Things I've never done before Part 1: Finish a knitting project

Ever since I was in high school I've always kept lists of things that I want to eventually do. Some of them were very attainable (go peach picking in the summer, spend more time reading) and others were more ambitious/ridiculous (learn Japanese, own a pirate ship).

Either way it's something I've always done. So I've decided I'm going to start documenting the things I do that I've never done before. Things that might have found a place on a list like that at some point in my life. I've already done a few things this summer that I want to write about, but let's start simple!

Finishing a knitting project!

Back in high school I had a group of friends that were very crafty. They were just great at making things. Clothes, purses, scarves...the whole deal. I, on the other hand, have NEVER been crafty. I'm terrible at making things. One time in Spanish Class we had to make a some sort of flower out of tissue (I'm sure it had something to do with Spanish, but who knows...) and mine literally looked like something you'd find in a dumpster.

Anywho! These crafty friends of mine wanted to start a knitting circle (my hometown was pretty boring so we had to get creative with our hobbies, I have to say we did damn good job of making our own fun) so we could knit and hang out. Well, they taught me how to knit and I realized it was the first crafty thing I wasn't obscenely awful at! We got together a few times to knit, but eventually we stopped and found some other silly thing to do with our time.

Long story short...I never finished anything. Ever. Because all I ever knew how to do was cast off and do a knit stitch. So I would get bored 1/4 of the way through a scarf and give up. I have started COUNTLESS scarves (usually when I was home from college on Christmas vacation) and never finished them.

So fast forward to a few months ago. There's a groupon for knitting classes! At a place that's two blocks from my apartment! And my friend Scarlett wanted to learn too! Yay!

I've been to two classes so far and I'm excited to say I'm ALMOST done with my hat! I dropped a few stitches and don't know how to bind off...so I'm going to wait until next class to finish...but I'M DOING IT! finishing something I started. Ahh..the little things:



I have a lot of yarn leftover so I think my next project will be some simple fingerless mitts to match my hat. And once I get confidant with my abilities I can start making things for other people!

Part 2 of "Things I've never done before" will feature THE WARRIOR DASH! Which was an awesome obstacle course/race I ran/crawled/walked the end of June.

Oh heyyy June, how's it going?!

So June is pretty much gone. Bye June!

Let's see. Since I last posted I have taken Maestro to a farm, been in a playreading in NYC, gone to California to babysit my siblings, rehearsed for another apartment play (which opens tonight), purchased a car (well, Pops helped with that), seen a couple of plays and worked my various jobs.

My friend Kyler drove my car across the country to get it to Boston. He documented his exploits here:
http://chelseascar.tumblr.com

Very exciting. He just got back to Boston last night.

June 6th I participated in a playreading. My friend Kim wrote it and it's called "Man in Boat". I really, really loved being a part of it.

The people who ran this reading were the NICEST people. They were so welcoming and grateful that I came all the way from Boston to do the reading. I couldn't believe how kind they were to me. Not that I expect theatre people to be assholes or anything, but they were just so genunine! They really loved what they were doing and it showed. Sometimes I get really tired of the shallow, presentational way actors/theatre people interact with one another. I understand that acting is a business and people have to "schmooze" and "network" or whatever, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. I only bring that up so I can say how refreshing it was to work with people who brought an infectious joy to their work. It was just really...nice. I hope I get to work with them again in the future because it really made me happy.

Not only did I get to meet some great new people, but I also got to work with people I already adore. Emma, Kim, and Kyler. Overall, it was just this perfect little whirlwind trip and I'm so thankful I got to take part in such a great reading.

A few days after the reading I flew to California with Joe to babysit my siblings. It was really, really nice actually. My siblings are hilarious and it was so good to see them. I got to see Tobey play baseball, too! Which was really great. We mostly just took it easy all week. We saw Super 8, played mini golf, went bowling, took Tobey to his baseball practices, took Saylor to her cheerleading practices, went swimming, and barbaqued. Sadly, we didn't get a chance to it to LA, but we did get to see Carly! And Kyler joined us to pick up our car!

The car thing was a whole ordeal, too, but I'm too lazy to get into it. All that matters is that everything worked out! Dealing with getting car insurance has been a pain in the ass...car insurance salesman...so...pushy...

Tomorrow I'm doing the WARRIOR DASH! I've deeply slacked on my running since my California trip, but hopefully doing the Warrior Dash will help me get back into it! haha!

Well, that's pretty much it on my end! Just thought I'd babble for a little while. Hopefully I'll be better about posting in July. And hey! I still have a couple of days left in June to make up for my slacking, right?!

Summertime

I've been having fantasies about summer.

The past week has been the week of GLOOM (not the pokemon). It's been rainy or foggy every single day. I usually love the rain. Especially warm spring rain. But consistently dour weather? It gets to a person.

