"has summer gone so slowly?"

Despite the boredom I encountered during the summer months, I did find some things to entertain myself. Beth and I dressed up 80's fabulous to go to a birthday party. I'm so glad I was only a child in the 80's.
Matt (Malcolm) gets into character reading some Jasper Fforde, apparently. I spent a lot of time with the Macbeth cast and crew. Now that the show's been over for a couple of weeks, I definitely miss all the quality time spent with these people. I loved watching the sun set from the hills surrounding the Castle as we put our makeup on and talked about our days. It was a great time to unwind and forget the world.
If you didn't know already, the costumes and makeup were inspired by the Goth crowd. Our witch trio grew close, and we enjoyed dressing up in high-heeled combat boots, fishnets, and tattoos. Though the boots made slinking around the Castle a little treacherous. And all of our flowing clothing struck fear into our hearts as it drifted too close to our potion fire night after night. This show was definitely one of my favorite productions I've been a part of.

Do I look like Satan's helper?
Christie (Lady Macbeth, above), Michelle (Lady Macduff), Say Jay (tattoo artist) and I became good friends during our production weeks.

Tales from the Twilight Zone

I can't say that I love my work. I really like the people that I work with, but during my shift we barely have any time to interact. I just ring up item after item after item. Not very intellectually stimulating. But there have been some bizarre occurrences, which is entirely fitting in a store of such a name.

1. The day after Peter Jennings died, my scary manager exulted: "At least he's a liberal. If the liberals keep dying like this we'll have killed them all off and we won't have to deal with them on our news anymore!" I couldn't believe my ears. Oh how I wanted to look up and say simply, "I am a liberal."

2. A young man asked me if there were any caffeinated drinks in the store. I told him no, BYU didn't sell anything caffeinated, and that the nearest source of caffeinated soda was J. Dawgz. He looked at me, slightly puzzled, and asked if this was a catholic school, or a mormon school or something. Was he abducted and dropped off on an unknown campus? I asked where he was from and what he was doing here. He said he was from California, and "just looking around". What did he think of BYU? There were a lot of people.

3. During Education Week, a notebook was left near my register. I did as Chris Clark would do and snooped inside. It was completely empty except for four steps written on the first page:
1) Listen actively. Oh, this could be about acting.
2) Be romantic. Hm, I guess not.
3) Kiss slowly. The moment when I started giggling.
4) Girls like the gentle touch. Well I happen to know several girls who dream about being handled roughly. With this last step, I cracked up and unashamedly showed it to all of my coworkers. I had been well rewarded for my snoopy ways.
What is more disturbing, that this guy felt the need to write these steps down for his future relationships, or that BYU was providing a class that taught these steps?

4. The bookstore sells the oh-so-popular undershirts which have lace on the bottom. They're long so that girls can wear them under the stylish shorter shirts of our day, and refrain from showing stomach and back. Cute and modest, perfect for the bookstore, yes? One of my managers, Phil, was accosted by an older woman who was hunting for the head manager of the bookstore. She held one of these undershirts on a hanger and thrust it into Phil's face, demanding to know "Do you know what this is?!" Phil, stating the obvious, replied, "It's an undershirt." "This is no undershirt. This is lingerie!" she exclaimed, her voice dripping with disgust. "I am ashamed that the bookstore would be selling such filth!" She marched on to interrogate the manager of the bookstore. Phil returned to the floor, only to run into one of the woman's friends who was holding a distressed jean jacket. Being distressed, this jacket had some 'dirty' spots on it. The second woman thrust the jacket into Phil's face, demanding to know "Do you know what this is?!" Phil, again stating the obvious, replied, "It's a jean jacket." "These spots represent manure, which came into style when that man threw manure at the Madonna, calling it art! This jacket represents manure on the Madonna! I need to see your manager!" A few days later, one of the bookstore employees was wearing one of those lacey undershirts, and was called a "dirty whore" by a customer. Crazy old conservative women.

At our staff meeting on Thursday, we girls had to get there early for a lecture on modesty. Carol, the scary manager, urged us to wear those wonderful undershirts with the cute lace at the bottom.

" He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person,...

...to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others-- the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad."

~Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

I'm the girl in the Edward Hopper picture again. Drinking coffee by myself in an empty laundromat, the reflected lights stretching into infinite abandonment.

I spoke too soon when I said that things were falling into place. I've had two major disappointments recently, and one minor one. I'm dealing with them a lot better than I would have a year ago; I recognize and truly believe that what has happened is for the best. But it still sucks.

In an effort to restructure my idea of what this semester will be, I've been trying to analyze what this crappy feeling is that lurks inside like so much green ooze. I thought it was just a mood, but perhaps I am really at a loss to define what it is that I'm doing with my life right now. I feel listless and unmotivated. What are my goals? To become a better actor, a better person, broaden my horizons, learn... On Sunday, in RS, our lesson was about the future, what to do when things don't turn out the way you expect them to, (namely, when you don't get married when you're at BYU...) One of the things which was stressed was that we should make ourselves as complete as we can, creating a strong base within ourselves; we don't need someone else to complete us. The idea of myself as a strong, independent woman is appealing. I have been trying to work on this, to make myself a more independently complete person. It doesn't work. I have heard this sort of thing in RS ever since I entered it Freshman year. I have been obedient and tried it. But life is made up of relationships. The most meaningful parts of our lives are our connections with other people. Yes, you need some strong roots, but you also need interaction with and nourishment from other people. Perhaps my problem is that everyone around me has something in their lives which drives them every day. Usually, for me, that something would be an acting class or a play. None of my classes are inspiring. As Macbeth winds down and Hamlet launches into weekly performances, I don't feel like I have a project which spurs me on, that thing which I'm passionate about, that I look forward to every day. And I'm at a loss as to what to do with myself. A relationship? That would be fantastic. A new challenge I have yet to explore. But that opportunity is one of my more recent disappointments, and I don't see a recurrence anywere on the horizon.

I guess I just keep going.