Baby Jack

Last night, we "auditioned" a boy for the role of Baby Moses at Richland Hills. His name is Jack Pinson and his mom is Christine Pinson, the girl playing Miriam. He is 10 mths old which is a little older than we were looking for, but we thought we'd try it anyways. So they started running the scene where a guard comes in to search for baby boys. Jack started smiling and laughing at the beginning and then when they put him inside the basket, he just played. It was perfect. But then he kept reaching his hand out of the basket like he was trying to wave or something. Miriam and Jochebed are supposed to be really scared that the guard was going to find Moses, but Jack was so cute they couldn't stop laughing and smiling at him. Then when Miriam took him from Jochebed down at the river and sang a song, he started clapping with the music! Finally, right before she put him in the basket at the end of her song, he grabbed on to Christine's mouth so she couldn't sing. At the end of the run through, we decided that he was just TOO cute and we couldn't use him. What a reason not to use a baby! He was just too cute! He would steal the show completely. Baby Weaver, Jack has set the bar high for you! You are going to have to work very hard to be the cutest baby boy ever after last night!

The Great Schnozzola!

Today Patty, Wade, Katie, Stephen, Lindsey, and I spent the day at Richland making the sphinx out of styrofoam for VBS. But this Sphinx had to have a nose because the slaves knock it off on Night 1 (sorry if I'm spoiling the suspensful plot for anyone!) We spent all morning hitting styrofoam with hammers, sawing chunks off with a wire PVC saw, and carving it with chisels (flat ones, not pointy ones.) I seriously have no skin left on my fingers from the pvc saw. But it looks great! And I had the honor of making the finishing touch, the nose. It looks so funny. Granted, this was the easy part, rounding of a triangle piece of styrofoam, Stephen had the hard job of shaping the face. But mine is the most memorable. Wade and I worked on it right at the end. We had a fun time, playing in the little pieces of styrofoam that looked like snow and crawling in the crevice between the feet. The funniest part is what happened before I got there, but I'll save that for Lindsey's blog - pictures and all. It was really a fun day and now we get to end it with a fun night of eating at The Keg and watching The Longest Yard.

Unhappy Alias Day!

This week was the season finale of Alias. If you have read basically ANY of my posts, you know how near and dear this show is to my heart, but yet, I am sad. It makes me sad when you see the beginning of the end of a show in 5 minutes. JJ Abrams has decided to make Michael Vaughn a double agent (of course! If you can't bring someone back to life, make them a double agent) and he even is saying his name isn't Michael Vaughn. I'm all about the new twists, but this one just doesn't make any sense! Nichole and I sat around and talked about it for an hour today and pointed out all of the flaws in this new twist and how it doesn't match up with events from past seasons. He married a girl who he later found out was a double agent and was mad! How could he be mad if he was a double agent himself? It is just really upsetting. I'll give Alias a chance to explain at the beginning of the next season, but with the whole Rambaldi thing coming to close this season, I'm afraid we're seeing the demise of an otherwise great show. I have never been so mad at a season finale.

Creepy Crawlies Part Deux

I just killed the biggest brown recluse I've ever seen. And where was it you ask? In MY bathroom! Not the downstairs one where most of the others have been. This means I will not sleep at all tonight and there will be about 15 sheet checks during the night. Ugh! I now feel like there are about 20 different brown recluses crawling all over me. I took a picture of it and Ben is trying to tell me its not a brown recluse. Once I figure out how to post pictures, I post it so you can see what I have to live with.

Edited to add:
So Ben wakes me up at 4 am to show me a spider in the computer room in order to make fun of me saying it was a brown recluse. Then he tried to catch it and realized he'd never seen a spider move that fast before. My answer was "THAT'S BECAUSE IT IS A BROWN RECLUSE!!" So then I showed him the picture I took along with a couple of pictures printed off the internet of brown recluses and he said, 'Yup, thats a brown recluse.' Never doubt my eye when it comes to spiders!

Creepy Crawlies!

Last summer, right around this time, my mother and I were sitting on her bed at about midnight waiting for my dad to get home from a marathon elders meeting. I looked over and saw small brown spider crawling across my dad's pillow. We killed it. It just so happened that the day before, I had helped Patty take the children at church to the museum to see an Omni show called BUGS! and a lady out front had different bugs to show us, including a brown recluse. I picked up the block that the brown recluse was in, realizing that it looked just like any normal spider except with longer legs. And the spider we had just killed looked like any normal spider except with longer legs. I looked a picture up on the internet and compared it with the dead bug we had in a plastic bag and it was definitely a brown recluse. We found 8 more in our house that summer. Thus the beginning of my bug paranoia.

