gypsygirl

Life’s been pretty busy since my last post (hence no posts since then).

So, first off, I started the new job. It’s been fairly quiet for these first few weeks. The whole first week and part of the second all I did was read, because they’d ordered me a new computer (a nice, shiny new macbook!) and we were waiting for it to arrive. The rest of the second week I spent trying to install Windows and Linux on it (some of the things I’m going to be working with run on Mac, some on Windows and some on Linux, so I have to have all three OS’s). Then I went on vacation for a week, but I did finally get the various operating systems running when I got back. Since then, they’ve slowly been getting me started on some of the things I’m going to be dealing with. Oh, and kind of cool coincidence, one of the first things I worked on was a problem a professor was having with his website, which he was running with wordpress… so this blog? Not just for fun! Actual work related learning experience gained from it!

Now back to the vacation. I went out to Mum’s for ten days. This is the first time I’d been out there since she moved to Palmdale and Paul brought the family up, so I got to see the new house, and of course, all the family. The times at home were fairly quiet. The boys are sort of between activities right now, so they spend most of their time online or playing video games (sometimes both). Mum and Natalie and I had fun though. Mum and I usually try to get out to the Hollywood Bowl whenever I visit during the summer, and this year Natalie came with us. We got to see South Pacific, with Reba McEntire and Brian Stokes Mitchell. It was awesome! Then a few days later, we went to see Wicked. I’d been wanting to see this since I first found out that the book was being turned into a musical, so I did a quick search to see if the touring company might happen to be in the Los Angeles area during that week, and found that there’s a permanent (well, probably semi-permanent) production at the Pantages! I treated Mum to both shows for her birthday present. Natalie came with us to this one too. They didn’t know anything about Wicked, but they were excited to be getting out of the house for something other than work. On the Friday before I came back Natalie’s daughter Debbie was playing in the orchestra for a community college production of Once Upon This Island, so we went to that too. Needless to say, after South Pacific and Wicked, this was a bit of a letdown. Maybe if we’d seen that one first. I mean, it wasn’t terrible, but it was definitely an amateur performance (I like to think that we’re a little pickier about our lead roles at the WCT… but I’m terribly afraid we aren’t always).

I haven’t been doing much outside of work since I got back. Though yesterday was my birthday and I did get taken out for lunch. Apparently, the Preservation people adopt whoever works in the office across the hall from them, regardless of what department they’re in, so Eric and I get included in all they do. It’s fun, and I’m enjoying getting to know that group better. I used to see them some when they were on the first floor, but we’re in much closer proximity here and it’s easier.

Annie opens next weekend at the Civic. I got cast in it, but then I found out that Linda had cast about 60 kids! I told them that I’d just started a new job and we were starting a big project and that I wasn’t sure how much spare time I was going to have in the evenings (all of which is true), so thank you but I was going to have to turn down the part. I will be ushering, though. Beth is playing Miss Hannigan and I’ve heard that she’s hilarious, so I’m looking forward to watching her.

I’m still working on El Dorado for Librivox. It’s an interesting story, but I keep putting off recording because Armand, from whose perspective most of this story is told, is driving me spare. He’s being such an absolute infant that I keep wanting to smack him upside the head. This one’s longer than the other Orczy book I did too, much longer. I originally picked it because it’s the other book they generally use when they’re making a film adaptation, so I know parts of the plot.

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.

Life seems suddenly much more relaxing. The show opened last weekend, and I think it went quite well. We haven’t sold out any of the performances so far, but we’ve had decent sized crowds. One of the cast members, whose only previous experience at the WCT was Fiddler, was disappointed at the size of the crowds. It took some talking to convince her that Fiddler was a special case, that not every show sells out every single performance! While Once Upon a Mattress is a very fun show, it’s nowhere near as well known as Fiddler, so there’s not as great a demand.

I’ve also just mailed in Team Steve’s final project to the professor, so the only thing left for class is the presentation on Thursday. I’m so glad that’s over - being in a team of five people in which only two and a half are doing any work is no fun (two and a half because of the amount of work involved by the half compared to the two). We got the results on our finals back last week and I somehow managed to get the exact same grade on it as I did on the mid-term… right down to the decimal. Weird, but good, because I hadn’t expected to do as well as on the mid-term. There were several things I wasn’t able to get working properly, but he seemed to think that what I did do was very strong work regardless. I’m not going to complain!

No, it’s not Talk Like a Pirate Day (that’s in September). It’s just finally sinking in that Once Upon a Mattress opens in eleven days! Eleven!! We still don’t have a full set or most of our large props, including the main one, the bed! But worse than that, we have yet to have a rehearsal with the full cast! Eeek!

Why do I go to Walmart? I know what it’s like, especially on weekends! I know what it does to me. I know that I just end up grumpy after fighting the crowds of people who go there on the weekend. So, why do I put myself through it??? Ai!

It’s time to start planning the yearly excursion to Scarborough Faire again! It’s not the same since Lauren moved to New York; in fact, we didn’t manage to get our schedules sorted in time last year and didn’t go at all! Not good. But this year we will go. We will!

Maranda and I both already have people we’re thinking of including in the group. I’ve already sounded Jana, and I need to remember to mention it to Sherry. I don’t know if MB is much of a faire goer, but I’ll ask her as well. I was thinking of asking Bobby as well, since he came with us the first year. We’ll see.

Fortunately, the faire runs a couple weekends beyond the end of Mattress, so we do have some dates available to us. Yay! I can’t wait!

In other news, I was told that Melissa hasn’t seen Music Man yet either!! So, we’re including her in our SKVE intervention night… when we get around to it. Darn the weather that forced us to put it off the first time!

So last weekend we had thunderstorms and tornadoes go through, which, though normal enough for Tornado Alley, did seem to be a bit early in the season; and this weekend, we have snow! Snow in April, in Waco!?! It’s colder today than it was most days this past winter.

What’s weird is seeing the contrast between spring and winter: bluebonnets blanketed in snow; trees with their new growth of leaves covered in stark white; a carpet of white over the grass, except around trees where it’s a brilliant green.

These photos really don’t do it justice, but they were the best I could do at short notice (meaning, before the snow melted!).