Aleksandra the Great’s Exploits

A couple of years ago my parents were picking me (and probably Christina, though I can’t remember some details) up from skiing. At the base of the stairs to the parking lot was a fallen pair of goggles. Although the right thing to do would have been to turn them in to lost and found, my mother and I probably walked past, commenting apathetically about what a shame it was that someone lost his* goggles. My step-father, though, saw it as his gain, and he took the goggles. I’m not sure how he justified that to himself; my mother and I couldn’t believe he’d do such a thing. After all, those goggles belonged to someone else, and what if the person realized it and came back searching for them in vain? My mother and I, in later conversations of the found/stolen goggles, agreed that his taking them bothered us so much because either of us—especially me—could easily have been in the former owner’s position.

Last Tuesday at 2am I realized that my trusty TI 83 Plus (I never did upgrade to an 89) was not in my bag. It’s never anywhere else, and since I’d used it in my NatSci lab earlier that day, I knew it had to be either there or in someone else’s possession. There was nothing to be done at that hour, though, so I went to sleep, planning to go back to the lab to check for it before work on Wednesday. So I went back to the Silver Center the next morning and up to the lab room, but it was locked, and apparently no security guard in the building has keys to those rooms. Significantly more upset now that my plan was failing, I decided to call in late to work and wait around for the lab to open up at 9. When it did, the man with the keys—he might have been a kind of supervising TA or at least one with power, but he didn’t seem old enough to be a professor—said he hadn’t found any TI 83s. He opened a drawer and looked at the most recently lost calculators, one of which, he said, belonged to a girl and was lost just last week.

Then he went to another drawer, one filled with calculators. He picked up one, checked to make sure there was no name in it, replaced its batteries, and handed it to me, saying something along the lines of “so many people lose these calculators and never come back to claim them.” So I’ve basically adopted this orphaned calculator.

As I made my way through the park I couldn’t help thinking about possible scenarios involving kids and their lost calculators. Perhaps a student left his calculator because he was in a hurry to catch a train somewhere, and as he was rushing down the subway stairs he slipped and landed at the bottom with all of his bones broken. Naturally the kid would have to stay home in bed and wouldn’t be able to search for a missing calculator, and what if he didn’t have any friends or acquaintances who would be willing to retrieve it for him? And now I’ve gone and taken the calculator from this immobile, friendless kid. Thoughts like this kept plaguing me, so I came up with these justifications:

1. The calculator must have been there for a long time. The man who gave it to me would not give away the calculator that was lost only a week before, so mine must have been lost a while ago.
2. There is no name in it. Even if someone came back, he would never know whether the calculator he received was his or not.
3. I looked for my calculator. I was back at that building at 8am the next day. Surely if someone had looked for the calculator I now have, he would have found it.
4. My calculator now belongs to someone else. The number of calculators out there is still the same. Besides, there is a possibility that my original calculator is now in the hands of the person whose calculator I have.
5. I have almost exhausted all possible fates of my calculator. Tomorrow I will check with my other lab partner, and if the calculator is not in his possession, then I will accept that I am not likely to see it again. (Of course, if he does happen to have it, I’ll return the one from lost and found.)

I know that my reasons for accepting the calculator don’t fully negate my being a hypocrite, but what else can I do? This calculator might just have sat in the drawer until TI 83s become obsolete, never to be used again. At least with me it serves a purpose.

*The appropriate female word should follow an “or” here and in several other cases; to prevent overly-garbled sentences, I left that out.

Well, new in the sense that I haven’t recorded one in at least the last four years. I suppose it was Wednesday that I realized that breathing cold air was unpleasant, and by Thursday morning I had a terrible cough. I thought perhaps I should skip my boring ConWest recitation to sleep in the 8th floor lounge at the Kimmel Center, but I ended up just taking a brief nap there before class. I did skip karate last night though. That was more of a matter of not wanting to have to carry my knee brace home. I didn’t know then that I was actually sick.

So I got to come home early (arriving in Trenton at 9pm instead of 12am), and I stayed up till maybe 1am playing Sims 2. When I went to bed I felt very achy, and I thought to myself, I’m going to wake up with a fever. Lo and behold, I did. It could have been a lot worse, though. I remember waking up with high fevers when I was younger and not being able to lift my head or call for my mother. This morning my temperature was barely over 100; 1000 milligrams of Tylenol brought that right down.

I guess I picked the best time to be sick—when I have almost three whole periods of 24 hours at home. If I were in New York, I’d have to bundle up to go get food, and I’d probably end up going out, not realizing that I’m sick. It isn’t like a have a thermometer up there.

