Friday was the load-in day for Europe in Grant Hall. We started by taking the dimmers and stuff I had here to Grant, then going on a raiding party at the PAC. We gathered up all sorts of equipment and dragged it all to GH by 1. We took an hour for lunch, the went back to it. Right away, we found that the way we were going to hang the lights wasn't going to work very well, so we went back to the PAC for more stuff, and a taller ladder. Then we actually got something done. Of the 3 dimmer packs (possessing a potential 12 dimmers) 8 dimmers work. I also have a 6 channel Dove board, so there are 6 dimmers controlled manually. I'm using the Express to control 8 dimmers. It's pretty silly when you think about it! The day took a lot longer than it would have if we hadn't been making it up as we went.

Friday night Robyn and I went to see Dr. J's Fringe Fesitval show. It was good. A little disturbing at times, but honesty usually is. I'm glad we went.

The wedding yesterday was nice. I knew a total of 5 people there, including Donald and the bride and groom. I owe Mike big time by the way. He and I had a good time snickering at the Man Sandals, aka "mandals" that one guy was sporting. The wedding party all looked very nice, and the decorations were neat. They had lots of cheesecakes, in many flavors. We got home about 10:30 and were very tired.

Today I finished up in Grant Hall, and Donald returned his tux and bought a DS lite. Now it's time for the usual grocery shopping, laundry doing and dish washing.

Anna is on Cute Overload! I sent in a picture and they posted it.
www.cuteoverload.com
Scroll down until you see a black kitty with her tongue sticking out. That's her. :)

Balance

To balance out the sad karma (haw haw, carma) of Robyn's sad squashed car, I will post pictures of kitty cuteness.

Hiding under Target's santa bag


looking rather drunk


She thinks she's a projector.


I'm not quite sure why she thinks that's a good spot.


DO YOU WANT TO COUNT MY WHEESKERS?

I've been rushing around doing various theatre stuff. I'm chasing equipment for Europe, and think I may have caught some. I'm currently on "plan D" for the damn fool equipment, and I really hope I don't have to go to any "plan E" 'cause I don't know what that is. I gotta call a guy this morning to find out when to get the goods. We had a meeting and a run through Sunday night, and now I'm trying to figure out how to light the show with possibly only 8 dimmers.

For the showcase in 116, I've seen 4 out of the 6 plays now. The other 2 directors didn't respond to my emails, so I may just not see a run through. I don't have time to chase directors AND equipment. In between rehearsals Monday, I searched the PAC for useful stuff and pulled some color and templates. I found some useful stuff, but not as much as I would have liked. I saw 2 more rehearsals Tuesday, and tried to get into locked places with no luck. The bitch there is that I have permission to use equipment, I just can't physically get it because SOMEBODY locks everything up. If only Sean D. hadn't turned in his keys, I'd have those dimmers.

Monday morning I helped my dad get a new washing machine into the basement, and take the old one out. My mom finally decided that she needed a new one, since her 30+ yr. old washer wasn't always draining. They got a Whirlpool from Costco for $200. It's so fun to be the one on the downstairs end of the dolly. Once we figured out what we were doing it was fine, but I still have a bruise on my shoulder and A couple red marks where it pinched me. Every time we do something like this my dad gets all wheezy and I worry about him.

the weekend

Saturday Donald had to work, so Robyn and Mike and I went shopping. Mike had an art project in mind, so he got the supplies he wanted. I got a wedding present for Scott and Tracy. Robyn and I both got more pretty paper for scrapbooks.

We went to dinner at Blue Koi on 39th St. and we were all satisfied. They seem a little pricey, but when you figure in that we all had leftovers and shared 2 appetizers, $20 each is pretty decent. Robyn got roasted duck with noodles, and Mike ordered a chicken curry dish. After tasting, they decided to trade, which confused the waiter to no end. Mike's friend Vicky had the ginger chicken, and I had pot roast. It could not have been more tender and flavorful. Mmmm... Next time I'm getting that curry thing.

