Have received my tentative schedule for fall semester; it includes class at 8:30 in the morning, 3 days a week. YUCK. Oh, well, I've definitely gotten better at mornings, and this career is going to result in more of them anyway. Might as well get in the practice.

I'm enjoying the feel of getting rid of things; yesterday, I bid farewell to one of my recliners (I'm keeping the other) as it was hauled off for use in the show I'm doing--boy, did they get lucky, though I'm going to ask the theatre for a receipt so I can write it off my taxes. I've written another theatre to see if they want my minidisc player--they may not, I think they're finally switching to computer playback, though I'm sure there is some small company somewhere that can use it. And just now I finally posted the Craigslist ad to sell my sampler that I've been meaning to sell for um, two years now? Three? I just checked and it still boots up and works fine--they built them tough in those days--so with any luck it'll net a few hundred dollars.

I'm debating about whether to sell the organ keyboard I bought in grad school; I find myself not really wanting to give it up, but the truth is that I won't have room for it, and more importantly, I can't play piano, so there's not much point holding on to it when I'm sure someone out there would love to own it--aside from dust, it's in excellent shape. (Also, it looks like it's such a well-regarded keyboard that I could get as much or more for it than I originally paid new. Wow.)

And then there's all the crap I get to throw out: old scripts and theatre programs, clothing, the detritus that piles up when you've lived anywhere for a significant length of time. I won't really get to start on that until this show is open--too much going on until then--but I'm really looking forward to it.

In other news, as much as I would like to use a local company, the national moving line is estimating me at $1000 less. That may change when they look at my stuff, and it's also pretty likely that the locals were overestimating (I gave them a high number on boxes I expect to move, just because I know me), but that's still enough of a difference that I may not have a choice.

Have spent far too much time in the last two days playing around with furniture arrangements for my new apartment. Surprisingly, the layout I'm currently favoring is the one that doesn't require buying a new desk. Though it may require repainting the shelves I have to make them slightly more appealing, which will not be easy, and is probably more a wish than a requirement, alas.

Now to get the estimate on how much moving is going to cost me. Bleagh.

Sore shoulder today from a tetanus shot, which I was about due for anyway; but all my forms have been submitted and now I just need to wait on the results of my polio titre (the school requires proof of three vaccination doses and I've only got proof of one, seeing as it was over thirty years ago). Eh, if I have to get immunized against polio again, that's not a horrible thing, just a pain in the ass. (Er. I hope not literally.) Otherwise, pending the results of my blood test--I'm curious about my glucose levels now that dad has been confirmed with diabetes, though I don't eat nearly the amount of sugar that he did--I seem to be pretty healthy, and the scale confirmed that I have lost a few pounds since the last time I stepped on one (whee!). Not that it would hurt to lose, like, 25 more, but since I fail at summer exercise (too hot during the day, and despite efforts over the last few weeks, I fail at waking up early), it'll have to wait until I'm on a regular school schedule. At least my apartment has a shiny new gym.

Tonight I'm taking my cousin to a movie, and sadly, because he's 19, he wants to see Year One. Ugh. I'd rather see Transformers, honestly (and I never saw the first one), but it'll only be a couple hours out of my life, right? Right?

The doctor told me that the reason Brenda's cat on The Closer was put to sleep in the last episode was because the real life cat did get sick, and the writers decided to write it into the show rather than trying to find another cat. It has since passed away. AW.

Things I am allowed to buy for myself before I leave town: anything involving hanging out with friends (play tickets, movie tickets, dinner, drinks, etc.); other forms of entertainment, within limits (books, Farscape S2, the Michael Jackson Essential Collection--just no going overboard); anything to do with packing (bleah).

Things I am not allowed to buy for myself before I leave town: knitting supplies, beading supplies, frames for unframed art and/or new art (well, maybe one frame, but only if I can find my discount coupon), big ticket items. In other words, stop drooling over espresso machines on Ebay, damnit.

The building landlord for our office just dropped by to tell us they're giving away free ice cream today. That's pretty sweet.

Also sweet? Going to Turner Stadium to watch the Braves whip the Yankees 4-0. Last night was a good night. Interestingly, since I'm at most times a pretty uninvolved fan, I discovered that I was really nervous until they got those three runs in the fifth. I mean, duh, it was the Yankees. I can name more members of that team than of the one I was rooting for. Still, as the game went on and the Yankees continued to fail to score, my butterflies stopped fluttering.

Meant to go to bed early, but as bedtime reading picked up the copy of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society that mom lent me and could not put it down until I'd finished it. What a lovely, lovely book. I'm still wiping away my tears from the ending.

