The Job Search

After months of searching (three months minus one day, to be precise), I have finally landed myself a job. Granted, my searching wasn't all that it could have been. Some days, instead of meeting my goal of one application a day, I would read on the couch all day, only sometimes pretending to look around for openings online or in the paper. Some days I would distract my parents from nagging me by ferociously cleaning parts of the house. I spent most of February attacking the dust and clutter that had piled up while the Mother Unit had been recovering from her knee surgery, pulling books off the shelf that had a quarter-inch of fuzzy dust on them and reorganizing the shelves by genre then by author, cleaning out drawers and closets that had been neglected for years. I got so carried away with my attention-diverting cleaning sprees that it even got me in trouble: while dusting and organizing our bar cabinet one day, I inadvertently picked up an ancient bottle of scotch and dusted off 150 years worth of dust. Oh, Todd* had a fit that day. I'm still not sure what upset him so much about it -- that I touched it, or that I annihilated over a century of skin cells and dust mite feces with one swipe of my rag. Is it a guy thing? I wouldn't want 150 years of dust on anything I owned, no matter how cool it was.

Eventually, Todd gave me an ultimatum (which may or may not have been in direct relation to the scotch incident): find a job by the end of March, or... Or what? I'm not sure; it wasn't exactly outlined very specifically in the conversation. I suppose I would have gotten a Lecture (they're terrible) and been forced to apply to Burger King or Old Navy -- two of the worst available places to work in my town, in my opinion. Either way, it got my rear in gear enough to start submitting an application every day -- from online, from the local paper, asking businesses downtown; anything I could think of without actually going door-to-door. Eventually the job just about fell into my lap.

As of Saint Patrick's Day, 2011, I am officially employed by a local optometrist as an optician-in-training, or optician's assistant. I file things. I un-file things. I answer phones and make calls and sign for boxes that the FedEx and UPS men bring in the mornings, after my first cup of tea but before my lunch fruit. I meet interesting people. I get yelled at by the doctor (to be fair, he kind of yells at everyone who works for him). I adjust glasses (sometimes). I am learning to do big-girl activities like file insurance and other things I don't understand yet.

Be proud, readers. I am now (finally) a real-life Productive Member of Society.

*Father Unit

Costa Rica

That's where I was. Costa Rica. That's (mostly) why I haven't been posting, but it's also mostly because before I went to Costa Rica it was the end of my college career and I was feeling weird and taking my final finals. I had a great, warm week where I just sat around with my family and did awesome activities like ziplining, hiking, tubing, horseback riding, and eating. Now I'm back and nothing's changed: it's cold here and I don't have a job and I can't seem to lose weight and I think I'm missing all the application deadlines for grad schools. I had a great trip, but it seemed to serve only to ignite in me a lust for a more exotic lifestyle. What if I could spend the next ten years living in Central America, riding horses and talking to tourists for a living? If only I remembered some Spanish....

My trip was wonderful. I spent 8 days riding a bus around a country the size of West Virginia (51,000 square kilometers, or about 32,000 square miles). I waded in both the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic (Caribbean Sea). I did things I had never done: rode a horse, tubed down what is the Colorado River in the US, talked to a 98-year-old man, got poured on for 3 days straight in the rainforest, went to a coffee plantation, a pineapple farm, and a banana plant, and stayed in everything from bungalows to five-star hotels. I met awesome people and learned awesome history about the country. I learned that it has no army and focuses on education and the temperature is pretty much always in the 80s because it's on the equator. I (might have) lost five pounds. All in all it was a successful vacation.

So today begins my job search. If anyone needs an under-the-table tutor or anything, hit me up.

Hiatus

That is all.

Winter.

The blogging world seems to be dead at the moment.

Senior Year

Casserole

I'm convinced that the majority of my family is certifiably insane. It's not that they're psychopathic serial killers or those people that sit in corners fingering greasy strands of hair and talking to the wall. They're not. They're just...strange. Allow me to illustrate:

Yesterday my mother had to go to the doctor's office for same-day surgery on her knee. Several weeks ago she had a total knee replacement and apparently there were some complications that I don't really understand because I know very little about the human body, especially the knees; I just know there was an infection and some other stuff and it was wrong. So they took her in and did another surgery that involved things like "nerve blocker" and "manipulation" and "make sure you eat and go to therapy tomorrow."

Of course, whenever anything happens to anyone that I'm related to, the entire family immediately descends on the scene of the event like a flock of loud, baking, well-meaning chickens. Chickens that never shut up.

Now, I should clarify that this is mainly my mom's side of the family. My father's mother and two sisters all live relatively close to each other on the Ohio/West Virginia border and pretty much take care of themselves. They have a decent sense of something called "personal space" that my mother's side can't seem to grasp, and they live too far away for us to see them more than a few times a year. My mother's side, on the other hand, pretty much all live within an hour of each other. My grandma lives down the street from my parents, and my aunt and her family live in State College, where I go to school. This turned out to be pretty convenient, especially recently since my mom has had so much trouble with her knee. There are plenty of people to help out when she needs to go somewhere, especially since my dad is travelling a lot right now, my sister can't drive, and my brother is at school like me. I should also probably insert here that my grandmother has started seeing a nice man recently and this gentleman friend has been worlds of help to us and is pretty much included in every family function these days.

But back to the chickens. When we do get together -- and we use anything as an excuse to see each other: surgeries, graduations, plays and musicals (my cousins and I are all involved in theatre on and off), just passing through town, business trips, holidays, you name it -- when we do get together, we greet as if we haven't seen each other in years and descend on each other like a smaller, more Irish version of Toula's family from My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Instead of a million of us, there are ten, but that does mean we're any more quiet or eat any less than her family does.

