With Friends Like These...

I knew it must be the week that something was due - even if I hadn't been told that the undergrads all had a massive project (ie something they were supposed to have been working on all along and now should be a massive journal of essays and responses) due on Monday, I probably could've figured it out on my own. Why? Because every night people would knock, come in, and just hang out in that I-have-something-I-REALLY-should-be-working-on-but-I-really-REALLY-don't-want-to-face-it kind of way. The boys built a massive "fort" in the top floor common room out of the couches, chairs, curtains, cardboard, etc - basically whatever they could drag in. (I won't even begin to mention what all we discovered was living underneath said couch...) Everyone who came in had to try on Mione's corset for the film shoot. 

Lars built a trebuchet out of my slide rule and some cardboard. We watched countless movies. To be honest, this worked out great for me, as I'd had crits the week before, and thus only had to get the costumes for the film shoot done - so all I needed was some entertainment and my thread and needle. (Lars chucking bits of paper across the room while Julia pulls Patrick into a corset, it turns out, is quite a bit of entertainment) :)

This week, however, the film shoot finished, the Wider Picture project was turned in, I went to Bath, and basically we spent the first half of the week with everyone finally being able to breathe again, sleeping for most of the start of the week, and vowing never again to procrastinate. Which, naturally, meant that Ciaran and Lars would come knocking thursday night with A Plan. (Lars laughing heartily while clutching his whiskey bottle, Ciaran giggling like a schoolgirl) They were going to make a short film for fun, and wanted to know if I'd be in it / help with costumes. 

I hate to spoil it before being able to provide a link to it, but as they're quite serious about their editing (Lars assembled four different versions today, tonight they're going to be working on color editing, tomorrow on sound design), so here's the plot (so as to illuminate the last line of my last post, and explain why I currently have a headache): A girl is sitting on the beach, lonely and sad, writing a letter which she places in a bottle and places into the waves, which gently take it away. Elsewhere, a guy (Will - also looking sad and lonely) notices said bottle lying on the beach, picks it up, opens it, reads the message inside and smiles quite sweetly. He turns the note over, and writes a reply message, sticks it into the bottle, and with a very hearty throw chucks it back into the ocean. The shot cuts to the girl, staring thoughtfully out to sea, awaiting a return message ... until the bottle flies in and smacks her across the forehead - shattering - and she drops down unconscious. The credits roll over a shot of her feet lying motionless in the surf. What they have edited thus far is absolutely beautifully shot, with the punchline shot absolutely hilarious. :)

So, the boys descended on Thursday night and pitched this - as you may have guessed, my first question was, "Umm... you really want to break a bottle across my forehead?!" After a brief discussion of shooting it so the camera goes *past* my forehead, we looked up the recipe for sugar glass online and, well, thus began the two day period of my room smelling thickly of sugar. :) Sugar glass is a special effect prop, made simply of sugar, water, and gold syrup brought slowly to a boil, then poured into a form where it solidifies, is bendable for a short time, then becomes quite brittle and shatters easily, all while being a nice semi-opaque color. We experimented with a couple different recipes, creating a bunch of pieces, then larger pieces we molded around wine bottles wrapped with tinfoil. (The first night, Ciaran went to bed while we were still waiting for the pieces to finish cooling - a few minutes after he left, Patrick, Lars, and I pulled a large piece off of the tinfoil, went up to his room, knocked on the door, and smashed it over his head when he answered) We ended up with two pretty decent "bottles" of sugar glass - one as a safety close-up (because it was very thin and shattered as we were taking it off of the bottle) and one as a long-shot (much more intact). We gave both a light tint of green watercolor, and huzzah! 

