LTVlog_06: One of those days

LTVlog_04: Standup, and Red Bull, and Matt...OH MY!

Sorry guys.  Just realized as I was finishing up the most recent LTVlog that I forgot to put up the last one.  I seriously doubt and hope that your lives were not ruined by this oversight of mine.

Without further ado...here it is.

Stay Classy,
LT

LTVlog_03: #Hashtags and Childstars

Genevieve - a Photo Timeline

This will be short as I am getting ready to perform Troilus and Cressida this afternoon.  I'm so excited.  Anyway, here's the deal, I always get these e-mails from the humane society, checking up on if I'm taking care of my dog (not in a bad way [I think it's great...if you're going to get a dog, you sure as you know where better take care of it] but by giving me coupons to take care of her for like...food, beds, flea stuff...etc..

It's funny because, before I adopted Genevieve, her name was not as awesome.  Each e-mail refers to her using her name from the shelter.  Today's e-mail was titled thusly:

"Keep Grape protected from Fleas, Ticks, and Heartworm"

Yes...her name was Grape.  She and all of her siblings had seemingly fallen victim to being given names found in a fruit basket or the produce aisle.  Things have changed, and I don't think she remembers those days too often anymore.  (While I do joke about the name thing, I must say that the shelter is awesome and does wonderful work.)

Anyway, here's the point.  In said e-mails, they always include a picture of "Grape" from her brief time as a shelter resident.  I just had to share.

Grape...as she was when I met her.

The Dog formerly known as Grape (i.e. Genevieve).

I think this was the day Genevieve came home with me.

Genevieve with her pal Nelson.

Genevieve (I know...shocker) on the patio.

Somebody was eyeing my dinner....

Yeah...we're awesome.

Genevieve awkwardly sitting in front of the vacuum.

Genevieve, proudly being the focal point of
the first photo taken on my iPhone.

Okay that's all for now.  This was way more time consuming than I thought it would be...and I couldn't find some of the pictures I wanted.  My mom has them, so I'll hopefully put them on sometime soon.

Stay Classy (and come see Troilus and Cressida if you're at Butler!  LH 328, 3:50 pm.  TODAY!

LT

An IPA Poem for Kristen

I am in Voice for the Actor 3 with Diane Timmerman right now.  I am so beyond glad for this, because it's been a while since I've had a performance class with Diane (my favorite) and this semester I have two.

(Okay, speaking of Diane, she's the one shooting at Gene Hackman with a machine gun in this clip.  Yeah...you heard me right.)

Ambush in the Woods
The Package at MOVIECLIPS.com

Anyway, first what we're doing is learning the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).  Then we will use that knowledge that we have acquired in order to master the art of dialects.  My first dialect will be Received Pronunciation (or RP), which is basically proper English.  My second dialect will be Irish.  Then I shall have a third, but I don't know what that one will be yet.

Anyway, in this class, as we are learning our phonemes, we are going through a workbook called Bringing Speech to Life: A Companion Workbook to Louis Colaianni's The Joy of Phonetics and Accents.

This evening, on page 30, I was prompted to:

"Write a short poem using / I / and / i / words."

And so I did.

Ahem...

My  sw/ i /t  b/ I /g  s/ I /ster  and m/ i  /

Ch/ I /t-chat  when  w/ i /  are  fr/ i /

G/ I /v/ I /ng  advice v/ i /a  the  phone

Skype  dates  't/ I /l  w/ i /  don't  f/ i /l  alone

I've  got  Sw/ i /t  S/ I /ster's back

And sh/ i /'s got m/ i /.

Maybe not the most brilliant thing ever written, but it's a step up from my sentence that I wrote on page 29 that had to contain four or five words with / i /:

"One must eat one's peas or one's brain cells will freeze, so pass them to me, if you please."

(Too tired to put that last one in IPA.)

Speaking of being tired...I have Voice with Diane in the morning...at 9:00 AM...which means I have to get up at 6:00 AM to take care of Genevieve...which means I'm wrapping this blog up and going to bed.

Peace Guys,

Stay Classy,

LT

P.S.  I love you, Sis.

I Dropped the Ball on Dropping my Nets

This morning, I already had a Bible Study related blog post planned out...but I've decided to drop that, at least for the time being, and just go with the flow.

