St and was the road leading out of the town centre to my student accommodation). I will go back there. One day I will do my masters in Classics or in their Centre for Theology, Imagination and the Arts, and I will live in one of those old sandstone flats with a brightly painted door, and I will take classes in 500-year-old buildings opposite the beach to the sound of the bagpiper who plays outside the supermarket once a week. I hope he's still there.



St Andrews

Friday evening the relatives started flocking in and the celebrations for the ordination started. Lynne and Chris Brown (my third cousins) came up from Nottingham on the train and we had dinner in a lovely French restaurant. Jill was networking like crazy with the restaurateur trying to get him to buy the olives they're importing from their grove in Sandon in western Victoria (between Ballarat & Bendigo for those of you who know and/or care).

Jill, Dad, Lynne, Chris & me

Saturday we met my uncle Neil off the plane from the south of England and then headed in to the ceremony. It was quite formal, and the bishop was wearing his mitre, and I bowed to the altar before I gave my reading! So Dad is now officially a deacon in the Scottish Episcopal Church (the Anglican Church in Scotland). There was a lovely connection to America: after the American War of Independence Church of England bishops were forbidden from ordaining American priests, which according to the Anglican tradition was really necessary to carrying out the practice of the church. So the Bishop of Aberdeen ordained an American priest so that the tradition could continue there. In thanks, the American Episcopal church gave a lot of nice stuff to the cathedral in Aberdeen, including shields from each of the states & colonies (I was proud to locate the Lone Star of Texas!), and the chalice that Dad served the Eucharist from.

Dad & the Bishop

After that there was a great big dinner with loads of family and friends at the Spanish restaurant Dad & Jill took me to on my first night there. As you'd expect, Dad knows a lot of interesting people! I had a great chat to an American woman who used to be an actor and was a part of the birth of improvisational theatre led by Viola Spolin in the U.S. in the sixties and seventies. She now works for the Scottish Episcopal Church. I also met some relatives I hadn't met before, Dad's cousin Graham and his wife Christine. Christine is fabulous, about sixty (much younger than Graham, who's 72) and slowly retiring from her job as an HR consultant. She's great to talk to, with a mind like a steel trap, loads of interesting stories and a sparkly, engaging personality, and she actually listens, which is more than I can say for some of the people I talked to over the weekend. I also had one of those lovely mumsy moments with Lynne Brown. I love my English family.

Some of Dad's colleagues and friends

Sunday morning was breakfast with the Browns and the Garners at Dad's place before heading off to St Congan's Church, where Dad now has the official role of Assistant Curate. It was a really lovely service and they seem to have a great community there. Church lunch was at the priest's house afterward. One of the people I was complaining about earlier, who talks but doesn't listen, was really getting on my nerves but everyone was being very polite and British about it and not breathing a word about how much he was making everything about him. But Christine handled him marvellously. He was talking to her at one point and correcting her on something she'd referred to incorrectly, and she said, quite politely but with a twinkle in her eye, "I feel I shall be a better person after this afternoon, with you adjusting me all the time." Sunday evening Dad, Jill, Uncle Neil and I played a board game called Touring England that Dad remembers really fondly from his childhood. He lost pretty badly though. :)

St Congan's

I'm at the airport now waiting for my plane down to London. Actually, I'm first waiting for Dad to run home and come back with a whole bunch of money he promised me - in typical Dad style, he forgot his wallet. My fourth cousin Zoe, who I love dearly but have only seen a handful of times in my life, is meeting me in London and tonight she and another cousin Emma are holding a big dinner for all of the cousins to see me. I can't wait! It'll be lovely to see them again, and also loads of fun to hang out with people who are younger than sixty!
More Scotland photos here.

U.K. Day 7- Houston Day 109

Facing southwest 

We changed our plans around a bit and ended up heading to Loch Ness today.  It's really beautiful, but in slightly grim, Scottish way.  Most places in this part of Scotland are a bit like that - the sky is darker than in England, the buildings are made out of granite, the hills are bigger than in, say, the Lake District of England.