And now I really ought to try to sleep, but it's just so hot. Today's weather was fairly awful; we went down to the CNN Center and did the tour, and Dad tried to get us to walk around Centennial Park afterwards, but we laughed at him--or rather, just sneered politely, as laughing requires energy, and ours was being sapped by the heat. (The original plan had been to hang out at the pool all day, but someone's child pooped in the pool yesterday and it was closed for cleaning.) Afterwards I drove up to Decatur to buy a picture frame, but discovered the place I'd planned to buy from had gone out of business, so I parked my car with the idea that I'd walk around the boutiques a little while to see if I could find one somewhere else. And then I didn't even make it half a block before deciding that I needed something cold to drink to deal with the heat, and once inside Java Monkey, that I really needed to stay in the air conditioning for a while before going back out, and at that point, I knew there was no way in hell that the boutique-bopping was going to happen, so I sat and drank lemonade and then suffered the walk back to my car and drove away.

Tomorrow's storm should make things cooler--back down to the high eighties, instead of the mid-nineties (maybe). I'm just hoping that it's not awful on Tuesday evening, when we go to the Braves-Yankees game...

Still feeling bleah, though a nap and egg drop soup helped. Staring at my computer continues to suck, but I can't keep myself from walking over to it occasionally... It's probably just as well that I'll be spending most of the day tomorrow in rehearsals, which automatically means I won't be using the computer much, until the evening when I'm building cues. Still, I think tomorrow I will not wear my contacts and see if it helps.

Wonderful. The headache in my eye has intensified to the point where I feel vaguely nauseated.

I'm contemplating throwing over the rehearsal I was going to go to this afternoon and going tomorrow instead, which would mean that I wouldn't be able to make it in to the day job at all tomorrow BUT I could go home right now and go to bed. Considering it was dicey whether I would make it in to the day job tomorrow anyway, this may be a good option, since I'm hitting a point where looking at a computer screen in my dry office is not the world's bestest idea.

Yeah, I realize I'm a little bit behind in my tv viewing, which is why I've seen Andrew McCarthy playing a jackass on two different shows in the last two days. Blane, I have to admit I'm intrigued. How Spader of you.

I completely and totally forgot that my friend K was in town and we were supposed to hang out tonight until she called me just now to work out the details. Fortunately, I hadn't planned anything else for this evening, so I didn't have to let her know I'd forgotten. Still.

So I thought I was all done with theatre in Atlanta, at least for the foreseeable future. As it turns out, I'm coming back for One! More! Play!--their original designer dropped out at the last minute (or, more likely, the artistic director assumed that person was doing it but didn't actually ask). It's not going to be particularly exciting--the playwright's pretty much chosen all the music--but it'll be nice to have a bit of extra money for moving costs, expecially since I only worked two weeks in May.

In other news, I'm going to post the recipe for my version of the super-tasty Portuguese* pasta salad I made the other night. It's a little iffy, since I had to type it into Babelfish before I could understand it, but the results are stellar.

*Well actually, it could be Italian, for all I know, but I got it off the back of a pack of Portuguese pasta, so to me, it's:

Portuguese Pasta Salad

1 cup dry chifferini pasta (sort of like mini macaroni)
20 cherry tomatoes
250 g queso fresco, cubed (the original called for 500 g, but that was too much cheese for me)
1/4 cup (ish) golden raisins
1/4 cup (ish) pine nuts (and wow, that one took me a while to figure out--Babelfish rendered it as marrow of nut)
2 tbs olive oil
1 tbs balsamic vinegar
handful of fresh basil, julienned
salt and pepper

Cook pasta according to package directions, adding salt to the water. Rinse with cold water. Halve the cherry tomatoes lengthwise, and add them with the other ingredients to a large bowl. Flavor with salt and pepper to taste, and stir in the basil. Makes about four servings, ish? Probably more as a side dish.

Yes, of course I would have insomnia when I don't have enough coffee beans to make a decent pot.

I think it's safe to say that I'm not going to get any work done today, because I am incapable of concentrating on anything useful. It doesn't help that it took me something like two hours to fully wake up this morning, either.

Sigh. Well, I can at least run this merge, which requires very little brainspace.

An excellent, if jam-packed, weekend: pool party for G's birthday on Saturday afternoon, then drove up to Dahlonega to visit frostedelves before she takes off. I took her to Star Trek in the evening, after a very tasty dinner; this morning she took me to brunch in historic Dahlonega, and after a bit of a wander, to the Consolidated Gold Mine, where we did some panning for gold and went on a tour of the mine, and then ate boiled peanuts by the river. Yum. And then came back down 400 and went to the pool party for my friend R's birthday. I had hoped to catch some of the Tonys, but it was already past 9 when I got home, and I decided to take a bath to try to cure all my real and phantom itching from being outside in summer mosquito season for two days (I'm also devoutly hoping I didn't pick up another tick in the North Georgia woods).

The weekend was also spent telling all and sundry about my school plans, both to people who knew and people who didn't. It's stopped feeling real again, for the moment, though I'm sure that will change.

