Now That She's Back in the Blogosphere

I know I have been MIA from the blogosphere the last couple of weeks.

You know when you get a message from a friend who you haven't talked to in a long time. You're so excited to talk to the person, but you keep putting it off because its been so long that you need a good long time to sit down and give the them all the juicy details of what you've been up to.

Well, I kind of feel like that. Except I haven't had a good long time for dishing in a good long time. And its almost midnight and I have to be at school at 8 tomorrow and probably stay until 8pm. So it's not looking good for the full scoop, but for any of you who are still checking back after I've gone missing for the last few weeks, I just wanted to say hi.

Here are few things I have done since we last chatted:

• Spoke at a professional conference for the first time in Sacramento
• Visited Michael, Jenny, Noah, Josh and David (my brother-in-law, sister-in-law and nephews) in Vacaville
• Spent time with Lai, one of my best friends, when she came to town from Macau for the week
  
• Went to my friend Heather's bachelorette party
• Logged some major hours house shopping over the last few weeks
• Put an offer in on a house we really like yesterday - I'm very excited since this will be the first home Paul and I have picked out together
• Started to prepare for study week and finals -only a week and a half to go before summer vacation!
• On a sad note, visited Maw Maw, my grandmother-in-law, in the hospital on two occasions after she took a couple of spills at my in-laws house.

I probably forgot some, but that's the quick and dirty. I hope to resume the weekly blogging again soon. Just think of it like all the TV shows returning after the writers' strike.

Save the Drama for ….the Popular Kids?

I was in every play in high school from my sophomore year on. I remember how excited I was to get cast as the lead in my first play over Starr Easterday, a really outspoken senior who, frankly, I was a little bit scared of, and had been acting a lot longer than me. As it turns out, despite my oh so convincing audition, I had a long, long, long way to go before I got even kind of watchable. That first audition was my ticket into the high school drama world though. No matter how big or small my part, I loved every crazy four hour rehearsal and even the constant angst-filled asides from the really intense kid. I made friends plus I got to flirt shamelessly with all of the cute clever boys, most of whom inevitably turned out to be gay.

I went on to play a sickly sweet flapper girl with a serious crush on a guy named George and the maid in You Can’t Take It With You. In the script the character was supposed to be black, but I gave her an Irish accent. Sometimes. I was the stage manager in Gammer Gurton’s Needle with a monologue that ended with “God Save the Queen! Huzzah!” You can never say that too many times. I was the understudy for one of the princesses in Love’s Labour’s Lost, my favorite Shakespeare comedy ever, and would have gotten to go on when one of the princesses ran away from home with her boyfriend had her costume not been a size 2. In my very last performance as the celebrated fashion designer Bibi Cavendish in a British murder mystery I actually felt confident in my improvement. Even my Mom, who came to every performance and kindly encouraged me through my mediocrity couldn't hide the hint of surprise in her voice when she said “Jessi, that was actually really good!”


What can I say? It takes a while.

So it hit me the other day, with the High School Musical movies capturing the rapt attention of all of the teens and ‘tweens of the nation. Are all of these kids now trying out for their high school musicals?

Instead of drama being the place for marginal kids who are drawn to acting because its not so mainstream, I wonder if stages are now being overrun by the would be cheerleaders and football players. And think of the competition… I might have edged out Starr Easterday, but I don’t know if I ever would have gotten the chance to get on stage with 20 mini Vanessa Hudgins running around. It would be pretty sad for all of those kids who are hopeful and whole-heartedly ready to make complete fools of themselves in the quest to get better like I was to miss out on their chance.

Any high school drama teachers out there who have seen a massive influx of auditioners of late?

Less is More

Sorry I've been away for so long. Or as I can now say in Japanese, Shitsudesu shimashita. I can even write that in fancy Hiragana characters now!

Since I wasn't crossing as many things off of my to-do list last semester with my convenient Tuesday/ Thursday teaching schedule with nice long weekends, this semester I decided to test out a theory of mine.

