Just got back from another fabulous fourth — this year, I took my friend Josh home with me to good ol’ Deep East Texas for some small-town family fun.  Though he didn’t experience the same itenerary that my housemates did two years ago (which is good, ’cause I don’t know if my body could have handled another round of falling off a horse or a mechanical bull), we had a great time. 

For as long as I can remember, we’ve gathered around a game table at (my mom’s parents) Nunna & Bobby’s house to play all sorts of games as a family.  Chicken foot dominoes are a family favourite, but my personal favourite is Scattergories.  It seems to be the game that makes us laugh the most.  Classic example:  around six years ago, when Bobby was still with us, we got together down in MP for Thanksgiving.  My boyfriend at the time had joined us, and was “getting in good” with the family.  After all the extended relatives left, we sat down at the game table:  my parents, Nunna & Bobby, my sister, and me and the boy.  Now, Nunna gets a little competitive when there’s a game going on, and she is a WHIZ with words, so we were all trying to be creative in our word choice.  The category was “Things Found In the Ocean” and the letter was “A”.  Bobby said, “Arm”.  My sister, ever the contrarian, said, “Arm?! There are no arms in the ocean!” [Note:  why we didn't argue that scuba divers have arms, I don't know.]  Bobby said, “Uh-huh, an octopus has eight of them!” And Alyssa immediately replied, “Nuh-uh!  Octopuses have testicles!”  As if that wasn’t funny enough, it took Alyssa a few seconds to realize what she’d said, and by that time, the boy had turned two different shades of red at hearing my then-thirteen-year-old sister say “testicles”, which made Nunna laugh so hard she nearly shot milk out her nose.

Ah, good times.  So of course, this trip home, I had to pull out Scattergories.

Highlights of this weekend’s game include:

Category:  Diseases
Letter: E
Alyssa:  “Erectile Dysfunction.  It was the first thing that came to mind!”  (This is EVEN FUNNIER if you know  my sister.)

Category:  Things That Are Disposable
Letter:  G
Nunna:  “G-String”  (This one made my mother laugh until she cried.  Please note that my grandmother does not now and never has played a stringed instrument.  She wasn’t referencing instrument strings.)

Category:  Things You Carry in Your Purse/Wallet
Letter:  C
Josh:  “Condoms.”  Game stops, Nunna’s jaw drops, and she just stares at Josh.  He says, “What?  Not me!  I don’t carry them!  But some people do!”  I nearly wet my pants. 

Makes me want to go out and buy the game myself.  Anybody at a loss for what to give me today? 

For the few of you still hanging on to this blog (or who happen to have it in your RSS feeds), my apologies for the lack of content lately.  I’m still clinging to the “I’ve been so busy!  And my computer is DEAD!” excuse.  However, I had to at least try for a little bit of publicity regarding the next Red Door Theatre Company production:

Proof
by David Auburn
2001 Pulitzer-Prize and Tony Award Winner for Best Play

June 20, 21, 23, 2008 at 8:00pm
June 21 & 22, 2008 at 2:00pm

The Barrow Group Studio Theatre
312 West 36th Street, 3rd Floor (Between 8th & 9th Avenues)

Featuring: Anne S. Bates*, James Fleming*, Kate Erin Gibson* & Chris Murrah*

*All actors appear courtesy of the Actors’ Equity Association

Director: Susanne Boulle
Stage Manager: Corey Womack
Marketing Associate: Andrew L. Napier
Sound Design: Paul Radford
Producers: Elizabeth Gibson, Kate Erin Gibson and Kyleen Milton

Produced by special permission with Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

Tickets can be purchased through www.smarttix.com (212-868-4444)
$18, General Admission
$12, Seniors

Apartment Therapy recently featured wall art done with electrical tape, which inspired me to post some pictures of my striped wall done with electrical tape:

I wish I had more time to blog. 

Oh, and a working home computer.

THE CULT OF SINCERITY premiers on YouTube on April 8th!  The first full-length feature film ever to be released on YouTube, The Cult of Sincerity is breaking all the rules of independent film-making.  Read more about it here and be sure to check out the website!!

