State Speech (continued) and my Tooth

My wonderful dentist just replaced my missing tooth piece with a filling, and I'm all done. So all that worrying and fretting I did was for naught. And the cost was covered within a few dollars by an Amazon.com sale I made this morning, not too long before going to the dentist! God does provide.

Okay: All-State nominations are up. Kieffer's Finders Creepers is invited as a nonperforming guest, sort of an honorable mention; they get invited to the festival, but they don't get to perform. On the other hand, both of our radio "broadcasts" are invited as performers! (The radio shows are prerecorded.)

Two of my favorite performances that were not of Kee High are performing: For Reader's Theater, Dubuque Senior with "The Things They Carried" (about a platoon of infantrymen in Vietnam), and for Ensemble Acting, Decorah High, with "Women Must Weep" (about a ladies' sewing circle in a Confederate home just as the War Between the States is drawing to a close). I'm pleased to see the judges agreed with me on those. :)

Regarding "Women Must Weep," one of the young actresses held herself high and stiff, with her chin lifted proudly and her shoulders always square. You could almost see a stiff corset on her, the way she held herself. It was very effective. (Had I been the coach, I would have cut part of that little play, as I thought it was superfluous: The suspected infidelity of the young soldier. The simple fact that one of the women characters was a divorcee would have been scandalous enough at the time.)

State Speech (large group) and the Viral Gastroenteritis Diet

Saturday was State Speech in Decorah, Iowa. I dropped Kieffer off for his bus at about 6, then went home and washed dishes for a couple of hours till it was time for the rest of us to go. (Barry stayed home and wrote a paper instead.) I took Lil Miss A, and Britta and her "young man", Amadeus. It was a great day. I packed a picnic lunch to save money. Kieffer's group's short acting piece was really good. They keep getting better. I heard jokes that I had never been able to make out before, because they enunciated so clearly. It was funny and they scored a perfect score. There were lots of other interesting performances that I may talk about if I get the energy later but right now I don't have it, because...

as soon as we got home I embarked on the VGE Diet, the one where you lose 10 pounds in about 24 hours and then you don't feel like eating anything for another couple of days. I feel incredibly thin right now. :) Yes, it's fluids. Anyway I'm over it. As it turned out, Barry had already gotten it while at home, and then Kieffer woke up with it Sunday morning. Barry learned later that the entire nursing home had already gotten it. He may have even picked it up there, who knows. Anyway it's done.

I broke a tooth last week chomping on a Life Saver, and this afternoon I am going in to see what they can do about it. I had a root canal once and it seriously hurt worse than having a baby, only I didn't get anything nice at the end of it. I feel like I'd rather just have this tooth pulled if it needs a root canal. We'll see.

District Group Speech

Today was the district speech competition, held conveniently close to home this year in Waukon. I love speech competition. I love the speech and drama kids. They're extravagant and exhibitionistic and don't care if they look a little foolish. They're a fun, energetic bunch of misfits. Of course when you put them all in an otherwise empty school building on a weekend, suddenly they are not misfits anymore, they're their own peer group, and they just get weirder. I love them.

Speech (it's really misnamed, it should be called small-group drama) is scored by one judge at the district level with a performance score of I, II, III or IV, with I being the best. Anyone with a I advances to State. (And state is also a misnomer and should be called Regionals, because there are 4 of them in the state of Iowa, by geographic regions, but nobody wants to listen to my opinion.)

Anyway, Kee High brought 9 groups to competition this year, in improv, mime, solo presentation, radio news, small group acting and probably something else that I'm not thinking of. And for only the second time in Kee High history, every single group scored top ratings - all I - and will be advancing to state competition! It was a sweep. I would have been proud of them even had they not all advanced, but this is even better.

Kieffer was in small group acting with a comedy called Finders Creepers, and then in an improv group with 3 other boys. Both were wonderful and hilarious.

Busy but productive weekend

Saturday morning the Kee High speech team bus left Lansing at 6:45, so I drove K and his teammate in and afterward got a nice early start on the day while the rest of the family slumbered on. I cleaned and cooked and cleaned, then we all drove down to Starmont High School and watched a few acting pieces including K's. It was hilarious, and he did a great job. We didn't know it till later but he scored all 1s (the highest).

We grocery shopped in Prairie du Chien on the way home, then started seriously cooking for Sunday, and late in the evening we welcomed a missionary from Uganda, Emily Dwyer, and her grandson. They stayed the night, then came to church with us, where Emily did a presentation on her mission. After church, we had a light lunch at our house for anybody who wanted to get to know Emily more, and had  a nice group of about 20 people. There's still food left, by the way. Emily and her grandson headed home around 2, and Britta headed back to her dorm a little later. Then I tackled my messy office and, in a fit of insanity, actually cleaned and rearranged it and now it's very inspiringly spacious. Almost makes me want to go back to work tomorrow.

Hey, how did it get to be 10:32 already? - Daylight savings time stinks.

The end of a pretty nice weekend

photo courtesy Ricki Lee G.

