2012 Kat Recap

Soooooo.....2013 is almost over!  Thanksgiving has passed and now it's full speed ahead through the (super short) holiday season that will end with ringing in 2014.  I'm not exactly sure why it took the entire year to post the previous year's recap on the blog, especially since it has been posted on Facebook for almost the whole year.  I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the photos.  Dealing with photos is a pain. (Update - yes, it's definitely the photo situation.  I need a better filing system and/or I need to post this recap immediately after posting on Facebook.)

Anyway - here you go...this is what happened LAST year.  Stay tuned for a 2013 version in a little over a month from now.

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A couple years ago I started writing annual recaps on New Year's Day. (I did start writing this on the first but didn't have a chance to finish it until a week later.)  2012 was another year of travel and musicals!

The year started with an epic (and you know it really was, because I can't stand that word and wouldn't use it unless it were true) trip to New York with Lindsay to see shows.  I haven't been to New York since my mom and I went to see Lion King on Broadway in 2004.  Lindsay and I saw 9 shows in 7 days!  Did we eat?  Barely.  Did we sleep?  Not really.  :-)  I could go on and on about the shows but in an attempt to summarize I'll saw that the highlights were seeing the original cast of Book of Morman, meeting Alan Rickman, seeing a preview performance of the breathtaking cast of Once, seeing our friend George in Godspell, his Broadway debut (!!), and having him take us back stage and ON stage after the show.  There were so many amazing performances, and words simply can't do them justice.  

I do need to share that the SECOND Once ended, the entire house was up on their feet.  It was pure Broadway magic, and stage dooring that show was a blast.  It was only the third night of previews and only about 6 of us were at the door.  Some of the cast seemed surprised we even wanted to talk to them - let alone their autograph or their picture.  We had a lovely chat with Steve Kazee, where he told us his [now ex] girlfriend was from Bellevue (and then we felt incredibly stupid a couple months later when we realized we didn't IMMEDIATELY make the connection that he was referring to Megan Hilty #BroadwayFanFAIL).

We even managed to fit in all of the major sites, taste the best cupcakes (Georgetown), visited Mood, and saw some old friends.  I was able to see my Semester At Sea RA, who I haven't seen in 11 years, and had breakfast with his family on our last day in the city.  It was a crazy, wonderful trip

Over the summer I flew up to Sitka over the 4th of July weekend to visit with family.  This trip was extra special because I got to see (and hold and play with) my Goddaughter's beautiful newborn son, Tucker.

The next big trip was in the fall.  My mom and I met up with my Aunt Laurie and cousin Rachel in Florida for a week at the Disney World resort - a place I haven't been since performing there during my senior year of high school.  I learned that I could never live in Florida - the weather would eventually kill me, but it didn't kill the trip!  Highlights of the trip included the best meal of my life at Kouzzina (so great that we re-arranged our dinner reservations for the week and ate there again), visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios and seeing Disney World with an intent to actually *remember* it.  The Epcot Food & Wine festival started toward the end of our trip - we highly recommend it!

We ended the year with a family vacation to Disneyland in early December for "Christmas."  It rained EVERY DAY.  Highlights included seeing the new Cars Land, going to the newly opened LA Georgetown Cupcake, visiting Universal Studios and seeing Beth & Connor's new apartment.  Plus it was the first family vacation with all four of us since 2002.

I'm not feeling inspired to do a full stats list like I did last year, but as you can see, I took four trips this past year.  I saw 35 performances of musicals in 2012 and 8 other performances that were not musicals.  (43 total vs 28 last year.) 3 of those 8 were plays, which I think I will continue to see each year, but I still haven't found one that I've actually liked.  :-/

I was in approximately 15ish flash mobs.  (Flash mob math is tricky.)  This is actually right on par with last year - interesting.  Our Glee mob was outstanding and included a surprise proposal which has since been featured by today.msnbc and Huffington Post! http://youtu.be/nZqsVk4XYKk What on earth are we going to do to top that this year??  There were lots of mobs that introduced something new, different, or personally challenging, which I really enjoyed.

