Here's the fabric for my dress. The blue is a little greener in real life, but this is the general idea.

wedding shower... joy

Donald's mom called me to tell me that they want to throw me a shower from his side of the family. Oh goody! This is going to be all kinds of weird! I barely know these people! I don't even know all their names! She's invited my mom and Lucy, and Robyn will go too. Crap, I really need to register for stuff now. We scheduled it for March, so at least I don't have to get all registered this week or anything like that.

why?

The lighting on West Wing is ridiculous. They are always walking through completely random pools of very bright light. I'm pretty sure that if I went on a tour of the white house tomorrow, I wouldn't see any silly-ass pools of light. Also, I wouldn't see the world's most defined venetian blind shadows in everybody's office. It's just silly.

One more thing nailed down

We have a musician. He lives on the next block, and is a really cool guy. He plays piano and sings too, but isn't at all snooty or lounge-creepy. We were at his house for half an hour, and were joking around within minutes. Donald suggested that he "play some Skynyrd" and he launched into a damn good Freebird. :D He will happily learn any particular songs we want, and plays all from memory. He knows his stuff, having played at over 300 weddings already. This guy is going to be great.

Sunday night off

The last few days, I've had a blessedly easy time getting up. Maybe it's because I have a goal, and I want to get it done. Thursday and Friday I wanted nothing more than to not go to rehearsal. I wanted to stay home with Donald and play Morrowind. Saturday and Sunday, I woke up ready to go and get it done. It's a good feeling, since I've been so massively unmotivated lately. I got up today, and it feels like a Sunday because I don't have rehearsal. But it's actually Monday, and I have to go to meetings in an hour and a half. I've been completely separated from the school world for a week, and I don't want to go back. :P

Yesterday we got started early enough to get donuts on the way to the theater. We were the first ones there at 10, so we got set up and started working as other people trickled in to work, and said, "ooh, donuts!" We got a lot of focus notes done before tech started, but no cue notes. There are plenty of adjustments I can do during the run, but many that I just can't. It was no big deal, there were only 2 places where I had big things to fix. The run was kind of rocky. We had a few tech problems, and a few moments where actors completely lost their lines. But we got through it, the director gave notes, and released everybody until Tuesday. Hooray!! It was about 5, and we didn't have to stay until midnight. Sound guys were onstage, so we worked on cue notes until they left. Focus notes onstage took about half an hour, then we went home.

Robyn came up to eat Chinese food and watch a DVD with us. The Chinese food didn't turn out well, but the movie part was fine. Apparently, Sunday night is very busy for Kin Lin, because I was put on hold 4 times before I could order. I should have given up then, and next time I will. Well, it took an hour to get the food, and then they left off some items. They didn't get Donald's food on the order at all, but we paid to a crab rangoon that we didn't get. I'm annoyed, but I'll forgive Kin Lin one night of crappy service for all the times the food has arrived in twenty minutes.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was very very weird, but good. I wasn't sure I'd like it, but was curious to see it and I'm glad I did. Donald liked it too. We were both pleasantly surprised that we enjoyed it. Jim Carrey was actually acting, and Kate Winslet was convincingly crazy. Thanks Robyn, for sharing your netflix. :)

word cloud

That's pretty nifty.

Tech continues

Last night we teched Act 1, and it went pretty well. Writing cues with moving fixtures can be a real pain in the butt. You have to keep close track of when they move, when they turn on, and make sure they don't move in the cue when they turn off. Then you have to make sure you aren't trying to bring the same light up in the next cue, and if you are, you have to add a cue to make the fixture move while it's off. What I'm doing isn't overly complicated, but I can just imagine the mess I'd make trying to do fancier stuff. To sum up, a regular light has one channel, to turn the light on and off. These fixtures have 25 channels, each doing something different, including intensity, pan, tilt, fine pan, fine tilt, color 1, color 2, gobo 1, gobo 2, gobo function 1 and 2, iris, strobe, focus, frost, etc. I'm only using 6 of them, and they sometimes twist my brain into pretzel. The annoying thing is that everything in the theater is CRAP, so I have at least 2 fixtures where the dowser gets stuck so the light won't necessarily go all the way out when I tell it to. Ugh. I'm going to have to do all manner of extra work to try and fix this stupid problem which wouldn't even exist if the fixtures were properly maintained.

