Busy and tired

Sometimes I wonder why I do it.
I just finished a hellish tech for Alice and now am going right into Greetings. The supposed two week overlap just disappeared when we were still adding and teching elements for the show an hour and a half before Curtain on OPENING NIGHT. This, after working all afternoon at the college for focus on Greetings. Well, it was supposed to be focus. Most of the afternoon was troubleshooting, figuring out why lights didn't work. The first reason was that there were only SIX dimmers in the rack of 40. Ok. Time to move 34 dimmers up from the basement. Now these are delicate electronics, each weighing about 3 pounds. I started with 4, two in each hand. NO WAY, it would take all day. Then I used a box, and took a dozen. Whoa. pretty heavy. That's when E mentioned that they usually use the grocery cart. Thanks. Then to fire everything up and see what still doesn't work. Most of those were dimmers that were just bad. A couple went bye-bye when a unit shorted out. D'oh. Some of the problems were just bad connections or sockets on the units themselves. One or two units didn't have a lamp in them. D'oh. We finally got around to actually focusing at 5. E and I got most of them focused in the next hour before I had to go to the opening night tech rehearsal across town. I finished up the rest of the focus today. About the time the actors were ready to start the rehearsal, I sat down to write my first cue. Thank Gods I'm good at fast cueing. I got all the cues at least roughed in. Some of them look really crappy, cause I didn't have all the color (try a nice sensative night scene, when your blue wash has no color, and the stage is flooded with white light.) Tomorrow is finishing laying in all the floor units; the basement light, the window backing, the last x-mas tree line, putting in the color and patterns I'm stealing from here to use there. and re-look at all my cues before rehearsal at 6.
The person who ran lights for Alice tonight (since I was supposed to be at the college) had not run lights at all in a long time, and had not even seen Alice yet. So I booked back from the college to oversee them during the run. She did fine. She's got a great mind for things like that. After the show, about 20 min. after, I'm chatting in the lobby with friends who came to see it, and S passes by and says that there's poker at one of the actors place now. Now. I wouldn't put it past them to plan it spur-of-the-moment, but that's a bit of a stretch. I don't know what irks me more, that I wasn't told about it sooner (granted I wasn't around the whole day up to then, but I was the night before), that I heard about it second hand, or that I'm too exhausted to do it. Oh well, who needs a social life. I'm going to take my poker chips back home. We're never going to have a poker night at work anymore, either nobody cares, or nobody has time. Really makes me want to start drinking again.

Oh well, home to bed. Or at least home to lay in bed and read, trying to get my mind off all the things running thru it, enough to try to sleep. Frodo is crawling south towards Orodruin from the Isenmouth. And that stinker Gollum is still lurking about...

shifting gears

Alice is almost complete. Time to shift to Greetings at a theatre across town.

Ever get to one of those times when you wish you could just be a hermit? About now, I really dislike people. Not just one or two, or several, but people as a whole. Nothing antagonistic, I just don't want to be around ANYBODY. I'm tired of the whole damned inter-personal relationship thing. It confuses me, and I'm inept at it; and I'm not willing to put in the effort right now to try to understand it. I just want to go away with my dog, and live in a cave. Dogs are ok. Nothing complex with them. You love them, and they love you back. Even when you have to take them to the vet, knock them out, have a stranger scrape their teeth and make their mouths sore, clip their claws so that their feet are sore, and cut away those annoying cysts around the sensitive areas, making them sore, they still love you.

I'm thinking more and more about quitting this place. The people were the reason I enjoyed it so much. Now, everything I do either rankles me or somebody else. It's no longer pleasant. I hope I can at least last the season, but wouldn't be surprised if I didn't. Open-ended straight draw with a flush draw on the side; almost even money. (yes, cable is showing WSOP and WPT a lot)

A long week

Well, the actors got on stage early, on Tuesday night. This gave me time to crash load all the cues in two evenings. This is just roughing in most of the elements I want to see for each scene, without subtleties of timing or even accurate levels. Just following along with the actors as they work, creating as much of each scene as time allows. Now I can tweak for the next three days, adding the subtleties (and the moving light) starting tonight. Once I have the bare bones, fleshing it out is easy. Everything was going swimmingly. Until last night. Then we had our usual tech meeting after rehearsal. It took 2 hours, and lots of changes were made. Some things that were done got changed, and other things not started, made simpler. Mostly we discussed the problems each missing element poses, and how to resolve it practically. Blaaaaahhh. Though I finally got my after work drink and darts. Boy, bars are deserted at 11 on a Wed. night. There was only the bargirl and her boyfriend and me, but I was sure glad that at least they were open. And
SCORE
somebody left three credits on the dart machine! that's a game of cricket, or one and a half games of 501 DI/DO.
Just what I needed after a long day, and in the middle of a really long week.