That said, what was my first concern really wasn't anywhere near the real "horror" of the shoot. While I should preface this with the fact that I really did have a great time, I nonetheless should recount that, after staying up 'til nearly 6AM with a whole gaggle of people watching Eddie Izzard and making the bottles, we were up and rolling at 8AM. We wandered down to the beach, everyone wrapped up warmly (please remember that we are still hovering around freezing DURING THE DAY around here, and especially on the beach where the wind chill makes it worse...) I was dressed in cargo pants and a short-sleeved, light-weight cotton top. And barefoot. Lars, bless him, was quick to race over with the fleece blanket between shots, but I nonetheless, after filming the first shot, found myself wading thigh-deep into the channel to deposit the bottle into the waves. A few minutes later, I was having bottles thrown at my head (which I barely felt) and falling with a thud to the ground (which I absolutely did feel, as my head smacked the sand each time rather harshly). After this, Ciaran walked up and asked if he could get a shot of me lying down, with the tide rushing over my feet. I stared him down for a moment, wondering if I really valued my friendship with these guys enough... :) But I did - down onto the sand, "knocked unconscious"... unfortunately, we underestimated the tide line, and the surf ended up coming up past my shoulders, completely drenching my back and filling every clothing item with ten tons of sand. (Which is all currently in my shower - heee)

After this, I was pretty much covered in every piece of clothing the guys had brought, wrapped up in the blanket and towel, and set down to "warm up" in the sun while they filmed Will's bits further on down the beach. They fortunately filmed him throwing the bottle into the surf last, because on the last shot, the mouth of the bottle broke off - losing us the cork and completely destroying the note. (whoops) We hiked back home, where I changed into dry clothes, stuck my feet into warm water in the sink, and noticed red blots all along my hairline - where the sugar glass had actually cut me. (double whoops) To be fair, they had brought along a first aid kit - I just hadn't even felt anything. 

Flat 4 becoming the film production room, as Lars went about editing the footage while Ciaran popped in and out to check in - and I went about "reading" in my easy chair for a few minutes, before saying screw it, and taking a nap. :)

For now, I need to pack and plan my transport into London tomorrow - from the 19th through the 25th, I'll be in London, dressing "Les Miserables" on the West End. (Woot!) 

300 Year Old Waistcoats and Very Tasty Buns

I'd been to Bath before - back on the study abroad to the UK I did with Seattle Pacific, we stopped in Bath for... a week? Probably less... between Cambridge and Stratford. We stayed at Belushi's / St Christopher's Inn (part of the hostel chain we had also stayed at in Edinburgh), visited the Baths, the Jane Austen Centre, the Assembly Rooms, the Abbey, Sally Lunn's, etc - all the fun touristy things that you have to see whilst staying in a touristy town. However, I also visited the Museum of Costume, and realized sadly that they had the option to book a study table to examine the historical garments in person - unfortunately, I hadn't booked it early enough, and missed my chance.

Not this time, though. I emailed Elaine Uttley, and booked myself a study table for 11-1 on Thursday the 15th, then bought a train ticket and mapped out Bath, to help avoid getting miserably lost. The night before I kicked everyone out of my room at a decent hour, packed my bag full of the required pencils (no pens!), sketchbooks, and camera, then went to bed. Far too early in the morning, I headed out the door to grab the bus to the coach station, a train to Southampton, then another train to Bath. I had to hustle a bit to get up to the Museum in time, but ended up getting there about five minutes early: enough time to pop my head into the Assembly Rooms and once more gawp and gawk at the majesty.

At 11, Elaine came down to fetch us (there was another girl booked for the same time slot, studying the New Look style) We had to leave our coats and bags in lockers in the hallway, sign release forms, don gloves, and then - voila! Elaine pulled a sheet off of the table I was working at, revealing an amazing stash of Victorian undergarments - corsets, bustles, crinolines - drool. I sketched, I photographed, I carefully examined from all angles (I went to put one of the crinolines back, only to have the waistband tape fall to the other side and reveal the advertising tags - I gasped aloud. :) 

By the time I was done going through the underwear, I looked up to realize it was already 12:15 - I quickly called Elaine back, and was able to access the rolling rack of actual garments she had pulled for me - menswear from the 1700's and women's riding habits from the 1800's. Absolute heaven. The garments were all in amazing shape for being 200-300 years old, and the level of workmanship on them was absolutely exquisite. 

