Afternoons in the Ice House

Everyone, meet Kava:

The Ice House is for summers.

Spring spring spring! I went outside this morning and looked at our back yard, horrified to see a huge patch of sand. What the hell happened to all the grass? It has not been so warm or dry that the yard would just dry up.



Suddenly I realized I wasn't looking at sand, I was looking at a huge patch of very tiny, very light purple flowers. Our yard is covered in teeny little flowers! From far away they look like the color of sand.



It was sunny and warm all morning, despite predictions of rain. It's just starting to look cloudy now. It's been a perfect day for planting the High Mowing seeds I got for free courtesy of Ben Hewitt, author of The Town That Food Saved. He came to the bookstore to talk about his book and gave out some free seeds. I only got to watch the first half of his talk, but I can't wait to read the book. I also did not miss the opportunity to talk to him and make a fool of myself. I have such respect for anyone good at talking to people they have just met. I am always an utter failure.

Spring also means it's tag sale season around here. In the past few days I've scored a rolling pin, a black glass bowl (Designated Popcorn Bowl), a spice shaker, two pairs of pants, 3 hand towels, 2 shirts, and a Teflon-free frying pan (finally!!). I celebrated by making rice flour pancakes this morning, which promptly stuck to the frying pan and made a big mess. But they were tasty, and not full of icky chemicals. I also started the process of prepping the cast iron frying pans that have been in the trunk of my car for a million and a half years. I guess that extra half year finally drove me over the edge, because I can't wait to use them.

To add to this wonderful day of good news and happy blogging, we found out we could stay in our Ice House until September!! That means I get to live all summer with a stream in my backyard and Frenchman growing veggies all season!! Plus, the cheap rent means more of my hard earned money can go straight to my student loans, which is both depressing and uplifting.

Another tag sale this Friday in Manchester! Woo! Wish me luck finding a food processor.

Winter to Spring, in pictures

Now's a great time to share some pictures from winter and remain hopeful of the coming spring.


The importance of storm windows. See that little etching on the lower side of the right window? That was done from the inside. All that ice was on the inside. The other window has a storm window on the outside, so it obviously stayed warmer.


The igloo ramp! The Frenchman used the top for snowboarding and Kava used the bottom for an igloo.


The snow is starting to melt around our tepee.



There's a stream in our backyard where Kava likes to play.


The bridge in our backyard.


Mini-lagoon.


Our house, from the bridge.


Spring tepee.


Signs of spring.

I can't believe we have to move out of this house in June.

I live in a Dorset horror flick

Driving home at night from the bookstore is a little freaky. The roads are dark and twisty and trees crowd in from both sides. They're the kind of roads where, if my life were cheap thriller movie, a ghost would suddenly appear in front of my car, or an ax murderer would pop out of the backseat (I guess it doesn't help that I never lock my car), or some psycho would start stalking me with his car and flashing his brights and maybe even run into me. Have I mentioned there's no police station in Dorset and no 24 hour businesses and basically no one around by the time I get home?

These are the kinds of things I was thinking about tonight while some asshole with NY plates insisted on tailgating me all the way through town all because I'm not going to speed. Sorry. Even if the roads weren't slippery, I probably wouldn't be speeding. What I don't need is a ticket, a deer plastered to the front of my car, or to slide off the road. And come to think of it, I bet that guy didn't any of those things either. Thus, I am a cautious driver. I also hate tailgating so much it's reason enough for me to just stop driving.

So I slowed down. He didn't get it. I brake checked him like nobody's business. No effect. If he had been any closer he would have been in the back seat of my car. Finally he passed me as we got into Dorset, 30mph speed limit, double yellow line. Good riddance.

The point of this post? Public service announcement. DON'T TAILGATE. It's annoying and dangerous and it will make people who don't even know you, hate you.

I know, I know, this isn't even a real blog post. But worry not! I have something special in mind for the weekend. Also I started a new book so amazing I want to memorize it and start reciting it on the streets like those crazy people in NY that are always yelling about the bible while everyone rolls their eyes and tries to ignore them. Yep, someday that nutcase you cross the street to avoid will be me. My parents will be so proud.

Ta ta for now faithful readers!

