Chocolate - can there be too much?

With term speeding to an end, most of the things I need to do are becoming manageable. 

Costume construction - under way and continuing.
Play written.
Props list and other stuff for Oklahoma! - underway and continuing.
Rehearsals planned.
Games all running along nicely.

Obviously I need another project and luckily there is one to hand.

In a moment of lunacy back in February, husband, son and I decided to throw an Easter party for no better reason than we hadn't had a party for years.  To the socially ept, this may seem like an easy thing to do.  Allow me to explain that this is not so around our place.

Although I am quite good at making and keeping friends, along with the rest of my immediate family I am petrified of large gatherings.  Parties in particular.  As a teen, I never went to them.  Partly because I wasn't invited to any (extreme introvert and reluctant to leave the safe confines of my bedroom), partly because even if I had been invited, I'd have worked myself into such a state of trauma that I wouldn't have gone.

The family record is not good in this respect.  It is, therefore, a little strange that we decided on a whim to hold a massive Easter egg hunt for what now looks like about 35-40 people on Easter Sunday.  The British weather being what it is, the current warm and Spring-like spell is unlikely to last.  I mention this only because we're planning to hold said egg hunt in the garden.  In the event of rain, it will be inside.

Several challenges await. 

The house must be tidied.  Not simple.  We live in a very large house indeed and it is packed to the gunnels with what can only be described as clutter.  For guests to get through the door without injury, something must be done.  Son has agreed to help.  Amazingly.

Mass catering must ensue.  This is fun and easy.  No problems there.  Except that in my nightmares, all guests decide they have better things to do and don't come.  Always an embarrassing possibility with parties.

Eggs must be purchased.  Also fun and easy, but brings me back to the original title of this post.  Can there be too much chocolate?  Clearly I can live on the stuff and I know I'm not alone in this, but I've got a slight fear that unless we make some kind of uber-spreadsheet, we may well be finding unfound Easter eggs well into next year. 

So far I've got lots on order.  No recent shopping trip has been complete without adding a couple of packets of chocolate eggs of varying types to the basket.

Guilt-free shopping for chocolate.  Lovely.

Odysseus makes it home

Done.  Play written.

Sirens at work, by Herbert James Draper (link below)

Picture is by Herbert James Draper - another Victorian artist.

Note that our costuming will be significantly less revealing.

Anyway, I have managed to turn almost everyone into a girl.  Including the crew.  Also included are Circe, a siren, several songs, some offstage Cyclopes, Penelope and an invented maidservant, Poseidon and Aeolus.  We'll have a read this afternoon and see how it works.

Had enormous fun re-writing the words of "Poor Unfortunate Souls" and "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree."

Probably will need a re-draft, but I'll test drive it first.

Odysseus in full flow

I've mentioned before I need deadlines.

Play needs to be at least in workable state by tomorrow afternoon.  As often happens, the sheer terror of that thought has opened the floodgates.  Play progressing nicely now and have appropriate numbers of parts for likely cast.

Will need to track down some bloke with big boomy voice to do offstage cyclops, but easier by far than trying to use a child.  Although -- childlike cyclops might also be good?

Details, details.  Get the words down first.  Fiddle with mechanics later.

Pain

Hit a block.

All the outline is in place for Odysseus.

Dialogue not coming.  Normally my strong point, but it's just not working this morning.

One phrase would get me started and I just don't have one.

Ideas please?

NaBloWriMo 1 ("Why do you blog?")

NaBloWriMo seems like an entirely excellent idea. 

Why do I blog?  Because I find the discipline of keeping things going is good for me is the short answer.  Left to my own devices, I am the procrastination queen.  Deadlines work.  There may be a longer answer later today.