well?  we  went through this  since the game starts!. Post when you can, when its  comfortable for you. Its good to get the heads up so everyone knows.

.....................

One side bar?  I am worried  about   Henry/Mila... I send a PM in my football game and did not get an answer.. i am pretty sure this is a big testing time  for  the students at  the Player's University.

 what concerns  me  is  The P)layer's spouse had  be  sick before. I'm afraid that maybe things  are going well?

 we will drag Henry along, and hope its just the   college stuff.

ok..good news  for us..maybe not so for  Henry/mila.

 the player  said  there are like 300 projects  to go through, so being swamped is a 'nice word"...sooner or later they will come out the other side...hopefully  they get to enjoy the ball

Mila runs in wagging.

290-odd project students to manage.

Immense flurry of emails - submission deadline was 23:59 last night and a LOT were burning the midnight oil and submitting at the last minute. So they are a bit punchy and upload the wrong file, forget stuff, and generally need sorting out.

The next morning that is, I was fast asleep whilst they were fretting.

Alex is doing a lot better, though, thank you for your concern.

Runs off, still wagging.

Pets Mila

ive been thinking how best to get back into the flow of things, so ive decided to take this opportunity to express growth in the character instead.

hey, Zob? grow  your  character  as you will. no matter how things  turn out, its good RP.

I will get a post up as soon as I can Zob and Sam thinks your amazing

It is gorgeous out today. it's 60+ out, nothing but blue sky and sunshine!!! I'm seeing that pinkish gold on the trees so they are going to bud here soon, and a few are a touch green so are budding.  Snow on the carport is just melting in storm.

bubs  have  come up for the last  month..on FB i have some Pics  of my Late  wife's  magnolia tree. its the last thing she ever planted, its  Massive now..frost killed  the pick flowers, but she'll have another  3..maybe  even for  Blooms  before  october..took me from 11:00 until 5:30 ro cut the grass, it was  high..and i had to keep charging the batteries.


Naturally, since i cut the grass today, its gonna  rain tomorrow  so it  grows  fast  again.. I think i saw  some Largs  in my  yard while i was  tryign to cut.

antlered largs or the low bush variety? (deer or rabbits) lol vorpal bunnies?

I stopped by my apartment after work, before heading to the school for the show, because I needed to grab a few things.  Walked back out to my car...and one of my neighbors was jogging down the block, getting his daily run in.  Stopped by my car and we talked for a couple of minutes, then he said he needed to head out because he was on his way to a lacrosse match (that's apparently become a big spring-time sport in high schools in this area...)  As he started jogging away, he called out, "Hope you enjoy this weather!"

I didn't have the heart to tell him I was going to spend the evening in a darkened theater, before going to ANOTHER theater to finish the night...

And tomorrow ought to be interesting.  Gotta cut some unistrut so they can mount new speakers in the theater, gotta do a group phone-call about some of the items on our to-do list, the company bowling party is supposed to start at noon...it's gonna be a chaotic day (but, then again, they are all chaotic this time of year...)

All that said...I'm glad I've got my chaos to deal with, Mila, and not yours!

Woo-Hoo sunny and 64 again today!  plus found out in the park across the street there is a pair of bald eagles that have an aerie in there.  Yesterday they were soaring. gorgeous to see.

not bad it rained..its is the low  50's now.. I had a talk with a guy  yesterday,  there are Dandelions  scatered about  my yard..he asked why i don't spray them.

  I said..well? first off  , I have grandkids that play in the yard, secondly, my neighbors  cats   come in, and hut  around by the shed   and my p[orch  for Moles  and suach... I also don't want to get rid of the  dandelions ,becaus they are a source  of  food for the honeybees...

he said, ;don't you hate the  way it looks?"

 I said...by the middle of Mat there won't be hardly any, and in August when the ehat is up and the rain is scarce. my yard  will be green...

Then I added, ..Green is   my Favorit color..Yellow was my late wifes  fav color..so..I kinda like it.

the blossom and stem are not edible but the leaves are.  they are part of those bags of mixed greens salad mixes. sooo... tell him your growing your own food.