That green tidbit I promised to keep up with: So this one is stolen directly from the book Sleeping Naked is Green. It's just such a damn good idea that I had to take it up. During my morning showers, I do not turn on the bathroom light. There's enough sunlight coming in the window to see with, plus I love the calm and quiet feeling associated with darkness. Somehow it makes my shower feel more hushed. Yeah, I've been spending too much time around lighting designers. Anyway it's just one more little thing that can be done to reduce energy consumption in a daily routine. If I actually showered daily that is.

This is a post in which I rant a little

So some cattle rancher decided to follow me on twitter. How on earth did that guy even find me and why would he think it was a good idea? Was it the fact that my profile states that I'm vegan? This cattle rancher is an "animal welfare specialist" according to his profile. Right. What part of breeding and raising animals specifically to kill them for human pleasure is to be considered humane? Just because animals weren't raised on factory farms doesn't make it ok to kill and eat them. Listen, you don't NEED meat to live, and you don't need it to be healthy. Therefore, when you do eat meat, it is only for pleasure, and nothing more. That means that you raise and kill animals for pleasure. End of story. There's no animal welfare in that.

So I checked out his tweets and he put up this article about vegetarians who eat meat. Um... what? Sorry, vegetarians don't eat meat. Not to mention that the word flexitarian means absolutely zero to me. It means about the same thing as an animal welfare specialist cattle farmer. I'm so fucking sick of hearing about "happy meat" and how it's morally ok to eat it. How about I come over to your house and kill your dog and eat it. I mean, you gave it a happy life, so it's ok right? That makes it ok!

ugh.

Also, I read Michael Pollan's new book, Food Rules. Awful. It's just a (really)watered down version of In Defense of Food. Don't waste your time or your money on that one, especially if you already read his other books. It was kind of a sell-out thing to do; publish a book that takes exact passages from the last book he published, increase the font size, add a ton of blank pages and big pictures and then sell the thing for $11. Um... why? He should have just published an article in the NY Times magazine instead of a whole book. Why waste all that paper?

OK, I'm don't ranting now. On a lighter note, we may have found some roommates who want to rent the other rooms in our house but not actually live here. That is so awesome! What more could you possibly want in a roommate?

Ice House - Dorset, VT

Waking up is hard. It takes all night to make the bed into a warm, cozy cocoon and the idea of leaving it in the morning seems impossible. Even the thought of a shower isn't appealing. Going out in the morning with wet hair could lead to icicles, and having ice growing from my head isn't my idea of a good time.

Every morning I roll over and click on the mini heater, then immediately roll back to the heat of The Logger. I wait for the air in the room to get a little warmer before I even consider leaving the safety of the covers and the warm person I'm curled up around.

I stumble into the bathroom and turn on the shower. I brush my teeth as the hot water comes up and I slip out of my many layers of pajamas. The tub floor is freezing cold where the water doesn't hit it, so I jump forward to the spray of heat issuing from the shower head. I curl my hands under my chin and pray to the steamy jet of water. make me warm. If I'm patient, it works. The steam has to fill the bathroom before I'll let an inch of my body creep out from under the water so I can reach for the soap.

Getting out of the shower isn't as hard as getting out of bed. The bathroom is warm and if I've planned it right the clothes sitting in front of my bedroom heater are warm too. I scamper back into my bedroom and huddle in front of the heater to dress. The Logger is slowly waking and I huddle down next to him to soak in the last bits of sleepy heat coming from him and our warm bed, before heading downstairs to dry my hair in front of the woodstove.

As I brush my hair drops of water hit the woodstove and sputter, immediately turning to tiny steam vapors. I suppress the urge to hug the giant beast of warm iron. I'm so cold, all I want to do is wrap my body around it before I have to brave the chilly world outside. I throw my head forward and let the woodstove dry the underside of my hair. The heater in my car will take care of the rest. At least I won't need to worry about icicles this morning.

Ice House - Dorset, VT

I try not to swear too much in this blog and everything but:

Holy shit it's fucking cold in this house.

I'm sitting about 6 feet from the wood stove, which is cranking. It's so hot the kettle that sits atop it is at a near boil. The heat is just not reaching me, or my freezing toes. I was going to upload some pictures (finally), but damn it I am not leaving this couch or taking my coat off of my legs. If I get up for more than a minute I might have to warm up the spot om sitting in all over again.

