Monday, May 23, 2005

When you're here, it's all peaches and cream! But when you're not, it's all raspberries and tarts!

General Announcement #1) I am going outta my mind right now for reasons which only 2 people in the universe currently know of, and part of the craziness comes from the fact that I can't really tell anyone what I'm going crazy about. Now that's whatcha call a vicious circle. Just thought I should preface this blog with that information, so that you can make excuses for me because of my present state of mind.
General Announcement #2) I've tried to make it as clear as possible that my name is now "Peg-Leg Whittaker," but the name doesn't seem to be sticking. Would you like to know that name that IS sticking? Against my will? "Gimpy." Definitely not as cool as "Peg-Leg Whittaker."
General Announcement #3) Did anyone else watch the highly anticipated "Muppet Wizard of Oz"? Was anyone else gravely dissappointed? I only caught about 15 minutes of it, and it was crappy. Lame-o.
General Announcement #4) Maybe I'll go to film school in a year or two. Just throwing that out there.
General Announcement #5) Annie and I both have the day off and we're bored out of our bloody minds. We've been stuck in the house all day, and don't have the car, and I can't walk anywhere. Whaa. "We've got cabin fever, we're all going MAD!"
General Announcement #6) I apologize that a great deal of this blog so far has been complaining. *Ph-tooey* It's all been spit in the fire now and is disentigrating and neither of us shall have to deal with the unpleasantness of complaints any longer!

Now that we've taken care of the necessary business, I should like to bring up a subject most worthy of your attention. Pancakes.
The simple fact of the matter is that pancakes are deceiving. Pancakes, in general, have an innate sense of simplicity to them. Even world-reknowned chefs would have you think that the pancake epitomizes simplicity. But au contraire. Pancakes are one of the most delicate and pain-stakingly complicated meals to concoct. I'm just saying.

Think about it, won't you?

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Call where yer at and we'll come where yer to!

Yargh! All right me hearties, I've got some bad news and I've got some good news. What say ye shall I tell first? The bad news, savvy? Yargh, tis a sorry tale indeed. Twas nigh 6:30 yesterday evenin at me job, whilst I was a-pullin a pallet-jack o' pet supplies out to the floor. I went to turn the blasted thing starboard, but blimey if she didn't turn. Her handle went right up and the thing didn't stop till she'd run right over me right heel. Hurt more than a barrel of gunpowder shoved up yer nose. I hobbled into the breakroom and took off me shoe, and twas blood and carnage nigh worse than I ever seen! I couldna walked on me foot if the devil himself crawled outta Davy Jones locker and called me down to watery hellish grave below a' I had ter run like mad ter hide meself. And wha's the good news, ye say? Well, savvy, went to the doctor and nothin's busted up too badly...no chips er tears er breaks er rips. Justa right bruised Achilles tendon and a chunk o' skin gone. But the thing to rejoice over tis it 'appened at work, so me decent employer paid for the doctor and supplies, and for the next 4 days I'll be takin off. I musta signed me John Hancock well nigh 50 times today. I've got meself some crutches fer the next few days and a little somethin to stabilize me foot whilst she's healin. The brace they've got me in looks like a bloody moon-boot. Tis enormous...all she be missing is jet-packs on the sides. A whole lot o' truck fer a little bruised tendon. But they say she's got to heal right so I'll be a-hobblin' around for a while. And that, me hearties, is how I got so that they're calling me "Peg-Leg Whittaker, the Scourge of the Seven Seas!"

A little note fer all those to whom it pertains: Me cell phone is at last a-workin' again. So ye can call me on it if ye wish. YARGH!

