So this was all there was to the great play/ She came so far to act in, this was all

Well, my last theatrical experience at Hanover, possibly my last theatrical experience for quite some time, has come to an end. As you know, I portrayed a prostitute in William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. There are pictures on Whitney's Facebook.

Actually, for the rehearsals I didn't have my contacts in, due to my eye allergies, and when I actually put them in and saw myself for the first time on preview night, my reaction was, "Hee! I look awesome."

The show went pretty well and was surprisingly well-received. We all had to move scenery between scenes, which included rotating wagons and stuff. One night my wagon-shifting partner wasn't there and someone else had to help me. Moving the screen before Act I Scene 3 never went right, for reasons entirely beyond my control (my screen-moving partner didn't show up, the person who was supposed to move the couch took it offstage for some reason). Still, the audience probably couldn't tell. I do think it's kind of funny that for my last scene on the Hanover stage I completely broke character-- I was supposed to be a reporter in that scene, and Jake, in the crowd behind me, started up a chant of "Duke! Duke! Duke! Duke!" It was funny. I laughed. I always laugh when something unexpected happens-- if I know it's coming, I'm good. This is what I discovered during Hay Fever. Because everyone was so busy the whole time, I didn't get much of a chance to savor my last show, except for a few forays down into the dressing room where some of us discussed how surreal it was.

Then it was time for My Last Strike. Usually during strike I hide downstairs, helping out in the dressing room, green room, and costume shop so as to avoid having something heavy dropped on me or, worse, having to lift something heavy, upstairs. This time was no exception. If anything, I was more of a slacker on this strike than I'd ever been before. I just made sure to look busy. Here is what I did:

Searched for and finally discovered in the dish room (why?) my prop book, Under Crimson Sails, to preserve as a keepsake/ curiosity item: 45 minutes
Transported Banana Boat, a stuffed dog and costume shop mascot, from the dressing room and back into the costume shop: 5 minutes
Found a dustpan: 2 minutes
Used a dustpan: 2 minutes
Stood holding a dustpan: 15 minutes
Stole an article about Hay Fever from the Madison Courier that looked like it was about to be thrown away: 5 minutes
Swept the green room: 15 minutes
Stood in the green room, walked back and forth from dressing room to green room: 20 minutes
Organized some cloth in the costume shop: 15 minutes
Stood in the costume shop: 20 minutes

At this point we were all called upstairs, and people with enough hours were told they could go. I got, "Erin are you on scholarship?" "No." "Are you a major?" "Nope." "Get out of here." So I went back to my room, got my purse, walked back to the theatre, and hitched a ride to my final Taco Bell Cast Party. It was all very sentimental, and then it was over, which is weird.

This weekend I'm presenting a paper at an undergrad conference at the University of St. Francis in Illinois, God help me. I'm really nervous. From what I'm able to determine, the trick is to pretend like you know what you're doing.

Oh! Oh, yeah, also, I'm officially going to the University of Illinois! Yay! IU finally, FINALLY got back to me and told me they didn't want me, but at least Illinois does, and they're giving me money, and they have a good program. I'm sure I owe the Battleses connections there for all of that.

I think that's all I have to post about, and now I will not be devoured by Lrrr.

"All I can say is Thank GOD for teenage pregnancy."

Does he think I'm Asian just because I'm a ninja?

I feel as though I've betrayed my pirate heritage...