Well, all things considered, it was an interesting day...

I was under the impression that the phone call was going to be about how we're going to rig the kabuki drape that the director wants to use.  The last time we used it was ten years ago, and the pipe that we hung it from (which was specially hung JUST for that) has now become a lighting position, so the director can't hang it there unless he wants to argue with the lighting designer about where all those lights are going to go...but he had something else come up, so it ended up being a rehash of where we all stand on our to-do lists and what needs to be highest priority...

While this was going on, I was trying to fit the metal-cutting saw blade I bought yesterday onto a saw.  I was going to use it on my chop saw...but the blade is only 7" and the saw is built for a 10" blade, so it couldn't swing low enough to cut all the way through anything.  So then I thought I'd try it on my cordless Dewalt circular saw...and discovered THAT was a 6" blade, so the new blade wouldn't fit inside the safety guard...

And I have a circular saw with a 7" blade on it, but I could not, for the life of me, get the blade loose (I mean, it's been sitting for years, so there's been plenty of time for the bolt to start rusting in place...)  I finally ended up using an angle grinder with a cut-off wheel, which was what I'd originally set aside and then thought it might go faster with one of the other saws...

But I got all the strut sections cut, and still managed to make it to the bowling party before things got too involved (they start off with a catered pizza dinner, and I got there as the last of the people at the bowling party where going through the serving line the first time, so I slipped right in.)  In the past they've always assigned people to a foursome as a team to have them bowl...this was hypothetically to encourage people to get to know people from other departments, have them spend some time with people they otherwise don't work with--and that actually does work, there are a handful of guys from the games and foods departments that I had seen around a lot but had never gotten to know, until either bowling or playing golf with them.  I say hypothetically, however, because it seems like the maintenance guys always end up on teams with each other, the office people always end up on teams with each other, and senior management is always their own team...

Today, however, they gave up any pretense and just said, "Here's a game card, it gets you two games plus shoe rental.  You can pick whoever you want to bowl with, but we encourage you to mix it up a little bit and get to know people you aren't always working with..."  Well, being the only one from my department there, that wasn't a difficult suggestion to follow...I ended up bowling with three security people and the lady in charge of the animals department.  And, ironically, I had one of the worst games of my life, followed by one of the best.  The first game, I didn't get a single strike or spare, and managed a measly 63.  The second game, I only had two open frames...eight pins down in both of them...and everything else was a strike or a spare.  Considering this is the first time I've even opened my bag since the company bowling party last year, I was expecting more of the first game and less of the second...but I have no complaints!

Took the next couple of hours to run errands and get stuff ready for dress rehearsal tonight...made it to the school, got stuff cleaned up and straightened out...there's still an airbrush that's got some kind of feed issue that I need to get cleaned up, but otherwise, everything was working smoothly.  Our zombie looked much better tonight (which made me laugh a little bit because people last night were talking about how good he looked, and the night before that, when someone else did his makeup on their own, he still looked 'good enough'...it's kind of traditional, when doing this show (Zombie Prom), to do the zombie as kind of cartoonish, "This is very obviously just green makeup that we slathered on in a hurry" type stuff, and I think the girl (one of the students in the show) kind of had that look in mind with what she was doing.  While I've done the show before, I never looked at what anybody had done with past productions of it, so I've come into it both times with a pretty distinct look that's more akin to Walking Dead (without prosthetics) than Scooby Doo.  So everyone's been really excited to see this very different take from what they'd been expecting.  And for me, it's a nice change of pace to tackle a more elaborate makeup like this with a skilled and eager helper.  She did his makeup Monday night.  I came in last night, set up some stuff, and ended up doing most of his makeup, and then after rehearsal last night, we talked about what changes should be made and who was doing what, so tonight, while I was doing one thing, she was doing another, and we got a LOT more detailed and still finished up in good time to get him out to the stage well before he needed to be there.

