day 11

Last night after the preview Don and I went to a bar to hear some live music. One of the cast members had said he might go and join in on the bluegrass jam. Well, he didn't, but we enjoyed listening anyway. One guy in particular was really good, he played mandolin and guitar. If we get out at a decent time tomorrow night, we might go back over there for the blues jam.

Today there was a photo call, and I amused myself during it by playing rollercoaster tycoon. After that we walked to a newsstand store and I bought a magazine to read, since I've finished the one I brought. Then we stopped in at a music store just to look. This place was like Those Were The Days, only with musical instruments. There were hundreds of them lining the walls and stacked up and every possible accessory too. It was pretty cool, but dusty smelling. Then we went to Subway for dinner, and back to the theater.

I'm so looking forward to my own bed. Actually, it isn't even the bed so much as my pillow. The bed here is pretty comfy but the pillows suck.

Holy crap, tomorrow's December.

still full

This morning we did notes and then had rehearsal. That got done early, about 2:30. Don and I drove out to the desert to the Saguaro National Park and looked at the sights. It's pretty out there, just cactus after cactus. The saguaros get really huge. The don't grow one of those arms until they're already pretty old, so if you see one with a lot of arms you know it's very old. There are a lot more plants than I thought there would be in the desert. It's packed with them, all prickly and such. We saw a roadrunners and hawks. Let me just say, real rodrunners look nothing like cartoon roadrunners. :) I took some pictures, so they may make it up here eventually. I don't have a digital of my own, and I didn't borrow Robyn's, so I'm using a little disposable one. With film! The sun was SO bright out there. By the time we got back to town I was ready for a nap.

Don and I went to his friends house for dinner. They made roasted chicken and vegtables, salad, and cake. It was great to have a home cooked meal for a change. I'm so tired of eating out.

I am doing so much nothing. If I do end up going to Dallas, there's no way I'm staying until opening.

"day off"

We started our day off at the normal time of 10 am, and worked on the star drop. It was built for a different show, so it was too small. We added to it and spread it out. Those damn little sockets are a real pain to install.

The highlight of the day was our tour of the Fox Theater. It's an old theater that had been used for vaudeville and later movies. Right now it's being restored to a performance space. Two of the people working on it are friends of the LD's, so we got to go look at it today. It's in the middle of everything, and nothing is done. The electricity isn't hooked up yet, the linesets aren't installed, it's still being repainted. Basically, it's the nakedest theater I've seen. I always like touring theaters, and it was especially cool to see on in progress.

Then we had thai food for dinner which was very tasty. That is all!

also

Yesterday before dinner we went on a walk around a residential area. Vicky wanted to take pictures of some neat fences for references. I also took pictures of neat houses and yards. It's amazing that a house here can be green with rust colored trim and look very nice. In Kansas City, it would look like crap. I think the bright colors for houses here must work because the natural scenery doesn't have a lot of color. There used to be a house by Ward Parkway mall that was painted four different colors. Each row of siding was one color. That was pretty odd, looking back. Of course, as a kid I thought it was great but dad wouldn'd paint our house that way.

day 8

It got "cold" here today. Yesterday was very windy, and today its' about 10 degrees colder than it has been. It's still nice. Nothing much of intrest is happening. Right now is intermission of the second preview. Last night's audience gave a great big standing ovation, so we must be doing something right. Every day we continue to do small focus notes, change a few colors and that sort of thing. I mostly do nothing. By the end of tonight, I'll have read the entire Achewood archive.

A Person of Some Importance is here from KC. He came yesterday to the preview and is here tonight too. In talking to the LD and Set Designer, it seems that it's widely accepted that he is rather creepy, and looks at ladies' chests. Also, he's staying at the same hotel that we are, which amuses me because Don and Vicky think it's a dump. (I really have no complaints, despite the fact that there is a gum wrapper under my bed that's been there since before I checked in.)

The other night I dreamed that Donald and I moved into a tiny apartment and were trying to find somewhere to put all our stuff. There was a corner where we were going to stack boxes. In the bedroom the windowsill was letting a draft in.

Intermission's over, time for act 2.

