Tuesday, August 31, 2004

We're off!

We're off!

Today is our last day in Portland. Last night was our final (and only) dress rehearsal with food service and everything. It went pretty well. We gave ourselves and extra hour to set up, and ended up with half an hour of down time (which means we're still behind timewise, but not too behind). We are all going to be very tired of Chicken Adobo by the time we're done with this tour. It's good, but not something I'm going to want fifty times between now and thanksgiving. We've packed Ramen noodles in the canopy for when we just can't eat another bite.

The actual run went very well. We had one missed quick change. One of my dressers - and it takes three of us - mysteriously disappeared right before the change. So Vicky went on with her veil on sideways and only half covering her face. We'll work on it. The only other problem was the lighting. It wasn't completely dark and there were lots of windows in the fellowship center. Thus, it was hard to tell when the blackouts were. By the way, I'm going to start (ha) ending sentences with prepositions. I was reading "Letters to an American Lady" and CS Lewis wrote that he hates the rule against it. He says it was perfectly admissible until some guy decided that since you can't do it in French, you shouldn't do it in English. I go with Lewis. It makes sentence construction much easier.

I've sent out another round of postcards, if any of them have begun filtering through. Those of you who are inclined to write back, my mail will be forwarded to me every other week. I really don't like postcards (it's getting her to shut up that's the trick), but it's been the most convenient so far. Anyone who wants actual letters may ask for them - or just wait for them to show up. At some point I'm going to get tired of cutting things down to fit on half a three by five card. I feel like I'm writing shorthand.

I went today to the post office and bought a gazillion stamps. Letter and postcard. The lady there had no idea how much it cost to send letters to Canada, and once she found out how much, didn't have the right denomination of stamp. Poor Nicole was standing there, and the lady kept looking helplessly at her, as if she should somehow come up with that information so she didn't have to look it up. The end result was Nicole getting letter stamps, but none for our spiffy touring cast postcards (look for those later on down the road -- also a handy reminder to pray for us, as we all sit there staring at you. By the way, I had just changed into that t-shirt when they gave the picture call, so everyone else is still dressed for church...)

I'll be able to blog more soon....