Vacation, All I Ever Wanted...

And...we're off to Disney World! See you 'round Sunday! (Maybe sooner, if I can blog from the hotel room.)

Candy-Making Adventure!

I've been dying to make salted caramels for months now. The idea of combining the creamy sweetness of caramel with the salty crunchiness of sea salt sounded too delicious for words. I've just been too intimidated by the idea of making candy to actually do it. I had a browser window open with a salted caramel recipe for two weeks or so about a month ago, and would open it, read the directions, salivate a little, then sigh and minimize the window, sure I'd never be able to do it. (I've done the same while walking by Velatis, the new caramel shop on Georgia Ave: look in the window, salivate a little, and then sigh realizing there was no way I could pay $3 for a truffle, or $17 for a box of caramels. The place has gotten great reviews...Someday, they will be mine...)

Imagine my delight, then, when Alton Brown--one of my celebrity geek crushes!--had a show last week featuring salty/sweet foods...And had a recipe for dark salted caramels! I figured if Alton was telling me I could do it, and it would turn out to be Good Eats indeed, I could get off my ass, stop being scared, and do it.

With a little "Don't worry about messing up; it's only food" encouragement from Jake, and his assurance that he'd be on the couch doing work if I needed him, I gathered my ingredients (pictured above--that mysterious brown liquid in the little dish is the secret ingredient: soy sauce) and started making candy.

The adventure begins...after the jump!

Birthday Food!

What a great day yesterday! I did practically nothing all day (save watching Miss Congeniality and Sixteen Candles), went to see Eulogy, then came home for an amazing birthday dinner, made by my favorite home chef, Jake.

We have a deal in our house: the birthday boy/girl gets to ask for whatever s/he wants for his/her birthday dinner, and the spouse has to make it. It keeps the birthday dinner budget down, and since food is one of our favorite things to share, keeps it personal. For the last couple of years, Jake has asked for one of my favorite recipes: lamb meatball gyros. They're not super-difficult to make, and I'm so happy he can take so much pleasure from them. He's already asked for them again this year, even though his birthday isn't until May, and I'm already excited to make them. (I only make them once or twice a year, so they don't lose their birthday novelty.) I'll also make some sort of dessert, since I know now I like to bake.

I had to think really hard when he asked me what I wanted to eat on my birthday. He makes so much wonderful food, it was hard to narrow it down. But over and over, my brain kept saying, "Cheese polenta! Cheese polenta!" So, I asked for cheese polenta with some sort of lamb...something... And I got:

Cheese polenta (recipe from Cucina Rustica), spicy lamb sausage, and a radicchio salad with pancetta. Amazingly delicious!

And now, for a medley of birthday cake pictures!

The cake, recipe courtesy Cook's Illustrated. It tasted like the world's best white box cake (which is what the recipe was going for), with the world's best chocolate frosting.

With a big chunk taken out. I won't pretend we didn't eat birthday cake for breakfast, too. I also won't pretend we won't eat birthday cake for breakfast tomorrow.

Looks good, doesn't it? And eaten with a Spumante Dolce--bought for an incredibly good price from Fenwick Beer & Wine--while watching Willow? Birthday perfection.

Countdown to Thirty: Zero Hour!

That's right, folks: your intrepid blogger is officially thirty years old! As of 1:44 this afternoon! Mom and dad have been called and thanked.

It's been a great day so far. I've been doing essentially nothing, which I don't get to do a whole lot of. Later, I'll be seeing SOOS Sr.'s original play Eulogy. Then, back home for a fantastic meal by my favorite home chef.

Right now, I'm watching Sixteen Candles. No one's forgotten my birthday (geez, the celebration's already been going for over a week), and there will be no panty-showings at any school dances today. But I will be having cake with a great guy named Jake! Just like Samantha Baker's sweet sixteen, I don't see any physical changes--not that I would know what that would look like at thirty; Samantha was expecting something very definite in the area of her chest--and to be fair, I don't really feel any differently than I did yesterday at 29.

But there's a sense of pride that goes with knowing...something...I'm not sure what. That (thank god) I'm not a teenager any more? That (thank god) I'm closer to figuring out who I am than I ever have been before? That (thank god) I'm happier with where I am in my life than I was ten years ago?

Whatever it is, it's pretty good.

Countdown to Thirty: One Day

Blogging later than usual today, because...well, it's my first day of vacation and I slept until 10:30. That felt SO good. I wasn't even out particularly late last night; one of Jake's former grad school friends (still a friend, but not at GW any more) came to town for the weekend, and we met up out in the city. We should know better than to go to Gallery Place after a Caps game, but our friend wanted a central location, and it's difficult to get people to come out to Silver Spring.