All the pockets were fully functioning, the lining was twisted to the outside, then handstitched over to create a lovely little binding to the outside, the collars all had two rows of (hand)stitching - and I should point out that this handstitching was pedantically straight, even, and uniformly 9 stitches to the inch. Crazy! All too soon it was 1PM, and everything was put back on hangers padded in muslin, copyright forms were completed and signed, and we were back out in the hallway collecting our coats.

It was scheduled to rain that day, so I had taken a bit of a chance scheduling my return journey for 5:30PM - if it had been nasty weather, I didn't have a whole lot of options to wile away four and a half hours with. Happily, despite being freezing cold and with a biting wind, the sun came out and made the city - nearly all Georgian buildings of golden sandstone - glow. As I was walking back towards the town centre, I found myself in a familiar street, and nearly started giggling aloud when I realized I was walking past good ol' Belushi's. I took a quick picture and went to walk away, but paused for a moment, looking at the windows of the pub. I remembered, suddenly, very distinctly sitting in that pub as I waited to meet up with a gaggle of people - I had a strongbow and some Shakespeare to read, and had stopped reading for a moment to glory in the moment, and to wonder what the future would hold. I people-watched through the window, wondering about their lives and what it must be like to live in the UK, rather than touring around, visiting a new spot every week. (Don't get me wrong - I loved that we got to see so many locations and I wouldn't change that for the world, but it was sad to always feel like a tourist, rather than someone actually living there) It felt like an oddly important moment, at the time, so I took a picture of the Strongbow on the window to remember that feeling. Standing there now felt like such a fascinating circle - living with film students, I imagined the scene as it would play out in a movie - me, standing in the middle of the street, looking in at the girl I was three years ago.

I went back to the Abbey, taking the tour inside (smiling at the ancient American flag hanging alongside the UK one, glorying as the sunshine came streaming in one of the stained glass windows, being creeped out by the vaults beneath the church, etc. 

I popped 'round to Sally Lunn's bun shop, because - even three years later - I remembered how fantastically delicious they were. I grabbed a corner table, ordered a sweet bun with butter, clotted cream, and fresh strawberry jam and a hot chocolate, and propped up my latest read which I had brought with me for the train (even though I ended up sleeping nearly the whole journey to Bath) - "Stigmata" by Helene Cixous. (A collection of her essays - don't let the classification of "Feminism / Gender Studies" scare you away - this is a lovely read. I wandered the Victoria Art Gallery, which was disappointingly small, but had some truly lovely oil paintings upstairs. I also picked up a flyer on the plays coming to Bath in the new year, including "Waiting for Godot" with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Definitely going to that one.

The train was twenty minutes late picking us up at Bath Spa Station - very unusual, but very frustrating. Fortunately, there was a train connecting Southampton to Bournemouth that left only about ten minutes after we arrived, so I didn't get home too terribly late. And good thing, that - as I was, shortly after arriving home, invited to catch hypothermia and get smashed in the head with a bottle - an offer I simply couldn't refuse...

I've seen detergents leave a better film than this

Yesterday I took my first foray into costuming for film - and, unfortunately, failed to take any pictures. :( Taneka, however, was taking stills throughout the process, so I hope I can steal some from her. 

The aforementioned film was a second-year film student project - a ten minute scene from Ibsen's A Doll's House. We were in a black-box studio, shooting from 12:30-7PM. After the original actors bailed on the director, I got Louis to cast Mione and Ciaran - fantastic for me, as I got to do fittings in the Halls, much more convenient than its been for Sally and Aleks, who are just getting started and just about ready to pull their hair out over actors in lectures all day. 

Both dress and suit were pulled from costume storage - I simply had to go shopping for shirt, vest, and tie for Korgstaad and did some heavy alteration on the bodice and skirt for Nora (while the various skirts/underskirts/petticoats had to be taken up 6 inches, the bodice needed some interesting alterations to accommodate Mione's short-waist-edness.

