Still here

After I posted on Friday, I FINALLY got ahold of the doctor's office and FINALLY got my hands on a new prescription and FINALLY put it in the mail on Saturday. Finally. It really really shouldn't have been that difficult. I'm certainly not planning to go back to St. Luke's Internal Medicine again. They were astonishingly unhelpful.

As for our rent, we decided to get a 9 month lease. We had an appointment to go over the new lease, but it got canceled and we don't have a new appointment yet. So we've gotten nowhere with that. Donald's going to go ahead and pay the rent for next month at the same rate we've been paying, since there's no way we'll get a new lease signed by Sept. 1. Plenty of time to argue about stupid crap details in the sample lease Donald picked up.

Donald and I decided we should eat out less. We're spending too damn much money on delicious but unnecessary meals. Or maybe I just decided it- at least it seems that way with all the crap Donald's been giving me about it. :P In the time left before I'm sucked into tech rehearsals, I've been trying to cook more. For dinner Wednesday I broiled us a steak. KC Strips were on sale, so I got a great price. It was mostly a steaky success, but ended up overdone because somebody thought it was too red in the middle. Next time I won't listen to somebody, and he'll eat the damn steak however I cook it. I also made instant mashed potatoes and frozen green beans. For dinner last night I reheated the sides, and baked breaded chicken tenderloins. While the food I prepared was certainly not cooking from scratch, it's at least a step above frozen pizza. (Which we had Monday.) Gotta start somewhere. :)

Last Saturday Donald completely and totally surprised me by making me breakfast in bed. He said he was worried that I'd hear him and wake up. I've gotten so used to sleeping through the noises he makes while getting ready for work every morning, that I had no idea what was happening until he walked in with a tray. He made me scrambled eggs and toast with jam. It was great. :) It was also a little weird to be eating right after I got up. I've gotten in the habit of getting up and puttering around on my computer for awhile before eating breakfast. Just like I'm doing now!

Ron's Slip and Slide Extravaganza (FULL VERSION)

hassles

Sometimes I wonder if my phone still works. When I'm expecting someone to call back and they don't, it's all manner of annoying. Sadly, I know the phone DOES work. I'm trying to get a prescription written.

When I went to the doctor in July, the nurse said she'd fax it. How convenient, I thought, and went on my way. Two weeks later, I went online to order a refill. It wouldn't let me, so I called them and found that the prescription never happened. So I called the doctor's office, and was directed to leave a message. Eventually someone called back telling me that the previous nurse was wrong about the faxing, and that they would send me a prescription in the mail so I could mail it to the mail away pharmacy. They would also call over to the CVS and I could get a month's supply from there while I wait. This business was on the Friday before I went out of town to my cousin's wedding. I got back, and on Monday I went to CVS to pick up the prescription, which they never got and therefore wasn't there.

I called the doctor's office again, and was told that my doctor's last day was Friday, and they couldn't help me. Apparently, the nurse I spoke to on Friday didn't exist or something. The receptionist was rude and unhelpful. Fuck you, St. Luke's Internal Medicine. Then I called my doctor's new office, got an answering machine and left a message. A nurse called back later, and finally- called CVS so I could get more drugs. (Which, by the way, cost nearly twice as much as they would from the mail away pharmacy.) I went back to waiting for the prescription to come in the mail, thinking maybe the St. Luke's nurse managed to get that part right. Three weeks later, I've given up and am back to calling the doctor's new office. I've called them several times on 2 different lines and never gotten a person. I deal only with the answering machine. Sigh. I should have just taken a written prescription with me back in July and avoided this whole mess. I just called again, and actually got a person- who promptly transferred me to the answering machine. Awesome.

More hassles! We haven't gotten a new lease yet, since the new rental company has still been sorting things out. Yesterday we got a renewal notice on our door, with our address, the wrong rent amount, and 2 other people's names on it. Great organization there. Donald talked to them when he got to work, and the bastards are not only raising our rent $30, but we're suddenly supposed to pay for water. We've lived here 4 years without paying water, but it seems that the girls downstairs have been paying water all year, for the whole house. That's bullshit, they shouldn't have to pay for our water, but why now? Ridiculous. Donald says they're going to charge us a flat rate of $35 a month, which seems awfully high. IF this crap goes through, they're essentially raising our rent $65. Ridiculous.

kitty tail tale

I just saw the funniest thing. I was playing with Anna, using a piece of string. She was chasing it, I was dangling it and so forth. I dropped the string on her, and it landed neatly over the base of her tail. She was still chasing it- and spent several moments spinning in a circle, centrifugal force keeping the tail-string out of her reach, while I laughed at her. The string fell off, and kitty stumbled a few steps in one direction until she regained her balance. Priceless!

