gypsygirl

Saw this in California a few weeks ago while I was visiting Mum.

Take a closer look at the far right of the bed.

Only it was the Heart of Texas Fair, not the State Fair. K, one of the girls in the Woman in Black, which I'm stage managing, was given some tickets at work, and she invited me and M, another girl from the play to go with her. She'd never been before, and really wanted to check it out, and since the fairgrounds are right next door to the theatre, we didn't even have to pay for parking.

When we got down to the end of the fairway, we came across the freak show booth; K had also never been to a freak show before, so we went in. For the most part it was a collection of live, stuffed and preserved animals of the conjoined twins gone more wrong than usual variety. One of the stuffed animals, however, was purported to be a chupacabra.

After looking at it for a couple of minutes M said, "That's just wrong. That's a deer butt, upside-down."

I was telling one of my coworkers about it, and he dubbed it the "chupacabr-ass"

On our way out, we saw one of those "Old Timey Photo" booths. Yet another thing K had never done (not that I had, either, incidentally... but then I'm not really one for voluntarily getting my picture taken). I agreed to join them in the photo under the stipulation that I was not going to wear anything frilly. They did have something in the Annie Oakley style, so I was happy.

We opened this past weekend. Got a pretty good review from Carl Hoover in the Trib. Friday and Saturday were almost full, Sunday's turnout was kinda pitiful, but at least they were awake and enjoying it (not always the case with Sunday crowds). Two more weekends to go. Hopefully they'll be completely sold out!

OK, so I don't often let people know when my birthday is, because, though I don't mind celebrating my birthday, I feel uncomfortable getting mobbed by well-wishers and being sung at, but thanks to facebook more people have found out when it is. I had to go to rehearsal on my birthday, and I was about two feet away from the back door at the end of the night, when I heard the rest of the cast start into 'Happy Birthday'. No one could see me, so I quickened my steps and snuck out before anyone could catch me.

The following night I had tickets to Broadway by Request with Betty Buckley at the Hip. The 'by Request' part means that as you go in, you have the option of filling out a form requesting her to sing a song from her Broadway or recording career. I went with Regan, and on our way in, we saw MB, who was ushering. About halfway through the concert, Seth Rudetsky, who was acting as her emcee, accompanist, and foil, pulled out a request form (she'd been reading them all up till then). He called MB's name and then read out her request: "It was my friend Karen's birthday yesterday. Would you sing to her?" So, Betty Buckley sang me happy birthday in an auditorium full of strangers (at least I didn't have to stand up!!!).

It was a fabulous concert, though.

A few years ago I discovered that my local public library had access to a whole bunch of audio books through netlibrary and I got all excited. I was a little less excited when I discovered that they came as one massive DRM'd file. When listening at work, I had to mark down the time stamp each time I stopped (they were WMA files, and I don't know of a way to make WMP remember where you stopped, like itunes can); listening on my mp3 player was even worse, because the one I had at the time didn't pick up where you'd stopped when you restarted it, it just remembered which file you'd been listening to... you try sitting with your finger on the fast forward button for ten minutes trying to get three hours into a file, and woe betide you if your finger slips and you accidentally advance to the next track, because then you have to start ALL over. Ugh. And of course, since the files are DRM'd, I couldn't import them into Audacity or some such to break them into more manageable chunks. So, I mostly listened at work, and got used to jotting down the time stamp (oh, also, you can only listen to a given file on the computer on which you originally downloaded it, you can't transfer rights from your work computer to your home one, for example).

Anyway, I'd been working my way through the Amelia Peabody series on audiobook. Netlibrary had the first few, but most of the rest I'd borrowed as discs, so I hadn't been to netlibrary in a while. Imagine my delight when I went back and found that they'd insituted a new software to manage and listen to the books, and that this software downloads the books in approximately hour long chunks, rather than one massive one, AND remembers where you left off listening if you turn it off! Add to this the fact that I have also bought a new mp3 player (a sansa fuze, last November), that not only remembers where you left off, but has individual file recall for any file with an audiobook genre. I'm suddenly back on netlibrary with a vengeance! Yes, you can still only listen on the computer on which you downloaded it, but having an mp3 player that plays well with audio books, I no longer care! Thank you netlibrary for improving the interface, and thank you WMC Library for continuing to subscribe to the service!

I have a couple of minutes before my meeting begins, so this seems as good a time as any to update here.

I've been working on Little Shop of Horrors for the past few weeks in the ensemble. We open a week from Friday. It's been interesting... we rented a set of puppets from somewhere or other, but when they showed up, they were in pretty bad condition. The director ended up going to Louisiana to rent another set, only he didn't have room in his vehicle for the largest, so we're still having to fix up the largest of the other set (and try to make it look sort of like the other set). Other than that, it's been quite fun. It's a small cast, fifteen people, and the youngest person is 19 (a great relief after the huge number of teenagers in Brigadoon); everyone sings well, can do harmony, acts decently. All in all, a really nice group, and at least half are new to the theatre, which is always fun too.

Finished the two Montfort books for Catholic Audio Company, and am close to finishing Death of a Pope for Ignatius, and not too far off on the two for iPublish. Have been neglecting Secret Garden dreadfully, but after next week, I'll have my evenings free again and will be able to record more.