Still, I've been making the best of it. I worked on the Freedom Trail quite a bit which has been a HUGE relief on my financial panic. I've also been meeting a lot of great people on my tours.

I've been sticking to my running plan really well! I've been consistently running every other day for about three weeks now! Last Sunday I ran three and a half miles in twenty nine minutes! and it felt great! Tomorrow I'm due to run four miles! I've really come to enjoy my time running. Tuesday I made Mike run a 5k with me. He hated me for it, but I think in the end he had a good time!

Last weekend I saw "Learn to Be Latina" at the Boston Playwrights Theatre. I had a blast (despite being in a kind of sour mood due to my horrendous allergies). I'll probably write down a proper review type post later, but I'm too lazy to do it right now. Ha!

Been playing L.A. Noire. Don't know how I feel about it yet. It's unique, but it's also just a a mash-up of games I've played before (Phoenix Wright, Grand Theft Auto, Heavy Rain etc). Which isn't necessarily a bad thing! In fact I appreciate any video game that tries to push gaming in a new direction. Yes, first person shooters and rpgs are fun and all, but it gets OLD. Good on them for trying something new. Still, it's certainly a flawed game. We'll see how it plays out!

Maestro has had quite a few couple of weeks! Last Friday he got his balls snipped (poor guy). At first when he came home he was aimlessly wandering around the apartment like he didn't know what to do with himself (it was probably all the drugs he was doped up on..), but the next day he bounced back completely. It was like nothing had even happened! Which was good and bad. Good because yay! he was still the same joyful pup, but bad because he'd leap onto things without abandon (making me panic that he'd rip his stitches right open). But so far so good! The incision looks good! We took him to the vet on Thursday because he RANDOMLY pissed in our bed. He was literally just lying down and staring at us. Then he got up and we noticed he was in a puddle of his own urine. This was very bizarre as he hasn't had an accident in months.

We took him to the vet and she said he seemed completely healthy! While we were there we also got him microchipped, but today I got a call and she said they found a few "crystals" in his urine (doesn't that sound magical?). Crystals are kind of the equivalent of kidney stones (but evidently a little less painful). She wasn't in when I called her back so not sure what to do next. Maestro SEEMS perfectly happy, but who knows! We might take him in again on Monday to see what we should do.

Oh! and we officially registered him with the akc! So his registered named is "Carl Sagan's Whale Song". It just felt right!

AND I'm taking Maestro to a farm next week to get him tested for herding instinct! If he likes it I want to get him involved in herding clinics so he can do what he was bred to do...which is really exciting to me! That's one of my many goals this summer:

- See if Maestro is interested in herding
- Go kayaking
- Learn to Sail (there are classes not far from where I live)
- Redeem my knitting class groupon
- Keep up with my running program (run a 10k in June!)
- Actually start saving
- Memorize Twelfth Night
- Go to Yappy Hour with Maestro
- Go swimming
- review the Japanese I learned in the fall and start practicing again
- Start reading again (Finish Bonk and the biography on Samuel Adams)
- Go to at least one new state this summer (Maybe Vermont!)

Obviously this is pretty ambitious, but I want to take time for myself this summer. Do things that make me happy and keep me inspired. I don't want to get so caught up in a routine that I forget to take care of myself. So there you have it!

Now I'm going to perform the Three Little Pigs.

Kirk Douglas dies for the love of his horse.

This weekend Katie and I performed True West. In my apartment. We transformed our upstairs living room into a performance space and invited people over.




Crazy, right?

It all began not too long ago when Katie and I were working at the Children's Museum. We were doing four shows (all of them being the Three Little Pigs) and we both knew each of the roles. We decided we would "True West" it (which meant flipping a coin to see who would play which part a la John C. Reilly and Phillip Seymour Hoffman's version of True West).

Then, jokingly, we said "Fuck The Three Little Pigs, let's just perform some Sam Shepard for these kids. Ha! Those kids wouldn't know what hit 'em". Little did we know a seed had been planted!

A couple of days later I got an e-mail from the artistic director of one of the fringe theatre companies in town. He said they were having a fundraiser called the "Live Your Dream Festival". The premise of it was that they wanted actors, singers, and musicians to do something they would never get cast in professionally. Whether it be a man playing Lady Macbeth or a white girl singing a song from Aida.

YES.

Katie and I promptly signed up, enlisting Terry to direct us.

We got together and read through the entire play in order to pick a scene to do. During this reading we had an epiphany: "Let's just do the whole goddamn play. And let's do it in our apartment".

We'd always talked about "apartment theatre" and how much fun it would be to just use our own place as performance space. And True West was IDEAL for this sort of setup.

So we did.

There's more, though.

