Happy Halloween!!!

You can imagine a great picture inserted here from the costume party that I went to on Saturday night. I was Miss Alaska, and I got my photo taken with Borat, even before his movie comes out! But of course, I forgot to take the photo off of my camera, so that is not much help now. I'll be sure to add it to this post later on, but for now I wanted to say: HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

A bunch of my friends in Alaska are performing "The Mummy" today for school audiences during the day, and then some frightening performances in the evening. If you're in the Anchorage area, feel free to check it out! I just want to let them know how sad I am not to be able to see it, and I wish the whole cast a special scary final adieu to the production today.

Meanwhile, I think I'm going to dress up like Shelby in "Steel Magnolias" for my Halloween costume! We're in the final rehearsals before we open THIS FRIDAY! I've been remiss in my photo taking of rehearsals, but hopefully we'll have some promo shots or something soon that I'll be able to share.

***Here's the Halloween photo I promised--a day late, but so what?***

My morning routine

Well, even though I work as a temp, I have pretty much worked for the same corporation the entire time that I've been temping in Minnesota. I love it, because it still gives me flexibility, but it also allows me to get into a daily routine.

Along the way temping, I've made lots of friends, and there is a core of us (that keeps growing because we're so cool!) that goes for coffee every morning. I'm not someone that requires caffeine in the morning, and I often even get decaf, but I love having something hot to drink. I also love the morning routine of seeing everyone!

So I decided to document it in pictures:

Here we are, walking through the skyway to the Carribou Coffee (it's great, many of the buildings in downtown are connected by skyways, so you don't even have to go outside--mighty handy in the winter!):

Here's our lovely coffee spot:


Here are the spectacular Elizabeth and Melissa, two of my closest friends:


Here's Elizabeth getting her coffee:


Here is the happy bunch with coffee in hand:


Thrilling, isn't it? I know it's not high drama, but it's something I do every morning. Heck, not all of us even get coffee every morning, but all of us go for the walk! It's what gets me through the morning!

Mmm... mmm... good :)

Yarn treasure hunt?

Believe it or not, I actually went on a yarn treasure hunt a couple of weekends ago! My friend Sandra and I split it up over two days, since the shops were spread around the greater Twin Cities area... but let me explain :)

Basically, there were about 7 yarn shops that teamed together to have the first annual yarn treasure hunt. You had to go to each store to get your passport stamped, and once you had all of the stamps, you were entered in the grand prize drawing for $3,000 worth of knitting supplies! But not only were you getting your stamps, but each store had a clue that you had to solve. Once solved, you could then get a different charm in each place. It may not sound like it, but to anyone who loves knitting and/or crocheting, it was a great time! And the other cool part? Apart from the gas spent in driving to these places, it was free! And because I'm still fairly new, it afforded me a chance to see some different yarn places in the area. So I highly enjoyed it.

I meant to document our hunt through pictures, but I got lazy, so all I have is this one picture from the last yarn store we visited:

Snow?

Well, we certainly didn't get dumped on like Buffalo, New York, but I was not a happy camper when we officially had snow in Saint Paul before Anchorage! What the heck?



Of course, it didn't stick, and now we've just been having some rain, but there will be more snow in our near future... I guess I just have to become resigned...

Weekend training

Why hello! Rehearsals have started for Steel Magnolias, and it feels so good to get this show up on its feet! It's kind of funny though--the first scene I'm getting my hair done, so I practically sit the whole time (talk about tough blocking!). The group is fabulous, and I know that we'll probably part with tears at the end. So even though I end up being exhausted all the time (with work and then rehearsals), it's the satisfied kind of exhausted.

A couple of weeks back I attended a junior youth animator training (basically a course designed to be training for people who will end up working with Baha'i junior youth groups). It was the first weekend of a two weekend training, the next weekend to be October 20-22nd. There were actually quite a few of us, and some people drove quite a ways to be there. And it was great fun! I really enjoyed the course, and I'm looking forward to the second installment.

We, of course, took the requisite group photo, so I thought I would share!

Autumn in Minnesota

Fall has been well under way here in Minnesota, and it is truly beautiful here. What’s great is that, although it has gotten cooler, we are still having some warm days where you can just have a light sweater and you’re fine. And the colors of the leaves! So pretty! Last weekend I had a chance to go outside of the cities to a Baha’i convention, and the building that the convention took place in was surrounded by incredible nature. We were able to go on a bit of a nature walk, and I saw my first snake in the wild! Granted, it was a teeny thing that wasn’t poisonous, but I was excited all the same.

Another thing that I was able to do recently was to go to the Sever’s Corn Maze. This is where they take a big field of corn and create a maze that from an aerial view has a picture! How cool is that? Here’s what this year’s maze looks like from above:

I went with my friend Elizabeth and her daughters (her daughter Emma is the one in overalls and a red shirt--one of the cutest kids ever!). They were meeting up with people who are part of her mommy club, so it was really fun to go with all these kids. Not only did they have the maze, but they also had a pit of corn that you could play in, as evidenced below:

They had a petting zoo (with a kangaroo!):

And a hay ride too!



It was a perfect day, and as soon as we walked in you could hear the Dixie jazz band playing and smell the wares that the vendors were selling. I absolutely loved this afternoon in the beautiful Fall of Minnesota!

Photos from Cannibal!

Well, it's been a little while, but some photos were just recently posted on the Mechanical Division's website, the theater company that I did "Cannibal! The Musical" with. I think they're pretty darn funny, so feel free to check them all out!

As you may have guessed from lack of updates to my blog, life has been a little crazy! But I hope to put up some posts about recent activities sometime soon!