1/27/2009

48 Questions

via konagod

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?
my Aunt Maureen

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
earlier today, when I was reading this blog post.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
I have beautiful penmanship when I make the effort.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT?
turkey

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS?
Yes, 2 of them.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
I think so, but I guess it would depend on which other person I was.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM?
What do you think?

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
Yes

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
Only if I were on The Amazing Race

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?
I don't think I have one. I like cereal in general, but only eat it occasionally.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
No

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM?
I'm not picky about ice cream, but I think you know an ice cream brand/maker is great when the vanilla is great.

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?
height

15. RED OR PINK?
red

16. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?
my damn deformed hip

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?
I have been lucky to not have lost many people in my life up to this point, but I miss my friend Al sometimes. And also, Phil Hartman.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO COMPLETE THIS LIST?
It doesn't matter to me.

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?
gray pants and white/gray sneakers

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
The sounds of the office.

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
forest green

23. FAVORITE SMELLS?
coffee, garlic, freshly baked bread, lilac blooms, new baby

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
My husband

25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
No one sent it to me

26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH?
hurling and hockey, but only in person

27. HAIR COLOR?
Used to be V-8 orange, now it's more like a penny that has been around for a while

28. EYE COLOR?
Blue

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
No, my body has betrayed me in many ways, but I am lucky enough to have 20/20 vision for now

30. FAVORITE FOOD?
cheese

31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?
Not a big scary movie fan, and sometimes I like happy endings, but I am also comfortable with ambiguity

32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
Hamlet 2

33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
purple

34. SUMMER OR WINTER?
Summer.

35. HUGS OR KISSES?
Kisses & hugs.. All good.

37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
??Leslie maybe?

38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
my husband

39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?
I'm not in a reading phase right now

40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?
don't have one

41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT?
House

42. FAVORITE SOUND(S).
interesting music, certain babies laughing....at the church where I used to sing, when they had Communion, everyone got a little tiny plastic cup of grape juice, and when we were done drinking, everyone would pass their cups down, and the sound of the little cups being stacked was very pleasing.

43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
Beatles.

44. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME?
Paris

45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT?
I sing, I can juggle, I can act, I can levitate (or at least make other people think I can levitate), and I have a great capacity for remembering useless pieces of information, like what someone was wearing when I first met them.

46 WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
Hartford, CT

47. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK?
Anyone who bothers.

48. HOW DID YOU MEET YOUR SPOUSE/SIGNIFICANT OTHER?
At college

1/25/2009

Did I ever tell you about my friend Leslie?

14 or so years ago, I auditioned for the female version of the Odd Couple at a community theater in Middletown. I had a good audition, and I was one of 4 people called back for the role of Olive Madison (obviously, the female version of Oscar Madison). I ended up getting the part that night, and I had a great time doing the show.

A year or so later, I auditioned for the play I Hate Hamlet, put on by the same community theater group, and I got the part of Gary Peter Lefkowitz*, the protagonists agent. Also cast in the play was Leslie, who played Real Estate agent Felicia Dantine.

So we were a week or two into rehearsal, and after one rehearsal we went out for coffee. I was sitting with Karen (who directed the Odd Couple) and Leslie, and we were having fun, talking and making each other laugh, and then Leslie told me, very seriously, that she had a confession to make.

She told me that for the past year, she had wanted me dead.** You see, she was one of the other people who got called back for the part of Olive Madison, and since Karen, the director, was her best friend, she assumed she was a shue-in for the part. But I got it instead.

Karen told me that then she began receiving a series of phone calls from Leslie:

"Karen, when Maureen breaks her leg, make sure to give me plenty of notice so I have all my lines memorized."

"Karen, does the rehearsal space have a sprinkler system, in case there's a fire?"

Karen explained to Leslie that I got the part because I had a certain vulnerability.

Leslie sniffed, "vunnerability" she said. "I can do vunnerability!"

I said "you can't even pronounce vulnerabilty!"