The Live Your Dream Festival was a week ago (Sunday and Monday night). On Sunday night we did the scene as we had been rehearsing it all along (Me as Lee and Katie as Austin). And on Monday we switched roles. I had never rehearsed as Austin and she had never rehearsed as Lee. All we did was memorize the lines.

And somehow. It worked. We were forced to play it moment by moment. Without preparation we had nothing to fall back on but each other. And it was goddamn thrilling! I had no idea what Katie was going to do and she had no idea what I was going to do and it just felt right.

It went so well, in fact, that we decided (during celebratory drinks afterwards) we would do this for REAL. We'd learn both parts and flip a coin to decide who would play which role.

I'd chalked it up to drunken ambition until Katie and I had the following text exchange the morning after:

Katie - We still doin this crazy thing?
Me - I think so! I just woke up.
Katie - me too. I just mean should I start working on it? it wasn't just a dream?
Me - I think it's our destiny

And with that we had four days to learn the lines for the opposite part. I started dreaming in lines from the play. Waking up thinking about a different scene everyday. Feverishly whispering the words to myself and frantically playing back voice recordings in hopes that I would just absorb it all.

But I wanted to do it. Just to see if I could! Just to see if WE could.

Saturday night rolled around and we had somewhere between 15 and 20 people show up for the show. It was so inspiring! To see these people coming to our apartment to support us in this completely over the top endeavor. These people who wanted to see if we could actually pull this shit off!

Terry asked "Who would like to flip the coin?" and Mary-Liz (a co-founder of another theatre company in Boston) raised her hand with a quiet authority and said "I will".

She flipped it. And of COURSE it landed on the side where I would be playing Austin and Katie would be playing Lee:



I should add one other thing. We decided on a safe word if we forgot a line (this was only allowed if we were playing the parts we hadn't rehearsed). If we forgot a line we would say "Ding!" and Terry would feed it to us.

What I can say about that night is it's one of those most exhilarating performances I've ever been a part of. The stakes were SO HIGH because we had no idea what was going on. All we knew is we had to tell this story. And we knew the story. And we knew each other. And we knew these characters.

So we did it. We got through it (and with minimal dings!). And we were there for each other. Saving each other if we couldn't remember a line. Powering forward even if we weren't sure what was going to happen next.

It was a blur, but I loved it. And the audience was brilliant. They were so supportive and right along for the ride. The power went out because I plugged in too many toasters and Katie spilled beer all over the place and jelly got all over the floor. But that's what made it great. The uncertainty. And the things that went wrong or could have gone wrong.

I felt so lucky. That I had all of these friends around me who were willing to let me do this. Who were willing to play with me! It made me feel full.

The next day Katie and I played the parts as we'd rehearsed them:









And you know what? It wasn't as chaotic or crazy as the night before, but I still had a blast. I realize...I love those characters. I loved getting to say Sam Shepard's words. I loved getting to see things from both of their perspectives. Lee and Austin were probably my favorite characters to play...ever. Maybe one day I will go into more depth about what I think about the play or the characters or blahhhdy blah, but to be honest...I don't want to intellectualize it right now. All I know is I got to express something as those two guys that I don't ever really get the chance to express in my day to day life. Something that felt true to me. And that's what it's about, I think.

This weekend I learned that cheap, exciting, and accessible theatre is COMPLETELY possible. All you need is the drive to do it. And friends to support you. That's all. I got more fulfillment from performing for less than 20 people in my apartment then I've gotten in a long, long time. And I think that's pretty special.

We men may say more, swear more, but indeed our shows are more than will.

Memorizing one of my scenes from Twelfth Night for the Fundraiser on Thursday night. We're hauling ass to Ocean City for one glorious night of Shakespeare boozin n' schmoozin'. Hopefully we can raise some cash moneyz to get this bad boy up and running!

And here is documentation of THE BLONDE! Before (well, more like during) and after.



Woo! I've got to say, I've been enjoying it! It's nice to mix things up. I think I'm going to have to get a hair cut, though, now that my show is over. Aside from the blonde my hair is pretty damn boring. We'll see. I'm too poor to afford a hair cut right now so maybe I will offer my head to beauty school student or something.

Yesterday was awesome. I woke up. I played Portal and ate pancakes. Then Maestro and I went to the beach (he chased seagulls and tried to swim after some ducks in the water). Had True West rehearsal. Watched Game of Thrones and ate a delicious feast (Thanks, Conor!). Done. Best Monday ever.

Today I went to yoga with Scarlett, and we decided we're going to train to run a 10k. BECAUSE WE CAN.

Tomorrow I get my bike back from the shop. Good.

That's all. Next post will probably be able gardening. I'm loving it. I just moved my lettuce, cucumber, collard greens, and green bean seedlings outside. Please live plants. I want to eat you.

Backstage at the CWT

I am doing something a little ridiculous and writing this on my iphone. I just haven't had any time to sit down in front of a computer recently! So here we go! I plan on riddling this bad boy with all kinds of typos!!

