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January 4, 2010

On Stage!

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:36 am

A magical thing happened this week. The show has really come to life. It’s hard to describe, but it’s the difference between a show that just kind of happens, and a show that sucks you in and makes you feel like the action is really happening for the first time right now in front of you. In a few short rehearsals our cast has found many new ways to bring their characters to life. On one particular day, I left the room for maybe 15 minutes to make some phone calls to take care of set issues, and when I came back the scene was totally fresh and new. I don’t know what exactly occurred, but all week we have made leaps and bounds in the show. Our run-throughs in the rehearsal room have been highly complimented, even by veteran designers and crew, who usually don’t come to runs to be entertained or moved.

Today was our first day onstage, and the excitement of the show in the rehearsal room has been topped by the excitement of the show on the set. The depth and texture of the structure really makes the action pop off the stage. Everything just looks so good and feels so comfortable. A large part of what we had to do today was to adjust spacing for the actual set, but we haven’t hit any problems, just things we can now refine better in three dimensions.

In the most unexpected good news ever, our platform Fred does not appear to need brakes. Through some combination of the quality of castors and the fact that it’s moving on marley, it rolls almost silently, yet has enough weight and stability that it doesn’t move at all even under significant leaning and sitting. It moves easily when you want it to, and not at all when you don’t. It’s like the scenic holy grail! So we have had to take back all the nasty things we said about Fred.

The theatre has a very warm feel. It’s very intimate, yet also has a grandeur that feels like working in a real honest-to-goodness professional theatre. And of course the Guthrie facility provides all the little goodies a stage manager wants. At my personal tech table, I have plenty of power and ethernet, my headset console, with four channels (of which I assume we’ll use three — deck, lighting and sound), a paging mic, infrared and color monitor, and a cue light panel that I hope to God we don’t need. We have cue lights set up here, but I’d really rather not have to worry about that on the road if all our actor entrances can be handled by Nick giving hand signals off my cue. Anyway, the best part of the cue light panels here is that they have a built-in electric pencil sharpener. Uh huh. Yes, they do. I believe the reason I never blogged about this last year is that they removed the panel from my tech table before I got a chance to take a picture. So this year I made sure I did:

As you can see, it’s a regular electric pencil sharpener that just fits right into the casing. It almost makes me wish I used regular pencils.

My other favorite thing in the room today was our rehearsal mock-up of the victrola we have in the show (what does a victrola have to do with R&J? Well part of what happens at the Capulet party is that Capulet shows off his new technological purchases, such as this fancy device that plays music by itself, and electric lights). In the rehearsal room, we used a cardboard box that vaguely resembled a pizza box, so while waiting for the real victrola to be delivered (supposedly Tuesday), our prop master, Scotty, wanted to make us a more accurate mock-up to use on stage.

Here’s what it looks like before it’s unveiled at the party:

Looks pretty nice, huh? And here’s what it actually is:

I think it’s the greatest rehearsal prop ever. Most of the cast hadn’t seen under the sheet before we rehearsed the party scene, so the reaction when the new victrola was unveiled was very special!

Our day went very well today. Between getting spacing done for all the major scenes, and apparently solving the Fred problems, we’re in good shape. At my urging, everybody on the production team who’s in town was present for the entire rehearsal, as well as our two local carpenters, Craig and Sarah, who are awesome. It’s so nice to finally all be in one room and able to discuss things in real time. That’s why I find tech less stressful than the rehearsal process — aside from learning to call the show, what I really have to do is guide all these people who are specialists in their respective fields to work together and solve problems, and I find that fairly easy and relaxing, once all the people are in place.

We have a very welcome day off (our second in four days, due to our weird Christmas schedule shaking out back to a normal schedule), and then we begin tech on Tuesday.


January 1, 2010

New Year Site Updates

I call this: tech,web — Posted by KP @ 9:54 pm

Today I took some time to update some little things that have been bugging me about the site.

I have wanted to make the comment feature on the blog more welcoming for a while. For one thing, I have removed the need to register for the site before posting. I activated that because I was getting a lot of spam comments, but I will try again and see if it’s ok. Also, the comment section should support Gravatars (a service that will show your avatar on any enabled site based on the email address you post with). I would very much appreciate some feedback from other Gravatar users on if it works.

I also added support for threaded comments, and edited my theme to make the displayed comments and the new comment form stand out a bit with different-colored boxes. If you want to really see it in action, you can check out this post, which has a couple comments already.

