So folks, check out my road trip photos. My favourite part of the trip was the SXSW stuff in Austin, but I didn't really take any photos of that, save the blurry dark ones taken when I momentarily forgot I have no flash on my cameraphone.
I did feel a little homesick for Houston while I was away, and it was
very nice to get home to both Lucas and Bekah telling me how much I was
missed. But this week so far has overall been less than stellar. The post-show blues are turning me into a cross between a petulant child and a grieving mother. The tears are pretty ready to spring at any moment, such as when I walked past a photo of my sisters and thought for about three seconds about how much I love and miss them. Lucas is not having a lot of fun living with me right now, particularly given that he doesn't quite get this particular aspect of "our" career choice. Made worse by still recovering from major relocation, less full life here than in Melbourne, etc etc etc, you've heard it all before, plus decision not to pursue out-of-town gigs in order to protect our relationship & mental health.
When I have the motivation to get up off the couch (tell you what, cable tv is such an enabler for depressive days), I have been doing some major organisation of our household. I found all our paperwork from the move, which took me right back to eleven months ago when the same papers literally had me up all night. (See very first blog post!) Made my hyperventilate again. The U.S. government sure knows how to stress the hell out of you.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
Houston Day 301 - I am, in fact, a grownup
I just filed my taxes for the first time in this country. Am amazing, am very clever, am law-abiding citizen and am proper grownup. Also only paid about a dollar in taxes. Feels especially good to not be shit at life on day one of the six weeks of underemployment.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Houston Day 300 - road trip!
Got back yesterday from an awesome road trip. Here's the run-down:
Tuesday
*I learn everything I know from theatre. Research for Freedom Train and attending Main Street Theater's Coast of Utopia season have taught me about a wave of German immigration into Texas in the 1840s owing to huge political turmoil all throughout Europe at that time. The hill country is full of German proper names.
Tuesday
- Mel & I leave Houston for San Antonio. Roads get prettier and hillier the further we get from Houston.
- Visit Mission Concepcion & San Jose Mission. Enjoy beautiful architecture and grounds, fascinating history; love that these missions are still functioning Catholic churches - day-to-day life happening in historical spaces always makes me happy. Feel white man's guilt about crappy colonialist, supremacist attitudes that founded such places, alleviated slightly by the fact that this time it's not my ancestors (the Spanish can be bastards too, apparently).
- Eat excellent Mexican lunch at Mi Tierra restaurant, recommended by a random stranger at the San Jose Mission.
- Attempt to find hotel with vacancy in San Antonio. Give up after about four or five tries (spring break=busy). Book studio apartment in Fredericksburg, and drive there.
- Enjoy taking German accent for a spin while driving through hill country.*
- Taste some wines at a Fredericksburg cellar-door-type business. Buy bottle and spend evening having excellent conversation on the porch of our apartment in the warm evening surrounded by spring break party atmosphere.
- Breakfast at a lovely restaurant called Bejas. Sopes with sausage, poached eggs and hollandaise sauce, and a mimosa, coz am on holidays.
- Browse through a fun jewellery store and buy a funky ring.
- Attempt to visit Enchanted Rock state park, but turn away in disgust due to crowds arguing with each other. Appreciate rock from a distance instead, and drive off. Enjoy country drive anyway.
- Visit Pedernales Fall state park. Breathe in the horizon and the views and the feeling I get from being near water, which I think I inherited from my beach-obsessed mother. Walk and climb over rocks and talk and soak up the sunshine and watch interesting birds.
- Drive to Austin. By happy coincidence, arrive in the middle of South By South West film/music/arts festival. Whole town is having a party. Meet Morgan & McKenzie (friends from City Dance Summer School who live in Austin) at the Spider House. Drink, dance, listen to music, meet people, and generally have a good time.