I am backstage right now at the second to last performance of Blackadder Part II. I am only in the first scene of the first episode so I've got plenty of downtime. The audience is strangely subdued tonight. Long week maybe? Who knows? Most of our houses have been delightful. Being in this show has been such a great experience. I love working with this company. And I love being in a show filled with potty humor and dick jokes. It's refreshing!!!

Let's see. Here's the past few weeks in a nutshell:
- preparing my freedom trail tour and getting cleared to start giving tours! Yay!
- taught my final drama class (phew!)
- training class with Maestro
- lots of time at the childrens museum
- brought the vespa out of hibernation!!!
- True West rehearsals
- Blackadder, of course!
- Release of Portal 2!!!
- premiere of Game of Thrones!!!
- watching a whole lot of Brotherhood

Whew.

Last Sunday was the best. You know you've been busy when you get stoked about doing the laundry or going grocery shopping. Stop and Shop felt like heaven and clean clothes felt like an honest to god luxury. Ahh! Plus we started our garden which makes me so damn happy. I got raspberry, blackberry, and green pepper plants. And I started growing cucumbers, lettuce, collard greens, and scallions from seed! I hope things grow!!! I'm probably going to take some pictures and document the whole darn thing! I'm usually not very good at nurturing things, but we'll see. It's so satisfying to see little green things come out of the ground. Especially after such a hellish winter. Spring, let's hug!

I've also been trying to live more frugally. No more ordering in, no more take out. It's been 11 days since I've used foodler or gone out to eat. Yes! I'm also cancelling my gym membership and running outside instead (with Maestro!). And starting next week (after my bike gets tuned up) I'm avoiding public transportation as much as I can. Vespa or bike, that's it! I'm hoping this will cut down my expenses significantly so I can actually start saving money this summer. I want to travel so badly. My wanderlust is kicking (wow almost wrote licking) my ass. I love Boston and it will most likely always be my home base, but I need to go someplace new for a little while. It doesn't have to be now, but I need to feel like I am working towards seeing more of the world. And I'm sick of living paycheck to paycheck! So this is my way of taking control. I am not just going to let things happen to me, I'm going to seek them out goddamnit!

So there's that.

Oh. This is way over due, but I saw Book of Days a few weeks ago. Fuck. It was fantastic. Joe is so good. It makes me so happy to watch him act. The entire ensemble was spot on and it just made me feel so many things. It was a very fufilling night of theatre. One day I hope to be a part of a show that has an effect like that on someone. Even just one person.

I will post some pictures when I get to a computer! Only one more episode to go before curtain call...i think I'll get some reading in!

Drink wine and screw.

Lots and lots has happened this week, but what I really want to talk about is the Queens of the Stone Age concert I went to. Not that I even have anything of interest to say other then FUCK, I had an amazing time. I was just so goddamn happy. There is nothing like hearing them live. I dragged Joe to the front of the standing room because I refused to be far away. I'm so happy I did. It's goddamn intoxicating. The audience was so strange though! So still. and quiet. For a rock concert. why? It's meant to be enjoyed! Meant to be danced to! who cares though? I felt great.

just. yes. It was so nice to not be thinking about anything. To just share this amazing experience with Joe. I had missed him so much this past week and it made me so happy to just be with him and have an amazing time. It was a really wonderful weekend that I'm so thankful for.

We also got to see a play together on Friday night and dinner in the North End on Sunday night. It was basically a weekend of awesome dates!!!




On another note Blackadder opens in LESS then two weeks!!!

Rehearsal yesterday went so well. We worked on the episode where I only have like, five lines, yet I was STILL struggling with the accent. What the hell? Ha! A couple of rehearsals ago the Assistant Director (who is ACTUALLY British) helped me with my accent and it made me feel so much better. Well, yesterday was the first day our director saw the accent work the AD had done with me and felt a lot better about the scene! YES. It's so a great feeling to know that even though I only have a very small part in that scene I'm still getting worked with on it. Nobody cares that it's a small part, they still want it to be GOOD and they want me to feel comfortable doing it! It's so nice. It makes me feel really fortunate to be working with these people.

ALSO. I have to go BLONDE for this show. YES. I'm going to be bizarro Chelsea.

Oh god, I want to go into detail about last week but it whooshed by so quickly. Some bullet points.

- Saw My Wonderful Day. V. funny show. Great premise.
- Helped Kyler with Twelfth Night Auditions (that was awesome)
- Did some Freedom Trail training for seven hours in the bitter, bitter cold. However, found out I made a really, really great hourly wage so I feel GREAT.

Man, I've been drinking wine this evening so I'm done with writing in this thing, but HEY. wine is great. life is good. I'm at another point in my life where I'm restructuring how I live. And that's good. always figuring things out. yessss.