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. 

Baby Jesus and Baby New Year

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas break I worked on a show at school, so our Christmas party turned into food all over the place in bags. I wasn't upset. I'm not posting pictures because it was messy.  Over  break, Matt and I made a variety of Christmas cookies! My friends from back home came to Philly to mourn 2012 and celebrate 2013 with glow sticks and waffles. I highly recommend making a resolution wall to record your memories from the previous year and goals for the next!

The show I did this semester took place on Christmas down in Africa

The entrance table

Shakespeare getting cozy

Matt mixes the dough

Luminaries back home

Christmas Eve

New Year's Eve in Philly!

Chris and Jenna share memories and resolutions

Resolution wall!

Holiday Cocktails

It's been nearly two months, but I'm back. At the beginning of December I threw my very first evening of fanciness. My mom offered to give to physical cocktail invitations, but I felt that for this occasion facebook invitations would be best. This way I could easily contact my guests and remind them to bring things and give them my number (I needed them to call me so I could sign them into my building. College life.)
Decorating for this event was not as hard as I suspected. I've always been big on Christmas; my room at home was crowded with nutcrackers, ornaments, and crafts from elementary school that are now too tacky to be seen, and luckily I was able to ship what I needed over to my apartment. By "ship" I mean put in my mom's car. When I was younger my brother and I wanted out own Christmas tree in the basement, so my parents bought us a seven foot artificial tree that we could decorate. It had been in the bag for three years now, so I brought it to my apartment. The gold and red balls that used to fill the tree are now used as hurricane vase decorations, so I was short on ornaments at first. I unpacked everything I brought (a wreath, a small tree, the seven foot tree, some ornaments, and a few table top things) and cleared my head of all of my usual Christmas decorating ideas. The wreath I usually hang on my bedroom door was now on the inside of my apartment door. In middle school (or maybe elementary school?) I covered it with ornaments, and I later added bells of different shapes and sizes. There was no theme to this wreath, just colors. I decided it was time to start from scratch. I stripped the wreath of everything (untied the ribbon, untwisted the pine cones, etc) and started fresh. My twelve year old self was horrified that I was breaking tradition. I wrapped the gold and white ribbon around the wreath several times. This was a much improved from the floppy bow weighed down by the large gold water drop ornaments which topped it years prior. I added a few pine cones and was pleased by the simplicity. Now I had more bells and ornaments for the tree! I waited for my roommates to return so we could do it together. Meanwhile, I decorated the smaller tree. It took the place of the pumpkin that sat on the sofa table in front on my mom's painting. I started to put ornaments on, but since I was going simpler I decided just to put on the gold and green ornaments. I topped it with a small teddy bear ornament. I used to get small potted trees every year, and I would attempt to plant them in my backyard, but it never ended well. With each tree came a bigger ornament (big for the size of the small tree, at least) which I kept. Instead of putting these on the little tree I used them as ornaments for the big tree. My one roommate found the other small ornaments I decided not to put on the small tree and started to put them on the big tree. I didn't want to tell him that they're too small for that tree, so I just let him do it. They filled up space nicely, but I probably wont put them up there again.
A week passed and as the party drew near I felt that the room was still missing a few things. Late one night my friend Ali and I watched The Santa Clause on ABCFamily and cut out paper snowflakes for her dorm. I went home and decided to make some for my room as well. I cut out about six and taped them together in the pattern of a wreath/large snowflake. This was flanked by a smaller wreath of curled paper and one of the snowflake scraps. They were more for background objects in pictures than anything. The next day I harvested a number of pine cones, holly branches, and other evergreens to fill the empty spaces. When my mom came down to drop off my peacoat and gold spray paint (my mom appears a lot in this blog) she helped arrange some of the greens. I don't have vases so we used empty sauce jars. I saw a picture on Martha of a pumpkin vase, so we tried something similar by sticking the holly branches into the top to give a vase like feeling. By sticking the branches directly into the pumpkin instead of cutting a hole the branches stood up straighter.
I bought entirely too much food. For some reason I didn't believe my friends would bring food, but they all brought a dish or bottle of something. There was too much food, though my friend Anna said in amazement, "There was food?" after seeing the facebook album. I don't know how to explain that one.
So the night of the party I went to see one of the one acts in the undergraduate festival after making sugar cookies to bring in the holiday season, as well as the birthday celebration of our one friend who was to be present that night. I was told it was only a half hour. After it ended I turned to my one friend and she said it was ten o'clock. I didn't think anything of it at first, then I thought she was joking, then I ran five blocks to get to my building where the first guest, the soon to be Birthday Boy (who we sang and presented a tray of birthday cookies to at midnight), was waiting. I signed him in and quickly dressed and uncovered the appetizers. More arrive to the sound of Michael Bublé's new Christmas album. Everyone looked great and brought delicious food, including chicken wrapped in bacon. Bacon is always the best choice. That freshman knows how to get it done. Also, put Reese's on toothpicks. What I learned this evening is that everything looks fancy when it's on a toothpick. It turns out that I didn't need to buy all of the bagel bites and spinach and flaky spinach pastry bites. I'll save them for the next party.
At two thirty the guests began to depart. I mentioned my plan to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol and it stirred excitement. Six of my friends stayed through the morning to watch it with me. They also cleaned up after the party? What is this life? I went to bed at five.

A few days later I candy striped the pole in my living room. I think it's festive.

My handsome roommates decorating the tree!

Using Temple University for all of its resources. 

Making cookies with Angie!

A Christmas tree made from a Cosmo, spray paint left over from prom, and glitter. (As seen on Martha.)

The tree! And a paper snowflake wreath.

The cookies!

More cookies

Anna smizes next to the wreath.

More snowflake wreaths. And Dionna and Tyler.

Nana's mistletoe. Anna kisses the Birthday Boy, Quinn.

The pole is now a candy cane. 

I had Christmas in my office as well. The tree is made of colored clips and rolled up rubber band ornaments. 

Thanksgiving 2012

My roommate and I were swamped with projects and classwork this semester, but we still wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving with our friends. At first we were going to have a small gathering with just a few people, but we're Thankful for everybody so we invited everyone from school who makes us smile. There was no way it couldn't be pot luck. We both work part time in addition to having class and rehearsal, and we're college students so money isn't real. Also, we both had no time to cook anything except mashed potatoes and oven ready spanakopita from Trader Joe's. At my roommate's Thanksgiving last year I witnessed a mashed potato competition while eating chicken nuggets. This year we made turkey hands and a sleepover.

The tree in front of my house in the suburbs. 

I made this scarecrow in third grade. He comes out for Halloween and Thanksgiving.

I used a wire hanger and leaves from around my campus to make this wreath! It is hanging on an owl hook I bought at Urban for two dollars. Beneath the table you will find an apple cinnamon Glade PlugIn. The three vases were a total of three dollars from Philly AIDS Thrift.  

But if it was a smaller gathering it would have looked like this.

Bonnie and Matt coloring.

Before the festivities, Matt, Aaron, and I were shooting a scene for Temple's first web series One of the Guys, premiering Spring 2013.

Last year we used the counter as a buffet and the coffee tables as the dinner table. This year we used our kitchen table for plates and people ate where ever. Sometimes the quality of the food is more important than the layout of the plates, especially with this many people. That casserole was the best I've had. 

Turkey Hands

Breakfast

Pumpkin pancakes with powdered sugar is a perfect fall breakfast.