Sunday the First

I can’t believe it is March already.  Unfortunately, it feels like January.  At least in the north east.  We have a snow storm on the way, up to 12″, depending on what forecast you listen to.  This is making me very nervous.  I know what Newark airport is like the day after a snow storm, and I am flying to California on Tuesday.  If I miss my connection in Houston, I am most likely going to miss the start of the conference and my class.  But my brain is famous for running amok with just a little bit of information.  It makes me really good at what I do, but miserable to live with…  🙂

So, I am in overtime drive here, trying to calm my frayed nerves, remembering this is all out of my control, and that what will be will be, and that it always works out.  Weavers are really flexible, and know how to get out of difficult tangled messes!

The show last night was a lot of fun.  We attended the musical Footloose at a local private school, this is the show where I altered 33 dresses for the production.  Back in early February I was asked to so some alterations and dressmaking, and I did have a lot of fun with it, but now that I’ve seen the show I have an interesting perspective here.  The dance scene is the final scene in Footloose.  Most of the dresses I altered were for that scene.  The scene was maybe two-three minutes long, tops.  The entire ensemble was on stage, so many of the dresses were in the back row, and couldn’t even be seen.  I have to wonder if all the work I did was really necessary for two minutes of time on stage.  That’s the funny thing with costuming.  Always weighing, how long will this actually be seen, versus the cost of the alteration and will it even be noticed.  I was sort of sad the cast wouldn’t stand still long enough for me to inspect all my hard work!  But of course, it wasn’t about me and the alterations.  The girls looked great, colorful, and much more current than some of the original dated dresses.  The show was fun, and I enjoyed watching the kids sing their hearts out.

Today I spent updating my laptop in preparation for the trip, that meant 13 Windows updates, and virus definitions updates, and 329 emails off the server, and moving over all the updated presentations, and realizing I didn’t have Photoshop Elements 6 in the laptop, only version 4, I had to install that as well.  I also backed up my Palm organizer, and other critical things along with the access codes to my blog.

This afternoon I had a real treat, I headed over to the local County College, the one where my son is a theatre major.  They were having a retrospective weekend of their 40 years in the arts, and Friday night we attended an overview of the entire fine and performing art department, theatre, gallery exhibits, dance, and some beautiful music.  This afternoon was a two hour Dance retrospective, some really terrific original modern dances, some award winning, and all of it current, thoughtful, colorful, and even humorous.  It was a wonderfully spent $15.   I think if I had unlimited funds and nothing else to do with my life, I’d attend the theatre daily, all sorts of things, living in the NYC area, we have access to so much it can be overwhelming.  Montclair State University has a fabulous new performing arts theatre, it is 7 miles from my house, and I could attend some event weekly and not break the bank.  And there is some fresh new original work being seen at some of these colleges and universities. So little time, so much to see…

Well, there is nothing to do now but ride out the storm, pack tomorrow, and hope I get out of Dodge on Tuesday!  My intent is to blog while I am on the road.  Since I haven’t done it before, and we are trying to locate my travel camera which mysteriously disappeared off my desk (could either of my two teenagers have anything to do with its disappearance?), I can’t guarantee there will be posts from sunny southern California, but I’m going to try.  Speaking of ‘sunny’, Continental sent me my trip notes, and it isnt’ so warm there, in the high 50’s and low 60’s.  I think I need to change what I was planning to bring for clothing…