Hiatus...that's such an American word. I do find myself using American expressions so much more than my Australian born and bred brain thinks is okay. 2012 = twenty twelve. I'm so used to seeing dates backwards that when I see them the right way around I get confused (are we flying to Australia on 2/1 or did we miss the plane when it left on 1/2??). I say things like 'Monday through Friday.' Sometimes I don't even REALIZE I'm doing it (well, I did there, but I was going for irony). And sometimes I'm just forced to change so that I'm understood - 'I'll have a moke-ahh' (mocha), 'I'll have an appetiser' (where asking for 'an entree' will get me a HUGE main meal), 'Check that off the list' ('What's a tick?'), 'Throw it in the trash' (if you said 'the bin' it'd end up in your pigeonhole), 'Give me a cookie' (unless you want a delicious Southern treat known as a biscuit, usually served with gravy, but kind of like a scone), 'That's sick' (is a good thing, but maybe I'm just too old and it's a good thing in Australia now too)...and so many more...
Anyway, back to my point. My hiatus. It's been a while since I've written an update. I feel like most people say that quite regularly when it comes to blogs, and are always apologising for it. I mean, who can blame us, when people are obviously waiting on our posts with bated breath. (It's not a lie, even if it's just your parents!)
These past weeks have been busy and fun. Before Christmas I started up at my new old job, which is really great. It's so nice to feel like I'm doing something worthwhile again, instead of bringing complaining people food. At least bringing complaining people babies feels like an achievement. When delivering food to a restaurant complainer there were times when I would want to throw someone's steak in their face, but you can't really go 'here, catch' with an embryo or a syringe full of medicine...although it might be funny.
Matt and I cooked a very successful Christmas dinner. We were house sitting at the time, for a couple who live about 40 minutes away by train, or 20 minutes away by bike, but we were cooking the dinner at our place, not theirs. We don't own bikes, but they do, and they said we were free to use them. This sounded awesome, but became a problem when Matt and I realised that we're both shorties, they're both VERY tall, and there was no tool in their house to lower the bike seats. So we started at their place, mounted our bikes, and ventured forth to our place. Unfortunately every time we had to stop we would have to do a stunt man sideways fall, until our foot was able to reach the ground. I fell off once, which hurt but probably looked a little silly, since I was obviously leaning to the side and just fell off my bike...BUT we made it (and used our tool kit to lower the seats for the ride back)! For our dinner, we had about 10 different things that needed different kinds of preparation...Matt made a spreadsheet thing and we checked things off the list (grr) as we went...and it all came out okay. We were two chairs short, so we put cushions on our coffee tables and sat our least favorite (ahh) guests on them...I mean, guests of honor (help!).
Then Matt became the most busy, driven, workaholic I've ever seen. He became a team leader for [insert long story here]. Basically he worked from home, from the moment he woke up, until the moment he went to bed at night, recruiting, training, testing, reviewing and assisting around 60 people doing data entry, also from their own homes. Some people were great, and some people just suck. And poor Matt had to deal with them and when things didn't get done on time, lucky us got to do data entry to finish them off. Yay money, yes, I know. But boring shmoring husbandless time. And Matt did go a little crazy - he's too nice to be the leader of anyone, which is what makes him a good husband ('Can we watch Downton Abbey?' 'Yes' 'Can we get pizza for dinner?' 'Yes' 'Can we get a cat?' 'No'...still trying with that one though!).
So while I was husbandless I signed up for my first ever improv class. It was a four week course at the PIT, very impressively named 'Level 0: The Joy of Improv'. That's right, level zero. But that's what sucked me in - doing improv when you've never done it before is terrifying, and calling it something that sounds as unintimidating as that was very smart of them. So I started, once a week for four weeks. And it was great. It's pretty much just a bunch of adults standing around in a circle playing games. I liked it 'cause I got to pretend to be Snow White, and a British woman who lost her dog, and a sexy Southern woman named Sugar who has a pet lion. Basically I got to be silly and it's terribly fun to be silly when you're grown up!
I also started a reading group, reading plays instead of novels, made up from people from the classes I've been doing. We've read 'Wit' and today we're reading 'August: Osage County'. It's nice to get a group of actors together who all want to learn and help each other, and learn about writing and what's good and what's not and what we like and what we don't like. And we get to do it while we drink, which is even more fun. I think drinking in auditions should be encouraged - they should have a shots station on the way into the room!
Matt and I are starting our own theatre company - we've already decided on our first play (which is still unconfirmed so will remain a secret). The idea is that we will have an Australian theatre company in New York, doing Australian plays with Australian actors (who are legally allowed to work in the US...). Hopefully our first show will be on around May or June. We're currently trying to think of an Australian-ish name for our company. We've learnt that anything with Australian flora or fauna in the title sounds like a kids group. I like 'Southern Cross Productions'...Matt thinks it's a bit generic, but I might convince him. If anyone has any ideas let us know.
And finally, we fly back to Australia on Wednesday! It's been a year since we've been home so it will be so nice to be in beautiful, clean, warm Sydney...to eat meat pies and have a proper selection of dips and rice crackers at the supermarket, to see SULOs on the side of the road instead of mountains of trash bags, to be able to say 'whacha doin this arvo?' and not get blank stares, to be able to share our niece's Bat Mitzvah and have fake Christmas with my family. Yay Australia, here we come!
