On Greeting a Stranger on the Street...

I loved you on this day

Watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind trailer.
Speech team.

Fun stuff, but not as good as last year. I guess it has to do with a few factors. The first being, I don't really have a love for either of the things I'm in. I mean, yeah, I love Star Wars for readers theater, but.. I don't love the reader's theater, or being in it. And with Titus, I love the language and I like the piece, a few moments in the performance - but I don't love it. Last year, I loved choral reading. It was a labor of love for so many people, myself included, that this year seems to pale in comparison. Aside from the events, I suppose I had too many things to see this year of ours. Last year I spent most of my time just being with people, and the year just in the improv room, but this year there were so many things I wanted to see that I didn't have time to do anything else, really. But now that I've seen most of them, I won't bother with most of them again at state. Hopefully I'll be able to see some really good stuff there. But anyway, back to districts.

Everyone had a great performance that I saw compared to their previous ones - with choral reading being the exception. It must be kind of a disapointment this year after doing so well with it last year that they performed so poorly at districts. But they still have a few weeks to practice till state. Overall, everything I saw was great, and I may be a bit partial, but I do think Hosbond put together some of our best performances this year. It feels weird that one of our improvs didn't make it past distcrits - first time that's happened since I've been here. But admittedly, I wasn't really expecting the "new group" last year to make it, but they put together a pretty good performance for districts and impressed me. But again, back to districts this year.

I think I did okay in both my events. I wasn't really feeling Titus as much as I thought I should, and I couldn't really improve it or do exceptional during the performance because I just went on automatic - something I do durning performance. Just not think about it and just let it happen. I'll try to work on that for state. And I did fine in readers theater. My voice didn't crack, but it also wasn't as menacing as I could have hoped. But my Chewie got laughs out of people - mostly Erin and Jessica though, heh.

I feel really bad for the people in West Side Story. They got a 2 when they didn't deserve it - so I hear (I couldn't catch the performance - something else was running late so I missed it). When they asked what they did wrong, pretty much what the judge told them was that "one of the girls" was much stronger than the others and didn't blend well with them. Everyone's pretty sure that's Michelle.. I feel really bad for her especially, though, because she was fantastic in it and she doesn't get recognition for it. But what really pissed me off was the way the judge said why they go the 2.. made it sound like if Michelle had been weaker, then they would have moved on. Pissed me off.

I hope we have someone come in and make some suggestions for Titus. Someone who actually knows Shakespeare...

Now, some happy little moments at contest. Sam/Sara/David improv was fantastic - can't wait for them to wow us at state. Laura french chick was cool - especially when she asked me to kiss her on the cheek (HA! corey and collin). Weird gross girl following Jed around. "PICK IT UP!!" then BAM! to David.. Graber/knives and Corey/Smoothandclean.. Pappin being hit on by the judge.. Jim saying "Beauty, Truth, Freedom, and Happiness"... Greasy Injuns... 4 Steel Magnolias... Hmm.. there are probably a lot more, I just can't remember.

Well, after we got back, everyone, and I mean everyone, went to Tiffany's for a post-districts party. That ruled. First I was upstairs with Rachel, Kelsey, and Michelle while everyone else was being loud downstairs, then everyone went upstairs so Kelsey, Rachel, and I went downstairs.. Then other people started coming down, then I got people to start doing a game where you have to tap the other person's head 3 times by any means (but you can't use legs).. Justin totally owned at it, tossing everyone about.. The best 2 moments were when Justin threw Steve literally 15 feet across the room and Steve just having this bewildered look on his face, and when Justin totally flipped Quinn over and smacked him into the ground. It was intense. Sam got into it too, and Jim, but.. I never did.

Instead, I went upstairs where it was quieter. People were more into talking up there, so I joined them. We were doing well until Gemma wanted to leave to hang out with "Tasha" who I'd never met before.. I went back downstairs for a bit, but eventually made my way upstairs... a select few found their way into Tiffany's room where we could just have a nice, quiet conversation. It worked for a while and was really nice... Eventually, more and more people kept filtering in and out of the room, and then, even though everyone objected, Gemma invited Tasha over. The point of the conversation was to get to know people better, not to meet someone new. So I was kind of pissed off because Tasha kind of took the center of attention, instead of having it shared between the group like it was before.

I hadn't ever really been around Joel before, even though I knew he was pretty cool, but he was up in the room with us and I learned just how cool he was. He totally kicks ass. He should hang out with us more often. Nandi was being a bit more talkative than I was used to (granted, I don't normally see her with such small a group) which was really cool, Collin was being really quiet and voiced how I felt for about half the time in Tiffany's room (about how most of the stuff they were talking about was trivial and boring), Tiffany was being.. well, Tiffany, Gemma was kind of spurring the conversation on, and everyone else who came in was sort of quiet (Evan, Kelsey, Rachel), and I've already mentioned Tasha. Quinn and Jenny were in the other room, and it was nice to have a conversation without Quinn complaining about it every 5 minutes. When everyone was leaving, I mentioned to Nandi that I'd want to hang out with her and Gemma, Collin, or whoever, in a smaller group the next day. She agreed.

So on sunday after I finished with TB around 2:30, I called Gemma up and she and Nandi and I went to Nandi's house. Collin said he had work to do at TB, and Gemma couldn't get in contact with Michelle, so it just ended up being the three of us. It was really nice to get to know Nandi a little bit better, and I also enjoyed just being with her and Gemma without anyone else there.. it just made me feel more like they were actually my friends, rather than just people I hang out with on weekends and such.. We talked about anything and everything, from silly to serious - a nice mix, too. We pretty much talked from 2:30 till 9:30.. I don't really know what to say about it other than the fact that it was really fun. Hope I can do stuff more like that more often.


Overall, it was a really nice weekend. The best I've had in ages. Friday with BR fun, Sat with speech and party, and Sun with nandi and gemma... Full schedule, but also fri and sun were relaxed enough that I didn't feel too busy. Fun times.