After dinner we happily settled into arts and crafts night. Mike wanted to paint something, so I volunteered the use of all my paints. I got nominated to be the art teacher and offer advice about stuff. We spent several hours painting or cutting and pasting, and a good time was had by all. Mike's paintings turned out really well. Robyn and I both would have put them up on our walls. :)

Yesterday Robyn and I went to Costco to pick up our photo prints. When we got back we spent some more time cutting, pasting and/or taping, while Donald played Paper Mario. I haven't played it yet, but Donald and Robyn both really like it.

NOW

Want more Battlestar Galactica, want it now.

dammit.

Friday

I'm glad the work got cancelled. Yesterday morning I took advantage of the fabulous 70's temperature and went for a walk. I walked 2 miles, and it took about 45 minutes. It was quite satisfactory. Then I pretty much did nothing the rest of the day.

Mike got here a little after 4, Robyn got here around 5, and when Donald got home we went for dinner. It sucks that the only weekday Donald gets home early is Friday, because we all know restaurants are crowded on Friday evenings. Our dinner service was slow, and the food was okay, but not really great. Mike was tired so he went home, so the rest of us got coffee and played Munchkin. It was very nice, since we hadn't done that for a couple weeks. I don't know how they managed to get something addictive into the very coffeehouse itself- but if I don't go there very few days, I really want to. How do they do that?

Pick up the damn phone people

I wish people would TELL ME when I'm supposed to work for them and the plan changes. Specifically, PAYING work, that I now don't have. I wonder how much money I didn't make this summer because of this.

In May, I was told that I was needed to assist at the Unicorn for several days. So I show up at 10 on the day I was told to, and he's surprised to see me. Well, this is when you told me to be here! I didn't hear otherwise, so I showed up to work, and you were going to pay me to do so! I even turned down other work because I'd be in your tech. So now I look stupid, having shown up at a tech where I'm not needed, at a place where I somehow always feel like they all look at me like I don't belong anyway, then turn around and leave. Thanks. No paycheck this time.

On Monday, I worked at the dinosaur restaurant, then we planned when to go back the next day, so I left my tools there. Tuesday morning, Alex tells me that the guy says he only needs one person. Thanks asshat, you could have told us that last night. Now Alex has my tools and I need to call him to get them back. Money evaporates.

Today, I call the guy who I was supposed to work for tonight and tomorrow, since I hadn't heard from him all week. He says the thing has been pushed back a week, and can I still work then? No, I can't. I have a show to load in and a wedding to go to. But thanks for telling me before today! I'm happy to have my weekend back, but there goes another paying job.

I would just like it if the people I'm working for would keep the people working for them up to date, dammit. It seems like common courtesy.

quiz

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says:

There aren't any books near me, I'm in the computer room. I'll give you the 4th item on page 18 of the Victoria's Secret catalog: "Low-rise boyshort. Sizes S-L. $7.50."

2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can...What do you touch first?

The directory of Phsyicians and Health Care Professionals

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?

Battlestar Galactica on DVD

4. WITHOUT LOOKING, what time is it?

9 something

5. Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?

9:52

6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear:

Donald's computer, NPR on the radio

7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?

Yesterday, I was returning from the grocery store

8. What are you wearing?

boxers & a tank top

9. When did you last laugh?

Last night, making some smart ass comment about BSG

10. Seen anything weird lately?

Monday there were dinosaurs

11. What did you dream last night?

Now that you mention it, Victor was trying to convince me that I should teach a drawing class, and Kevin and Denise were here to visit.

12. What's on the walls of the room you're in?

Diplomas, posters of comic book characters including Death, Kabuki, and Strangers in Paradise

13. What do you think of this survey?

entertaining enough to do. :)

14. What's the last film you saw?

Pirates of the Caribbean 2

15. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?

a car

16. Tell me something about you that I don't know.

Uhh...