Bugger this town

Of course, I forgot that this town rolls up the sidewalks downtown on a weekend. Especially Sunday night. No bar/dart action. Maybe tonight. Nah, not tonight, I'm not in the mood to dart alone.
I've gotten my Q list done and printed and put in the SMs mailbox. She'll appreciate that. Act I only has 3 pages without cues on them. Act II is a bit slower, with some longer scenes, 11 Q-free pages. The overall count isn't too bad at this point, but I know it'll have a lot of hidden Qs. Cues that cause the moving light to do it's effects (while only being started with one Q, it could take 8 linked cues to make it look right). It still scares me that I have all those cues to write. The annoyance is that I've ordered 3 or 4 new effects for the moving light, and they haven't come in yet, which means that I can't put up the light until they do. Yes, there are some cues I can rough in without that light, but it's a lot harder. If they don't show up tomorrow, that's what I'll have to start doing.

I'm also looking forward to FINALLY finishing The Two Towers book tonight. Since Wife stopped having PT appointments three times a week, I'm not getting much reading done. Only a short burst in the mornings, and I usually fall asleep to it at night. Then on to RotK. I've always found TT the slowest to get thru, maybe it's the depressing landscape around Mordor.
Well, TD is back in to work now. He took a few hours off for dinner. For some reason, I don't have any problem leaving him to work alone. As long as he doesn't cut anything off that won't grow back.

Trying to stay motivated

Well, I'm still here at work (well, obviously, not at work since I'm blogging), and starting to put actual Q notations in my script. Gonna be a lot of them. My aim is to have a written Cue list for the (new and improved) SM for the Tuesday night rehearsal on stage. But as usual, my motivation is low. I took the work home to try working there, but no dice. Yesterday was shopping day, and, as usual, Wife and I got into a big fight over money. We recently got a check from my father so that we could go out for a weekend away. A mini-vacation, since we didn't get one this summer. Wife is all for blowing that idea away and just spending it on whatever we need, like lots of treats at the store, and christmas gifts, etc. She is doing better, and is probably able to DO a weekend away at a B&B or something, provided they have a chair for her to sleep in, but she seems not willing to even try. So yesterday was a long day, with loooong silences, punctuated by brief bouts of shouting.
Today I'm hiding at work. I'm also probably going to go out darting again, and have a beer before I go home. It seems that everybody else worked here yesterday, because I'm quite alone here today. I was briefly disturbed by our custodian who came in to use the phone, but that was only briefly. I don't mind though, I love the silence. Well, almost silence. There are LOTS of odd thumps, creaks, and footstep noises in this old building. I can get a lot more work done in the quiet of the empty theater. Provided I can keep my mind from wandering to other topics.
Provided I can stay off the Internet!

Another photo test

Ok, the test from before failed. Logging on from work, I couldn't see the image I posted from my laptop. so the alternatives are: use the server at work to host them (I don't think I have enough bandwidth for it to be a problem, unless it's a firewall issue... hmmm) or continue to use Hello, posting one pic at a time, or, another test, using the little post photo icon at the top of this compose box. So here goes:
Here's that pic from work,
I thought it wasn't going to work (clicking the little button did nothing) until I noticed that there was the little icon at the bottom of the screen denoting that a pop-up had been blocked from this site. A CLUE! So I added blogger to the list of allowable popup sites, and presto, I get action. Now the test on multiple images.

Still kind of awkward to format them, but it works. We'll see what they look like when it gets posted. Still, I like this better than using Hello. The color seems a bit off. More yellow than the original. Oh well.

Wife (a rare shot. she's more photophobic than I am), with Mike in ecstasy. Mike is our baby Buddha, our 20+ pounder. a mommas boy. 

This is Tamsin. Storing up energy to raise hell tonight. 

