Trick.

Happy Halloween, y'all! Here's my little Hannah Montana and butterfly faerie princess proudly standing behind the pumpkins they so painstakingly designed yesterday. (Awwww!) Not much to say about today than the ordinary.........the girls went trick or treating and wore costumes, but usually they wear funny clothes and beg for goodies too, so when you think about it, Halloween is simply a slightly ramped up version of normal childhood. *holds up an imaginary glass of water* To childhood!

Hari kiri

Jason, sweetie, I love you but you're no actor. I said 'Make a scared face!' Not 'Look like you just coughed up a salamander!' (hee hee! Isn't he cute?) At any rate, today was a good day of recharging. I did some yoga with friends then went to German where I found out I got a 96% on my test from last week (wo0t!) then I made my world famous potato soup (note-there's just no such thing as too much bacon in potato soup.) After dinner I said, "Okay. Everyone get your shoes on." "Where are we going?" "Oh, it's a surprise." I had arranged with my friend Whitney (from school, theater kid, woo!) for some free tickets to the Deanna Rose farmstead's Halloween special event dealie. (yay!) We showed up and she greeted us at the entrance dressed as a cow. Way to start the evening, huh? We went in and did all the activities and got a bunch of candy. They have two separate hayrides going on there! One is 'scary' the other isn't. The difference between the two is the unscary one is a tractor pull and there's light up pumpkins, and the scary one is an actual horse drawn wagon and people jump out at you. Awesome. The above picture was taken just before leaving on the scary hayride. I kept joking that I was scared and Brianna said, "Hey, that's not funny. You're grown ups!" Oh child, if only you knew. We came home and carved our pumpkins. Two of them rotted (the green ones! Don't let your kids get green pumpkins, fyi!) so we gave the girls our pumpkins to carve. Brianna made a cat and Leigha made a Frankenstein. I'll post them tomorrow behind my little ones in their costumes, so no fair whining about our unconvincingly afraid faces tonight.

Riddles in the Dark

Today was another rough day, but it's okay. I've made the decision to be okay with whatever comes my way. Shortly after deciding this, I left the house with the girls. It's been raining all day long, but as I drove to Dustin and Alanna's a HUGE, vivid rainbow came out, sweeping a translucent multi-hued arc across the sky, connecting two points of the earth with happy. As I drove East I went right under it. It was like a cheerful sweep edit, like I was being told, "Now you get it. It's gonna be okay. Oh, and you've got mustard on your shirt. Ah! Made you look!" Rainbows aren't always nice. Sometimes they can be bullies. I got to Dustin and Alanna's not too long before Jason got there. A few other couples came as well and we all had dinner then played the most amazing board game that makes you do absolutely rediculous things! At one point Dustin had to pick an object from around the room to be his 'mascot' and every time he took a turn he had to make it cheer for him. The whole thing was like a study in Dadaism turned into a board game. Sweeeeet.

Unitard

If you don't like Princess Lolly, sorry, it's Jason's fault (yup, I'm going to blame him again) because it was a choice between this and Darth Vader on drums. He said, "I kind of like the Princess Lolly one." Princess it is. Now, we're three sentences, a quote, and a parenthetical tangent into this entry, so you're probably thinking, "What's the deal with Princess Lolly?" Good question, glad you asked, have a pillow mint. It's three days before Halloween and our church turned the sanctuary into a giant Candyland board! How cool is that? This is Cherie and Crystal (mother and daughter) as Princess Lolly and her sidekick. Aren't they adorable? Where does Darth Vader on drums fit in? Good question, glad you asked, have a butterscotch. Jenny's oldest son, Trent, is Darth Vader for Halloween, but, like most kids, wore the mask for 47 seconds before becoming bored with it, so Jenny decided to wear it around instead, even to music practice, where she plays (gasp!) the drums. Mystery solved. Have a peppermint.

Oh, we don't PUT hummus in Betsey Johnson!

Today was really rough. I got by thanks to the help of my family.

