Roommates

My roommates this year are familiar faces. All but two of us work at the same theatre, and one of those is a friend of my manager at the theatre. They both came down early to do some skiing before the festival started.

Most of my Sundance friends are from Canada. I'm not sure why that is; they just seem to be the people I gravitated towards over the years. I got to know the group year by year; they are part of an extended circle of acquaintances who know each other from the Toronto festival. They are just smart, funny, and pleasant to work with.

There is one other American here, but he, like me, is a sort of honorary Canadian. An unofficial traditional has 'Canadian Night' at a local brew pub, and this year there ere at least twenty people all at once.

Sharing a house at Sundance is a bit like recovering dorm experiences I never had. When I was in college, I only lived in university housing for my first semester, and even that was a six-person A-frame building a bit removed from the regular dorms. At the time, that was to my liking, and later on, after living with my parents for about two years, I moved out into my own apartment. I've shared apartments off and on, but never really had the multiple people in one house situation.

With these people, it's a bit like a dorm situation except everyone's pretty tidy and polite. Maybe it's because we're all older - late twenties through early forties - and that much more mature, or maybe it's bc it's only two weeks and there's not enough time for any real drama to develop, but either way, it's pleasant. We all have our own lives and activities in our free time, but we work together and come home, share some beers and talk about the festival together.

we have, at our disposal, two gas fireplaces, two kitchens, two bathrooms for six people, and one hot tub for all. The hot tub unfortunately is on a porch that is snowed in. My door is right outside, so the flight path involves walking through my room (or a longer trip through someone else's), and then stepping onto the snow for a minute or two while you climb in. Once in, though, it's nice. The water keeps your body warm even as ice forms in your hair. It's small, too, and therefore cozy.

So it's nice. Honestly I'd been a little ambivalent about returning; this is not a vacation in a real sense; it's a working vacation, with stints standing in the snow, stomping through the mud, and bending a weary ear to laughable complaints, but once I was here, this cameraderie took over and made it seem like a decent vacation after all. I'm working my way through a nice play to stay, pleasant company, and a beautiful background, and that is nothing to complain about.