Category Archives: Updates

by

2012 In Review

Here we are at the end of 2012 and what a great year it has been.  While I don’t have a Top 10, I thought I’d run through some of the personal highlights that made this year so great.  Now I fully accept that I may be the only person interested in this, but by golly I’m doing it anyway despite the yawns and alt+tabbing. (Oh, you thought I couldn’t see that did you?)

This year I’ve read more books than I have in awhile and while that number isn’t impressive by any stretch, I still did it and count it towards my personal achievements.  As a person who used to live in books, my past non-reading has been a bit embarrassing.  This week I’ll finish up A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini and then it’s off to Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale.  That only leaves me with a gigantic stack of books (about 2’ high – I have the best intentions) that I’ve been meaning to read for a long while.

I wrote a lot of sketches this year, I got terrific feedback from Esther’s Follies on one I submitted to them, and we had a show that sold out over a three week run.  Fantastic!

I was involved in three film shoots – two were for sketches I had written and the other was for a fellow classmate’s sketch.  I can say that in my shoots, I was surrounded by incredibly amazing people who taught me a great deal.  I’ve learned a lot and hopefully, if we continue to shoot sketches, I’ll become a stronger director.   Right now, I’m more of the, “ummm hey guys like if you could maybe like ummm read the line like this… yeah, ok? Roll sound.  Roll camera.  Scene 1B Take 5. Action.” type.

Behind the scenes for Dunes

Below is my classmate Richard’s sketch “Good Morning” (you’ve gotten to see mine already – time for something new) where I got to play the role of Production Assistant and door slammer extraordinaire.  It turns out I not only have a knack for door slamming, but it’s really quite enjoyable. (Note: I got to slam that door no less than about 20 times.)  Now if I could only spin that into a job.  I know I’d excel.  Maybe move up the door slamming ranks until I became a Slammer Supervisor and allowed to slam two doors at once or maybe a French door on occasion – I mean, if my performance evaluations went well.

(Features many of the cast from our “Moral Compass Rumpus” show and all of the writers.)

I finally used my “big girl” camera and while I’m not entirely amazed by the results, I learned more about it and more about film (yes, yes, I’m a hold out).  Namely, that I may be investing in a DSLR vs. the SLR I have in the future.

Film – Chinese Lanterns – State Fair of Texas 2012

I’ve asked Seth a ton of questions and learned many new things.  Seth endured high school with me and is one of those insanely smart people who kindly puts up (for reasons I don’t understand but appreciate) with a random question a month.  Seth gets nothing in return save the knowledge that I’m kind of an amusing air head and that fuzzy good feeling that comes from helping the hopeless.  This year I’ve learned about topics from Copyright Law to Lomography to purple vs. the light spectrum.  He also tries to encourage me to use my camera. He claims it’s not scary.  I’m supposed to go on a photo stroll.  Yes, I will get on that. You can see Seth’s amazing photos here.

I’ve had some great times with some great friends despite April’s attempt to try and bump me off.  She’s now got me in a regular walking group.  I think her diabolical new plan is to make my heart explode.  In the last two months I’ve walked further and climbed higher than I have in a long time.  New muscles reintroduced themselves to me by way of “I can’t move my legs”.  Muscles like hip flexors said their hellos. Hey guys, where have you been?  Ouch.

I look forward to 2013.

by

Improv: You Still Have a Death Scene

Yesterday I started Improv 101 with April at Merlin Works.  Hands-down, it’s the best class I’ve taken, and considering it involved me + strangers playing together, this is saying a great deal.  Usually me + strangers is akin to cats + water or maybe even polar bears + desert (which makes for great Sci-Fi, but since no one calls me Cassiopeia and I don’t hang out with a group renegade space pirates called the Starjammers, it’s still a bad mix).  I didn’t notice the time until we had about 15 minutes left.  (Usually, when I’m in the throes of truly loathing something, I can feel each painful minute, purposely and with great directed malice, ticking by.

What I learned (aside from how to pick a thumb buddy):  How to fail.  This class made failing fun, because all of us celebrated our failure by throwing our arms over our head, smiling broadly and receiving a heavy round of applause from the rest of the class.  In fact, sometimes it was actually worth failing for that applause.  When you’d fail, you’d acknowledge it and immediately move on – no time to dwell.  And everyone failed, which helped me realize I’m actually not alone when it comes to screwing things up.  I may need to start doing this in other settings.

My favorite line from the class during “Slow Motion Samurai”: “Beth, the game isn’t over just because you died. You still have a death scene.”

Next favorite line directed at me from another student: “She has SCARY eyes!”  This is how I won invisible tug-of-war.  I just channeled my brother-in-law’s face from a Kendo class we took long ago where I’d been called-out for being intimidated by him.  Hey, he can make a super SCARY face!!!

To give you a better idea of what happens there, if you’re on Facebook, look up “Merlin Works” in the search window and find the latest video posted from their Improv Mixer.  There you’ll see “Rock, Paper, Scissors” – a game everyone knows that we played on our first day of class and hands-down the most fun I’ve had playing that game.  The set-up:  Everyone breaks into pairs and plays until there is a winner.  The loser then becomes part of the winner’s entourage of super fans and follows them as they challenge other competitors (and that competitor’s crazy group of fans) until finally you have half the class cheering one guy and the other half cheering-on the other in a final match-up.