I know I haven’t written anything lately. It’s probably because I’d feel silly writing too much just about me, but I’ll update soon. For now, though, a bit of shameless bragging about my little brother. Unfortuantely, he did not make seminar during this round of testing. He only missed by three points because his “cognitive efficiency” wasn’t high enough above average. Oh, well. So they tested his IQ, and naturally it’s above average (but not high enough overall to satisfy the district). He’s in the top 98% for reading and the top 99% for math, but what’s even more exciting is that his math reasoning IQ is above genius level. Yay, Stevie! Heh, and his teacher had thought to keep him in the middle level math class with her to make sure that he could hear everything properly (he’s in the upper level math now, though). I completely forgot to mention here that he passed the test for his orange belt a few weeks ago. He goes to karate four times a week now. I’m so proud of him.

I don’t see Amanda nearly as often. She was in her first horse show last weekend and got second place in one event and fifth in two others. This is her in her equestrian uniform on a horse:

And I suppose Nate is surviving. The last time I talked to him was right after he downloaded Advent Children, which I still have yet to do. Anyway, that’s it. There should be an update soon.

America Reads is such a nice program. They pay well for an interesting job that doesn’t require night or weekend time. Better than that, though, they give out free tickets to RENT. My friend Sisi and I got tickets this morning (she was there early, so we got row C of the mezzanine; thanks!) and went to the 8pm show tonight. During the first act, mostly, I noticed few things about the show in general and of course about the actors. If you haven’t seen it yet, I wouldn’t recommend reading the post; I tried not to make it spoil anything, but still, you wouldn’t want to see it with my opinions already in your head. Otherwise, if you’re interested in these minor details, enjoy! [Note: I object to not italicizing RENT in the title, but I really didn’t have time to figure out how to make that work and I wanted to post tonight. Perhaps having it in all caps will suffice.]

Acting
Mark (Matt Caplan) worried me at first. He …well, he practically lisped some of his early lines. Not that that would have been so terrible, but I was prepared to hear a rather poor Mark. But! he lost the lisp very early on (I’m talking about by the time “Rent” was over), and was actually reminiscent of Anthony Rapp at some points. He was the first actor to make me really understand the “She got you out” line in “Christmas Bells.” He made it seem like he was thanking god or some higher power that Roger had finally left the house; before I had never quite understood what he meant by it besides that Roger was outside now. It’s hard to explain. If you had seen him do what he did, and had been as confused as I had been, you would have appreciated it.

Roger (Cary Shields) was a bit shouty, but it was an improvement from last time. I’m not sure if it was the same actor or not; my other playbills are at home. He took the liberty of adding some notes to “One Song Glory,” but I’m a lot more tolerant of that now than I was four years ago when I first saw RENT. Other than that, he was pretty good.

Mimi (Karmine Alers) has been in the show for a while. I mean, we’ve seen her before, though I don’t know how many times. Since I went in knowing that I thought she was good, I easily let slide the deviations in “Light My Candle.” She doesn’t do “Out Tonight” as well as Rosario, but I guess it’s different when she’s actually jumping around on stage.

Maureen (Ava Gaudet) and Joanne (Merle Dandridge) worked really well together. Maureen had dark hair, like Idina, and did well in “Over the Moon.” I almost considered mooing; maybe next time. Angel (Justin Johnston) and Collins (Destan Owens) also were good together. Angel did not make his voice high enough at some points, but he was very funny in his actions. Benny (D’Monroe) was, like Roger, shouty at times. And he changed a line, saying “We’re out of luck, Alison, the protest is on.” Where does he get off changing Jonathan Larson’s lyrics? I guess where they all get off changing his music….

Colin Hanlon (omg!) had a few minor parts. For those who weren’t there, he was absolutely amazing last summer. He was the closest representation to Anthony Rapp’s original Mark of anyone I’d seen or heard. I couldn’t see him quite as well as last time, and of course his stage time was greatly reduced, but his version of Gordon was equally well-presented. It’s a shame he got shunted to such a small part.

General
This production was particularly interesting since approximately 200 NYU kids were there. I’m of course referring to the whole “couch potatoes at New York University” part. It got some laughs. I had actually completely forgotten that line, its having been cut from the movie and my listening to that soundtrack lately to prepare. The audience was very receptive in general tonight. You could tell that a lot of them had seen RENT before, since they anticipated entrances, etc. It wasn’t only that, though. People laughed a lot at certain parts (like Angel’s funny movements or Maureen’s role in the beginning of “La Vie Boheme”).