Saturday, May 14, 2005

"Pray for adventures." --JD Taylor

Last night I had a totally new and slightly awkward experience. First of all, have you ever noticed how watching a movie is different from watching live theatre? Probably the biggest difference is that in movies, the actors and crew can't hear or see you, so you can say and do whatever you want and be completely candid in your reactions. Unless, of course, one of the actors is in the room with you as you watch. THAT is one of the weirdest experiences in the world, and that's what I did last night. Watched a movie while one of the actors was in the room. As a matter of fact, we were in his house. (His enormous, rich, taxidermy-filled house.) The movie was a short, rather creepy short film called "Dead West." It's also extremely difficult to be objective when you recognize the face of one of the actors as the guy on the couch across the room.
A friend of everyone's in the theatre dept. here, Ryan Wood, recently graduated and went down to Salt Lake to try his luck in the world of church film. And it totally took off, landing him roles in all sorts of things. For all you Mormons out there, he played Hyrum Smith in "The Work and the Glory" movie. ("You've got to stop beating everyone at stick-pull.") He just got done filming for another church movie in which he plays Oliver Cowdry, and they're still filming for the other "Work and the Glory" movies. But since he had a break, he came home to little old Rexburg, ID. In "Dead West," he plays a bank robber/murderer (creepy) and was shot AND hung. Exciting stuff, huh?
All his stories made me want to do the same thing...go down to Salt Lake, get an agent, make church films. How fun would that be? Maybe I will someday.

Second item of blogness, as I was sitting in the living room last night, listening to Brazilian dance music, sipping a virgin screwdriver (that's a drink) and playing "Pop-up Pirate Russian Roullette" by myself, it occured to me what a great day it had been. It was a day off for me and Sarah, and we had planned to go up to West Yellowstone for the day, but decided against it. Around noon, it was so beautiful out that we decided to get in the car and drive to the park on the other side of town. As we were climbing into the car I said "Oh, it's so gorgeous out here! We should have gone to West." She gave me this look and I got this big grin and said "Should we?" She grinned back and said "Let's do it." We ran back in the house to grab some more stuff and took off! It was so much fun. A great drive, and we stopped at the Playmill and said hi to everyone, and then we decided to go for a walk on one of the trails nearby. It was looking a little rainy, so we decided to only take the 1-mile trail. As we neared the halfway point, it started HAILING, so we started running. Life lesson #76a: "Running in hail is painful." We stopped under a tree to rest for a minute, and as we were trying to shelter ourselves and catch our breath, we hear the unmistakable roar of a bear, fairly close to us. We looked around quickly and couldn't see it, but then again, we were alone in the woods and it was hailing, so it was hard to see ANYTHING. We just looked at eachother and said "Let's go." We ran most of the 1/2-mile that was left of the trail, mostly because everytime we stopped to rest, we heard it again. But we made it back alive!
Then, we got home, and I napped and read and played and ate, and then we went to Ryan's.
My good friend JD says to pray for adventures. He learned that on his mission. So I have been, and I can't figure out if I'm having more adventures, or if I'm just realizing more what adventures I do have. Of course, some adventures I could probably do without...adventures like tripping over Alexis when entering Ryan's house and nearly knocking over one of two 3-foot tall vases, which are from 6th century China and cost $75,000 EACH, and which casually decorate the foyer. Then again, no harm was done and it makes a great story, so I'm grateful for the adventure it was.
I challenge you all to pray for adventures...see what happens. Unless of course, you want to live a safe--and dull--life, in which case, carry on as usual.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

I'm a human being AND a girl! That's a bad combination!

Hizzah for 2 blogs in one day! This one is actually post-dated. I wrote it about a week ago but didn't have access to the internet until now. So, here it is, with a few minor addendums as they come to me!