Anyway I turned on my camera to see what was on there and I realized I had a TON of old photos that I never bothered to delete, even after upload. I was going through enjoying the old pictures of the plants growing in the greenhouse and the Levis kids looking so much younger than they do now, even though the pictures are not even a year old, when I stumbled upon it. My favorite picture ever! I had it as my desktop for months. I thought I had lost it when I had my hard drive replaced because I hadn't backed up most of my pictures last time I did a back up. I love this picture so much, it's just so freaking cute!



The point is, it made me change my mind. So here are some freaking pictures.



Brussels sprouts are so weird. I think they were a gift from outer space. Crash landing.



Kale forest

Ice House - Dorset, VT

My computer finally crashed for real. Dead. Do not resuscitate. I took a day off of work to drive myself and my poor little laptop to Albany, an hour and a half (two if you get lost, which you know I did) to the nearest Mac store. Turns out the hard drive had gone completely useless. I failed to ask if this could be because of all those times I dropped it, accidentally tripped over my backpack while it was inside, or jostled it on the subway. But that does seem rather likely. Turns out that even though my warranty was up, there is still a warranty on the hard drive, so I didn't have to pay for it to be replaced. The bad news is, I lost all the stuff on my hard drive. I did back most of it up over the summer, so I didn't lose much. Yay.

You may have noticed that I've taken down the daily-ish photo. I really haven't had time to deal with my camera (read: I'm too lazy to take it out and take pictures), and I've always been terrible at recognizing photo ops. I replaced it with books! Wonderful, wonderful books! Books you should be reading! Now that I work at the bookstore I am constantly reading (except when my computer is working and I'm giving in to internet addiction). Any spare time I thought I might have is devoted to reading (and the internet). But I like it. Anyway you can click on the link to get to a mini (very very mini) review of what I'm reading.

Other goings on include the mice in my kitchen. We caught three over the last few days and I dropped them off int he woods on my way to work, far from my house, and I hope far enough from other people's houses. I gave them a little talk about staying out of the road and other people's food. Just so they can't say they didn't know when they run into trouble. I hate hearing people say that humane traps don't work. Of course they don't work if all your doing is catching them inside and then tossing them into your back yard. They already know how to get back in. You have to take them far away. Or you need to make sure you seal up all of the holes where they are getting in. The Logger and I are going to make a trip to the basement and see if we can find where the little buggers got in. For the meantime we appear to have rid ourselves and our kitchen of daily mouse droppings.

I never really thought snap traps were ok. Even when I ate meat I would never have used a kill trap. For one thing, I'm terrified of them. But that's probably because my parents always told me to be terrified of them. My family used humane traps for a long time and to keep me away from the snap traps they instilled a deep fear in me. Even now when dealing with snap traps I tend t just drop things on them and then leap backwards at the moment of snapping. Yes, I've intentionally set off many of these traps when I find them in my own home. They're not only cruel to mice, they are down right dangerous, and don't try to get me to believe otherwise. Rat traps can break your fingers!!! So basically, live catch traps are the best. Besides getting a cat. And you just try talking the Logger into that.

Ice House - Dorset, VT

Well, I can check 'Find A Job' off of my list of things to do. I just confirmed my second job today. I'm currently working for a non-profit web-based company just outside of Manchester, and on Wednesday I start training at the bookstore. Pretty crazy. I'll be working 7 days a week, but only until January, so I think I can manage. I need the extra income to get more aggressive with my student loan payments. The internet job is so easy, I just sit at a desk for a few hours and handle paperwork and phone calls. I actually really like it, because I like the people I work with and I think the company does some really good things.

Part of my job is to call public schools and speak to receptionists to verify that the people who order from us are eligible for the discounts we offer. Navigating the phone systems of American public schools is a scary and frustrating thing. It takes forever just to get to a person at times. My time pressing buttons through the automation system is usually longer than the calls themselves, and for once I'm not exaggerating. There are some schools that take weeks of calling before anyone actually answers the phone. It's kind of scary when I think about parents trying to reach the people that are responsible for taking care of their children for most of the day. It would be like leaving your kids with a sitter and the sitter never answering the phone. I find it a little reckless actually. When I worked for a phone-based ticketing company it was my job to make sure someone was ALWAYS there to answer the phone, and that was just ticket sales. These are public schools I'm calling, and half of the time no one is there. Today I had a lot of phones answered by students, which I thought odd. Are schools saving money by having students answer phones instead of receptionists? Awkward.