And thus a friendship was born. And I'm writing this tonight because Leslie and Karen and I got together today for lunch, then a little shopping and then hanging out at the bookstore. And she reads my blog, so I have to write about her, because she likes reading about herself. And because, okay, I love Leslie, and I'm glad she's my friend.

And did I mention that she has developed a game to help kids learn how to clean and organize their space? Because she has, and you can buy it here.

*I maintain that I must have a certain quality that reads as male, because this was not the first time I got cast in a male part, and it wasn't the last time, either.

**Leslie said that when she found out I had a child, she decided it would be okay with her if I were merely maimed.

1/23/2009

Maybe President Obama *is* magic

Since President Obama was inaugurated:

I've lost 4 lbs.
I can open a newspaper without feeling ill
I can read the news online without my blood pressure rising
I can read blogs and feel happy instead of angry
I no longer clench my fists when I'm listening to NPR on the way home from work

Now if he could only clear up the lingering pain in my lower back...

1/22/2009

My kingdom for a Vicodin!

Pain sucks.

My hip is always hurting, but I am experiencing some exquisite pain in my lower back. In that little dimple on the left-hand side, it is hot to the touch and hurts however I move.

On top of that, yesterday, my own husband told me I walked like Quasimodo. I feel like I'm just declining, physically, with each passing day.

I just don't know how much more of this I can take. I'm at my desk, on the verge of crying from the pain. And occasionally over the verge.

1/20/2009

I feel that I should post something on this historic day...

So I'll share that I got a text from Sio as she was on her way to D.C. in the wee hours of the morning. We have not heard from her since, I hope she was able to feel part of the historic events today.

I can't tell if I'm more happy that a responsible adult with a brain is in charge, or that the old incompetent moron is gone.

1/13/2009

Harmonious Soul (and Friends) in Concert

We have finally rescheduled our concert!

Come see a fabulous six member women's a cappella group perform a wide variety of music. We sing traditional as well as contemporary music including songs by James Taylor, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Etta James, Guns N Roses, and many more!

A few other performers will lend their talents to the night as well!

Tickets are $8/$5 for seniors and 12 and under

Friday, February 27, 2009
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Emmanuel Lutheran Church
60 Church Street
Manchester, CT 06040


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If you would like more information, please e-mail me at maurinsky@yahoo.com.

1/09/2009

Celebrity cameos in my dreams

Lately, I've been having dreams with celebrity cameos in them. First, Jason Segal showed up in a couple of them - I assume this was due to seeing Jason and Little Jason in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Though these dreams were not sexual in nature, they did have a romantic sort of quality to them.

Last night, Daniel Letterle, who played Vlad in the movie Camp, showed up. Pretty obscure celebrity cameo, I grant you, but it gets better. In my dream, the kids from the movie Camp were having a press conference, and Daniel Letterle was in costume for his next project - he had a fake moustache and his hair was grayed at the temples, and he was wearing a 3 piece suit and a bowler hat. He and I wandered away from the press conference, and he confessed that he was terrified because a man named Culpepper was after him.

I pulled a book out of my jacket, and said "Do you mean this Culpepper?", and on the cover of the book was a man wearing the same 3 piece suit and bowler hat, who looked like he was crossing Abbey Road. Letterle was clearly terrified. We decided to find a place to hide. We were in a building that might have been a convention center or a hotel - there were a lot of big meeting rooms, and escalators, plus some balconies and wide open halls.

Letterle and I started climbing the stairs, and we got to a conference hall that was still messy from whatever event had just been held there. While we were there, a phone rang, and Letterle answered it and went pale. "Culpepper is here!" he said, and he ran off.

I went out onto the balcony and looked down into the big open hallway, and saw a man in a 3 piece suit and bowler hat. He paused and looked up in my direction (although he didn't see me). It was Culpepper, but Culpepper was played by Malcolm McDowell in my dream. And he was scary! So I ran away, and then I segued into another dream that did not feature any celebrities.

My subconscious, ladies and gentlemen! Let me know if you can make any sense of it!

