Taking and Making: October 12 – December 31

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All right, well, after I started working a temporary full-time job in October and took on quite a bit of freelance work, I let a lot of things fall by the wayside, including keeping up on Taking and Making. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t stop doing those things! Here’s a roundup for the last two months of 2018.

I took in:

The rest of Upstream and Outlander

Emma Cline’s The Girls, Roxane Gay’s Hunger, Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven, Zadie Smith’s Swing Time, and I started Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere

Caught up on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and The Good Place, rewatched season 2 and the start of season 3 of Parks and Rec, the first few episodes of Doctor Who

The Spy Who Dumped Me, Finding Your Feet, The Bookshop, The Avengers: Infinity War, Early Man

The Lion King musical at the Lyceum; King Lear featuring Ian McKellen, Sinead Cusack, and Danny Webb; a dance show loosely based on Medusa at Sadler’s Wells; and Fanatical, a wonderful musical about fandom written by my friend Reina Hardy

my favorite London comedy night, Quantum Leopard and the recording of a No Such Thing as a Fish podcast, a Sofie Hagen work-in-progress show

my annual solo viewing of Handel’s Messiah, this time by a small group (with no conductor!) at the Barbican

my first NHL game, Detroit Red Wings vs. Florida Panthers

I made:

a pumpkin carving party, a Halloween party (I went as the Road Runner and my boyfriend went as Wile E. Coyote — meep meep!), a birthday dinner, a haunted pubs of Hampstead and Highgate tour, a dinner with other comedy fans, a Laurel & Hardy viewing party, a mince pie tasting, a Philadelphia Story/High Society viewing party

a concert featuring Rutter’s Requiem for a Remembrance Day Centenary program with my choir (we were pretty good, and it was fun to sing)

an intro to the basics of Swedish massage class

rehearsals, prop purchases, logistics organization, and finally the presentation of a Christmas panto by my group of girls in Drama Group at the center where I volunteer (they were wonderful, it was absolute chaos including a toddler climbing up on stage and stealing a key prop which I tried and failed to take back from her — totally appropriate for a panto!)

lunches and dinners with friends visiting from Iceland, Portland, Skokie, Seville, and Chicago

a trip to the arts market in Camberwell and the big views and too-big space of the Sky Garden

decorated a lovely little Christmas tree purchased in Brixton market and had a lovely little holiday party at our flat

a trip to Hull (nice cobblestoned area and good view at the marina), Michigan (many lovely friends and family, including my friends’ babies, always adorable), and Chicago (introducing the art and architecture to Nakul and visiting more lovely friends and family)