I've also been working on a sound booth, because since the weather got hot, I've pretty much been limited to recording first thing in the morning, because the crickets and cicadas are so loud. I build a cage out of half inch pvc pipe. It's tall enough in the centre that I can stand up straight. I bought a set of sound absorption sheets from Audimute to cover it with. I've attached two lengthwise along the sides with gromets and one inch binder rings. I've started attaching a third sheet to the top. I had originally planned to just hang the fourth sheet over the front opening, but quickly decided that wasn't going to be effective, so I've decided to build a door and attach the fourth sheet to it with the gromets and book rings like the rest of it. That leaves a section on the back wall between the roof and the top of the other sheets. I'm planning on attaching a couple of acoustic tiles that I had for the portable sound booth to a piece of muslin and hanging that over that hole. Once it's complete, I'm going to move the mic in there, along with a secondary monitor, keyboard and mouse so that I can continue to read off the screen, but without having to worry about laptop fan noise (and without having to move the laptop back and forth, which gets pretty old when you have as many things plugged into it as I do). I forgot to take pics of the work in progress, but I'm planning on taking some as I build the door, and then of the completed booth.

Betty Buckley is coming to the Hip this Saturday, and I've bought two tickets to the show. I've invited Regan to go with me, since she's a big fan of the Mystery of Edwin Drood in which BB played the title role. It's my birthday present to myself, and I had to do some wangling to be excused from rehearsal the Saturday before opening night (but I made sure to wangle before buying the tickets, just in case).

I originally had this in my last post, but I decided to separate it out and leave the Star Trek review in its own spoilery post.

I managed to record eight chapters for my Clara Vaughan project this weekend (it had been on hold for a while while I finished the Interior Castle, did Brigadoon, and then bought and set up a new laptop after my old one died). I'll be working more steadily on this one as it's due mid-June and I'm not quite half-way yet. I may be doing another project for Catholic Audio Company (the people I did Interior Castle for), a two parter by St Louis de Montford, True Devotion to Mary and the Secret of the Rosary. I haven't signed a contract for this one yet. My three LibriVox projects have been sorely neglected for the past few weeks.

I've been watching Rosemary and Thyme via Netflix. I've been a fan of Felicity Kendall's since I came across her as Viola/Cesario in the BBC's Twelfth Night back when I was an undergrad, and after she appeared on an episode of Doctor Who, I saw that she'd done this murder mystery series a few years ago and decided to check it out. I've also been meaning to watch the Good Life (aka Good Neighbors in the US) because although it comes on PBS every so often, it's quite sporadic, and I've never figured out the schedule.

So I went to see Star Trek this weekend and I must say I enjoyed it. I liked the choices they made with the various actors; Karl Urban seemed to be channeling DeForest Kelley's McCoy, which was fine for McCoy (he's such a specific character), but I was glad the other actors did their own takes on the characters. I liked Scotty a lot ("Are you from the future? That's brilliant! Do they still have sandwiches there?"); I found his accent to be more authentic than James Doohan's - he tended to do a more stereotypical accent. I was a little weirded out by the Spock/Uhura thing, and I didn't even realize that Winona Ryder played Spock's mother till I got home and looked it up. Chekov was adorable, and seemed much more competent than in the original series.

As far as the plot went, I'll bypass the fact that they used time travel as the main plot device (they comment in the film that this is cheating). I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept that Spock and Nero ended up 154 years in the past, but what really bothered me is that the way they got to the past was by passing through a black hole. I mean, isn't the point of a black hole that the gravitational forces in them are so great that nothing can escape?? I mean, putting aside the passing through it, even if they could, shouldn't the ships have broken up completely, or been crushed to teeny, tiny, dense lumps?

For the rest, there were quite a few things that made me giggle, a fair few in-jokes for the fans of the series and movies, and enough explosions to satisfy the most rabid mythbusters fan.

I finished the first of my two paid audiobook gigs last weekend. I just checked, and they've already got it listed on the website! http://www.catholicaudiocompany.com/current.html

This was actually the second gig I got, but it had an earlier delivery date, so I'd been pushing to get it finished. The other one, Clara Vaughan, is due by the middle of June, so it's time to start pushing on it.

At some point the publisher is going to post my profile on their website, but as far as I can tell, they haven't gotten that far yet. They have, however, posted the excerpt that was the first thing I read for them (it's available from their front page: http://www.ipublishpress.com/).

One more weekend of Brigadoon to go. It did finally come together (like, the night before we opened!), and it's going pretty well. Not the hugest crowds we've ever had, but not the worst either.

Off to the Amigos conference tomorrow morning. Just going for the first day, not both. They rented me a car from the library, and when I went to pick it up, they gave me a frickin' Hummer! Not exactly the statement I'm interested in making in life. Still, it's only for one day and then I can give it back (and thank goodness I get reimbursed for gasoline!!!).

I don't think I've ever before been so frustrated during rehearsals for a play. S, who was such a great director in Nunsense, turned out not to have... I'm not sure what's missing... discipline? organization? cojones? I don't know, but whatever it is that's missing, it's driving me crazy. The show opens this coming weekend and we've only just last night run the show all the way through (supposedly we were going to run it without stopping, but for no reason I could understand, she kept stopping to block scenes that had already been blocked. One more show like this would be enough to put me off theatre (or at least the WCT) for life.

I guess it doesn't help that I'm working on two paid audiobook gigs at the same time, so I really don't have much in the way of free time (hence the long gap since my last post), but at least those are coming along nicely. I should be done with the first one due within a week or a week and a half. The other I have another month to finish. I'll be able to really get busy with it once I finish the first one.

One thing I have been enjoying in Brigadoon is learning Scottish Country dancing. One of the girls who auditioned used to do it for a hobby in the last place she lived, and she's choreographed a couple of scenes. It's great fun, and several of us are trying to convince her to start a Scottish Dancing Society here in Waco.