Other random things about 2012:

• Blueberry picking in Bellevue + ice cream maker = Blueberry Ice Cream! (so delicious)
• Met The Pioneer Woman (.com)
• Went to PAX for the first time
• Did the Puyallup [fair] for the first time
• In search of loukoumades (and other Greek fare) Jared and I drove to Greek Festivals in both Bellingham and Tacoma (since we were out of town for the one in Seattle)
• Video I shot with my phone on election night is on its way to becoming my most viewed video on YouTube: http://youtu.be/lpDk6NUrtGg
• I tried a handful of new recipes this past year...excited for more in 2013!
• There was a short time frame in 2012 where I belonged to 3 different gyms.  If you know me you'll know that this is hilarious.
• Instagram for Android :-)

As always, each year has its share of sadness but I'm grateful that as I look back over 2012, I see a year full of friendship and lots of laughter. 

One of my favorite pics of the year! This was a big deal because I rarely do costumes - let alone coordinate them with others. It ended up being really fun :-)

Love More, Hate Less

A collage of Once - starring Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti. You get an upgraded version of this pic because I didn't make the collage until mid 2013.

Another favorite pic from the year - taken at a flash mob rehearsal in Cal Anderson Park

Another Fave - Glee with the Quiet Zebra Girls. We have no idea who they are, but this picture is framed in my apartment.

One of my best phone pics of the year - Seattle Center at Christmas

December 7, 2012 ~ Photo by Steven Kahn

Holiday Season

It really makes me sad when I write a post that doesn't include a picture.  But not so sad that I don't write at all (as evidenced by my last four posts).  Let's be honest, if I enforced that kind of restriction on myself you'd see even less of me here.

So here you go - a photo of a book I bought on Halloween!

This my friends, is a "Thanksgiving Book."  A Thanksgiving Book, because it is about the man who created the balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.

Jared picked me up from downtown that day because we were headed straight to Sara's and when I got in the car he said "So....just standing there on the street....reading a children's book?"  and I said "That's what makes me awesome!!"

Also awesome = this book. I LOVE having seasonally appropriate children's books out on my coffee table, but have always lacked a Thanksgiving representative because - as I'm sure you can imagine - most of the Thanksgiving books out there are stupid.

But I'm not here to talk about books (...tricked you with that picture didn't I?)

I'm here to talk about decorating for Christmas...which may start as early as next weekend.  As in, before Thanksgiving. *gasp*

This holiday season is all screwy timing wise.

I know that technically there are the same number of days until Christmas as there always are, because Christmas doesn't move, but with silly Thanksgiving moving, and being extremely late, it's thrown everything off.

It's moved my vacation with my mom later in the month, it's moved my Christmas party later (and to a weekday - what?!), it's reduced the number of full weekends in December before Christmas because the first day of December is on the Sunday of the weekend after Thanksgiving.  See? All messed up.

I went into last December convinced it was going to be awful, and in an attempt to make it #NotAwful, I packed it full with every single activity possible.  I'm more positive about this December, but I'm sure it will be just as busy, so I'm trying to reduce stress by moving as much prep into early November as I can.

Of course, in order to be ready to decorate, I need to finish cleaning my apartment first.  I made massive strides this past week.  My living room is "put back together" for the first time since March  - it's really quite amazing.  I wish I could keep up that momentum, but instead I'll use a hashtag that Beth created this weekend....

#ButCouch


In other news:

• Online shopping could eventually destroy me.  Instead of being that crazy old person ordering everything from QVC and HSN, I will be the crazy old person who loses everything to Amazon.
• I turned on the heat today for the first time this fall.
• Despite this past week trying to kill me, it was full of some awesome things like Gena coming to visit, and my episode of The Big Bang Theory airing...and some packages arriving...of things I ordered online.
• The ceiling of the parking structure is leaking...again.  It's a miracle my building is still standing.
• North Dakota photos have been posted to Facebook, so that trip happened.  Still on deck - New York, Tim and Emily's Wedding, Florida, and Chicago. (Maybe I'll post Chicago photos on the 3 year anniversary of that trip...)
• It was a #TeamSatrina weekend, complete with a rowing class, running, errands, and an awesome Garfunkel and Oates concert - Sara thinks we should be them next year for Halloween, which could be really funny.  I just need to find a way to be 4 inches shorter and 100 pounds lighter by next Halloween.  #WeTotesGotThis

#BusyBusyBusy

I didn't actually identify until recently that I REALLY like to stay busy.

