Bucks County Interview

I had my interview with the Bucks County Playhouse today and I thought I'd tell everyone about it. It was kind of an ordeal, and turned into an all-day adventure. I took my camera... but left my memory card in my computer. >.< I took a few pics with my phone, though.

So I started out fine, got an early start. I left at 10:30AM, for a three-hour drive. I should have gotten there around 1:30PM, and had plenty of time to look around, fix myself up, maybe get something to eat.... Yeah, the best laid plans, etc. I got to the ramp onto 78 East and the road was closed... just... closed.... Apparently there was some kind of "incident". The only thing I can imagine that would cause them to close a major highway is a 750-car pile-up, or a nuclear waste spill. Well, it said there was a detour, but the only detour sign was right where the ramp was closed. There were no others to follow. What. the. hell. Well, my GPS kept looping me back around to 78E. After half an hour of driving in very big circles, I turned on the AM radio and it told me to get on highway 22. Ok. The problem with that is, they took allll the traffic from 78E and tried to funnel it through little towns with traffic lights. I sat in traffic for a solid hour. No. joke.

Well, by some miracle and by breaking many speed limits, I got to my 3PM interview at 3:05PM. They didn't seem to be annoyed, especially after I explained, so I'm hoping they didn't count my lack of punctuality against me. After I ran into the building and started talking to the wrong (very confused) receptionist, one of my interviewers came and got me. I talked to them for awhile, and they realized that I'm more qualified for a tech position than anything they were interviewing for. Sooooo, they called the TD and set up an interview for me at 5PM.

At this point it was only about 3:30PM, so I had plenty of time to wander around. I had to go to the bathroom like whoa, but the two gas stations in town had none. I finally found a coffee shop with a customers-only bathroom, so I bought a coffee so I could pee. After my $3 urination, I walked around Lambertville for awhile (where the BCP offices are), but it's pretty small so I headed over to New Hope, where the theatre is.

Here's where I finally got to chill and take some pictures. It was an awesome little town. I really hope this job works out, just so I can walk around New Hope every day.

The first interesting thing I came across was... this....



After some research, I've discovered its name is Boomer, and it is a "19 foot long bronze beast". Interesting.

While wandering, I noticed that there were ice sculptures sitting around everywhere.



They were a little melty since it was 50 degrees out. There was an awesome one over in Lambertville that was a wine bottle holder, but I saw it right after the first interview and I was all flustered and trying to find a bathroom, so I didn't get a pic. It was very cool, though. Take my word for it.

The whole area was gorgeous, mostly because of the river.



That's the bridge between Lambertville, NJ and New Hope, PA. The theatre is right on the river. It actually used to be a mill, and there's a little creek beside it, too, that powered the mill.



While walking around, I went into a little bookstore right beside the theatre - Farley's Bookshop. It was totally awesome. There were gazillions of books, and it was just very laid back and smelled like a used book store. You know what I mean. Everyone likes the way books smell. If you don't, get a Kindle. This store had the best book ever.



Also, the best cat.



As soon as I walked in, she started following me around and meowing until I petted her. She followed me all around the store and looked very sad when I finally left.

Once I finished wandering, I went back to my car and got my stuff. There was another person interviewing when I got there, so I took a seat in the tech office. I poked around a little and stuck my head in the theatre. Once we started talking, he seemed impressed with my resume and experience. I knew how to do everything he asked about, and he said they were thinking about getting an Ion lighting console like they had at Clemson. I'm all about the Ion. He's not sure how many people he's hiring, or what his budget is, so he'll make decisions on staffing once he knows all of that.

Coming home, there were no traffic issues, but I missed a turn and my GPS took me along every out-of-the-way road it could, before finally taking me right through the center of Easton. I think it was punishing me for not following its directions.

If I don't hear anything from the BCP by Feb. 11th, I'm going to go down to Busch Gardens in Virginia to interview. I'm really keeping my fingers crossed for this job, though. I love the area, love the theatre, and could totally see myself there. I guess only time will tell!

A Quarter of a Century

So yesterday was my 25th birthday. I am officially a quarter of a century old. I can now rent a car and a vacation home. I could rent a car and drive it to a vacation home. It's a very big deal.

I didn't do a whole lot for my birthday. I slept till noon, and did nothing all day. When my mom got off work, we went to The Barnyard for supper. I love it there! I had Country Fried Steak and mashed potatoes. Of course I didn't take my camera, so I don't have a picture of the delicious. I do have a picture of my rather deadly birthday cake.




It's deadly because you have to have a shot of insulin ready after you have a slice. It's chocolate, covered in chocolate, decorated with chocolate. Yeah.
