I went to my mom's school dressed as a ninja today. Not for the entire time, no, just for a short part of it. See, there's this kid in the show choir, and he had this dream where a ninja attacked him in class and he fought him off, despite not knowing any ninja moves. Naturally, the music department has always been about making kids' dreams come true. And, of course, I just happened to be home for spring break and have nothing better to do than go to work with my mom, dress up in all black (including a mask I made out of a leg cut off of a pair of sweatpants), and assault this kid at the beginning of class. To be honest, I was pretty excited about it. That is, until I remembered I had to let him win. Still, the opportunity to dress up and perform had presented itself, albeit in a rather silly manner. Sillier things have happened, I suppose. So I walked in their and challenged him, and it was scary as shit because we were on a hard floor, and I was in socks on account of being in all black. It was slippery. Also, since the kid hadn't expected it, I didn't really know how he'd react. All in all, he was a pretty good sport, let me do some cool stance things and punches. Naturally I couldn't throw any kicks on account of the deadly slipperyness and my limited experience in stage combat. Afterward, he grabbed my head (probably what I would have done to him, the lanky bastard wouldn't know what to do with himself), gave me a noogy, and pretended to punch me in the forehead. Thing is, the punch landed on my eye, and there's a bit of a bruise on the lid, and on my pride. Despite that, everyone had a good laugh, and a few people got a good story out of it.

There's my quota. I'm ready to go back to school

"All I can say is Thank GOD for teenage pregnancy."

There is another world that watches us, I'm not afraid

So, does anybody in Indy want to see Jane Eyre the Musical tomorrow (Friday) night with me and my aunt Barbara? It's at 8, and we have an extra student ticket. You'd have to get yourself downtown to Footlite, because my mom is pretty much taking me straight there from Hanover.

"All I can say is Thank GOD for teenage pregnancy."

Smiting is serious business

Coming to you live from Portland, Oregon, it's the Wooster Chorus tour edition of Nathan's Compendium post. I'm on the computer of a host family who is graciously letting me use it for this.
Our escape from Ohio was a bit less eventful than Jonah's, but far from boring. We left the music center on Friday night and drove to Cleveland, where we had a rather uneventful night. Then the hotel cheated me out of ten dollars. By which I mean, I started eating what I thought was a complimentary breakfast buffet, but it turns out was an overpriced breakfast buffet. So I stole a whole bunch of little boxes of ceral from them in retaliation.
The choir managed to board the very last plane to take off from Cleveland airport - ten minutes later, everything was grounded due to the storm. This gave me an experience I have never had before - flying through a snow storm. I much enjoyed the flight though, as fate and alphabetical order placed me next to Jen, a girl who I had previously been unable to have a conversation with because half of the male population is enamored with her (the first time we went to mixed position, Russell actually had to ask why there were four tenors and three basses in one clump. Jen was in the middle.) Anyhow, it was nice to get to talk to her for a couple of hours with all of her suitors stuck five or six seats ahead. Thanks to the weather, we ended up getting in to Denver two hours late and missing our connection. Two hours later, however, they somehow got all 55 of us onto a new flight, and we made it into San Fransisco in time for our first concert. Unfortunately, to our internal clocks, that concert started at 11:30 after a 22 hour traveling day. Suffice it to say, we did not sound our best.
There are at least two more good stories to tell, but I'm getting exhausted. So I'll pick this up again next time I have a computer. Hope to see you all soon.
"All I can say is Thank GOD for teenage pregnancy."

In which Jonah concludes The MegaBus Diaries

Any illusions I had that my MegaBus return journey might have been uneventful have been shattered my the crazy hobo two seats in front of me. He is actually muttering. He calls the bus driver “Captain” and speaks to him when he can’t actually hear him.

“Alright, Captain, we’re ready to go, Captain, let’s rock ‘n’ roll,” he said before we left, athough the bus driver was all the way in front of the lower level.

He just now muttered a string of unrecognizable syllables with the word garbage repeated several times. He also claps his hands randomly and flails his arms. This man unnerves me terribly. Of course, I know I’m being pretty classist. He could be a perfectly well off fellow who just dresses and acts like a crazy hobo. He does have a really nice cell phone, nice shades and glasses, and he has some reason to go from one place to another and the means to obtain a MegaBus ticket (i.e. a credit card).