In other news, I cleaned up some of the margins to allow for more consistent and attractive spacing between paragraphs and headings (on the blog and the main site), and fixed what was broke with image alignment with a recent WordPress update (hint: the needed CSS code was correct, it was just apparently too far down in the file, and moving it to the top was what fixed it — not exactly sure why, and don’t really care now that it’s fixed).

I’m also currently in the middle of updating all the posts with tags. I’ve never been one to use tags, but it seems like a good idea, especially given how many posts I have accumulated over the years. In the process, I moved the tags listing to the bottom of the post, where it seems more logical to me, in terms of where people will be looking when they decide they may wish to read more about the topic. My recent studies in PHP have made me a little more confident in editing my WordPress files. I may not always understand exactly what they do, but I’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out roughly what does what.

If you’d like to take a moment to play around with the comment features, please do! I’d love to hear from you!


Halfway

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 5:32 pm

Today marks the halfway point in our stay in Minneapolis. We arrived here December 1st, and we depart on January 31st, for our next performance in Moorhead, MN (right next to Fargo, apparently), on February 1st.

As one would assume, we are about to go into tech. Nick, Ashley and I will pack up the rehearsal room on Saturday night, and all of our stuff will be moved up to the theatre on Sunday morning. Sunday is a regular rehearsal day, but instead of being in our rehearsal studio, we will be on stage. Our local carpenters, Craig and Sarah, will be there with us for the first time, where they will begin learning the show, and becoming familiar with the props. I’m sure they already know the set better than us since they put it up.

Sunday’s rehearsal is about spacing, getting used to the ins and outs of the set, and troubleshooting any problems we discover in the course of that.

We have Monday off, during which the crew will complete everything that remains to be done before tech, and then on Tuesday morning we have our first day of tech.

My Team

Although being away from our company’s base of operations has its challenges, one of the things that has helped me stay reasonably sane is that I have a stage management team I trust. At this point Nick and I have been working together long enough that we often think of things at exactly the same time. This year we are taking part in the Guthrie system of using Google Talk to communicate in the rehearsal room and between departments and other shows. Usually at least once a day, Nick and I will type the same thing into Google Talk and send it to each other simultaneously. Yesterday I caught us both letting out an exasperated sigh at exactly the same time and duration. That being said, instead of always thinking of the same thing at the same time, we also often think of things the other has forgotten, which is far more useful than two people thinking the same thing.

Nick

I am a big believer in delegation in a stage management team. I believe the ASM should be an independent entity, and not just a someone who does the PSM’s bidding. I think the biggest part of that is not just to assign certain duties to the ASM, but to empower them to be in charge of certain aspects of the production. That might mean maintaining certain paperwork, or keeping track of certain aspects of the production (usually props).

In our production, I do most of the paperwork, because almost all of it is generated by the database I designed, so any changes to its function go through me, but once I get something working, a lot of the data is Nick’s domain.

Nick is also in charge of props, costumes (mostly because last year’s Henry V was so complicated that costume pieces had to be tracked like props), and I have put him in all the fight rehearsals because he likes it, and he was the fight captain for The Spy last year, so he’s got a good eye for fight choreography and weapons maintenance. When we get to the theatre, he will be the one who knows how things are backstage. I know he’s been watching the entire process with an eye towards backstage traffic, prop tracking, where costume changes happen and so forth, and in his head he has a much better picture of what things will be like backstage.

I have been more focused on what happens in front of the audience — blocking, light cues, sound cues, etc. Chances are we will finish the tour with neither of us ever fully understanding what happens in the other’s world, but that’s why we are a team.

Ashley

Ashley, the Guthrie’s stage management intern, is our liason to all things Guthrie. She knows the people in most departments, and knows who we have to talk to about what. Although this is the second time working here for me and Nick, we have a grasp of the way things are done, but we aren’t fully integrated into this well-oiled machine. Ashley has been with numerous productions here, and can keep us on track with what’s expected of us throughout the process, while freeing us from having to personally interact with all the little details of operations in such a large organization.

She is the keeper of the official Guthrie computer (largely because Nick and I prefer to use our own computers, and they don’t allow outside computers access to the network). Aside from the strangeness of switching computers, email systems, and document formats in the middle of our tour — I mean come on, why would we stop using Macbooks to use a Dell?