For those of you in suspense about my life and career, I have an update. Anyone close to me already knows that my job in Wisconsin fell through. I was offered an interview at the Bucks County Playhouse, and when I told the theatre in Wisconsin about it, they told me they had to hire someone else if I was going to interview for other jobs. SO. I have the Bucks County interview in a few days, and I have an interview at Busch Gardens in Virginia in February.

I'm not actually sure what position I'm interviewing for at the Playhouse.... I had e-mailed them and said I was willing to do anything they needed me to, and I was called for an interview. I guess I'll just prep for every possible position, and find out what they want me for when we meet! Busch Gardens would be a stage tech job, but this is the third year I've applied for a position there, and this will be my second interview. Maybe the third application will be the charm! I would LOVE to live in Williamsburg. We went there every summer when I was little. I love Colonial Williamsburg, the Winery, the Pottery. There's a Golden Corral and a Zaxby's. I'd be working at an amusement park. I'd be super close to VA Beach and a few hours from the Outer Banks. I mean, come on. Who wouldn't want that life?!

So we'll see how these interviews go, and I will keep all of my fingers crossed that one of them works out. If not, I guess I'll just keep my few shifts a month at the Campus and get a job somewhere else to pay the bills and continue to add to my savings. Maybe I could get in somewhere else in Lewisburg. There's lots of quaint little shops and cafes. I could handle working in one of them a few hours a week.

Well, it's leftovers for supper and then out to the Smiling Chameleon Draft House with my friends for a belated birthday celebration. I'll get back to baking and hiking soon, so I'll have some more interesting posts!

Marriage

I haven't been baking lately, and it's been too wet and snowy for hiking, but I need to post something! There's been a lot of buzz lately about marriage equality. So... let's take a minute to talk about "gay marriage". First of all, I kind of hate that term. When two heterosexuals get married, it isn't called "straight marriage". I just don't get what the big deal is. Before I get into too heated an argument, let me share this link.

http://www.topix.com/issue/gay-marriage

It's a national poll on "gay marriage". I would love it if everyone could go there and vote in support of it, so we can show that there are more loving, open-minded people in the country than bigoted homophobes. When I first found that poll, the support contingent was over 1,000 votes behind the opposition. Now (at the time of this post) the support is leading by over 23,000. That's amazing!

Now on to my heated argument. My biggest pet peeve is when people try to use religion and the Bible as an argument against marriage equality. If we went by everything the Bible tells us, we wouldn't be able to eat shellfish or pork; it would be perfectly fine to own slaves; any child who disrespects their parents can be killed; and every man would have a bad-ass beard because shaving was frowned upon.

There's all that and more here. So the next time someone tells you the Bible says that God hates gay people, ask them when the last time was that they shaved, ate bacon, or had shrimp.

Even worse than the religious nuts going around misrepresenting the Bible are the people who claim that marriage is too sacred a union to let gay people marry. Yep, because straight people treat it with so much respect. If marriage is so sacred, maybe we should make divorce and annulment illegal. The next time some celebrity has a two-day marriage, maybe it should be illegal for them to ever marry again. The other argument is that only man and woman should marry because they can have children. So... anyone who is infertile or doesn't want kids shouldn't be allowed to get married, right?

As of now, only 6 states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York), and Washington D.C. have legalized gay marriage. Even in some of these states, there is a relentless procession bills introduced to take away the right. How would straight couples like it if the legality of their marriage could be taken away at any time, depending on which way the votes swing?

If any of the Republican presidential candidates that are running right now get into the White House, I'm fairly confident that not only will all gay rights disappear, but they will probably open up camps for gays to live in, so the public isn't further corrupted. Homosexuality spreads like a disease, you know.

So please, take a minute and vote in support of gay marriage. It's 2012. Some dudes marry dudes, and some chicks marry chicks. Get over it.

New Things

In an effort to blog more regularly, I am writing about new things in my life and new experiences I've had recently. I want to learn to carry my camera around more so I have more pictures to go with posts like this. If I blog about new experiences every week, I'd like to take pictures to go with it and the camera in my phone isn't going to cut it.

I've been trying to get out of my comfort zone a little and go to new places and make myself get out and do things. This past week, I tried two new restaurants, both in downtown Lewisburg, PA. The first is an adorable little Italian place - Vennari's. I went there after work one day since I wanted to go back to the theatre later to see Hugo. I had an eggplant parm sub that was pretty excellent. It's the kind of place that you can tell hasn't been redecorated since the early 90's, but has a kind of nostalgic charm. I would definitely go back there if the occasion arises.

