Kicking Conditioning in the Ass

Thursday, February 28, 2008

I will continue to eat 5 servings of fruit and veg every day. If I only get in 2 or 3, I'll try not to stress.
I will exercise because it gives me stamina, because it makes me strong and because I like the energy that it brings. I will not look at the "calories burned" screen on the machine. I will not let the live-at-the-gym-super-thin-ladies make me feel bad or unworthy.
I will continue avoiding processed shit because food should be food, not a "food product".
That said, I will eat the cookie because I want a cookie. I will not see the cookie, or the croissant, as anything other than a cookie or a croissant. It is not "bad," it is not an enemy, it is not an indulgence, it's a fucking cookie.
I will relax. I will not take up valuable brain space on negative thoughts about myself.

And you know what? I'll be fabulous.

breaking news

Monday, February 25, 2008

It's official, friends. Yes, in the last 5 days, I have used exactly 200 kleenex. Well, 200 store-brand-generic-tissues, I should say.
I can't help but think about the land fill somewhere which will be the home of my 200 used tissues.....ew.....

Orpheus

Opening day of the opera was yesterday. Considering my intense headache and congestion, it went pretty well. Since I can't breathe through my nose, I was having to breathe much more often in my aria, and each breath was pretty big and gaspy......oh well.....We performed in the Napa Opera House. The theater is tiny, but it's beautiful and easy to sing in.

It was totally renovated a couple of years ago, so the dressing rooms are comfortable, spacious and numerous. The men all had to share one, since there are far fewer of them, but the women were divided up, with no more than 3 or 4 in each. The green room was comfy as well, and stocked with hot water, tea bags, coffee and fruit.

It was a very satisfactory performing experience. I only wish the audience had been more receptive. It was an awfully geriatric crowd, and many weren't laughing at the jokes. One woman in the 4th row slept through the whole thing......

I did have an adventure as I tried to leave, though. It rained yesterday, and I forgot to turn off my headlights when I arrived at the theater...4.5 hours later, when I got in the car, it wouldn't start! Oops......We keep jumper cables in the trunk, though, so I was able to grab another cast member with a car and get it started.

**********

I was home in time to watch most of the Oscars. I was really happy for Diablo Cody, who won best original screenplay for Juno, but I wished that it had been recognized more. It always seems that to win Oscars, you have to create some heavy, overly dramatic, overly grandiose kind of movie. Yes, I liked No Country for Old Men, but I really don't think that the acting was all that special.....oh well.....

I just about died of envy when I saw Helen Mirren's dress. I thought a lot of the fashion was nice, but all too similar. Then she walked out and took my breath away.


Amazing, right? I seem to remember the dress she wore last year as being pretty incredible, too. Plus she's an amazing actress and seems (in interviews at least) to be intelligent and funny and generally awesome.

...oh, am I drooling again?.....I'll try to stop, but it's just so preeeettttyyy......

Improving Television

Saturday, February 23, 2008

It's really easy to rail against television for any number of reasons. If you're not white and upper class, you're not likely to see folks like yourself, if you identify as anything other than straight you're most likely to be the butt of a joke, and if you're a woman or a girl-child, if you're there at all, it will be as a simpering romantic with no identity.

And of course, the wretched box will just plain rot your brain....

Many people have started to realize that the 3rd example is really bad, especially if you're a parent trying to raise a strong, patriarchy-challenging daughter (or son, I suppose). What I found yesterday, though, is that one celebrity (and mom) is taking on the issue of depictions of women and girls in TV. Geena Davis has started a group that will study gender in media, with the goal of equalizing depictions of female characters in TV and movies.


I don't know why it surprised me that it's Geena Davis who is spearheading this group. I suppose I've only seen a couple of her movies, and haven't been terribly impressed with her acting. A mediocre actress does not a bad person make, however, so yay! Good for her.

Check out the website. It seems like a new group, and the website is not terribly complete, but it lays down the goals for the group.

http://www.thegeenadavisinstitute.org/home.php

Snuffle snuffle

Just call me Snuffy the Snot Factory......This cold is sucking is a major way....

Last night was the first weeknight in ages that didn't have a rehearsal. I managed to stay in my pajamas and bathrobe all day, since I had absolutely no energy. The downside of this is that our fridge is nearly bare, so at some point I realized that dinner would be complicated. I alerted Boyfriend, who came home with some canned soup, which he fortified with barley. He also whipped up a batch of cornbread (from the Trader Joe's mix....not half bad actually). We had a lazy evening watching a movie (The Breakfast Club, which he had never seen) and reading.

I'm going to need more evenings like that in the next couple of weeks, to recover from the month of basically not ever seeing him. I was starting to feel really crappy that because of rehearsals, Boyfriend was really just a lump that I was sleeping next to, but never spending time with.....oops, ended a sentence with a preposition....

Anyway, I realize that sometimes the schedule will be like that. If I end up doing operas more often, I'll have to try to space them out with concert work, which is usually less rehearsal-heavy.

I complain about not getting enough opera work, then I complain about the schedule when I do....great....I guess I was generally displeased with the rehearsal schedule for this opera, which I felt to be excessive and completely inefficient and mismanaged. That is not a good combination.

So, the Breakfast Club. I hadn't seen it since high school, and I never loved it or anything, but this time around, I was really struck by how offensive it is. I can't figure out if that's on purpose, and that the writer was trying to point out how crappy teenagers can be, or if people really thought rape jokes would be funny.....I have to say, though, that I did like Molly Ringwald's outfit. It would only look good on a twig like her, but still.

I hope everyone enjoys the weekend. Love!

Colds suck

Friday, February 22, 2008

So, my cold has gotten seriously worse today.....I had to pass off Yiayia Duty onto one of my uncles. That's the term that I've coined for having to pick up my grandma at the nursing home where my grandpa is, then driving her home or on errands or whatever...
I have 2 days to recover before Orpheus opens on Sunday. My dress rehearsal went pretty well last night. I had to resort to Afrin to get rid of my congestion, though, which was no fun. That stuff kind of burns the inside of my nose, but I was so congested that my ears were all plugged, which makes it really hard to sing. I got some new props: a toy bow and arrow that actually works.....sorta....and a giant pacifier. Good times....'cept the arrows don't want to stay in the quiver, which gets awkward. Still, in general, we all did a pretty good job, and we're much better about remembering the words than we were a couple of days ago.
This opera company always does its shows in English, and they're always really clever. In this case, the translation is a little tooooo clever. One of the songs is written entirely in tongue-twisters and goes at a breakneck pace. On monday, we were all so mixed up that the lines came out as "hebel gerble nurfle sturfle damn it all to hell!" Instead of "Antiquated, over-rated, bawdy and bizarre."

I just went into the kitchen to get some tea, and stepped on the place where the living room carpet ends and the kitchen linoleum starts. The floor made the most interesting little sigh. You know, that kind of sigh? I deduce that there is an orgasmic Leprechaun living under my carpet.

the extent to which I hate yoga

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Not the actual act of doing yoga, of course, because I've never done it, but the obnoxious, yuppie "I'm better at yoga than you are, and you can tell because I walk around in $80 stretch pants and shop at Lulu-fucking-Lemon" yoga mommies who are taking over the East Bay. The ones who are "stay at home moms" which really means rich-ass trophy wives with blond ponytails and nannies (or au pairs) even though they don't work.

So, I'm not the only one to notice. The hysterical website "Stuff White People Like" has yoga as number 15......heee!

The site is a combination of laugh-your-ass-off and kinda-simplistic-with-over-generalizing, and I think by "white people" they actually mean pretty well off supposed liberal white people, but whatever.