a new respect

Hey folks. I feel like I've been neglecting you since it has been five days since my last post and longer than that since a particularly interesting one! I'm hoping this week will not be quite so hectic though. I worked 65+ hours this week between my two jobs and that will not happen again hopeful. Well, it will come close but not that close. As you know, I"m now in rehearsal for The Merry Widow at Light Opera Works and am working several days a week at BEHIV. I have considered quitting my BEHIV job but frankly, I feel a sick need to push through this and prove to myself that I can be self-sustaining. I love my LOW job but when I graduate, if I get a job like the one at the theater I have now, I will have to work a second job. So I should get used to it now. Not all stage managers make a good buck after graduation. You have to work your way up!

So I have a new found respect for all those parents who work more than one job to support their children. It is self sacrifice at the greatest. I also have a new respect for people I know who have to work their way through school and occasionally have to change schools or drop out long enough to make enough money to pay for it again. I am blessed in my parents being able to support me through school with the help of the government. Of course I will be in debt for many years after graduation, but that was my choice. And now I know that I can work two jobs to help pay off those loans.

So tomorrow is Monday and I start another long day of work. But I'm excited because it is a full day of rehearsal, and our first staging rehearsal! I've never worked on a show this scale but this is what I'm here to learn! I'm not just an intern anymore, I'm an ASM with a lot of responsibilities and now I get to test them out in the "real world."

I'm still doing a lot of reading, btw. I just bought Harry Potter #6 but I'm not really going to work too hard on that until I finish some of my other reading. I'm picking up "Why I am a Catholic" by Gary Wills again because of some conversations about the Catholic Church and it's "archaic" traditions. I also am almost done with the Orestia (I'm on the Eumenides...) and have almost finished the first book of Riddlemaster. So I'm hoping to tie off some of those loose ends this week on my long El rides. That's the advantage of rehearsal outside of Evanston. I get more time to read on the train! I always try to find that bright side.

Anyways, have a wonderful week and I will try to put some more "interesting" posts (aka rants) up soon. I"m sure things will come up throughout the week.

OOh! That reminds me. I read this morning that 99 Iraqis were killed by a suicide bomber this morning. I read it in the World section of the NYTimes online. It was not frontpage news and throughout the day, I did not see a single news station report on it for more than 4 seconds. I have deep sympathy for the victims of the bombings in London. But sometimes it seems like we ignore the devastion in other countries happening on larger scales, just because they don't look like us or have the same ideological beliefs as the "Western" world we live in. It just made me really sad, just as all loss of life makes me sad. It's why I hate war and deplore the actions of many politicians in our country as well as others. My life is precious to me as are the lives of all those people I love. But its as though we have been desensitized as a society to see other people as not having lives. Of course, the "other side" is guilty of this as well. But that doesn't make our society any less disheartening.

I hope that makes sense and doesn't seem like I'm downplaying the tragedy of recent events on our soil and those of our English friends. That's not my intention. It is all loss of life which is horrible.

Okay, glad I remembered that. More opinions to come soon. Thanks for reading!