I am a bad blog parent

Yep, once again I need the DEFACS of blogs called on me. I am a bad blog parent. I have not been tending to the care and feeding of Donutorama. However, I have been busy. Nothing I can do about it. So there! I really need to make a commitment to myself that I will conscientiously maintain said blog, if only as a good writing exercise. It's good to stretch your language muscles, boys and girls!

So, Jesus Christ Superstar Gospel is now out of my life. Does it make me a bad person to say that my life is a little better without Jesus? Yeah, I just RSVPed for my own personal room in hell. Gone! As in the good gone! As in, the millions of dollars worth of sound gear loads onto a 53 foot tractor trailer tomorrow at 10am. Yes, it was a good show, however, the unfortunate experiences outweighed the credibility of the show. I'm still wondering how much we spent on that production. I'm sure we didn't break even. It's a bad sign when your General Manager is selling artwork out of the lobby, so I'm just guessing that the numbers didn't add up. Now, I'm not expressing a correlation between the expenditures of the show and the selling of the artwork. I'm just saying that times are hard, and I'm gonna be really pissed if I get laid off because no one could keep Jesus under budget.

In better news, I'm FINALLY closing on my house on Friday! Yay, happy day! Those of you who know me know that I've been round and round with this house since October, and was really supposed to close in November. Such is the purchasing of foreclosed property. But it's all good. My lease isn't running out any time soon, so I don't have a hardcore deadline on when I have to vacate the basement squat. I do love it here, but it will be so satisfying to have a place of my own.

Okay, I know that was an incredibly uncreative blog post, but I have now fulfilled my duties as a blog owner. I'll try not to wait so long next time.

Until then, keep it between the ditches, y'all.

Holly

Update: I just broke up with my incredibly sweet landlady. I'm terminating my lease early, so I was afraid she'd be unhappy with me, but instead, she was thrilled for me. Maryann has been so good to me since the day I came here 3 years ago to look at the basement squat. I will really miss her. If anyone is looking for an adorable little apartment in the Highlands, give me a shout. I will certainly miss it. It was a great place to recover after all the trauma of getting unmarried 3 years ago. I'm sure these walls hold a lot of caring and warmth. Plus, you can walk to the Clermont.

Okay..

..I figured it out. I probably should have tweeted that.

Any ideas..or maybe I'm just stupid..

..because occasionally I AM just stupid. I'm venturing into the world of twitter, and can't figure out how to post a link here. You can follow me on twitter under the user name sndgrrl. If anyone know how to find the link code, please let me know. I'm probably just drunk.

I know I should be grateful to have a job, but...

..I bet you didn't get puked on tonight at work...by an adult who knew better. Actually. it wasn't me who was the brunt of the gastric contents, but two actors who wear ALL WHITE costumes. They are not the ones I feel sorry for. It is the folks in the wardrobe department who have my condolences. They are currently in search of a 24 hour dry cleaner so that said costumes can be dry cleaned by tomorrow's 2.30pm performance. Also, just a note. It's never good to vomit on stage soft goods, either. Take your ass to the bathroom if you gotta puke. Please don't let your stomach contents ruin my day.

On another note, Simon the Apostle continues to grab my ass. I know that I'm not an expert on the acts of the apostles, but I'm fairly sure that smacking someone on the ass every time you see them is not a very Christian thing to do. Thank God (and Jesus!) this show closes next week. I've had enough.

Call me the awkward ostrich

If you understand the title of this blog entry, then you are probably a member of my close circle of friends. If you don't understand it, just know that the awkward ostrich is the weird animal looking you in the face right after you have done something to which no one knows how to respond.

The bottom line is this: I don't know how to date. Let's face it kids, I was involved or married for most of my adult (read: after college) life. That's a long time. So this whole being single thing completely confounds me. As soon as I figure out that I may be interested in someone, I immediately become 16 again. As in "do you think he's into me? He said this, what do you think it means?" and so forth and so on. I know I vowed a few months ago to not play games, but it's hard to do that when the single world lives and dies by the rules of the games.

I am in a quandary. There are two people I know whom I am interested in, but I don't know how to move forward. And when I say "know", I mean that I don't know them that well. Nor do I work with them, or have many mutual friends with either. This, my friends, presents quite a challenge. I mean, a grrl can only "run into" a guy so many times before it gets weird.

I conveniently "ran into" someone the other night, and it seemed like we enjoyed each other's company. We both smiled and laughed a lot, even casually touched each other occasionally. But I kind of get the feeling that this is a guy who doesn't really date. As in, he has a life other than work that is fulfilling (something I know nothing about, since all I'm allowed to do is work..) So there is my difficulty. How does one get to know someone who seems interested without being forward. Oh, I know, I could go for the slutty approach, It worked with my ex-husband...But for some strange reason, that doesn't seem like a viable option. Call me self-defeating, I know.

So what I'm asking for here, boys and grrls, is not relationship advice, but a survival guide. I'm mean, I'm pretty savvy when it comes to stuff like changing a tire, fixing plumbing, trouble shooting a sound system, and the occasional brain surgery, but I know nothing about being single, other than being a hermit.

C'mon, y'all...help a sista out...

