Wow. So I haven't been on LJ in like years. Not quite sure what prompted me to get on here, since now I have a blogspot website that I started last summer. Which I also haven't updated in a while.

So I live in Austin now, am doing improv like a madwoman, and trying to make a life.

It's 35 degrees and SNOWING. In fucking APRIL. In LATE fucking April.

I hate the Midwest.

Final stretch. Working like a crazy woman. Crushing on youngsters. Learning how to love. At least, on stage.

Sigh. I feel like I've aged 10 years.

My grandmother died last week--the one that I had been having so much trouble with, for those remembering back 2 years ago. She had been in various stages of congestive heart failure over the past year or so. The only choice to make it better would have been open heart surgery to fix her valves, but she wouldn't have survived the surgery.

My father was diagnosed with prostate cancer on Monday. Fortunately, it's really tiny and treatable, but I didn't know that for like 24 hours.

My dog Abby, who I had been with since she was 2 months old, just died today.

I seriously shouldn't complain, because I heard from a lot of kids in my non-majors acting class on Wednesday about some of the shiite they've been through in their lives...but damn, the events of this week sort of suck.

I'm drowning in work (a 15 minute monologue to memorize, three 10-minute scenes, and several minor movement pieces), and I'm off to California in 2 weeks to hopefully wrap up the suckiness that's followed me around for the past year and 2 months.

Spring? Really? I hadn't noticed. Grrrrr.

Happy Birthday, ashendi! When are you going to realize that no man will do it for you like I will and run away with me?

Somehow it turned into three weeks between my last post and now.

Slowly trying to get back on track, but in a not-back-on-track kind of way. I think the wheels are coming off the wagon, but I also think that's a good thing. I've had my wheels on too tightly for too long, and instead of just effing coming off, they've been careening all over the place and spilling stuff in the wagon. I need a new set of wheels. I also need to learn how to manage the wagon when the wheels come off.

It feels sort of strange but appropriate to deliberately choose to introduce chaos into my own life. Introduce and welcome. I'm nervous about repercussions, though.

More mundane stuff: school is over in 5 weeks. I don't know what I'm doing over the summer; probably returning to CA via my folks house. I am no longer worried that they're going to kick me out of school. :) I am, unfortunately, now afraid that they *won't* kick out my PBC. I signed a lease on a beautiful 2 br apartment with my classmate Rotimi for next year. DeKalb still sucks, and my relations with my classmates aren't improving. Or more specifically, the relations aren't improving but I'm getting better at dealing with that. I officially hate snow and winter.

I have some nice friendships that are starting to develop here. They're the kind of friendships that only take place outside the class, so it doesn't help the in-class tension, but things are better outside now.

Seriously, anyone thinking about an MFA, talk with me. It's so much harder than it seems. It may very well be worth it, but I wish someone had warned me first! :)

Watching VH-1's "The Best Songs of the 80s." I love the music of the 80s--pop, alternative, metal, you name it. I love it all.

I just fell in love with Across the Universe recently, and I want to live in Evan Rachel Wood's voice.

My heat's back on. It only took 4 days and 3 calls to my landlady to confirm what I already knew: that it wasn't a problem with an unlit pilot light, there actually was a problem with the furnace, and we needed to have a technician out to fix it. F*&%king c@#t.

(I use the second of those euphemistically-identified words relatively alot these days, usually to describe my PBC (Psycho-Bitch Classmate). It actually doesn't apply to my landlady, although the edited text version of the word is close. Shout out to my Desire castmates for being the first people in the world to hear me say it out loud, ever. Ah, thank your lucky stars, people of my world, that you weren't treated to the wonders that was to be Alan Kaiser as a naked john and me as a newly-depregnated prostitute. What was I thinking?)

I keep thinking that I want to write stuff of substance. Then I don't. Spring Break's going ok, although DeKalb is the most boring crap town ever. I'm memorizing a scene for Monday; grad school is fun, because you get 6 page scenes to memorize and rehearse in 5 days.

It's over in 7 weeks or so. Hmm...

1) I have no heat in my house. I need to call my landlady. Having no heat for a day isn't fun when it's 20 degrees outside. I thank the farsightnedness of my father and the electric blanket he sent me for my birthday in January for my current survival.

2) I am on Spring Break, and have slept like 15 hours a day for the past 2 days, under said blanket. Yippee cozy warmness and long REM cycles!

3) I am catching up on work. Or at least, I will later on.

4) More importantly, I am catching up on errands. Paying bills, buying plane tickets, following up on insurance claims, talking with parental units. I have to get to the doctor this week, too. I tend to let these things slide even more than usual with the "but I'm in grad school!" excuse, yet the external world continues to not accept that as a valid reason for ignoring it. Sheesh.

5) I've been watching Angel Season 4, and am planning an upcoming discussion with my evangelical classmate (who LOVES all things Joss Whedon) on *why* I shouldn't equate Jasmine with all things Christianity and come to the same conclusions that Joss does. Emphasis on the childlike bewilderment and innocent questioning on my part. I'm so eeevil sometimes.

6) I am less sick, thank to the multiple sleep hours.

It is Spring Break.
I am getting sick with the plague.
I am not happy about this.
But everyone is sick, so I'm in good company.

I am looking forward to the time to get caught up, get ahead, get back on track.

I am not, however, looking forward to the fact that all the above must be done in De Kalb and not someplace effing warm.

The weatherman said that it's 20 degrees lower than usual right now. I now have hope for the future.

Grad school is getting better. Updates when I have the brainspace.

 I would like to invite everything and everyone in my life who is causing me stress at the moment to look at the icon and FUCKING DO IT.