My friend Kyle comes into town again this afternoon to spend Easter weekend with me.  I anticipate much hilarity and fun as I try once again to convince him to make NY his home base.  Wish me luck!

“ ¹⁹For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. ²⁰ To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. ²¹To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. ²² To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. ²³I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. “ 
-1st Corinthians 9:19-23 (emphasis mine)

 This idea has been on my brain lately, as a “calling” of sorts.  I was talking with my mom on a recent drive from Longview to Dallas (about 2.5 hours in the car each way) about how my friends from Hebrew class consider me almost Jewish; some of my Asian girl friends from church lump me in the mix when they say “… and the Asian girls” (referencing a group of young singles who often have lunch after church); my friends at Red Door think of me as ”a theatre person” even though I haven’t been on a stage in years; and I had so many Mormon friends in high school that people often thought I was Mormon myself.  The more I talked about this with Mom, the more I realized that this has been a pattern all my life:  in high school, I wouldn’t have told you I had a “crowd” or that I stuck with one particular clique — I was a band nerd and a choir geek and a theatre freak, and I also spent time with some of the hicks, the jocks, the social misfits, and even some of the popular kids.  In college, even though I was a music theatre chick and I spent time with that crowd, I often felt gravitated toward the music business or music ed kids, and I had friends in all sorts of programs from business to bio-chem (even in nursing, the program known for having “invisible students”).  In church and in school as a kid, I never stuck to the kids in my own income bracket.  I think people in all walks of life are fascinating, and I’m always looking for ways to understand people different from myself.

 I think that most of the time you have to meet people where they are in order to love them.  You can’t wait for them to come to you.  We’re called, as Christians, to love one another — everyone — as Christ loved us.  Really loving people, I think, means trying to understand and to know them, even if it is for a short time or in a small capacity.  I’ve been told I’m good at networking, and I see that talent as an opportunity to love more people.  I may not, as Lincoln said, be able to “please all the people all the time”, but I will continue to try to love them.

Seemingly paradoxically, I have the hardest time loving (and forgiving) some of my fellow Christian brothers and sisters.  More on that struggle later.

Look, Kids!  A color page!  Grab your green crayons and print this one out!  (And if you don’t have crayons, well, that’s just sad; but you can borrow mine.  I love coloring.  Really.)

The blog shelteriffic does a round-up post called blogwatch that highlights blogs they’ve perused in the past week.  Inspired by that, I thought, even if I don’t have the time to sit and write out a bunch of blog posts, I can at least direct you to some other places that had content I enjoyed this week! 

So here you go, straight from my browser history, in no particular order:

http://itsbean.blogspot.com  A friend’s new website that follows the life of Bean, a little character ADORED by those that know her.

http://jalan46.livejournal.com/17446.html  A friend’s review of Cloverfield that amused me.

http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/70375AD.html?noImages  A project I’d love to tackle if I had the time and new how to read crochet patterns.

http://www.jakearmerding.com/home.shtml  Fantastic musician who’s also a friend of mine.  The very first time I heard him perform, I immediately went home and bought all his CDs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/dining/02curi.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&sq=harold%20mcgee&scp=2  Interesting article about heat.

http://www.crazyblinddate.com  My latest spontaneous endeavor which promises at lest interesting stories if not the love of my life. 

 http://www.biblegateway.com/  Handy reference for looking up verses in different translations.

That’s all I’ll post for now . . . Happy Browsing!

Ok, it’s not really true; I don’t even know how to fish.  I had a boyfriend once who wanted to take me . . . and I’ve always loved the song “Fishin’ in the Dark” by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band . . . but I digress.  I’ve been so busy with the holidays and then with a CRAZY start to 2008 at work, that I haven’t had a lot of down time.  Plus, my home computer is totally dead.  Thus, this blog is neglected.  Hopefully at some point I’ll be able to resurrect it, as I do actually enjoy blogging (who’d've thunk?).  ‘Til then, don’t knock me out of your feed reader!  I’ll be back!