Wrap Up

I'm doing laundry as we speak, which in and of itsself is not very exciting or interesting. However, as these are the costumes for the show I was working on and I am washing them as the final thing I have to do before being completely finished with this job, its almost...exciting!

Yes, tonight at the cast party I will be returning the last of the costumes (the ones that weren't claimed by the cast, that is!) to the director to do with as she pleases. Earlier today I returned all of my rental costumes to their respective owners. The fat lady has sung.

The show went really quite well. There were 4 performances this weekend at the Drag0n Theater in Palo Alto. Sunday got a bit ridiculous with the heat wave we had here; it must've been easy 90' in the theater. No air moving. Some of the characters in several layers. Fairly unpleasant. But with the exception of the matinee, we had a full house every night. The audience laughed at the 'right' parts and applauded generously at the end of each story.

As for the costumes, I was really quite pleased with myself. The costumes themselves turned out almost exactly like I had drawn them, but more importantly, I was ready for opening night without being in a panic or killing myself with all-nighters at any point during the costumeing process. Sure, I might have done things a little more efficiently - renting and shopping and the like - but I tried to budget a lot of extra time into my schedule for accidents and unknowens and just getting burned out, and it seemed to have worked. Looking at my history of being the absolute queen of last minute work, I am feeling pretty damned smug right now.

A brief selection of costumes from the final costumes from the show can be found here. I've already included them in two job applications I just sent out today; part of the neverending cycle of trying to find the next gig (fingers crossed.)

Cast party is tonight, which I am looking forward to -- and not just because of the booze. It was strange and kind of sad to have to pack up my costumes after the last performance on Sunday. I've invested the last 4 weeks into this, and have spent a lot of time with these folks. Sad that it is ending in a way (although that part where I didn't have to - and therefore didn't - get out of bed Monday was exceptionally fabulous!) I've really enjoyed myself. Can't wait to see what the next one is. Would definitely work with this cast again.

Oh, but if we do, I can all but guarantee it won't be atthe same theater. Turns out they didn't quite get that we would not only have open piles of real dirt on set for the show, but that it would be thrown through the air as well. By the end of 5 days of in house rehearsals and the performances themselves, there was at least a fine coating of dust on every object and surface in that theater. The stage area itsself? The one that was painted flat black and showed every speck of dust? That had to be mopped 4 times when we were striking. Still didn't get it all. And after sweeping the place? The air was heavy with dust. It was like being on the playa -- except in a box. Ridiculous. (But fun!)

Feeling a Bit...Betrayed?

Wow. I just saw a video for English Beat ("Best Friend", to be exact.)

Turns out the lead singer is WHITE! I had no idea! Obviously I've never seen one of their videos before, and sure there's a white guy on the albums, but I never thought he was the lead singer!

I might hve to lie down for a bit.

Fuck You, Kodak Gallery

Boy, live and learn.

After Mags was born, I used the now defunct Ofoto to post all of her baby pictures so I could share them with my family and friends. Eventually other pictures of mine started making their way up there as well, and it soon became my only online picture sharing capability. Eventually I started taking less and less pictures of Mags (much trickier once they can a ctually MOVE,) and I learned of the wonders of Flickr, which had a lot of new and better features than Kodak, most noticeably that you didn't have to sign in every single time you wanted to look at pictures.

Kodak slipped out of mind for me.

However recently I've been getting notices from Kodak that they were changing their policies and would now be charging an annual storage fee for pictures, and if you did not pay all of your existing albums would be deleted. A few years ago our hard drive crashed and I lost more pictures than I can think about without becoming physically ill (honeymoon, crosscountry airplane trip), and I leapt back to Kodak to re-download all the pictures I had previously uploaded. Well you know what? You can't actually redownload your own pictures. Nuh-uh! I mean, not without paying EXTRA, anyhow. Well, fuck? Oh, I know, I'll just order a CD of the pictures I know I don't have on my current drive (the really old ones.) Nope, sorry, can't do that either. If you want the CD, you have to order absolutely everything you ever uploaded.

I beg your pardon? I have nearly 4000 photos there!! 2/3s of which I still have on my harddrive!!

But my hands are tied. I can either lose all of Mags' baby pictures, or I can pay $100 to get them all in my hands. No contest really. My CD should be here in about a week.

I'm glad since starting Flickr I still keep the original copy of all my images on my harddrive here. Its a great way to share stuff, but I'm NEVER going to hand all my images over to someone else again, at least not to a service that is going to charge me to have access to my own data, anyhow.

Fuck you very much, Kodak. I hope you tank.

I Love the Smell of Police First Thing in the Morning!

Husband came back into the house a minute after leaving for work toady. "The police are here. The neighbors car got stolen last night," he said.

"Oh no! That's terrible!"

"Yeah, and ours and the kids next doors car got ransacked."

"Shit! Again? Dammit. Well, at least there was nothing of importance in there... except for... all of the costumes for....the...showohmygodgetoutoftheway!!!"

