gypsygirl

I got the job!!!

Yes, yes, I know I usually agree with PTerry on multiple exclamation points, but this is a special occasion.

They finally called me Wednesdy evening to offer me the job. The HR lady who likes me had told me to expect the call, and to pretend to be surprised. So I pretended, and needless to say, I accepted! I'll be starting Monday week, but I still don't really know what it's going to involve... other than some amount of programming. I suppose they'll get to that eventually.

I went to see HP5 Tuesday night with some friends from the theatre. MB bought the tickets ahead of time, and at the last minute a couple of people had dropped out, so I invited Eileen to come along with us. It was pretty good, considering it was the shortest movie so far - and based on the second longest book. They left out ridiculous amounts of stuff, but what was there was good.

In other news, I'm going to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) at the Hippodrome this Saturday. It'll be the first time I get to see the Cachinnator act; Don Boscoe is also going to be in it, plus a third guy I don't know. I'm going with MB... Sherry was up for it, but was going to be out of town that day. Also, we're finally going to have our Music Man intervention this coming Tuesday. Huzzah!

So, I still haven't heard back on the job I interviewed for over a month ago. There's a lady in HR who likes me and is rooting for me, so she's been keeping me up to date on where they are. She asked me for one final piece of paperwork this morning, and said it was the last thing they needed before they can make an offer. Needless to say, I had the form in the mail within five minutes of getting her email (I'm just ready for the waiting to be over, either way). She said I might hear by the end of tomorrow. Please, God, let me hear (preferably a job offer and not a "thanks for applying, but...").

In the meantime, it's time for One Acts again. Carlos is directing alone this year, as Mark has moved. He asked me to assistant direct for him, as he's taking classes. I agreed, as long as I get to do lighting design again (I had fun with that last year). I'm going to be in one called For Whom the Southern Bell Tolls, which is a parody of The Glass Menagerie. There were enough women who tried out (who were good) that he didn't have to double cast, so that's the only show I'm in this summer. Some of the men did get double-cast, as (as usual) there were fewer men who tried out than women.

No sign of Kelita this year, though Carlos said Jack knew auditions were coming up; if he hadn't said that, I would have guessed that she hadn't checked her email in a while. But we're getting some old friends back - Mandy (for sure) and Larry (if he can). Yay! Haven't worked with either of them in a couple of years at least.

For a job, that is. I haven't had a whole lot of luck, but I did have an interview here in the library Friday before last. They said that they hoped to have the rest of the interviews done by last Friday and make their decision some time this week. It's now Thursday and I have yet to hear anything, so I'm starting to lose hope. Still, fingers crossed until I know for certain.

I finally finished Tales from Shakespeare on LibriVox, which I'd been working on since March. I didn't remember them being so dry and dull. The only way I got through was by bribing myself with reading a chapter in a new project every time I managed to finish one of the Tales. The two projects I bribed myself with were What Katy Did at School, which I've since finished, and Anne of Green Gables, which I'm about two thirds of the way through. I'm planning on doing another of the Scarlet Pimpernel books next; I'm leaning toward El Dorado, the one where they rescue the Dauphin.

We had a SKVE meeting on Monday and watched How to Steal a Million with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole. So now we have several new quotes on our SKVE board. And let me just say that Peter O'Toole was hot back then! We still need to have our SKVE Music Man intervention with Regan and Melissa, because we never did get our schedules worked out during Mattress, and they can't keep going through life without having seen Music Man!

The show ended last Sunday, and now I'm feeling at a bit of a loose end. This is normal; it'll take me at least a week to get used to it. This is the first show I was in where we had to have stand-ins for three different actors (as opposed to understudies, who are prepared to take over from the beginning of the run). In each case, it was illness in the family of the actor that pulled them away from the show. There was a rumour running around that someone mentioned the name of the Scottish play early on in rehearsals, and that's why we had so many problems; others said it hadn't actually been mentioned, just talked about without using the name. Lise mentioned something about "reverse luck" or "reverse superstition"; I can't remember her exact phrasing, but the idea was that we'd been really careful to observe all the usual theatrical superstitions, such as not whistling in the theatre, not mentioning the name of the Scottish play, etc, and still ended up with awful luck.
We had one fabulous audience the second weekend, that was everything one could wish for in an audience; responsive, not afraid to laugh aloud, enthusiastic... and, of course, every audience after that seemed a let-down (though there was one that would have seemed dull even without that comparison. Good grief, it was like pulling teeth to get any sort of reaction out of them!).

