On the Stage

-Finding a good book or series of books or an author and just reading, reading, reading
-Finding some good music you hadn't explored before (in this case a musical I hadn't take the time to get to know until now)

It's funny how two simple things can make life seem so happy and so normal right now.

What couple things would you use to finish the sentence "Happiness is..." (excluding anything to do with family because those are constantly making us happy some how -- just something superficial but great)

The animated gifs aren't animating for some reason with the upload to blogger, so I'll have to fix that later so you can see them animated.



funny animated gif someone made of some of the original broadway cast of Into the Woods. I liked it.



VERY good representation of this musical, The Last Five Years, from the poster. I love it.



A very good animated gif of Wicked that I liked a lot.



It's Josh Radnor from How I Met Your Mother in Into the Woods when he was in college! How awesome is that?! It sure looks like he's the Baker too. How much would I LOVE to hear something from that.



I'll repeat but slightly change...It's Josh Radnor from How I Met Your Mother in Jesus Christ Superstar when he was in college! How awesome is that?! He is Judas...a VERY hard role to sing. Once again, I want to hear that bad!



A Hirschfeld drawing of the MAN, Stephen Sondheim.

people talking OUTLOUD to themselves. It's freaky and I don't like it. There is someone I know that does it ALL THE TIME. Full on sentences and conversations. I have experienced others doing it, but no one beats this person. What up in your brain isn't functioning properly that you can't keep your thoughts to yourself? I have never talked out loud to myself, I just don't do it. I have maybe said out loud, "ooh, that's how that works" or something along that line, but it's when someone else is around and I know they'll hear it and either strike up a conversation or I'm basically saying it to them and leaving it up to them on whether they're curious enough to want know what I'm talking about.

Entire conversations people...do you talk outloud to yourself?

My tongue is too big for my mouth! It is. No one believes me. I was just talking about it with my co-worker. At the back, towards the back of the teeth, the "molar area" I ALWAYS bite my tongue. It's always so big that it makes me talk funny sometimes, it's always in the way, and I bite it. It then gets inflammed and makes it even harder to talk, and it's all sensitive and annoying.

I swear, if we did some kind of measurement, mine would be above average in size. What "tongue girth" maybe?

I swear!

I am a "graphic artist" and I put that in quotes because I SUCK. Long story, but I dind'tk now what I wanted to do until about my senior year of college and by that time I was 1 year from graduating at a college I loved but had NOTHING to do with Graphic Design, but I just finished, got out into the world and realized how much I sucked and what I really wanted to do, but my senior year of college I was having a child and wanting to graduate and get out into the world to make money for my family. Well, suffice to say I just got out, got a job I hate, and can't break into the graphic design world, but it doesn't help that i have no training, no experience, and I suck. I can't go BACK to college because my wife is in college, and we NEEEEED income, MY crappy income, and we have NO money so I can't take any classes on the side, so unless I really kick myself in the ASS to teach myself and really buckle down and just learn all by myself, which I can't seem to do because I'm 1.)Lazy 2.) Busy 3.) Tired by the end of the day 4.)A big piece of shit so I'll be stuck WISHING I could graphic design, but discovering I suck and just can't get any better and spinning into a spiral of depression in jobs that I hate. SOund like fun? I'm so frustrated...so very frustrated...