It may be the planner in me? I like to know what's coming up and planning and organizing all of the details.  There are decidedly less of those tasks to do if there is nothing on the calendar.

I've often said (jokingly - and possibly even on this blog...?) "my life sucks because it's so full of amazing things."  To be clear, I've never felt like my life sucks, but this year more than ever, I've had an overwhelming sense of gratitude for everything I get to see and do.  (I'm...fairly certain I've said that before on the blog too...which is funny, because I haven't written a lot.  A lot of time I compose blog posts in my head, maybe that's what I'm thinking of.)

For all of my planning, what I'm not great at is recovery.  During this weekend I've been trying to restore my apartment.  There are things on my kitchen table from PAX, I had bags that weren't unpacked from Byron and Christine's wedding, I wasn't fully unpacked from LA and NYC.  The only reason I was unpacked from North Dakota was because I had to use that suitcase again for New York.

It's things like this that make me wonder how people manage with kids and/or how they travel with kids.  I'd like to think that when I have kids, I'll have a husband to partner with, and hopefully a home, where my suitcases aren't stored at the foot of my bed, switching out bedding doesn't involve puzzle piece precision in my closet, and that doing laundry doesn't monopolize the entire living room.  As far as business travel...let's just hope that's never a regular occurrence, because in addition to destroying my living space, I also hate flying.  (I've written that before, right?  How do people remember what they've blogged.  Use that "search" feature?  Pshhh....I've got laundry to do.)

#FromTheBlogs

I'm not always current, but there are several blogs I follow.

It was a mini-crisis when Google Reader announced it was going away, but now I used Feedly, and order has been restored. I don't even feel the same pressure I felt with Reader to have everything read, which is nice.

I refer to the blog authors I follow as "my bloggers" as in "One of my bloggers wrote about..." and on occasion I send my friends excerpts in emails entitled #FromTheBlogs.

One of my bloggers is Mayim Bialik. I love reading her blog.  She's vegan, a devout Jew, a home schooling parent, practices attachment parenting, and her ex-husband was Mormon before before they met and he converted.  She likes things simple, natural, doesn't wear pants, detests over-the-top places like Disneyland, and doesn't shave.  Sooo....we're quite different, and it is difficult to imagine that she and I would be friends in real life, but I still adore her (and...do I even need to mention that she's an incredibly talented actress??) Her writing is so easy to read, and I feel like she has found the delicate balance of being personal but not-to-personal in her writing which I strive to achieve as well because what we do have in common is that we are both fairly private.  (Although I think I'm winning at privacy right now by having a completely secret blog).

She recently posted a link to a young woman reading a poem...

http://www.kveller.com/mayim-bialik/watch-this-college-student-nail-how-it-feels-to-be-a-woman/

So I watched it.

I didn't have an issue with the poem itself.  I like poems.  I even liked this poem and its message. But this was at a poetry slam, and so the whole time I was watching it all I could think about was how different I was from the people who were at this event and watching her speak.  Who are these people - responding with murmurs?  How do they know when to respond in unison?  Is that....snapping??

It's like when I'm at a play, and have that very distinct feeling that a "play audience" is so different from a "musical audience" and it's obvious which one I belong in.  What struck me was how strong these feelings were just watching a YouTube video.

Was I surprised by these feelings of discomfort? No...it felt pretty on par for me. I've always claimed to not be a "spoken word" fan. I think what was most interesting was how....the presence of the audience distracted me so much, that it turned a pleasant piece of art into something uncomfortable and basically unpleasant for me.  That I was almost a the point of dismissing the poem because of the environment in which it was presented.  That's what made me stop and think...and write.