I've pretty much given up trying to find a grown-up job in Waco. I heard back (unofficially) on one of the two remaining applications I had in at Baylor, that it had been offered to someone else. So, since most of the family is now in So. Cal. (Alondra and the boys moved up to join Paul and Mum last weekend!) and not planning on moving to OK, as they had been for a while, I've started applying for jobs in the Pacific states, to be closer to them. I've been looking at jobs in universities in Washington, Oregon and Northern California. I always did say that if I ended up leaving Waco, I'd like to move somewhere with a cooler climate. I've got four applications in so far, and that's just in Washington, some in teaching and some in IT. We'll see how it goes.

It all started around quarter to nine when the power went out across most of campus. We could hear sirens of some sort going past fairly close, and there was a rumour flying that someone had knocked over a pole... but then we heard that the fire-engines and EMTs were over at the SLC... so who knows. They never did announce what had caused the problem (the PTB's at BU aren't terribly good with communication).

So, we just sat in the dark at the ref desk and chatted and listened to my radio (thank goodness the batteries which have been in there for the past... ooh... three years? at least! still worked!). Not that there was any relevant news on, so we just listened to the oldies station. For an hour and a half. In the dark.

As if that weren't enough to make the day weird, just as I was getting my stuff together to go home (that would have been right around 4:30pm), the tornado sirens went off, and we were all ordered into the basement. I grumbled,  but I went.

There was a small group of us standing around grumbling by the door to the stairwell, when we saw one of the downstairs staff members heading out the door. E asked her why she was leaving, and she said they'd had a tv on in the back, and the tornado was down near Moody (south of our area, and way south of home, for me).

Well, that decided us; it was time for us to go home, and darned if we were going to stay for a tornado that was down in Moody! But we weren't as brave as L, to leave through the front door, so we snuck round the back, and took the service stairs up to the first floor, and then started across to our building... but our unit leader was at the circulation desk! Darn it! So back into the stairwell and up to the second floor, then across the breezeway to our building and down and out our front door! Phew! Man, we should have been spies! We would have aced the covertness tests... except for the giggling.

Anyway, it took me about twenty minutes to get home (five minutes usually), because the freeway was clogged, and I decided to take a shortcut, which also ended up having fairly heavy traffic. But still, home safe, if a little damp. We may not have had any tornadoes in my area, but it was raining pretty good! The lawn between my building and the next was turning into a lake; the drainage ditch outside the complex had overflowed its banks, as had the Brazos; and my apartment windows got a good rinse, because at times, the water was falling horizontally (this despite the three foot overhang of the roof).

I kept the tv on the weather reports most of the evening, just to be certain, but all we got in my area was thunder, lightning and rain. And that was plenty, let me tell you.

Sadly, the bad weather meant that rehearsal got cancelled, and we also decided to reschedule our SKVE night/intervention. Just as well, I suppose. With so much water on the roads (even after the storm passed), it was safer not to be driving on them.

As if to mock the previous day, yesterday was gorgeous! And today's shaping up to be more of the same. It's like Nature had a hissy fit on Friday, then took a nap and woke up all sunshine and smiles.

So far, this summer has been pretty awful. We'll start with classes.

So, I'm three classes away from graduating, and I was hoping I'd be able to take two classes in the summer (one each session), and just one in the fall, mainly because tuition is cheaper in the summer, so I'd have less tax to pay on it. Well, come registration time, I find that the IS department wasn't offering any graduate level classes second summer session. Well, fine! So I registered for one class in the summer (one that I wasn't particularly interested in, but I didn't have much choice), and two in the fall. A few weeks later, I went in to print out a copy of my schedule, and I noticed that it was only showing one class for the fall. What the heck!? I went looked for the missing class in registration and it was gone! Poof! They'd cancelled it and not even had the decency to send out an email letting people know! So I'm looking around for a class to replace that one and in the meantime I email the professor who was teaching my summer class to see if he'd send me the reading list so I could start trying to get the books. He emails me back and tells me that he doesn't think the class is going to make, because I'm the only person registered for it. *scream* So I'm down two classes, and it's looking like I might not graduate in December. Well, I finally decided that I would switch my one remaining fall class to the summer (it was being offered both times) so I'd at least have a summer class and could give myself a bit of time to try to figure out what to do about the two other classes I needed. I finally found another class in the fall that I hadn't already taken, and then I decided to email the professor of the fall class that got cancelled (happened to be Java), to see if he'd be willing to teach it as an independent study. I still haven't heard back from the man. So instead, I asked the professor who's teaching my summer class if he'd be willing to do it, and he agreed, so I'm finally back to my three classes, and I'm actually doing what I'd originally planned; two classes in the summer, and one in the fall! But good grief, the stress involved in getting to that point!