My show is broken

Ever have one of those nights where everything that can go wrong, does? Yeah, me too. Often. Fortunately for me, it's usually not related to the sound department. Tonight was a different story. The automation control unit to the front of house consoles decided it needed a nap, so the entire show had to be mixed entirely by hand. Now before I start getting flamed from all you guys out there, remember that our show has 200+ inputs, 50 of them being RF mics. This is no small feat, even with a working automation platform. So I lost my other deck sound to head downstairs and run the show on the Hertz stage, while Lane came upstairs to help our mixer manually mix the show. Thankfully, I didn't have many of my usual RF problems, but did have massive sweat outs, due to the fact that we went up 30 minutes late and everyone was stressed out.

Then, scenic motor control went all crappy, but got repaired fairly quickly. Electrics were having their own special hell, and I'm not going to EVEN discuss here what happened to Courtney in props. Suffice it to say, it was not pretty.

I'm sure if you've read this far, you're waiting for my rant. Well, here it goes....

If your stage manager informs you that sound is having issues, so it's very important to keep unnecessary backstage talking to a non-existent level, then DO that! In a situation like that, there is a good chance that your mic could still be open after your exit. Also, DO NOT ask your A-2 if your mic is live. She doesn't know, and is probably too busy unpatching open inputs to address it. She can not see what is happening out at FOH, only what is going on with RF. Same goes for your dresser. He has NO IDEA. So don't even ask. Just assume, just for one show, that you need to be on good behavior and do what we tell you.

Well, I'm home now, with a nice cocktail and a somewhat clean house. So I'm going to go enjoy the rest of my night.

Cheers!

A production rant

This is just a production rant. Nothing more, boys and grrls, and really only applies to those in the audio field, however, some points may apply to all members of production.

Headsets and headphones are personal items. Do not, under any circumstances, pick up a colleague's headset or, worse yet, an engineer's PERSONAL pair of headphones and put them on your head without permission, FOR ANY REASON. You wouldn't rub your hair and face against someone you just casually know, would you? You wouldn't put on someone's article of clothing without permission, would you? It's the same damn thing. As a professional A-2, my headphones are my lifeline, an essential tool, and, to some extent, an article of clothing. Don't walk over and place them on your head without my express permission. The reason disease can spread so fast within our particular work environment is often due to the sharing of Clear Com headsets. I've paid good money to own my own personal one, and no, you can't use it. You can't wear my panties, either, but you probably wouldn't ask to do that.

Item number two I would like to address is personal hygiene. Every one should bathe before work, however, this becomes more crucial if you work in close quarters with other people. Even more so if are required to touch other people. If I can walk into a room and tell that you've been there previously by the smell, there's a problem. Oh, and by the way, if you can't bother to wash your hair, DO NOT EVER put on my headphones. Tonight it took me an hour with hand sanitizer and Lysol to get your hairgrease off my headphone band, rendering my essential tool useless for that period. Not to mention the fact that that shit doesn't come off leather easily. And I just can't have that. It makes me nervous. It also makes me feel repulsed.

Perhaps I'm a germ-a-phobe, but seriously. That's just consideration for your fellow man.

On that note, I'm off to the showers, kids!

Bad music for bad people

I just learned that Lux Interior passed yesterday. I will miss him creeping across the stage in those leather pants.

Rock on, my brother, rock on.

Stress management, or how to buy a 90 year old home in a million easy steps.

I don't think I have ever been so stressed out in my life. I know that I'm going to get the house, the question now is, for what price. After the inspection on Monday, I realized that after I buy this place, I'm going to be in bed for at least $20,000 before it's even livable. The roof needs to be re-surfaced, the electrical needs to be re-wired, and the hot water heater (that is currently gas) needs to be upgraded to electric. Call me a picky snob, but I would like to be able to dry my hair with the lights on without causing a black out, and I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with a pilot light (read: open flame) in the crawl space of a 90 year old frame bungalow.

Considering that I have such a fear of commitment, including financial, I am losing my mind right now. But I know that this is what I truly want to do. Not only will I finally have a home of my own, I have made a commitment to myself that over the next 10 years, I will renovate this home with the love and care that it truly deserves. Having grown up in a home that was 150 years old, I have no illusions about the commitment this involves.

That being said, I needed a bit of a break after tonight. The show this evening was a bit stressful in that Tim Rice was in the audience. You've never seen a cast so on point. However, the pressure to make sure that things I have no control over were correct was pretty high.

So...I can home, fixed a nice little cocktail, and gave myself a lovely pedicure. Nothing is more therapeutic than scraping callouses off feet that have been abused for the past two months.

I'm going to watch the latest episode of "Damages" and fantasize about how great my new house will be in 3 years, and then how AWESOME it will be in ten years, and how I finally have a home.

A man's home is his castle..

Well, I know I've been neglectful of my little home on the internet,but I've been otherwise engaged. Since homeownership seems to be working so well for Paulie over at Inside the Perimeter, I thought I might try it for myself.

I've found a (not so) little craftsman bungalow over in Westview that I think needs my attention. And by attention, I mean a new roof and new wiring. Which are both a little more expensive than just simple attention. But damn. I'm getting the house for less than it costs me to feed my cats for a year. My cats eat a lot.

Anyway..

So it looks like grrlfriend will be leaving Poncey Highlands after 7 years here. I'll certainly miss the 24 hour food delivery. I don't think that exists in the West End. There is, however, a nice, new Kroger on Ralph David Abernathy. And neighbors that I know on Mathewson. I will be leaving the little hobbit hole basement apartment for a home of my own that is painted Florida State colors and is 90 years old.

I haven't had a home of my own since I left home 20 years ago. This is a big deal to me. I am 36. It's time.

Wish me luck, and if you like, send me money!

Peace,
H