 I then built a bonnet with false hair built right in - the original bonnet, complete with blonde braids and flapping corners, ended up placing me dead square in Holland, rather than the intended Norway. Whoops.

I got rather a kick out of the filming process - it was nothing more than tech week in the theatre, only instead of coming out of this "tech week" with a finished show, ready for an audience, you come out and go home, dropping the footage off with editing. We (actors and I) showed up a little after noon, I proceeded to get them into costume, hair, and make-up, then let them loose onto the "stage". I stood around a lot, occasionally popping in to poke hair either back up into the bun or back into a center part, but mostly just stood around watching and each digestives out in the hallway. The actors would be put into position, fed their lines, the lights would be adjusted, everyone would get back of the camera. "Sound ready?", "Ready", "Camera ready?", "Camera ready", "Sound rolling", "Check", "Camera rolling?" "Camera rolling" ... (a pause as we waited for the room to become completely silent) "Action". The scene would roll until the director would call cut, at which point everyone would scurry about - AD would check lines with the actors, Louis the director would start talking with the cinematographer in Portuguese, while I'd either go fix hair/hemlines/etc or chat with someone else on the crew. Lots and lots of hanging around, talking, and the general rule of tech week - 40 minutes of boredom, for every 2 minutes of sheer panic and frantic runaround. 

Around 1500, Mione had to go to a class, so we had to race her out the door (as we had filmed up to nearly the last minute before she had to leave) still in costume; as it was raining, she held an umbrella aloft, while I followed behind her, holding up her train. A short bit later, we broke for lunch and the group of us wandered over to the canteen, Ciaran still in late Victorian wear, which simply made him look more dressed up than normal. 

By the end of the day, I remembered the strain hell weeks put on the body - despite the fact that it hadn't even been a full day by any standards and despite the fact that I hadn't really done anything, I bundled up the costumes and hauled them home, absolutely exhausted. I think the film will turn out quite nice, but I will be so glad to hand the costumes back in tomorrow - I've been hanging them on the outer hook of my closet, meaning I have to heave them up and off the hook, then throw them over onto my bed if I want to get into my closet. I have bobby pins, plastic stands of blonde hair, and hangers lying about everywhere, and - while I'm excited to see the final product - I'm glad to move on to the next project. :)

"You can't take a guess for another two hours?"

My number one clue should've been the ridiculous number of screaming, coughing, completely unsupervised children racing around the plane. No really, I don't mind your child running up and down the aisle of the plane, slamming into my elbow and hacking as s/he races past. Whatever gave you that impression? Thankfully, I had my headphones, plenty of decent time-waster movies on the personal video player, and a smart-ass old Scottish man sitting next to me who grumbled as much as I did. :) 

Since I obviously wasn't getting the hint: "You WILL be sick because of this plane ride!", I got a much more obvious one: about three-quarters of the way into the plane ride, the lead stewardess came over the intercom, asking if there were any doctors or trained medics on board the plane. I started giggling, because I desperately wanted to call her over and say, "Oh stewardess, I think the man sitting next to me is a doctor." Of course, he would've had to have been wearing a stethoscope while sleeping, and he wasn't. As I heard a few different seats ding their call buttons (either they were doctors themselves or, lucky them, were in fact seated next to Doctor Rumack), I started remembering instead the episode of House where House and Cuddy have to treat what looks to be an outbreak of SARS on a flight overseas. Of course, since that was simply a case of the bends (geezes, spoiler alert!), I calmed myself and instead went back to imagining multiple eggs coming out of a woman's mouth or having to calm a panicking woman with a crowbar. 