Well, dearest family, friends, loved ones, and visitors, my homeless days are over and we're settling in to our cozy new apartment! As I've been absent from this blog for a while, allow me to open this entry with a "turbo-update." All the important details about the life of Liz in one brief paragraph:
I'm living in Rexburg this summer, employed by what my mother affectionately refers to as "The Chief Minion of Satan," a.k.a. Walmart. I've discovered that I have a great love of philosophy. I don't have a significant other. My career onstage is carrying on, although it will have to be put on hold during the summer due to work schedule unless they start paying me. I don't have a car, but do have the happy privelege of access to one (thanks, Jagger). My weight and hair color have remained consistent.
Now that I've done that, I move on to tell my adventures from the week I spent "in limbo." There's actually not much to tell--it was a pretty mellow week. I watched 9 romantic comedies over the course of 5 days. Of course, that probably had a lot to do with the fact that I was running about a 9.7 on the S.F. scale. I also started my summer reading fest...check it out:
"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding (great and creepy)
"The Mother Murders" by Dale E. Gilbert (fun classy detective story)
"Briar Rose" by Jane Yolen (phenomenal!)
"Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn (also great...intriguing)
"Good Poems" compiled by Garrison Keillor (great collection)
and I'm currently re-reading "The Twinkie Squad" by Gordon Korman, which is fabulous.
See, while I'm in school, I have to read textbooks and assigned novels all the time, and I know that if I start reading a novel of my own choice, I'll neglect my homework. So I force myself to stay away from the library and my own book collection and can usually manage to limit myself to about 5 novels a school year. So as soon as the semester's over and summer is in the air, the public library becomes a temple of reading! (Is that sacreligious?) One highlight of my week was going to the Madison County Library and getting my library card. There were a few adventures involved in that morning...
The day was lovely, so I rode my scooter 15 minutes downtown. In fact, the day was so lovely that I was paying more attention to it than the enormous chunk of sidewalk that was sticking out and which caused me to take a total face-plant. I kind of wish there was some way to see how I fell; it was pretty classic. Front wheel cuaght, vehicle and passenger flip forward and then passenger rolls approximately 20 feet. Beautiful, although I did get a pretty gnarly scraped-up knee. The really mysterious thing is that something about the impact caused my water bottle to COMPLETELY DISAPPEAR. I don't know how, I haven't taken physics yet, but all I know is that I had my water bottle before the fall, and I didn't have it afterwards, and it was nowhere to be found within a 30-foot radius of the fall site. Maybe a team of diabolical villians de-hydrated it and then re-hydrated it with soft laboratory water, leaving it in a hightly unstable state, meaning the slightest impact causes it to vanish. That must be it.
Well, once I was safely in the library, I found that in order to get a library card, I had to have proof of a Rexburg address. This presented a minor problem in that I had neither a current Rexburg address nor a future one. The girl said I could use something with an old address and come back later to change it. Not being exactly prepared even for this, all I could produce was a little slip of printed paper from my purse. It read "This hereby certifies that Elisabeth Whittaker, address-blah-blah-blah, is an ordained member of the clergy of the Church of Spiritual Humanism with all powers and priveleges granted therein..." And it actually worked! Some of you may at this point be shaking your heads at my use of a fraudulent document to obtain a library card. I will have you know that it is NOT a fraudulent document; I really AM an ordained clergyman of the church of Spiritual Humanism. I was ordained online, just for kicks. One of those fairly pointless, whacky things I decided I just had to do before I die, and if I waited until I was almost dead to do all those things, I wouldn't be able to do them all. So I did it when I was 19. I figured it wouldn't do any harm; it's not the true church anyway. (Lightning bolt cue...NOW.)
I would like to conclude this blog entry with the documentation of a strange phenomenon I have recently observed in myself. Every few days or so, it's one of my responsibilities at Walmart to stock the paper goods aisle. You know, napkins, paper plates, toilet paper, etc. Well, lately, I seem to be having these awesome revelations about my life that only come to me while I'm stocking that aisle. They'll just come out of the blue. I'll be refilling the paper towel section when all of a sudden I'll think to myself "Hey, maybe I could be a motivational speaker." Or I'll be straightening the Kleenex boxes and the thought will come to me "I wonder if I could publish my writing for supplemental revenue throughout my life?" Or "Maybe in a few years I'll get an agent down in Salt Lake and audition for Church movies and get into them, like 'The Work and the Glory' or 'The Best Two Years.'" ("I like pie." "You sa Gad?") I wonder what it is about that aisle...maybe it's because I'm so surrounded by white. Lots of toilet paper and napkins. Anyway.
I close in the words of the immortal Jim Carey as he spoke them in "A Series of Unfortunate Events"...
"I'm sorry, I don't speak monkey. Banana?"
I love you all!