So, so glad I went to the Decemberists concert, even if it was by myself. I've been wanting to see them for years. Colin Meloy has more energy than a bouncing ball, and so clearly loved being there (as did all of them--I don't think band members usually embrace each other at the end of a concert in the middle of a tour--but he was the only one speaking). And both Shara Worden and Becky Sharp were amazing--I'd say I need to get a My Brightest Diamond album (I've already got a Lavender Diamond album, thanks to calliope_nyc), but it was next on my list anyway. And also, I didn't realize until I looked it up a couple days ago that I already had the album from Blind Pilot, the opening act. I know why I don't go to concerts that often--I simply can't afford it--but god they're fun.

A friend of mine had an extra ticket for Jersey Boys last night at the Fox and invited me to join her. Really enjoyed it, and was especially impressed by how tight the book was. As much as I loved Buddy, the book for that show is a rambling mess (and our director made a number of cuts to tighten it up, but still: a mess); this one has a much longer period to cover and a more detailed story, which helps, and I really appreciated that all the information gets in there, from all four perspectives, and it moves. This was the first musical by these particular creators, and it ain't going to be the last, by a long shot. The friend I was with wrote the copy for the program's articles, and so got to interview one of the creators--their next project is a musical adaptation of The Addams Family. Normally I'd be pretty skeptical, but going by this one, I think they've got a really good shot at pulling it off if they get a good composer on board--apparently, they had almost no rewrites whatsoever between the first production at La Jolla and going to New York.

And I've had "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" in my head all morning. Guess I know where I'll be spending some iTunes money...

The other thing I really liked was the snarly cover of "My Boyfriend's Back"--don't know if that was a function of casting for this tour or the way the director decided to do it for the show, but it rocked.

I'm a little late to the party, but this is almost enough to make me start following a Twitter feed: The 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's coronation is being chronicled on Twitter. Here's the link to the actual feed.

"I’m surrounded by people who want to get close and offer advice, mostly contradictory. Who can I trust – and will it always be like this?" Oh, you poor sweet innocent eighteen-year-old king. Yes. Yes it will.

Didn't bring my laptop with me to work today, as I usually do, because I assumed I've have so much to catch up on that hauling it around would be pointless.

As it turns out, I'm already done with everything. Sigh. I do have to wait around for a client to drop by with a piece of equipment, but if he comes in the next hour, I'm seriously considering a quick errand to the nearby yarn shop to buy new circular sock needles, as security at Schiphol cut mine up to keep me from bringing sharp metal things on board the plane. (I'm not saying they weren't justified, as the needles probably could do some damage if you were really trying, if not a whole hell of a lot, but since I'd already been on four planes in the previous week and a half and no one else had said a word, it really sucked. Oh, well, at least they cut them instead of confiscating them entirely, so I didn't have to deal with my knitting unraveling.)

Client has been and gone. I could really use more for lunch than airline peanuts anyway...

Home from Portugal and the Netherlands, finally (who'd have thunk travel to Europe would take more than 24 hours both ways? New rule: I am no longer allowed to fly home from weddings by myself) and the entire trip was wonderful, and even though I doubled the number of photos taken from my last trip, it was still not nearly enough--and I'd be much happier if I could keep my stupid thumb out of the lens. I'll start on my writeup in a day or two, as today has been all about doing nothing involving mental strain whatsoever. (One could also argue that yesterday was all about that as well, but surprisingly, an eight-hour delay at Schiphol airport is stressful, though I'll admit I wasn't sorry that I had to spend last night in Detroit, considering it was already 3 in the morning Netherlands time when we landed.)

Also, it is possible that I will avoid going to Europe until I can go business class again, because hot damn that was nice. Fortunately, as a student for the next three years, I won't be able to afford trips to Europe anyway, so no problems there! Though my cousin in Porto would be happy to have me work for her law firm for a couple of weeks as a trainee (bonus: their firm works in IP!), which would be awesome, so maybe I'll just suck it up in economy anyway.

Special preview pictures!

Palácio Nacional da Pena, Sintra

Pasteis de belem, Lisbon

Have spent the evening doing a long-overdue clean of the apartment; it's still not what you'd call tidy, but it's no longer at a point where I would be ashamed to have someone come in. The best part is that now I can actually find things in my closet, like shoes. Am I the only person who finds a walk-in closet just an excuse to throw things on the floor--especially since I keep the door closed to keep the cat out? Yes, yes, I'm a slob. Some months are better than others. Maybe it's a good thing that my new place won't have one.

And now I'm eating some oatmeal, because I unintentionally skipped dinner and decided that actually, I really would like to eat something before going to bed.

Oh, crap, I forgot to call the taxi company to find out how far in advance I should ask them to pick me up (I'm not leaving my car at the airport). I'll call first thing tomorrow; my flight's not until 4, so I've got plenty of time.