The other new place I tried was the Cherry Alley Cafe. I had never even heard of it, but a friend invited me to lunch there. I had a Marinated Steak Panini and cole slaw. Oh. my. god. It was probably one of the greatest sandwiches I've had. Marinated steak (I think it was actually just delicious roast beef), tomato, roasted red pepper, mozzarella cheese, and onion jam on a ciabatta roll. It was juicy and fresh and amazing. The cafe itself is a little hipster place with an artsy atmosphere. The guy who took our order looked like he was about 15, and had blue hair and skinny jeans. Despite that, I could see myself killing a couple of hours in there with my laptop and an Americano. I'll definitely be going back - mostly because I want to try some other things on the menu (namely the pulled pork wrap, the grilled tofu salad, and the Cherry Ally salad).

Another new thing in my life is my amaaaazing new laptop. I was holding off on buying a new one until my old Dell died completely, but that wasn't far off and this guy was too good a deal to pass up. It's a Toshiba Satellite P755.



I had been looking at Dells, since that's what my past two laptops were, but to get all the features I wanted it was over $1300. I found this Satellite on the Office Depot website. I know, right? Who knew Office Depot was even still around?! But this one had everything I was looking for, plus some. It was half the price of the Dell, and they offered free overnight shipping. There was no way I was passing it up!

Well, I've spent most the day backing up and transferring files from my old computer, re-downloading programs, and getting my new Toshiba set up the way I want it. I still have to go through my music and get rid of some, organize it, and get it on this computer.

Be on the look-out for more new things in my life, and new experiences. Anything new in any of my readers' lives??

Cherry Run Hike

A hiking post!! No waterfalls, but at least I got out hiking again. It's been way too long. This was a super easy, flat hike on a well-maintained trail that is actually an old railroad bed.



I hiked this trail once when I was younger, with the Boy Scouts. I wanted to go back and since it was a fairly nice day I thought I'd get out. It was a little chilly, but as long as I kept moving it wasn't bad.

Along most of the path, it's just piles of rocks.



It's very The Hills Have Eyes. I kept expecting some inbred mole person to crawl out of the rocks and eat me.

Barring any mole person attacks, it's a pretty uneventful hike until you get to the old train tunnel. I remember loving this tunnel last time, but it's slightly terrifying by yourself.



That's the opening now. It used to be big enough for a train, but because of structural integrity or whatever, they filled it in so there's just this little 6-foot tube at the start of the tunnel. It's a little claustrophobic to start with, and the fact that the batteries in my flashlight were dying didn't help. It took all my guts, but I finally sucked it up and went in.

It's really not that long, but once you get through the little tube, it opens up to the original size. Have you ever seen The Descent? Well, a friend and I decided the things that live in the caves look like a cross between Voldemort and Smeagol... Voldemeagols. I'm still pretty convinced this tunnel is full of Voldemeagols.

Once I got through, the view from the other side is much less claustrophobic looking, but still kind of terrifying since I knew I had to go back through.



Since I didn't die in the tunnel, I thought I'd explore a little. On this side of it, there were a bunch of cabins, probably 8 or 10. There was no one at any of them, but there were a couple of cars of other hikers. There's an old railroad bridge over Penns Creek that I'm kind of in love with.



And the creek is gorgeous.



After walking around a bit, I headed back through the Voldemeagol tunnel and back to my car. On the way back, I got attacked. It was terrifying. I almost got my face licked off. I'm not sure where they came from, but there was a woman with a very friendly Jack Russell. He kept running up to me, then back to her. :-)

I'll definitely go back there soon. I want to do the 8-mile loop that I did with the Scouts at some point. Just up to the tunnel and back is about 5 miles.

I'm excited to be hiking again, and the next nice day I think I'll tackle the 7-mile loop trail in R.B. Winter State Park that I read about in one of my new hiking books.

White Chocolate-Cherry Shortbread Cookies

Before I get to this amazing recipe, I just wanted to update everyone on happenings in my life. My dad had his surgery two days ago. He had most of his esophagus removed and his stomach is now attached to his throat. They said everything looks good and they got all the cancer. We'll know for sure if it's all gone when we get the pathology report back. He's doing very well and recovering nicely. There might be a problem with his heart rate since his stomach is now behind his heart, but the surgeon didn't seem worried, and he said if it continues, they'll fix it with medication. So he has a minimum of 13 days left in the hospital, but he's doing well!