This is Caliph, and how I usually see him. He's my familiar. Constantly following me around when I'm home, yowling for attention. He's usually perched on my chest staring me in the face. 

The ceiling fan in my bedroom. Playing with shutter speed. I probably took 2 dozen shots, kept 10 or so. 

I guess I'm back

I've been in one of my black moods recently, thus my lack of posts. I was wallowing in self-pity again (it took that astrological thing for me to realize that's what I'd been doing). This happens occasionally when I get slapped in the face with Reality. I guess I just don't take reality well. But for a while, I was in no condition to post civil comments here. Maybe I'm just doing what I said I wouldn't do, censor myself. Should I care what other strangers think about my vitriol-spewing posts? The only friends I know that read this, are at least three states away, and don't have to deal with my venomous ramblings outside of this blog. Whatever. Call it an attempt to rise above my animal instincts, and to moderate the bad karma I'm putting forth.
I'm getting over it. I'm starting now to go out and have a good time on my own. I've realized that I don't need to wait to be invited out with co-workers to have a good time. If I wait for it to happen, I'll just go crazy. Just because my co-workers have friends outside of work that they prefer to spend time with, I can't fault them for it. The fact that I don't is my own problem. So I've been going out after work and having a beer and throwing a couple games of darts on my own. Occasionally. I can't afford to do it too often. As a result, I don't end up staying out too late. Usually I just sit off to the side and watch the other darters, or the other drunks in the bar (or the drunk darters, who annoyingly enough, are often better than me) nursing a beer, two at most, between rounds of, what amounts to practice darts. What I need is a bigger circle of friends. I'm even tempted to try one of those online dating sites. Heh. yeah. Like I can afford a mistress. I'm too old and too socially inept to date anymore anyway. So I'm back at home, ameliorating my baser instincts with the true purpose of the Internet. Hey, at least Wife is finally sleeping nights again. It makes the few hours I do spend at home almost bearable.
Last night was also another movie night. Huge screen, full sound, great flick (Shaun of the Dead). Sitting alone in the back of the theater getting plowed for the first time in a LONG time.

The other thing that helped me out of my funk is that, finally, two days ago, after more than a month of waiting and cyberstalking, my camera finally came. It only took a threat of faxing the Attorney General of NY for them to ship it.
So, as a trial... my first picture postings.

The ceiling fan in my bedroom. Playing with shutter speed. I probably took 2 dozen shots, kept 10 or so.

This is Caliph, and how I usually see him. He's my familiar. Constantly following me around when I'm home, yowling for attention. He's usually perched on my chest staring me in the face.

This is Tamsin. Storing up energy to raise hell tonight.
and finally...

Wife (a rare shot. she's more photophobic than I am), with Mike in ecstasy. Mike is our baby Buddha, our 20+ pounder. a mommas boy.

EDIT
Ok I've pulled the pix in this post and hosted them. They had disappeared when I changed the name of the folder they were in on my computer. I don't know if they disappeared when my computer went offline or not. So I hosted them. They now appear in a later series of posts. I'm going to continue to do some tests. I don't think I like the Hello setup and operation. So as a test, here's a shot from work.

A Monday Meme

Better late than never (well, maybe not). They were late posting it. I was too apathetic to finish it in one sitting.

Monday Meme 24 : 2005-10-31 : Well, I Never

1. List 5 foods you've never eaten:

sushi

oysters

sweetbreads

escargot

ugli fruit

2. List 5 places you'd like to visit:

Iceland

Norway

Molokai and/or Kauai, Hawaii

Pacific NW, Oregon,Washington.

Maine

3. List 5 things you hope to do in your lifetime:

Ride in a helicopter

Ride in a small airplane

Scuba dive

Hot Air Balloon

Spelunking

4. List 5 things you would never wear:

Speedo (I can hear the collective sigh now)

Thong (for women it's different. The anatomy is different (as I vaguely recall).)

Formal White tie.

hmm. Can't really think of much else. I might consider about anything else if conditions were right.

5. List 5 things you never want said to you:

Happy 90th Birthday!

It was close, but we brought you back.

Wow! You've worked at that theater for 12 years?? Oh, wait. Never mind.

I was the 69th person to take this week's Monday Meme!

Ain't this the truth

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