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melynnee
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Country: United States
State: Illinois
Gender: Female
Interests: I like reading, singing, dancing, tv shows on dvd, swimming pools, dolphins, shoes, purses, my cat, black tie mousse cake, making Steve laugh, etc...
Expertise: Well, now that I have a degree in Theatre Performance, I'm OBVIOUSLY an expert. My expertise also lie in accumulating credit card debt and making MP3 players appear as if I didn't just drop and scratch them (Steve still thinks it only happened once!).
Industry: Entertainment
Message: message me
AIM:  melynnee
Member Since:
12/9/2003
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| Wow. It's been a long time since I posted anything. I
realized recently that I hadn't posted because no one would really be
that interested and all that. Then one day I started reading my
posts from literally years ago and realized, that, yes, xanga is
public, but it's also primarily for me. It's for documenting my
life. My ups and downs and all that.
Anyway, I'm resolving to try and post a bit more so that one day years
from now I can look back again and have my life and feelings
documented. Yea!
So, things are good here. Steve and I live in Hoffman Estates
now. We have a great apartment with a huge living room and a
fireplace and a balcony view of the fishing pond. We both teach
ballroom dance at Fred Astaire Dance Studios. We absolutely love
it. It's got so much potential, financially and personally.
It really is making a career in the arts, which I am so excited
about. I absolutely love everyone that I work with and am
thrilled to be back in the Chicago area. I'm so close to
Woodfield Mall and an IKEA and there are always things going on.
We're loving making our new life up here.
Steve and I celebrated our one year anniversary in September. Our
first year was such an adventure and we decided to keep it that
way. We never want our life to be predictable or boring. So
far, we've kept that promise to eachother! Who would have thought
a year ago that we'd end up being ballroom dancers?!
The cats are fantastic. Cole is still a pain in our bum.
He's crazy and keeps us up at night, but is still too cute to get mad
at. Onyx is still the stoic, well behaved older brother.
Anyway, not much else to report. It's going to be a crazy month
with Christmas and all. I absolutely love this time of year, but
always manage to get stressed out. I hope that all of you who
read this have a lovely and relaxing holiday season. You're all
in my thoughts and prayers!
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| Oh wow. It's been an awful long time since I posted. Lots and lots of updating to do!
Steve and I finished our tour with Hampstead December 22nd. The last week included watching the sunrise over the Atlantic and the sunset over Manhattan. Performing in an inner-city school so poor that the performance room didn't have heat, then performing the next day at the Long Island School for the Gifted, where their budget was large enough that their shoe stock was all Dolce and Gabbana... for kids less than 16 years old. All in all, it was a fantastic tour. We really enjoyed our time with Hampstead. They're a great company to work for and we loved the touring experience. I'll tell you though, I couldn't do that kind of a tour for too long. I got tired of taking out the set and putting it away. Especially in Boston!!! In the end, we had been to every New England state except Rhode Island. We visited Plymouth Rock, Bunker Hill, Fenway Park, Portsmouth, the Ben and Jerry's Factory, a Maple Factory (Steve's pick... it runs in his Canadian blood), the Hamptons and NYC. In the end we performed in something like 50 cities (not including Boston and all its suburbs we performed in). It was pretty amazing to see and be in sooo many different places and realize in the end they're all about the same.
We spent Christmas in Canada, which was nice, and made it back to Champaign on the 27th. Then we had Christmas #2 with my whole family, which was great. We are still at a point where we don't want to do any long drives! Ready to be stationary for a while!
Since we've been back Steve and I have started working with a new theatre company here called Brightlights. They're primarily a children's theatre and have sooo much potential for growth. Steve is working with them now on getting their 501(c)3 and planning a tour for the fall. Other than that we're working at our restaurants again and making enough money that we're able to put a lot in savings for a future move.
We adopted a new kitten named Cole a few days ago. He's a bundle of energy, curious about EVERYTHING. In fact, I have moved him off of my laptop maybe 10 times in the time I've been writing this. He loves to get under your feet when you walk and thinks that my hair is the coolest toy ever. He also loves to play with the movement on the tv, which is super cute. Onyx doesn't particularly like him, but is getting better at establishing his dominance and playing with his little brother.
