It’s January 31st - the first month of 2006 is at its end. Outside my apartment the winds are howling like mad and the rains are pouring down - I went up to campus to work on the dance for Buenos Aires and read “Vinegar Tom” at the Library (I took the bus due to the weather), and even in the short walk from my apartment to the bus stop and the bus stop to the PAC and Library, I was blown this way and that and my sturdy trench coat was no match for the rain. If I had been a British Nanny with an Umbrella I would have assumed that it was the Second Coming of Mary Poppins for sure.

So, yes, January 31st. Valentine’s Day is two weeks from today, Evita opens a little over a month, and we’re 1/12 of the way through the new year. Are you doing anything for Valentine’s Day? I’ve been going over all sorts of romantic things I could do - picturing candle-lit dinners, sunset walks hand-in-hand with my true love, chocolates, teddy bears, champagne, kisses… Most likely my Valentine’s Day will contain none of these things due to lack of a lady to shower my romantic fantasies upon, but I still reserve my right to imagine.

Do you have your tickets to Evita? If not, you oughta buy them! You can order online here: http://www.tickets.wwu.edu/ (click on “buy tickets” and then click on “March” and select the performance date you want to see)

Today was a fun day - in Theater History this morning we watched some of the movie “Stage Beauty” which I enjoyed thoroughly, and for Puppetry we went to the new costume shop and molded our puppet heads out of clay - that was the high point of the day. For dinner I tried an experiment recipe based on the blender quiche I made last week that turned out pretty well. I ate some of that while watching the first half hour of the State of the Union, which I will not comment on because I do not feel like being political at this time.

After that things got rough - I braved the weather to get to campus as described in paragraph #1, but when I got there, nobody was there to work on Buenos Aires, and all copies of Vinegar Tom were checked out from the library, so all I got from my trip to campus was a heaping helping of wind and rain.

Tomorrow is the performance of my Twelfth Night scene for 361 - if you’re a Western person that’s free from 1-3, you can come sit in the audience and watch. I’ll be wearing a very colorful yellow and purple outfit that I picked up at Value Village yesterday that in itself should be some high entertainment value.

That’s about all I have to say for the moment. Ciao.

Another weekend, Another post.
My week of free time was followed this past week by little free time. This was the first week that we met for Puppetry since the first day, so I had two more classes than I’ve had the rest of the quarter. We haven’t done any building of puppets yet - on Tuesday we went down to the armory and saw a model of what the puppets will look like, and on Thursday we got into our puppeting teams (each puppet requires three people to operate, so we’re all in groups of 3) and learned some team skills. We made a team name (the Handsome Young Flockers) and drew a poster, and had some getting-to-know-you excercises.

In other theater news, we started choreographing the song “Rainbow High” for Evita, in which I’ll be one of six dressers who are so flamboyant that they’d make you watch The Producers and wonder why they made the gay guys so subtle. That’ll be a fun number, and not in the least bit stereotypical. In other other theater news, I found out the musical for summer stock will be “The Sound of Music.” Aieeeee! I’ll still try out, but it’s certainly not what I was hoping it’d be.

Friday was Jordan’s party, which was packed with theater people and quite a blast, and last night I watched the movie “Go” (which is a party in itself) with my roomie and his girlfriend and Kelsey and Richard, after which I went over to Random and Jessilee’s to watch “Kinsey.”

Today I’ve been watching Comedy Central all day - they’re having a marathon of Comedy Central Presents (Stand-up), which I always enjoy watching. If you’ve never heard of Demetri Martin, I highly recommend looking him up. If you like Mitch Hedberg, you’ll most likely like him as well. The more stuff of his I see, the closer he gets to becoming my Favorite Comedian of the Moment. During commercial breaks I’ve helped Greg move some of his stuff over to James’ room. Since James is pretty much never here (see previous entry on the dream that focused around that fact), Greg decided to move into that room - so now I’ll have my own room, Greg will have his own room 90% of the time, and James will keep doing whatever he’s been doing.

Also today I decided to change to a new AIM screen name, so I tried to sign up to be “Nathaniel Jones,” but that was already taken! So after trying a few variations that didn’t work I ended up with “Nathaniel J0nes” (the ‘o’ is a zero), so update your buddy lists if ya got ‘em.