Day 6

I finally did something where I felt actually useful. Yesterday, Don drew the light plot for the next theater this show is going to, in Phoenix. In many ways, the Phoenix plot is very similar to this one. We printed it out this morning, in pieces and taped them together since they don't have a plotter. I took the lightwright from here, and adapted it to match the plot for Phoenix. Mainly, I went position by position on the new plot, found the channel in LW, then changed the position, unit number, and sometimes instrument type. That took much of the morning. And was kind of fun. I found a few glitches between the two, asked Don about them, then updated the plot too. He uses a Vectorworks add on called Autoplot, which I imagine is kinda like Autoblock is for AutoCAD. Well, I don't have that so editing his plot is slow and I have to do everything manually. The other version of the plot is much easier to edit using Spotlight.

P.S. My pocket knife is hella gone. goddammit.

holiday

My first holiday out of town was pretty nice. In the morning we went to the grocery store to get food to take to the pot luck. On the way, we drove up a mountain nearby. The view was really great, we might go up again so we can take pictures sometime. When we got back to the hotel, I sat around and used my computer for a while. Then I took my book outside and sat on the porch outside the restaurant. I found some shade and some (plastic) wicker furniture to sit on to read. It was very quiet and relaxing. Also warm, about 75.

Dinner was at 4. The group was mostly actors, as well as the director and designers. There was a LOT of tasty food. Afterwards, they took some of the leftovers and made up plates to give to homeless people. There are a lot around here, because the weather is mild. We hung around for awhile, letting food settle.

It wasn't the same as being home with my family. (That includes you, Donald.) But it wasn't too bad either. I've been feeling a bit sad about it all week. It doesn't help that my aunts and grandparents were in KC when I wasn't. But I guess I should get used to it. Theatre takes you away from home a lot, even over holidays. But I won't like it. :P :)

so dry...

This climate does weird things to me. My nose is constantly either stuffy or runny.

In other news, I'm sort of getting my feet wet with Vectorworks. I can see why people say it's easy, now that I've dabbled a bit. It does some things a lot easier that AutoCAD does.

I'm glad to say that I won't spend thanksgiving in my hotel room eating peanut butter crackers. There will be a potluck thing. Yay. :)

P.S.

I am so bored. The designer keeps taking his own notes out of habit. Sigh.

4 more hours.

itsa Tuesday

During rehearsal yesterday I mostly updated Lightwright. All day long when I was doing absolutely nothing, I COULD have been doing it, but they didn't give me the stuff until right before we went to dinner. Thanks folks.

Today we came in at 9 to do some notes, and also sit around doing a fair amount of nothing. It is now 12:54, and we just started teching the opening of the show. That's about 54 minutes arter when I expected us to start,

Also, one of the actors is named Margaret, so my name is being called a lot, but it isn't for me. Rather distracting.

I think I lost my Gerber again. I remember using it a couple days ago, and now I don't know where it is. The stupid thing falls off my pocket. I'm annoyed enough that I may give up entirely on it. I don't want to keep getting a new one and losing it. I also left my leatherman on the bed this morning. I really really hope it's there when I get back tonight. It will certainly get moved in some way when housekeeping comes, I just hope it doesn't disappear. Hope hope.

Random theatre stuff:
- They bought S4 PARS for worklights. They use regular PAR 64's for shows. Technologically, this is pretty back-asswards. Also, financially silly since you can get many a worklight that costs less than a S4 PAR.

-They have an Obsession 2. The elip-scans are not, however, programmed as fixtures. To move the mirrors, they have recorded the individual channels into submasters. Or they just call up the channels individually. Very inefficient. At the least, you should be able to move them using the track pad.

Slow going

I bought me a hat today, to keep the sun off my brains. Still without sunglasses, but it's a LOT better.

Yesterday we finished about 7:30. Then Don and I ate at a nearby Mexican place. After that we went "home." I got in just in time to talk to Donald a bit and then watch Grey's Anatomy. I used my computer for awhile, watched some TV and went to bed.

We weren't coming in to the theater until 11:30 today, so I ate breakfast and struck out in search of sunglasses. I walked to the downtown area and eventually found a souvenir shop. I got a hat, becuase I didn't find any sunglasses. Then I went back to the hotel to pick up my stuff.