- Spend whole day and night enjoying SXSW stuff. Highlights include the sunshine, the excellent Mexican food, the live bands, a film called "Gayby", street party atmosphere, meeting strangers, playing frisbee, and Austin's loveliness. Oh, and did I mention all the music gigs were free? I've never been a music festival fan, mostly because in Australia you have to be dedicated enough to pay $200 for a Big Day Out ticket, and camp for a week at Fall's. But in Austin? You can wander in and out as you choose. It's awesome. Lowlights include inability to deal with tiredness after fifteen hours out, sunburn, and losing Morgan in an enormous crowd.
- Tour Natural Bridge Caverns on our way home.
*I learn everything I know from theatre. Research for Freedom Train and attending Main Street Theater's Coast of Utopia season have taught me about a wave of German immigration into Texas in the 1840s owing to huge political turmoil all throughout Europe at that time. The hill country is full of German proper names.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Houston Day 295 - a little confession, and a little observation
Observation: People say "excuse me" much more here than Aussies do. I gather you're supposed to say it when...
And now a little confession. The friendship circles I had in Melbourne were so excellent, and so close, to me and to each other. Building up similar friendships after moving here is happening more slowly than I would like (I feel like every other time I've moved I just jumped into a ready-made close-knit community), so that means that the friendships I do have are so precious to me. I am so grateful for them! Here's the confession part: I know that I need most of my friends more than they need me, and I get so afraid of losing them. Being so needy & vulnerable is not pleasant, to say the least.
Saturday evening was a very fun & social evening...Houston Family Arts Center's production of Seussical was excellent, and it was so fun to catch up with people afterwards! (Yup, these are some of the times I'm grateful for!)
And now, a little afterthought: those of you who know us well will know that we love being social and hospitable, but are pretty rotten at keeping the house clean. BUT we seem to be blessed with the knack of making friends who are happy to do our housework for us, which means we can have our cake and eat it too. I was thinking of our Melbourne friends who did this - remembering one of my birthday parties when I walked into the kitchen to find that Caleb and Stu had done all the dishes, remembering the time Amber came over after work and cleaned pretty much the entire house in one evening, remembering Hayley, and Monica, and Jenn, and Janet, who I think cleaned our little white house in Chadstone more than we did. The reason I was remembering this? Lasagne Day last week, when Shemica came over between shows, marched straight into the kitchen, pulled up a chair in front of the sink, and got to work on the dishes. Bless her.
- you sneeze
- you yawn
- you cough or clear your throat
- you walk between someone and what they're looking at
- you walk close behind someone....even if you don't need them to move!
- you overtake someone on the footpath
- ...pretty much anytime you walk close to a stranger....actually you really can't get away with walking close to a stranger without saying something, otherwise you come across as rude. Ah, the South.
And now a little confession. The friendship circles I had in Melbourne were so excellent, and so close, to me and to each other. Building up similar friendships after moving here is happening more slowly than I would like (I feel like every other time I've moved I just jumped into a ready-made close-knit community), so that means that the friendships I do have are so precious to me. I am so grateful for them! Here's the confession part: I know that I need most of my friends more than they need me, and I get so afraid of losing them. Being so needy & vulnerable is not pleasant, to say the least.
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| Leslie as Mrs Who |
Saturday evening was a very fun & social evening...Houston Family Arts Center's production of Seussical was excellent, and it was so fun to catch up with people afterwards! (Yup, these are some of the times I'm grateful for!)