The process of becoming

The only seriously interesting thing that happened to me today was meeting with my study group for a big Western Civ test tomorrow. So in lieu of an actual entry, here are some fictional things I did today:

1. Met a guy named Arnold.

2. Ate massive quantities of tacos with Arnold.

3. Discussed botany with a tribe of lizards.

4. Attacked by grizzly bear. Played dead.

5. Saved a colony of rainbow trout from a blizzard. Named honorary trout king for a day.

6. Stole a balloon, let it go, then hid in an attic. (No, wait, this one I actually did.)

7. Reversed the earth's rotation. You're welcome.

8. Dyed Brianna's hair blue while she slept. She has yet to notice.

9. Ate every option on the Mc Donald's dollar menu.

10. Became a hobbyist beekeeper.

11. Arc Welded a ferret to a jetpack. Yes.

12. Started a band.

13. Band drama

14. Broke up the band.

15. Created my very own paper crane army. We now control the Western third of Canada. It's about time somebody did.

16. Stalked your mom for a little while. She's boring, fyi.

17. Wore shoes on ears. (No, wait, this one I actually did.)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm bored with this game. Time to nail Jell-o to the wall. *grabs a hammer and walks off*

A heavy dose of atmosphere

Today was the day when all the tired finally caught up with me. Four days and nights of improv revelry sure do take their toll on a girl! The good news is that even as a barely functioning human I still make a pretty decent improviser. I managed to get through the last workshop pretty well, then ran on the last of my energy reserves for Project Improv. Here's me as I was pulling up the blogger site to let you know how tired I am. Good news: I get to sleep in tomorrow. Four intensive days of great improv, great friends, and great times. Mission accomplished. And now to recharge.

Leaves of three

Oh wow. Today was pretty amazing. Like, on a scale of amazingness to non-amazingness....today was so high up there on the good side as to be transcendent. I had workshops with Jill Bernard all day, and during the course of those workshops I played a velociraptor character and mentioned Owl City. We all went to dinner at a BBQ place then Tom, Jill and I went to Starbucks for some caffeination. While we were there we made up a rousing chorus about a stuffed gorilla we found in the bargain bin. This is a picture of Jill and the lower half of my face from on the way to Starbucks. I love the energy in the picture so much I don't even care that I'm barely visible in it. Either way, I had a great set with my group then sat down to watch the last few shows of the improv festival. The last set of the evening was 'Brownies Don't Lie' which is comprised of Trish Berrong and Jill Bernard. They were amazing, of course, but in one of the scenes Jill played a very familiar looking velociraptor! I was incredibly flattered to have been used as inspiration and I told her as much after the show. She said, "Oh, yeah, guess what? In that mother-daughter scene that we did where I was stroking the poster on the wall? In my head that was an Owl City poster." Squeeeeeee! I felt like I was a part of it! (Lucky Jen. She actually WAS! She got to tech their set!) Unfortunately, that means the shows of Impfest are OVER. There's one more workshop tomorrow, but the festival is gone now. Boo! It was such a blast. Thank you so much, John, this was so incredible and I feel privileged to have been a part of it!

Can you still hear my inane giggle?

A self-portrait of Anomaly Orange in the green room tonight, day 2 of Impfest! I love how Matt looks like he's drowning in a sea of fellow improvisers. It was a great night. Wonderful performances, supportive audience, a karaoke after party, and best of all, Jason and the girls came out for the 7pm show tonight. The girls got to meet Jill Bernard, yay! You may notice we were missing Joe tonight, he had a city council meeting to go to, apparently. Good 'ol responsible Joe.

The five people that make up Miley Cyrus.

Today was the first day of the first ever 'Impfest.' That's right, John has decided to put on his own improv festival at the theater! The very first group on the menu, er, roster? Anomaly Orange! We met at the theater early(ish) to get some stage time so as to work some of the kinks out of the format, and then when it was time to warm up we went out the back way and across the back parking lot to the little park on the corner and warmed up on this weird concrete circle thingy that's out there. It was a blast, we got crazy loud! We kicked off the festival with a bang (literally. I tripped and re-injured my stupid ankle and shin that I hurt going down the stairs a couple weeks ago. It's not as bad as it was then.) and we get to perform again tomorrow. I can't wait!