We came in to the theater, for no real reason it seems, since nothing is really happening. They're just working on stuff. I have volunteered to update the paperwork, but they seem to want to do it themselves. So I asked if I could do anything, and the ME had me cut some gel for a lightbox. I can't put it in yet though, since it needs to have the paint touched up first. Don told me earlier that I should feel free to go take a walk around downtown if I got bored, so I may do that. I'm a bit bugged by the leisurely pace we seem to be taking here. I'm used to having focus and lightover on the same day, and then tech the next. Well, focus was yesterday, lightover will be tonight but not until 6, and tech starts tomorrow. Time to rest is great, but I'm just sitting around a lot so far. I predict more sitting around too, since Don's already done this show several times.

day 2

Last night I fell asleep watching Harry potter 2 on tv. I was planning to read or do a puzzle, but it was not to be.

This morning, I went to check out the "complimentary full american breakfast." I ended up eating 4 tiny boxes of cereal. Take that, breakfast! On my way back to my room, I saw some sparrows taking baths in a leak from a garden hose. The hotel has a nice looking (heavily watered) lawn.

We got here at 9 but didn't start focusing until probably 10 or so. Now lunch break is just about over. We took lunch from 2-3:30, of al the weird times. We will probably be done focusing in another few hours. Everybody seems nice here.

Ha, ha Robyn!!

You are 'French'. In the nineteenth century, it
was the international language of diplomacy.
It is a 'beautiful' language, meaning that it
is really just a low-fidelity copy of Latin.

You know the importance of communicating
'diplomatically', which for you means both
being polite and friendly when necessary and
using sophisticated, vicious sarcasm when
appropriate. Your life is guided by either
existentialism or nihilism, depending on the
weather. You have a certain appreciation for
the finer things in life, which is a diplomatic
way of saying that you are a disgusting
hedonist. Your problem is that French has been
obsolete for a long time.


What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Tucson day 1

Started out early again. My flight was at 6am, and it was on time. The flight wasn't full so I was able to move and had 2 seats to myself. Took a nap, landed in Salt Lake City. The airport there was really different. Instead of exiting the plane into one of those tube dealies, there was just a stair unit rolled up to the plane, and I was actually outside. It was rather cold. I got a bagel and boarded my second plane.

The second part of the flight wasn't as empty, so I actually had to sit in my assigned seat. Uneventful flight, landed about 10:15, got my suitcase, and called Adam, who was picking me up. He's a nice guy, very friendly and chatty. We were picking someone else up too, so we drove around a bit and then picked up the sound designer. After that we went to the theater. It's a good size, and very southwestern looking. Naturally, everything here looks very different. It's desert, so there isn't grass everywhere, only where people planted and water it. Everywhere else is just kind of pebbly. There are great big cacti and smaller cacti and generally, a lot of weird looking plants.

After a short tour, we went to the hotel to try and check in, but they weren't ready yet. So, we drove somewhere for me to get some lunch, and then Adam dropped me off at the theater to eat while he went to pick up Don, the lighting designer. Then I got to take me a little break. I sat comfortably in the greenroom and ate my sandwich.

At 1 there was a runthrough to watch. Let me just say that Hank Williams music isn't that bad. The performers are really good. After the runthrough, Adam drove us to the hotel and we finally checked in. Then he drove us to a grocery store and we bought some stuff to eat. Don bought a whole lot of stuff, and I just bought a little. Mainly for lunches. Then we came back, and I unpacked. A little while later, Don and I went to the nearest restaurant for dinner, and now I'm back in my room.

It's a good sized room, even has a loveseat that folds out into a bed. Not that I need it, I've got a great big queen bed already. It has internet though! But it isn't wireless, so I had to get an ethernet cable from the front desk. It's a short cable too, so I have to sit at this desk instead of comfy in the bed. :P The theater also has wireless, so I'm all internetified. I'm not even stealing any of it!

why?

Why am I suddenly plagued with AIM spam? In the last week I've gotten several offers for sexy chats with locals who have apparantly checked out my profile and want to hook up. Wait, no, I don't want to look at your profile. No, I will not be clicking on that link. Of course, warning or blocking them won't do any good because it's friggin AIM. All of you using aim, just go and switch to yahoo. They have offline messaging! It even works sometimes! It even delivers my instant messages... most of the time. Oh well, it's free.