1/05/2009

A Day At The Beach

Yesterday morning, my alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. Those of you who notice the hours when I am online might take note that when I'm up at 4:30 a.m., that's at the end of a long day, not the beginning. But yesterday, it was the beginning of the day. Because my sister and husband made plans to go to the beach.

Yes, the beach. Yes, in January. It's not the place I would think of going, either. But I got up at 4:30 a.m., and we were headed out the door by 5:30 a.m. We were hoping to experience sunrise at the beach, but we had to make do with watching the sunrise from the car on our way to the beach. Once the sun was up, I realized I left my sunglasses in our car, at home.

The beach was a very different experience in winter. The sand was frozen, and it was a delightful experience to walk on it - I imagined I was standing on a distant planet where the frozen ground had a little give, a little spring in it. It was a lot less crowded, although we were never the only people there - at the Narragansett Public Beach, there was a clearly insane man who was surfing. It was also, of course, cold. I have been unable to find my awesome winter earflap hat, so I had to make do with wrapping a scarf over my head, babushka style, to keep my delicate ears warm.

My sister was on a quest for seaglass, and she found plenty of it, as did Sio. We also found: frozen starfish, huge clamshells, a plastic turtle, an earring painted to look like a pineapple (Loki: "I found Spongebob's house!"), a moldy English muffin, a peanut (me: started singing the Found A Peanut song), peach pits, cigarette butts aplenty, and some pretty shells.

After we finished at the beach, it was about 11am. We decided we were ready for lunch, and we drove to downtown Wakefield, RI, where we stopped in at this excellent breakfast place called Phil's. It was a perfect little greasy spoon, I don't think any of us had a meal that cost more than $5.00, and I didn't feel hungry for the rest of the day. Loki asked for detailed instructions on how to make the homefries, because he deemed them the best homefries he ever had. My sister had a strawberry pancake that was bigger than my head (and my head is huge), and there were whole slices of strawberry in it - it was gorgeous.

Then we walked down to a bookstore that sold both used and new books. I almost bought a music book that was published in the 1860s - it was only $7.50, and it had some pro-Union songs in it, but it also made me sneeze with each turned page, so I left it there. I did flip through a book called Songs of Man that featured folk songs, showing how regardless of culture, certain types of songs developed from nearly every part of the globe. Including a whole chapter on folk songs about Cuckoos. What a world.

On the way home, we stopped to see our younger sister and her new(ish) baby, Clara, who is darling - all smiles and giggles. Clara and I played peekaboo for a while, she jumped every time I said "boo!", and then would giggle and smile. Babies are cute, and they are even better when you don't have to change their diapers.

All in all, it was a great day, although the last two thirds of it were kind of fuzzy for me, since I was all punchy and silly because of the early wake-up.

1/03/2009

Longer term goals

1. Perform a stand-up routine.
There have been moments in my life where I've made a large group of people laugh, not by speaking lines written by a playwright, but by coming up with something on my own. Those moments are some of the greatest moments of my life. The idea of doing stand-up is something that terrifies me, which makes me think it might be worth doing.

2. Publish a novel or short-story.
I've been wanting to do this my whole life. I have loads of material that could be brushed off and polished. I will do this.

3. Write a song.
Okay, I've filked plenty, but I've never come up with my own tune. The problem with having a good ear is that everytime I start humming a tune, it may start off as something new, but eventually it veers off into something I've heard before. Also, lyrically, I tend to be more along the lines of Weird Al than, say, the Indigo Girls. I would like to do something meaningful on this front sometime before I die.

1/01/2009

Goals for 2009

1.Get my hip replaced - this one is more involved than just getting surgery, I also have to lose weight to make this happen.

2. Clean my house - I'm tired of my house being so messy and chaotic. I have to make order out of the chaos. I would like my home to be a sanctuary, and right now, it is someplace that I have to get out of to keep my sanity.

3. Figure out whether I should continue taking 1 class per semester towards getting a music degree, or whether I should cut my losses, stick with my current public sector job and take online classes towards getting a degree in Public Policy or something similar. I'm leaning towards the first option, still.