Now I hear the sounds of Mitch Hedberg coming from the living room, so I’ll end this here. Ciao.

(for those that are curious, when I leaned against the wall just before sitting down to write this, I was poked by a push pin, and the title of this post is the first thing that came to mind as I thought of things analogous to the sensation.)

Things have been rather uneventful lately in the life of Nathaniel Jones. Last week I had only three days of class (no class Monday for MLK day, no class Thursday because my one Thursday class didn’t meet), and with the exception of a few plays to read, I didn’t have much homework to do. In addition, in Evita rehearsals, I had very little to do most of the time because they were rehearsing a dance which I am only in for a few measures, towards the end, which they didn’t get to until tonight. So I had entirely too much free time on my hands.

Since I had so much free time, I figured it would be a grand opportunity to increase the quality of my life-outside-of-school-and-evita (since before long I will not have a life outside of school and evita). For purposes of blogging, I’ll divide my areas of focus into two realms: physical and creative.

For the physical, I spent the week walking all over the place with my ol’ 5 pound weights so as to increase my hottness and add to my rippling muscles (maybe “rippling” isn’t quite the word to describe them… I guess they’re really more “jiggling” muscles right now). At the suggestion of Rodney, I went down to Fred Meyer and picked up some 10 pound weights and have been walking around with those since - it was difficult the first day, and by the end of the day of walking with them today my arms are a wee bit sore, but I’m getting more comfortable with them as the days go by. Also being lumped into physical, I’ve been increasing my intake of fresh fruits and vegetables (especially romaine lettuce, which I have discovered is delicious, and goes well with many things, as well as being a dandy salad on its own if you put some croutons in). Also in the culinary world, last week I ordered a nice blender from amazon, and today, after waiting around for the fedex guy to show up, it arrived, and I made a smoothie with fresh strawberries and bananas and some juice and yogurt. Yum yum. Yay for having new kitchen gadgetry!

In the realm of the creative, I’ve taken the first baby steps towards writing a musical as my senior project. The story, as it stands right now is this: a timid fellow is in love with a woman he has been admiring from afar, and as it is the Valentine’s Day season, decides to enlist the help of his friend, a ladies man, in woo-ing her. However, the ladies man sees the love interest and decides that he would much rather have her for himself, and so begins a plot to use the timid fellow as a tool to gain the woman. The woman falls in love with the man, but due to some misunderstandings and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the timid man thinks she is in love with the ladies man rather than himself, which leads to another misunderstanding which leads the woman to believe that the whole time the timid fellow was only working for the ladies man (who she, in fact, despises). When the woman and timid man figure out what the ladies man has been up to, the join together in a plot to teach him a lesson, which leads to more hilarity, and the ladies man gets his comeuppance while the woman and timid man live happily ever after. And I have a few snippets of songs spinning around my head.

Also in creative, but also in a third ’social’ realm, a while back I went on a shopping trip with Meredith to pick up some paints so that I can have a Finger Painting Party at some point in the relatively near future (within the next month is my aim). So if you’re within driving distance to Bellingham, you should plan on some fun with fingers and paint at some point. I’ll have more info when I have more info.