Leaving town in absurdly short time. I seem to be staying at a nice enough hotel. It will provide me with breakfast every day at least, and the website boasts free high speed internet. It'll be kind of nice to have a hotel room to myself. I greatly appreciated the couch in Brooklyn, but a bathroom with actual doors and no other people very nearby will be pleasant.

It's friggin cold

I can't believe it snowed yesterday. It was too warm to stick, but still damn cold, and windy, and generally craptacular. Donald stayed home to get stuff done and avoid nasty weather, which was a nice treat. It was like a mini-weekend, which we needed because I'm leaving before we have another weekend.

We worked on wedding announcement stuff some. I'm formulating an excel file with all the names and addresses to make labels, and it's also great for making a count. At this time, we have a grand total of 145 people, but a total of people that will probably actually show up of about 93. Donald has a lot of out of town relatives that we should apparently invite, but aren't likely to show. At least, I hope they don't. We have no possible way to fit 145 people.

We went downtown to pick up my ring again, and actually got it this time. We're calling it done. It looks very pretty. A picture will happen sometime. Then I got a re-haircut. It seems that if I want an actual haircut, I shouldn't go to the barbershop. I have to go to a place where they shampoo your hair and, well, actually know what they're doing. I've learned that the word for the way I wanted the back of my hair is "stacked." I feel bad for poor Donald waiting though, after the haircut she must have spent 20 minutes styling it. Which I will never do again.

Then we ran a few more errands, came home and did some laundry. In the midst of the laundry, we made a slightly bland but perfectly edible casserole. We also went to Muddy's for a bit and played scrabble again. I might actually win this game.

Today Jen is going to show me some stuff about Vectorworks. No more putting that off.

At least the sun is out today. I can always sit in a sunbeam and pretend I'm not cold. Seems to work well for the cat.

NYC pics 5

This picture begins my trip. Here I am, all comfy in my 3 entire seats. Nearly empty airplanes are the best!

Pretty tiles in the subway. It's a good thing they built the tunnels back when people cared about nice details. They're filthy now of course, but still! This is the stop where I got off the L in Brooklyn.

On my last day I went into a yarn store. This extremely expensive yarn was also extremely soft. I was strong though, and did not buy any overpriced New York yarn.

NYC pics 4

These are at the theater. It was quite small, as you can see. There isn't anything behind those curtains but wall. All the gear was rented, and installed before we got there.

I took this one from the back of the house.

And this one from the back of the stage area.

The ceiling was very high, and very useless with no hanging positions. The front of house stuff was all on those booms.

This is the stairwell up to the theater. The whole thing is inside a church, and there's some pretty architecture.

NYC pics 3

Here are a few pics of beautiful Brooklyn. *snicker* Sorry, I couldn't keep a straight face saying that. It was dead ugly, where I was. This first pic is the actual building I was staying in. Right behind that One Way sign was the front door, where you could push a buzzer for each apartment. They gave me a key so I didn't need to buzz after the first time.

This one is down the street a bit.

And the lovely subway station, which took me into much less ugly Manhattan every day. Hooray subway.

NYC pics 2

Here's the kitty, same one from Sacramento. She got to fly to NYC on a plane, drugged out of her tiny mind. She managed to get much bigger in the 6 months since I'd been there.

NYC pics, finally part 1

Here's the apartment I stayed in. That lovely couch was my bed, and surprisingly comfortable. On my "bed" is my unhelpful laptop. On the left is the mac I used to post that one time. :)

Here's the view from the other direction including bathroom and kitchenette. One big room. This apartment costs about twice as much as mine in KC, and it's way the hell out in Brooklyn. Oy.

bah.

Yet another ring derail. We went to pick it up again, AGAIN, and they still didn't have it right. There was a gap where one stone was set, and the guy who wrote down what to do didn't write it down clearly, so they didn't fix it. So Tuesday. Hopefully. Once I get the damn thing, I'll put a picture up. I should have taken a picture before I gave Robyn's camera back. Dammit, I want my friggin ring.

I need another word for minutiae

I didn't even turn on my laptop yesterday. I am so unmotivated. Instead I read a book, Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, author of lots of Sandman goodness. It was pretty good, but rather short. I also made some dinner, and it was almost but not quite actual cooking. I made chicken and vegetables from the freezer and sweet potatoes that were fresh. So I did 1/3 Real Cooking. It was a decent dinner, but the mixed vegetables were mostly broccoli stems.