When emails go out on the G’s system, they go to Ashley and if it’s anything I need to know, she’ll tell me about it or forward it to me.

As we make the schedule every night, I create it in our database, which arranges it in a vertical format (which I’m not really happy with, but it’s the best I could design before we started rehearsal). The best I can say about it is that no one has ever missed a call because they didn’t read the schedule properly, in fact I can’t remember anyone even asking for clarification, even on the craziest days, which may be the best track record of any schedule format I’ve ever created.

Anyway, Ashley looks at my schedule as I’m making it, and copies it into the Guthrie’s format, which is more horizontal, and shows things going on in different rooms side-by-side, which is definitely a more natural way to conceive of it. The fact that we simultaneously create and then proof-read the schedule in two different orientations allows us to catch problems more reliably, and Nick can also watch my schedule from his computer, as we share access to the database over our network. So between the three of us checking our work, we have never made a scheduling conflict.

Ashley also has access to the magical document that shows who is using what rooms in the entire building. On days when we have multiple rehearsals, fight choreography, movement and voice work going, this can be very important. We also now have Macbeth in rehearsal next door, which is the big show in town and requires more space, but we have been very successful in sharing rooms with them, and coordinating our schedules so we can have time with members of our creative team who are working on both shows. Knowing what rooms are available the following day is essential when scheduling things outside the main room, which also affects what gets scheduled in the main room and when.

Honorable Mention: Corey

Corey is not a member of the stage management team. He is the company’s staff repertory director. If you’re wondering what the hell that means, he functions more-or-less like an assistant director in the rehearsal process, and like a resident director once the show opens. He tours with the company, and maintains the artistic integrity of the show. Which I kind of like, because it means I don’t have to do it! While I would enjoy the challenge, it would be very hard in this situation because I don’t travel with the cast, and rarely get to see them outside of performances. Also, with a two-person stage management team, I can’t swing out to watch the show from the audience, which is often vastly different than watching from a booth. Ian and I worked closely last year and would sometimes confer on things, or even watch and discuss the show together if the booth was comfortable and afforded a good view, but ultimately it’s the staff director who evaluates the performance and keeps up the original direction. Since I’m advancing the show with the crew while the actors are just waking up and boarding their bus in the previous city, I maintain the technical integrity of the show, while Corey will have time with the actors on the bus to give any notes he feels are necessary.

In the rehearsal process Corey and I don’t have all that much direct interaction, but sometimes after rehearsal we check in and discuss how things are going, or things we need to plan for in the future. In my experience from last year, I think that relationship is one of the most important for the success of the tour, because it keeps the physical production and the artistic side of the production working in harmony, which keeps the show’s quality consistent.

In Conclusion

So all in all, having a great team in the room with me has made the rehearsal process incredibly smooth, which has left me more time to deal with all the things that need to be coordinated out of the rehearsal room.

I’m very relieved that the hardest part of our process is basically over, or soon to be, and I’m excited to see what comes out on the other end of tech, which will become the show that we will bring to audiences in Minneapolis and all over the country.


December 31, 2009

Getting Close to Tech

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 7:21 pm

We’re in our last couple days in the rehearsal room. This morning Nick, Ashley and I went up to the theatre before rehearsal. The tech tables are already out. That’s mine closest to the stage in the center.

We’ve had some really complicated schedules as we try to squeeze every moment out of our rehearsal time, and finish all the haircuts, costume fittings and wig fittings. Yesterday the day was crazy. In the first 4 hours of rehearsal, we had 24 individual calls scheduled. Some of them were only 15 minutes long. So to keep track of where everyone needed to be, and to make sure they all got required breaks, I had to map out everyone’s day individually, at least prior to lunch. It was insane, but the chart was actually really helpful.

And finally, we used this time to take a portrait of Nick and I on the set. This is the “hobbit hole”: a small doorway tucked under the balcony stairs, used primarily as the entrance to Friar Laurence’s cell. In this photo, I demonstrate how there is absolutely nothing tight or uncomfortable about the size of this doorway. Nick does not seem convinced.


December 28, 2009

Load In

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 10:30 pm

One of my favorite stories from the tour so far:

This morning I came into the rehearsal room to find a shipping receipt folded on my desk. This isn’t completely out of the ordinary. Sometimes things get sent to the theatre in my name, such as props, the payroll/mail packet from New York, and so forth, and whoever receives it leaves the receipt for my records.