My shiny wet hiney

German was SO much fun today! We are finished learning new material in the chapter we'd been working on so today was review day before our test on Friday. Instead of the typical rundown we'd usually have, our teacher pulled up the website on the back of our book and brought up some of the fun excercises you can only utilize if you buy a membership to. (between shelling out $100 for the book, $50 for the online workbook and another $50 for the online lab, that's unlikely. Yay for grants and loans!) This picture is from one of the games we did, where you take the square that has the words on it and match it with the picture. If you get it right there was a chiming congratulatory noise. If you got it wrong, it would go, "BOI-oi-oi-oiiiing!" And snap back into place. We got so into it that when the teacher was moving the mouse around saying, "Okay, which do you think it is?" We were all screaming out, "NEIN, NEIN, NEIN, JA, JA!!!!" until she'd pick the right one. She totally dragged it out on purpose just to get a rise out of us. (I would have. I so would have.) Any time she purposefully made the incorrect match and it would go, "BOI-oi-oi-oiiiiing!" We'd groan collectively, and likewise cheered correctly when the chimey noise came wafting out of the speakers. We are a generation of absolute dorks and I love it.

P.S.-the word in the background on the screen is one of my very favorite German words. It's right up there with 'schadenfreude.' No, I won't define the terms, look them up for yourself! Cultural enrichment is a beautiful thing.

Reverse toast

Rehearsal tonight was exhilaratingly fun! We had an absolute blast and I worked up quite a sweat between being super active in scenes, editing, and laughing really hard. Jen and I went out for a bit afterward so we could talk about stuff and eat fried food. While I was at the table with her I said, "Oh! I didn't take a picture yet!" She said, "Well don't look at me, I'm not in the mood to be on your blog!" "Yeah, well, neither am I.........." I settled for forever comemorating our lovely fried pickles. Thank you, dear pickles, for the wonderful deliciousness and conversation starting. You will be missed, but not as much as if we hadn't eaten you at all.

The European housewife

On my way home from school this afternoon I went grocery shopping for a few items. I got all the way back to dairy before it occurred to me how very Parisian the whole thing was. Fruit, olive oil, a mini baguette and goat cheese were in the basket (too bad it wasn't wicker) I was carrying. Oh yeah, and of course my purse, complete with a scarf tied to the handles. I also happened to be wearing a flowy skirt and ballet flats. Ooh la la! Today felt like the unnofficial 'Let's all think about Jessica' day. I had people popping out of the woodwork calling and texting me, I had lunch with one of my classmates to discuss the Aristotle notes she missed, and then I found out Owl City is coming to Kansas City in January, and it's totally affordable. It's like they planned it! Oh, and also I needed new Chucks and the Converse store is having a 2 pair for $35 sale. Aw shucks, I got new Chucks! 2 pair! One of these days you can see them when I get bored and take a picture of my feet again. Not likely to happen any time soon.

Oh, sure, blame the man...

I didn't sleep well at all last night. Morning comes whether or not we will it to, however, so I got up, sang my little heart out at church, then came home and took a short nap. I woke up at two feeling sick and tired, so naturally I suggested we go out and do something. Hey, why not go to the art museum? After all, if I'm crawling with culture already I might as well invite more in, right? Right. So we loaded up the kids and went to the Nelson-Atkins, and a pleasant afternoon was spent making a game of trying to see how many paintings look like modern day celebrities. (There was a victorian era painting of a woman that looked JUST LIKE Dave Foley!) I had a couple pictures in mind for today's blog. This one, and one with Jason sitting on the steps of the museum. I asked his opinion and he said, "I like the one with the shuttlecock." Yeah, sure, blog shy boy. So if you don't feel you see enough pictures of Jason in my blog, you can go ahead and blame him.

Let the record show that Jen has new contacts in.

We had a poorly attended yet fun show in Lawrence tonight. Lately the realities of being a hardcore artist are making me smirk in the extreme. Tonight was one of those 'We almost made enough money to cover the cost of chair rentals, whoopie!' kind of nights. The good news is that we have a pretty good troupe nest egg and two shows later this week, so we should be able to make up for it. We decided it would be a good idea to make up for the small audience by having pumpkin pancakes at IHOP after the show. Here's a picture of Jen wearing her compassionate face and saying something to Carl while Hans tries to eat his own beard, apparently.

P.S.-doing a show sick=INTERESTING experience.

But I like the town the color it is!