17. If you could change one thing about the world, what would you change?

People would stop being stupid

18. Do you like to dance?

Yes, but my friends all suck :P

19. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?
20. Boy?

No

21. Would you ever consider living abroad?

Hard to say

Only one angry thermometer today

There is a LOT more scenery at the dino restaurant now. The 4 huge fish tanks are packed with large brightly colored fish. One has some of those little sharks, who have been spotted taking bites out of the mantas. I feel really bad for the mantas. Lots of booths are starting to go in, as well as retail stuff which is less interesting. I'm taking my camera back today.

Yesterday was spent mostly putting more dichroics in lights for dino displays. Oh, and refocusing all the ones I did before. The scenery people came and put fake plants in and screwed up all the lights. There will be many melted fake plants, you can count on it. The owner was there doing a walk through of the whole place, loudly telling everybody everything that was wrong for an hour and a half. Made me very very glad to not be in charge of anything. After that, I had to go back to the fern and sequoia rooms to work on them. They had dark spots that needed fixing, so I got to get intimate with that goddamn greenery- covered cargo net again. There are also tree branches now, adding to the fun. So I pushed, pulled, got covered in itchy dust, added a few track lights, and managed to get the walls and corner trees lit. Every day there are more and more people doing a wide variety of things. Today they have staff training, so I think we're waiting to go in until late.

the weekend beer report

As described to me by Donald:

Fat Tire: "Pretty good."
St. Pauli Girl: "Tastes like liquid skunk."

So there you have it, folks!

Saturday we started the day with a good old fashioned trip to Country Kitchen. It was mostly okay, but I like Chubby's better. The CK breakfast buffet didn't have any of those little donuts any more. :( Then we wandered around town checking out video game type stores. Robyn got a great price on a Gamecube. We left about 1:30. The people on I-70 drive like nuts. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who think you should drive 65 or anything. But when I'm going just under 80, (that's nearly 10 over,) and getting passed on the right, that's just silly. We got to Columbia in plenty of time to check in to our hotel and take naps before getting dressed for the wedding.

The wedding was very nice. The wedding party all looked great in their finery. The tux place even managed to give Mike a coat that fit this time. The coffeehouse where the whole shindig was looked like a place I'd enjoy hanging out. I think I got some really great pictures, especially during the ceremony. I didn't plan to spend the whole ceremony on camera duty, but it just happened that way. I supposed some photographer instinct kicked in or something! Donald looked a little pissed that I didn't sit by him. Sorry, dear. There was a better view a few seats over. :) The reception was fun too. Many tasty food items were consumed, and a lot of free beer. None of us got drunk, but I can't say the same for Jim's family. They were damned happy.

Sunday we met Jim and Amy at Ihop. It was nice to sit and talk with just the two of them after the relative chaos of the wedding and reception. We really will have to get together again soon. The drive home was uneventful. As usual, I was glad to sleep in my own bed again. :)

Today and tomorrow I'm going back for more dinosaur goodness. So to speak. This heat is getting ridiculous. My ForecastFox toolbar is showing me two angry looking red thermometers. It's supposed to be around 100º all week. Ugh! Did I mention the humidty? I wish it wasn't so dirty in the basement. It's gloriously cool down there.

Reunion not so much with the reuniting

I packed everything up, put gas in the car, and generally got ready to go yesterday afternoon. Donald got home, we got on the road and got to Warrensburg about 6:30. We figured that wasn't enough time to go to Heroes, so we ate at Arbys. We met Robyn at the theater and discovered that we really didn't miss much not going. She said there was hardly anyone we know. At the theater, we chatted with a few people, but mostly just watched the play. I was hoping to see more than one or two people our age!

The play didn't suck. It wasn't great, but it could have been a lot worse. We vaguely knew one person in it. The set was okay, but we had plenty of nitpicking to do. As for lighting, it was mostly okay. There were plenty of dark spots, and not one time but TWICE the houselights came up with cues. That's just sloppy. Like I was telling Robyn, everybody will sometimes write houselights into a cue by accident. You just have to fix it before you have an audience. And we were at the 3rd of 5 performances.

