Every Thursday here at uni there is a programme invented to keep students from drinking on Thursday night. On a campus where everyone goes home for the weekend, Thursday is the night to go out and get trashed. But this alternative activity usually has a movie or a band and free food. Once they had lazer tag, another time Banachek, who I did go and see. (It was good until I realised he was a phoney.) This last week they had some sort of event called "Glow-Dance", the glow-in-the dark, blacklighted craze "sweeping the UK and Europe".
So, Europe only now discovered the rave?
Yesterday morning was my first Midsummer scene rehearsal. With half the actors. The difficulty of this situation is increased because I only have two actors. It wasn't a total waste of time, but it does not encourage me particuarly, especially as Ren, the missing actor, insisted this was the only time she could rehearse. I phoned, but I haven't heard back from her.
The afternoon and into the night was spent in CR with Nathan's family. His father gave him an absolutely horrendous haircut. He went from 60's Paul McCartney to GI Joe in a matter of minutes. Except not really, because Joe had a regular buzz cut, and this is a buzz cut with two inch long bangs. He looks sort of like a shaved carnie who forgot on which end the rat-tail goes. This morning, however, he's decided the bangs have to go, so he'll just look like he escaped from the military or an asylum for a few months.
Nathan's younger brother Ryan was over to do laundry and he brought his LOTR Monopoly game. I don't like the way they do the houses and motels in it: "battlements and fortresses", I believe, but other than that it's pretty cool.
Nathan's older brother Eric and his four sons, Kyle 12, Lucas 9, Oliver 5, and Parker almost two, arrived for dinner. That set, plus their parents, all living in a trailer with a small menagerie of animals is a frightening thing to contemplate.
Their sister Sandy, the youngest of the four, has decided she's moving back into the house. The reasons she moved out in the first place are a month old now and too complicated to get into. Frankly, Sandy scares me. She's absolutely ruthless about getting what she wants: to her, the stakes are always at their highest no matter what the situation. When she was younger, it seems that Nathan was fairly close to her and able to influence her for the better, but that doesn't work anymore and I think it hurts him. She didn't know this, but Nathan and I wanted her to do my hair for the wedding, but since she's not going to stylist's college anymore and lost her job we'll find someone else.
Speaking of the wedding, Nathan's mother is worried that since it's going to be a nonreligious ceremony it's going to be like the one she went to recently of one of her niece's. They announced they were going to have the wedding a week in advance and the whole thing was informal to the point of tacky. From that experience, she's convinced that's just how it is if you're not including the religious parts. How can we explain to her that it's pretty much similar to a religious ceremony but without a minister for an officiant and the word "god" ommitted? Well, I mean, we could say that, but it seems like the wrong way somehow.
So, I guess it's time for me to do a little research and see what I can come up with. Very few people in this country leave the religion out, it seems. I can't help it, I don't believe in giving lip service to something I don't believe in: that seems worse than nothing at all.