I didn’t recognize it, so I picked it up to see what it was. The delivery was itemized thusly:

Qty Description of contents Weight
1 trailer load of theatrical effects 21,000lbs.

It was a slightly bigger package than what I was imagining when I saw the receipt. I think the dimensions of the box are something like 53ft(L) x 8ft(W) x 13ft(H). I wonder if the Postal Service offers a flat rate box for that.


Fittings and Haircuts

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 6:12 pm

One of the things I hate most about my job is coordinating costume fittings, wig fittings, and haircuts. The schedules and needs of the director and costume designer, drapers, wig designers and hairdressers often conflict, and negotiating the actors through a very tight schedule without screwing anybody’s plans up can be very difficult, and usually gets screwed up by things you can’t control (a.k.a. Friar Laurence Syndrome).

With a ton of fittings and haircuts to be accomplished in a short span of time this week, each with their own particular criteria of when they could be accomplished, I felt that any method of organization short of moving solid objects around on a physical representation of the week would fall short or be prone to error. I literally cut up a cardboard box and made a calendar and individual pieces for each fitting that needed to happen, and taped them in order on the appropriate day.

It’s actually working quite well for us.

This was the schedule from yesterday.


December 25, 2009

Christmas Coding

I call this: computers,phones,tech — Posted by KP @ 6:59 pm

It’s been a really long time since I had the time to learn anything new about web development. The next thing on my list has been to learn more PHP so I can learn how to write scripts and generate dynamic content on the site.

I had an idea months ago for an online quiz I wanted to put on the site: I kept reading about iPhone apps where the title of the app gave little indication of what the purpose of the app was. Some of them were actually kind of funny (and by funny, of course I mean “could potentially be raunchy”). I had visions of a quiz which would present the title of an app and the user would have to guess from several descriptions of what the app was for. My only problem is that I didn’t know any programming languages to allow me to create such a quiz from scratch.

So today, Christmas Day, after a video chat with my family, I set about learning some more PHP (like all my coding knowledge, I don’t have any fancy books, I just type “php tutorial” into Google and see what comes up). I have gained some new knowledge, and I present to you:

The iPhone App Name Quiz!

Once I got used to the syntax, things came easily. Between my work on spreadsheets as part of my very nerdy involvement in the high command of Battleground Europe, and the stage management database I’ve been designing for the last four months or so, I have been spending a lot more time dealing with calculations and logic formulas. The last programming I successfully did before this year was in BASIC, back when I was in gifted camp when I was ten, so I am happy to find that my brain is retaining things and having an easier time working with concepts like if/then/else statements.

I’m not sure what else I’ll want to do with this newfound knowledge, but now I will have one more trick up my sleeve while adding to the site.


Twas the Day Before The Day Off Before Christmas

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:12 am

Just a visual tour of our final day of rehearsal prior to Christmas (Dec. 23rd).

The day began with the Guthrie’s weekly production staff meeting, which last year I attended weekly, but this year got a pass on — except for this week because we’re about to load in, and they thought it was, you know, kind of important.

And this year I had backup — Nick and Ashley were with me as well, and I didn’t have to sit in the “inquisition seat” where the rising sun aligns with the narrow yellow windows to blind the person sitting on a certain side of the room. The department heads had some tough questions for me, and I had a few questions for them, but overall it looks like we’re on track.

As the meeting was concluding, our truck showed up at the loading dock, to unload the marley floor so it can thaw and be rolled out flat for a few days before it has to be laid.

Trevor came down to the rehearsal room to return the key to the truck and tells us that the truck is at the dock if we want to take pictures. I love the fact that people are looking out for our interests as bloggers, as well as as stage managers. So naturally, we went to the dock and snapped some pictures, including Nick posing on the dock.


I didn’t get a good opportunity to get a clear shot of the inside of the truck. In fact, besides the endless rows of road boxes (they purposely sent us more than we need, so we would definitely have enough, and can return the unused ones when we play New York in late February), it was hard to see much. The set seems very flat (as well it should be), and is strapped neatly to the walls. The big staircase was in there in pieces, with what look like very handy castors inserted into the banister posts.

