Readying The Stand for Festival, and Pride and Prejudice opening

I sent out all the character sheets for The Stand. I'm pleased with myself for getting them out a month in advance, because it gives people time to read all the materials (there's a fair bit of them) and to get their costuming together. I hope my players like them.

I wrote a short play last semester about two characters, a PC and an NPC, in The Stand. My teacher liked it and I was happy with how it came out. It occurs to me that there's probably more ten minute plays I could get out of the characters in this game. Something between Tall Bear and Negahse'wey, for example. Hmm. Might be worth thinking about. I do want to write more ten minute plays, and they get easier to perform all in an evening of theater when they're related in some way.

I am excited to get cast in the games I'm playing, Jesriah and Folding the River. They both sounds like they're going to be awesome. I desire very strongly to costume these games out of my own closet. I have made a number of interesting acquisitions from thrift stores over the last few months, fortunately none expensive but they do add up after a while, that I would really like to make use of. Both to justify their purchase and to prevent me from spending any more on costuming in the near future! ;-)

Tonight is the opening of the play that Jared, Tegan, and Jenn are in, Pride and Prejudice. Unfortunately I won't be able to be there tonight, but I know it will be great and I'm really excited to see it. I am going with a large group Saturday night, so anyone who'd care to come with company is welcome to join us. I'll be going again next Friday night, and have yet to make plans to join anyone, so please let me know if you'll be there then. Jared shaved off his beloved beard for this role, so go if only to ensure that its sacrifice will not be in vain!

Dad's cheese progress

My dad sent me some pictures of the results of all his efforts in cheesemaking. This is his cheese locker, a mini-fridge kept around sixty-three degrees in the basement. The top shelf is all little bries made of goat's milk, sealed in plastic so as not to contaminate other cheeses with their mold. The narrower yellow ones are the wheels of cheddar he and I made, while the thicker ones are cow's milk manchego. The big pale ones are gouda. This is about twenty pounds of cheese, all and all.

Here are my dad's latest products, two wheels of Swiss being kept at seventy-five degrees with little glasses of water to produce humidity. This is to encourage the growth of bacteria to produce the carbon dioxide that is responsible for blowing Swiss's characteristic holes. They stay in that box for three weeks, getting regularly washed with salt water, then they will be waxed and go into the cheese fridge to age for at least three months.

The only ones that are approaching readiness are the cheddar, which we made around Christmastime. Dad says when I come home for Easter we'll break into one and see how it came out. That will be the first time we taste a hard cheese we made ourselves.

Dad and Mom have also been making ricotta out of the whey that's left over from making the hard cheeses. I looked up a bunch of ricotta recipes for them, and they've made some delicious things. They sent me this picture of one such ricotta-based meal, roasted eggplant and ricotta crostini with strawberries in balsamic ricotta cream.