We had a great time, but I couldn't help feeling like the oldest one at the party. Probably because I was the oldest one at the party. It's not a big deal; I get along great with these folks, but sometimes our age differences stand out. The group last night ranged from 23 to 27, plus Jake and I. (We do have a friend who just turned 22, but she wasn't there last night.) Again, it's not a big deal--honestly, it's just a couple of years--and I really like the people around the table. But I'm in a very different place in my life. One of the girls at the table, someone a friend brought and I had never met before, kept cracking me up by remarking on how much she loved me. She capped the evening by saying I was "the best wife ever!" to which pretty much everyone else nodded their agreement. (If I remember correctly, that was because I said I liked strip clubs. Or something.) Jake and I joked that the crowd keeps us young.

Which brings us to my goal for the day: emulate Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30.

The movie is the namesake for this blog--near the beginning, Garner's character Jenna closes her eyes and wishes with all of her heart that she could be "thirty, flirty, and fabulous." I will admit that it's one of the movies that I will watch any time it's on television, regardless of what point in the movie I'm turning on. It's in good company with The Devil Wears Prada and Mean Girls.

So, today, I will:

1. Smile to the point of dimples.
2. Be pleasantly surprised with everything in my closet, and how I can fill it out.
3. Avoid back-stabbers. (Ha!)
4. Dance at least once to "Love is a Battlefield" and/or "Thriller.
5. Revel at how well I get along with people younger than me, and the wisdom I can give them.
6. Realize how lucky I am in my home life (I got the Mark Ruffalo!).
7. Be proud of something I've done that was outside-of-the-box and artistic.
8. Walk down the street with "Head Over Heels" running through my head.
9. Tell my parents I love them.
10. Take in the world around me with new eyes.

That's "all." Whew!

Countdown to Thirty: Two Days

Two days to go. Whoo! Went to the SOOS Sr. dress rehearsal last night, and the students (with the attendant adults) did a fantastic job. Can't wait to see it again on Sunday. It was a great way to achieve yesterday's goal: when I see a show I helped develop, it makes me recognize the artistry in collaboration and dramaturgy. I'm going to see Sing and Never Tire, another play I worked on, tomorrow night.

So, on to today's grown-up goal: be okay with walking away. I've been crossing items off of my to-do list at work, and it's seriously satisfying to see all of those "X"es. But there comes a time when one has to erase the completed items and add new ones. When I get to work today, I'll be faced with everything I have to get done by close of business today...or it won't get done for another week! There are a few items I'll be okay with leaving until I get back from vacation. I just have to figure out what they are.

With visions of Disney World (and the great birthday dinner Jake is going to make on Sunday) dancing in my head, it'll be difficult to get anything done today! But I have eight (who am I kidding? Nine) hours to work today, and I will be okay with walking out the door for a week when I leave this afternoon.

Countdown to Thirty: Three Days

Three days left of my youth (ha! Just kidding), and I'm having a pretty good week so far. My grown-up goal for the day: recognize and appreciate myself as an artist, not just an administrator.

A year or so ago, when looking at my CV, one of my teaching-artists said, "You know, I think of you as an administrator, but you only have, like, two admin jobs on here. The rest of them are teaching or artistic." Well, yeah!

It's difficult sometimes to call myself an artist. Like so many other artists, I make my money with a day job--unlike so many other artists, my day job is actually in the arts, in my field, and I love it. Like so many other artists, I create, usually in collaboration with others--unlike so many other artists, my creations sometimes live in the worlds of research and criticism. I've found that as a dramaturg, it's hard to recognize myself as an artist sometimes, preferring instead the term "grown-up theatre geek." I have to recognize that what I do is, indeed, an art.

During the summer, my colleagues at work and I get to focus more on artistic pursuits, since there are so many actual student shows going up than during the school year. My party line is that it would be easier for me to go after a position if I were a director or a choreographer or something like that. I could say, "Hey, Guys and Dolls! I'd like to direct that!" or something to that effect, and get my artistic fulfillment that way. But I'm a writer, which is a bit harder to go after. Fortunately, I have the opportunity to write a script once a year, and I have a great time with it. I'm more than satisfied having an admin position if I also get that part of me fulfilled, and I recognize how lucky I am that I do get that.

