The house that I’m in at the moment, which we’ve only been in since December, 2005, has been up for sale for a while now. As I’m home a lot during the day, but out at night, I’ve been here while real estate agents have been showing prospective buyers through.

This Monday I was at home doing uni work as usual and the real estate agent showed through a corporate executive who had been head-hunted for a local firm. Accompanying him was a woman who’s job it is to relocate employees after job transition. I heard the real estate agent say, “It has only been on the market two weeks” (at least a white lie by any standards), so I wondered what else she had been telling this guy. Shortly after the executive came into my room and said, “It must be sad having to leave this place?”. I heard some movement and the real estate agent bolted into the room and looked at me wide-eyed while diverting the man’s attention. It turns out she had also told the man that we had to leave for what amounted to ‘financial reasons’, which isn’t the case. In fact, I’m quite willing to move, if just for the fact that it was too far from town for my liking (not to mention all the disruptive youth). Realising this was not the thing to say, I said “Uh, yeah, I guess” by which time the agent had dragged the man away from me.

That night we had an offer on the house from this man, which my parents accepted. This morning, although I woke up quite happily at 4.45am, pest and building inspectors showed up and poked and prodded everything for a few hours before suddenly disappearing. All things going smoothly, it appears I will be shifting house sooner rather than later. I’m told it will be end of May at the very latest, although we have absolutely no idea where to.

After the General Noisemakers left, I took to the endless task of packing my things up. In my situation, it wasn’t quite as typical as other families. My process mostly involved taking things out of boxes that have been there for several moves and putting them into newer, bigger and heavier boxes.

The date is set (sorta kinda), but I have no idea where we’re going. So… does anyone have a spare pantry I can stay in just in case things get a little desperate?

Before the matinee performance yesterday, I went out and performed my democratic duty by numbering a few boxes, then jamming lots of paper into a small hole.

Entering the polling station, I faced the gladiator-esque gauntlet of how to vote cards like a man. I took one (didn’t look at it), but still felt like I needed an oversized foam cylinder to fend off the outstretched arms. Right at the very front, Labour and Liberal went head to head. After everyone in front of me took a Labour card, the Liberal man dropped his shoulders and conceeded, “Right… okay.” A tale of things to come indeed.

What hit me whilst standing in line was that everyone votes. Finding myself standing in line with people who can surely not have had the mental capacity to digest the information being presented to them, one can only HOPE they gave donkey votes or drew a giant penis on their ballot form, as Ash details*.

When I finally reached one of the tables, one of the officials asked if an older lady could move in front of me. Fine, I said. She had a scraggly beard, after all. Anyway, after before she had realised she wasn’t there to pick up the prescription or put on the weekly lotto ticket, three hundred thousand senior citizens pushed in in front of me. Thankfully a rather hip young lady at the next table over saw what had happened and sorted me out.

It did make me wonder though… why would you be in such a rush to vote if you’re going to die soon anyway?

*: This post started as a comment on Ash’s blog.

Production week is always torture. Everything is rushing to be completed and you have an impossibly large number of things to make sure are set and ready for opening night, but thanks to the Gods of Theatre (tentatively named Stephen Sondheim), it all comes off.

I must admit that earlier this week my pants were a little moist. My band were not up to scratch because we had scarily few orchestra rehearsals. They worked really hard and we rehearsed before and after performances to fix up the messy bits and by opening night I was much more comfortable. I always pride myself on having a good band to support the cast, because I know as a cast member there is nothing worse than putting in heaps of work and having it trodden on by a bad band.

Thinking back to my earlier days of theatre, while the procedures are more familiar there is still that excitement there of the first rehearsals and cracking the spine of the music. The rehearsals endure as you battle with harmonies and dance routines, and then are insanely asked to do both at the same time, or are doing the asking. Suddenly more people are showing up and you end up with bits of wood to walk around and interact with (hopefully not your other actors), and you’re donning your oldest clothes to do a spot of painting. Orchestra rehearsals begin and then suddenly one night you find yourself doing it all again in the dark trying to find the pools of light to be in. Everyone hurries around trying to do 20 things in the “five minutes” before we start the run, and it’s a thrilling time. Every time.

Now being half way through the unusually short season, the feedback has been great and people really seem to be enjoying this new material. I certainly am loving getting to play the score each night with the band.

Whilst playing a song during a particularly stressful rehearsal earlier this week I took the time to realise that what I was doing was what I had always wanted to do since my early days of being a rehearsal pianist. What I originally saw as a pipe dream had come true much sooner than I had expected. It made me think of what it felt like to be starting out, and the pure magic of it then. If this is the progress I’ve made in that short time, I’m very excited to see what the future holds.