For this leg of the trip (Minneapolis to Chicago) I’m on the top of a double-decker MegaBus and we are watching the movie “Collateral.” I’m not really paying attention but the movie has a very straightforward plot: Tom Cruise kills people, his cab driver freaks out. I might enjoy the movie in another setting, but I can’t hear it very well. I’m a little worried about the bus driver who came on the intercom to say we were going to stop early to pick up a Red Bull and then “See how far we get.”

Picking up a few hours later, just outside Chicago. I have made it this far without incident though crazy hobo guy continues to alternately amuse and scare me. I realized that he sort of looks like Christopher Walken. Not like you’d see him and say “Oh my gosh it’s Christopher Walken,” mind you, but he definitely has Walkenesque features. Most notably the Christopher Walken crazy eyes.

We watched two more movies and crazy guy talked to both of them. This was especially amusing as the second movie, “The Rundown,” actually starred Christopher Walken,, allowing me to make a real time comparison that totally vindicated my earlier observation. Also I’m pretty sure he’s not really a hobo because I can’t imagine how he would have gotten on a MegaBus, but I’m keeping the name. For your amusement, here are a couple of crazy hobo guy quotes, more or less verbatim:

“They’re probably not even Jewish. They wish, they dream about it, they wish they was Jewish!”

“It’s all about who’s got the quarters and who doesn’t got the quarters. Is that it?”

“Tuesday. Unbelievable. Tuesday afternoon. Dinner time. Unbelievable”

The rest of the trip has been uneventful. I read an entire novel (Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code) and some bits of my Philosophy homework and looked out the window a lot. Looking forward to dinner in Union Station and then home.

This is my final entry in the structurally incoherent Part III, and therefore in the MegaBus Diaries in general. I am writing it from the safe warmness of my own bed. Union Station was fine. It was late and the custodians were cleaning, so they had put chairs on top of most of the tables, including all the tables by outlets. My master plan to charge my computer and then watch Deep Space Nine on my laptop on the way home, so this was quite vexing. I sat down at a regular table and had dinner, which was these incredibly delicious grilled veggie tacos from Burrito Beach, and called Saralyn.

However after that I still had some hours to kill and I decided to charge my computer anyway – what would they do, kick me out? So I sat on the floor and charged my computer – read some Kierkegaard, called Alice, just generally killed the time. And I did get it up to 95% before I had to go wait for the bus.

The 10:00 bus did not show up until 10:30, but in the mean time, there was a rather good looking blonde waiting for the same bus, another college student, whom I had glanced at a few times while we were waiting. She was glancing back and I was entertaining the possibility that she was checking me out (I’m almost always entertaining this possibility. It’s an ego thing.) Especially when she walked over to be next to me (or possibly to get closer to where the bus was going to be). I was starting to actually believe she might be into me and though I am off the market, well, a thing like this is a matter of masculine pride. So I was trying to think of a way to start up a conversation and I finally did, asking her if she was heading to Indy. She was.

Although I’m now pretty sure she was not “into me” (and I should probably say that in any event since it’s entirely possible she’ll read this (Hi Georgia!!)) we did turn out to have a lot in common – she goes to IU, knows some IU people I know, knows a Wooster person I know, does journalism, does improv. We each managed to get the obligatory dropped reference to a girlfriend/boyfriend in early on, so that eliminated one source of awkwardness. She was somewhat concerned about a drunk guy who sat with her before and, what with one thing and another, we decided to sit together.

So my master plan was dashed, but I actually had a lot more fun talking Georgia’s ear off and, to a lesser extent, letting her get a word in edgewise, than I probably would have watching Star Trek and sleeping, so I’m happy with how it all worked out. Before we knew it we were in Indy and she was off to Bloomington with her boyfriend and I to my house with my father. If nothing else, I think I’ve made a new Facebook friend – and it beats sitting with a six-year-old or a crazy hobo guy.

All in all I think I learned a lot on the MegaBus about life and stuff, and if it weren’t 3 A.M. I’d even be able to tell you what it was. But I think in the end I traveled cheap and got good stories out of it, so maybe the smiling guy’s not so bad after all.

