Preparations

Sorry all, it's been a bit busy here. Mostly good, fun, stuff, though, which has been nice. The important thing is that CP3 is actually cruising along again, although it will still be cutting it pretty close to have it done for Christmas. On top of the fact that I still have to make the slippers, too. And I think it'd be fun to make a hedgehog for Ma'am, given her reaction to the one I made for Baby S for his birthday.

Let's see...what have I been up to? Last Friday, since we didn't have class, I went to see the Twilight movie with some friends. It, like the books, is a solid Okay. The movie is better than the book, imho, for the sheer reason that they can cram 300 pages of angst into 2 minutes onscreen. The effects are kind of cool, and the cast is pretty good. Robert Pattinson is WAY hotter as a Quidditch player than a vampire, though. He's the kind of guy who is always nice looking, but is only really spectacular when he smiles, and angsty teen vampires don't really get to smile all that much, apparently. Ah, well. I did forget that there is a lot of pretty decent sarcasm and one-liners in the books, though, so that was fun.

Saturday, I called the matinee but had the evening off, so I drove up to Cambria with Cute Guy to see the show he'd directed up there. It was called Indoor/Outdoor and was about a cat who longed to explore the outside world. It is actually a surprisingly good script. It was actually really cute and, to Cute Guy's credit, there were a lot of laughs and even many tears at the end. He had a good cast to work with, too, which helped a lot. Afterwards, we went to this teeny little bar with an Irish bartender and a live band for a while. It was a lot of fun. He's going to New York in a few weeks for a short gig, so I'm not sure when we'll get a chance to hang out again.

I ended up calling both shows on Sunday, so I didn't get much else done that day. Monday was all about cleaning and rearranging furniture and going to class. There was a test this week (more on that later), so both Monday and Wednesday's classes were focused on testing criteria. I think I'm getting a cold, though - I was absolutely freezing again during classes and had a really hard time breathing during them for some reason this week. Because of the test, the fact that we'd been working in the office until almost 7:00p this week dealing with the weekend's audition tour, and the fact that I knew I'd have to call all five shows this weekend without any hope of backup, I decided to give myself a forced break and didn't go to Haganah this week at all, which near to killed me, I think. I missed my guys, but I'd also done a fairly decent attempt at breaking my finger on a board break Wednesday night and my entire right hand and up my arm to my (already bad and protesting) elbow was bruised and swollen Thursday, so it was probably a good thing to not go to class.

Instead, I spent Tuesday evening putting up my Christmas tree. It's nothing fancy, in fact, I know I need at least one more string of lights for it, and it just has plain glass ball ornaments on it, since all "my" sentimental ornaments are at my parents' house on their tree where they should be. I've always maintained that when I have a family, then I'll have a family tree, but for now this is just fine, and it makes me smile when I look at it. I've draped my Christmas stockings on it, as well, which I like. Teddie has decided it's his own private hideaway, though. He loves to curl up on the tree skirt and snooze. Oh, and I made cookie dough that night. Because it sounded good.

Thursday night was spent working on putting pictures into my jewelry box. My mom got me a really cool jewelry box for my birthday, if you recall, and it's actually been hanging and full for a while, but I hadn't put any pictures in it. I'd gone through and decided which pictures I wanted to put in it, I just hadn't gotten around to actually doing it. Since my parents are coming out next week, I thought maybe it would be nice to have the jewelry box finished. So I spent the evening carefully arranging, trimming, and taping the pictures I wanted into their respective slots. It was great, just the way I wanted it. Then, when I went to actually put the frame into the box, I realized my mistake - I'd had the frame sideways the whole time, and it didn't fit into the box in that orientation! Argh! A whole evening's worth of work wasted, and of course, the vertical pictures and the horizontal pictures aren't cut the same size, so I had to go to Target and reprint some of them today. At least it's finished now!

Today was a little crazy. I went to a meeting for one of the Outreach shows. While I really like the people involved in Outreach, quite frankly, the script choices they've made lately have made me scratch my head, and the shows just really aren't that good because of it. Anyway, that meeting, which was supposed to have lasted twenty minutes, went almost an hour fifteen. I knew I'd have to call the show tonight, so I'd made arrangements with Sir to do my midterm test at 4:00p with the Tiny Tigers. It was now 2:15p, and I still had to get the brakes on my car fixed. I called to see how long it would take, and was told an hour. Perfect. Get an hour of knitting time while waiting for the car, have it done by 3:30p, run home, get my uniform (stupidly thinking I'd have time to run home and get it, I'd left it home), and easily make it to the dojahng by 4:00p. Yeah, that didn't happen. I didn't get my car back until 3:50p, which meant I went flying home, changed as fast as possible, and went flying to the dojahng and ended up ten minutes late.

Of course, I was a bit frazzled and didn't get a chance to warm up or stretch out or prep myself at ALL (and it was my fault, I completely admit to that), but luckily all I had to do this time was my regular form, my weapons form, and sparring. I know I made a few small mistakes on both my forms, which was frustrating, and I know that I let the judges know that I made mistakes, which was even more frustrating (Sir and Mr. R are always on me to not make faces when I mess up), but I thought my sparring was pretty decent. I sparred Miss G, a third degree, and C, who is testing for his third degree, no contact. I still suck at sparring, but I thought that was probably my best showing of the day, which isn't saying much. It was so fun watching the Tiny Tigers, though. Of course, they thought my sparring matches were "awesome!", but each of my forms are about five times longer than their attention spans. Their parents seemed to enjoy watching them, though, since they all told me afterwards that I'd done a nice job. Meh. I had to quickly change clothes again to go back to the theater for the evening show, though. I would have liked to watch Ma'am midterm and C test for rank. Oh well.

Mom and Dad are coming in on Monday, so I've been trying to keep the place cleaner than usual. It's been a little difficult, though, what with the cat seeming to drag fake Christmas tree needles all across creation and the styrofoam from a new $9 lamp I was forced to get when my original living room lamp blew up over the weekend getting strewn all over the carpet. I'm getting my wisdom teeth out bright and early Tuesday morning, and if all goes well, I want to be back in class by Thursday night, but definitely by Friday. It'd be fun to have Mom and Dad see a sparring class and Klondike's (I think Dad would be interested in the kickboxing and haganah on Thursday night, too, but not sure how much I can get away with dragging them to ;-) ). We don't have class on Monday because of the belt ceremony, which I don't have to stay for, but I did say I would bring cookies for, and I'm sure Tuesday is going to be a wash for obvious reasons. I was thinking maybe catching the matinee on Wednesday and going to the Melodrama that night, depending on how things are going, though. I guess we'll be playing everything by ear.

Anyway, I also set up a job interview on Monday morning at VAFB (sort of, the job is through the Air National Guard, so I'd have to join that to get it and I'll have to think about that), so I really need a haircut, and the only time I'll have for it will be tomorrow morning before the matinee, so I should probably get some sleep.

ETA: Oh, and I wore my Boatneck Bluebell sweater yesterday, and got tons of compliments on it, even from total strangers!