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This week's theme/prompt is: HEADS -Wear or TAILS - Where
Cory mentioned tonight that all that stage makeup he's been wearing the last several nights has caused his face to break out. All over. I shouldn't tell you that, should I? It kind of destroys the illusion. Here's another picture of Cory wearing that stage makeup (those sideburns are not his) and his costume:
The rest of the pictures from opening night are here - Act 1 - Act 2
I like using pictures in my blog posts. Ideally, I'd use my own pictures all of the time, but I don't always have the exact image I need. I could go out and take pictures and then write the post, but I'd usually rather just get the post written.
Sometimes I just don't use an image, and other times I grab one of the images suggested by Zemanta, search for images on Flickr, or just do a Google image search. The problem with some of those searches is that, while they do turn up some great images, many of them are not really available for use. Many of the image owners have an All Rights Reserved license on their images, and would not be happy to see them used as blog pictures. I hate finding the perfect image, only to see that I'm really not supposed to use it.
Today I found a site full of images, and they're all available for use. It's called acobox, and you can search through the galleries or search by keyword, look at recently added pictures, or just choose 'show me any picture' for some random images. Find one you like, choose alignment and image size, click for the code, and paste it into your blog post. There's no downloading or saving images, no hosting them yourself, and no resizing, because acobox does it all for you. All images are properly licensed, optimized, and ready to use. Best of all, it's free. How do you like them apples? I mean lemons. (this was one of the random images I just had to use)
If you'd like to try acobox, just click on one of the images in this post.
All that work - practicing for weeks, designing sets, planning costumes, learning songs and choreography - and just like that it's over. After today's performance, everything got taken down, packed up, and put away. Chairs got put away, the tarps covering the floor got folded up, the set was dismantled, the lights came down, and the sound system got taken down and packed up. The gym looks like a gym again.
We saw Oliver! four times - Thursday night dress rehearsal, and 3 performances, Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoon. The kids all did a good job, and it was fun to watch them, but it is also good to have it over with. It certainly makes for a long weekend - and we were only wiring the performers for sound, not doing the actual performing.
Friday night the kids (high school) went out for their traditional Denny's get-together after the performance and didn't get home until late. Saturday night someone usually has a cast party in their home, but Cory hadn't heard of any plans so, a few minutes before we left for school, he asked if we could have it here. We said sure, as long as no one else had anything planned. I guess no one did, because we ended up with a basement full of teenagers after the performance. They played Wii, ate candy, drank soda, watched The Producers, played Apples to Apples, and just had fun hanging out. It's so nice that we have a basement where they can do that. We ordered a bunch of pizzas from Dominos - too many, because we had several left over, but that was nice because they were easy to warm up for dinner when we got home tonight. No one went hungry, anyway. We got everyone out of the house by 2am and finally got to bed. No wonder I'm tired - I'm not used to staying up that late.
Cory is worn out, but he had a lot of fun. He loves being on stage.
When he was thinking of going out for this part, he had people tell him that he's too nice. He could never play such a bad guy. Then, sometime during the course of rehearsals, he had someone else tell him that she didn't think he could ever play a nice guy. I guess that means he was doing a good job?
Anybody want to see pictures from the opening night of Oliver? Here's one of Cory and his friend James before the performance - ready for their microphones.
I uploaded all the pics to Facebook if you want to see more. I had to split them into two albums:
The school musical is this weekend. That means we will be there tonight, tomorrow night, and Sunday, and we've already been there practically every other night this week getting things set up. Well, Jeffrey has, anyway. Cory is in the musical, of course, and Jeffrey is running the sound. I just help Jeffrey with whatever he needs, and take pictures. Here's one of Cory in costume as Bill Sikes at last night's dress rehearsal:
I took this with my new little Aiptek camera, which we mainly got because it was $21 and wanted to try it for video. (I'm looking for the same camera online now, and I can't find it for under about $70) I'll take my regular camera for the actual performances, because it definitely takes better pictures, but this one's still fun to play with.
There's some guy taking video of the whole thing, and he's going to use Jeffrey's recording for his audio to put together a DVD. I'm not sure exactly what he's doing it for - maybe so everyone involved can have a copy to remember it by, for a nominal fee, of course. That would be kind of neat, even better than the traditional t-shirt, which we already paid for.
It's (almost) Friday again, and that means Sky Watch Friday!
Here are a couple pictures from today's sunrise. I was out taking pictures when I should have been making sure Cory was out of bed. He has Jazz Band on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that means he has to be ready to leave the house at about 6:45am. On other days he can wait to get out of bed until Jeffrey and I get back from our walk, but on Jazz Band days, he needs to get up right away. Today, he didn't.
But I got these sunrise pics - and Cory did get ready and out of the house on time. He was just a little rushed.
If you enjoy looking at the sky as much as I do, you'll want to check out Sky Watch Friday. You can enjoy skies from around the world!