That’s it for now. B’bye.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr Weekend, all.
Here’s the poop on what I’ve been up to:
Thursday I slept in after staying up late recounting the tale of my strange dream here on the LJ (after which I went to sleep and had another dream, this time in which I got engaged. However, it was not such a wild story as to warrant a post of its own.), and then lounged around until it was time to meet the puppety group for another round of watching videos (or, as it turned out, turning on videos and then ignoring them and talking about balls). From then until 2am I read plays and worked on the monologue that I had forgotten that I had to perform on Friday, with a break in the middle to go to Evita rehearsal.
Friday was full of class, and my monologue performance went about as well as could be expected considering the lack of time I put into it (I got a C-). In between class and Evita a delivery man brought me my firewire card that I had been expecting, and since I had some time, I took my computer apart and installed it. Unfortunately, when it was all set up, I discovered that now there’s a conflict with my audio driver, and so in order for me to play sounds on my computer I have to re-install the sound drivers each time I restart, which is a hassle. Hopefully I can figure out a fix for this soon. After rehearsal a bunch of the cast went to Rudy’s Pizza and had some food and drinks and got to know one another a bit.
Saturday and Sunday daytime was spent playing with my new video capabilities that my computer has, and I put some old videos on my website, and created some new ones. Here’s the links:
A Very Bratty Christmas - from the video that was found in my new camera when I bought it at the pawn shop.
Marty: Vicious Kitten of the Night - a video of my cat Marty that I filmed during winter break.
The Internet as Performed by Roscoe the Cat - selections of internet movies recreated with my puppet cat
Great Advice - the first them I filmed on my new camera to test the special effects settings
Saturday Night I went over to Random and Jessilee’s place and watched the Reefer Madness musical with them and Nathan and Meredith, and tonight I went to see Brokeback Mountain with pretty much the entire theater department of WWU, followed by pool and drinks and social interaction at Abe’s. And now I’m back home.
Since it’s 4:41 in the morning, I anticipate that I’ll be sleeping in tomorrow as well, and after that I’ll be reading plays to avoid having to stay up till 2 the night before they’re due again. And now it’s bed time. Goodnight, all.

That was the question that began the three day long whirlwind adventure that took place last night between midnight and 8am.
The story you are about to read is true (most of it takes place in the dream world, so some details are blurry, but it’s my attempt at being as accurate as I can remember), and none of it has been exaggerated or fabricated.

It actually began the day earlier, when I found myself on a trip to an extraordinary city unlike any that could possibly exist in the real world - the buildings were painted all sorts of colors, and were built in a range of styles from all over the world. It was night time, and I was riding a raised train through the dark streets, lit by the colorful glow of the buildings below. Despite the brightness of the city itself, the stars overhead were clearly visible, and in between some tall buildings in the distance was a giant illuminated picture of Peter Griffin, advertising Family Guy on Fox, and in the distance behind that were fireworks. I walked sat on the train and noticed some people I knew from various times in my life, and so I chatted with them, and when the train stopped we all got off together and floated around the streets of this dream city.

When I returned to my apartment in Bellingham I was surprised to see that much of what had been in the living room (the TVs, the table, the couch…) had disappeared. Roomie Greg was not home, nor was New Roomie James, and so I sat in the remaining chair to try and sort it out. After a little while, Greg arrived home. He did not seem to notice the missing furniture and things until I pointed it out to him. He did not know where they had gone to, either, and we decided to ask James about it. The thing is, neither of us had seen James all week, and so we were not sure whether or not he even lived in the apartment anymore. And if he was not living there anymore, then we decided that we should move Greg’s stuff into that room so we would each have our own bedrooms.

However, we didn’t want to move all the stuff only to find out that James had just been staying with a friend or something, so the next day, we, along with a few other people (I knew who they were in the dream, but cannot remember now) went up to campus to ask the Housing People if he had officially moved out of the apartment. Campus looked similar to real life, except that there were many more buildings, and they were all built out of very red brick, and had English-style guards walking around. We kept going to different buildings trying to find out where to get the information. I remember that there were many different buildings and obstacles we had to go through, but the only one I remember in detail was one building that we went in, and TJ from the Dead Parrot Society was there collecting tickets. We explained that we were there trying to find out about the apartment, and he said that in order to find out anything we would have to buy tickets for $10, and we were trying to get him to let us in without tickets, but he wouldn’t. As we stood there arguing, a bunch of the British Guards came up a set of stairs, escorting a blend of people from Dead Parrot Society and Commedus Interruptus, all dressed in big fancy British costumes. The all came up the stairs and marched around the lobby area that we were in, and then went back downstairs, and all of the other people followed them down to watch the show. Since we didn’t get tickets, we had to leave.
Some more things happened after that that are just a blur (I remember going to the theater building and not being able to get in, and having to run around the entire building, and my body was being affected by gravity in a strange way so that I was unable to turn corners or stop, and so as I was rounding a corner in the parking lot I slammed into a parked car and set off the car alarm, and a giant mob of cops came and surrounded me - but I don’t remember how this fit into the overall plot. Now that I think of it, this might’ve even happened before I went to the colorful city), and eventually Greg and I went back to our apartment.

