I Broke a Rule

One of the first rules of cooking and baking is to make sure you have all the ingredients you'll need before you start. Last night I made candy corn fudge. (It looks like candy corn. You don't use candy corn to make it.) I got through steps one through six just fine. Step seven, however, called for yellow and red food coloring. I was almost out of yellow, so I had to use it sparingly. Unforunately, instead of bright orange and bright yellow, my finished product was kind of a pumpkiny color along with a kind of lemon chiffon color.

It tasted good, though.

But, I have learned my lesson. Next time, I'll make sure I have all the ingredients before I start.

Tales of the Traffic-Law Challenged Part 10

"Stop here on red" with an arrow pointing to a big white stripe on the road. Self-explanatory? You would think so, wouldn't you?

I wonder if the people who don't "stop here on red" and then have to back up when a tractor trailer can't make its turn are the same people who stop on the tracks at railroad crossings. I also wonder where they're going in such a hurry that they think getting a two-foot head start at the intersection is going to get them to their destination faster.

A Little Late

Yesterday I woke up at about 1 a.m. I knew I had a dream but, I couldn't remember exactly what it was. All I remembered was that it had something to do with food poisoning. I told myself I'd have to be careful of what I ate for the next few days. Then, I went back to sleep. I woke up a couple of hours later with one of the worst stomach aches I've ever had. And I had abdominal craps worse than I had right after my surgery before everything started working right again. It was awful! I couldn't tell which end stuff was going to come out. It ended up being both. So, a couple of hours after that, when I started feeling better, I said "If I'm going to have psychic dreams about getting sick from eating something, would it be possible to have the dream before I eat the sandwich?"

Aaand ... Strike!

It's over. In a way, I'm glad but, I'm sure I'm going to go through some kind of withdrawal. If nothing else, I'll go through caffeine withdrawal because I drank a lot of it during rehearsals and the show. Anyway ...

Saturday's show: Perfect. All the mics worked. We (SFX, lights and actors) hit all our cues. No one flubbed any lines. The audience was good. Also, the president of the theater company (who was also in the show) told me that his daughter was at Friday's performance and I was her favorite part of the show. (I think she's 10, or around there somewhere.) I said "Wow! I have a fan!" Then, during the "meet and greet" the audience thing after the show, a woman came up to me, introduced herself, told me how good it was, then went on to tell me she read and loved "Contempt of Court" and just started reading "Actual Malice" and loves that so far as well. Cool!

Sunday's show: Not quite perfect but still good.

Sunday's cast/crew photo: Funny. There's a part right in the beginning of the show where the theme from "The Adams Family" is played. Of course we all lip sync it and do the snaps. During the cast/crew photo session, the photographer was having a little trouble with her flash so, while we waited, we sang the Adams Family song. I think the photographer thought we were nuts. Well, we are. But in a good way.

Cast party: The best part of the whole thing. I don't know if all the directors do this because this is only my second show and the same person has directed both of them, but she gives little gifts to the entire cast and crew. We all got little pewter (I think) globes. (War of the "Worlds." Get it?) We also got wooden stars with "BLT 2005" on one side and "WoW" on the other. Then, after every show, the entire cast and crew receives "awards" ... with certificates. I got the "Playtex Gloves Award" for "diving head first into SFX, especially the water ones ..." The SFX crew gave the producer a box of Cheer laundry detergent (signed of course) for making us coordinate our laundry days so our matching T-shirts would always match and one wouldn't be more faded than the other. (Actually, she didn't want us to do laundry at all but we couldn't not wash our shirts. It was hot on stage, if you know what I mean.) One of the coolest things we all got was a big surprise to all of us, including the director and producer. The tech director/writer said he was going to edit the best parts of the dress rehearsral and the three shows together so the show that's re-broadcast on the radio would be a "best of" type of thing. So, we all expected the finished product would be ready for us to buy in a couple of weeks. But he gave us all a copy of it at the party so, not only do we not have to pay for it, we don't have to wait 'til Oct. 29 to hear it. And, by the way, it sounds awesome! I'm very proud of it.

Well, I guess I'm going to go start working on my WoW scrapbook. Maybe that will help ease the withdrawal symptoms.

Opening Night

It went really well! There was one problem, though. The SFX crew has six microphones. One of them died. The tech director fixed it and everything was fine after that but there were a couple of effects that the audience didn't hear. Oh well. I told the tech director that's our glitch for the the three-day run. As I'm typing this, however, I remembered the movie "Apollo 13." Very early on in the mission, a hydrogen tank bursts and Jim Lovell says "That's our glitch for this mission." Man, I hope I'm not as wrong as he was!

Anyway, we hit all our cues. I was suprised that I did, considering I was shaking so much. ;) But after I got past the part where I have to walk to the front of the stage and do an effect during the death scene of one of the actors, I was fine. Actually, somehow I was able to tune out the audience and concentrate hitting my cues. The actors did really well, too. Some of them had their best performances ever.

After the show, we all go out to the lobby for a "meet and greet" with the audience. (Refreshements are involved as well.) People I didn't even know were coming up to me and telling me how much they enjoyed it. It was so cool!

I didn't get a chance to blog about this before but I didn't realize I'd have to wear make-up. Yuck! The only make-up I wear in everyday life is a little mascara and, sometimes, lipstick. Because this is supposed to be a radio show, the director didn't want us to look really made up, so she told the women to wear their street make-up but kick it up a notch. If that didn't work, we could use stage make-up. So, for rehearsal on Wednesday, I figured I should kick it up two notches since I don't usually wear make-up. I thought I looked like a hooker but, under the lights, I looked OK.

