There's Nothing To See Here

Today, I felt quite adult.

I went to the optometrist (appointment scheduled all by myself), got a checkup, and got new glasses and contact lenses. I hate dealing with paper work and insurance. The guy selling lenses was upselling up the wazoo. I'm lucky I didn't take the bait (well, most of the bait), but it still cost a pretty penny.

Ah well, I'm all set with eye care for a good year.

But then my bank thought I was undergoing some suspicious activity. I think it's because my cards are still aligned with the Sioux Falls zip code, and a major purchase at a Rochester, MN Target may seem a bit shifty. Fraud protection called home instantly and my credit card account is frozen. I think I've gone through the necessary steps to "un-freeze" it. I haven't been using the credit card a whole lot (just for online purchases for books on my Monster Reading List and the new Fleet Foxes album!)

I'm going to the dentist on Monday, and I'm not looking forward to that. I'm flossing a lot more recently, as if they won't be able to notice the irregular flossing schedule! HA!

IN OTHER NEWS
I'm trucking along with grad school duties. I sent my head of program a 5 page document entitled: TIM _____________: A Life, Abstracted. I fear this is going way beyond what he's looking for, but we'll see.

I'm working on Stanislavski reading. I'm reading the new Jean Benedetti translation of An Actor's Work (which is a fusion of An Actor Prepares and Building a Character). The end of the first half was tough. The same jargon was repeated ad nauseum. This next section is (thankfully) different and stresses the importance of physical training (voice and movement) to stir the inner creative life. It's not as dry. After this, I still have Creating a Role and My Life in Art to complete, but I think I will take a break from Stan "the Man" islavski to dive into more plays and some voice work (Skinner and Hobbs).

Next week, I have a 5-day vacation. I'm going home, dropping off a TON of stuff, going through my belongings at home. On top of that, I'll be reading, reading, reading. I will take a break from reading to do more monologue poaching.

Today, I refined my spreadsheet for the reading list.

I have to figure out a better way to work through my monologue project (which I will perhaps describe some other day). Right now, I'm just copying/pasting the monologues in one large word document. It's not fancy. I'm not obsessing over the font and formatting (which, for me, is saying something). But it's becoming cumbersome to categorize them and keep track of the order and such. I think I'll need to create a spreadsheet, print it off, and fill in the blanks with a pen. That way, I don't have to worry about the order and categorizing on the computer screen (scrolling through 100+ pages ultimately). That can happen once I'm finished (who knows when that will be).

Another solution is to have multiple documents:

Ten Contemporary Rock the House Monologues_1 Minute
Ten Contemporary Rock the House Monologues_2 Minutes
etc. etc.

This could be a bit easier, but I'd still be dealing with a lot of documents.

This blog post is probably the driest thing you've ever read today. It's more for me than anything.

My goal for this "vacation" is to have a system in place for maximum monologue organization (and have a nice chunk of reading finished).

TIM: You also need to back up your files on your laptop.

Egad, I better make a checklist now.