Shameless Promoting

A little bit of promotion for my team.

You know you want to join.

To skate.

Or ref.

Or volunteer.

Come check us out on March 10th.

You'll have a fantastic time!

The Bleak MidWinter

I don't know if it actually is MidWinter. What's the actual date of MidWinter? Seems like it should be halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Solstice, right?

Anyway, semantics.

It FEELS like midwinter. It certainly is pretty bleak with all the snow around. I'm desperate for spring. Desperate for warm air and sunshine.

Desperate to be back on my skates.

I've been doing a lot of work prepping for the 2013 derby season. NONE of it, thus far, as been track work. The majority of it has been marketing and PR related. How did I get that job, I wonder? 

Some of us are born into marketing, and some of us get marketing thrust into our unwilling hands and have to take the burning pile and run with it or get burned.

I'm doing my best not to get burned.

It's a lot of work. A lot more than I was prepared for. But, so far, so good, I think.  We'll see on May 11th - at our season opener - if I have been at all successful.

I've also had a fair bit of marketing thrust upon me at work as well. The marketing member of the board has stepped down and, for lack of anyone better, they've decided I will assume all of that person's responsibilities.  I'm looking at it as job security. 

This post has gotten away from me. 

I'm looking forward to Spring. That's really the point of all of this.

   

Upcoming Shows

I'm in the midst of tech week craziness for the Odd Couple right now.  

This show is hysterical and awesome and great fun.

And a little stressful, I admit. I took on a bit more than I can chew. Stage manager, props mistress, scenic designer, lighting designer, electrician. Remind me not to do this again.

At the risk of drawing attention away from that awesomeness, I do want to point out for a moment my upcoming gig.  Which is also wonderful and delightful and beautiful in an entirely different way.

Eurydice. By Sarah Ruhl.

I'll wait for a moment while you go read about it.

........

Done?

This wonderful, delightful, beautiful, heartbreaking show is wickedly expensive to do. So, like all artists in recent times, my producers have started a Kickstarter campaign to help fund it. We're hoping at least to raise enough money to cover the rights. At most to cover the rights and the sets, lights, props and costumes.

Here's the link to the Kickstarter if you want to donate.

Please donate.

Thank you. 

Knitting Like Crazy

So far, all of my community involvement efforts have been knitting related ones.

Today, I take part in this:

We're knitting hats to donate to a local food pantry. 

The Phoebe Conundrum

As poor Phoebe in Friends discovers, there is no such thing as a selfless good deed.

I call this the Phoebe Conundrum: You do good for someone else, thereby making yourself feel good.  I feel this will play a large part in the Wina Motto for the year (the Year of Community Involvement.) The things we do will help others, but we will get some kind of pleasure or satisfaction from it ourself.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Just that it is a thing that exists and I'm acknowledging it.

That said, my first small project for the YoCI is done. (YoCI, what a crappy acronym. I'll find something better.) 

My friend Nicci has a friend who is going through a rough time at present. Her three-year-old daughter is in the hospital undergoing treatment for brain cancer. She has begun chemo and radiation and has begun to lose her hair. Nicci has asked me to knit a hat to keep her little head warm in the hospital. 

So this hat:

and these little slippers:

are going off to little Miya to keep her little head and feet warm while she gets her treatment. 

One request of you, dear Readers. Please keep Miss Miya in your thoughts. The doctors seem hopeful that she will pull through this. 

Happy New Year!

One of my very close friends,Whitney, and I have a New Year's tradition: instead of making resolutions that we won't keep, we make mottos for the new year. It's a sort of catchy tag or label that we try to live by through the year. 

2012 was the Year of Choice Not Chance.

This year, to follow a year in which our faith in our government, general safety and common decency were shaken and stirred, we've made 2013 the Year of Community Involvement. We aim to make small or large efforts to do good close to home. 

As an effort to track these efforts, I'm going to create a label and I'm going to do my best to blog about them - whether they are small or large efforts. I hope you all will make notes in the comments (or send me an email or message on facebook, if you are friends with me personally) and let me know what changes you are making in your area. 

Let's make 2013 brighter and happier for everyone around us!

Migraines

     This is more sort of an entry for me to keep track of how things are going. You can read it if you like, but I won't be offended if you skip this one.

    I've been getting migraines for about fifteen years now. They weren't too bad at first. I'd get one every couple of months. It'd last for a few hours then sort of fade away.  Then I started working a lot during the summers in un-airconditioned theatres and I noticed the heat made them worse. Much, much worse. I started to get one a week. And it'd last for a few days. 

   And they got worse from there. 

They'd calm down a bit in the winter when the weather cooled. I'd still get one if I didn't get enough sleep or if the planets aligned just right or whatever decided to set it off that particular time. As I got older, they got worse. 

There was a two month stretch ending about a two weeks ago where I got them every day. 

About a month ago, I finally got in to see a neurologist. He put me on a new cocktail of meds and vitamins: 100mg of prescription Topomax (once daily, taken before bed,) 400 mg of Magnesium (once daily) and 400 mg vitamin B2/Riboflavin (taken as 200mg twice daily.) 

In addition, I have to make sure I'm eating regular meals. This is surprisingly hard for me. In my childhood, I was a good meal-eater. I rarely skipped breakfast as a kid. I ate lunch at school, dinner with the family. When I was in college, things got a bit off kilter. I started skipping breakfast in favor of a snack around mid-morning. Dinner went by way of a quick something after rehearsals or a show. As an adult, breakfast has been replaced altogether by coffee. And now the Topomax decreases my appetite to the point where I don't think to eat anything until about 3:00 in the afternoon. Evidently, the drop in blood sugar is a contributing factor to the migraines. 

So, regular meals to keep the blood sugar up and regular exercise to keep the sugar-filled blood flowing. The exercise isn't too hard, once derby gets back in season. (In the meantime, if anyone local is looking for a gym buddy, I'm available.) 

My clever, high-tech doctor suggested a couple of fun iPhone apps to track the suckers. So I have yet another anal retentive time suck in my life. 'Cause I needed that like a hole in my head. 

The results so far: Better.  I've improved from migraines every day to one or two a week. They've gone down from lasting two to three days (or more) to a day or so.  

The neurologist says to give the vitamins a good four months to really kick in. I have another appointment with him in April. So we'll see how things stand then. I'm hoping for enough improvement by April where I don't have to change anything.  I'll keep you posted.