 |
| Nick as Horton |
And now, a little afterthought: those of you who know us well will know that we love being social and hospitable, but are pretty rotten at keeping the house clean. BUT we seem to be blessed with the knack of making friends who are happy to do our housework for us, which means we can have our cake and eat it too. I was thinking of our Melbourne friends who did this - remembering one of my birthday parties when I walked into the kitchen to find that Caleb and Stu had done all the dishes, remembering the time Amber came over after work and cleaned pretty much the entire house in one evening, remembering Hayley, and Monica, and Jenn, and Janet, who I think cleaned our little white house in Chadstone more than we did. The reason I was remembering this? Lasagne Day last week, when Shemica came over between shows, marched straight into the kitchen, pulled up a chair in front of the sink, and got to work on the dishes. Bless her.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Houston Day 293
So the last show went off without a hitch, and in order to assuage my post-show blues Shemica and Benito went out for brunch with me at the Down House, which Benito prefers to call "our club"*, afterwards. The other gentlemen of the cast couldn't join us because they had, respectively, rehearsals and an angry pregnant girlfriend to get to. (Although, in the immortal and way-funnier-out-of-context words of Derrick, "She's not angry, she's just black.")
*Certain areas of the Heights are still technically dry, according to some way old statute that nobody's bothered to change since the Prohibition. Many local bars get around this by calling themselves private clubs, and in order to buy alcohol you need to join the club. Benito joined the Down House with us after we went to see his show Circulo Vicioso de un Cuarteto Amoroso....I think I remembered that title right...
Last night, like the truly hip Houstonians we are, we hit up Montrose for some great food and many many beverages. "We" in this case means Lucas and Mel and I, and James & Aria + kids for the dinner part, and someone Mel met at Exxon called Erica & her husband for the drinks part. The best pizza I have ever tasted. Rocket (arugula as they call it here) + taleggio cheese + pear + truffle oil. That is all I will say.
Today Mel is off for a few days to some national parks east of here toward Louisiana, Lucas is off to Costco, and I am doing not all that much. Tonight is Seussical, starring Leslie and Nick and some other friends from The Sound of Music. Tomorrow is brunch with Aaron (from Exxon) & Lorena, and something which sounds very boring but will I hope be very helpful - a tax seminar put on by my agency about how to manage taxes as an artist.
*Certain areas of the Heights are still technically dry, according to some way old statute that nobody's bothered to change since the Prohibition. Many local bars get around this by calling themselves private clubs, and in order to buy alcohol you need to join the club. Benito joined the Down House with us after we went to see his show Circulo Vicioso de un Cuarteto Amoroso....I think I remembered that title right...
Last night, like the truly hip Houstonians we are, we hit up Montrose for some great food and many many beverages. "We" in this case means Lucas and Mel and I, and James & Aria + kids for the dinner part, and someone Mel met at Exxon called Erica & her husband for the drinks part. The best pizza I have ever tasted. Rocket (arugula as they call it here) + taleggio cheese + pear + truffle oil. That is all I will say.
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| Freedom Train cast: Brandon, Shemica, me, Derrick |
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| Benito & Shemica at the Down House |
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Houston Day 291 - unemployment again???
Freedom Train ends tomorrow. It's been such a wonderful journey, and the cast are very sad to be bidding farewell to working with each other every day. I had an attack of the post-show blues on Tuesday night (yes, before the season's even over) which Lucas very lovingly sat through, and my darling husband talked me down off my metaphorical hysterical high ledge.
Not only am I sad about saying goodbye to this precious time with some dear people, I'm also terrified of being unemployed. At this stage the next bout of full-time work happens in the last week of April, which is production week for the Hope Stone kids' show (and Pinkalicious rehearsals start the following week, in May). There are a couple of opportunities in the pipeline, but nothing I'm ready to move from "possible" to "likely".
And, blog readers, do you remember the last time I was unemployed? Existential angst, self-worth through the floor, and it being way too hard to get out of bed in the morning? Most of my brain knows that there are two big differences this time - one, I'm at home here now, and two, I have friends. In fact, two friends in particular have reminded me of their excellence this week. Bekah and I usually let each other know about audition results as soon as we find out, and when I told her on Tuesday that I didn't get in to Goldilocks she came over immediately and comforted me with good conversation, a French musical movie and going out for ice-cream. And Leslie, who is also finishing up a show this weekend, has suggested we watch Strictly Ballroom when we both get back from our post-show holidays (she to Kansas City to visit her sister, me road-tripping with Mel Bok who's visiting from Melbourne). But the tiny afraid part of my brain can scream pretty loudly sometimes.