Adding to my confusion, I'm using a light board that I've never used before, the ETC Obsession 2. It works very differently from the Expression line, mainly in the tracking, which I am starting to really love as I get used to it. (I won't even try to explain tracking here. If you care, ask me in person sometime.) I would be so screwed if my board op didn't already know what he's doing. He has been extremely helpful. I should buy him some beer.

Today we went in at 10 to do notes. We started at noon and finishing teching Act 1. Then we ran Act 1. We got done early enough that I had an hour and a half to write cues for Act 2. We probably spent half an hour on one sequence using all 6 moving lights, even though they aren't doing live moves. It just takes forever to move each light, adjust focus, get the right template in, and make sure you didn't screw anything up. After dinner we teched and ran Act 2. Tomorrow we're going to go work again at 10, run the whole show at about 1, and if all goes well the evening rehearsal will be cancelled. My fingers are crossed.

If you want to come see this thing, and I would like it if you did, sometime this week would be best. We will most likely be running Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Thursday and Frday are previews, at 7:30, and Saturday is opening night, also 7:30. I will be at all of these, so you can join me. Don't make me come back after that, come to one of these. Please? :)

still sick

I don't feel better, but I don't feel worse. I'm a-hangin' in there. My head is producing amazing amounts of snot right now, so my nose is alternately stuffy or runny.

Yesterday we met with my dressmaker again, who is going to start working on the mock-up. We're going to meet again in about 2 weeks and try things on. She took samples of the fabric and embellishments with her. It will be pretty. :)

Donald and I bought groceries, and I took a much needed nap in the afternoon. Tech started out rocky, but turned out okay. I have some cues written, and some that even look decent. We stopped early, so I got to come home and play some Morrowind instead of going to bed early. Amazingly, I didn't sneeze or blow my nose much all evening.

Tonight we will tech Act 1, and the go the hell home. And right now, I'm going to go take a nice hot shower.

sick again?

Yesterday we finished hanging lights for The Trial. We started about noon, and it took until about 6. It was messy and not very well organized, but it got done. Then I came home, got dinner, and went to a run through.

Today was focus. It didn't start well. I was starting to feel crummy last night, and when I woke up this morning I felt a cold coming on. I was there at nine, and puttered around, turning things on and setting up. Two of my people got there a few minutes later, and we slowly slogged through a few lights. We got a truly pathetic number of lights done before the other 2 people got there at 11, and then it picked up some. We managed to eventually get through all the lights, as I was feeling progressively crappier all day. We got done about 5, even though we spent some time going back and adjusting things that I focused badly the first time. I'm pretty convinced it all looks like shit, so if the moving lights don't cooperate I'm royally screwed. I'm disappointed in the whole product of this day. The worst part is that I actually like the show and have a pretty clear idea of what I want the lights to do. This is pretty much the opposite of my usual situation at this point, where I have focused at least a few lights I like- but I have no idea what I want the cues to look like.

I really hope this will be a magical 24 hour cold. I have to write cues tomorrow night, and I need to feel better than this to function well. Then I have a week of tech to get through. I want this show to look good.

Ow, teeth

I went to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned today. The cleaning part doesn't really bother me. The part when the dentist pokes my teeth witht the pointy tools doesn't really bother me, except on the occasion when he slipped and stabbed me in the gum, but that only happened once. The part I hate is the flossing part. They do the flossing right after the polishing part, so to begin with she's squashing that gritty stuff between my teeth, and that feeling stays for hours. The worst part is that I think she hates me, and takes it out on my gums by attempting to cut my teeth off with the floss. I know I should floss my teeth more often. I know that that would be the smart thing to do. But honestly, I've made it this far without flossing! The teeth are fine!

