You may have noticed today that I added a page to my blog called “Geocaching Profile” (under the about tab). You may be asking what this is.  So I figured that I should tell you.

For those who have not heard of Geocaching, it is a global GPS “treasure hunt” where people hide caches around the world and post GPS coordinates online so that other people can find them.  A “regular” cache usually is a watertight plastic container or a .30 or .50-cal ammo can.  A cache always contains some kind of logbook and trade items.  Most of the time trade items are simple things like lapel pins happy-meal type toys, and other small nick-nacks.  Some people also hide larger and smaller caches from 5-gallon buckets to tiny “nano” caches that only contain a small log sheet.

The official Geocaching website is Geocaching.com, but there are a couple other sites that have popped up like Opencaching or even Munzee, which is an odd derivative that involves using your smartphone to scan QR-codes.  Geocaching is by far the most widely used of the services.  Cachers can visit the website and get information and coordinates for the caches they want to look for, and you can even load this information on to your GPS or smartphone so that you can take it with you and not have to print things out.  The geocaching motto is “Get out and play!”

What does this have to do with me?  Well, I was introduced to geocaching by my father back when I was in college.  I did a little bit of caching with my friends while in school, and then it kind of fell by the wayside despite the fact that the old GPS unit that my dad had “loaned” me was riding around in the back of my car for years.  Then, for my birthday this year my in-laws gave me a new GPS unit that makes caching really easy, and it re-sparked the flame to go out and do it.  So, pretty much since my birthday this year I have been trying to get out every day and find at least one cache. As of this writing I have a string of 54 days with finds.  I don’t know if I will ever be able to put together a streak of finds that is longer than the 2115 days of slump, but that isn’t really the point.

What is the point? Well, it really is just to get outside and have some fun, which I certainly have been doing.  There are some challenges that cachers can complete.  Some caches require you to solve puzzles or complete challenges in order to find and log the cache.  Basically the game is based around goals that you set for yourself.  There really aren’t any big prizes, no one can win the game.  I suppose if you found all of the millions of caches around the world you could say you won, but there are new caches every day.  For me it is just something fun to do.

Well, I am not sure that this really is the right title for this post, but it is the title that came to mind.  If you don’t know what it means, well, you should just brush up on your musical theatre.

I think the text in the image says all I need to say.

So, you may have seen this image floating around the tubes, especially on Facebook.  I first saw it when it was shared by George Takei.  I have also heard that there is a version where Jesus’ second line is “Did I fucking stutter” but that is really neither here nor there.

In any case, the image sparked quite a long comment thread on Facebook, and it really amazes me how defensive people get.  I shouldn’t be so surprised I suppose, given where I live, but it annoys me to no end.  The worst bit is that everyone gets totally defensive for their side and in the process misinterprets things that others have said.

I just want to know how long it is going to take this country to solve this latest bit of equality issues.  We are a country founded on facing equality, from women’s rights to racism, now to sexual orientation.  How many times to we have to re-invent the wheel on this one?  We have proved that people are people and we have made it into law, why do we have to do it again.

I have said many times, at least in the USA we have freedom of religion, but we also have a separation of church and state.  You are free to believe whatever you want in your home and in your place of worship, but out in the real world you have no right to impose your beliefes on me or anyone else.  It also means that religious beliefs should not affect government policy.  Therefore, since in this country marriage is goverend by the state, not by religion, there should be no question as to people who are not heterosexual being married.

That is all, putting my soapbox away for a bit.

Ok folks, it has been quite the long stint since I last posted here.  Every blogger says it on a regular basis, but life has just been totally crazy.  My last post was in May, before I went to camp, before I got married, and before the current season at the theatre.  It was almost before the summer really started and now winter is starting.  I have been kind of bad about lots of things in the digital world of communication though.  I have been very slow at responding to emails, I have been behind on processing and sorting photos, and apparantly I am behind on getting videos together from the summer to go online.  Then there are the actual things that I havent been doing, like going to the gym.  Great.