It's 10:00-something on a Sunday evening, the end of a very good weekend. Britta was home, and yesterday we girls went to Decorah to watch the Kee High speech team perform at the state competition (which is really the regional competition if you ask me, as there are 4 of them in Iowa). It was great fun, as usual, but we were very disappointed in K's improv team's score. Not their performance, as it was wonderful, but their rating was not high enough to advance them to the All-State Festival in Ames. We are still waiting to hear the scoring on the Choral Reading performance in which K also took part.
After church this morning, we got to go eat a lovely Thanksgiving-esque turkey dinner at our friends the Fruechtes' home. I brought pies.
And this evening I drove Britta back up to Viterbo in light snow. On the way back, just after I turned onto the 26 south of La Crescent, a strange thing happened. The snow came down very heavy and fast for maybe 5 miles, and there was no traffic but me. The road was completely covered, so I could not see any of the painted lane markers on the highway. Normally when you're driving in snow, there are at least other people's tracks to follow, but not this evening. Plus I was listening to Simply Folk on Wisconsin Public Radio. Suddenly it seemed like the car was just floating in this sea of fluffy white critters. The inside of the car was warm, there was Irish music playing on the radio, and there I was gliding on this white, trackless, smooth expanse of nothingness. Hard to describe, but rather special. By the time I got to Brownsville, the snow had cleared and I could see the road markings again, and the effect was over, but for that 5 miles, I felt like I'd been lifted away from my usual life. It was like being underwater, or something. Weird, and kinda neat.
I just finished a 2-week pay period which may have been the best single pay period since I started working for Webmedx. I'm tired, but triumphant.

Highlights of All State Speech

I'm so zonked after this weekend that all I can manage is a bullet list.

• The best/cheapest place to stay within reach of the Iowa State campus is the Quality Inn and Suites of Ames. For $49 plus tax, we got a non-smoking double queen room. And it included breakfast. Yes, I'm serious.
  
• The best/cheapest place to have lunch during All-State is La Fuente. Little Mexican hole in the wall, neat hand painted murals on the tabletops (are they murals if they are horizontal? maybe not), tons of delicious food. Four of us ate for $24. It was amazing. We got there just as it opened and by the time we were done with a leisurely lunch the place was packed. Only caveat would be possible sanitation issues; there was no soap in the ladies' room and that makes me concerned about how the staff members wash their hands. Best not to think about it too much.
• Once again, we were amazed by the talent and imagination of Iowa's nerdy drama geeks. What a wonderful day. An eight-dollar arm band gets you in to unlimited acting, musical theater, improv, mime, radio and TV newscasting, reader's theater and choral reading. Just awesome good fun.
  

All-State Ensemble Speech

I neglected to tell you that Britta and her friend Dustin B. are going to All-State Speech once more with their mime. It's in Iowa City on February 21st. Also representing Kee High will be the Radio News program which is prerecorded; Britta and Dustin will actually be performing their mime again. This is the one titled "Labor of Misconception," about a young couple expecting their first baby any moment, and the hilarity that ensues when he thinks she is in labor - and she isn't. Basically these are the same characters they played for last year's mime, in which the couple went fishing. The year before, it was Dustin and another young lady, getting engaged. We figure if Dustin were around next year the natural progression, given how this couple is doing, would be the Hilarious Divorce.

Dustin is trying for a theater scholarship at Viterbo University. We know how talented he is and I hope the auditions go very well for him. 

All-State Speech - and Champeenship Barberin'

We're off this weekend to Ames, Iowa, to the university campus to the All-State Speech Festival. Miss B. is performing a mime titled "Worms Meet the River" with her friend DB. They swept through both Districts and State (which I insist should be called Regionals, not State, because that's what it is, but nobody listens to me), and were invited as one of only 22 mime troupes to perform at All-State. Also going is our school's Radio News team, and they are one of only 15 teams in the state to be invited! For a tiny school, we are really strong in speech and drama, thanks mostly to Tammy Manning and Jackie Garin, the coaches.

The All-State Festival is a great source of entertainment if you are needing something to do on a frozen Saturday in February. There are events in several buildings on campus. If you don't have a team you want to follow around, you can just park yourself somewhere for a couple hours of one-act plays, then hop over to a classroom and watch some improvisation, then catch a mime or two, then watch some musical theater, then some choral reading, then Reader's Theater, then a small acting ensemble, then back to the improv. The kids who do improvisation completely amaze me. I don't understand how anyone can do that. I stand in awe. Anyway, it's an awful lot of fun for the cost of an $8 armband, and tomorrow is going to be a fun-packed day for us (and a stress-packed day for Miss B, who doesn't get to perform till midafternoon, so she can spend the whole day in a fuss).

Also on campus at the same time is the grand championship to determine the Best Barber in Iowa. New Albin's own Walt Breeser is one of the 10 finalists and will be clipping and chatting sometime between 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. tomorrow. We hope to figure out where it happens and be there to cheer him on!