I think she likes it when I bleed. :(

Today I finally played Cranium with my mom. She gave it to me last christmas, and we just played it with her today. She made chicken and noodles for lunch, and an angel food cake for my birthday. Afterwards, Donald and I played against her and dad. This was funny on many levels. To begin with, they both have trouble reading the small type on the cards. That isn't funny in itself, but the holding things ar arm's length in order to focus is always silly looking. Then, we kept rolling purple, so we were in the center before they got halfway around the board. It was unheard of, we actually rolled 4 friggin purples in a row. My parents cracked me up. Mom got the one when you draw an object. It was a menorah. She drew a very respectable menorah, to which my dad guessed: "Oh what the hell is that thing called..." He knew it was that jewish thing, but absolutely coudn't come up with the word. Mom says: "I knew he wouldn't get it!" I tried to help him by telling him that it was also the name of a hospital around here, so he says "Baptist!" Trust me, it was funnier then. Also funny was the club cranium where mom and I were both acting out waterbed. Donald won us that one. :)

We polished off the evening by watching more West Wing, and a distinctly lame SNL.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Extremely weird, but not even in the entertaining way. It held my attention, but the whole thing was kind of draggy and the story sucked. The stuff they made up about Willy Wonka's background was ridiculous and useless. Johny Depp was creepy, but somehow managed also to be uninteresting. There were funny moments, and I think a lot of the actors gave good performances for their roles, but generally it was just not that good.

dollas

For my birthday, Donald's grandma sent me 2 scratchers tickets in my birthday card. Now I know the lottery is a waste of time and money, but I think it's fun to get in a card. I scratched off the 2 numbers to match, 6 and 11. I scratched down the side; 6, 6, 11, 11, 6. I won $25! That's pretty neat. Now I'll never win again, having used up all my luck on a $1 scratch-off ticket, but hey, it was fun!

This Questionable Content made me laugh much:
goddamned stoner cat. You should laugh too!

It feels like the weekend, because Donald is here and I'm not doing much useful. We spent many hours yesterday running around on errands, and today we did a few but mostly we did nothing. I had a $10 off coupon for V. Secret, so I went to use it up today. I tried on 4 bras, all of which made me feel fat. Not really because of the bra itself, but mainly because of the damn mirrors, showing my pudge clearly under the overpriced bras. My mirror at home doesn't do that. In disgust, I decided to buy a different color of the bra I was already wearing. I got this one from the clearance pile for $10 last year, so I'm annoyed that I just paid $30 for the same thing, after the discount. Ripoff. At least they send me coupons every now and then for free panties.

Feeling fat or not, I need to eat better. Practically everything I eat comes out of a box. I need to drink more water, and eat less crap junk food. That's particularly hard, because after friggin' Coldstone Creamery, I CRAVE that dark chocolate mint ice cream. Argh!! It was delicious, and overpriced. I realized yesterday that the only way it could have been better would be instead of oreos, it would have Thin Mints smashed up in it. That would be prefection.

Damn you VCR

The plan was to tape Scrubs while I was at rehearsal, then get coffee, come home and watch the tape. Well, we screwed up the taping bit. So now we're watching the West Wing. Are you happy now???

So pretty...

I picked up the fabric for my dress today.

Wow. It's really beautiful. I have 10 yards of the blue, and 6 of silver. The blue is like an irredescent peacock color, with purple highlights. It's sooo pretty!

Fine, Kinion, here!

After several days of crazy busy, I'm at another lull.

Thursday night I watched the runthrough. It went quite well, and I actually think it's going to be a good show. I wanted to work on it that night, but I was distracted by the dance concert too, and then I had to go to bed in order to but at the theater at 9 the next day. So work on my plot got pushed back.