Subconcious runs amok

Last night I dreamed that Robyn and I were at a Costco-like super warehouse. They had samples, such as melted chocolate that you dipped graham crackers in. There was a huge freezer that they only let 2 people go in at a time. In the freezer, there were 3' diameter pizzas. Also, bags of frozen ginger ale chips as big as a person. I sampled one, and the weren't that good. (Later it occured to me, where would you keep that??) Then the store morphed into an amusement park/ super warehouse complete with themed areas. Next it was a shallow river in a park where Robyn and Donald and I were walking on bridges over the water. You could go down to the water, and I rolled up my jeans a few inches to keep them dry. Then all the water was gone, and the bridges were no more fun. :(

back to work

I have 2 shows to work on right now. It's hard to get motivated, but kind of fun to be back at it. They're both small, definitely nothing I can't handle. One is the Equity Showcase in 116, where I'll be designing 6 short plays. They are, in no order: English Made Simple, Sure Thing, Can Can, Naomi in the Living Room, The Chalky White Substance, and The Questioning. 3 are familiar, the last one is brand new. I did this shindig last year, so I already know what needs to be done. I may even draw a plot this time...

My other project is a play called Europe by Australian playwright Michael Gow. It's being directed/ produced/ and acted in by a UMKC MFA actor, and the rest of the company are also current students. This one is really small, being produced in a room usually used for rehearsals. What makes it different is that it's going to be a one night only "event." The evening will include musical acts, a small auction of neat stuff, and drinks included in the ticket price. Hopefully, it will be really cool. That's the plan anyway.

Today: Pack for weekend trip. Try not to melt. Do dishes.

"A nice cake is waiting for you"

We had a good time this weekend, but Jim's right- very tiring. We must be getting old or something. Friday afternoon I made a salad for the co-worker barbecue. It was a nice barbecue, even thought I didn't really know anybody. I hope that the next time I see these folks, they'll be wearing nametags. After all, when you get introduced to 15 people all at once, it's pretty hard to remember names. They all seemed pretty nice, and the food was good. The host had a nice deck and yard. My salad got lots of compliments. We stayed about an hour and a half, then headed home to meet our friends.

Basically we just hung out. We went to the coffeehouse, then came home to play video games and consume beer. Mike brought a new (to us) Mario Party game. We also enjoyed some munchkin. I had to go to bed "early," since I had a meeting in the morning, at 9:30. (Who schedules meetings so early on a saturday??) After I got back and everyone got a shower, we went to Chubby's to consume delicious breakfast food. It's truly a good thing that restaurant isn't closer. We'd go way too often. After that, Jim headed off for family time, and Mike suggested that we go to the art gallery, since none of us had been for ages. We spent about 3 hours there, and saw some of the newly remodeled sections. Somehow, looking at art was friggin exhausting. We went to Uno for a snack, and a restm then went to see Pirates 2 at 5:30. It was an enjoyable flick, but not as good as the first one. We all agreed that there was just too much cgi, and it was kinda long. Then we walked to Kin Lin for some dinner. We managed to pack a lot into the weekend! Sunday Donald and I did the dishes/laundry/vaccuuming thing, and relaxed.

As requested, here are some dino pics:

2 more days of dino fun

Yesterday and Wednesday we worked 4pm -1am on the dino monstrosity. It was slightly less ridiculous this time, but mostly because I was just doing physically easier work. As usual, we stood around doing nothing for 2 hours when we got there Wednesday. I spent most of the day with a screwdriver and a pile of red, orange and yellow dichroics perched on top that aforementioned wall. This time I was putting color in the stupid little lights, and focusing more of them. When I got done with that, I used the very same screwdriver to open up and install more dichroic color in little wall mounted architectural lights. Later, we unpacked a couple dozen gobo rotators and filled them with steel and dichroic templates.

