I Moved!

Four weeks ago on my twenty second birthday I loaded up my dad's Subaru and my parents drove me to my new apartment/job in the Finger Lakes. It's my first time living outside of the Philadelphia area, which is nice. My studio apartment in Auburn has four walls the color of my bedroom in Delaware County, hardwood floors, and a full sized bed. Blank walls are scary. There's so much pressure to hang the pictures perfectly. There are just so many options. I brought the essentials: my map of Philly, posters of shows from this year, my Homestar flat, my moose, jar of notes, guestbook, soapstone heart, and also sheets and clothes and yeah. I bought a bike! I don't have my own car, and public transportation is ?????? and I need to do things. This is this first time in my life when I send praises for the local Walmart.
The last four weeks included daily creative writing workshops with middle school students and rehearsals for my tour show opening next week. The company, Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, hosts a creative writing competition all over central New York that uses samples of writing from middle school students to create a show that comes back to their schools in the spring. The competition is similar to the work I did with Philadelphia Young Playwrights in college.
It's weird to think about college in the past tense. Most of my friends are still in school spending late hours in rehearsal while my day is done by five o'clock and I'm drinking coffee in my studio. There is no Starbucks in town, but our tours go through several areas that supply the lattes I need. Don't think I'm sacrificing pumpkin spice lattes this fall. The good news is Merry-Go-Round always has free coffee in the office/rehearsal space. And sometimes on Wednesdays there are home made cookies. "How did I get this job?" I think as I check my company mail box and eat a chocolate peanut butter chip cookie.
Up State New York is the definition of Americana. Syracuse is home to the second biggest mall in the country, Destiny USA. I dropped a portion of my first paycheck here on essential things including a casual fall jacket and a grey knitted hat. Later, the youth tour actors and I took a trip to the New York State Fair in Syracuse. The highly anticipated butter sculpture was on a revolve. There were chickens of many colors, rabbits of all sizes, and there were kids on leashes. Our first week on tour with the writing workshop opened my eyes to how much corn is in this country. There is so much corn. And beautiful rolling hills. And corn. The wind mills capturing the wind energy are massive and pop up on mountains when you least expect. There are old red barns, cows, corn, corn, horses, corn, pretty sky, corn. I don't think they grow anything else up here. There are a number of local wineries (along a wine trail, which intersects with the cheese trail), and everyone enjoys the local honey. I bought a bottle of it at Tomato Fest 2013. There were hardly any tomatoes at Tomato Fest. I was expecting a giant dancing tomato. One of the other actors was expecting a Tomato Queen pageant. Anyway, almost all the food sold up here is grown locally. There are even some strawberries in the garden outside my apartment.
All the youth tour actors live in the apartment complex together. Two of my cast members and I watched the first season of Orange is the New Black. I screamed when it ended. This blog is not the place to talk about the rage, though. Just. Watch it. Also, after thinking about it for years I finally read The Perks of being a Wallflower. I wish I read it in high school, but I'm glad I did it now. I'm actually started reading it a second time today in the tour sprinter, which I learned how to drive in my first week! We take sprinters out for our workshop tour and each cast has one to carry their set, costumes, and props from school to school.
The show I'm doing this fall is about the controversial Belo Monte dam project in the Amazon. It fits in with the fifth grade curriculum in NY.
A few days ago my cast went out to Fillmore Glen to rehearse some of our scene in the wilderness. I wish I did things like this in school. I've realized that I've forgotten how to play. I used to see a ramp or a staircase anywhere and think, "Yes, that could be a stage, we could do a play here." The trip to the woods helped bring that feeling back. We also saw two gorgeous waterfalls. Follow the path and never stray unless you are actually in the woods then leave that trail because that's where you can see the cool stuff.
Soon we're going to Apple Fest. I don't know where. Possibly Ithica? I heard it's beautiful there. And the leaves are already starting to change up here. I get chills thinking about it.
I'm still weirded out by having all this space in my bed.

Graduation

Also I went to Disney world.

I made this event months ago when I was upset about becoming a twenty-something.

Bye, Matt and Rex.

A view from the Blue Water Grill in Skaneateles.

The Butter Sculpture 

These pop up on mountains sometimes.

The local 24/7. It reminds of me of the Big L back home. 

The sunset view from the playhouse.

This South Street is close to Harriet Tubman's grave.

At Tomato Fest with Clare and Scott

Aurbun is home to the first electrocution death sentence. Here is one of the chairs (unused) from that era.
Located at Parkers.

The first of the season. Guest starring Clare Lopez.

Free caricatures on Fridays at Parkers! Becki and I met at convocation freshman year, and we both ended up working at Merry-Go-Round. Our time overlapped for just a week up here, so he made sure to get this portrait done. 

A Fillmore Glen native.

This waterfall.