I have been wanting to do something special with the family Friday evening all week long. Initially, I looked for a children's play or something like that that we could hit. This being Halloween season, everything is Edgar Allen Poe and zombie themed. Maybe in a few years, but for right now, that would be a no. So I decided to find us a movie that wasn't Where the Wild Things Are. (It's opening weekend. Do you know how many crying babies that equals? Pass.) There was a Toy Story 1 and 2 marathon at the theater, and I LOVE Toy Story, so we planned on that. On the way to grab a quick bite before the movie we were in the car ticking off things we need from Target and it hit me: I don't want to pay good money to watch computer animated toys do cool things, I want to do cool things! So we left the turning lane and went straight, got on the highway, and went downtown. We had dinner at a great Mexican place and got some fried ice cream there for dessert (my first time eating it. Woooow, that's good.) then we went exploring for a while, just seeing what we could find (Yeah, and I'm the brain genius who suggested we take Main all the way from River Market to Westport on a Friday night. Stupid Power and Light district, you ruin everything!!!) before we finally ended our little excursion at Half Price Books. I found a Vintage Clothing book (yeah!). We hit Target for essentials on the way home, and as we were walking into the building Brianna said something funny and I laughed and said, "Bri, you're going to be a very interesting teenager." She said, "Nu uh, I'm gonna be on a stage doing IMPROV!" Yeah..............I love that she wants to do improv, but there are some serious implications that she apparently feels there is a direct correlation between being interesting vs. doing improv. Little snot.

P.S.-if you look closely at this picture (0r click it to make it bigger) you can see that Brianna is wearing shoes from two different pairs. Both are left shoes. We didn't notice until Target.

Alvin, Simon, Theodore

Tonight was the first Project Improv meeting. We had a rather small turnout (it's fall break. We chose the WRONG week to start. Oh well.) but it was a blast! Those who did show up played hard and well! For such a beginner group they were really talented! Halfway through the evening we took a break and Tom and I were discussing what games to play next and I heard a giggle, turned around, and saw Tim, Laura and Whitney like this peeking around the door. "We weren't sure if we could come in or if you were talking about us." Hee hee, it was really funny. All three of them are in my Voice and Speech class so it was weird seeing them in an improv setting, but it was an absolute blast as well. Can't wait until our next get together, and hopefully at that point we'll catch those who are out of town this week!

Mittwochenende

Jenny has been trying her hand(s) at drumming recently. She keeps a pretty steady beat and if someone tells her to do something she can pick it up pretty quickly. She feels she needs more practice before actually playing in front of people, but hopefully that time is not far off. We could seriously use a drummer. Also featured in this picture is Jason, his bass, and the stool I place my coffee on when I sing, except tonight it has sheet music and my chewing gum. Yeah, boyeeee! (Yup, in a mood today.) Jarod is in town right now. It was great to see him tonight. He helped us with a song I've been absolutely DYING to do but nobody else knows so we just hadn't gotten around to doing it. Lovely!

Oh, and for any and all German buffs out there who are trying to figure out my clever polyglottal subject line wordplay, I don't have school tomorrow or Friday. (Ooh, clever, right?)

Under fire?

Does that not seem like the stupidest place for a scarecrow to be hanging out? I mean, seriously, no wonder he only wanted a brain! Fortunately, Zak was there to save him.

It's a two purse day!

Lookie! A self-captioned picture! There's a dormant improv group at my school, apparently. Tom found out about it and since he works at the college, he was able to take over as the staff advisor! Naturally he asked for my help on the project (1. I'm an improviser 2. I'm a student. Two things you'd need for such a group.) and I gladly agreed to help make this thing happen! Sign ups were today so I grabbed candy ('student bait.') and helped with the table-ing! Joe showed up to keep us company, and then (to my delighted surprise!) Jessi showed up about an hour in, sat down, and stayed the whole time! We had an absolute blast and got a TON of signatures. We even had a couple people who have done improv before sign up! I can't wait to see what comes of this thing!

I do homework in the bathtub.