FIN

"All I can say is Thank GOD for teenage pregnancy."

In which Jonah posts a blog epic both to make up for past deficiencies and because he had time to kill on a bus

The smiling man who is the MegaBus logo, I’m afraid, is a bit of a swindler. He’s smiling sadistically as he thinks of all the ways your MegaBus trip could go wrong. Not that everything is MegaBus’s fault. The weather is the main culprit, that turned what would have been inconvenience, even adventure, into pain and the (thankfully unrealized) possibility of toe amputation. But maybe I should start at the beginning.

JONAH COMSTOCK PRESENTS

A JONAH COMSTOCK PRODUCTION:

THE MEGABUS DIARIES

It all began with a Mr. John Franklin, a band director of ill repute who came to the small liberal arts College of Wooster to fill in during the regular director’s sabbatical. Mr. Franklin, who quickly became Dr. Franklin (and wouldn’t let anyone forget it) was a person who had studied band directing extensively while having actually done a very small amount. He was, as they say, all book learnin’ and no street smarts, which is why the band quickly discovered they had little to no respect for him, and most of them surmised they could do better themselves.

So it happened that a number of the less devoted band members didn’t see any reason to continue into Symphonic Band in the Winter and Spring, since Marching Band in the fall had been less than pleasant under Dr. Franklin’s reign. (Well, really it was pleasant in its own way, but Franklin wasn’t responsible for any of that pleasure, save that which derived from students mocking him.) Those that played the less common instruments were implored to continue. I myself was called, e-mailed, and bothered in person until I finally agreed to audition for Symphonic Band. Well, since my audition was at the begging behest of Dr. Franklin, I did not tear my hair out preparing for it. In fact, I barely prepared for it at all. Which is why I suppose, Dr. Franklin chose not to admit me into the band he had begged me to audition for.

Now, I didn’t shed too many tears about not having to spend my Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays being poorly directed. But I was sad to miss the tour, which was a good deal of fun last year and is a real bonding experience for the band. The thought of heading back home during Spring Break to sit there and think about how much fun my friends were having did not appeal to me. So I made a decision to do something else with at least the first week of my break. I decided, after exploring various options, to visit my older brother at St. Olaf. My plan was to ride to MN with my ex-roommate Hugh, which promised to be a zany fun roadtrip, but Hugh decided to do a hippie Spring Break with WOODS (a campus outdoor adventuring club) which left me faced with one option: the MegaBus.

I’d heard great things about the MegaBus, but I think the main draw is that the busses themselves are nice and the cost is low. Because in terms of everything else, my experience has not been optimal. To get to Minnesota, I found out, I would have to catch a 10:50 p.m. bus from Columbus, Ohio to Chicago (6:30 a.m.) and then a 9:30 a.m. bus to St. Paul/Minneapolis (6 p.m.). An entire day of traveling when you add in getting to Columbus from Wooster and from Minneapolis to St. Olaf. (It could be worse though. While trying to get Saralyn home, we discovered that the only way to MegaBus from Cleveland to Indianapolis was to go through Chicago.)

So flash forward to today, when I wake up to find a new challenger approaching my break plans: the weather. (That was a little SSB reference in honor of the occasion). My father called to inform me that a huge winter storm was headed in and that Marten and I should leave extra early. Of course, we were already planning to leave at 4:00 p.m. – Marten was driving home to Indy and was just going to drop me off at Columbus on the way. Instead, I skipped a class and we left at 1:00. Now remember that I don’t catch my bus until nearly 10 hours later.

