Friday, April 21, 2006

The Elephant Man

My friend and I get season tickets every year to the local University plays. It is a series of 6 or so plays and we really enjoy them.

Tonight, we went to see "The Elephant Man". Wow. It was a very sad, disturbing play. But the guy who played the Elephant Man was just brilliant. I thought he was wonderful. You'd never know he is a college student to watch him.

So, the premise behind the Elephant Man is that there was a man who was deformed and growing more deformed as time goes on. In a movie they would use a lot of makeup and stuff to make him look grotesque. In a play, however, they sometimes just use the actor's ability to portray this grotesqueness. The guy who played the Elephant Man tonight was amazing. He was able to contort himself into a sick looking position and keep himself that way most of the play. It was incredible. He also changed his voice to be very gruff, strained. It was believable. It looked likt it took a lot of work and was probably painful to stay that way for 2 hours. Amazing.

The play itself was ok, although a bit odd at times. I'm glad we went to see it even though it was a tough play to watch (very sad). Of course, I love most plays and musicals, which is why we get season tickets!

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Unproductive

I'm having one of those unproductive kind of evenings... the ones where you sit on your couch and eat bon bons, watch tv and do nothing kind. I still have a headache (migraine yesterday, yuck). But I have no other reason to be doing nothing, really. I should be running or quilting. I have purses to make.

I have a baby room to get ready. I have lots of clothes to go through and bag up to give away... laundry to do. The list goes on. Doesn't it always?! LOL.

Oh, and I *will* be watching American Idol tonight! :D Cheers.

...maybe i'll go through some clothes or sew for a half hour before it comes on... (uh, yeah right! ha)

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

So...

Let's see, what shall I write about today? Well, I watched American Idol tonight. Yes. I'm an Idol fan. I really liked Taylor and Katherine tonight. Very nice. Kelly can go home at any time, though. If she wasn't such a ditz, I would probably like her. Oh well. I thought Elliot did alright, too. Not a big Ace fan. He bored me tonight. Such the critic I am, huh? lol.

Ok, more personal stuff, I guess... I ran my 14th marathon a week and a half ago in St. Louis, Missouri. It was nice. Nice town. Good race. Got to hang out with my friends and we had a blast. My friend Joe's birthday was the day before the marathon. He was running the half marathon with me. His wife Kat ran the 5K on his actual birthday. We had a great dinner at this little Italian restaurant downtown. Shoot, I can't remember the name.

The course on race day was pretty nice, too. It was rolling hills, but none that were too huge. I got hot early on and had to take not only my jacket off, but my long sleeve shirt, too! I had to re-pin my number on my short-sleeve shirt. Oops. At one point a radio station guy was announcing people during the race and he said... "And here comes Melissa (my name was on my bib), who's wearing half her wardrobe around her waist!" haha. I laughed. We also ran down one street that was 'thrift shop row' (that we drove down the day before). It was probably mile 18 or 20 and I looked up and saw Goodwill Industries, which is where my Dad works (helping people get jobs). I had a corny, happy moment thinking of my dad and my sister ('cause she loves to thrift shop). :)

On the adoption front.... the rumor is that the wait could be 10-14 months right now. Not sure how that will affect me, yet. I am still hoping to travel after October. But, of course, I'm getting anxious like others are...

Monday, April 10, 2006

Monday... yawn

The past few weeks have been very long weeks for me at work. Can you tell? I haven't blogged in awhile! Yikes.

Let's see. Last Monday, I had a flooding issue in my garage and laundry room. YUCK. Thankfully, a friend of mine brought me her 8 gallon shop vac so I could get the water out. I emptied that thing at least 35 times (close to 300 gallons)! It was gross. Apparently, there was a block in the sanitation line and that was why water was coming up through my drains. I had to have a restoration cleaning crew come out and clean up. It did get into my family room a little bit, where there is carpet. I was none to happy about this. Oh well. It is cleaned up now.

My co-worker came back this past week and so I was able to get back to my own project that needs to be done very soon. That was good. Problem was, I had to take Monday off due to the water problem, and then Friday I took off because I was going out of town (more on that later). So, I had to work a bunch of over-time again to make up for it! Ugh. Oh well. I'm hoping this week is better. :)

I haven't even gotten a chance to check out other blogs in the past couple of weeks, or get on the adoption boards. I think the latest is that the last of the May '05 group hadn't gotten their referrals yet, and it is still about a 10 month wait. I need to check that out this week.

Sunday, April 2, 2006

Baby in need

Well, I haven't felt like I've had much to say this week, 'cause I've just been SO busy at work and all. I haven't even had time to get into my sewing room this week. ugh. It is gorgeous out today, and did I run? No. Am I exhausted still? Yes. I'm working on it though.

Anyway, my sister and I came up with some things that we are going to do soon. Like have a garage sale. We love to go garage saling, and we try to have one a year, if we can. We also had a chance to talk a little about our trip to China. That was cool. We both decided to go through our closets, and anything we were going to give away this spring, we will take with us and then leave in China so we have more room in our suitcases for fun stuff on the way home! :)

We also talked about how awesome it would be if my nephew and my sister's hubby could come with us. I guess we'll just have to see when the trip falls. He can only come if it is late, late in the year (like December). Right now, it looks like the trip may fall between September and November sometime. (I'm still hoping, praying for after October 24.)

My sister got a lot of things from our cousin to list on eBay. She was excited. My sister loves eBay! LOL. She had me play model this weekend for some of the purses and dresses and shoes.

Oh, and we also found out about a little baby boy this weekend who is in need of some extra love and care right now. He is a cousin of one of my sister/hubby's) best friends. Their friend (the wife), "S", wants to take the baby in to help her cousin because her cousin is hooked on all kinds of drugs. This little baby "T" is only 4 days old and has already had to have some medical procedures done to help him. He has a little fluid on his brain and glaucoma, so far. It is so sad when people do these kinds of things to their children.

My sister and her friend "S" have both talked about maybe one of them fostering (adopting?) the baby if they can. "S" has some health issues, herself, but she has 4 wonderful kids and she's a great mom. My sister (like me) seems to have this heart for adoption and kids in need. She also feels like I do, that you do not have to give birth to a child to have them as your child.

I think that if she and her hubby took this little baby that it might be tough (they aren't sure what all medical issues baby "T" has yet), but they are they type that could handle it and give this little boy lots of love. Which is what he needs. Who knows what will happen, his mom might actually clean her act up and take care of baby "T" herself. But none of us is getting our hopes up. If you belive in prayer, please pray for baby "T".

Oh, and not that it matters, but I did say that I could possibly take baby "T" if there was no other family/friend who could take him. The problem with this is that I live a bit out of the jurisdiction of this situation and am not sure if the foster care system would even let me do it. When I looked into fostering from a neighboring town (albeit, across the river, so technically a different state - which also applies here), they said I couldn't. But it is always an option.