Yahoo! I am officially blogging from my very own, brand-new laptop (purchased during the previous tax-free weekend) and on stolen wireless signal, no less! I have arrived in the twenty-first century! (Though I must keep this short, since Mark would hate the signal-theft if he knew...) We still need to get me a bag--the ones they had on the Gateway website were expensive and not that nice--but we should do that within the next week or two.

So a lot has been going on in the past few weeks. We've had quite a few social engagements--Mark's friend Pat was down, as were my cousins from Pennsylvania, and Mark's sister stayed for almost a week, which was nice, and we've had a few parties--and we're both excited about the reunion. I've been working on memorizing Figaro, which is going okay. Our rehearsals start in four weeks! I would really love to be virtually off-book by then. Luckily I already know both arias, all but one section of the Act II finale and the duet with Susanna, but I still have to get some chunks of recitative solid, plus there's the Act IV finale, which is fun and luckily doesn't involve my character so much as the one in Act II. The Countess leaves the stage for about two minutes for all of Act II--luckily I have almost all of it down.

The main reason I've been so out of contact is because I've been feeling so crappy. This medication I'm on has given me some intestinal issues, certainly, but they seem to finally be wearing off, which is normal. The main issue is this serious lack of energy--and total crashing after meals, the bigger the worse the crash. I just read up on this today, and apparently that's a normal side effect, too (it was specifically referred to as "malaise", which was the word I've been using already). I think I'm going to have to eat lots of small meals instead of two small ones and one big one. I've just been feeling like shit, really. But this also seems to be improving. As for the core ovarian issue, I'm on the inactive pill week, and I'm already crabby but have yet to see results. I know this all will take some time, but it's getting a little frustrating...