Facing northeast

There's not much pedestrian access to the waterfront.  We went down to a jetty and walked around as much as we could, then had lunch in the Clansman Hotel overlooking the water and the hills.  No sign of the fabled monster, except for in the gift shop.
On the drive back to Fyvie we saw Culloden, a giant open field where the last hand-to-hand battle was fought in the U.K.  It's the Alamo of Scotland, except that it's not straightforwardly English v Scots, and not so much heroic as just awful.  The guy who won, the Duke of Cumberland, earned himself the nickname "The Butcher".  And it's also a field, not a building, which also means that it's a grave site.
So (as much as I have learned from the visitor centre, Wikipedia and Dad), it was the British government v the Jacobites, who took their name from James I, the first Scottish King of Britain.  The Jacobites wanted to return his descendants to the throne, and the British government didn't, coz they'd deposed the last one for being crap.  The Jacobite cause was at its heart about the divine right of kings, but varied geographically, had really complex associations with church politics and religious freedom, and in its Scottish manifestation had a healthy dose of "how good is Scotland" in there too.  Actually I think for some people it wasn't even about Scotland, but just their clan - Dad says that's very Scottish.
The Whigs (Cumberland's chaps) had many more resources than the Jacobites, so when it came to the crunch there were more of them, and they were better fed, better rested and better prepared.  They knew that their opponents in Scotland would use the Highland Charge, which finished off by fighting at close range with traditional Scottish swords, so they trained really well in how to run a bayonet through someone.  Which, at Culloden in 1746, they did, about a thousand times.  And then to totally crush Jacobitism in Scotland, they went round the country and killed a whole bunch more civilians, and took all their stuff.  Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Jacobite leader, took off "over the sea to Skye" dressed as a woman.

Culloden

Jill's in Edinburgh tonight, so Dad and I have the task of baking a cake to bring to the church lunch on Sunday.  We might also have to watch some television.  Damn.

U.K. Day 6 - Houston Day 108

My earliest memories of the U.K. are from a trip I took with my mum when I was eleven (earlier trips at ages one and three didn't really make it to my mental photo album, except for brief flashes of memories of being on the plane).  Being away from home sometimes makes me a bit jumpy, and I'm the kind of person who gets easily scared.  Mum, in contrast, can't get enough war history, so when I was too scared to go through Winston Churchill's underground bunker with her (complete with wax figures, which freaked the hell out of me), she left me with a bemused security guard so she could go round herself.  We both laughed about this recently when I told her over the phone that I won't be going to Tower Bridge, and I won't be going to Madame Tusseaud's, and I definitely won't be going to Churchill's war rooms.

Fyvie Castle

This time, I'm setting my own agenda.  Somehow, this agenda has still led to me being creeped out, which is not helping me fight the insomnia already present.  I visited Fyvie Castle today, and that has enough grisliness about its history to make me pretty jumpy and not likely to make it to sleep tonight.  So while I'm awake, I'll catch you up on my doings. It's lovely when you're visiting people to be a part of their normal life a bit.  Jill is working every day, and is going away for work to Edinburgh for the next two days, but Dad is in summer holidays at the moment so has kept his schedule pretty clear for us to spend time together.  He asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I felt like being a bit touristy.  So it's a nice combination of things that are a bit special and holidayish, and just hanging out at home.  Yesterday we went to Inverurie to run some errands and go grocery shopping, and then went to visit a whiskey distillery at Oldmeldrum on the way home.  It's called the Glen Garioch distillery (pronounced "Glen Geary"), and it's a cute little small one.  The whole point of it was just to buy some nice unique whiskey as a present for Lucas, something you could only get in rural Scotland, but Dad and I ended up enjoying the tour and the tasting as well.  And, shock horror, I tasted a whiskey that I liked!!!! So that was the present I bought for Lucas, along with some signature Glen Garioch glasses.  Plus I now know some things about how it was made.

Dad went to work today, so I stayed in Fyvie and walked to the local castle.  (I love how in the U.K. one has a local castle.)  It was a lovely walk and I was lucky enough to get some good weather.  The grounds of the castle are beautiful and there's a biggish lake.  I've been to the gardens a couple of times before, but haven't gone inside.  I got there today just in time for a guided tour, so I joined that and it was really interesting.  Loads of old artefacts and impressive rooms and eight hundred years of history.  I love history, but it also creeps me out a bit.  Even without thinking about the ghosts of the two unfortunate ladies who were murdered in the castle for having babies of the wrong sex and wanting to marry a miller's son, thinking too hard about those people who have been dead for so long, sitting in that same enormous room, lit only by a few candles as the dark, serious portraits of their important relatives glower down from the walls...well, it gives me the heebie jeebies.  I was planning to visit Oxford Castle when I go down south.  Maybe I shall rethink.

Fyvie Castle Lake

After Dad came home, we did a cryptic crossword together (a favourite shared pastime of ours) and had dinner with Jill and watched some telly.  Nice bit of normalcy.  Tomorrow Dad and I are going down to St Andrews, Friday visiting Loch Ness, and then more family arrive from England and the weekend of celebrations begin.  The main reason for my trip here is happening on Saturday: Dad's getting ordained in the Episcopal church (what the Anglicans call themselves here).  All bells and whistles in the Aberdeen cathedral.  Dad is so much more high-church than I ever was, I'm sure I'll feel awkward and stand or kneel at the wrong time or something.  But worth it to celebrate this important day with him!