It bothers me that in the movie soundtrack, dialogue parts like “Could never be a theater person” are cut out of the songs. It seems to bother the actors in the show now too. Some of those parts were said really loudly, as if the actors were trying to compensate for their being cut from the movie. Something really pleased me, though. There are a few lines in “Christmas Bells” that are very hard to hear on the OBC cd and even in the show if you aren’t watching Mark’s and Roger’s mouths. Tonight those lines were the loudest; it was the first time I could clearly hear them, and I felt sure that a lot of the other theater-goers picked them up as well. [Oh! Ricky just reminded me about how the renovations were to fix the sound system. Perhaps that’s why those lines were much more clear and loud.]

I also noticed two things about the choreography tonight. I never noticed before, but the waiter in “La Vie Boheme” joins in with the bohemians in singing against Benny and Mr. Grey. That’s not really a big deal, just some pleasant interesting thing. What is kind of absurd to me, though, is “Santa Fe.” It really is just like Collins, Angel, and Mark sitting in the lot singing, and then all of these uninvolved homeless people start dancing around behind them. I know that a lot of people criticize musical theater because people just burst into song and everyone knows the lyrics and the movements, but this is different. It’s pretty clear in this song that it isn’t one of those impossible musical moments, and yet everyone suddenly starts dancing and singing. I don’t know, but from my experience homeless people don’t jump off their benches and start dancing when musicians set to work in the park. Maybe lot homeless people are different.

Most of the details I picked up on were in the first act. Perhaps I was too absorbed by the time the second act came around that I didn’t bother with petty differences. Overall, it was a good production. I can’t say it was the best I’ve ever seen, because I know the cast last summer with Colin Hanlon as Mark was probably better, and that was the best. But of course I can’t say that it was worse, either, because that would be a disappointment. So, it was good, it was different. Seven times now.

Christina and I went home this past weekend to visit family and teachers. We decided to text Z to find out the best time to visit him since we were undecided as to when we should come in anyway. He said fifth block was best, and we planned to come in earlier to see other teachers (specifically Wuetig and Connelly, and I wanted to see Ms. D) during fourth block. We approached the main entrance security guy around 1pm and told him we were back for a visit. He asked if Mr. Z knew we were coming in because we weren’t allowed to interrupt his teaching and he hadn’t put our name down on a list of expected visitors. We assured him that we had contacted Z and that everything was set. Doubtfully, he instructed us to go right down the hall and into that door (as if we didn’t know where the English office is. We didsay we were former students), and he said that we couldn’t go wandering about the halls.

So Christina and I set off down the hall and wondered whether he would notice if we went somewhere else. We got to the intersection in front of the English office and walked past the door to see if Z was in there. Since he was not, we thought we’d try going to his (old) classroom to let him know we were here. Just then, the bathroom monitor asked us what we were doing, and he said that he had no idea where Mr. Z would be right now. We told him we’d check Z’s classroom, and he almost let us go, but then a female security guard came hurrying down the hall and stopped us, saying “We got them” into her walkie-talkie. She asked if we checked in the English office, and we said that we hadn’t because we saw that he wasn’t there. So she sent us back to the main entrance to wait until fifth block.

When we got back there, the first security guard told us that he’d kept his eye on us, that he’d seen us turn to the left (which we did to talk to another security guard) and then to the right (to go to Z’s classroom). He made us sit on the bench and wait for fifth block to begin. As we were waiting, Ms. D walked by, and she stopped and talked to us for a while. She left, and soon after the bell rang. We told the security guard that the bell had rung, so now we’d be off to see Mr. Z, and he said something like, “Go ahead” as if he wouldn’t have had us chased down if we had just left.

We made it safely to the English office. Z met us there. He said that a security guard had told him that two girls were looking for him, and that he had told him he was expecting us. Mr. Connelly was in the English office, and Z snuck us up to see Mrs. Wuetig, so we ultimately had a successful visit. We left before 3pm with no problems except the fine I got for breaking a one hour(!) parking limit.

A friend on the inside suggested that we leave the school saying, “All right, we’ll visit teachers another time,” and then sneak around and enter through the gym doors. The friend also suggested that we just walk in from one of the other entrances. It would be risky, sure, but perhaps if Christina and I had been in dress code and not wearing jeans, we might have tried it.

The policy may be different on the days when mass visitations occur (e.g. the Wednesday before Thanksgiving), or after the school year has progressed a bit. Just in case, though, be careful visiting.