Tuesday, March 5, 2013

The Ravenclaw Common Room

January 19, 2013:

I was pretty sure I'd posted something since New Year's, but clearly I was wrong. Things, unsurprisingly, got busy. Starting New Year's Eve I worked 11 straight days at Potter, then my roommate Anna arrived and there was Ikea shopping to be done and then Ikea furniture to be built and more trips to Kmart and decorating and being excited and still going to work all the time.

Things are really coming along here! Our kitchen is furnished with a nifty expandable table that Anna and I constructed all on our own and real wooden (not plastic) chairs. The living room has become a little separate area with a loveseat we got for free from a friend of Anna's, and a blue and bronze (Ravenclaw) rug, and a coffee table and TV stand. Gifts from my mom arrived, some pots and pans and a toaster, so our kitchen is starting to be functional. Soon after its arrival the couch was draped in Anna's blanket that portray's Sirius's flight on Buckbeak in Prisoner of Azkaban. I found blue curtains to match the rug, so the living room/kitchen is well decked out in blue and bronze, with a Ravenclaw banner between the windows.

My room now has a bed, dresser, and desk, constructed by myself and my friend Joe, whose screwdriver has saved all of our Ikea purchases from being half-finished piles of particleboard and screws. Having furniture is pretty exciting after over 2 weeks of just me and an air mattress. I'm actually pretty impressed with how well we pulled things together in such a short span of time. I will say, we did have the Ravenclaw banner and the Prisoner of Azkaban blanket before we had a kitchen garbage can, so we all know where our priorities lie. Anna and I have never pretended to be anything else though, and that is why we are perfect roommates. Well, that and we're both super neat.

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Well that never got posted either. January was a month full of moving, shopping (for the apartment), furniture building, and work.

February was full of work. And a visit from my mom! In her short time here she got to visit two of my workplaces - the Harry Potter exhibition and Fuerza Bruta, making her the only member of my family so far who has seen the show. We also spent a day doing the Broadway thing, catching performances of The Other Place starring Laurie Metcalf (of Roseanne and Steppenwolf) and The Heiress, with several famous people including David Strathairn, Jessica Chastain, and Dan Stevens, plus my favorite, Judith Ivey. Both productions were really well done and not things I would have sought out on my own, so go Mom. (Admittedly, we did try for rush tickets to Once and took a stab at lotto for Book of Mormon but it's what we actually saw that counts, right?) We also spent a day in New Jersey with family during the "big snowstorm" (read: regular snowstorm) that hit that first weekend in February, but Mom made it home okay after a couple canceled flights the same day. (I went back into the city to work.)

Also in February: the Phelps twins (who play the Weasley twins) came to Discovery. I didn't meet them; I was miserable for four days. The end.

Aside from Potter and Fuerza, I'm still teaching Sunday school, a constant joy, chalenge, and learning experience as I navigate working with a boisterous group of 6-10 kids ages 3 and 4. They are always a surprise, and perhaps sometimes I expect too much of them or am ambitions in our activities, but it's always worth a shot. I think people underestimate how astute and intelligent young kids really are, just because their vocabulary isn't as developed yet.

And, beyond Sunday school, I get to continue with another passion, stage combat. Twice a week I assist with the classes at NYU, where my teacher and fight master is training kids this semester in unarmed combat as well as rapier and dagger. I learn a lot just from watching the students learn, and even more when I get up to help them adjust mistakes. They ask questions that make me think more and watch better, and become more aware of those same things in myself so that I'm getting better all the time, even if I don't so much as throw a punch in class. Soon I'll also get to take a single sword class, testing in my fourth weapon with the Society of American Fight Directors in May. (I might recertify in RnD just to try and recommend, because I'm a stubborn perfectionist and I love RnD.)

Life is pretty good right now. Busy, the way I like it. There is a little bit of a gaping hole looming in late April, after the Potter exhibit closes and my almost-full-time job disappears completely, leaving me with "only" three part-time jobs, but I know something will come up. I'm pursuing some possible lighting gigs at the moment, working on a play (still, God, help me), and maybe, you know, I'll just take a couple weeks to relax a little before finding something for the summer. Who knows. What should be, will be.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the phenomenon/machine/enterprise/commercial entity/community/business thing that is Harry Potter a lot since I've been working at the exhibit, and I have tons of thoughts about it all now that I'm involved from this new perspective, but that is a post for another day. Perhaps Friday, when I actually have a day off, before I head to free nights at MoMa (which I haven't visited in nearly 3 years) and then Fuerza. (So when I say a day off, I mean the day time. Not, like, the whole day.)

Nox.