More snow!

So we did Henry IV Part I yesterday.

Woah, guys, WOAH.

It was that good.

My geeky English major side definitely came out as soon as we took our seats. The stage was amazing and did such a wonderful job of blending the courtly world and the tavern world (a major idea that runs throughout the play). It was so helpful that I had read and throughly discussed the play before I saw it; I vividly remember discussing certain sections of the play so it was neat to see it play out in front of me.

One of the neatest parts is that last semester I wrote a paper on one particular scene (1.2 for anyone who has read the play) for my Shakespeare class. It's where Hal, the Prince of Wales, has a soliloquy where he tells the audience he knows he has been hanging out in the taverns for a bit too long but it's okay because he is just waiting for the right moment to reveal himself. I imagined Hal in a leather jacket with a white undershirt and guess what? That's what the actor was wearing. Maybe not a big deal to you, but I was pretty proud of myself.

Overall, the play was a nice blend of more traditional, Renaissance costumes with a modern flare. When the play finished, Susan knew one of the women who is a part of the company and that friend brought one of the actors to our seats to have a small talk back. It was great to hear from him and to hear what my peers were thinking about the performance.

Whitney and I decided we needed food after the performance and attempted to find St. Patrick's Day food, aka a rueben. We ended up at Good Enough to Eat, a local restaurant up the street from our hotel. Unfortunately, they had already ran out of corned beef (really!) so I had something similar to a rueben. Am still looking for a rueben sandwich in the next couple of days!

After dinner, I wrote a few responses and then went to bed (still trying to feel full strength again!). I felt much better this morning and headed to work.

Work was full of research as I'm still working on building out our veteran pages. I really enjoy it because I get to discover all the neat resources NYPL has and I also expand my own knowledge. Today, I learned so much about the Vietnam War.

When I left the library, a weird rain/snow had begun and when I got home, it was more heavily snowing. I don't know how much we got, but there's definitely a nice white layer on the ground right now!

St. Patrick's Day Fun

Well, as you know, St. Patrick's Day was yesterday and boy, does Cedar Rapids know how to celebrate a day.  I was asked to march as a Coe student in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Cedar Rapids.  This parade is on its 37th year and over 10,000 line the parade route over a mile long to watch all the floats and people walk by.  My friends and I walked down to our staging area where we met other Coe students and finished decking ourselves out in green.  Around 1:30 PM we started marching and handing out candy to all the kids.  It was a lot of fun, although I ran out of candy a little before our route was over.

I finished my St. Patrick's Day by going to a Roughriders game.  They were playing a team from Green Bay and it was intense.  The score was 3-3 after three periods and then they played five minutes of overtime.  No one had scored after that so they went into a shootout.  The other team won.  But it was okay because the atmosphere and the excitement of the game was worth it.