Last night, I had a training session to become a script reader for a local company I love. This evening is my mid-semester observation for the Creative Drama class I teach. Tonight, I'm going to the dress rehearsal for a student show I dramaturged (and going to the closing night on my birthday). This weekend, I'll go to the most recent grown-up show I dramaturged. And through it all, I'll happily do my administrative work (which, being the spreadsheet queen I am, and getting to work at a theatre with some great people, I'm more than happy with). I do love what I do.

Countdown to Thirty: Four Days

Four more days until I turn thirty. Grown-up goal for the day: focus on prioritizing, both small things and larger things.

I'm going on vacation next week with Jake and my mom and dad. Mom's birthday is exactly two weeks before mine, and so we're taking the opportunity to celebrate big. In Disney World! I'm super excited.

I'll be happy not to have to think about anything but family and fun for a week, but I'm also a workaholic. I love my job--it's not hard to in my position--but sometimes my efforts spill a little too much into my home life. I check my work email too much from home. I stress out about things at the theatre when I'm not there. But in my department, we all work on the weekends.

I realized yesterday that in order to leave the office for a week and have peace of mind about it, I actually have to finish things. And my checklist seems like a mile long. (In reality, it only takes up a white board.) I also have to realize that I have three days before I leave. That's plenty of time to finish what I need to, in a way that will be satisfactory to me. (I don't like to do things half-assed.)

I'm also thinking about all of the exciting opportunities that have presented themselves to me outside of my office. In the last year, I've started to freelance a little bit, and I'm loving being able to work with adults and develop new works of theatre. I'm still working on understanding scheduling and how to balance projects--a couple of weeks ago, it seemsed like I only saw Jake for five minutes in the whole week! But it's important to make connections with theatre companies, directors, and playwrights, in addition to reading new works and seeing as much theatre as possible. Being a Helen Hayes judge certainly helps with the last part. Getting your name and work known in the community is incredibly important in the beginning of a freelance career, especially when you're a dramaturg...because who the hell knows what that is? :)

This weekend, I spoke with a director about potentially working on a reading series, and I have a training today to be a script reader for The Inkwell. I've loved working with that company in the past, and I'm excited to read submissions for them. At the same time, it's important to spend some quality time with Jake every day, even if it's for a few minutes. We try to work it out so that he's doing homework while I'm doing work, but we're still trying to figure it out. We had a great time watching RuPaul's Drag Race last night, and dinners together are a real pleasure we get to have almost every night. I also like to go out with friends...Go figure! :)

So, today: prioritize things that need to be done at work today, tomorrow, and Friday, and think about future gigs.

Countdown to Thirty: Five Days

Goal for the day: think about who I was at twenty, and who I've become since then.

Last night, I found a book called The Bad Girl's Guide to Getting What You Want in our apartment. The book was in a cardboard box that lives on our floor and positively overflows with books we're going to give away someday. I haven't looked at it in years, and figured I'd give it a nostalgic shot. Three pages in, and I was laughing out loud.

The book is a self-help manual written to help a woman find her "inner bad girl" and be unashamed about finding what she wants and getting it. It's the most nineties-est thing I've seen in a long time, full of sentences like:

"At every age, being a girl rocks. It's your ace in the hole, your backstage pass, your automatic first-class update. Being a girl is what makes you who you are. It's your power source, your secret sauce, and your *69."

You can imagine Ally McBeal reading this book. You can imagine an episode of Friends centering around Rachel finding this book and trying to put its advice into practice. You can imagine Riot Grrls everywhere snorting and rolling their eyes in their Doc Martens as they turn the volume up on their Walkmen and blast their L7.

I turned to the copyright page and saw that the publication date was 2000--written in the heart of the 90s, and finally making it to bookshelves in the last year of the millennium. Which makes it the perfect jumping-off point for thinking about who I was at twenty, when I bought the book, and who I've become since then. (In convenient lists of ten items!)

When I was twenty, I...

1. was a junior/senior in college.
2. thought I wanted to be an actor when I grew up.
3. had already danced with Jake for the first time (although we wouldn't really date for another 4 years).
4. had been to Paris, London (where I lived for 2.5 months), Ireland, and Wales.
5. worked at a paint-your-own-pottery store.
6. had taught classes in Commedia dell'Arte, improv, and creative writing.
7. watched Friends and Seinfeld every Thursday night.
8. had only ever dated one guy.
9. had sent my first full-length play to a festival and gotten a very kind rejection letter. (My play was seriously overwritten: Joan of Arc--speaking only lines from Henry V--coaches a woman towards fighting her abusive boyfriend with a metaphorical sword. What the hell was I thinking?)
10. was not comfortable with myself--either my intellect or my body.