I’m already looking forward to the next class.  Why does Saturday have to be six long days away?

by

Midsummer Update

I think we can all agree that this site is mostly a means for my family and friends and friends of my family and family of my friends to check-in periodically.  Of course, some of you cheat a bit and check-in on me without letting me know what’s going on with you, so I look forward to YOUR updates to appear in my email over the next week or so.  Now if you feel like I’m talking directly to you, then I probably am unless your name happens to be DeAnne and she gets a special shout-out for sending regular emails.  In other words, if your name didn’t just appear on the list of “DeAnne”, I’m talking to you.  In fact, you should stop reading right now and start typing a nice little “hello” followed with some bits about what you’re up to.  Yes, I know you’re the busiest little monkey at the zoo, but you’re wasting valuable writing time trying to work out how you’d prefer to be a panther, an ocelot or some other cuter, sleeker, or even nobler zoo creature and taking exception to the monkey remark.  Although, now that your brain is spinning that’s not a half bad start to your email.  “Dear Beth, I feel I’m more of a Chilean Flamingo than a generic monkey – suited more for lawn decoration than swinging from trees.”   

Back to the updates – here we go:   

My First Reversible Skirt (looks very stylish over jeans & with better lighting)

Sewing: I took another sewing class.  This one was the reversible wrap skirt.  My biggest achievement: remaining upright the entire class (no spills on the floor) and therefore no histrionics on my part.  I would add “my skirt” to that list, but we’ll just have to write it off as a learning experience.  Fortunately, the bits that I had to fix after many quality moments with a seam ripper, will hide beneath a blouse (at least that’s how I plan to wear it).  A couple of the gals in class were thinking ahead and figured out that they could use the same pattern to make cute aprons.  I’m sorry guys, I’m not a cutesy apron kind of girl.  I wasn’t raised by June Cleaver.  I think pearls are over the top.  Therefore, none of you will be receiving cute aprons for Christmas.  I’m sorry.  I also want to re-state for the record that I find rick-rack abhorrent; it horrifies me.   

Toastmasters: I joined.  Well, I was followed by the club’s president who said it was his mission to add me to the ranks of his club and talked about my easy-going nature so I gave him a check.  (I’m a serious sucker for flattery.) I’m still trying to convince myself this is a great idea.  The folks in the group are really great – they talk about how it’s a supportive family, but I’m trying to decide if it feels like “my” family.  Right now, I feel like the weird guest brought along by some well-intentioned dorm mate – the one whose dysfunctional family didn’t have plans for the holidays.  I nearly had a stroke last week when I saw on the schedule that I was supposed to make a speech in two weeks.  Thankfully, that’s now been postponed and I just have to give an invocation at that time.  Jay suggested I could get up and invoke the right to remain silent.  I like the way he thinks.  On the positive side, my mentor said, “Beth, if you go up there for your first speech, stare at everyone, nod and run away, that’s ok.  We just want you to get up there.”  WHEW! I can do all of that.   

Improv:  Improv starts next weekend!  I’m hoping something in improv will help me not fall apart in Toastmasters come speech time.   

Writing: I finally wrote my first piece of fiction for the writing group (as noted by Jay, it was not Hemmingway’s A Farewell to Arms – I’ve been beating him soundly for days after his “Beth lamenting her work” impersonation).  I wasn’t at the last meeting for feedback, so I’m going to pretend that for a first effort it received a hearty and sincere round of applause.  Big thanks to DeAnne for reviewing it, especially since it was a first piece, and for making very helpful suggestions.   

Sam:  Sam had a few milestones this week.  Sam’s stitches were removed, the bell collar came off and she went back to canine rehabilitation where she walked on the underwater treadmill, did a few leg exercises and got a back massage.  Overall, Sam’s recovery on this leg is going a lot more smoothly, but it helps that she’s eight pounds lighter.   

Movies:  We just saw “Inception” – handsdown the best movie I’ve seen all year – solid SciFi adventure.   

Randomness:  Apparently, the AP Style Guide now says there should be only ONE space after a punctuation mark and the next sentence or after a colon.  This is all thanks to proportional fonts.  (Basically the letter “i” or the punctuation mark “.”  no longer take up the same amount of space say an “M” these days.  Thanks, Anna!)  Since my high school typing teacher (don’t ask how I ended up in that class) was more frightening (and nasty) than the AP Style Guide will ever be, I’ll be sticking to the double space between sentences, thank you.   (Side note: If you work with Anna, she has been trying to break all of you teachers of double-space habit for over 13 years now.  Please, do not the double-space in her presence.  Unless, of course, you also had my high school typing teacher who is still way more scary than Anna.  Not that Anna is scary.)  

That’s about it.  If you’re still reading then you’ve been wasting valuable writing time and should spend the next five minutes sending me a note and letting me know what’s going on with you.

by

Sam Update: Revelations

For you Sam groupies out there, here’s an update —

We recently learned Sam loves chicken. Sure, as a beagle she lives for her nose and all the neat things it can snuffle out (rule of paw – the smellier the better), but food is food is food to Sam (and sometimes food can be clothing or backyard deposits – she isn’t particularly picky, but she can be gross). So, eating chicken one night and having her chase the cat out of the room was completely unexpected. See, the cats still scare the hell out of Sam. If the cat is in the hallway and is blocking Sam from one of us, Sam will cry until we get up and stand between her and the offending beast. (She hasn’t worked out that the whole barking thing horrifies them or that the pitiful whimpering never makes them move – only cackle and drum their claws while eyeing her with that particular ennui cats reserve for just about everything.)

Since Sam has discovered that chicken is definitely worth a fuss, she now readily defends all forms of chicken from the furry tailess ones – food that a few months ago previously went unnoticed – from grilled to fried chicken, sandwich meat to Chik-fil-A – she’ll bay and snap until the room is cat free, then she’ll proudly pad back and fling herself down on her dog bed.

Since Sam doesn’t get table scraps, our best guess is some little chicken loving synapse fired her beagle brain.

I can’t wait to see what other surprises our little goofy beagle will reveal.