In other news, I got a call from the theatre in Wisconsin. I have to call them back today, but I think they're going to offer me the job! I hate to move so far away, but it's not for over 4 months yet, and I would only be there for 5 months. I also got an e-mail from a theatre near Philly. They're remodeling the theatre and hope to open this summer, so they'll start hiring staff soon. I'm keeping all of my fingers crossed that they give me an interview! I'd much rather move to Philadelphia than Wisconsin!

So those are the major events going on in my life. It's all very exciting! Now on to this great recipe. I wasn't going to post any Christmas cookie recipes since it's well past Christmas, but I love these! They can be made any time of the year, they're not just for Christmastime, so I thought it would be ok to share.



White Chocolate-Cherry Shortbread Cookies

Ingredients
1/2 C. maraschino cherries - drained and finely chopped
2 1/2 C. flour
1/2 C. sugar
1 C. cold butter
12 oz. white chocolate - finely chopped
1/2 tsp. almond extract
4 drops red food coloring
2 tsp. shortening
sprinkles, edible glitter, colored sugar, etc.

Method
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Spread chopped cherries on a paper towel to drain well.
- In a large bowl, combine flour and sugar. Using a pastry blender, cut in the butter until crumbly. Stir in drained cherries and 4 oz. of the chopped white chocolate. Stir in almond extract and food coloring. Knead the mixture until it forms a smooth ball, and the coloring is evenly distributed throughout the dough.
- Shape dough into 3/4-inch balls and place 2" apart on a greased cookie sheet. Using the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar, or your hands, flatten the balls.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes, until centers are set. Cool for a minute on the cookie sheets, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
-In a small saucepan, combine the remaining chocolate and shortening. Stir over low heat until melted and smooth. Dip half of each cookie in the melted chocolate and allow excess to drip off. Roll the dipped edge in sprinkles, edible glitter, sugar, etc., if desired. Place on wax paper to dry. Once dry, store in a cool place in an airtight container.



A few notes from my kitchen:
-To chop the cherries finely, I just ran them through a mini-chopper for a few seconds, then spread them out on the paper towels.
-I also chopped the chocolate in a chopper. I just used white chocolate chips, so there were some bigger chunks. For smaller bits, use bars of chocolate. (Chocolate chips don't chop well in an electric chopper, but I like the bigger bits.)

Enjoy!



*Update*

I just got off the phone with the American Players Theatre in Wisconsin. I got the job! So basically, I'll be living and working in Spring Green, Wisconsin from May 14th-October 11th.

2012!

Happy New Year, y'all!



I rang in 2012 last night at work. A Relay for Life team rented the theatre for a New Year's party/fundraiser. I have to admit, it was fun to watch the ball drop on a movie theatre screen! I also got to blast Lady Gaga as loudly as I could and no one complained.

As this is the second New Year that I've been blogging, I thought I would compare last year's list of resolutions and this year's. There are... a few similarities.


Last year's list, from my post one year ago:

1) Get in shape/become healthier. Cliche, I know, but for realz, I'm going to get back in a gym, become more active, and start to eat better.
2) Read more. A little less TV, a little more good, old-fashioned print on paper.
3) Continue to hone my skills and build knowledge - in cooking/baking, crocheting/sewing, theatre/electrics, etc.
4) Be a little more financially responsible and pay down some debt.
5) Be more charitable. I want to donate more of my time, money, and blood.


This year's list:

1) Get in shape. Yeah, yeah. Shut up. At this point, it's about not having a heart attack before I'm 30. I have a new workout routine mapped out. Let's see how long I stick to it.
2) Become more socially active/active in the community. I joined the community band this past year, but I really don't have anywhere to go or anyone to see. I need to crawl out of my cave once in awhile.
3) Travel more. There's so much to see and do that wouldn't even cost anything. I just need to get in my car and go. If I want to see the world, I have to leave my house.
4) Read more. I said this last year, too. I get on kicks where I read constantly, but then I go days or even weeks without cracking a book.
5) I'm not sure how to word this one, but I need to purge my life. I guess "live less materially" or "live more simply". Basically, I need to get rid of a lot of crap.


So I guess the only repeats are to get in shape and read more. As for the other three on last year's list: I think I've built on my knowledge in cooking, baking, crocheting, technical theatre, etc. quite a bit; I've paid my debt down some and haven't used my credit card in months; and I've donated blood twice since moving home and donated quite a bit of money to good causes this past year.

All-in-all, I call 2011 a success... even if I have two rollover resolutions, and have been essentially unemployed and living with my parents for months. :-P Hopefully 2012 will bring new opportunities, more willpower, and new beginnings!

Did anyone else make any resolutions??


Happy 2012!