As odd coincidence would have it, the family that I was seated next to on the flight from London to Seattle was sitting right in front of me on this flight, and we ended up walking together to the gate for the Amsterdam-London portion of the trip. It was an adorable little plane - we had to walk out onto the tarmac to board (as I was still a little high on my anti-anxiety meds, I started giggling again, imagining Eddie Izzard's take on it, complete with squirrels screaming your name); the flight was less than an hour long (which absolutely whizzed by, compared to the previous nine and a half hour ride [please to note: I was about to put "absolutely flew by", but realized that it might be construed as an attempt at an awful pun, and thus changed my wording. You're welcome] ), but we were still offered a snack of some sort - maybe it was just the travel fatigue, maybe I was already sick, but I quickly turned it down, thinking it looked like the worst bit of "food" I've ever seen. 

Upon landing, I wandered my way through customs, picked up my luggage, walked right on through the 'nothing to declare' hallway, and found my way up to the DLR (Domestic Light Rail) platform that shot me along to Waterloo Station, where I found a train waiting to depart straight to Bournemouth in only ten minutes. What service. By the time I wedged my luggage in front of the seat next to me and set the tickets in my lap, I was fast asleep. In between train stops, I kept dreaming that I was somewhere completely different - one time I'd be at SPU in the loop, another time wandering backstage at ACT's Christmas Carol, a few times in the old house, and at each stop the announcer's voice would jerk me violently out of sleep - while it was nice of her to inform me where I was each time, she could've turned down the volume a bit. During one of the naps, I woke to discover that the ticket officer had punched my ticket without waking me up. He gets massive karma points for that. 

I hopped in a cab once I reached the station and, arriving back at Bourne Chambers, quickly unpacked and - despite it being about 1PM, fell into bed. I think I posted on facebook that the room was spinning, but it would be more accurate to say that I had an approximation of sea legs - that feeling you get when you've been on a boat for some time and, even once you're back on solid ground, feel that you're slowly bobbing up and down. Sometime around midnight I woke up and paid an unfortunate visit to the loo - thankfully, I was still too tired to remember anything beyond "I vomited copiously" - the memory details are quite vague, though. I stayed up for a few more hours, too exhausted to actually sleep. 

I woke up around 6PM New Years Eve, and took the rest of the day easy - I still felt feverish and dizzy, but I kept a bowl of noodles with olive oil down, drank all the water I could stand, and watched the rest of Mad Men season two. Oooohh... sooo good. A little before midnight, I bundled up in as many layers of clothing as I could reasonably fit onto my body and made my way down to the pier. I passed on the way multiple clubs filled to capacity, and chuckled that my goal for the New Year would be the same as many peoples': to not throw up on oneself. 

There was a very strong, very cold Westerly wind (westerly meaning going towards the west, right?) and a slight hazy fog through the lower gardens, but the water and the pier itself were crystal clear - you could see quite a ways in either direction along the shoreline, the stars clear as day, and the water gently reflecting back the lights of the city in undulating, dreamlike swirls. The countdown began - I couldn't quite hear the numbers being shouted by those on the beach, but I'm pretty certain they weren't always going in sequence, as one person would be shouting a countdown, to be drowned out by someone obviously trying to correct him. There was no big signifying "boom" to mark it definitively, but eventually everyone with a watch decided that it was near enough to a unified "one", and began shooting off fireworks - all along the coast you could watch the flights flash across the sky, as each group struggled to out do each other. 

To properly delight my inner English major, I stood on the eastern side of the pier to bid farewell to 2008 and watch fireworks, then walked around the edge to the western side and watched from there for a bit. For whatever reason, the fireworks were going on the eastern beach, but not from the western (well, further down the coast yes, just not right next to the pier) - here families were... well, I overheard a family explaining what they were doing, but thinking it over later, I'm a bit confused. "They put "fire" in a "carrier bag" (plastic grocery bag), then let the wind blow it away." I'm not sure how the fire didn't just destroy the plastic bag instantly, and it's not like it was in a votive or something like that, as the wind picked these up and let them float away on the breeze over the water. That said, they were a beautifully eerie and almost supernaturally spiritual sight - a small flicker of light, like a candle in a distant window, borne aloft on the wind, drifting and gliding aimlessly this way and that over the water in the inky blackness. It was one of those sights that feels like a metaphor, but one so big that you don't want to destroy it by thinking it through - you much rather simply feel the enormity in the miniscule and watch it go on its way. I returned home, tired and quiet, and ready for bed once again. 