Things at the Ice House are good. Still no internet. Luckily I've started using my personal laptop as my computer at work because I got tired of using slow machines, or using extra laptops that get taken away without warning. Long story. Anyway I can update my blog from work. Plus the bookstore has internet, so both of my jobs will keep me connected and I don't have to pay for it.

Speaking of awesome things I didn't pay for, my parents got me The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook by Jo Stepaniak. Amazing. I made this awesome cheeze sauce with pasta tonight because I was feeling lazy, and it was so good The Logger said that he did not need to add real dairy to it. I win! I'm looking forward to trying some block cheeses so we can have cheeze slices and mozzarella for pizzas. Yum. I was kind of thinking that I wouldn't ever feel like cooking after work anymore if I was going o be working so much, but I think I'd rather cook than do dishes, and since I always make The Logger do the dishes after I cook, maybe I will still be cooking. Anyway Jessie won't want to cook every night either and The Logger is pretty limited to pasta and burritos, so I don't think I'll be giving up cooking any time soon.

I guess that means my blog can look forward to more yummy recipes in the future.

Ice House - Dorset, VT

I moved! The Logger and I have moved in with The Frechman in Dorset. The house, like most of the houses in Dorset, is rather old. It sits right next to a stream and in the winter it was used to store ice for the town, thus my calling it the Ice House. I'm hoping it catches on, as houses seem to do better with names. It's an amazing house, three bedrooms upstairs, and two downstairs, but it's not huge. Still livable.

The Frenchman, also known as Jeremy, is French. Obviously, otherwise why the hell would I be calling him that? His son, Kava stays here on weekends. He is a painter, woodworker, and all around interesting guy. He's been living here for a few years, renting it from some friends. His accent is rather thick, even though his english is great, and the housemates often find ourselves thinking, "wait, what was he talking about?" I'm certain that the solution to this problem is to start thinking in a French accent when he's talking to me.

Our other housemates are Jessie and Pete Moss (I must include his last name here because it's such a weird one and I often call him by it), a pair of WWOOFers gone local. Sound familiar? They we working over at Teleion and a little with Theo for the summer and then decided to get jobs and find a place. We all get along, so it made sense to find a place together.

The house has no internet or cell service. This is kind of an issue. I need one or the other, preferably internet. My attempts to steal internet from the neighbors have been futile. Th person behind us has wireless, but it's password protected, which I don't understand. People around here don't even lock their doors, why put a password on the internet? OK, I realize that my trying to steal the internet proves that they do need a password, but the thing is, I know this town. I'm the only person around trying to steal internet and no one even knows I'm here. Plus, I wouldn't put a password on my internet because I think wireless should be everywhere for people to use. So unless people are downloading inane amounts of crap and slowing my internet down, I don't care if they use it. I always make a point not to do my downloading when stealing internet anyway, so no one would even notice if I was stealing it. So there.

Other than that, I'm really enjoying the current situation of my life. Today The Logger and I spotted some fallen tree branches near his mother's place, so I decided we better grab them before someone else did and we loaded them on to op his car and piled them in her driveway. The Ice House has a big wood stove in the kitchen and wood can be costly, plus the Logger has a chainsaw in his trunk, so why the hell not? And speaking of wood stoves, I made hot chocolate on said stove today. MMM!

So here's my super simple, super yummy hot chocolate recipe for winter warmth:
2 heaping T coco powder
2 T raw sugar
1 cup rice milk

stir up sugar and coco with a little of the milk to make a paste. Heat the rest of the milk up until it's steaming then mix it all into your mug.

Yeah, it's a really simple and obvious recipe, but holy crap, people buy hot chocolate mix and there's so much garbage in that stuff. Plus mixes are a lot more expensive than plain old coco powder.

Colony House - Dorset, VT

Oh the days have been flying by. It's already the end of the summer and our last show closed on Saturday. We've been cleaning up the playhouse and finishing up little projects, so the place will be ready for the Dorset Players to move back in for the winter. I finally finished the aisle lights, which have been a nuisance since the summer began. They look quite wonderful.

Alice came and went. I thought it was spectacular. The amount of talent and sheer force of will that went into that complicated show was amazing. I have some photos, which are a little dark, and a little color corrected, and not of the full stage, but it's what was managed. There was no time to take photos, except during a performance, so I never got to take any of my own, and I haven't seen any photos of the full set. It's a bummer, but the ones I have are ok.