I'll figure it out. I'm sure it'll all be fine. Something will come up, and if it doesn't, I'll make that fine too.
Check out the link below for some Freedom Train photos, which I'm sure I'll add to after our last show and what I'm sure will be a massive cast party (the party will be massive; the cast is pretty small).
Freedom Train photos
Not only am I sad about saying goodbye to this precious time with some dear people, I'm also terrified of being unemployed. At this stage the next bout of full-time work happens in the last week of April, which is production week for the Hope Stone kids' show (and Pinkalicious rehearsals start the following week, in May). There are a couple of opportunities in the pipeline, but nothing I'm ready to move from "possible" to "likely".
And, blog readers, do you remember the last time I was unemployed? Existential angst, self-worth through the floor, and it being way too hard to get out of bed in the morning? Most of my brain knows that there are two big differences this time - one, I'm at home here now, and two, I have friends. In fact, two friends in particular have reminded me of their excellence this week. Bekah and I usually let each other know about audition results as soon as we find out, and when I told her on Tuesday that I didn't get in to Goldilocks she came over immediately and comforted me with good conversation, a French musical movie and going out for ice-cream. And Leslie, who is also finishing up a show this weekend, has suggested we watch Strictly Ballroom when we both get back from our post-show holidays (she to Kansas City to visit her sister, me road-tripping with Mel Bok who's visiting from Melbourne). But the tiny afraid part of my brain can scream pretty loudly sometimes.
I'll figure it out. I'm sure it'll all be fine. Something will come up, and if it doesn't, I'll make that fine too.
Check out the link below for some Freedom Train photos, which I'm sure I'll add to after our last show and what I'm sure will be a massive cast party (the party will be massive; the cast is pretty small).
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Houston Day 284
Yesterday was a marathon day. 4 shows at 3 different venues adding up to a 15-hour work day. With a decent-sized break in the afternoon for me to invite the cast back to my house and feed them my excellent home-cooked lasagne. Also, in the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you there was a lot of sleeping going on in the back of the van between shows. But that didn't seem to ward off the hysterical exhaustion that overtook us at the end of the day.
It was so much fun. The first crowd of kids weren't great, and the second show was bizarre, because we had a time limit and so sped up the pace so much I was buzzing and couldn't slow down afterwards. The third show was pretty good, as was the last one. But this cast gets on really well, and we make each other laugh, and we look after each other. And we also explain, multiple times a day, to the resident Australian and token white person, that just because I don't always understand what's being said, doesn't mean they're insulting me.
Today was pretty chilled to make up for it. I went to the doctor this morning and I think I've finally found a doctor who I like. She talked to me like a person, which is a big step up from the last doctor I tried. I'm at Hope Stone now, and heading out for tapas with Scott, Maggie, Leslie and Lucas before we go and see Part Three of the Tom Stoppard trilogy tonight. So the serfs will be freed, and I think Bakunin gets a bit of redemption as well.
It was so much fun. The first crowd of kids weren't great, and the second show was bizarre, because we had a time limit and so sped up the pace so much I was buzzing and couldn't slow down afterwards. The third show was pretty good, as was the last one. But this cast gets on really well, and we make each other laugh, and we look after each other. And we also explain, multiple times a day, to the resident Australian and token white person, that just because I don't always understand what's being said, doesn't mean they're insulting me.
Today was pretty chilled to make up for it. I went to the doctor this morning and I think I've finally found a doctor who I like. She talked to me like a person, which is a big step up from the last doctor I tried. I'm at Hope Stone now, and heading out for tapas with Scott, Maggie, Leslie and Lucas before we go and see Part Three of the Tom Stoppard trilogy tonight. So the serfs will be freed, and I think Bakunin gets a bit of redemption as well.
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