Ever since this day, I constantly feel like something is crawling on me. I check under my sheets every night before I go to bed, and sometimes again after I'm already in bed, even when I'm not in my house in Crowley. And even after I've checked, I have to consciously tell myself, "Nothing is crawling on you. You are fine." If you see me randomly brushing something invisible off my skin in public, it is because I feel something crawling on me. I know, its weird. But there have been 2 times when I have been wrong about this feeling. One was over Christmas when I was on the computer, I felt something crawling on my arm and lightly brushed it away to prove to myself it was nothing, and was promptly stung by a wasp. Not a fun day. The other was last night. I checked the sheets like normal, and tried to go to sleep. This morning, woke up to find cricket parts strewn all over my sheets and cricket guts rubbed in quite nicely. Apparently a cricket thought it would be fun to get in bed with me and I rolled over on it and smashed it to pieces. The worst part is, now I know my initial sheet checking is not enough and I'm going to end up looking under my covers several times - just to make sure. All I can say is at least it wasn't a brown recluse or I probably would have been bitten! Does anyone know a good exterminator?

50/50 chance

The last bridal show I worked at was 2 days long. During this time, we got to know some of the other vendors around our booth, particularly the ladies across from us that had a custom wedding dress shop. They would watch our videos while they sat in their empty double booth and sing along with the songs to pass the time. Finally, one lady came and talked to me to tell me how much she liked our stuff. Then she asked a question that really left me speechless...a feat in itself. She asked, "Does it ever make you sad or depressed that 1/2 of the weddings you film will end in divorce?" At first, I thought it was stupid and just brushed it off by saying something about, it didn't depress me because we only see the beginning so in my mind they all live happily ever after. But the more I thought about it, the more it disturbed me that people go into marriage thinking that they only have a 50/50 chance of making it work! I don't really have any profound thoughts on this except that when I get married, I plan on it sticking. Bad thoughts won't do any good from the start. The real reason I wrote this is to tell that little story that was too long for the comments portion of Trey's post, the original thought on this topic. Go read it, it's good. Also check out Ryan's comment. See you tomorrow!

Almost isn't good enough

Everyone has a lot of "almosts" in their life. I almost went to OC instead of ACU. I almost decided to work before going to graduate school. I almost made my first C in Carl Brecheen's Family Relations class (ok, that one's not so good.) But today I had an almost that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I almost got to drive my favorite baseball player on the planet, Mark Teixiera at the Colonial Golf Tournament.

If you don't know already, I am spending this week driving Cadillacs between the Colonial Golf Tournament and the special parking lots that they have for valet parking, club members, VIPs, and caddys. The VIPs aren't really what you think, they are people like the marshalls for the tournament and the head of the transportation committee...nothing especially exciting. Today I was on blue lot duty, which is the valet lot. Instead of us bringing your car to you, we take you to your car about 3 blocks away. There were about 15 cadillac drivers today and to keep things orderly, we line up in our cars along the front of the clubhouse and take people as they come. Then the next person moves forward. It's basically your standard elementary school line format. So I was in line, moving forward, when all of a sudden I see a very tall, really hot guy. Then I realize that it is Mark Teixiera! I start going crazy because all at once I realize that I am about 20 feet from my favorite player ever and I am second - not first - in line! And I am positive that the girl who got to drive him had no appreciation for what she was getting to do! I was absolutely sick all day. And to make matters worse, my boss was standing at the front when the situation occured, so after I made it back around, I said "Do you know who that was?" He didn't. So I told him it was Mark Teixiera, my favorite baseball player and I missed him by one car. His response was, "You should have said something! I would have put him in your car!" So not only did I barely miss him, I could have done something about it. So the moral of this story is, if you ever get within 20 feet of your favorite athlete, forget protocol! Jump in line and stomp on whoever should rightly be in the presence of greatness, or you will be kicking yourself for years to come.

