Birthday Outfit Deux

Lest we forget June is my birth month! I'm already planning what treats to take in to work and the theatre and what kind of things I'd like to do when Mom comes to visit. So far I have drinking, cake-making, and a potential 5k at Pride Fest on the books. Not too shabby, eh? And of course there's the outfit. Still haven't narrowed it down in the slightest. I'm hoping that I'll come across it and be in awe of its style and price...or I'll just pull something out of my closet. Either way you can rest assured that I'll be wearing clothes, which is Viking's favorite answer to give when I ask what I should wear: "How 'bout clothes?" Thanks.

Speaking of clothing, I've been slowly chipping away at my 24 before 24 list and have now decided that most of it is just going to have to roll over on to 25 before 25. To be fair I made this list in January, a mere 5 months away from my birthday so I didn't have the full year. Wah wah wah, I know...

22. Shop my closet and wear all of my clothes. If I don’t, I have to donate it at the end of the season.

When I can't think of anything to do in the evenings and it's too dark for a walk to my favorite lake (Michigan that is) I go through my closet and start trying on clothes. It seems silly to have a whole closet, dresser, and clothing rack full of clothes that I hardly ever wear. My job choices are to blame...the theatre would prefer that I wear all black (which I am getting seriously tired of doing because I'm running out of options here) and food service which requires a very specific type of jeans OR a very specific shade of khaki AND a very specific kind of undershirt. For the most part those rules are flexible but I know I'll be the idiot that messes it up when they do a store report, sporting my orange jeans or some nonsense, which I have!

In any case I've completed closet and clothing rack try-ons, all I need to do is go through my dresser drawers and I'll be able to scratch number 22 off the list! A vaguely productive week indeed!

I've been everywhere...

It's only the beginning of June and I've been bitten by the travel bug. I'll know for sure next week whether or not I'll be able to go to Georgia to visit E, but making my own "Places I've Been" map on visitedstatesmap.com has me really itching to go to California or Texas. Apparently I need to spend some more time on the east coast...and some of the states (like Michigan) I've only been to as a baby. It's probably time for a quick road trip up there to see what it's all about.

Personally I blame Mom for this June travel bug. She always planned fun road trips for us as kids, mostly to visit my grandparents in Iowa (which I would also love to do this summer). Once we drove from Ohio to Utah for a family reunion. Another summer we flew out to Arizona to visit Grandma and Grandpa Harig, and for my senior trip we drove to Carolina Beach. Can't forget about good ole' Whiskey Pants and our conquering either!

E might also be to blame for this bug. She's taken me to Canada, planned a spring break to Virginia Beach, and when she went to school in South Carolina we rocked Charleston, which is why Atlanta would be so much fun!

Are you going anywhere exciting this summer? May I please live vicariously through your adventures?

Fisk Day

My mom called me up last Sunday to ask if I wanted to go to a White Sox game. Grandpa would pay for the ticket on one condition...that I get there early and snag him a Carlton Fisk statue that they were handing out to the first 10,000 people or so in the stadium. He even offered to let me bring a friend, then there would be two statues!

After a snafu with the trains not running southbound (what?!) I took the red line to 36th and Sox and walked to the stadium. It's funny the looks you get boarding the red line on the north side wearing a Sox shirt, but as you get closer to the loop you start to pick up more of "your team" and the energy changes. It reminded me so much of game days at Ohio State. As a young'un I was never huge in to sports, but college kind of renewed my sense of team spirit in the Buckeyes, just like going to this game reminded me why I love Chicago to begin with.

I was nervous when I got there because people were walking out of the stadium with the Fisk statues in trash bags! It appeared that they had bought tickets just for the rights to extra statues, but luckily there were plenty left...Grandpa is now the proud owner of two Carlton Fisk bookends. Running Buddy joined up with me and we ate inexpensive stadium food and gabbed in the peanut gallery. We had to leave early so I could make it to my theatre job, but we had an amazing time! We're already making plans to go back when I can stay for the entire game. My north side beginnings be damned, I'm a Sox fan.

Sunday

The weekend appears to have gone too quickly for my liking. Yesterday Running Buddy and I went to our first baseball game! White Sox v. Mariners, I'll post some pictures tomorrow. Today is a matinee and some potential apartment cleaning. Also managed to get in some quality facebook chat time with Viking who was going out to dinner just as I was waking up.

All in all the weekends are nice but I'm ready for a real break. Read: time off work when I'm not sick in bed, potentially leaving the city...maybe even the state to see friends and family.

Happy Sunday!

-K.K.

Following

Unbeknownst to me I have a small readership that extends outside of my family. And here I thought I was just posting pictures and pretend outfits for my mom! A co-worker specifically informed me of his reading it and my knee jerk reaction was: "I am so embarrassed!" But what reason is there to be embarrassed? I obviously post it online for the whole word to see, and when I look at my page views I know it's more than just a couple people...but it seems strange. In any case it made me very aware of the fact that I haven't posted anything about my theatre job in a while, with the exception that we went in to tech a couple weeks ago.

But as it happens, some ridiculousness happened last night that I thought was share-worthy:

Everything seemed to be humming along as usual. As the stage manager I get there first, start up the light and sound board, check props, re-fill antique coke bottles with diet soda. The ASM arrives and we start doing channel check, or checking all the lighting instruments to see if they work:

"Can you bring up 34 again? I can't see it..." Two lights have blown. "Okay, I'll make a note of that, channel 35?" It goes up and the light fizzes out. I call the lighting designer who is working on another show, and then the director who is also busy that evening. Luckily a stage manager from the previous show is in our cast and she scoots up the ladder to see what she can do. Soon after arrives another actor who works for a tech company and he follows suit and starts changing lamps (bulbs are "lamps" in theatre. Do not say bulb to a lighting designer!) 20 minutes and a shower of corrosion later we're showing the understudy how fight call works and everything starts to fall in to place.

Around the second act we have a waiter who comes on with a cocktail made of Hawaiian Punch...I think you know were this is going. Actors collided backstage and the fruit punch ended up all over the waiter's white shirt/black pants combo and the white cloth napkin. Being the consummate professional he went on like nothing happened, but I think it shook everyone a bit. We consoled each other over drinks across the street and are thinking that tomorrow will be more dynamic.