The more time on my hands, it would seem that the more time I would have to pursue all sorts of interests- fitting in some more yoga and gym time, reading, blogging, finding ways to save the world, etc. However, in reality, since free time was in abundance I found myself feeling like I could always do it later. Kind of like the Spanish mañana syndrome.

So my theory was this: the less free time I have, the more likely I am to fill it up with more productive and worthwhile than catching up on daytime TV. So this semester, I took advantage
of the #2 perk that comes with teaching for the university system (#1 of course being summer and winter break between semesters). For every credit I teach, I can take 1 for free. So along with the 4 classes I am teaching I am also taking Beginning Japanese and another grad class about conducting classroom research.

The results so far? If the they were playing in the Superbowl, it would be a really close game between super productive and really freakin' tired. In fact, I think I've already gone into overtime.

Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are

I am very excited to see that the hit counter for this blog has tipped past the 500 mark (and only half of those are me checking in throughout the week, I swear!). So thanks to all of you for stopping by and reading. And on that note, this week is national de-lurking week in the blog world (thanks Nanette at Say It Don't Spray It! for the info) so if you've been reading please leave me a comment to introduce yourself and leave me a link to your blog or website if you have one. I love getting a glimpse into other people's thoughts and lives.

Writing on the Wall

The building where I teach 2 of my classes this semester is pretty old. Not beautifully old, made of aging red brick, rich in history with ivy crawling up its sides like you’d see at some New England University. Instead, this building is 1970’s mod style old, complete with peeling stucco. And like many buildings that pass their prime in Las Vegas, it is scheduled for implosion (well, at least destruction of some sort) and rebuilding in the coming years.

One of the interesting features of the 2nd floor ladies room in this building is the writing that covers the walls of the bathroom stalls. I don’t think it has been cleaned for years because I have some hazy recollection of seeing it when I was an undergrad at least 6 years ago. Reading through some of the strange comments the other day, such as a debate over whether or not Jesus was in fact black, I got to wondering what possesses people to write on bathroom walls and how they choose the subject of their bathroom stall graffiti.

The bathroom that sticks out in my memory as being the most actively filled up with comments was at my favorite college hangout Tom and Jerry’s. Sadly, the place is now a Laundromat or something like that, but during my college days, every Tuesday night it was bursting at the seams with underage college students with fake IDs for dollar drink night (perhaps that’s why it was eventually shut down). It was the first bar I ever went to. The floor was always sticky with spilled drinks and packed with everyone I knew at the time. Being thoroughly liquored up with a continuous stream of $1 Captain and cokes or beers, it seems like a brilliant and pretty obvious idea to write on the bathroom walls. Especially when so many other people already had. Most of the writings at Tom & Jerry's were to the tune of Anthony hearts Melissa 4-ever or Natalia is a skanky b**ch and she better stay away from my man. I’m pretty sure I added own my comments at one point.

However, I’m a little more curious about the people who scribble on the walls in the middle of the day at school. Are the authors bored? Are they looking for a forum to express themselves? Who are these people that write on the bathroom walls anyway? Are they rebels? Just ordinary, everyday students? Are they (gasp!) professors? I can just imagine Ira Glass doing an interview with the people who write these comments for This American Life.

There is one bathroom I refer to as the F*** Jesus bathroom. The dialogue in there goes something like this:

Jesus was black.

No, he wasn’t. Jesus was white.

What color is the sand when you wet it?

I have it on good authority that Jesus is purple.

Jesus was Jewish. Cleopatra was Macedonian. Stop rewriting history.

F*** Jesus. (This comment is now scratched out.)

Mmm-kay. I find it funny that their choice of topic for defacing public property is religion.

This made me think of something written in a bathroom wall in the University I went to in Spain. I wrote it down one day after returning to class because I thought it was funny. It said:

Nunca corras detras de un tio ni un autobus.
Llegara otro en un ratito.

Translation:
Never chase after a guy or a bus.
There’ll be another one along in a minute.