So this morning...I was doing my Bible Study and found myself in Matthew 4.  While I was roaming around in good ol' chapter 4, I ran into that story that I know by heart, the one where Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John run into Jesus when they're out on the waves, doing their jobs...and at the simplest invitation from Jesus these dudes are like "Forget this gig...I'm going to go fish for people instead!"

In case anyone is unfamiliar with this story...or has read my paraphrased version and is left wanting...here's the NLT version.

Matthew 4 

18 One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers—Simon, also called Peter, and Andrew—throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living. 19 Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!” 20 And they left their nets at once and followed him.

21 A little farther up the shore he saw two other brothers, James and John, sitting in a boat with their father, Zebedee, repairing their nets. And he called them to come, too.22 They immediately followed him, leaving the boat and their father behind.

So that's the deal with the first disciples.  In the present...when we read this...or at least when I read this...I think: "well, duh!  It's Jesus!  I mean, yeah, they're leaving everything that they know, everything that they've worked for, and everyone that they love...but...IT'S JESUS!  Who would turn down a personal invitation from the Son of God?!"

Anyway, for those of you who know me...when I say something like..."I think," and then there's a quote following...there's a lot more to it, but seriously, who wants to read absolutely EVERYTHING that I think?  I know I don't.

Anyway...yes looking back, it seems obvious that the right thing for them to do is just drop their nets and go.

I apologize...this is a scattered blog post.

But it's not just about dropping our nets, now is it?  No.  There's more to it.  It's kind of like the "Bend and Snap" maneuver from Legally Blonde.  (Okay...no it's not really like that at all...but when you can tie in a really goofy movie...not to mention a really goofy movie that was turned into a guilty pleasure musical...how can you pass it up?)

Okay...so dropping our nets is like the "Bend and Snap" (oooh, I'm making another connection, prepare yourselves).  Ir's a process with steps.

1.  Drop your Nets.
2.  Take those newly empty/unoccupied hands and grab on to Jesus.

Side note...this is kind of where the next connection came from.  So when I was reading this passage, I thought of the following song.



...and the words really hit me.

If You say go, we will go

If You say wait, we will wait

If You say step out on the water

And they say it can't be done

We'll fix our eyes on You and we will come

Your ways are higher than our ways

And the plans that You have laid

Are good and true

If You call us to the fire

You will not withdraw Your hand

We'll gaze into the flames and look for You

When I was younger...I did my own personal net dropping.  I had plans for my life.  My initial plans were thwarted...so I came up with new ones.  But then I felt Jesus telling me to drop those nets.  And I did.  I dropped my plans, grabbed onto Jesus, and basically told him that I was along for the ride and He could take me wherever He saw fit.

But then I found myself in Indianapolis.  And at times...more often than not...I was very unhappy.  I think that I frequently felt abandoned.  I wondered why, when I had given up my former plans to follow the plans that God had for me...when I moved 160 miles away from everyone that I knew and loved...I wondered why I wasn't getting it.  Why would God lead me away and then step out of the picture?  I had plans already...and knew how to achieve them.  These were not my plans...these were His plans...and how was I supposed to figure out what they were and how to fulfill them on my own?!

Ah yes...there is the key..."on my own."  I was playing the role of Eponine in my own life...(if you don't know Les Miserables...get the soundtrack from the library and listen to it...or youtube it I guess...but you should really hear the whole thing)...singing the song "On My Own" with every breath that I breathed and every step that I took.

I felt alone...but I was never alone.

I thought I was suffering for God...but in reality...I was suffering by my own hand.

I dropped my nets, grabbed onto Jesus, felt alone, and slowly but surely loosened my grip on the Lord.  It was, of course, not God who stepped away...it was me.  I didn't gaze into the flames and look for the Lord...I saw the flames, remembered how "certain" things seemed for me before God lit His fire in my heart...and I felt as if I were alone in a burning house.

I have come to the conclusion that this is more like "Wash, Rinse, and Repeat."

1.  Drop your nets.

2.  Grap onto Jesus.

3.  HOLD ON TO JESUS.

4.  Repeat.

Maybe it's inevitable that we will continue to pick up new nets along the way...but each net that we grab on to takes up space and time.  It's good to know though, that if we've dropped our nets before, we can always do it again.

I think that I always looked at my net dropping as the end of a story.

"Well here's what I wanted to do...but I gave it up for God...The End."

Pretty backwards.

It's a beginning...just like it was for the Disciples.