That's about all there is. I've had a couple auditions, which has been good to get back into the game. We're planning on going to Colorado Springs at the end of May, California next month and Louisville in a couple of weeks. We're also going to be in Mundelein next month, which will be weird.
I hope all is well with everyone out there. Take care and be peaceful!
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|  | Currently Watching
The Muppet Christmas Carol - Kermit's 50th Anniversary Edition
By Michael Caine, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Jerry Nelson, Frank Oz, David Rudman, Louise Gold, Karen Prell, Mike Quinn, Robert Tygner, Donald Austen, William Todd Jones, Jessica Fox, Steven Mackintosh, Meredith Braun, Robin Weaver, Raymond Coulthard, Russell Martin (II), Theo Sanders, Kristopher Milnes
see related |
How in the world can classes be cancelled all throughout the Midwest and it's still beautiful in Massachusettes. Ok, not BEAUTIFUL... it's drizzling a bit, but Steve is wearing short sleeves and I've just got a zip-up hoodie on. The bad weather is supposed to be headed our way. I hope it isn't as bad here as it is in Oklahoma and Illinois and such. At a library computer in Medford, Massachusettes, which is just North of Boston. We've had some lovely times. This week has been busy. This is our busiest week with 15 shows. Every week after this it goes down... next week is 13, then 12, then 11 in our last week. We don't get a full weekend off until the tour's over. As tired as we are and all that, we're both still loving touring and finding new ways to make the shows fresh and fun for us. We've had our worst 2 audiences this week... one show we were basically reading each others lips half the time b/c the kids were so loud and there was this industrial fan drowning us out. It's been quite the experience! Well, we must be off. We have to be at a school to perform Christmas Carol in 10 minutes. I'm excited as we mostly do The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It's nice to break the monotony.Safe travels for all of you in snowy areas! Enjoy your snow days. | | |
|  | Currently Watching
A Charlie Brown Christmas
By Ann Altieri, Chris Doran, Sally Dryer, Bill Melendez, Karen Mendelson, Geoffrey Ornstein, Peter Robbins, Christopher Shea, Kathy Steinberg, Tracy Stratford
see related |
Well, Steve and I celebrated our first Thanksgiving away from my family ever. It was quite sad, but I guess that's how life goes, huh? We were back that the "International Headquarters" of Hampstead aka The Farm. Kati cooked us a fantastic meal. There were something like 24 people here, so it kind of felt like a Champ Thanksgiving! Though it was rough to be away from my family, I am thankful that this family here was willing to take us in for the holiday and that we didn't have to spend it in a hotel room eating Ramen. We start the heaviest week of tour on Monday. Monday we have four shows in Boston, then eleven shows the rest of the week, one day off, then we do it all over again until December 22nd. The time will fly, I'm sure! We're both a bit anxious, but really excited to take on such a full week. This whole experience has been full of lessons, so I'm very sure it will only be good for us in the long run! Meagan, our friend here, bought us a Christmas tree! She knew it was our first Christmas together and that we weren't going to have a tree, so she bought us this cute little one with ornaments and lights and everything! I think I was a bit more excited than Steve was... but it looks so cute next to our bed. I'm still trying to convince Steve that we can take it on tour with us! I also started a new hobby! I am now doing wood burning. You know, when you have a little thing and you burn designs into wood? I taught Meagan how to knit, so she taught me how to woodburn! I made a nice little picture frame. I'm not too bad at it. I may have to keep it up! I wanted to start doing some very amateur photography, but I don't really have a cool camera for it (I just don't feel like you can take artsy pictures on a camera that you don't have to focus... wrong I know, but it's still this idea I have) and I wouldn't even know where to start... so woodburning fit the bill!! I think that's about it. Got lots of Christmas shopping done so that we don't have that on our backs for the next few weeks. I can't wait for Christmas! I'm looking forward to getting back to Champaign and spending time with the whole family! Still trying to figure out where and what we're doing for New Years... but I think there will be a Peoria trip at some point, so hopefully I'll see all you crazy college kids and my other lovely Peoria dwelling friends. Lots of love to all of you! I hope you have lots to be thankful for! | | |