Since then, I've been feeling much better, but on an unfortunately truly bizarre sleep schedule that despite my best efforts I can't seem to get turned around. Also unfortunately, I've been dealing - most crankily - with my not-dead-but-useless refrigerator. Sometime while I was gone for Christmas break, the whole unit decided that it didn't want to keep things cold anymore. Upon first opening it, I discovered that the upper freezer area had completely thawed, dripping all its thawed water onto my previously frozen and now also thawed and moldy meat - which had, in turned, found a way to leak onto into the fridge below, covering everything in the somehow-now-warmer-than-my-flat fridge with a layer of moldy-germy-thaw-water. Everything that needed to stay cold to be viable as food had to be tossed. Anything that could possibly have had water leak in had to be tossed. Anything with a paper label had to have the label (now soaked with the water) peeled off, and thoroughly wiped down with disinfectant. The small amount that hadn't been tossed was moved to my larger freezer unit which, even on the warmest setting, has managed to freeze ice chunks into my milk carton and make the ketchup non-moving. On top of this, despite four thorough washings with disinfectant spray, two with a baking soda solution, and a tray of baking soda left in the fridge for a day now, the fridge still REEKS of death and decay - each time I open it, I half expect to see animated skull-and-crossbones come flying out, moaning aloud in despair. The odd thing is that it's still plugged in, the outlet switch is still set to "on", the circuit breaker isn't popped (and, perhaps more to the point, the light still comes on when you open the door), yet it is nowhere near cold, nor does the temperature change at all when you change the coldness switch in either direction and leave it for a few hours. I tried calling James, only to find - surprise, surprise - he's still off on holiday, and won't be back 'til Monday. I've tried to work out what the problem could be beyond, "It's very old and probably just dead", as the thought of having to wait for James to haul it away and bring in a new one fills me with dread, as the stench has already begun to filter out of the fridge - I can faintly smell it even across the room with the fridge door shut and absolutely nothing inside it save a plate covered in baking soda. (grumble) 

A Public Apology to the People of Seattle

So, you should understand that it's been quite cold in Bournemouth. No snow, but that's simply due to a lack of rain mixed with the below freezing temperatures. Pair with this a strong wind chill coming right off the water and it gets a little nippy. Also, there's the fact that the British are not inherently afraid of natural temperatures like the Americans are - between central heating and air conditioning, it's easy in the States to never have a clue about the outside temperature. No so much here, where the MA room - despite best efforts - is permanently set on "cold fan and these crazy Europeans who seem content being whatever temperature it "is". 

So... I *may* have mentioned... a few times... that I'd be happy to get back to Seattle where it's ... (ahem) warm. Where's it's never this cold, absolutely never. And, in answer to the question posed, it never ever snows. 

While sitting in Heathrow, waiting for my plane to start loading, I overheard people chatting about the current weather in Seattle. "A foot of snow?!" I snorted incredulously. "In the 23 years I've lived there, I don't think I've ever seen more than a few inches, and those pretty much only ever after January". Foot of snow, indeed. Bah.

"University of Washington meteorologist Cliff Mass said that the snowstorm is the biggest for Seattle in 12 years, and that the length of time the region has been locked into low temperatures makes it particularly unusual." 

The No Fly List

At 9:10AM on December 19th, I loaded up my bags and headed out the door to catch a bus that would take me to the coach station, then a National Express coach that would take me to Heathrow. Despite my usual anxieties about timed travel, I made each interchange easily and efficiently, patting myself on the back for work well done. Yes, it was a bit more of hassle to find my terminal as, having (wrongly) assumed that Terminal 4 was connected to the terminal I was dropped at from the coach, I found myself waiting 25 minutes for the next underground to take me to Northwest Airline's check-in station. No problem, however, as I had left *plenty* of time, and sailed right through the line to check my large rolling suitcase, take my boarding pass, and wander off towards security. I had 45 minutes before the plane was due to board and the line for security was nonexistent. I would have plenty of time to get something to eat - I hadn't eaten breakfast, as I had conducted the massive purge of the refrigerator the night before - for breakfast I had the choice between chicken nuggets with peanut butter and jelly or frozen ravioli with maple syrup. 