I'm just bitching...I figured I wrote it all out for someone else's blog, I might as well revise it and put it on my blog because it feels good to let it all out. I'm just so frustrated with how my life has turned out so far when it comes to a profession, and that I KNOW I'm a lazy bastard but I just don't do anything about it. Well, very little, I have been learning things here or there on photoshop, and I do the graphics work for all the shows from the theatre troupe I'm a part of, but it's just not enough. I look at everyone elses work and I WANT that, but I can't DO it, and I just don't know how to go about doing it. I just don't knwo what to do, so many times I tell myself and I tell people I'm sitting across at an interview that I can and have taught myself everything I know and everything I"ll learn, and I can teach myself fast and be good at it, but shit, half the time I don't feel like I can. I try, half-assed, sometimes to learn something in photoshop or illustrator or quark and it doesn't come easy to be and I can't immediately figure it out or find an answer and there is no one to show me, so I just kinda give up. And 90% of the time I feel like I'm just not creative enough either to find new and imaginative ways to design stuff, I just can't think up this cool shit that I see everyone else doing, and the only way I can is if I'm copying something else I saw somewhere. Occasionaly I can think of stuff myself, but it just looks like shit, to me at least. The poster for Into the Woods was all mine, but shit, what more is it then all black with some green boxes here and there? The idea to make the I of Into the Woods a tree was mine, but I'm SURE it's been done before. The design of the tree, while drawn in Illustrator by me, was from a tree I found online, not out of my head. And plus it's not the design I wanted in the first place. I had a completely different much more interesting design in my head, but I COULDN"T make it. I'm not that good. And there are SOOOOOOO many people who either work as a graphic artist or dabble in it who have never taken a class either, but are just GOOD. How the hell? Maybe it's the universe trying to tell me to just give it the fuck up because I suck. But that's what I want to do. I really do, but I don't want to be one of those people who keeps tryign to do somethign he sucks at and just looks like a depressing loser because he can't realize that he sucks. I also do NOT want to work in something I didn't do in college because otherwise it's a supreme waste of money. I shouldn't have even gone to college. I know millions of people do it, and I'll probably be one of them, but it's a tough pill to swallow right now. If it truly is a job I LOVE that has nothign to do with my major then I can get over it a little better, but I just feel like I'll spend my life in a job I hate at this rate.

Well...this has been bottled up again for a while, I know I've spouted out about this before, but it needed to come out again so I could let off a little steam.

There's really no sense in me trying to be anonymous. I can't really succeed in that at this point, if I started a new blog, perhaps, but not on this blog. I'll never post my feeling on how a show is going. I'll never post on a family member or friend unless it's good stuff. Which kind of sucks that I have to limit myself like that, but like I've said before, I'm too lazy to start a new blog and try to keep up posting on an anonymous blog and this blog. I'm already pretty much too lazy to keep up posting on this blog sometimes! ;-) I have SO much I could write about, but most of the time I think it's just too much time to come on a type it all out. Because I like to talk, I like to explain things thoroughly, almost always too thoroughly, so trying to get up the gumption to type it alllllll out so everyone knows the whole story? Yeah, it seems like waaay to much work when you think about what goes through my head and how much I'd like to share just to get the story across. So anyway, I put up a stupid banner I made myself with pictures of me from a couple of my stage shows, and an animated gif icon that is of myself too. Eh, I'm not at this point ever going to write anything too personal on this blog, it's just for fun, so there I am. I've posted plenty of pictures before anyway, so if you really want to stalk me, it's probably possible. I hope you don't...but there you have it! :-) I still like to refrain from using last names or posting too many other names besides myself, but I falter in that sense too, and if you really wanted to, you could figure out who I was anyway.

So there's my ramblings on that. :-D

I. am. FRUSTRATED with something...that's it, thank you.

If someone says the title of this post like Jimmy Fallon as that disc jockey character he played on SNL then you win the prize!

I'm back to my old layout, I hope it's working fine and everyone can see again :-)

While I'm here writing a post let me recommend a book I'm currently reading for the second time. I LOVE reading, but I do not love reading books twice, but here I am, it's been about 2 or 3 years and I'm ready to read it again it's THAT good...well, and I don't remember jack shit about it, except that I LOVED it SO much the first time I read it...so I suggest running to your local library and cheking out this book and reading it:



Seriously, one of the best written books and storylines I've ever read. It grips you and makes you go, "What the hell?!" from the beginning, literally the second chapter and it does NOT let go. It's interwoven storylines, each seperately good and put together by all these common things is just genius.

Ok, I was going to give you the plot summary from Amazon, but they give things away that I want you to be shocked by, so don't read their summaries. Just get the book, you wont regret it.