"I had plans.  Human plans.  Unenlightened plans.  Then I dropped them, as they were no longer needed, and followed Jesus Christ.  I dropped my plans...my nets...and I picked up my life."

That's all for now, guys.  Peace, Love and Happiness!

SC,

LT

Romeo and Juliet (Pop Culture)

A while back I was given the task of staging a 5 shot tableau of Romeo and Juliet using only objects.  I immediately knew what I wanted to do, and ended up doing just that.  This may have been the quickest decision I have ever made in my life.  It was more complicated originally.  The good Friar Lawrence was to be played by Dr. Pepper because, while Brittany from Glee assumed that Dr. Pepper was a dentist, I was going with the possibility that he was a doctor of theology.  However, I could not find anywhere to purchase just a single can of Dr. Pepper, and as Sister will tell you, I do not drink Dr. Pepper because it does not taste like Diet Dr. Pepper.  Also missing from the tableau is the Prince who could have been masterfully played by RC (Royal Crown) Cola, as pointed out by my pal Jacob back home, because I simply didn't have the time to find a can of RC Cola, and because I didn't really have a primo place to put him within the tableau.  Friar Lawrence was to be in Scene iii, marrying the lovers.

Anyway, there it is.  Have a great weekend, everybody.  Stay classy!

Family Support

Kyle and my dad just got home from Washington D.C. last night (the Spring Break vacation that I had to stay home from to do makeup work).  It was great to have them back.  Now Kyle and I can work on homework together some of the time and veg out watching movies some of the time.  Anyway, that's not the point.

They got gifts for both my mom and myself which was really sweet.  Firstly, I got this fascinating new Tea Tumbler from Starbucks.  Kyle said, as he was handing it to me, that it really had nothing at all to do with D.C. but they wanted me to have it anyway.  It's honestly really neat.  When filled with tea (or another hot beverage) a design appears on the exterior...and...the interior is coated with a certain kind of porous clay from China that absorbs the flavor and aroma of whatever you put in it.  (For that reason you're supposed to use it for either coffee or tea, not both.  Also, I think I might need to pick my favorite flavor of tea and just stick to that.  At the moment, that would be Teavana's Samurai Chai Mate...so I think I'll go with that once I'm back in Indy this coming week.)

Thoroughly interested in my new tumbler, I was reading the card that came with it...researching...planning which tea flavor would receive the honor of being the exclusive tea for that cup, then Kyle reprimanded me for focusing on the tumbler when I had something else to focus on.  I wasn't aware that I had another gift, but I did, and the story behind it touched me to the core.

Once I put the tumbler on the coffee table, Kyle pulled a book out of one of their bags from D.C. and handed it to me.  The first two words on the cover were George and Washington so I was a little apprehensive...history is not my thing...AT ALL.  My mom loves historical biographies, and maybe someday I would enjoy them, but I'm still jaded from primary school social studies.  Being the strong person that I am though, I pushed through the pain of this being a potential history book and read further.  Upon doing so, I found that this was hardly a history book, but a collection of Letter's written by George Washington's adopted daughter, Eleanor Parke Custis, to her best friend, Elizabeth Bordley Gibson.  The letters span from 1794-1851.

So I was pretty excited about this to begin with...I opened it to read some bits and pieces but was told to wait as there was a story behind the gift.  Kyle and my dad bought me this book, George Washington's Beautiful Nelly: The Letters of Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis to Elizabeth Bordley Gibson, 1794-1851, after seeing an actress somewhere in D.C. (in some important building, I'm sure) portraying Eleanor.  They spoke to the actress, who said that she had used this book as research for building her character.  They thought knew that I would be really interested in this...and they were right.  They got me the book thinking that maybe I could turn it into a one woman show.  I was so touched that I seriously almost started crying.  I am so beyond blessed to have such a supportive family that is emotionally and intellectually (not to mention monetarily) invested in my career.

After we talked about that prospect for a while, my dad added on this invaluable piece of information:

"Plus, we figured you could play her because she had hair similar to yours."

"Like curls?" I asked.

"Yeah, and color, too" my dad responded.  When I asked if she had red hair or my natural hair color, my dad, without even pausing for one moment, answered "both."

"Wow," I said, Kyle and I smirking at each other, "that's some hair!"

We laughed and went on with the evening...I must say that I'm really looking forward to reading these letters and seeing what comes from them.  Surely something thrilling...I mean...two-tone hair...in the 18th and 19th centuries?!  LEGIT!