And then texted my boss at the movie theater and said, 'Hey, I'm going to be done with the show early enough to go ahead and close for Abby tonight, so you don't need to,' which immediately won blessings upon my head...*laugh*

So, it was a full day.  And a good day, in a lot of ways.  Tomorrow, we hang subwoofers, and I'll be running the lift for that for at least a few hours...and then it's back to the theater again (but I need to swing by the hardware store and grab a couple of magnetic door latches and maybe some neodymium magnets to go with them.  And I should probably take my screw gun...I know the school has some, but if I take mine, I know it works and I'm not concerned about whether or not they have a decent bit driver...)

For all that these last couple of weeks before the park launches into full-on rehearsal mode get ridiculously crowded and busy, I still so much enjoy working with these kids.  One of the kids in this show was in the junior-high production of Fiddler on the Roof I worked on last year...she was laughing about how I had to turn her into a little old woman (she was Yenta) and people would give her grief because she never got all the makeup washed out of her hair before she went back to school the next day, so teachers and kids were teasing her about going gray...

And the fact that she's in this show...as a sophomore...with a significant role...really is kinda heartwarming for me, because last year, she was stressing out about auditioning to get into the Productions class at the high school, and her mom was even worse...and I kept saying, "Look...trust me, you're gonna be fine and you are MORE than ready to audition for that class."  One of the reasons I do this (because none of the schools can afford to pay me anything close to market rate for a makeup artist, much less a designer who also acts as backstage crew and even occasionally does props and wardrobe work) is because working with these kids reminds me of how I felt when I finally found my way into theater and stopped feeling like I just didn't quite fit in where I was at.  I love theater, and a lot of these kids do, as well, and I hope that my efforts and example boost that love for it even higher.  I take a lot of pleasure in seeing that some of the kids that I've worked with through the years are still, a decade or more after they graduated, still doing theater work.  It's not for everyone, and I don't begrudge anyone who decides that it's not lucrative enough or is too demanding or time-intensive...but I want to make sure that nobody I work with decides they don't want to do theater because they didn't enjoy it.

 That's all pretty neat!. The fun working with the  kids. You know , some where down the line, they'll be telling spouses, friends, of  castmates  about 'The Guy i knew , who helped  our school company"

The Bowling things is fun,  We had a Gold league  i ran at Navco, for  2 years, but  it died  when  guys ( me)  kept getting laid off.  I beat the  Big Boss in our head to head match, everyone said i should have lost on purpose..but it  did  serve  the purpose of getting to know  folks...people i didn't like i  disliked more... people i liked went the either way.. Bosses  , gained respect for me, because i handled  all the numbers and standings.

 My  Late  wife  didn't like to go to stuff  the Union had  or the post office  had,, i think she didn't like lot of the people. But the Union Pic nics  were fun..kids won prizes, i got to show off, and  My wife  got to talk to some  people  she ended up ,liking to talk to.

so..yeah?  do that stuff, even  if its   just to 'drop in and say hi", then leave. its good  for folks to know you , outside of things.

I tend to skip most of the employee parties these days.  They're geared to be entertaining for 14-18 year-olds, and I was long past that when I started at the park.  This is one of the few things they do that I actually look forward to.

I'm sure, had I said anything about "I'm going to the bowling party", there would have been some concerned words about priorities...but when push comes to shove and the chips are down, I'm there for the long haul.  Anyone who wants to complain about me leaving early, now, to go to an employee party, needs to come talk to me after lighting focus, when it's one AM and there's me, Security, and the grounds clean-up guys on the park, and that's it.  Since they're all home in bed whenever we're doing that, I don't feel bad about giving up an afternoon when we're still a couple of weeks out from starting rehearsals, especially when all of the major projects on my list are things that I can't do until electricians and carpenters are done putting our space back together.  Or today, when I was the one in the basket lift, almost twenty feet above the stage, balancing on the bars on the side of the basket (which we're not supposed to do...don't tell anyone...) because there's already so much crap hanging above the stage that I can't get the basket close enough to where I need to be to mount the anchor points for yet more stuff that's going to be hung (and could potentially make it impossible for us to get down a couple of our lights...that will be fun...)