Yeah...our house has no central air or anything, and though we have an air conditioner in our living room it has so many rooms to cool it's doing absolutely no good. The only room in our house worth sitting in is our bedroom, which also has an air conditioner. So guess where Kaia is sleeping? But I'm ok with it, because it is so fucking hot.

Our house was 90 degrees. Outside it was 100+ degrees. This is with an air conditioner and 3 fans. Needless to say we spent most of the weekend at my parents house, where it's COOL.

Last night Kaia had a temperature :-( She was inside all of Sunday and most of Saturday so I don't think it was from the heat, but we're not sure. It started at about 630pm when we noticed and gave her some tylenol. Throughout the night she was into 102 and even 103 (according to that ear thermometer). It was scary, because a few years back she got pneumonia and had to be on a nebulizer for a month or two, and the doctor says they're most susceptibal (Sp?) to it after that. But with Tylenol every four hours and some praying and air conditioning in our room and a cold compress on the forehead at about 6am she was getting back down.

Hold the phones, V just called me now and shes back at 103 so she's calling the doctor to see what's up.

Darnit, now I'm worried again :-(

Oops! hahaha...tiger nutsack!

My favorite animal!! Though I wanted to see better penguins than this, I wanted to see tuxedo ones, that have to be in the cold, etc. But these guys were cute too!

We have a picture of Kaia on one too, lol, but V sent me this one here at work...so you get ME on a camel :-D

Here is the storm from last night, this was before the torrent rain and lighting and thunder, but the wind had kicked up by then:

Check these out! So cool...

Tiny Houses

I'm going to wait a day and see if my template fixes itself, otherwise I'll have to switch to one of the shitty blogger templates.

ok, so I went and changed it now. I really like this template I found. I need to figure out why my little music icon thingie to the right is covering up my synopsis of my blog, and get the synopsis centered on the page. I'd also like to get that picture at the top changed to something I care about, but this is all stuff I don't know how to do, so if anyone DOES know or wants to check out the source code and tell me how that'd be cool. YOu can type it back here or e-mail me theatretenor @ gmail . com (without the spaces)

Change is good :-D

Is my template mysteriously missing, leaving behind just a white background with the layout all messed up or is it just me at work seeing it like that?

Anyone do it or done it?

I did it for about a year or two then took a year off and now I'm finally getting back into it again! I love it because I get to read lots of books and I get lots of money, you know the whole saving lives thing is good too :-)

$20 for the first donation
$30 for the second donation in a week
---
$50 a week to save lives and read books

Check it out, all you do is sit with a needle in your arm and pump when the machine tells you to and in under an hour (usually, especially for women) you're done. If you go to do it at the one in my town though tell me because I'll get the referral fee :-D

I'm afraid my super high metabolism is leaving me. I honestly never thought it would...but it feels like it is. I just sit at this damn desk all day. And even though I've ery active outside of work, I weigh more right now than I ever have before in my life. And my tummy, while not big, is def. not concave anymore...

I need to curb my appetite, but when I've been eating like this for 25 years it's hard to cut back!! The running and tennis and swimming and golfing and all that doesn't seem to be doing much, but I've only just begun so maybe I'll see some effects later in the summer.

Either way I don't want that tummy poking out.

I just recently got to play disc golf for the first time. I've had a disc for about 2 years but never got to play and now I finally did, and now I'm hooked!! BUT my arm is KILLING me from throwing those discs. They are harder than normal frisbees and heavier and you're chucking them hard to get them to go far. Sidearm, forearm, tomahawk, it's tough shit. lol, it hurts!! I'm waiting for my arm to heal up so I can go again. I went twice in two days and so that didn't help.

I'd suggest it if you've never done it, it's a good time!


Check out:

Innova for the #1 maker of golf discs and other assorted whatnots.

PDGA -- Professional Disc Golf Association

Either one of those sites will let you find courses near you. Iowa is #2 in amount of disc golf courses.

These are the two discs I currently have:

not having a good day, just don't feel like dealing with it...you know? Just sick of it all.