Donald got home, I fed him the dinner, we set the VCR to tape Alias and went for coffee. We played scrabble and had a nice time. Last time we played scrabble I could have made an excellent word combo, where I was going to put the word "unholy" parallel to another word and all the letters lined up would make little words. It was going to be great. But we both figured that "el" wasn't an acceptable word. Turns out that it is, dammit! That'll teach me to leave the scrabble dictionary at home. /boring Such is my life. :D

When we got back from Muddy's, Donald went to take a shower and I sat on the couch to read. Anna hopped up to sit on my lap. Then she stayed there for about 2 hours. By the time I got up my feet were cold and I had to pee, but I didn't want disturb the cuddly warm cat. Cat wins! We watched Alias and I read more, way too late but I wanted to finish the book. I finally got up, resisting the urge to fall asleep on the couch and went to bed.

daily minutiae

I've always wondered why the cat insists on sitting in front of the refrigerator door. I go to open the door, and I either have to push her with the door, or my foot. She won't move until you actually force her to. A minute ago, I was getting something out of the cabinet across from the fridge and I finally realized why she loves that spot. That's where the fridge vents heat. For some reason, it never occured to me before, and for some reason, I'm finding it pretty funny.

Other non exciting things have happened this week. We focused lights for the opera. I bought groceries. I got my glasses adjusted. That's about it. Today I should open up my laptop and work on learning Vectorworks, and getting familiar with Lightwright 4. Will I do it? Who knows! What I actually want to do at this moment is make raisin bran muffins, but I don't have any raisin bran.

what to do?

I hate being busy for so long, and then it just stops. I don't know what to do with myself. I have to be somewhere in an hour, and I don't know what to do until I leave in 45 minutes. I could read, but then I'd feel like I should be doing something else. I guess I'll just kill a few minutes posting about my inertia. 45 minutes isn't really long enough to get started on something.

Yesterday I read the 12th Lemony Snicket book. Those of you who have read such things know that isn't saying much, they're short and the print is big. There was a critique that took longer than it should, because Victor's meeting ran over. But I did enjoy holding a kitten, which Rocco kept trying to give me. I resisted the kitteny goodness, and came back home sans cat. Thne I read more, and waited for Donald to get home because he was working late. Then I fell asleep on the couch, and wasted most of the time he was home by sleeping. I woke up somehow at 11, used my computer a bit and finished the book. Why am I not doing something useful??

Only 5 minutes have gone by. I guess I could go eat something. I should, but I don't feel very hungry. I guess I'll eat anyway.

"Who the hell is Uncle Denny??"

Donald is on the phone with his sister. They're talking about the list of people on his side of the family. Apparently, Donald's grandpa has a lot of sisters. And somewhere there is an Uncle Denny. Donald is trying to convince his sister that if he doesn't know who they are, they probably won't care to come to his wedding. It's pretty damn funny from my end of the phone.

By the way, the date is May 14, 2006. Mark your calendars!

Cambodia review

Here's a link to a review of the show I worked on in NYC. As for my opinion, I'll put it this way: If I were doing the show here, I probably wouldn't try to get any of you to see it.

http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/7029

My lighting in a magazine!

At the coffeehouse tonight, I was looking through a magazine when I came across an article on the Urban Culture Project. I turned the page, and there was a picture from Quixotic in June. How great is that! My name isn't on there, but it's still pretty damn cool. The shot looks decent too, it's amazing what you can design with 12 Source 4 Juniors. :-/

annoyed

Yesterday I found out that for assisting on Harry, Jen's getting paid more than I did to assist on Carter's Way. Goddammit. Putting up with the evil LD from hell for a week, and getting paid less for it. AND Jen will get twice as much as that to remount it in the spring. Life is not fair, but I will get over it.

I've been working on dance all week. When I'm not teching my own pieces, I've been at school working on other stuff. There would be no point going home when I'd have to go back a couple hours later to work on notes. Therefore, I've been getting home lateish, about 7. Then I eventually fall asleep on the couch, until Donald wakes me up. Why have I been so tired? Sitting around the 5th floor isn't really that tiring. I have a meeting today to talk about Lost Highway stuff, which is still all up in the air right now. It needs to get nailed down FAST.