Ummm... Yep, that's my duffel bag being hauled away to the side. I dutifully put back on my shoes, my coat, put my ziplock baggie of purel back in my purse, and followed the woman with my carry-on. I was amused that I had been selected for a random inspection - I was obviously just making up their quota of caucasian girls. She pulled out my laptop and swabbed it down. She pulled out my camera and swabbed it down. We started chatting about how I was a student down at the Arts Institute, working on Costume Design, and how - yes - sewing was a lost art nowadays. About this point, she had reached my sewing projects bag (placed in my carry-on so as to allow me to get stuff for my group crit done whilst home, even if my checked luggage ends up halfway across the world); she pulled out paper patterns with the corresponding fabric shapes pinned on. She then pulled out a metal case with "Gingher" written on the side.

Oh, shit.

She gave me a sympathetic smile as she heard me say it - "this is what I was looking for, isn't it?" Yep. She opened it up to reveal my 7" extra-sharp dressmaker's sheers. Which, incidentally, come with numerous warning to not let children even touch these. For all the joking about confiscating nail files and bottled water, these scissors could do a pretty serious amount of damage. She had only my word that I would never get blood on them, lest they stain. Fortunately, as I'd only checked one bag, I had the option of going back to the NW Airlines desk and checking this one as well. With my "plenty of extra time" flying out the window, I raced back to the desk to see that the line had increased tenfold, and was now filled with families carrying tons of baggage, skis, oversized packages, etc. Grumble.

Worse, when I was about six groups from the front of the line, we received our holiday greeting from the head honcho: "This flight has been oversold, so many of you are going to get bumped." Merry Christmas. Fortunately, as I had my boarding pass and seat number, I was fine. We were all offered $1000 if we'd switch and take the same flight tomorrow - if we didn't speak up now, however, we would lose the compensation. I briefly considered - the money was to be in travel vouchers, but that would easily pay both for the current Christmas trip and some fun trip later next year... As quickly as I thought it, I dismissed it. I was already here, I was ready to go, and we were going to be making Christmas cookies for Andrew's birthday the next day. Hells no, I WILL go!

By this point, the evil Christmas gremlins started making trouble - as I rounded a corner, I saw approach in the line an old British grandmother/fatherly couple, obviously on the way to Seattle to see young relatives; they were met, however, by airline personal who informed them that they had just been bumped. The grandmother started crying. I was overcome by horrific feelings of guilt and imagined myself turning into the grinch when I had to turn away. (If I had watched her another minute, I would've bounded forward and declared, "HERE! She can have *my* ticket"... only to regret it a moment later) When I finally reached the first in line, they decided it was time for a shift change, and I had to sit as every single person behind the desk handed theirs over to someone new - and explained what was going on. During this time, my watch showed that they were officially beginning to load the plane. I handed them my new second checked bag, raced over to security (which, was now choc-a-bloc full of people, nearly all of whom reached the front of the line without any inclination towards taking off shoes, taking off coats, taking liquids out of their bags, etc before they finally ambled up to the conveyor belt and looked about in surprise when asked to do so) 2:35 - ten minutes passed the start of loading... I passed through security quite easily (I had placed my coat into my carry-on-now-checked bag, so I had only myself, my shoes, my purse, and my laptop - pre-swabbed and all); when I went to catch my tub coming out of the X-ray machine, the TSA bloke grabbed it and pulled it back - 'haha, little Christmas humor there', he said as he let it fall through. Thank God they had already taken my scissors away. 