So, will this just be a feeble attempt to try to get things moving on the blog again? I have no idea, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

So, if you got through that first paragraph and didn’t have a “wait, what?!” moment, you probably either already knew that I got married this summer, or you just missed that part.  Yes, since August 25 I have been happily married to Ruth and life is pretty good.  The wedding was beautiful, and everything seemd to go smoothly despite being out of the state at camp for the two months leading up to it.  We held the ceremony and reception at the Alta Lodge and we were happy to celebrate with friends and family.  Good times were definately had by all.  The weather was beautiful, the montains were beautiful, and the over atmosphere was great.  With a ceremony that we wrote ourselves, we were married by a mutual friend in one of the most beautiful places I can think of.  Don’t believe me? Here, see for yourself:

Here we are standing under the canopy that was built by Ruth's father, with our friend Warren officiating our wedding.

Working backwards in time from the wedding, the summer at camp was not one of the best.  Maybe that is why I refrained from writing during it.  I don’t know that I will say too much, though there is plenty to say about it.  The camps were under new ownership as of this past summer, and for some that transition was not so easy.  Suffice it to say, I saw some good friends mistreated in a very public manner and it got dragged out for the better part of the summer.  While I managed to spend the summer flying under the radar, there were grumblings about me as well.  Camp can be strange like that, it is just unfortunate and really hard when friends get hurt.

So let’s not dwell on the ugly past.  The theatre season is in full swing so life has been very busy.  Getting Annie up and open was a killer, but now there is a little room to breathe.  So in the mean time I have been prepping a bunch of my photos for my first ever gallery display!  I will be showing photos at the JCC in SLC for the month of January.  This is pretty darn exciting.  I have the prints on order and should get them soon and I am really excited to see them.  I am having all the prints done on metal with float mounts.  The test prints I had made earlier look amazing, it is a really cool finished product.  It would be hard to show what the prints look like in a photo, so any of you who find yourself in the Salt Lake area during January should stop by and see the gallery!

With that, I think that I need to stop staring at this computer screen. I have spent a lot of time in front of it in the past couple days. Besides being warm in bed sound much nicer!

It is hard to believe that the end of yet another season at the theatre is coming to an end.  This is going to mark the end of my fifth season at the Pioneer Theatre.  That is five years living in Salt Lake City, five years out of college, and five years living in the real world.  Five years is not a super long time, but it is nothing to turn your nose up at either.  It is kind of hard to believe that I am getting information about my five year college reunion.  I probably won’t make it to that since I just went this year to the big theatre reunion, but we shall see.

I often write about how time is such a funny thing.  Usually in relationship to camp, but it applies in all things.  Here we are at the end of the season and it feels like the beginning was so long ago, a distant memory.  At the same time, we actually have to go on a little longer since they added a show, but it will probably just feel like business as usual until we get to the end of that.

At this point I have been feeling like I just want to move on to that last show.  Not because I want to be done with the season faster but because I just want to be done with the current show.  We are currently working onSunset Boulevard which is to be followed by RENT.  There is just something about Sunset and the way that it has all been fitting together that has made it just a nightmare to work on.  it is a huge show, but nothing terribly out of the ordinary as far as musicals go for us.  It just feels like it has been a constant fight.

We were off to a flying start when the designer got into town early, I was even able to make time in the schedule to go to a Passover Seder.  Then the whole thing ground to a halt as hurdle upon hurdle was thrown in the way.  It felt like there was just not enough forethought that went into planning some things with this show.  I know that I am not the only person who feels this way as our new Sound Designer had to deal not only with the sound but also with projections for the show.  needless to say, we all have been spending long hours in the theatre and he was still there working when I left at 1AM last night (this morning).  Having a day off today could not be a more welcome thing.