Next stresser? Well, the powers that be at the library decided that it would be a good idea to consolidate the three reference points (and the reference collections) into one central location. Ok, fine, that would probably be a good idea, if we actually had an area in the library big enough to house all three reference collections. But since we don't, and parts of the reference collections are still going to be scattered around the library, it makes no sense to me. But they didn't ask my opinion, so I guess it doesn't count. (Can you tell I'm vaguely annoyed by this whole thing?) Anyway, as soon as I got back from vacation, I was told to pack up all my stuff and bring all the departmental supplies to the supply person downstairs. We then sat in our offices for over a week, waiting for the IT people to get around to moving our computers (why we weren't allowed to move them ourselves, I'll never know). The move itself was stressful enough, but having to sit in clutter for a week while we waited to move was worse! So last Friday we finally got to move, and I've lost my lovely windows (I had two walls made of windows in my last office) and now I have to share one window with three other people and I'm not even the one closest to it and I've no privacy and... well, I keep telling myself I'm graduating in December. I still have no idea what's going to happen to my student workers. At one point they said they were going to be shifted to the departments that are taking over responsibility for the journals and reference collection that were left upstairs; then on Friday I was told to email them and tell them to check in downstairs from now on. I wish they'd make up their minds so I can tell them something definite. My students who aren't working this summer know absolutely nothing about what's going on. Grr! Ok, enough ranting for now.

On a more pleasant note, I'm going to be directing the melodrama (The Drunkard) at the theatre this summer. Auditions are this weekend and the show goes up July 21st - 23rd. It's my directorial debut, and it should be a fun show. It's a small cast of only five people, which is generally lots of fun. I'll keep posting on how it goes!

Well, that's summer over. Two more classes under my belt, and just six to go before I finish my masters. Yay! If all goes well, I'll just have to endure one more Texas summer! I really, really want to move somewhere cooler when I finish.

Just got back from vacation. Second day back at work, today. I spent a week in California with my mother. Among other things, we went to the Hollywood Bowl and saw their production of Camelot. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that they had Jeremy Irons in the role of Arthur. Very, very cool. Needless to say, there were a whole lot more people there that day than the time I went to see Regina Carter.

Now I'm just trying to get through Seussical. Hmm... that makes it sound like it's a complete drag, but it's not. I'm having a great time, it's just that it's very time consuming, and I'm always tired. I guess it doesn't help that I'm both stage managing and acting in it. Still, just a week and a half more of rehearsals and then we open. Scary thought! Should be a really good show.

I would just like to say, "IT'S FRIDAY! WOOHOO!" Dances around the library like a crazy person. At least there aren't any patrons in right now.

Just needed to get that out of my system. For some reason, while this week has gone by fairly quickly and it hasn't been a bad week, each day has seemed to drag on forever and I'm just glad it's finally over.

Going to a conference tomorrow morning and while I am looking forward to it, and to spending time with the friend I'm going with, there's just something... unholy? Yeah, that's a good word for it, unholy about having to set the alarm to get up early on a Saturday.

Random quote of the day:
"When I see a spade I call it a spade."
"I'm glad to say I have never seen a spade."
From Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest

So, Spring Break's over. Well, they call it Spring Break, but not all of us get to take a break. Hmpf! Still, even though I still had to work, at least I was able to go home earlier each afternoon because I didn't have to make up the hours I was out for my classes. I'm trying to convince myself that this makes it aaaallll better. It hasn't quite worked yet.

On the plus side, the library does join with the rest of the university in closing down for Easter, so at least I'll get that long weekend. Yay!

Things are starting to get busier with The Little Prince. Fools runs through this weekend and then we'll finally have access to the space. Huzzah!

First week of the new semester is now over, and already we have a break, with MLK Jr day coming up on Monday. Not that I'm complaining about having a day off, but it does seem a bit silly to have it so soon after the start of the term. I guess it's just going to be a silly term as far as breaks go anyway, what with Easter being the weekend after Spring Break.