As it turns out, the marley was most of the way into the nose of the truck, so all our many, many road boxes had to be unloaded into the elevator to get to it, at which point they ended up loading all the boxes, and our infamous platform, Fred, into the theatre. The trailer was then parked on the other side of the parking lot to await load in day. It can’t remain at the dock because the Guthrie’s dock is this amazing giant garage-door-like thing that flips up. You can kind of see it in the below picture. With a trailer parked, the door can’t be closed, and while that may cause certain logistical or aesthetic problems, I think the primary one comes down to, “Close the door, it’s f***ing cold!!!” There are, of course doors between the dock and inside, but I’m sure the extreme temperature and wind would find its way into the building, especially through the giant freight elevator.

While the marley was being searched for, Nick and I went up to the theatre to examine the boxes that had come up, in the hopes of identifying unfamiliar ones that might be concealing rolls of marley. There we found our box, and without even opening it, saw the infamous message scrawled on it.

Backstory: when the boxes were being loaded on the truck from Spoon Group in New Jersey, where they are stored, our Associate Artistic Director, Ian, called me to check about which boxes we should bring, and so forth. Ian was the Staff Director last year, and probably the person Nick and I worked most closely with on the road, and Nick and Ian got great pleasure out of antagonizing each other for six or seven months. So before we got off the phone, Ian told me to pass word to Nick that there was a message waiting for him on our road box.

Nick and I tried to get to the box when we went out to the truck at its storage lot, but couldn’t get to it. So finally, we got to see what the fuss was about. And as I thought I heard, the message was truly on the box, not in it. And here it is, with physical commentary from Nick:


In a compromise, we have saved the tape, but it’s been moved to inside the box. And here’s a shot of some of our boxes (the other side of the stage has most of them).

All this happened before noon, and by the time rehearsal started I felt like I had so much work to do and so many questions to follow up on that the last thing I had time for was a rehearsal! But it was a big day, and a very rewarding one: we did our first full run of the show. It was a great way to take our two-day break for Christmas. After rehearsal ended, everybody stayed around for maybe a half hour, chatting, hugging, saying goodbye like it was the last day of school. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but we have a little over a week, and now have a greater grasp of the big picture. All that remains is to refine it.

I leave you with a picture of my desk as it has appeared for the last week or so. My mom sent a crazy springy Christmas tree. Last year I had a similarly-sized fiber optic tree, and kept it at my apartment. This one proved to be such a favorite in the rehearsal room on the day it arrived that I had to leave it for people to play with.


December 24, 2009

The Deadliest Catch

I call this: computers,mac,On the Road Again — Posted by KP @ 8:53 pm

or
“What Happened to Your Laptop?”

deadliestcatch
Entertain conjecture of a time in which I’m on the road with Henry V. We have just concluded our very successful run in New York, and have set out on the next leg of the tour. When our story begins, we’re in Nashville. We have arrived there the day before, after a layover in DC, to board our buses to go the rest of the way to our first performance at Mississippi State. No one understands how it could possibly have been cheaper or more efficient to do it this way, but nevertheless that’s why we were in Nashville.

After we spent the night for (as far as we can tell) no particular reason in a Nashville hotel, the cast departed in the afternoon and the crew was given the entire day to hang out in Nashville while our driver slept, as we would be leaving around midnight and sleeping on the ride down.

It wasn’t all that exciting, as the crew had actually been to Nashville earlier in the tour, because our bus’ water pump was broken and we had an extra day between shows, so we took a detour. While the bus was being repaired we ate ribs, listened to the live bands on Broadway, bought cowboy boots, ate way too much, and did all the things one does in Nashville. So for our second visit, we had lunch at a nice outdoor place we had visited the first time, researched potential sushi restaurants for dinner, and otherwise just kind of hung out on the bus watching TV.

Somewhere in the course of watching TV is where things get interesting.

Now I must introduce Daphne. Daphne was our props supervisor. We must have been watching the Discovery Channel, and it was at this point that Daphne realized that the season premiere of Deadliest Catch was coming up, and that we would be in the middle of our first performance in Mississippi while it was airing. My assistant Nick, who you have already met, was also disturbed when this was brought to his attention. Apparently Nick and Daphne really like Deadliest Catch.

It was something of an urban legend that the bus had a DVR. The satellite remote had buttons that referred to it, but when we tried to program the show to record, it became obvious that we were missing something that would allow that to happen, as it could be programmed, but nothing would happen. This was also one of our first experiences with our new bus, which we would later come to realize sucked in every imaginable way. Maybe the original bus had a working DVR, but this one didn’t appear to be fully equipped.

