Rehearsing on the stage!

In a very exciting development for SDG's Beauty and the Beast cast, we had our first major rehearsal on the actual performance stage last night - and all of the rest of our rehearsals will be on the actual stage. We have now moved out of the tiny dance rehearsal room at the Historic Hoover Theater and onto our large stage.... which will be made tiny by the GIANT set pieces we'll have on there. The tech crew taped out the positions of the farm house and the F.C. (Freakin' Castle), and we discovered that where we thought we could enter, there were now walls. Most of our big dances had to be reworked last night to accommodate the odd placement of set pieces (which I'm sure will look fantastic from the audience). I hope I can remember all of the changes for our next rehearsal. At least we're doing these changes now when we still have weeks to get used to the new steps and other changes.

Our vocal director, John, is back in town and reminding us of our harmonies. We aren't too bad, but will need to refocus on some dynamics and breathing. Singing isn't all about just having the right notes.

We've had a photographer in catching shots of our rehearsals - it's pretty neat to look and see a show build up from scratch.

Next week's rehearsals should see more of the actual flow - back to what we were doing in Hoover, but now on the proper stage.

Considering how many more weeks we still have, the flow of the show is very good and we're doing well on time, too. These next few weeks will just be polishing, which is a fantastic position to be in.

Lunar eclipse

This was pretty cool - I read about on the Internet yesterday, and my husband and I set the alarm for 3:30AM this morning, threw on some sweats and went outside to just look at the red moon in the sky for about 10 minutes. The view was fantastic - I can only imagine how neat it would've been if we had a telescope or binoculars, but even with the naked eye it was an awesome sight.

Lunar eclipses aren't rare - it's just rare to get such a good and unobstructed view of a full lunar eclipse.

Unfortunately, had a hard time falling back to sleep after that (the cat expecting her breakfast didn't help), but I think it was worth being a bit tired today.

Neck deep in rehearsals!

Rehearsals for Beauty and the Beast at Saratoga Drama Group are well underway. I'm doing a ton of dancing, and while I did have all my music memorized a few weeks ago - the dancing has pushed it from my brain. We have a night off of rehearsal tonight, so I'll have to sit down with my keyboard & plunk through my harmonies. That's actually a pretty big recent accomplishment for me - I've learned to read enough music that I can actually do the "one fingered bandit" on the keyboard (or piano - I just don't own one myself!) and plunk out notes.

I can even play a few songs, but nothing complicated like what we're singing in BnB. Once rehearsals wind down, I'll have to start practicing piano again. My 6 year old nephew plays way better than me - I'm sure he always will.

I had a few recent callbacks, but haven't been cast in anything beyond Beauty & the Beast. The last show I was called back for the director said I just had too many conflicts for October, since I'm going to the Grace Hopper Women in Computing conference and taking an acting class. That's okay - a break will be good for me, and there will be other shows! Also, having a break in my acting will give me a chance to see my friends in shows!

Anyways - tickets to Beauty and the Beast are more than 75% sold out for opening night (Sept 22), so call now for tickets or visit the website. Don't forget to say you're coming to see me!

FIPS 140-2 rough draft design posted!

I've finally gotten a rough draft design for the FIPS 140-2 work I'm doing for getting the Solaris Cryptographic Framework certified. It turns out we have to do some coding work, first, before we'll even be certifiable. I've tried to capture it all in the rough design, but I am new to the FIPS 140 world, so would love feedback from more experienced folks.

Another engineer will be joining me on the enhancements soon - yay!

If you're interested, design discussion is going on on the crypto-discuss at opensolaris . org alias.

Wonderful Town was Wonderful!

This weekend we caught West Valley Light Opera's Wonderful Town, a musical based on the play, My Sister Eileen, about two young ladies that move from Columbus, Ohio to NYC in 1935. I'd never seen the show before, so found myself in for quite an unexpected treat!

The sets by Stephen C. Wathen were, as usual, incredible, truly bringing you into the seedy little apartment in Greenwich Village. The street scenes were vibrant, the club was intense, and I even found the velocoraptors hiding in the trees in the opening drop. (Stephen's sets always have a dinosaur hidden in them somewhere for those of you with keen eyes).

Afton Bolz as Eileen Sherwood absolutely glowed with the uber-cuteness factor, even though she played being oblivious to the fact very well. Her light soprano voice balanced very well with Leslie Hardy Tamel's (Ruth Sherwood) rich alto in the amazingly well put together song "Ohio". These two actresses really brought me into their story, making it an absolute delight of a production!

K. Michael Riley was outstandingly sleazy as newspaperman Chick Clark, making my skin crawl every time I saw him make a move on poor naive Eileen. A part well played!

Jennifer Smith (Helen) and Jay Steele (Wreck) played off of each other very well, as a "living in sin" couple in NYC, always drawing attention during the cast-wide pantomime scenes, and pulling off lots of delightful shenanigans.

Other standouts include Caren McCreight as the NYC Tour Guide, Matt Tipton as a drunk *and* a police officer (and many other roles, as far as I could tell!), and Reggie Reynolds as Violet (a ne'er do well).

My absolute favorite part of the show was in the police station when all the Irish cops sang "My Darlin' Eileen" to a lovely girl they insisted was Irish. Jeff Henson as Officer John Lonigan really stole the show with this song, with his rich velvety voice and perfect Irish accent.

The show runs for two more weekends - it's well worth the ticket price! Please go out and support the arts!

On a related note, I'm very excited about rehearsals for Beauty and the Beast starting next weekend!

June, I hardly even knew ya...

Wow, what a month!

First, and most importantly, Mark & I tied the knot on June 2! It's a lot of work planning a large event from across the country, but it all just turned out so perfectly! We were married in Foster Park's Bridal Glen in Fort Wayne, IN - we couldn't have pulled it all off without the amazing help of all of our family and close friends.

After we got married, we ran off to NYC and Sonoma, CA to honeymoon for a couple of weeks. It was relaxing not being online, riding our bikes and enjoying long leisurely dinners with just the two of us.

In the middle of June, I returned to the office to find a backlog of several thousand emails. I've made a dent into them, but if you sent me something & never heard back - please try again!

I've been busy with work related to FIPS-140-2 certification of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework and fringe work related to making SUNWcry and SUNWcryr more accessible to the masses. I'll write up more about that once I know where we stand.

After all of that, I decided I'd captain Team Salty Dawgs again for the American Lung Association's 2 Rock Breathe Easy ride. It nearly killed me, but I did nearly reach my fund raising goal. Just a bit more & I'd be there. I do appreciate all the incredibly generous pledges I did get this year - the overall generosity of Sun employee's never ceases to amaze me!

I did the ride last Saturday - 66 miles in 5 hours and 10 minutes of ride time (6 hours and 16 minutes including breaks), 12.8 mph was my average speed, and I burned about 2500 calories. I'd really like to improve that time for next year so that I can get back in time to enjoy the post-ride festivities! As of now, I'll just try to get rolling about 40 minutes earlier ;-)

Calling all potential captains!

The campaign for this year's Breathe Easy ride is ramping up, and I will not be able to captain Team Salty Dawgs this year, due to the timing of my impending nuptials. I may still do the ride for fun, but won't have the time to organize a team or do fund raising. I haven't had much luck recruiting a captain for this two time top fund raising team - so thought I'd try to find folks via this blog. Anyone available to do a GREAT ride on June 30, 2007, willing to find some teammates and raise some funds for lung disease? I'll take things over again next year, but need a little help this year.

Any takers?