I bolted outside and sure enough, there was the officer talking to the neighbors. The drivers door and gas door hung open on our car and the trunk was definitely open as well; same for the neighbors. Without touching any of the doors I looked inside, taking inventory on what I could see and trying desperately to remember what I had left inside the day before.

Luckily it appears that all of the costumes are still there, but I am heading over to the theater to drop them of in a minute to take a piece by piece inventory and confirm that, what with the showw starting on Friday and all. And after we had a few run-ins with our car getting rifled through at night, we've been very good to excellent about never leaving anything important in there. Husband did lose a $30 elecro-nerd-gadget thing, and I still have to find my iPod, but I am pretty sure that is at the studio. Will check before I head off to the theater. AT least we still have the CAR, unlike the neighbors. Can't imagine how bad THAT would suck.

Not that they would've gotten far in ours - I was halfway throug the gas light when last I drove it. See?!? It PAS to not always have a full tank of gas!!

P.S. I am very glad that the officer either didn't notice or chose not to say anything about my wildly expired drivers licence when she took my info. That would have been an embarrasing insult to injury on this fine sunny morning.

Some Combination

Wow, for being 2-ish days from my period, I feel GREAT! I mean, sure, I'm swelling up like normal - lots of fast food while sewing and running around to rehearsals is NOT helping - but I'm in a fine mood right now.

The hippy sleeping pills seem to be helping quite well; I slept fairly deeply for almost 10 hours last night! I've upped my B6 dose from 50 to 100 mg. I started throwing in some 5 HTP pills in the mornings as well to see if they would make a difference about 3-4 days ago too (although I am now reading material that suggests that the B6 and 5 HTP are not a great combination; will do more reading.) Plus I had my first full dress rehearsal with both shows on the acttual set and it went really well. Got lots of fantastic feedback ("You're amazing" being my personal favorite; thank you so much,) so while I have a lot of work to do still, a lot of the wondering-if-they-like-it stress is gone, baby, gone.

Dunno what it is, but it is GREAT to feel this great. Its been a really long time since I've felt this good, and without the pesky side effects of being brain dead and fat from pharmaceuticals to boot. Here's hoping this is not just a passing thing, and I've found some things that will actually help me! Fingers crossed!

She Is Unused to Speaking About Herself in the Third Person

Just got a request from one of the directors to submit a bio for the show program. Slightly more challenging that I would've thought. Do I mention that I like to sew nude? Is it too early to thank the Academy? Is "For a good time call" a little too forward?

I'm pretty happy with what I came up with. At the very least, its probably too late to change it. :)

Mampajama (invisible townsperson, Costume Designer) has been parked behind a
sewing machine for almost 20 years. The Hole and Sublet are her first design
gigs, but she has also worked in costumes with the Marin Shakespeare Company and
The Crucible (among others,) and in a former life was a traffic pilot with KGO.
She hates pina coladas and prefers a couch and a book to actually walking in the
rain.

Survery Says....

*buzz!*

Oh, I'm sorry, director says 'too dowdy'. Also doesn't fit nearly as well in person as it did on the mannequin. Lose an afternoon of sewing and get your first major blow to the self-confidence. But the clock hasn't stopped ticking! Keep sewing! Keep sewing!

But Will the Director Like It?

I sure hope so -- the show opens in less than two weeks. Yikes!

Biting Back Laughter

Husband called me over. "I need back up,' he said after a long pregnant pause.

So I went over to the tent the girls were getting ready for their slumber party in. Minutes before, Miss V had come begging for another pair of scissors. "For paper!" Mags called from the nylon depths. Miss V shot me a look from the corner of her eye and then slyly smiled. After she scuttled back into the tent, I crooked my finger at Husband. "Do me a favor and stick you head in the tent, will ya?"

There, sitting in the wee rocking chair was Nat, Miss Vs 3 year old sister. The two 5 year olds sat smiling at me from the side of the hexagon. And all over the floor: hair. Lots and lots of hair. Apparently our sleepover theme had gone from 'camping' into 'beauty school dropout', as evidenced by the large swaths of hair that were missing from the side of Nat's head.

Really, I wasn't terribly surprised. They'd been acting up all evening, feeding off each other, and, well, aren't 5 year old supposed to give/get home-style haircuts? I had to try hard not to laugh. What stopped me more than anything was the blatant lying; a first for Mags. What to do?

We ended up pulling their tent privledges for the night, as well as any and all treats. Mags cried, but Miss V was basically unfazed. And wee Nat, well, she was a bit clueless as to what was going on. Couldn't really fault the 3 year old.

So now they're watching a short movie just so we could get a break for the evening. The hopes are that they'll all pass out and we can be done for tonight. This was the first time a sleepover had really gone 'wrong'. I'm kind of treating it as their one off, but Mags is going to get a serious talking to tomorrow once Miss V and Nat are gone.

Wish I'g gotten a picture of the dust pan full of hair, though... :)

Attitude From the 9 Year Old?

Moomin: (looking at the hedge critically) Why did you cut all of that back like that?

A) Don't need it and b) I'm guessing that 9 year olds would never even notice had it not been for, say, another person to point it out to them. Double don't need it.

Seriously, it grows back. Seriously.