It’s about an hour and half drive to Columbus in optimal conditions, but the snow was bad and the roads were worse, and combined with the actions of stupid drivers (and a somewhat leisurely dinner because, at that point, what the hell?), we found ourselves in Columbus at about 5:30. Now my plan was to wait in Starbucks for most if not all the time until my 10:50 bus. I had gone as far as to research the closest Starbucks and whether it had wi-fi. It seemed nice, and only a block from the station. And my options were limited since MegaBus does not have indoor stations (this appears to be how they keep costs so low – MegaBus stations consist of a sign that says “MegaBus Station.”)

So I went to Starbucks, sat down, plugged in my computer, and settled in for five hours of waiting. Then, just as I was about to purchase wi-fi, I noticed the closing time on Starbucks’s door: 6:00 p.m. I had 15 minutes. So, I asked the lady behind the counter where I might go to stay out of the snow until 11:00, and she tells me what everyone else will when I go outside and roam door to door: The only place in all of Columbus that stays open past six is a bar called the Tip Top. So I waited in a bar for five hours.

Mind you, it was a sort of bar-restaurant deal, more like McClaren’s than Moe’s, and the people there were really nice, and they didn’t even make me buy anything (though I did by a hot cider), and they showed where I could stash my bag (under the pinball machine). They wouldn’t let me drink without ID, but whatcha gonna do? I killed the time, played Worms, wrote fiction, read poetry, and talked to various people on the phone while people around me got drunk (which is sort of a funny process to observe from the third person, honestly).

Finally, after an eternity of staring at the “Future Spa” pinball machine that looked like Isaac Aasimov’s wet dream, 10:00 rolled around and I set out for the “bus station,” hoping the cold would die down. It did not. Though it wasn’t so much the cold around my body as the unshoveled sidewalks and the snow around my feet. I was wearing my Converses and by the time I found the bus station (I had gotten a bit turned around on my way to the Tip Top) I couldn’t feel some of my toes. So I got dry socks out of my bag and changed my socks right there at the outdoor terminal.

Finally something went right when the bus arrived fifteen minutes early. So I got on, settled in, took off my already-wet-again socks, and got out my computer to start working on this post. Then, about three paragraphs in, I started feeling really drowsy so I put my computer away and went to sleep.

END OF PART I

The night was a fitful one, with me waking up pretty much every hour on the hour, shifting position, and going back to sleep (just as well because I think it helped me to avoid a vicious crick in my neck). I dreamed lots of things, but most of them took place on busses. Like I dreamed I was on band tour and someone made a crack about wishing they had some weed, and the woman who interviewed me for the Daily Record popped up and was like “I’ve got some.” And I asked “Where does everyone keep getting this stuff?” and she stage whispered “Brian Frederico.” Then we all got busted by Odo. Anyway, that was one of many dreams, but really I was in Chicago before I knew it. Those 7 hours were nothing to the 5 at the bar. When I got to Union Station I was greeted by a sign that said:

“Note to “MEGABUS” customers:

YOU HAVE CHOSEN A CARRIER
THAT HAS NOT PROVIDED
AN INDOOR PASSENGER
WAITING AREA FOR YOU.

Amtrak & Chicago Union Station Co.
Have no business relationship with
“MEGABUS” and cannot
provide assistance.

UNLESS PATRONIZING
CHICAGO UNION STATION
ESTABLISHMENTS
PLEASE WAIT OUTDOORS
FOR YOUR BUS”

My favorite part is the quote marks around “MEGABUS.” As in “If you can call it a bus!” I mean I suppose they have a right to be annoyed that what is essentially their competition is dropping people off and picking them up from their doorstep, but the sign seems to say “This is all your fault. You chose this carrier. You’ve made your bed now lie in it. Out in the COLD!”

For my part, I decided to patronize a cup of coffee and a Cinnabun so as to avoid the wrath of Amtrak. I sat down and wrote some more of this post. Union Station was not really so much of an adventure, aside from the humorous sign.