I took advantage of the time that I was up there to strip out some of the old rigging (some of it, I had to, because it was in the way of what I was putting up), even though the last time we used it (five or six years ago), when I asked if I should take it down because we were unlikely to use it again and if we did, there would probably be better places to rig it, the director said, "No...we should leave it there.  Just in case..."  You get up to the grid over the stage (where we're hanging all the lights), and there's an absolutely revolting amount of, "No, leave it there...just in case..."  Half of it, we can't even use now, because so much other stuff has been hung underneath it that we can't even get to it anymore.  I understand the whole "we went to a lot of trouble to get that installed, and we could end up using it again, so keep it there" (I mean, I'm the king of "Don't throw that away, that could be really useful under the right circumstances!")  But when you have to move it around EVERY YEAR to get it out of the way of what you ARE using, and you haven't used it in almost a decade, and it could be EASILY rigged to be reinstalled if you decided to use it...WHY IS IT STILL THERE?!!!

Yeah, I was a little frustrated today.  It got even better when they wanted to use the basket lift to raise the subwoofers (the 'more crap' that I was rigging hanging points for) up into position, and I had to explain that I could barely get MYSELF in there.  Throw a 4x3x3 ft box up on the edge of the basket so I can't see where I'm going and there's even LESS room to maneuver, and I seriously doubt I can do that.  If the other speakers weren't already in the way...if I didn't have to dodge the antique-ish sconce lights (with legitimately antique glassware in them)...if they would get me trained on the other lift that fits in the theater--the one with an articulated arm on the end of the boom so I could get closer to the ceiling without worrying about crushing part of the main support beam around the outside of the theater...

If they would stop layering band-aid fixes on top of band-aid fixes...

But, the rigging work is almost all done.  We have one in position to be hoisted up, we have pulleys and ropes rigged, we have a maintenance crew that's supposed to show up to help us hoist it tomorrow morning (we tried it tonight, and there just weren't enough of us to make it work)...so, hopefully, by noon tomorrow, it will all be done.

That was part one of the good news.  Part two is, the kids did so well at rehearsal last night that the director/theatre teacher decided they didn't need to rehearse tonight, which would send them into opening night tomorrow all rested up (hopefully!  We ARE talking about high school kids, after all, and that's an age group that isn't well known for wise decision making.)  But I didn't end up sitting in a darkened theater tonight and almost falling asleep (again).  Didn't really get rest, but I did get to run a few errands for the things I was going to fix tonight and can now fix tomorrow night instead.

But I did have to deal with the group that rented our large screen for the late (9pm) time-slot tonight.  A realty group, sponsored by a realtor who specializes in buying flipped houses and then reselling them, and a bunch of the people who either flip the houses or provide services for those flipping the houses.  They were WAY more interested in talking to each other than watching a movie, and a handful of them only lasted maybe five minutes inside the theater and then came out and spent the rest of the night talking in the lobby.  I didn't realize how much I enjoy the solitude of a quiet lobby until they left...

Weaves through Zob's legs and nearly trips him up.

Thank you everyone.

Much as I enjoy special effects work, theatre in general, whilst fun is not where my heart is. I'm happier with students. I beat the email to a standstill last night, and there was an unpredidented number of grateful ones from students I've dealt with, some in this recent madness, and others I've worked with over the year. Even a formal Islamic blessing from one young gentleman. Back to marking on Monday, but for now curling up with my medals website - with inpeccable timing, I've been being deluged with images for the section I'm working on just when I don't have the time to work on them...

ok. Palindrome  week!.. from 4-25-24 to  4-29-24

now?  5 points is way too much to give up  for  number.

 BUT.....  evey one  take  2 points..anywhere, mix or match

Put at the bottom   PD424

PM  me changes.

Thank you Don.

Hey…power is out until 7:30 .I’ll catch up when restored.. tablet won’t work hang phone now

Penal says 9:30 now….thiey still
Don’t  know what happened…..I post whenever we have power.ot is amzonh how black the house is without all the gadgets lights

i got caught up in some real life stuff catching up now

still at the Ball..it  just started.

three weeks to go...