HAIRSPRAY

This afternoon some friends of ours are joining us to go see the musical Hairspray at the Nampa Civic Center. We have season tickets to the Music Theatre of Idaho and have really enjoyed going to watch the various productions there. So far this season we've seen:


Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
The Secret Garden
South Pacific

The first one we saw there was last fall when we went to see Jekyll and Hyde since someone we knew was in it. We were really impressed by the quality of the production so we decided to go ahead and get season tickets this year.

We still have three more to go after this one:

The Music Man
Wizard of Oz
A Christmas Carol

We always go to the Saturday matinee shows so we aren't out late. Once we even did a little geochaching in Nampa before the show. It's a fun date to go see these plays and and we've been consistently impressed with the talent of the performers. There are some great voices in our local area!

Usually Larry and I have just gone one our own. Today will be twice and fun because we are going with our dear friends Larry and Judy Todd. One of our best blessings living here is that THEY live close by too. We knew each other for many years in Oregon and used to get together about once a month for card nights at each other's homes. Then they up and left us, moving to Nampa. Now we are here in Boise so our monthly card nights have resumed! It's so great having some tried and true friends with many years of shared history even though we've only lived here a year.

As much as we enjoy playing "Hand and Foot" - sort of like Canasta, we decided to do some other stuff together. So we are planning a trip to go tubing the Boise river and today we'll see this play. Of course, as much as I'm sure we'll enjoy this afternoon's show, it just won't be the same without John Travolta as Edna Turnbald.

Defining Fun

I recently was given a new visiting teaching route (for the non LDS who read this, that means a list of several women in our church who I will visit on a monthly basis and watch over in case they have any special needs.)

Some of the ladies on my list I've never met. Others I barely know. So, in an effort to get better acquainted I asked them each to answer the following questions:

1. How were you introduced to the church?
2. Who / Where is your family? Who are you closest too?
3. What's the best job and worst job you have ever had? If you could do ANY job you wanted what would it be?
4. What do you do for fun?
5. Do you have any hobbies and/or collections?
6. What challenges are you currently facing?

I very much enjoyed reading the answers that my ladies shared with me.
One in particular, however, gave me much food for thought.

After listing several activities she does in her leisure time she said: "Not all of these things are actually fun....define fun for me......"

Ya know, she has a point there.

What exactly do we mean when we say "FUN"?

According to the Merriam Webster online dictionary it says this about fun:

Main Entry: fun
Pronunciation: \ˈfən\
Function: noun
Etymology: English dialect fun to hoax, perhaps alteration of Middle English fonnen, from fonne dupe
Date: 1727
1: what provides amusement or enjoyment ; specifically : playful often boisterous action or speech
2: a mood for finding or making amusement
3 a: amusement, enjoyment b: derisive jest : sport, ridicule - a figure of fun -
4: violent or excited activity or argument
synonyms fun, jest, sport, game, play mean action or speech that provides amusement or arouses laughter. fun usually implies laughter or gaiety but may imply merely a lack of serious or ulterior purpose . jest implies lack of earnestness in what is said or done and may suggest a hoaxing or teasing . sport applies especially to the arousing of laughter against someone . game is close to sport, and often stresses mischievous or malicious fun . play stresses the opposition to earnest without implying any malice or mischief .

So that got me to thinking about what makes something "fun" for me...

Yesterday my husband and I teamed up to do some work in the yard. He ran the edge trimmer around the fence while I dead headed flowers and together we both pulled lots of weeds. It was work. No - wait a minute. It was fun. Yeah, it was work. But it WAS fun. We both enjoyed it a lot.

I've gone to some parties, museums, amusement parks that were supposed to entertaining only to find I had NO fun whatsoever for one reason or another.

So, in my mind FUN has less to do with the structure or type of activity and more to do with my mindset at the time.

And what determines my mindset? I DO. What happens around me certainly may support or challenge my mindset. But I honestly believe that how I feel at any given time has way more to do with what I'm internally choosing to focus on than it does with any external reality beyond my control.

So I suppose that means I can make my day to day comings and goings about as much fun as I choose to, right? In some cases I would have to work a lot harder at it than in other situations. Still, if fun is determined by how I feel rather than whatever it is I am doing - by extension that means I can choose to have fun a whole lot more often and in more different contexts than I currently do.

Do I buy that? If that is true why don't I have fun more often?

HMMMM. I'll have to think about this some more.