It was night time, and so we went to sleep. I couldn’t sleep well, and I kept waking up - once because Greg was snoring, once because my pillow disappeared, a bunch of times because I kept having strange dreams (within the dream) that were waking me up, and at one in the morning because Greg’s alarm went off really loudly. I complained because his alarm always goes off at one in the morning, and it really bugs me, especially since I wasn’t getting a good night’s sleep, and he was yelling at me because he said he has things that he had to do in the morning and can’t sleep in like me. I went back to sleep until normal wake up time, and Greg said that he was tired of living with me, and since we weren’t sure if James was still living here, he had found himself a house to move into, and he needed me to help him move his things there.

So that afternoon we took a bus to some remote part of Bellingham that I had never been before (it looked just like the part of Los Angeles where Josh, Collin and I had looked at an apartment that one time), and we walked and walked trying to find this house. Greg was getting impatient with the walking, and so he ran ahead so that he could take a look at it, and he left me in the dust with a strange rough ancient-looking dagger-like weapon. I tried to keep up, but lost him. I had a sort of rough idea where I was going, tho, so I kept on walking the way I thought it was, and eventually I thought I found the house, so I knocked on the door and nobody answered, so I peeked in the window to see if Greg was in there, but instead of Greg there was a young African American girl, frightened to see a man with a dagger-like weapon looking into her window. I decided that I’d best run away, but for some reason instead of running normally, one of my legs wasn’t working right so I had to sort of drag it along behind me, and as I was running I looked like some sort of hunch-backed monster shuffling along with a sharp dagger-like weapon. When I had made it what I thought was a safe distance away, I found a building with a stair case, and I sat down on the stairs.

An elderly man rode along on a bicycle, and he had a little mean dog on a leash with him. When the dog saw me he ran over and sat on the step next to me, looking kind of cute, but it was still growling as well. I asked the old man if I could pet it, and he said that I could if I pet him really quick, or else he would bite me. So I patted its head really quick and got my hand away before it could bite it, and then I got up to go back home, and the dog jumped up too, and it bit my shoe really hard and wouldn’t let go. It was a small enough dog that I could keep walking, altho it was an awkward walk since the dog was pulling my shoe, and the leash was very elasticy, so the farther I walked, the longer the leash got. Another man walked up to the old man with the dog, and I overheard them talking about how their different approaches to keeping college students away was going - the man with the dog was saying that he had great success by sicking his dog on people, and the other man laughed. I was going to turn a corner, and so I picked the dog up off the ground and tossed him back toward the old man, but the leash was so stretched out that it flung the dog really hard, and the two men hollered at me, and I ran around the corner.

I had no idea where in Bellingham I was, and so I just kept walking until I saw a sign that had the name of some other state on it, so I knew I was in the wrong spot, so I turned another corner and walked until I saw a sign that said “3rd Ave.” and had a sign with an arrow pointing the direction of 1st Ave, and I figured if I could make it to 1st Ave I’d know how to go the rest of the way home from there. So I started to walk up 3rd Ave, and it started going uphill very steeply. And there was forest all around, and I kept walking up hill, until I eventually got to 2nd Ave. When I hit 2nd Ave, there was a big busy street that I had to cross to get to a ridiculously steep hill on the other side, so I waited for the walk signal, and I ran and ran and ran to get across to the other side, and when I did I noticed that it was so steep that it had hand and food holes so that you could climb the street like a rock climbing wall. But I didn’t know any other way to get home, so I climbed and climbed and climbed. I don’t remember making it back to the apartment, but I must have, (I think the end of the climbing might have been climbing up the ladder to my bed), and I slept for just a little while before my alarm went off for class, so I got up, very confused about what was going on. Greg wasn’t in the room, and I knew that that must have been because he had gotten up at one in the morning. I saw Greg in the bathroom mirror when I walked out of the bedroom, and on my way to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal, I checked James’ door to see if he were still here. The door was locked. So I went to the kitchen, noticing that all of the living room furniture was back in its place, and I started eating my cereal, when Greg walked in and said “So, did you have nightmares last night?”