Stardust

I really enjoyed Stardust. I know they changed things up for the movie, but I'm okay with that. It's been several years since I read the book, so I barely remembered more than the plot anyway. I found it to be about 90% delightful. The part I did not enjoy was the completely pointless DeNiro mincing about scene. The movie people clearly think it's hilarious, but it just made me feel embarrassed. On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed the 7 brothers, Michelle Pfeiffer and her goat drawn chariot, Claire Danes, and the guy playing Tristan.

It's been a lazy week for me. Dishes have been washed, groceries have been purchased, laundry has been laundered. Annnd... I played a bunch of Wario's Woods. I just can't help it, I love games when things fall out of the sky. We've certainly gotten our $5 out of it. It's funny that I've never played it on the Nintendo. I played it on Donald's computer- emulated, and on the Wii- also emulated? I don't really know how the virtual console works.

Well look what I didn't know- Wario's Woods was released for NES an SNES at the same time. Wish they'd released the SNES version for the virtual console instead, it looks eaisier on the eyes. After entirely too much time playing this game, all I can see is little dancing creatures. Must stack them!!

Show's done

As I mentioned (very briefly) the preview of our show went fine. As anyone in theatre knows, a good preview is a bad sign. If a bunch of things go wrong in the preview, opening night will be fine. If your preview is smooth, something will go wrong on opening night. I figure there's some kind of universal balancing act going on there. Things have to screw up at some point. There wasn't any kind of disaster Monday night, but my light board did overheat and reboot itself twice. I was pretty unhappy with that. At intermission we moved the fan closer and raised the board up, so Act 2 was okay. The audience seemed to really enjoy the show. Success!

Strike yesterday went very smoothly. Taking things down is so very much easier than putting them up! Hooray gravity. With a bit of help, and a few trips here and there, I was finished and home by 2:30. Then I took a most glorious shower. It was even more satisfying because I knew that I didn't have to go back to the dusty place ever again! My lungs will finally be able to recover. I'm looking forward to not coughing up phlegm and being able to talk again wouldn't hurt either. My toe is feeling better too. I'm feeling very hopeful that my toenail is undamaged. Regrowing my big toenail would be a bitch.

So now it's on to the next show. I've started preparing for Aida at the Lyric. I also have a bunch of dishes and laundry to catch up on, and I need to go to the grocery store.

Absorbent and yellow and porous is he!

Friday I got to play with icing again. Lucy wanted a pineapple cake this year. Mom baked the cake in 2 round pans, and I took it from there. I got out the food coloring and the good ole' Betty Crocker icing and had a good time. It turned out nice and pineapple-y. The whole time I was making it the Spongebob song was in my head. ("Who lives in a pineapple under the sea!") The real pineapple was very useful to have as a reference. Mom cut off the top and stuck it on the cake before serving it Saturday.




When I went out to water my plants yesterday I heard rustling under the bushes. My first instinct was to squirt the sound with the garden hose, assuming it was a squirrel. Turns out, it was a teeny baby bunneh. It was cute, so I got my camera. It was also terrified, being a bunny, but too stupid to actually run very far. It was gone, or at least better hidden by the time I finished watering.

Yesterday I managed to drop a Rubbermaid container of Chinese leftovers on my right big toe, causing a great deal of pain. The edge managed to just hit the cuticle, which has now turned very purple. I couldn't even yell in pain properly, just sort of croak. It amazes me how much something so small can hurt. It just throbbed all the rest of the night, as I limped around at the show. (The preview went fine, I took many photos.) It feels better this morning, but I'm still going to keep it elevated as much as possible. Sigh. I decided not to post a toe picture, but I have one available on request! It actually doesn't look like much. :)

Time for an audience

Our little show is ready to go. We ran through the whole play last night and the night before, and it went pretty great both times. We have our preview tonight, and the performance tomorrow. Yay! I'm glad to get to the performance, and yes, I'll be glad when it's over. I'm looking forward to not inhaling any more dust. We're bringing in fans to try to keep our audience as comfortable as possible. Oddly enough, we all agreed that it didn't seem as hot lately. Either we're getting used to it, or there's some inversely proportional temperature thing going on with the outdoors. It's probably the first one.

I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon helping the set designer make masking. Using only the finest in materials- we made blacks out of black plastic paint tarps. :) It worked surprisingly well. I cut them to size, then sat and put grommets in them, and Dave hung them. Then we made a backdrop with the same technique. The backdrop has fabric "buildings" attached. Dave laid them out, then I took over making them into buildings. It was a lot of fun actually. The sound designer watched me do it, making suggestions. So it ended up being a truly collaborative effort. For once. All the talk about collaboration in theater is usually just talk. It's very rare that 3 designers do ANYTHING together. So, it was fun!