Friday is the big day. The big scary day. It dawned on me quite suddenly that at 25 years old I'll be moving in with my 30 year old boyfriend and his mother. And I have no job. This is not where I planned to be at this point in my life, but I really hope that the situation will get better soon. I need to find a job first.

I'm sort of in this odd position between trying to decide whether I want to save up as much money as I can, as fast as I can in order to buy land. Or if I want to focus on paying off my student loans so that I can eventually buy land without my student loans in the way. It would be awesome if I could find someone who will lease me some land, with the idea that I would pay it off over time, so I could just pay both off at once. Because, really, smaller bills are better at this point. But like I said, the first step is finding a job. And a haircut. I need to get a haircut.

Colony House - Dorset, VT

OK, I've talked about my computer, now let's talk about my life.

Several things to go over:
1. I love Friday nights
2. Lobsters can cause nightmares, dirty looks, and unexpected reporters
3. A broken computer means hours of podcats which may lead to dietary changes that make your mother roll her eyes and wonder what she did to raise you so wrong.

Friday nights! Dinner! At Teleion! No, Earth, Sky, Time! The Levis clan has moved houses to be closer to their fields and never have to deal with cyber-creeps again! They have moved themselves and their WWOOFers into The Big White House. So Friday dinners are there, which means Slocum and I are there. The Logger can come too. I've had a renewed interest in cooking, even though I hate this kitchen and Slokes and I have been making some freaking yummy thing. Recipes later, I've got far too much to say right now.

There's a WWOOFer there right now who loves to sing, and has a talent for rewriting pop songs. So for the past few weeks I've had TLC's "No Scrubs" stuck in my head (only her version is No Slugs), and other equally irritating things. And I would find this endlessly annoying, except for the two things that make it tolerable: It's fucking genius and I can always go find Slocum and have a sing-along (which is actually more annoying for anyone around us, but somehow makes it better for me).

The lobster. Oh man, the lobster. So... I got this email. Actually, wait. Let me start here: I know that the number one rule of blogging is that you don't write about work. However, I blog about my life and my life tends to be wrapped up in my work and since my boss has the address to my blog (I gave it to him, he was curious, he got bored and never looked at it more than once, I'm sure), and I never say bad things about anyone, I often blog about work. I blogged about Teleion endlessly. Last year I blogged about the theatre. This year I saw no reason to stop. I still don't. Except for the lobster.

OK, I took the post down, so maybe you don't know what I'm talking about. There was an incident at work. It made me unhappy, it made others unhappy, I voiced my opinion, problem was solved. I blogged about my reaction to it, what the main issue was, no names, no finger pointing. It was a problem and we solved it. We were all at fault and we all realized it and changed what we were doing. Well, a reporter saw that post and emailed me. He wanted to write a story about it. He doesn't want to say anything bad about the theatre, he just agrees with what I was saying, and in Vermont, somehow this kind of little thing can become news. I guiltily told my employers, they were not upset and I remain silent on the issue until this all blows over. Meaning, I'm not saying anything more until I can put a link in my blog to the news article. That I started with my blog. Hell yeah. At least I'm not getting fired. It's not like it was a big deal, it's just that businesses don't generally want newspaper articles written about mistakes they may have made.

Fine, on to point three. Dairy and I broke up. When my computer died I still needed something to entertain me at work, so I decided to catch up on all the podcasts I had sitting on my ipod. Replacing aisle lights is not so bad when listening to Vegan Radio, followed by RadioLab (by the way I HIGHLY recommend RadioLab to everyone, as it is an awesome odcast that will make you smarter), followed by Vegan Freak. That's a lot of Vegan, and a little bit of science.

The thing is I haven't really been eating much dairy. Maybe a cookie or two that was lying around, but I never buy it, never cook with it, and wouldn't ever order it in a restaurant. I was eating pizza at changeover because the theatre bought it for us and I had no time to go home and eat anything else. My logic was that I wasn't contributing to the dairy industry because I wasn't buying anything, or causing others to buy things for me. And while I'm fine with the Freegan logic and lifestyle, I have finally become grossed out enough that I just plain don't want to put that crap into my body. Dairy is full of puss. And it causes lots of mucous. Mucous and Puss are gross words and I don't want to eat things associated with it. So there you have it, no more dairy for me. And don't start talking to me about cheese. Who the hell even cares about cheese? Sure it tastes good, but not THAT good. The only food that might actually be a true strugle for me to never eat again, and no way could I go through with it, so if I suddenly develope an allergy could you please just kill me? is chocolate. There I said it. You thought I would say eggplant, but I didn't. It's chocolate. And since Fairtrade dark chocolate doesn't have puss or suffering in it, I'm not going to stop eating it. Eggplant is still a close second though.