Today was the very last day of the show, yay! It's over! Immediately after the last audience members left we struck the set and I made the dressing rooms all pretty. The girls, meanwhile, were picking out pumpkins with their fellow Girl Scouts. This picture is MUCH more interesting than one of me on my hands and knees covered in set sawdust, patrolling the ground for wayward screws. They came home with four pumpkins (Yeah......Bri got the green one. *shrug*) and went to Jenny and Jason's house for Trent's eighth birthday party (wow, seriously? Eight?) I finished up at the theater and met up with them there. Coming back to your family at the end of the day is a wonderful feeling. Coming back to your family at the end of the day, surrounded by friends and immediately being handed two slices of pepperoni pizza....well, that's just gravy.

Thor was here

Oh man! I had THE busiest day today. I had a lot of driving to do as well. Fortunately for me, my car decided to break down, though. Yay! Oh.......wait, that's the part I'm NOT happy about. However, the good news is, it was a part that cost $200 and was completely hubby fixable. Score! So I got to feel like an invalid as people shuttled me around all day long. Thanks, dear friends, for you copious amounts of awesome! *blows a kiss* I love you all! The crown jewel on my day, though, was the Improv Thunderdome Championships! Yeah! Everyone played hard and represented their teams well, and in the end, Your Mother Called walked away with the well deserved belt. Thanks to Mike Jimerson for posing for me! I think it's really cool that they won because when they played the first time around Janina was in town and we all came to see that round of Thunderdome. What's more, most of us voted for them! Like I said, very well deserved.

When we're apart whatever are you thinking of?

The play started back up again today. Last weekend of it, yay! I'm getting pretty tired of hanging out backstage. (Can you tell? I lay down on the floor for a while for goodness' sake!) On the way to the theater I stopped at Taco Bell and got a burrito. They handed me SOMETHING but I was in a hurry so didn't realize that my awesome steak fresco burrito was nothing more than a dog chow.........erm.......what Taco Bell passes off as 'ground beef' burrito supreme. *eye roll* It had rice in it! I hate that. It's like, "Yeah, no the sixty carbs in the tortilla aren't enough, thanks a ton. Literally." Ugh. The person who started that is probably the same genius who decided potato was a decent filler as well. At any rate, it was SO not even close to my order, but it was vaguely the same shape, so I took a bite. I was holding it saying, "Oh........this isn't what I ordered...." When Sarah came up and took a GODZILLA sized bite out of my burrito. I turned to Samantha and said, in a deadpan voice, "There's a Sarah on my burrito." When Sarah finally came up for air, she said, "Oh! That's yummy, can I have a bite?" Wow. Just..........wow. She's a treasure. (No sarcasm, I love the girl) After extensive arguing and me feeding her castoff bits of tortilla like she was a baby seal, I finally conceded the other half of the burrito that I hadn't ordered. I think we both walked away from the exchange happy. Her for getting the burrito she desired, me for making her jump through extensive hoopery to get it.

Being an artist is fun!

Tonight, Jen, Tom and I went to Lawrence to put up flyers for Anomaly Orange's next improv show. Being an artist on a smaller scale is a funny thing....You do your own press and box office stuff, design and distribute your own handbills, and when it's show time, you set up and take down your own chairs, sometimes chairs you paid out of pocket to rent! The good news is if you play your cards (and handbills) correctly, you come out ahead of the game most of the time, and build up a troupe nest egg for those evenings when most people would really just rather see what reruns are on. (Srsly? Lame.) We had a pretty good time, despite the rain and whatnot. Jen and I goofed around with lipstick and she got the two of us matching candy skull rings at Target. (I only broke two molars on it!) We also took some goofy pictures of us making faces and one of me sitting on one of those 25 cent horse rides you see in supermarkets. Lucky you, you get to see one of the tableful of flyers we visited!

Here. I posted it. You can go to sleep now.

The good news is my ankle doesn't hurt as bad as I thought it would, the bad news is my other ankle is the one I sprained so badly LAST time and I've been putting most of my weight on it and it's really sore now too. I'll take what I can get at this point. Tonight I helped out in the kid's zone at church. Here they are watching a movie that they started the evening with. They were all SO squirrely tonight. So was everyone in my German class. They say that happens with major barometric pressure changes and we had a storm blow in tonight. Go figure. Beyond that, my day consisted of exactly one thing. HOMEWORK. Nurschk.

P.S.-I just googled the word 'google.' I'm doing GREAT up in here......