So that’s what happened to me last night. Today I was sort of sleepwalking through the day due to the overabundance of events during my sleeping hours last night. I got a nap in between class and Evita rehearsal, tho, so I was feeling well during that. After rehearsal I watched The Muppet Movie, and while I was watching it, James got home. Later on, Greg got home, and he asked if I had seen James, because he hadn’t seen him all week, and was thinking of moving into his room.

Did you notice how I used repetition of words and the words “strong” and “Week” as a punny antithesis? Take that, Shakespeare.

Since I last wrote, one week has gone by. In that week, I had the first week of rehearsal for Evita, the first meeting of Naku Tsuru, the first week of class, and all sorts of otherities. For more detailed accounts, read on.

The last post took place shortly after returning from the New Years Eve party. The next day was spent recovering from the New Years Eve party, so I spent most of the day at the apartment. I had been planning on running some errands, but I found out that the busses weren’t running, so even when I was feeling recovered, I was still stuck to places walking distance, so I picked up some groceries, and that was about it. That was the least exciting day of the week, but necessary due to the excesses of N.Y. Eve and the lack of sleep that followed.

Monday was a thrilling day. Before I went home for Winter Break, Hiro had showed me a box of watches that didn’t work that he found, and when I checked when I got back here, he had left the box here, so I had a box of broken watches. I was wearing four to each wrist because they’re nice bling. But then decided four broken watches on each wrist wasn’t very helpful, even to the pimpification it gave to my persona, so I picked out the watch I liked best and put it in my pocket so that I could look for a watch shop at the mall so they could take a look at it. With watch in pocket, I walked downtown to catch the bus to Bellis Fair. On the way I passed by Mallard’s Ice Cream, where they were tossing out a bunch of things in preperation for moving to a new location. I glanced into their dumpster and found this jolly fellow:

I imagined that such a friendly ice cream man should not have to go live in a land fill, I rescued him and brought him with me on my adventures of the day. We two fellows continued to the bus station, where we hopped on our bus to the mall. On the way I noticed that the ice cream man’s foot was broken, and only held on with a little bit of tape that had come undone, so when I got to the mall the first thing I did was go to customer service and get some tape to heal his wounds. Then I went to the watch shop they have in the mall, where I learned that the watch just needed a new battery, so I got the new battery, and had the strap adjusted so it fit my wrist, and then I had a lovely watch to go upon my wrist.

Then it was off to Value Village. I had been noticing that more and more of my shirts had been becoming ragged, with buttons missing and holes growing, and so I decided it was time to get some new ones, and also some new pants, because all of the pants I had were similar colors, and I need some variety. So at Value Village a picked up a mountain of new clothes, as well as a box to go on the TV I got last quarter that would make it handy to go to channels with numbers higher than 12. And because of the 99 cent green tags, all of it together cost about $20. Wadda deal. When I got it all home I tried it on to see how it looked (I hadn’t tried anything on at the store), and was pleased with almost everything (there were a couple shirts that I probably won’t ever wear unless there’s a costume that they’d be good for). Yay. So after washing them the next day, my new clothes made up my entire wardrobe for the rest of the week. Also on Monday, James, the new roomie, moved in. It’s still too early to say anything about James. Also Also on Monday I went to a little Arrested Development party to watch the new episode.

Tuesday was laundery day. Once I was finished with Laundery I went to IHOP for a late lunch, followed by “Twelve Monkeys” at Crystal’s house, followed by a race to campus in order to get to the first Evita rehearsal on time. First rehearsal was introducing the folks in charge, and beginning work on the music. I love the music, but some of the strange harmonies will be tricky. This’ll be a fun show.

Wednesday was the first day of class. Classes jumped right into the work, and by the end of my three classes, I had three plays assigned that had to be read by Friday. There was another music rehearsal that night.