Yesterday one thing I did was place waterproof lights in the pond. (It wasn't filled yet) They had numbers written on them, and I had a drawing telling me where to put each number. A more challenging job came with putting color and glass diffusion in the lights mounted in the ceiling of the ice room. There were supposed to be access panels to get in there, but the panels were short on access, and sharp. The whole room is covered in plexi, with tiny plastic "ice chips" glued all over it. They are quite sharp! The people doing the gluing were working at the same time, so I got glue on me which was fun too. Their process included one person applying glue with a paint roller, and a second person flinging handfuls of loose chips at the wall. Those damn chips kept getting stuck in my shoes. :P Later, more dichroics were installed in lights in the dino displays. I finished the day in a scissor lift "focusing" track lighting on the build-a-bear build-a-dino advertisement wall.

Someone yesterday speculated that the restaurant cost about $15,000. ((Correction! 15 million.)) Holy crap. I took pictures, so let me know if you want to see them.

If that doesn't sound like a lot of work for 18 hours, it isn't. Some jobs were time consuming, but a lot of time was wasted waitng for the designer guy to tell us what to do.

Ice cream is tasty

Today felt like a Saturday. It's weird to have a weekend, then a work day, then a day of holiday. Not that I have a job to go to or anything, but Donald was home so that makes it a weekend. Tonight we watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I recommend it to anyone looking for something out of the ordinary. It's a kind of mystery with a bit of action and humor in it. It starts out with a guy in NYC who gets caught during a robbery, then while trying to escape, accidentally auditions for a movie. So he gets sent to LA to screen test, and it all goes from there. Highly entertaining.

Tomorrow I'm going back to the dinosaur restaurant. I did get paid a few days ago for the last time, and the amount of money was quite satisfactory. So I'll just keep telling myself that I'm paid by the hour, and it's only 2 days.

Missed any fireworks

Yesterday Donald and I got up late and did some house cleaning. Then I bought groceries, made dinner, and then we both dozed off. After we woke up, we decided to watch Battlestar Galactica. I vaguely remember watching reruns of the original on Saturday afternoons with my dad, but I don't remember anything about it except for the theme song. As we were watching and enjoying, Donald said that we'd probably have to stop it soon. It was almost midnight, and I was confused, until I realized that we'd already been watching it for nearly 2 hours. He told me that we were in fact watching the entire miniseries. Oh. Here I was thinking it was just one of those 2 hour opening episodes. But we watched all 3 hours of it. I enjoyed the Firefly cameo at the beginning. :)

Halfway through I was annoyed to find that I barely knew any of the character's names. I prefer it when a show tells you everyone's name without being obvious about it, like in Firefly. I guess it isn't important what their names are, but I hope to pick them up as we watch more.

At one point I heard booms and went outside to look for fireworks. I didn't see them. I love fireworks, but this weekend I just had no motivation to leave the house to see any. I must be mentally scarred from that time at the river when the display malfunctioned and we drove all the way back home after 2 minutes of show. I wonder if there will be any tomorrow, even though it's in the middle of the week. I might be more motivated then.

Superman was okay

Yesterday Jim drove all the way from Columbia to see movies with us. We had it all planned out. We saw Superman Returns at 3:20. It was okay, I think. It was a little too long, and a little dull, but I think Superman is a little dull so that's not a surprise. I won't rush off to see it again or anything, but I'm glad I saw it. One thing I really liked was the Spiderman 3 trailer before the movie. Looks good!

After dinner, we saw X-Men 3 together. It was kind of better he second time. Since I'd already seen it, I wasn't waiting to see what happens. I still think they had so many characters going that the new ones ended up underdeveloped.

Then we got coffee. :D

scrapbook

I haven't posted for a bit because nothing of interest has really been going on. Robyn and I have been working on our scrapbooks all week, and Donald has been insinuating that we are little old ladies. That's about it.

I've started with our NYC pictures because I don't have all the wedding pictures printed yet. I've got 6 pages done so far, and have 2 to go. It's fun. :)

(click for big)