Friday I worked at the Rep until 3, then I came home and rushed off downtown. My tech time was scheduled from 4-5, so I chased down the guy for information, came back with very little, and wrote cues with the most crummy setup ever. If anybody wants an explanation in technical terms, let me know. Lets just say it was amateur at best. The guy had no organization. I'll sum up in nontechnical terms. When you are dealing with, say, 200 lights, each one is assigned a number. When you are not an idiot, you assign them in an organized way that makes it easy to call them up in an orderly fashion. This guy just left them with the numbers they were plugged in to. IT was very very stupid. After that, I came home and Mike joined Donald and me for dinner and coffee. Then those 2 played Mario Kart and I worked on my plot. I sent off the revision at about 12:30 that night.

Saturday I focused lights at the Rep until the lunch break, then Donald dropped me off downtown to finish teching the dance piece. The whole process was a mess. We get kind of harried here at school during dance concerts, but this was ridiculous. Donald met me for dinner, and to give me Nano birthday present. :) The show was at 8. There were 9 pieces total. One was mine, 2 I'd seen before, 4 were crap, 1 was okay, and 1 I really liked. It seems that to some people, "modern dance" just means annoying music.

Sunday was hang for the Trial at Union Station. I wanted so much to be asleep in my bed, but instead I worked. It was a bit of a mess, but came together okay. We finished what we were doing in tome to go home at 5, which was great. Robyn came up for coffee and hangin' out.

Today we finished the hang. We were almost done in 2 hours, but then getting the moving lights up and running took about 2 more hours. But now it's done, or at least as done as it can be until the set is loaded in and we can hang 8 booms and rig 2 pipes under the ceiling. That happens next week. It will take a bit of time. Bah.

I've spent the week so far running back and forth around town for 1 hour meetings. I think it's more than a little stupid that I've driven downtown 3 times already, and then back home again after an hour. And I'll be doing it 3 more times. It's not the downtown that bugs me, it's the short time.

Monday I went to a dance rehearsal of limited usefulness, where only 3 of the 4 dancers were there and they spent the first half hour warming up. I asked if there would be a rehearsal where I could see all of them, and I was told sure! They were having another tomorrow at 1:30. I showed up at 1:45, because warm-ups aren't very exciting. They weren't warming up, they were teaching the 4th guy the dance, and they stopped for lunch at 2. What the hell people, this group is AWESOME at wasting my time. It was the same way last summer, when they'd need me to see a rehearsal that lasted only 15 minutes. And for that, I drove all the way downtown and put 2 hours worth of quarters in the meter. It's just such an inefficent use of time. If they'd told me that they were only rehearsing for half an hour, I'd have asked to see it another damn day. I still haven't seen the whole piece, and I'm thinking that I won't until the damn fool performance!

All at the same time I've been having lots of email coversations about the Trial, which we hang Sunday, on my birthday. We have a plan to get donuts on the way to work. :) We're trying to coordinate the moving of equipment, scheduling, all the usual stuff. It's at Union Station, which adds 3 more pain-in-the-ass steps to everything for a number of reasons. It's not our space, so we have to try to plan ahead to bring everything we need. We have to play fun and games with security passes on half the doors. And to cap it all off, I'm not sure some of the equipment will work.

Tonight I get to see the Trial rehearsal for the first time. I'm looking forward to it so I know what's going on, but dreading it because I'm concerned that they'll have moved everything somewhere I can't light it. Tomorrow and Saturday morning I will work for dollars at the Rep, but I have to leave early both days to drive downtown for this dance thing. I feel bad when I do that, even though I'm sure there will be enough people there.

