UPDATE on my life and such :-)

October 14, 2014

Ah, precious naive girl. So very excited to turn in her urine to UCLA Medical Center
Ah, precious naive girl. So very excited to turn in her urine to UCLA Medical Center

Hey, what’s up? πŸ™‚ How are you doing? I hope well. I haven’t been great at keeping up & keeping current. (I’m behind on the blog, as subscribers, I’m sure you can tell with random emails popping up now and again as I go on spurts to try to catch up.)

In case you don’t want to read all the upcoming posts with the minutiae of my life, here’s an overview of what’s been going on. πŸ™‚

1) Kidney stuff (for those of you following the saga that continues to autopost each Sunday and Wednesday night) – spoiler alert – I started all over at UCLA. Surprisingly, it’s been going beautifully except there is one hold up. One of my tests – the 24-hour-urine collection – keeps coming back with levels of protein that are too high. We don’t know what’s up with that yet. So, that’s a bummer. Doctors are looking into it. It’s the last thing left standing between me and kidney donation. So, we’ll see…

2) Work life – In case you haven’t heard (though you probably have because I never shut up about it. :-P) – I recently finished working on a show about the Jackson family. If you know me (or have read the millions of times I’ve talked in this very blog about Michael Jackson being my inspiration to get into the entertainment industry), you’ll probably agree that it seemed so very fitting that my first credit with producer in the title came on a show about the Jacksons. It was dramatic, intense, time-consuming, and gratifying. And yes, I have stories about Jermaine. Let’s go out to lunch sometime, and ask me about him.

Oh, you know, just chillin' in the Batmobile. Whateva. ;) (Just another day at work :-P)
Oh, you know, just chillin’ in the Batmobile. Whateva. πŸ˜‰ (Just another day at work with the Jacksons :-P)

2b) More wonderful work stuff – Now that that’s over, I’m taking a little “break” (it’s in quotes ’cause I’m still working, just not *nearly* as many hours) getting to stage manage a children’s show – Charlotte’s Web – down in Orange County. Orange County is chill and cute. Theatre is beautiful and magical. And this is the whole reason I got in the business in the first place – to transport people to another world with the magic of theater. So, I’m extremely grateful that I get to be a part of this.

 

One of my many goals in life is to be a well-rounded individual, which to me, means that in a perfect scenario, at any given time, I should be able to tell you things I’m doing that fall into these categories: Creativity, fitness/athleticism, academic, and community service. So, let’s take a look at those 4:

Fitness/athleticism: Last week, I did my first ultramarathon! (50k – 31 miles) It hailed. It rained. I jumped over fire. There will be plenty to talk about, and trust me, there will be many blog posts about it.
I’m also signed up for Rock ‘n’ Roll Los Angeles on Sunday on the 26th (plus some upcoming Disney races). I have no idea which awesome woman I want to dress as this year for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Halloween Half. If you have ideas, give me a shout!

Aurora pulling up weight at Hercules HoistAcademic: I’m taking a class called Saving Schools at Harvard Extension School. It’s all about how we came to be ranked 32nd against other countries’ school systems. It explores the history of schooling and what we could possibly do to improve on the system. It raises a lot of interesting questions and has taught me that I know oh so much less than I think I do.

(It also taught me there are *so* many more problems than just class sizes or simple things like that – poverty, lack of health insurance, all sorts of other social issues are deeply folded in to student performance.) Anyway, more on that later, but it’s a pretty riveting class. I took my midterm last week. Hopefully I rocked it, but grades aren’t back yet. We’ll see. I’ll let you know.

Creativity: The New York Musical Theater Festival deadline to submit to the Next Link Project is November 3. I don’t generally like to talk too terribly much about festivals or things I’m applying to, because I get rejected a lot(!) It’s part of the business, for sure – but not one I love to publicize, because what fun is that, to admitting I’m a constant failure? πŸ˜› Anyway, I’m working tirelessly with any downtime to finish up my 3-person musical about an on-again/off-again love story. My favorite recent line I wrote, “with a million reasons to be mad, tell me why is it I’m sad?”

Community Service: Still going strong in the 52 volunteer activities in 52 weeks. I’m 41 in. So, I just need 11 more by February, meaning I should be pretty good. I’ve had some interesting experiences recently with Dining in the Dark (a blindfolded dinner for a charity supporting more independence for blind people), and handing out medals at the Long Beach 5k. I look forward to talking about those and more.

Random bonus thing:
Daddy and Aurora at Let's Make a DealVegetarian/vegan challenge: I said way back in 2012 that I’d been put up to this food challenge sometime in the next 5 years. I figured it was really time to do it. So, alas, I am doing it. I’ve been living as a vegetarian for about 2 1/2 months. My final 3 months of this are full on vegan, baby. This has been an interesting experience for me. And I look forward to talking about that as well soon.

Oh yeah, and:
Let’s Make a Deal February 12. My dad came out here and we went to a taping. Perhaps watch our episode and see what happens. πŸ˜›

I’m pretty sure that covers everything. πŸ˜›

And if you don’t know what I was talking about with subscribers earlier, you can subscribe to my blog (with either daily or weekly emails) using the little box in the upper right portion of the website. (And you can read all about “what’s the deal with subscribing” here.)

Please say hi in a tweet, email, comment, whatever you want. I’d love to hear from you! πŸ™‚ xoxo

6 thoughts on “UPDATE on my life and such :-)”

  1. So interested to hear about this class you are taking! One of the classes I’m taking for my PhD is on Current Issues and Trends in Special Education (seeing as that’s my major) so I’m interested in what Harvard has to say on that issue (which I’m sure is A LOT!)

  2. I’m sure I am biased, but you are AWESOME! I love you so much and I am very proud of you. Keep strong on being a well-rounded person. If only Planet Smoothie would open in Los Angeles, life would be complete. πŸ™‚

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