Saturday, May 18, 2013

What a Great Week!

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This has been a busy week - all in a good way.

I will confess that I am still not caught up on my "21 Moments" prompt writing yet. I thought I would be able to do it this week - get caught up and get back on track - but that hasn't happened. And I'm okay with that, because it's been a really good week. I'll focus on getting some more writing done tonight and tomorrow before work.

This week I had the pleasure of interpreting two plays. And not two performances of two plays - two different plays.

One play was "My Children! My Africa!" by Athol Fugard, put on by Profile Theatre on Tuesday. They've started a new program called Inside Out: Community and School Tour. The first stop was at Roosevelt High School, where Rich Hall and I interpreted the free performance. We had a good sized Deaf school audience and it was fun. The play is well written, well directed and well acted - I really like this play. The Deaf students, overall, enjoyed it and it was nice to see some of the kids I haven't seen for a while, and a few I saw not too long ago at a different production. This play is still running and you can buy tickets. And for signing audience members, Rich and I will be interpreting the play again this coming Thursday, May 23, at Theatre! Theater! at 7:30 pm.

The second play was "The People's Republic of Portland" at Portland Center Stage on Thursday. This is a one-woman show, comedy, and very funny. Lauren Weedman has done a great job of getting the people and things who really do "Keep Portland Weird" and she does it with humor and takes us on a fun ride. This was a challenge to interpret because there was no script, it's fast paced, and humor is a tough thing to interpret from English to ASL - but I felt prepared and I feel good about my interpretation. The play has a basic structure and some common stories - but the order and some content and even some of the stories are mutable - improv, stand-up comedy. So I prepared for this play by seeing it many times (I think 7 in all, including rehearsals). I had a blast interpreting the show and we had a large interpreted section - which was awesome.

I was able to do the two shows in one week for a couple of reasons. Normally I wouldn't do that - because theatrical interpreting takes so much time and focus. But with one of them being a one person show, that meant that I only had to juggle my own schedule for preparation - and with nine performances a week to choose from and because the rehearsals were open, I was able to prepare early and long for this play - on my own schedule. It was also made possible because Rich and I are a good theatrical team. We approach the work similarly and I feel our prep and theatrical interpreting styles are very compatible. He's  a good interpreter and and easy to work; I enjoy working on plays with him. This is the third Profile Theatre play we've done together this season and the plays are by the same author (that's what Profile Theatre does, if you don't know - they select one playwright for the season and present a range of the playwright's work) - so not only do Rich and I work well together, but we are familiar with the playwright's work and style. So theatrical interpreting this week was smooth despite being unusual in terms of interpreting two different plays in the same week.

This week I also had the pleasure of doing another job with a client I very much enjoy working with, and with another interpreter I haven't seen for a long time whom I also really enjoy. I can't and won't say anything more about that - it's all confidential. But I just wanted to mention that as another really positive and grounding experience this week.

Last night I also went to the opening night gala for "Artists Among Us" at Trinity Episcopal, where my partner is showing four cold wax and oil pieces. I love the four pieces she has hanging (the show runs through tomorrow). It was great to see all the different art and wonderful to see our friend Allan Oliver, a fabric artist, whom I haven't seen for awhile.

Then the final "great thing" was this morning. After talking to someone yesterday about the garden, I realized I really should harvest some of the spinach and lettuce and kale. I didn't want to kill off the plants and thought I should wait. But Betsy told me that the spinach bolts easily and I should harvest some - to not worry, it will keep growing more leaves. And in reality, it grows more if it gets trimmed! So this morning I decided to make breakfast with, guess what? Fresh spinach and herbs right out of the garden. I cooked them up with some Vidalia onions (my favorite!), added a little tumeric and sprinkled on some grated three hard cheese blend. Yum!

Oh - no - the actual final thing is that I also harvested some kale. We have two kinds growing and one of them has really taken off with the wetter and cooler temperatures (it was a little early for the plants when we had the 85-90 degree weather a couple of weeks ago). I had a bag of Tuscan (?) kale in the refrigerator and harvested a lot of ours from the garden this morning. So right now I have five trays of kale in the dehydrator. I'm making two flavors of kale chips - one made entirely from our garden. This will be fun and I'm excited to see how long it takes and how it turns out. The taste test of fresh versus bagged kale chips. And, yes, I did eat some kale as I picked it. We also have a big container of lettuce, kale, and spinach for salad from the garden. I do see that we will be eating spinach and kale three meals a day plus snacks, very soon.

A good week. And while not much writing happened, I did pick up a few inspirations from things I saw on my travels around Portland this week and I picked up some energy from all this goodness. That will have a positive influence on my writing and I'll be getting to that after a few errands and things I have to do to get ready for next week. Which will be capped off by an out of town writing workshop.

Things are looking good.
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