This minor setback was not going to dissuade us, however. We would just have to go a little low-tech. The bus had a VCR, we reasoned. All we have to do is find a place that sells VHS tapes and we can record it the old-fashioned way.

On our way to our sushi dinner, we passed a drug store. Daphne went in, and a few minutes later happily emerged with a set of three VHS tapes.

When we got back to the bus, we naturally set about doing a test run and trying to record a show. What we found was that the VCR apparently could play tapes, but the satellite connection didn’t pass through it, so it couldn’t record anything. This was very annoying! But given that all these electronics are mounted behind panels and on opposite sides of the lounge from each other, we didn’t feel comfortable tearing the whole bus apart to get at the wiring. We accepted defeat, and the VHS tapes were stacked on the kitchen counter.

Fast-forward a few days. My laptop was having battery issues, so after using it in the front lounge after the show, I set it down on the couch where I had been sitting, and left it to charge overnight.

It’s now the middle of the night. All of the crew are asleep in their beds. We encounter some bumpy and/or hilly roads. At some point in the night, a clattering is heard from the kitchen. This isn’t really unusual. Somebody’s coffee container or soda bottle is usually falling off the counter in the night. I, having the bunk on the other side of the kitchen wall, remember hearing this and thinking that it didn’t sound like anything breakable or containing liquid, so I didn’t even really wake up.

In the morning I was alarmed to find my laptop had 3 black smudges on it. I wasn’t concerned about smudges but at first I couldn’t tell if they were smudges or dents. I frantically rubbed on them, and thankfully the black marks came off. Two of them left no sign, but the largest of them revealed a dent in the aluminum cover of the laptop! I was totally confused about how this had happened, until we started to look at the forensic evidence. On the couch, laying casually, were the three VHS tapes. They looked like they had just been tossed there from when we were trying to get the VCR to work, until someone remembered that they had been stacked on the kitchen counter, and most of us had heard the crash from the kitchen during the night. So I went back to the tapes, and sure enough, each of them had a corner bashed in, where their black plastic had been worn off.

And that solved the mystery of how Daphne and Nick’s love for The Deadliest Catch dented my laptop.

The afterword to this story is that whenever I open my laptop I am reminded of Daphne and Nick, and how badly they wanted to see The Deadliest Catch. They never did get to see that episode. I’m not sure if they’ve seen it in reruns yet. I still have never seen an episode, but I am very curious to see what’s so special to have created such a fervor on our bus. And that’s the story of what happened to my laptop.


Overdue Back-to-Tour Shopping Post

I call this: computers,mac,On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 4:56 pm

I ordered a lot of supplies before going on the road. Here’s a run-down.

Business Cards

With this tour I’m switching to using my @headsetchatter.com email address for business and personal use. Naturally I needed new cards. I was going to do new cards anyway because my old ones were designed to match the Go Button site and logo, and I wanted to use the HeadsetChatter site colors and logo as a kind of personal branding.

Once again I ordered the premium business cards from VistaPrint, which are more expensive because they have full graphic images on front and back, and these even more so because I added a foil effect, which looks really cool.
cards

Composite-Toed Shoes

I bought a pair of Sketchers steel-toed shoes about five years ago. They’re sneaker-like, but very heavy and uncomfortable. So heavy that sometimes if I wear them too much they start to hurt my leg muscles in uncomfortable ways because I’m not used to having to work so hard to pick my feet up. I only wear them in very rare cases, where I’m working in a theatre while the set is really still under construction.

Last year on tour, our props supervisor, Daphne, was the only one of the three of us who loaded the nose of the truck who wore safety shoes, so she was the designated person who would kick the scenery into places where it didn’t want to go. On one of our long nights in the truck, I asked her how she liked her shoes, and expressed how I never wore mine because they were so heavy. She informed me that her shoes aren’t steel, and aren’t heavy. At some point, hopefully back on the bus, and not on the truck, she took one off and let me see how light they are. At that point I decided it was something to look into if I returned.