Once again shod and carrying my bags, I raced for the departures sign to see what gate I would need to sprint to as though all hell's demons were chasing me. 

NW Flight 105 - Seattle - DELAYED / WILL BOARD 15:00. 

 

"Christmas is all about the baby, right?" "I warn you to seriously think twice before suggesting juggling babies..."

(The Songs of Praise episode would probably be more appropriate, but I already posted it... so here's the Christmas episode. Fun times to be had with auditions and improvisation exercises - make sure you watch the second clip for Mary giving Joseph a beat-down)

So, with everyone out of the Halls, I started putting on Gilbert and Sullivan and my various Italian pieces from voice class and realized - you know what? I really, really miss chamber choir. I miss belting out the high notes, rolling my R's, and pronouncing things in a massively, ridiculously posh English accent. So, I went online, looked up St Peter's Church (just down the street) and found the contact person for St Peter's choir. David emailed me back almost instantly - he just took over as head of the choirs in September and is desperately trying to rebuild the choirs. As of January, he'll be starting up the girl's choir in addition to the established men's choir, boy's choir, and "mixed volunteer choir" - however, if I popped in today around noon, I could meet him, see the choir, etc. Sure, why not.

Well, turns out the organ concert planned for this afternoon was cancelled, so they decided to throw in the choir instead. I wandered into the church at a little after noon and was almost immediately handed three choir books, a cassock and surplice, asked if we sang "Ding Dong Merrily on High" in the States, and met people as they filtered in - David the choir director (who looks exactly as you'd imagine a young, British, church-mouse looking choir master to look), Alice his wife (who looks exactly like the actress who played Evangeline in Nanny McPhee [she's one of those "oh, that girl" actresses and I know I've seen her in a bunch of stuff, but Evangeline just jumped straight out as that's how she behaved and carried herself), Ann (the middle-aged, strong-arm primary-school teacher soprano, there with her husband and late teenage son), Sam (who was the second to arrive, but I still barely spoke to), and... the guy who stood on the other side of the room... um... him. Cutest of the cute, however, were the two choir boys, who had to have been under the age of 9 and were running around in cassocks and could never find their place in the hymn books. (Eeeeee! Sooooo cute!) Thank heavens we were simply doing Christmas carols and I'm a soprano (huzzah for the melody line!) - there were only two songs I didn't know and one that I knew the lyrics but had a different melody line than I knew. People flitted in and we rehearsed for about half an hour, before the Vicar came in to give us a blessing and we walked out to our places in front of the much more massive congregation than I'm used to, usually only coming for Evensong. (And generally not on beautiful, sunny days like this one) That said.... ah, how I missed the sound of a chamber choir with the slow reverberation of harmony as it rings through the stone cathedral... Alice (which stills makes me giggle, as I watched an episode of Vicar of Dibley last night on youtube) sang two solos, David played the organ for a few of the numbers (most we did a capella), we probably did about 8-10 songs. Nearly towards the end, David asked those who had been in the choir for a year to stand - then those who had been there since Easter - then those who had joined over the summer - leaving me alone. He informed the congregation that I had joined up about half an hour before the concert and I got applause (whilst blushing terribly, I'm sure). He also informed the congregation that we'd be starting up the girls' choir in January, and would be getting two new boys for the boys choir - huzzah! Ann later informed me that it's getting competitive these days to sign boys for the choir, since they lose most of them to footie. ("It's not "cool" for boys to sing in the choirs anymore - is it like that in the States?" I had to stop myself from saying, "I don't know if boys in the States ever thought it was "cool" to sing in the choir". Especially with those FANTASTIC neck ruffs - seriously, so cute) 

So, yeah. Good times. I'll be back in January and bid them all Merry Christmas before heading out the door and back home for a snack. Duly fed, I am off to find the elusive fabric store in Winton, in the hopes of getting some of my projects for January started before I head off home. (My goal is to get them all cut out before I leave [provided I can find the right fabric at "Sewing World"], hopefully get a bit of sewing started tomorrow)