Break's over.

Hokayyy then, so I took a slightly longer break than I had intended, but I'm cute so you'll let it slide. And we're back! Today's picture is me about to study at my favorite spot on campus, a courtyard with a lot of benches and trees. Yes, that's my pet guinea pig Terwilliger, isn't he cute? Sometimes he does the cutest thing where he turns black and a bunch of white dots shoot toward me like stars. He's great with perspective.

21,198

One of the questions I keep getting is, "So.......how much DO you guys travel?" So I decided I'd calculate the miles from this Summer and find out exactly how much we traveled this Summer. I am only counting trips that at least half the family (2 or more members) were involved in. How many miles, you ask? The round trip total is the subject line. Yup. I didn't believe it myself so I recalculated, and it is accurate. Wowza! Today marked the 'official' end of Summer with the girls' first day of school. Yes, I already had mine, but I marked the beginning of Summer with their last day, so it works out. Brianna's first day of kindergarten, wow. We took the girls to the school and she sat down at her desk and immediately took out a pencil as if she was ready to jump in by writing a novel. Too cute. All she wanted to talk about when she got home were the rules and who broke them and how. They had a good day. Jason's mom flew out to Anchorage to see Bob this past week and she left her car at our house so she didn't have to pay for the parking fees. She came back in tonight so she took us all out to dinner and asked the girls all about their days. That was nice. After she left I went to the auditions for the fall shows at my school. I doubt I'll get a callback for either, I really didn't do well at all. It's been a while since I've done a real theatrical audition with the 'prepare a monologue and 32 bars of music' and whatnot. Oh well, there's always the Spring!

Zoom camera under this arch

Sketchy Thoughts rehearsal today. Our show is next week so today we met and did a full tech with partial props and costumes. The heels and gun are props/costuming from two different sketches, but I really like them together. Maybe if I get bored I'll just throw in a surprise sketch in which I'm a lady spy or something. Either way I walked around really tall and threatening people with the (blue, plastic, toy) gun. Aw yeah. I'm dangerous! Grr!

Tomorrow is the girl's first day of school, therefore the last day of this 'one photo a day every day this summer' portion of the blog. I might just observe one day with no photo then keep doing the photo a day thing. Who am I trying to kid? I like to too much!

A bit off center......

The Kansas City Improv Festival is three weeks away and things are starting to sew themselves up pretty well for the most part. A few details are less clear than we had thought, but these things happen. We'll nail them down shortly. Either way we had a meeting this morning. This is a plate and handbill mock up of the stage, seats, and backstage of the space we are holding the festival at this year. Jen did it to show people where the backstage area was and how the stage sits, and I think there was a lighting reason for this as well but I don't recall what it was. Either way I found it amusing. As far as the rest of the day goes, I spent it catching up on schoolwork. You know what sucks? Trying to read incomplete texts from 6,000 year old manuscripts. Yup. Can't wait to get to the middle ages in Western Civ.

I would, I would pay you so much money!

After German today there was a Theater Department meeting/party (note: It was an informative meeting marketed as a party {free food} to get the drama kids to come. Smart smart smart!) It wasn't immediately after my class, though, so I had some time to kill. Not unusual, after all, I've had random time spots between classes when the teacher was just DONE talking and let us out early throughout the week, but today I decided to take a picture of it. Today I was on some stairs near the theater area, catching up on reading for my Western Civ. class. I have two bags for school, a Mon/Wed/Fri bag (which is German class) and a Tues/Thurs bag (everything else.) since today was German you can see the bag I'm using for that class, which was ironically procured in Rothenburg ob der Tauber this February. Also, there's my foot, left hand, skirt, and purse. Just tiny snippets of what it's like to look through the window of my life. Enjoy. I had corned beef simmering in the crock pot and Jen had to smell it for four hours while she watched the girls, so what else could I do but invite her and Hans over for dinner? Shucks. She aired some concerns about upcoming events, we had ice cream, and we all watched Flight of the Conchords. Not at all a bad day.

Is this the little girl who's rotten?

Classes were great today! I had to drive all over town before and after school, though, so I ended up being pretty stressed out. I drove up to the babysitter du jour (thanks, Alanna!!!!!!) then down to the school, then back to Alanna's, then home just long enough to grab the school supplies for the girls, then to their school for 'Meet the Teacher' night. Here's Brianna sitting at her desk. She looks so little, how can she be big enough for kindergarten already? It just doesn't seem possible! She'll do great. Her teacher seems really nice. We dropped off her supplies then took Leigha to her classroom and met her (also nice-seeming) teacher. It's going to be a good academic year, I think.

Simon and Hecubus and Garfunkle

Today was Jason's work Monday, so for the rest of the week I have to find helpers for the kids so I can go to my classes. Can't wait 'till they start school, it will be so much easier on me! Luckilly, I have amazing friends, like Jen! She came over this afternoon to watch the girls while I went to German. (Sehr gut!) I came back to find her playing fishing on the Wii with the kiddos and freshly baked snickerdoodles on the counter. Jen, can you babysit me sometime? She grabbed her laptop to show me the ad she's designing for the upcoming Kansas City Improv Festival (starts 09/09/09 because comedy is repetition. Comedy is repetition.) We lay down on the floor together giggling and pretending we were at a sleepover while she pulled up the program she's designing the ad on, and I took the opportunity to snap this 'we are in our awkward phase' picture. I showed it to Jen and she said, "Wow............there is nothing about this picture that I don't like."