In the last ten years, I...

1. have gotten my BA in theatre and my MA in theatre history & criticism.
2. realized that my passion lies in writing and research.
   
3. married Jake. :)
4. have been to Italy and Greece, and make frequent trips to California and New York (both the city and western NY).
5. have had a lot of jobs (from teaching preschool to bartending to running a tutoring center), and have learned from all of them.
6. got a job that actually uses my two theatre degrees! And get health insurance doing it!
7. have evolved with NBC's Thursday night line-up. And faithfully watch Lost every Tuesday.
   
8. have had my share of dates and boyfriends, and am incredibly happy to have ended up where I did, with whom I did.
9. have written plays for the summer camp I run, and learned how to guide other playwrights' new plays through the writing and production process.
10. have become increasingly happy with myself: comfortable with my intellect and my body (I embrace "sexy librarian")

I've also learned to run, actually eat my vegetables, and have a cat! I still have a lot to learn--I'm only turning thirty, for goodness' sake!--but I've come so far since I was twenty. There are things I need to work on to be sure. But I am happy with where I am right now, and happy to continue with the journey.

Wow, that got sappy fast. Let me close with another quote from the introduction to The Bad Girls' Guide to Getting What You Want:

"Once you light your badness fuse, you'll start to hear the muse--that sassy little voice inside your head reminding you to go for it, trust your instincts, and find the G-spot of your own life."

(Really? Really?)

Countdown to Thirty: Six Days

The countdown begins! Six days to the big three-oh. Goal for today: maintain an illusion of awake-ness. (It remains to be seen whether that'll be easier or harder since my boss was at the same Oscar party as me. He did leave an hour before I did, though...)

Thirty and Fabulous

I have decided to fulfill the title and mission statement of this blog by going forward and turning thirty. I know what you're saying: "But, our dear, sweet blogger! You look far too young to be reaching such a milestone. Also, don't you know that thirty sucks, as evidenced by the lollipops on the bar at Hollie's birthday party?"

And to that, I say, "Oh, hush, you!"

I am seriously excited about turning thirty. I promised myself that when I hit that milestone, I would stop using my age as an excuse for anything. No more, "I'm too young to..." (fill in the blanks: ask for a raise, market myself as a freelance dramaturg, negotiate a contract, get published, and so on). The celebration starts tonight with a party, and the official countdown starts at midnight. I'll be thirty exactly a week from tomorrow. But since people started wishing me a happy birthday yesterday afternoon, I've decided to start calling myself thirty already.

I think this is going to be a very good year.

Sinbad in Process

I've been thinking a lot about adaptations lately. Most of the scripts I've written have been adapted from one source or another, and here I am, working on one for this summer.

It stands to reason that most musicals are adaptations, whether from plays (Green Grow the Lilacs became Oklahoma!, Pygmalion became My Fair Lady), books (Wicked, Les Miserables), or movies (The Producers, Hairspray). It's not just that it's easier to write an adaptation; those scripts also have instant name recognition, and in a ticket-sales-driven society like the one we're in, name recognition goes a long way in marketing.

I come up against this every year when choosing titles for our summer camp productions. We write the scripts for camp in-house, and so it's not as simple as picking (for example) Guys and Dolls or Annie. We have to think of stories that are intriguing and enticing, not only for the students, but also for the parents who shell out the bucks. This year, we're doing one adaptation--written by me--and one original story--written by my colleague.

Each year I've written a script, I've been encouraged to not stick incredibly closely to the source material; to take the outline of the story and run, in order to make my own product. The first year, there wasn't a whole lot of substance to the source material, so I tacked on another story from the same culture. The second year, I stayed pretty close to the Persephone myth, but updated the language and themes so a modern audience (both the parents watching the show and the students acting the show) could relate. And I've had a great time doing so!

I chose to work with the Sinbad stories this year, and feel free-er than I ever have to extend the story beyond the myth and make it something new. There are hundreds of stories starring the titular character, and I picked and chose between them. I also took the Scheherazade framing device and made it more child-friendly, while still providing a sense of danger. The storytelling framing device opened up even more options--since the princesses have to please their king, there's an opportunity to continually one-up the story, and add fantastic elements.

I put a "the end" on my rough first draft, and while major revisions are needed, I'm happy with the product so far. Here's to the journey.

(I'm talking to one of the playwrights from our professional stage this week, in order to get her outlook on the adaptation process. She's taken a popular fairy tale--one of my favorites--and made it something completely new. I hope to use some of the material she gives me for new insight.)