April 29, Two Thousand Awesome

Best. Day. Ever! (As Rapunzel would say). Yesterday was truely epic. It begun with a wedding! Nathan and I ventured about 10 minutes from our house to join our fellow Bristolians in celebration as William and Kate were wed. We were in Millenium square, which is kind of like the inner harbour in Baltimore. It's right next to the Aquarium and Kids' Science museum and the water. There's a big screen there, where they showed the coverage of the wedding, and lots of people showed up with blankets, chairs, picnics, and flags.

After the wedding, there were festivities around town, but it was chilly and we were tired, so we stopped in to Jamie's Italian for lunch! It's Jamie Oliver's reataurant that's literally two seconds from our flat. We always thought it'd be way too fancy for our budget, but it really wasn't that expensive! Nathan had a rabbit pasta and I had a risotto with bone marrow (YUM) and cruncy squid on the side. Yummo.
Then we went home and rested up before getting ready for Hairspray! Mind you, I'd been waiting for this since before Christmas, so I didn't nap with Nathan. The show was great! We were impressed with all the accents (they were all Brits) except sometimes Corny Collins was a little too corny and hard to understand. It was funny because when we met the actors outside the stage door, almost all of them asked us how their accents were. We had a hard time recognizing the acters, since most of them had crazy wigs on for the whole show. I recognized Amber Von Tussle, so Nathan stopped her and asked for her autograph and she said,"Would you like Tracy's too?" I was like... YEAH! She was standing right next to 'Amber', but she looked totally different! I recognized 'Link', so after we got his autograph and picture I asked him to point out 'Penny'. When Mickey Dolenz came out (he played Wilbur Turblad) of course the ladies started singing "Hey hey we're the Monkees..." He actually didn't seem that friendly. I think he knew we were all there for Michael Ball and he was a perk.


Tracy and Amber
Link
Seaweed, so dreamy
Little Inez. She's actually 23!
Penny
Mickey Dolenz

And then. The moment I've waited for since I was 6 or seven. The Marius to my Eponine. The curly haired, dimpled, blue-eyed dreamboat from my worn-out VHS tapes. The one. The only. The slightly older than me. MICHAEL BALL! This may not mean much to a lot of people, especially the ones my age, but this man has influenced my life! He's the reason I love music and musical theater as much as I do! I put a few other people on that list, like Lea Salonga and Bernadette Peters, but this definately checks off one of my bucket list items: meet Marius. It was funny because I know him as the young, dashing love interest in Les Miz, Aspects of Love, Phantom of the Opera, etc, but now that he's older he gets older roles. Like Edna Turnblad. A woman. He made a good woman though, if I do say so. And he had the best voice of any Edna I've seen (Harvey Firestein anyone?). He kind of out-shone the rest of the cast (except maybe Tracy), but... I mean... he's Michael Ball. So anyway, I got his autograph and then people started asking for pictures, so I thought I'd squeeze my way back for a photo. I told him he's the reason I love music and he said "Oh, what a kind thing to say." Sigh. I was glad I didn't make too big a fool of myself like..."Uh dur I love you uh you sing good". Although I look a little derpy in the picture because I was talking while Nathan was snapping. Haha oh well. (When the video cuts, Nathan was taking a picture. Cool thing my camera can do, video and pictures at the same time!)
Walking home I was on cloud nine. I cried a little and Nathan thought I was adorable. We talked about our heros (he said his equivalent would be Steven Speilberg) and reminiced about our wonderful day.
Here's some Michael :)

Thor!

We saw Thor yesterday on my day off (I'm working 30 hours at H&M now. I think I forgot to tell people. It's a big deal! No more once a week!) and it was a-ma-zing. Seriously, even if you're not a comic book movie person, you'll still like it. It was more like "Lord of the Rings"/"Hercules"/"Superman", not so much "Batman"/"Transformers"/fighting and blowing up stuff. The Scotts came with us and Yuki was the only one out of us that I was worried about liking it. The only thing she said against it was that she wished his weapon wasn't a hammer. Which I can agree with, it can seem kind of silly. But who's to change Norse mythology? Anyway, the home of the Gods, Asgard, was so gorgeous. Like, rivals Avatar's Pandora as a fictional place I'd want to live. Go see it. When it comes out in America, that is :P
Oh yeah, and Royal Wedding tomorrow! But even more importantly, HAIRSPRAY TOMORROW! Michael Ball/Marius/Raul here I come! <3

Mind Blown

Some of my peers are on their second baby. SECOND. Everyone else is pregnant/raising their first. (Not literally everyone... but like 98.7% of my married friends). My turn soon? Maybe. But for the moment, I'll just have a food baby made of chocolate and deviled eggs. Happy Easter! (BTW the eggs here are all brown, so no dying pretty colors... boo. I had to describe dying eggs and deviled eggs to my co-workers today. I felt so foreign.)

As we go on , we remember...

To be honest, it breaks my heart a little to see all my frends' graduation pictures, knowing that I would have been part of them this year. But, we all make big tough decisions. And I decided to have an adventure instead. So there. :)

Hope for Society

Working in the customer-service industry, we are always met with that customer that ruins our day. You know the one. "I'm going to make a big deal because you made a mistake." I, myself, try hard NOT to be that person. People make mistakes, so I like to give my waitress/sales clerk/fitting room attendant the benefit of the doubt because chances are, they already feel bad enough.
So this girl brings nearly 20 things to the fitting room while I'm letting people in and out. You can only take in 10, so I let her know that she can take in ten, then switch out for the rest. This was our busiest time of the day and we had a line of people waiting to get in. She came out and gave me the stuff she had tried on (not specifying that she wanted to actually purchase the stuff) and got the rest of her clothes to try on. Since we were so busy, there was another girl with me helping to traffic the clothes coming back from customers. Since the customer didn't tell me she wanted to keep the stuff she handed back to me, it got lost in the shuffle and ended up back out on the racks. When the girl came out again and asked for her stuff I obviously had let it get put away. She was not happy and proceeded to ramble on in another language as I apologized. I eventually just had to move on and help the hoards of other customers, but thought "Oh great. There goes my day." Once something like that happens to me, my day is thrown, confidence shattered, and mood shot.
Then, a miracle happened. She came back! Mind you, she was only about 15-16, so this really threw me. She apologized for saying anything that had offended me. I proceeded to tell her that I would have been upset too and I again apologized for the mix-up. That really meant a lot to me. I don't know if her mom made her do it, but I like to think that she did it because she felt bad for being rude. If only everyone was like that, the world would be a nicer place. I mean, we all fly off the handle and say things we don't mean, but to have the guts to apologize and make things right says a lot about a person's character.
And the quote of the day comes from my manager Chris. We were sorting out some new bikinis somone had tried on and he didn't like the color of one (and you have to imagine a tall gay stylish black man with a "Puck-from-Glee" mowhawk from London saying this or it's not as funny) "I hate yellow, even on bananas." Made me LOL