Here we go AGAIN.

You might not believe this, but there are some serious disadvantages to being a massive klutz. For instance: You can have a completely rockin' day, absolutely peachy, wonderful rehearsal, feeling good, surrounded by good people who love you, then suddenly have it all turn around on you, fall down a couple stairs and have all the good stuff just wiped from your memory. I twisted my ankle AGAIN. My ankle itself doesn't hurt at all, but the ligaments that wrap around the shin are just killing me. I also cut up my foot and knee. The best part is that I fell, started feeling okay, then drove home. Yeah, it's my right leg that I injured. Pressing the gas pedal for 20 minutes: OW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can I just stay in bed for about a week?

Stinkylangweilig!!

Today was an amazing day with precious few photo ops, so in the interest of fairness, here's a picture of Leigha doing something funny. You're welcome. So, yeah, amazing. Today I:

*Slept in!

*Learned a bunch of super fun words in German!

*Had coffee with Tom!

*Did some shopping by myself!

*Didn't have to cook!

*Spent time with the family!

*Watched some TV with Jason after the kids went to bed!

........all while listening to copious amounts of Owl City, who I love. This may seem like a ho hum or even blah day to some people, but for me, every element of it was perfect and it was exactly what I needed.

It's never that easy

Today the strain of the past week overcame me and I had to take a three hour nap to try and recuperate a little bit. Again, those of you who know me know that a nap for me is a BIG DEAL and can understand how devastatingly exhausted I've become. The thing is, with as busy as I've been I hadn't even noticed that it got to that point. Not good, Jess, not good. Jen and I got together over coffee this evening and we decompressed. It was absolutely lovely. I really really needed that. I forgot to take a picture of it, however, so here's one of Brianna acting goofy from earlier today.

Everything is never as it seems

Ah hah! This picture cracks me up! Okay, so this is myself and another crew member for the show, ironically also named Jessica. We aren't allowed to talk, as I mentioned previously, so tonight we made a game of sharing one ear bud speaker and switching back and forth between our iPods. She'd play a song, I'd play a song, and back and forth. We also spent a lot of time tied together via the afforementioned earpieces, dancing. It was fun to come up with dance steps that were as much movement as we could possibly get in without dislodging each other's groove juice. (yeah....we did that a lot.) I spent most of my day at home, on the phone. Everyone seemed to want to talk to me today! (Tiffany, I will call you back when I get a chance, you called in the middle of a conversation with my sisters who are currently in Vegas.) I had hoped to get in some homework today, but unfortunately all that gabbing made it possible for me to get six pages of reading in, and that's about it. Gah! I attack tomorrow with my entire armada.

A healthy dose of FABULOUS!

Two shows down, four to go! We were all hanging out backstage tonight when one of the costuming department heads wheeled in this GIANT laundry hamper (remember Mr. Bundles in Annie? That kind.) of shoes and left them right in front of the dressing rooms. I honestly don't know what she was thinking. Needless to say, it was soon brimming with theater kids. Everyone's favorite pair were the spike heeled orange tennis shoes, as modeled here by Justin and Ed. FYI, the blonde is Justin and I sit next to him in German. I don't think I'll ever be able to conjugate with a straight face again.

Yes and no

Today was a veritable mixed bag of good and bad. I honestly don't know which won in the end....probably good. I am an optimist, after all. At any rate, my consensus either way is that THIS is the outfit I should have stayed in all day. (tee hee!) Oh come on, you know you've been thinking to yourself, 'Gosh, I wonder what it would look like if Jess took her blog picture before 8am?' Aren't you glad you know now? Today was one of those amazing gloomy rainy fall days (I have fondly dubbed them 'Coffee days') and I got out of school early thanks to the theater department's trip to Into The Woods that I opted not to attend since I have other classes during the day. However, my voice and speech teacher went on the trip, so those of us who stayed didn't have class. Wo0t! I was done by noon! I decided to go to one of my favorite coffee shops and read Aristotle for a couple hours. Coffee goes well with philosophy, I gotta say! I came home just before three and worked on some German homework and this evening I went to the theater for opening night of the show! I got everyone looking all shiny and pretty then headed off to my rehearsal at the Imp.