So Mom, I know you aren't a big fan of the veganism and maybe Dad and Justin just disowned me, but at least I know what's important in life: chocolate and eggplant.

High cholesterol and Alzheimer's

The Dorset Playhouse - Dorset, VT

The longer I am here the more I realize that it isn't my attachment to the people of the Dorset Theatre Festival that keep me coming back, but the place itself. I care so much about this theatre that it would break my heart if it were to fail. I love the history and I feel honored to be a part of it. I think we do good things here and with time maybe we can win back the audience that was lost over the years.

Some events occurred last night that made me question why I decided to come back here and work these ridiculous hours for so little pay. I put so much of my life and energy into this theatre, to be insulted for it is a major blow. It just made it so much more obvious that I'm not here for anyone but me and this place. I build relationships with the people here and make lasting friendships, but that feels so separate from my actual work.

The Dorset Playhouse - Dorset, VT

I've been experiencing this overwhelming feeling of being out of place no matter where I am. At the theatre I only feel right when I'm working non-stop during tech week. I feel weird at the farm because of all the new WWOOFers and the fact that they've moved the whole operation to The Big White House and out of Teleion Holon. I can't even relax in Colony House. The kitchen situation is not good and I'm the only person in the house who cooks for every meal. This is baffling to many people there and they often stare at my food as though I've made some kind of gourmet meal, when all I've done is put squash in quinoa. For some reason it makes me feel incredibly awkward.

I'm starting to realize just how much my living situation revolves around the kitchen. After being at the farm cooking has become even more important to me. I decided to do more cooking this summer and buy no pre-made frozen meals. They are pricey and not even very good. Not to mention how much healthier whole foods are. My meals have been revolving around what I can get at the farmers market, plus whatever grain sounds good to me at the moment. I feel really great about my food, but I've become less excited about cooking it in the Colony House kitchen. The fact that I'm the only vegetarian doesn't really help. Yeah, I'm sure that meat you made is -really- tasty, but amazingly I'm not even a little bit interested. I realize my aversion to meat is self-alienating, but I'm not about to fake interest in something I find repulsive.

I just feel like I can't be very independent right now and I have little control over my living situation. I can't wait to have my own meat-free, clean kitchen. I think a lot about when The Logger and I came back from New York and walked in the kitchen at Teleion and The Logger took a deep breath and commented on the good smell of a meat-free kitchen. At the time I just thought it was silly and cute, but lately it's become so obvious. I miss my little vegetarian community.

I think I'm just frustrated by the fact that I ditched New York over a year ago to seek out my independence and I've been enjoying my freedom. Now I'm back to Dorset and it's a lot like being back in college, which I never really enjoyed much anyway. Wha Wha, maybe someone should just call me a big whaaaaambulance.

Colony House - Dorset, VT

I can't believe I'm still in bed at 8:30. Lately I've been going in to the theatre at 8:00 and today I think I will go in at 10. The interns have arrived, as well as the cast of the next two shows, so things have been picking up rapidly. St. Nicholas opens tonight, so the past few days of my life have been spent in the dark, with 10 minutes breaks of sunshine every hour and a half. I was terribly worried about getting my job done on time for this show. I really felt like I just didn't have enough time, but it actually worked out great. Bradford usually ends up needing me to change most of the lights over the course of tech, but that didn't really happen this time. I only spent one night in the theatre until 1am, other than that I've been leaving at a reasonable time. Still after my 9:30 bedtime, but... this is theatre, not farming. We all have to be night people here.


This is the stage last week

Let me try and explain the layout of this show a little. St. Nick is a one man show, in which the one man (The actor's name is Jack Gilpin) is telling the audience a story. It's an intimate kind of story-telling and it needs an intimate setting. So we moved the audience to the stage. They are seated along the back wall of the stage and down the side walls. His playing area is pretty small and he has a chance to really look every person in the audience in the eye. It's so amazing and I think the people of Dorset are a bit shocked and giddy about it when they walk into the theatre. Anyway the backdrop of the whole play is the empty theatre. Bradford designed a bunch of cool effects that light up the theatre in interesting ways. I also got the wonderful project of cutting up Christmas lights and hiding them in the seats. I now know more about christmas lights than I ever really wanted to know and 5 hours of my life are gone forever to this subject. However, when we tuned the lights on the effect was so beautiful. It was exactly what Carl (director of this show) wanted to see.