Speaking of dust, I started getting a sore throat a few days ago. I'm sure the excessive dust doesn't help, even though by this point we aren't really stirring it up. By today my voice is nearly gone. I'm thinking about making myself a button that I can just point at to avoid unnecessary speaking.

For dinner last night Donald and Mike and I tried out the Westport Flea Market for the first time. I give them 2 thumbs up. They have 2 sizes of hamburger, A Little Too Big and Really Too Big. Both sizes are delicious- flavorful and juicy, and reasonably priced for the size. They come with a side of fries, and you help yourself to a condiment bar. There are a lot of other sandwiches on the menu, but I'm pretty sure that the next few times I go there I'll be getting another delicious burger. Tasty tasty.

That must mean I'm a unicorn!

Day 2 in the dustiest place to ever do a theatrical production went rather better than day 1. I got some desperately needed help from Dan Parks for a few hours. He helped me hang and focus my pile 'o lights. Hanging eighteen lights is no big deal, if you have a buddy. If you're on your own, it takes much much longer. So Dan is awesome, and I owe him a nice big dinner sometime. With his help, I got the stuff ready between 11:30 and 4:30. Then I went home and took a glorious shower. One of my top 5 showers ever, probably. I rested awhile, made a lovely batch of smoothies, and had dinner with Donald.

Around 8:30 I went back for the evening portion of rehearsal. I wrote some cues, and watched the scene change rehearsals. It was a pretty productive evening. It was also relatively comfortable, sitting still in front of my light board with a fan on me. I borrowed a camp chair from my dad so I have a clean place to sit. Once the sun has been down a couple of hours, it gets cooler, or at least seems to . That's not going to help with the performance much though, since "curtain" is at 7:30.

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to not go in until 6:30 for rehearsal. We thoroughly teched Act 1, then just did the scene changes for Act 2. It's coming together quite nicely, and I think we're ready to run through the whole thing tonight. If you're free Monday night, check it out... it'll be unique! Bring a hand fan and wear shorts though!

info here: http://davidfehr.net/Sin.htm

Dirty place: day 1

Having gotten the Equity Showcase up, and having returned from the weekend out-of-town trip, I was left with no choice but to start in on the One Night Stand show. Hoo boy, did I do a lot of running around using up petroleum today. (Sorry planet, at least I recycle, right?)

1. Drove to fetch lights from theater in a land far, far away (Kansas.) Took about half an hour to get there. Kept telling myself, the lights were free, I only had to go get them. Filled up my dad's gas tank, said goodbye to $50. Delivered lights to "theater."
2. Drove to fetch booms and dimmers from a land much closer, but possessing a much more unpleasant smell. Harvest Productions is just north of the river, and it smells truly awful in that general area sometimes. Loaded all the stuff into the pickup truck, back to the "theater" for more unloading.
3. Drove back to my home to get keys so I could fetch a light board and various other stuff from UMKC. More unloading.
4. Started setting up in "theater." This was the hard part, and the lack of A/C was very unpleasant. I spent a lot of time taking water breaks and trying to cool off somewhat. At least there are now copious extension cords to plug fans into.
5. Drove to Home Depot, bought a few things, went back again.
6. Set up a bit more equipment. Got booted out of the building at 7. I've never been so glad to be kicked out of somewhere I'm trying to work. I was so ready for any excuse to go home and take a shower.

I think I sweated more today than in the whole rest of the summer combined. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit better, since all the equipment is already there. Now I just have to put it all together, and hope none of the lamps are burned out. Then focus the lights, and write cues, and do a play! Whew.

weekend pics

We headed up to the farm this weekend for my cousin's wedding. Here are a few pics:

Donald, dad, and me before the weddingThe happy couple
In the getaway vehicleThere they go, off to the receptionYep, they drove to the reception in a shiny new fancy (borrowed) tractor. No question here, they're farmers. :)

The ceremony was blessedly short. The church had very inadequate A/C, so they kept it short. The reception made up for it though, being nice and chilly. The food was good, the cake was very tasty, and I ate too many wedding mints. I can't help it! I love those damn things! I was told they're usually made of cream cheese and powdered sugar. Mmmmmm. It's always good to spend time with the family at my Grandma's house. Since Grandpa died, I wish I could get there more often to visit. My dad goes up pretty often though. All in all we had a nice time, but by Sunday we were ready to go home. As always, it was good to be back in my own bed again!