I could write an entire book on the things that my family does that they think are normal. Just last night we all went to dinner after my mother got out of her surgery. We promised the nurse that we would get her to eat, so we took her to Perkin's; but not because we couldn't cook anything ourselves. On the contrary, Grandma actually had a casserole in the back of her car. The problem was that the casserole needed to cook for an hour, and Mother needed to eat now. So we went to Perkin's. But just because we couldn't go to Aunt's house to eat didn't mean that no one was going to get casserole. Instead, Grandma came prepared: two Tupperware containers and a spoon. After dinner she popped open the trunk and stood there in the dark parking lot, spooning servings into the Tupperware and passing them around like some sort of casserole pusher.

This is just one example of the things we do. We also (mis)quote movies obsessively, refuse to take money from each other, and fight over who pays the bill when we all go out to eat. This usually results in someone threatening the waiter to a) not give them a tip, or b) forcibly tie them down, if they don't give them the check. This also results in a lot of frightened waiters that we leave behind when we're done eating.

Seeing as I'll be going home for the holidays soon, I'm sure that I'll be experiencing a lot more of these antics over the next several weeks. I'll keep you posted.

Les Misérables 25

Throughout the course of today I walked over two miles in three-inch heels and got massive blisters on both my feet. I put on makeup (which I hardly ever do; and even by makeup I just mean a couple swipes with the mascara wand) and wore a fancy and uncomfortable shirt. I left a meeting early. I skipped dessert. And for what?

One of the most amazing experiences of my life.

Tonight was the showing at a local theater of the 25th anniversary concert performance of Les Misérables done at the O2 Arena in London. I'll just let that not sink in for a moment for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about or why it means so much to me.

....

Ok, we're good? Good.

The plot involves some people doing some things around the time of some Parisian uprisings (early 1800s), but the story of the show is actually about love (and God -- but isn't all religion just about love anyway, in the end?). It follows Jean Valjean, a runaway convict; the girl he adopted, Cosette; the police officer that pursues him throughout their lives, Javert; and the revolutionary student with whom Cosette falls in love (and who falls in love with her), Marius. The musical version is an opera and the anniversaries are done in abridged concert fashion.

The concert tonight was nothing short of magical. It's not that every singer was amazing (they weren't) or that the theater I was in was packed (it wasn't) or that I actually got to see it live (I didn't). It was more about the experience (ask me about the Bob Dylan concert sometime). It was the experience of seeing the performance of a show that I've grown up with, that has shaped my love of theatre and music since I was a child. Not just any performance, but the anniversary performance. A performance that was specifically produced to mark the passage of time and commemorate the years that this show has existed -- existed to touch millions of people all over the world. It was the experience of watching an extremely talented group of individuals breathe life into one of my favorite stories of all time.

Now is probably a good time to mention that I've also seen the 10th anniversary concert that was done at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1995 (the official title, Les Misérables: The Dream Cast in Concert, might give you an idea of why I like it so much). I've think I've seen this concert once. Or twice. A year. For the past ten years. Like I said, I've grown up with the story, the show, the songs, the singers. I've fallen in love with the characters again and again through the power of music and theatre (which, if you know me at all, you must know that one of my maddest obsessions is with musical theatre). I also tried to read the book once, but I was too young -- I'll try again sometime soon.

Perhaps the most exhilerating part of the show (though it's hard to pick just one) was the end. Isn't the end always the best part? For those of you who don't know (or can't count), the musical Les Misérables was first performed (in English at least) in 1985 at the Barbican Arts Centre in London. It was produced by Cameron Mackintosh, written by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boubil, and Herbert Kretzmer, and the original cast starred Colm Wilkinson (most amazing man alive) as the leading role. Now forget for a moment that the high school girls sitting behind me didn't know who any of these people were, what the plot was, or that this was the cumulating event of my musical-watching career so far. Forget for a moment that Nick Jonas played the role of Marius tonight. Forget for just a moment that I was going through all of this by myself because I'm the only person I know who is both free on Wednesday nights and crazy enough to spend $15 on a ticket to a show about singing Frenchmen. Just focus on the fact that after the finale, just when everyone was thinking about grabbing their coats, peacing out to avoid the rush, and wondering why no one was leaving, the cast parted to the sides of the stage, and out walked the original 1985 cast from London. I put that in italics for you in case you wouldn't have understood without them how much of a mind blower this was for me.

By that time I thought that I was cried out. I had already cried off all my mascara ten minutes into the first act, and it just kept going from there. I really thought I had no emotion left for this show. Boy, was I wrong. I could hardly contain myself. Out walked Colm Wilkinson himself, looking a little old and grey for a Jean Valjean, but still obviously capable of the role. Beside him strode Michael Ball, showtunes singer extraordinaire and original Marius. My grandmother likes his voice almost as much as his dimples, but in my opinion the dimples play second fiddle. The man has the voice of an angel. The rest of the cast was there too, and just in case you thought it couldn't get any better -- and I couldn't be any more surprised and blown away -- Colm Wilkinson stepped up to the microphone and began singing the most famous solo of the role. But instead of a solo they turned it into a quartet with a few other Jean Valjeans, including the man who acted the part tonight. The two (or three? I couldn't tell) casts sang a couple more songs together, the Important Men (Mackintosh, Schönberg, et al) said a few words, and then they shot off fireworks, as it appears is becoming customary at these anniversary things.

I attempted to stand. I clapped at a screen, forgetting where I was. I furiously wiped my eyes, hoping the high school girls behind me (why were they there?) wouldn't notice my tears. I walked home, decided that that ticket was the best $15 dollars I had ever spent. Thank you, Cameron, for producing such a beautiful and enchanting show. And thank you, State Theater, for broadcasting it, allowing me to experience the magic along with the 23,000 audience members in the O2.