The week after my Harry Potter Day was my last week of work for the Indiana Festival Theatre's inaugural season. I have to say that IFT has been one of the best summer theater jobs I have had and it makes me look forward to starting school in a few weeks! During my last week we celebrated one of my co-worker's (Jared) birthdays by buying him an ice-cream cake but once we got it back to the shop we realized we didn't have a knife to cut it. So another co-worker took a saw out of the tool room, cleaned it and handed it to Jared. Yummy...
On Wednesday of that week my mom and step-dad came from Little Rock to visit me. We had a great visit full of awesome and unique food like this Tibetan restaurant...
They were able to see 2 of the shows I had worked on this summer, Ah! Wilderness and Comedy of Errors. This is me with the set for Ah! Wilderness in the background and my mom almost got us in trouble for taking these pictures.
They also got to meet my mentor/professor at IU and tour the facilities of the theater department. You can see the River City portal (my first thing to paint this summer) from Music Man in this pic which was the last piece of scenery to get struck when the show was over with.
I took them to the really cool restaurant that Jeremy and I went to for our anniversary, Farm Bloomington. They were very happy with not only the awesome food but with the fact that it is a sustainable restaurant.
On Saturday my aunt and cousin joined us in Bloomington. They had spent their summer vacation going to a music festival in Canada but since they were driving they decided to go through Bloomington on their way back to Alabama. After a late morning we decided to go to a movie to beat the heat and humidity. We wound up seeing Captain America which was a refreshingly good comic book movie. This is my step-dad and my cousin.
Our last big meal together was Saturday night before we went to see Comedy of Errors. A friend of my mom's who had attended IU a long time ago recommended we eat at The Trojan Horse, which is a Greek/American restaurant, so we did.
We all loved Comedy of Errors and after the show, while standing outside the theater my mom decided it would be a good time to do some on-campus gardening....aka stealing. So now there is an Indiana sweet potato vine in Arkansas. :)
After a wonderful visit with everyone they went home on Sunday morning, driving to their different southerly locations. I relaxed/napped for most of the day after they left but in the evening I got a second wind which meant it was time to pack. I spent Sunday night and most of Monday packing/boxing up the rest of my stuff. I had to get everything packed because I needed to move all of my stuff over to the permanent place I will be living in during the school year before I could visit my hubby in Oklahoma. But I got a great break on Monday for taco night. Everyone from work got together at a friend's place for our potluck taco night as our last big dinner together of the summer. We ate so much good food that the shop workers reverted back to their natural state of rest.....and no I didn't pose them like this.
Tuesday was moving day! It was a long day full of packing, renting a uhaul truck, and feeding good friends pizza and cookies. Thanks again to everyone who helped me move! After everyone went home Tuesday night I went back to my old place to finish cleaning and to make sure I had everything else ready for the next day. Wednesday was an even longer day but with a greater reward. Very early Wednesday morning I made a quick stop by the Bloomington Bagel Company for some awesome bagels and schmear for later and then I hit the road.
After nearly 14 hours of driving and plenty of road construction I made it back to Norman, Oklahoma. But one good thing about my long drive was rediscovering audiobooks. I had never been a big fan of audiobooks except for the BBC version of The Lord of the Rings since it is a full cast recording. But on the recommendation of my hubby and others I decided that getting an audiobook that would last me the whole trip might help me on such a long drive. Thanks to Audible.com I got the first book in the Game of Thrones series for free and since the audio book is 33 hours long it will last me on my return trip to Bloomington as well. Game of Thrones made me like audiobooks again. The narrator does an awesome job of distinguishing the characters especially because the story is constantly jumping focus between members of different ruling families in the book. But besides Game of Thrones the best thing about the drive was getting home. I was greeted by my husband with a very delicious pot roast. But before digging in the funniest thing about getting home was being greeted by my dog Leela. I have never seen her so excited to see anyone else; with her I was greeted by being pushed to the floor and being licked all over my face. I love that pooch!
The next couple of days reminded me of the significant difference between living in Oklahoma and Indiana. Northerners might not understand real summer heat the way Southerners do but they do understand the humidity. So after leaving the 90 degree heat full of humidity in Bloomington I was reintroduced to the above 100 degree very dry heat of Norman. So during most of the day you can find Leela laying like this on the colder hardwood floor of our dining room.
Just as Leela is trying to stay cool so am I. As part of my weight loss goal of reaching my goal weight by Christmas I was going to give myself a makeover by chopping my hair off and getting new glasses at Christmas too. But since the temperature in Oklahoma has been above 100 degrees for the entire month of July and it is continuing into August I decided that at least one of my makeover wishes had to come early. So yes.....I chopped my hair off. Below you can see....
or rather not see the new do. Sorry but the suspense will have to linger until I get back to Indiana. :) It is over a foot shorter but I am just glad to have my neck free and for the weight of all that long hair gone. Besides the dramatic hair-do change (and bringing my garden here back to life), Jeremy and I are just enjoying being in the same place. With only 3 weeks left in Norman before I go back to Indiana I plan to continue enjoying every minute of it.
Great post!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you posted some pictures from Indiana, since I never got to see the other sets.