| Hey everyone! Steve and I have completed our first week of touring and are at the Hampstead headquarters (the farm) for the weekend. So far, we're both loving it. I couldn't spend my whole life on tour, but I love the challenges it presents. I love getting to a new space and seeing what needs to be reconfigured to fit it. I love meeting the new people. I love answering the kids questions afterwards. Most of the time they ask things like, "How did two people do so many characters?" or "I saw the movie." (which isn't a question, but don't tell them that!) Every now and again we get a real gem, though. Friday we had a kid ask, "Do you get to meet any real actors like Russell Crowe?" Steve took that one because I was too focused on not laughing out loud. Anyway, touring is great. It's odd to think that something this fun and easy is our job. For those curious, we're in a different town every day (and it's usually that we're in one town in the morning and another in the afternoon, but sometimes we're in four towns throughout the day). So, basically, we drive to the town the night before and locate our first school, then we drive from there to find a hotel within the budget the company has given us. This can be the hardest part. The next morning, you get to the school, find your contact and get all the information you need from them, unload, set up, do the show, do a q and a session, then load the van back up, and head to the next school. This past week we did Maine, which was beautiful. The weather has been really nice, so it's great to see New England in its fall glory. It really is a fantastic job. One thing I've learned from it, though, is that I don't want to go back to just waiting tables when I get home. It's so amazing to see the power theatre has to effect people (wait, how'd I get on this soapbox?!), and it has reminded me how much I want to be doing something that truly matters. I also have learned that I was a nutcase in college. I wish I had just focused on the things I loved and not let all the other bullshit get in the way. I wish I had enjoyed it more. It's funny to think back on how life or death every show was to me and to realize how much we complained and stressed about everything. I wish I'd just had fun and loved it for the learning experience that it was. You know what, I can't remember if I screwed up in any of my Bradley shows, I can't remember if the audience gave us a standing ovation... I can only remember the things that I learned from the shows and how my attitude effected my performance. I'm gonna admit to something I didn't think possible in college... life after college is way harder. Being an actor after college is WAAAAAYYYY harder. It's easy to keep your passion when you're in a department full of passionate people 24/7, but when you're in the real world and you keep getting asked "what are you going to do with a theatre degree?" and the like, staying passionate becomes an uphill battle. In light of all this, I don't really see why I wasted my time worrying about whether I was great or whether the audience or the reviewer or the adjudicator loved me. I should have just focused on why I was sacrificing so much to do what I loved. And then enjoyed every second of the amazing opportunities I was trusted with, because Sally Bowles, Lucy, Hippolyta... those aren't roles you nab every day. Ok, after all of that, here is the long awaited bird story I promised you all. It's a bit more upbeat than my above rant! So, Steve and I are at SeaWorld the first day we're in Orlando. Seeing Shamu, feeding dolphins, so on and so forth. Then, Steve sees this roller coaster called the Kraken, which is supposed to be awesome. There's virtually no line, so we hop on and it's great. We get off and Steve begs me to go on again. Fine, we go. We're in the second row (there are four seats to a row, so we're in the two right seats). About a quarter of the way through the ride, we see this exotic bird flying across the sky. You can guess what happens from here... BAM! We ran right into the bird. The kid in front of Steve got hit by it and so we were the lucky ones who got bird guts splattered all over us! Steve had the foresight to close his eyes and mouth. I, on the other hand, had yelled out "Bird!" like it would stop the ride, or move the bird or something, and so got some nice juicy bird flesh in my mouth. Now, what makes this worse, is that we were a quarter way through the ride... but Kraken happens to be one of the longest roller coasters in Orlando. So, it took forever to finish! Luckily, no one was hurt, just grossed out. We kept finding bird in our hair and clothes for the next bit, so we went to the bathrooms to clean up. While we were there I was talking to some other people who were on the ride, including the girl who sat next to me. She and her boyfriend were going to complain, so Steve and I went with them. We ended up getting VIP passes for the next time we were there, which included Preferred seating at the shows, $20 in Shamu bucks, and a pass to go straight to the front of the line at all the rides. Needless to say, I didn't go on the Kraken again, though Steve did. So, that's my story. The artistic director here at Hampstead said to us on our first day, "If it isn't a great time, it's a great story." So, at least we'll have a great story to tell our kids about our honeymoon! Anyway, I have to help Steve do some stuff on the van, so I better go. Talk to you all soon! P.S.-Cardinals World Series Champs and a Democratic Congress?! Must be my year! | | |
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