For christmas, Donald's parents bought us a digital camera. They were 99% sure we'd return it anyway, and they were 100% right. Today we tried that. Yesterday when we were in Odessa, we picked up the receipt. Donald called OfficeMax previously, and they told him that you needed the receipt to return. We went there today, where a bitchy woman snippily told us that we also had to have the credit card to do a return, even for store credit. Oh, and also that there was a limit of 14 days after christmas to return things, and that's tomorrow. Thanks a lot bitchy woman. Not having the credit card, Donald called him mom, who suggested going to the OfficeMax on Noland Road, where she bought it. We went there, figuring that if they were going to be as unhelpful as the other one, that we'd at least already be half way to Odessa. That OfficeMax returned it no problem, no question. Not for cash, but that's to be expected. Moral of the story? Screw OfficeMax, and just go to Office Depot.

Tonight we watched Batman Begins. I enjoyed it overall. There were some very nice moments. Katie Holmes still looks like she's 15, but her acting isn't quite as bad as Heather Graham's. The movie would have been better without her, but whatever. I liked Christian Bale's performance. If you want to see another cool movie with him, see Equlibrium. It's a futuristic action flick with very little action, but the action that it does have is very badass.

There were 2 sides to that billboard, and they both hurt equally

I'm beginning to get very annoyed at myself. I set my alarm for 8 today, thinking that with snooze button-mashing I'd get up about 9. When I looked at the clock, it was after 10, and I think, goddammit, why can't I get up earlier?? I'm fairly certain that when I actually NEED to get up at a specific time that I still can. It just seems that I can't drag myself up if I know I don't really need to. It's pissing me off, and I feel like I'm wasting time. When I'm finally dressed and fed and it's friggin' noon, I feel like a lazy bastard.

Even though we didn't drag ourselves out of bed at a decent time, we did lotsa running around yesterday. Again, I didn't get up until after 10, and Donald until about 11. We were discussing what to do with the day, and how long it would take in order to be back in time for the movie. So we hauled ass and got ready in time to leave the house about 12:30. We made the long and boring trek to warrensburg, where our goal was to get Donald's old Nintendo fixed for his nephew. The helpful fellow at Rock n' Sports took care of that in short order, and we went to wal-mart to spend our $20 gift cards. We indulged ourselves by buying not one but TWO boxes of laundry soap. Then we went through Odessa, and headed home.

Cell phones are wonderful. You can coordinate a movie-going experience whilst riding down I-70. One movie viewing plan fell apart, but we decided to get together anyway. Mike was assigned to scout us out a restaurant in Westport, so we ate at The Thai Place. I ordered a spicy dish, and a sprite, anticipating fiery goodness. I got goodness, but no fire. I was rather disappointed, I like spicy. The price was a little high, about $11 for the entrees we ordered, but there were lots of leftovers. Donald said he wasn't especially fond of the food, so I think I get to eat his leftovers too. :) We picked up ice cream on the way home, and you guessed it, played more video games. Robyn joined us eventually, having had her day tied up with a tournament.

My verdict on the 40-year-old Virgin: It was okay. It had good moments, but was kinda draggy at times. Then it ended with a weird musical sequence, which was funny, but unexpected. So, I'm glad I didn't see it in the theater. $4.29 for a 2-day rental is ridiculous, but 4 people watched the damn thing, so it was actually very price efficient.

Today we were going to a birthday for a 100 year old cousin, but we got uninvited. Turns out that we're too young. They decided to use age as a cut-off for attendance. Perhaps I will play Morrowind. :D

Fabric: check

We ordered fabric for my wedding dress yesterday. It's a very pretty color of blue. I just hope it won't be too bright when I see it in a larger piece than the 1" by 2" swatch. It should arraive in about 10 days, and then I will know. Waiting sucks...

Robyn and Mike came over last night. We played a bit of Mario Party and then got coffee. Pretty much the usual. As I suspected, a game of Phase 10 goes much faster with 4 people. It was good to see them, since this week seemed to go by very slowly.

