Mid-November

     Last Saturday night we went to go see the Mingo Valley production of "The Curious Savage", a play written in 1950 and performed ever since. Suzanna played the lead, a millioinaire widow named Mrs. Savage, Bennett played Jeff the WWII veteran with mental problems, and Paige played the nurse Miss Willie, Jeff's wife. It was a good show; with interesting quotes to think about, and the plot was about a common-sense filled widow and her hidden fortune, her scheming stepchildren and the quirky inhabitants of a psychiatric facility.
     It's sort of a funny thing about plays, though; they never quite fully capture the sense of reality of a book or TV show or movie; as an audience it's hard to trick yourself into believing the story is real. I think a lot of that may have to do with all the structure based in dialogue - it's hard to convey a sense of reality when every scene is a bunch of people in the same room talking to each other. Because in real life, we do other things while talking, we multitask. And that can be shown in novels and movies and TV episodes much more clearly than plays can. They're sort of like the entertainment-production equivalent of baseball. Fine enough once in a while for a casual observer, and wonderful for those avid fans, but for the general populace it drags on too long and seems sort of out-of-date and antiquated. (If you know people in the production, though, that makes it a lot better.)

     I'm done with biology now, so that's something. I probably won't know how I did for another month while the handful-of-projects-awaiting-grading stand in line, but it's good to know it's over with. Photoshop is coming along. It's very interesting, but complicated and intimidating.

     The BCM state tournament is this weekend, so everybody's heading down to OBU for some late-night basketball in Shawnee. (Elizabeth, Stephen and Jordan are all very excited.) Apparently they flipped the basketball and volleyball tournaments, so this will actually be like the 2014-Part II tournament. (See this post  for the March recap.) Hoping NSU's teams do well. It's the one time I ever accept and wear the RiverHawks label. Reminded of 1 Corinthians 10:31 when it comes to sports(and really, everything else, too.)
     (And maybe I'll be able to make the volleyball tournament as a Hillcat? We shall see....it got moved from UCO to Falls Creek, so sand instead of indoor. Which, in theory, gives me slightly better odds, having more experience in sand than indoors.)

     In SGYC news, I've looked over some school stuff for Ash here recently, glad to be able to help her out a bit. It's Mrs. Boyer's birthday, so just about everyone had to write something on her Facebook wall. Jon's doing well, and Amanda's having a baby. So are Matt Jacobs and his wife, and so are Dylan and Grace.
     This is weird, seeing everyone start having babies and getting married or engaged and everything....I just keep thinking of what everyone was saying in July; the buzzword (phrase?) was variations of "Don't outgrow us, please!" If I can be there this next summer, I totally will. But it's not really up to me, it's more of a "If the Lord allows, then..." like in James 4:15. But mentally I've been back in Mizzou pretty often here in the last few weeks.

     Rags has been awfully cuddly and shadowy. She's purring on my arms right now as I type this. It's really nice except for when I'm trying to do homework or something like that. We watched the Cary Grant movie His Girl Friday earlier tonight; I liked it a lot, she fell asleep pretty quickly.