The stage and its weirdo seating

I'm going to pause for a second here to explain that the average audience member of this theatre is... older. A few years past retirement. They are well educated and maybe a bit old-fashioned, and when they pay good money to see a show, they don't want to be offended. This means we can't have smoking on stage, we have to be careful about loud unexpected noises and, holy crap, we do not want to swear too much. Well, this show is about an Irish alcoholic. He swears a lot. Carl cut about 90% of the swearing out of the show, and though it might throw the rhythm a little, I know the audience appreciates it.

So, after we tried the Christmas lights for the first time, Jack turned to Carl and said "I think this is worth putting at least five 'cunts' back in the show." I would say the five hours of frustrating work I put into this look was all worth it just for that hilarious moment.

Colony House - Dorset, VT

Back in Dorset once again. I miss Teleion so much, but the people here are great too. Slocum is back and Marshall got recruited as the Tech Director. There are only a few other people here right now to start the season up. Everyone else is coming on the 13th. This makes no difference to me, of course, because I am the only person in my department. I only hope more vegetarian/vegan types come up with the interns, as I am the only one so far. Whatever, I'm not eating a single Boca burger this summer, I'm just going to eat before all of the functions.

I've been pretty busy organizing the equipment and fixing lights, which I love doing. I'm back to the basement again, working happily with my headphones on. I found my camera so here are some pictures of my work situation:


My office. It's cozy, but it's pretty far from farming.


Inbox


Outbox


And here's my room in Colony House.

I feel a little backwards right now. I left New York and I left the theatre in order to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I know I want to farm, but the only way I know how to make money is by doing theatre. It's this annoying back and forth thing. People will pay me to waste electricity, but not to grow healthy food? I say waste because good theatre doesn't need lighting it just wants lighting. It's true, I love doing this job, but I can't do it forever. It's not really where I want to be. If I knew I could have land somewhere and farm it, and then do theatre in the winter once in a while, that would be perfectly fine with me. But, Dorset is a summer job and as much as it disrupts the rest of my life, I would miss it. Theatre gets under your skin. You can only do it for so long, and if you try to spend those years getting away from it, something always pulls you back.

SoBro House - Bronx, New York

It is time for the last installment of Dorset pictures. The summer has officially ended and I am back in New York, so I better wrap this up fast.


This is one of my favorite pictures from the summer. Kevin, Slokes, Amanda and I decided to rive to Rutland to go to a porn shop. We had no real motivation for this, other than there was nothing else to do. We drove around for a while, got lost, and decided to ask someone if they knew where this store was. We found these two trashy looking girls at a gas station who were clearly high on something. It turned out that one of them worked at the shop and that it was right down the street but closed. As we walked away one of them yelled out "That boy was gayer than a two dollar bill!" Slokes yelled back "It's queerer!" to which she replied, "Bitch you can't afford me!" Still not really clear on why that happened.

Because the store was closed and we had driven all the way out there, we decided to go bowling instead. Cosmic bowling. Kevin killed us all, but it was a great time. We took many wonderful pictures. Never did get back to that shop, but my guess is that the bowling was more fun anyway.


The ice cream social at Angie's place. Lisa came to visit us and we dragged her out to Angie's and ate ice cream and played with the dog and then tried to get Angie to play psychiatrist, but she wasn't having it. Not sure if that was the best ice cream bar I have ever seen, or the most disgusting. Probably both.


Farmers Market veggies! Jess got a crazy HUGE zucchini, Amanda got a skinny eggplant and I got a small, but rather average looking eggplant. We grilled them outback. Or rather, I grilled them. And I should never be allowed to grill anything. I may or may not have hidden several dropped veggies under the grill. Oops.

And that's that. Dorset. Now I'm killing time until I need to leave for DC, eating some beans and rice, which I put too much salt in. Hoping DC food will be better. Hoping I won't feel so lost once I get out of NY. Being here is always so hard. I never want to leave, but I know I can't stay. Transitioning is so tricky.