The pair I found are made by Converse, and are a little heavier than Daphne’s, but I think most of the weight is in the heavy rubber sole, not from the toe cap. I wear very lightweight Puma running shoes normally, so the contrast is especially large for me when I switch to the boots. They have an air bubble in the heel, which also helps to make them feel more supportive and sneaker-like. The site where I got them, Steel-Toe-Shoes.com, had some options that really look just like regular sneakers, but I decided to play it safe and go with black, in case I need to wear them for performances. My philosophy about that is that if I am at the stage of production where I need to wear black, and still need to wear safety shoes, something is really wrong. But it’s always good to be safe.
Converse-Composite-Toe-Boots-C4555L
When I had to reduce weight and bulk from my suitcase, they were the obvious thing to cut, but I held onto them, and I’m so glad. As it turns out, I have worn them almost every day. Not because things have been getting dropped on my feet, but because of the snow. Pumas, it turns out, do not make good snow shoes. These are relatively heavy, and my feet get kind of clammy compared to the breathable sneakers I tend to wear, but in the snow the warmth is very welcome, and the thick materials and high-top design gives me a little more confidence about slipping on the ice.

Work Gloves

Last year I did load outs with my leather winter gloves. First of all, it roughed up my gloves pretty bad. And then when it was like 70 degrees, it was really lame to be wearing winter gloves. So then us ladies on the tour all bought weightlifting gloves, because they were made small enough for us and padded, but offered no finger protection. This year I vowed to find serious work gloves that fit properly.

Apparently in order to find serious work gloves for women you have to be willing to buy things marketed as “gardening gloves,” but these gloves by Youngstown Glove Co. are very comfortable, and in my limited amount of frozen-truck-work, they felt great.
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Hard Drive Upgrade

Maybe surprisingly, this is the only computer upgrade. I have been planning this since I bought my Macbook Pro two and a half years ago. For various reasons of time, place and money, I’ve put it off, but this was the time.

I bought a 320GB 7,200rpm drive from Western Digital which will is my new internal drive. I haven’t noticed a significant decrease in battery life, although I do hear the fans running a lot more, and the drive itself sometimes vibrates so much at random times that when I have my phone next to the computer, I think my phone is ringing.
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I also got a 500GB 5,400rpm drive from Fujitsu (my new secondary Brand I Trust since I can’t believe how well the original drive in the MBP did). This will be my external Time Machine backup drive. As is my style, it’s a 2.5″ laptop drive so that it also serves as an emergency replacement should my internal drive go kaput.

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I ordered these from Newegg, which is pretty much the most reliable seller of anything on all the web, so far as I’m concerned. However, I also wanted two drive enclosures to put the outgoing 160GB drives in, and none of the ones on Newegg filled me with confidence or floated my boat. For that it was back to Other World Computing (macsales.com), who sell the enclosure I currently use and love, and will continue to use.

I was looking for one or two cheaper USB enclosures just to have around, so I wouldn’t have to swap out to use my spare drives. The one I found was so nice, small and so cheap ($20) that I bought two. I ended up bringing one of the old drives on the road with a few seasons of The West Wing and The X-Files on them for entertainment. Just a word about these: they look cool, they match the Mac product line, but they are plastic, not aluminum. They’re $20, and there’s a reason they’re $20. But for a cheap enclosure, they do the job and look good doing it.

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The reasoning behind this upgrade is that I’ve always wanted a faster internal drive, and I’ve got 4 frickin gigs of RAM and rarely feel it, and I was sure that the drive speed is the bottleneck. I’m not a big one for benchmarks, but I will say that since the upgrade I have yet to stare at the spinning beachball of death and wonder what the hell is taking so long.

Also I needed a larger Time Machine drive. The reason both my drives were 160GB is because I bought the backup drive before Time Machine existed, and I was doing exact clones for backup. Naturally if you’re just cloning your drive, you don’t need a bigger drive than the one you’re backing up.

Before the upgrade my Time Machine backups went back about four months. In October I discovered a couple songs missing from my iTunes library. I know I listened to them over the summer, but my backups only went back to July and they weren’t there. I have no idea where they went or why, but they’ve been gone long enough to have outdone the mighty Time Machine. This event had nothing to do with my decision, but it’s a very good illustration of why your Time Machine drive should be as big as possible.

Winter Coat

Screen shot 2009-11-14 at 10.17.48 PMWhat I wanted for Christmas from my family was a new winter coat to get me through December and January in Minneapolis. It had to be super-warm for the weather there, and yet light and flexible enough that I could do load-outs wearing it if the weather was really bad. At my mom’s suggestion, I looked at the offerings from Eddie Bauer, and decided on this one. It’s awesome. I have yet to really be cold in any part of my body covered by the coat.


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