Robyn had to leave early in order to get up in the morning the next day, so we 3 remaining couch potaytoes played monkey ball, and opened up Monkey Bowling. Then we played it for about 2 hours. It occured to us that real bowling is fun, and that we should do it some time. I lead a boring existence. Since I've started playing morrowind again, I basically just want to play it all the time. I'm going to have to say that this is all Donald's fault. Before I met him I didn't play video games at all! Now look at me, a slave to the start button! Damn you, Donald!

back to work

The last couple of days have been pretty busy/tiring. Wednesday was light hang for Raisin in the Sun until 5. I was pretty tired when I got home, and actually considered taking a nap. That never works at night so I didn't. I nearly fell asleep while using my computer. I emailed my plot in and washed my hands of it. Then I wasted the evening playing Morrowind while Donald played Final Fantasy on his laptop. I think I dozed off a little while running in the game, and woke up realizing that my character was just running into a wall. I don't think Donald noticed. :D

Yesterday we finished the light hang, then I had some errands to do and a production meeting. This meeting was supposed to be on Monday, before my plot was due, but got moved. So I already have changes for the plot, the day after I turned it in. Sigh. I fully expect to have many many more changes within the next 2 weeks. Union Station is going to be such a hassle. They told us that their projector isn't working right now, and that it might not be working by the time we need it. This is friggin ridiculous. Their equipment is always a problem.

Meanwhile I'm getting all manner of emails about the Modern Night at the Folly thing, full of mostly useless information. I have very little idea what's going on, since I won't even see the dance piece until Monday. I just hope the groups will make SOME kind of sense so I can write some decent-lookin' cues. :P

It's very nice to have Donald around. I think he's getting antsy though. Having all this time off must be pretty weird for him.

Why don't you mousse the CRAP out of it? Straight up!

Not only did Scrubs season premiere come on tonight, but there were 2 episodes, oh yeah. And now I'm watching even more Scrubs on DVD. Yay for TV!

We haven't put the furniture back yet. Instead, we've watched 2/3 of Scrubs season 2 fighting for space on the orange pillow. I'm kind of enjoying it not being the same, but I'm ready to be back on my couch. We've thought about moving the room around, but we can't find another good place to put the TV, and it's waaay too heavy for experimenting.

I think we gave Sam a good tour. As Donald pointed out I kept showing him lighting stuff, but hey, you go with what you know. Now that he's seen the space, he can have a good picture in his head when/if he talks to faculty.

I'm off to the first rehearsal of The Trial today. Meet and greet, talk a little bit about your design, etc. I may or may not stick around for the read through. Light plot is almost ready for deployment. Bah, school.

Happy 2006

Good times were had this New Years. We had a total of 12 people in the house, and 3 video game systems running on one TV and 2 projectors. We played the hell out of Mario Kart. :) There was much food and many drinks. Nobody threw up (I think), and all was well. I was concerned that I hadn't gathered enough things to eat, but everybody brought plenty, and we had good variety too.

Yesterday was nice and relaxing. It started out with Sam making us breakfast. Eventually, the Sedalia group headed home, and the rest of us decided to go get some lunch. At about 4. We got some food then went to the coffeehouse, which was thankfully open. Sitting in a warm coffee-scented place playing cards was just what we needed. The card game took rather too long, just like last time we played it 5 player. Joe won, the smug bastard. Then they went home, and Donald and I cleaned a bit more, then finished off the day watching some of Scrubs season 2. Good day.

Last night I dreamed a story. A kid found some high-tech cloth that, well, worked like an invisibility cloak; and a high-tech backpack that, well, worked like the anti-grav boots in UT. Then he went on a reign of mischief, eventually got caught, and everything went back to normal. There was no moral of the story but I was entertained! I slept very well last night. Lately my neck has been bothering me, so I've got to appreciate a good sleep.

And now, back to the real world. Today I'm a-gonna work on my plot more, get the rent dropped off, give Sam a tour of the theater, and have a production meeting. Putting the furniture back might also be in the picture.