I suppose that work cannot be completely fun all the time though I do try to have a good attitude.  It doesn’t always happen, especially when I am running on not the best nights of sleep and frustrating situations.  I still try really hard not to just grump around at people, but I know that I do from time to time.  Of course the next day I get a good night sleep and come in with a much better disposition which drives everyone else nuts since they are grumpy.  Go figure.  Sometimes I just have to remind myself that at the end of the day there will just be a whopping pay check with lots of overtime.

On the other hand, I take a day like today off and think about all the things that I still need to do.  I have two shows worth of photos to sort and get posted online.  There are a bunch of theatre department students who want them.  I have wedding things that I should take care of, like calling our photographer or checking the address list.  Yet I didn’t really do anything today except make breakfast and watch Stargate Universe.  That is how a day off should be right?  Plenty of time for everything else, just not today.

There are few things that truly make me upset.  The biggest is ignorance.

“…she [Anne Frank] died three days before the camp was liberated, it makes me ill.  They knew the liberation was coming and they still went to the gas chamers?!”

~A Patron after the show

Ok, so you sit through two-and-a-half hours of a wonderful production of The Diary of Anne Frank in Salt Lake City, UT and this is what I hear people saying as they leave the theatre.  Go figure.

Go figure also that this comment came from a woman who looked to possibly have been old enough to at least have been born shortly after the war, it would seem to me that someone of that generation should have a little more understanding of what went on.

It amazes me how many people are just completely ignorant of the things that happened during World War II, especially people who are my age or older.  Are events from less than 100 years ago so quickly forgotten all the time?  Did people not learn about this in school like I did?  Does world history not get taught as thoroughly when you move this far west in this country?  Seriously.  Is Utah just that sheltered?

I can’t imagine that all of those things are true or that this is an isolated case.  Mostly because I know that when the show was being produced in Indiana they received similar remarks and questions there.  I will be very intrigued to hear the talkback after the student matinee on Wednesday.

I am having a hard time forming coherent thoughts, can you tell….

This is a period of history that I am sure that many people would love to forget, but it is something that we never should forget.  Sure, it didn’t happen here, in the United States, but it happened.  Even more forgotten is the fact that it almost did happen here, with the Japanese.  How does it come to pass that over a span of over 10 years the world was plagued with some of the grossest violations of human rights that have ever been seen.  How can we combat the continuing threats of genocide in other parts of the world today when we can’t even remember one of the biggest?  Why is it that people just don’t seem to understand history.

I grew up going to religious school, “Hebrew school” as we called it.  I was taught there about the Holocaust.  In public school we read books like The Diary of Anne Frank, Number the Stars, and The Devil’s Arithmetic.  I know some kids who even read Ellie Wiesel and Schindler’s List in high school.  I am pretty sure that at some point in my public school career we watched Schindler’s List.  All of this is grounds for not only a great English class, but for great history classes as well.  Anne Frank was 13 years old when she was writing, and her words were more powerful and better written than many modern published authors.  She wrote a perspective on the war that we see very little of.  Most books and movies focus on the ghettos, the concentration camps and the war itself.  This look at a life of hiding, waiting, never being able to get away from the people you live with is just so different.  It also shows that despite some of the darkest times in our history, there is still some light.

The other day a colleague asked me how watching this play made me feel, did it make me upset, is it hard to watch every night?  In all honesty, no, it isn’t really.  This is something I grew up with, grew up learning about.  I am proud to work on this production, especially on nights like tonight when i know that someone was actually touched by the story.  Zachor – Remember.  To me, that is what it is all about.  We need to remember, and if this helps, then I am happy.

Are there still things that make me upset when I think about the Holocaust, of course.  Could I walk through the museum in D.C. or Yad VaShem in Israel without being moved, no.  It is part of our history as a global community and it is part of my history.  On Passover we remember the Exodus from Egypt by saying “I was there when God took us out of Egypt…” and I think that there are many who feel that the Holocaust needs to be remembered the same way.

As bloggers, many try to leave what they hope will be a lasting impression on the world. Some might actually do that.  We all want to be remembered.  The real question is, will anyone be able to do it the same way that a 13 year old girl did with a fountain pen and a diary?