To drain or not to drain

Today I went to the eye doctor (Lindsey, you've already heard this a couple of times, so you can skip down a bit). I found out that there is a reason that I seem to have an unusually large amount of eye problems and why my contacts are always bothering me and my eyes always red. And if you went to Brenham on the Middle School Mission Trip in like, 1996 or so, you certainly can't forget how my eye randomly swelled to about the size of a ping pong ball (I know, great mental image, sorry). Well apparently I have a condition called DES - Dry Eye Syndrome. Original huh? I have the exact opposite problem that Maisy Inlow recently had surgery for - her tear ducts were clogged and wouldn't drain tears...mine are too big and drain tears away too quickly. So now they want to plug up one of my tear ducts in each eye. Does that seem just wrong to anyone else? I mean, when you have had constant annoying pain for over 10 years, any solution seems like something I should jump at and my doctor says it works really well. Even insurance companies must think its okay because they are paying for part of it without any trouble or referral. So depending on how my finances work out, the next time some of you see me, I may only have 1/2 of the working tear ducts that I started with. Anyone else know of any other solution? Because I'm open to suggestions that don't involve sticking silicone into my eyelids....

A Whole Lotta Nothing

I did nothing today. And it was wonderful! At this point in my life, my perfect day would be to do nothing by myself all day (as long as I had an endless supply of entertaining TV shows that I hadn't seen yet...this is where my day fell short). After doing nothing all day, I would join up with some friends for dinner at H3 (pods anyone?) and then eat some of Jennifer Gambill's Harry Potter birthday cake that she made for Katie (obviously I am not on South Beach in this scenario...the second point in which my day fell short of perfect). After a delicious dinner, we would go to someones house and play a game for a while, watch the New Years Video, and laugh at how dumb we all really are. And Ryan and Maggie would be in town, so we would spend a couple of hours watching Maisy and being amazed at her cuteness. That would be my perfect day.

What would be your perfect day? Would it involve the word "pods"? Would I be invited along? Does anyone else catch the blatant style-stealing of Lindsey in this paragraph?

I'm ending my post like Lindsey today,
Emily

Same script, Different show

I just got finished watching the Season Finale of Project Greenlight, a show that gives a new writer a chance to have his script made into a movie and a new director a chance to actually make that movie. The director this year, John Gulager, was kind of a loose cannon in that no one really knew what to expect out of him. I knew he was awesome from the beginning because his audition video was incredible. The movie has (apparently) turned out really well (they don't really show much because they want you to actually have to go see the movie) and everyone is giving all the credit to the director. I started wondering what this movie would have been if one of the other 2 directors had been chosen.

Movies and plays can change so much based on the director. You can take the exact same actors, same script, and have a totally different product based solely on the person directing. I have the priviledge of being involved in the productions of both Altamesa and Richland Hills VBS's this year. I'm actually in Altamesa's and have just been observing Richland Hills as I help them with their music. It is amazing to me how different the two shows are. If I hadn't written the music and read the script about 500 times, I wouldn't even be able to tell that they are even the same at all. And it's all because of the directors. The two directors have very different styles. Neither one is necessarily better, just different. This fact has made it fun for me. If they were the exact same, the 12 hours each week I am spending at rehearsals would be VERY monotonous. Let me conclude with this: although Altamesa and Richland Hills are using the exact same script, they are producing very different shows. And I can't wait to see how they turn out!

==WARNING: Shameless Plug Time==
For the (maybe) 2 or 3 people who aren't directly involved:
Richland Hills Church of Christ presents Moses on June 6-8 at 7:00 pm
Altamesa Church of Christ presents Moses on June 19-22 at 7:00 pm
We'd love to see you there!

A Week of Lasts

- Yesterday was our last night with our roommate Deborah
- Today is my last day of work
- Tomorrow I will take my last final at ACU
- I will finish my last episode of Gilmore Girls Season 3 this evening
- This is the last week that I will be in Abilene wishing I was in Fort Worth
- Tuesday is the last episode of Amazing Race!!
- Today was the last time I'll vote on Ryan's poll saying I pretty much voted every day (okay, maybe I'm lying there!)
- I sold back my last book this morning
- This is the last time I write a post thinking I have lots of items to put in a list when it turns out I really don't. I'm out.

I went to bed at midnight!

Last night, I got really tired. I looked at the clock and it was 11:00pm, so I thought, I can't go to bed yet! So I watched another episode of Gilmore Girls Season 3 (we just bought it on DVD) before going to bed early at midnight. Why is it that in college, midnight is early? I remember in High School going to bed at midnight, walking into school the next day exhausted, and making a huge deal about how I was tired because I went to bed at midnight. Fast forward one year to freshman year of college, going to bed at midnight, walking into class totally refreshed, and making a huge deal about how good I felt because I went to bed at midnight. Fast forward four more years to now when Katie and Stephen go to bed at 10:30. Its like this is really the peak of my life, because it won't be long until midnight is late again. I'd better enjoy it!