Thursday I got to sleep in, because I have no theater history on Thursdays. In fact, I have no class at all on Thursdays except for Puppetry, which we learned isn’t actually going to meet like a class will - we just have some videos to watch, some things to read, and in a few weeks we’ll start to build the puppets for the show. Sweet. I also found out that I’m one of the Puppet Masters, which means that I’ll control the head and right hand of my puppet (if this were authentic theater, I’d have to work as a puppeteer for 30 years before getting this role). So that’s pretty sweet. That’ll be a fun show as well. Thursday’s Evita rehearsal was canceled, so I went home for the night off.

Friday was similar to Wednesday, except that instead of first Music rehearsal for Evita, we had the first Dance rehearsal for Evita. Also different from Wednesday - rather than having IHOP for dinner, I made from scratch baked Alaskan salmon and garlic mashed potatoes. It was so delicious that I’d say it was worth the two hours it took to make it. After rehearsal I came home and watched Eddie Izzard’s “Dress to Kill” DVD, and then ate a sandwich, which meant I didn’t want to go to bed for a while longer, so I wrote some more facebook poems until I was too tired to write any more, and then I went to bed at last.

Today I got up at ten, went to the gym, went to the computer lab, came home and had a salad and a sandwich for lunch, and then went to Haggen and Rite Aid, and got completely soaked walking back. What does the rest of the hold? Only time will tell. And I will tell, too, but I have to wait until after it happens. When it does, I’ll be back.

Ladies and Gentlemen, old man 2005 has shuffled off, and baby 2006 is crawling in to take his place. May he take better care of us than the old man did.

I just got back home from Brittni’s party (I got to Bellingham this afternoon). I think it’s safe to say that this was my favorite New Years Eve ever. Actually all of today has been pretty best-ever. The bus ride from Seattle to Bellingham wasn’t too exciting - I listened to stand-up comedy on my mp3 player the whole way (Brian Regan and Eddie Izzard). No big traffic accidents to slow us down, so we got to Bellingham a little after 2pm. Then I took the normal bus back to my apartment, where I unpacked some of my things, tried to find some party plans for tonight (didn’t find any), and then went to Haggen to pick up some dinner. I got the makings of a Caesar Salad, and a bottle of champagne to bring to whatever party I would find later.

When I got back to my apartment after shopping, I saw that Crystal had left a message on my facebook saying that Brittni was having a party. I had already called Lisette earlier because I originally thought that I might go to whatever festivities she was going to, but I hadn’t heard back from her by the evening time, and so Brittni’s party was the way to go.

I left for the party about 9, and the walk there was really astounding - it was pouring down rain, and there were massive puddles everywhere (some up to my ankles - my shoes and pants were quite soaked by the time I got there), and in the near distance there was some sort of fancy firework show going on. The mix of pouring rain, fireworks, glowing signs, and the music playing in my earphones made a really magical walk. The first part, anyway - it started to be not as fun when the fireworks ended, and a giant car-thing drove through a puddle near me, creating the tidal wave splash exactly like you see in the movies. But despite that set-back, it was a fantastic trip to the party.

When I got to the actual party there weren’t many people there, but it got larger and more fun as it went on. I stuck my champagne in the fridge so that it could be saved for midnight. I had a few drinks and had fun talking to people and dancing and whatnot (whatnot included getting a tattoo - made out of pen - of a big letter J, making me an honorary Jenna for the night) until midnight was approaching. I went to pull my champagne out of the fridge, but when I went to grab it, I noticed that it was gone! And then I saw a few people drinking from my bottle! So I was disappointed that I couldn’t pop the cork at midnight, but oh well. They had sparklers, and everybody shouted the ten second countdown, and I got piles of New Years hugs and kisses, and there was more partying and revelry.

The fun went on for hours and hours - and during those hours, I discovered that somebody had grabbed my champagne bottle by mistake because we had brought the same kind, and the other bottle was still in the fridge. By that point I had had plenty to drink and didn’t want to start a new bottle of champagne, so it stayed sealed, and now I have a bottle for some special occasion. At around 4 everybody was clearing out, and I was able to hitch a ride back to my apartment, where I got out of my clothes that were still wet from rain, puddles, and tidal waves, and then wrote this thrilling account of my New Years Eve.

Hope yours was fun as well.
- Nathaniel Jones