Then it was back on the MegaBus, though this time with wakefulness and considerably more people. I had the good fortune of being seated behind a baby, so we entertained each other making faces most of the way to Milwaukee. In Milwaukee the baby and her parents got off so I was left without entertainment. I wrote a series of poems about glasses and nearsightedness. Then, at the second Milwaukee stop I gave up my seat so a mother and her six-year-old son could sit together on. His name was, coincidentally (but not ironically) Levi, and he was at the peak of the “Are-we-there-yet” age, which is how it came to be that the woman, myself, and my seat mate, a medical student from the University of Toledo named John, all became engaged in the task of keeping Levi entertained. Levi suspected himself very good at I Spy, primarily because he cheated by assigning objects arbitrary colors. Eventually his mother and John each offered him a dollar if he could be quiet for 20 minutes. He lasted a very impressive 8 before bursting out “Are we there yet?” and then immediately pretending he hadn’t said it, even going as far as to blame the perfectly silent child two seats back (by pointing frantically). At this point we arrived at the U of M, and the first of my MegaBus journeys was concluded.

Oh I also went to Subway, but there’s nothing really entertaining about that, except that Veggie Delight subs aren’t half bad.

END OF PART II
(Part III will come if my return journey, also by MegaBus, proves to be at all entertaining)

"All I can say is Thank GOD for teenage pregnancy."

We were very tired, we were very merry

Last week was my Winter Break, in which not much happened. I found out I had eye allergies, and I saw The Other Boleyn Girl, which was ridiculous in a fun way. Other than that, I mostly just worked on the ten-page paper I had due Monday.

The paper itself turned out probably not great; I had to beg for an extension because I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. It was a paper/presentation combo, and I was the first one to do both, which sucked. I hate being first. And the discussion leading part of my presentation was disastrous. I am horrible at leading a discussion, and I think the professor is now doubting the wiseness of my career choice. However, I don't care, because I also sucked at presentations period when I first got here, and now I'm okay at those. So I'll get better.

This week has been pretty laid back other than that. I haven't had rehearsal that much, since I'm only in a couple of scenes of the play we're doing. When I am there, I spend my time reading the romance novel which is my prop book. It is called Under Crimson Sails and is almost as bad as Taken!, I swear. The heroine's name is Janielle (Janielle!), and she calls the hero, who is a pirate, "jackaknapes," and then he says, "You gave me no quarter with your words, now I'll give you none!" and I bet you can guess where it goes from there. And all of the descriptive passages are like landscape porn. And the exposition is handled thus: "What should she tell him? That she was a wealthy landowners daughter and her name was Janielle Patterson and her family was very respected and she had been his mother's companion and she should have gone home but she was just really curious to see a pirate?" I read it and I laugh and laugh, but I can only handle about twenty pages a night. Other than that, I'm very excited about my costume. It's going to be rather Moulin Rouge-y. I've been wearing my hooker boots the past couple of rehearsals-- although, I'm going to stop wearing them the whole time because they hurt my knees. But they are big and black and they have chrome heels. And I've gotten past the stage where it feels like they're going to break under me at any minute.

The other night, when I didn't have rehearsal, I went to the Jenaba Is Still Alive party at my friend Jenaba and Whitney's room, to celebrate that Jenaba's midterms had not killed her. I was the first to arrive and was awarded an ancient and moldy piece of French bread, which I promptly donated back to the cause. Then we played Apples to Apples, and I won.

"All I can say is Thank GOD for teenage pregnancy."

NATHAN AND CHALKEY FOREVER!

I don't have too much to blog about write now. I'm getting ready to leave for choir tour on Friday, and I've completely lost my voice. I'm really hoping it comes back before I have to sing a concert every night for a week. As much as I'm looking forward to seeing California, I almost wish I was just going home. I could really use two weeks to just chill right now. But I'll have to make do.
I'm really loving my costume design class. And every day that I go, I come closer to thinking I should study costume design rather than set design. I figure I still have a year to make that decision though. It's possible I just like the class better because Charlene is an infinitely better teacher.
Jonah and I are 20. it feels really weird to be twenty. On our birthday, my roommate played a set at Common Grounds. At some point during this, he pulled his shirt off to reveal a fairly decent likeness of me which Oatman had drawn on his chest, with the words "Nathan and Chalkey Forever!" written above it. It was pretty much awesome.
Unfortunately, his girlfriend was here for the weekend. Apparently, she did not approve of my face being on her boyfriend's chast the whole time she was here. It was... kind of awkward.
Speaking of Emily, there are a lot of common complaints people have when their roommate's significant other's come to stay. I was not sexiled, nor did they make out while I was in the room. I could not however, sleep at all. Because it turns out Emily snores. Like, a lot. Like, way too loudly to be possible for such a tiny girl. And since Chalkey can sleep through anything he never noticed this. So yeah, that wasn't fun. But the rest of the weekend was.
Well that's it. I'm gonna be computer-less for a while, so hopefully I'll post again this month, but if not, I claim extenuating circumstances. I ought to see at least some of you when I get back.


"All I can say is Thank GOD for teenage pregnancy."

You just WON the game!

To be honest, I figured out that game a long time ago. It's pretty easy. Although, now that Randall Munroe has made the secret public, it won't be nearly as fun as when I could gloat over all the people that lost all the time.

Today it was warm, and I felt good. It's not so warm anymore, but I still feel pretty good, so I'm not too bitter about the weather teasing me. This morning, African American Theatre History didn't suck as much as it usually does, and people actually liked my narrative for what is probably the only english class I will take other than Shakespeare next semester. I wasn't feeling too great about it, so I probably grinned like an idiot the entire time. I guess my second perspective really solidified the point more than I thought it did. I'll post the new version on Untitled later, as well as continue my thoughts on magic's function in different fictional cannons. After being reassured about my writing ability, I learned about Aldus Manutius. He invented italics! I am surprised that no one has made a movie about him, and I intend to pounce on that. Not because he invented italics, but because he led a fairly interesting life and was important to the Italian renaissance, and is usually forgotten because of Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and a host of other ren-artists. I'm thinking the story would be told from the perspective of one of the scholars that he housed in order to translate and edit ancient Greek texts. Seriously, he's probably the reason we've got philosophy classes. Damn, now I wish I were taking a philosophy class right now.

After class and lunch, I headed over to the OLO office to see when I'd start getting stuff. Most of the scores were already put together, so I'll probably get those soon. I was leafing through "The Czarevitch" (which is basically The Prince, but in Russian) in which I will be playing the part of Bardolo. All I learned is that I am an Italian girl's lover. Her name is Lina. I learned later from Jonah that after the prince tries to steal my girl, I go after his, who is named Sonja. I just find it hilarious that the two love interests share names with two girls that I have dated/made out with. Also, I'm a crazy Italian duelist, and I bite the Czarevitch's ear. I really hope that I can sword fight and/or die in this show, even better if I can do those things in an Italian accent. I'm incredibly excited for this bit.

The rest of my time has alternated between things going very badly or very well with Gen and wasting time refreshing D&D message boards. I think Gen and I have something figured out, we'll see. As for D&D, (Unless you are Nathan, Jonah, or Paul, you probably won't get much out of the rest of this post)I am enjoying the Avatar campaign setting immensely. I'm going to run a playtest, and I hope to run a campaign over the summer. The bending classes are surprisingly balanced, both with each other and with non-bending classes. We'll see if that changes at higher levels, but they really run kind of like 3/4 casters; sort of decent at their bending skill and less decent at combat at the beginning, the balance being that they're not limited by a certain amount of times they can use their ability per day. Also, they're not broken in that they can't magically create food and water with 0-level spells, making RP more interesting. I'm really looking forward to running this as my first campaign as a DM. As soon as the pdf is updated, I'll send copies of it to everyone that's interested.

"All I can say is Thank GOD for teenage pregnancy."