One more thing. One of the grocery stores in town always has a sandwich board set up with a poster from the show and rehearsal photos. After Wednesday's rehearsal, I went to the store and I was standing in the check-out line. I saw both cashiers near the door chatting. They turned to look at me a couple of times but didn't come to wait on me. After three or four minutes, they both came over. They said they were looking at my pictures on the sandwich board. Pictures. With an "s." Two of them. Cool. They asked me if I had a big part. I said, although it's not a speaking part, yes, it's big.

OK. This really is the last thing. My picture was in the paper (not the one I used to work for) on Thursday with a great article about the show. Yesterday, the local paper ran a story and the director was quoted as saying "The sound effects crew is almost the star of the show." So, I figured if anyone asks me why I wanted to do sound effects instead of having a speaking part for my first time on stage, I'll say "If I wasn't going to be the star, why bother?" ;)

Perceptions

There's this person I have known of for quite some time. Until recently, however, I had never formally met this person. Despite that, I had formed an opinion. Kind of. I wasn't quite sure if I liked this person or not. I was leaning toward "not," though. Because of my former job, I wasn't quite sure if this person liked me, didn't like me or never gave me a second thought. But after meeting this person, and getting to know him/her a little bit, I decided I do like him/her, and I think this person likes me a little bit, too. At least he/she tolerates me and we have fairly decent conversations. I guess that just goes to show you (me) that you can't make snap judgments about people.

Yet Another Weird Dream

The Best Friend and I have a mutual friend (let's call him "John") who we haven't heard from in ages. Actually, I haven't heard from him since graduation. I think The Best Friend has seen him once since then. Every once in a while, The Best Friend and I wonder what happened to him. We think he's a doctor of some kind, though. So, anyway, here's the dream.

I was at my grandparents' house and there was some kind of family gathering because my sister and her kids were there. There was some kind of commotion outside so I went to see what it was. There was a car being towed away. I looked at the guy who was putting the car on the tow truck. It was John. I smiled at him and, eventually, he realized it was me, smiled, then walked up the stairs to come and talk to me. We talked for a while, then decided to go someplace, have coffee and talk some more. I went inside to tell everyone I was leaving. My sister got all pissy and said something sarcastic like "Sure, you go have a good time. Don't worry about anything that's going on here." I said "I know you just had a fight with your husband but don't take it out on me." (In the dream, I knew I was talking about her ex-husband, not her current husband, with whom she has a great relationship.) Then I left with John. He told me to get in the tow truck, which I did. Then, before I knew it, the truck just started moving. Before he got in. I kept trying to look around to see if I could see him somewhere, thinking that there was some other way he could have control of the truck other than being in the driver's seat. Although the truck was going really fast, it seemed to be under control. Anyway, that's all of that dream I remember. I think, since I had weird driving dreams in which I wasn't in control two nights in row, it's my subconscious worrying about the crazy drivers around here.

You know what? Now I know that's what it is. Just as I was typing that, I remembered something that happened when I was driving home from play practice last night. I was at a four-way-stop-sign intersection. When I got to my stop sign, there wasn't anyone else at the other stops. Just as I was about to pull into the intersection, a car came zooming up the street, didn't stop at the stop sign, then whipped through the intersection right in front of me. As the vehicle went by me, I noticed that it was an unmarked cop car. No excuse. If I wasn't a conscientious driver, there would have been an accident, and it would have been the cop's fault. Doubtful the courts would see it that way, though.

Another Installment of Weird Dreams

An "ex" of mine, who had my car, picked me up from work. In my dream, the street, which IRL only has stop signs 'til the end of it, had four traffic lights instead of the stop signs. The "ex" drove through the first red light, which bothered me a little bit, but not too terribly bad because we could see that there were no other cars at the intersection. However, at the next two intersections, we couldn't see if there were other vehicles but he drove through the red lights anyway. I told him if he did that again, I was going to get out and walk home. He laughed, then did it again. I told him to stop the car so I could get out. He didn't, but I got out anyway and walked home. I assumed he and my car would be waiting for me there. They weren't. He didn't show up for two more days.

I Hope You're Not Bored With This

I'm having a blast doing the play! In fact, I can't even believe how much fun I'm having. Yesterday the director told me she didn't know how I was doing the sound of the alien walker but it was perfect. I said "Well, I kind of feel like I'm the star of the show ... Anne Holliday as the alien walker." Everyone laughed and the stage manager joked that they'll put that in the next press release. The thing is, most of these people don't know that saying stuff like that will encourage me to be more of a ham and publicity hound.

Anyway, I still get butterflies and the shakes before every rehearsal. The theater veterans tell me that's normal. I'm just hoping the shakes and nerves don't get so bad that I blow it when we have an audience. Nah. I'm sure I'll be fine for my stage debut. Actually, it's not really my debut. I was on stage for piano recitals when I was a kid. And I guess you could count my speaking gigs for my book as being on stage, too. I think what's making me so nervous is that, with the other things, it was all me. If I blew it, I would be the only person who looked bad. This, however, is an ensemble and other people are depending on me to be good. Oh geez. I'll be fine. I better be. Yikes. I'm starting to get nervous all over again and the next rehearsal isn't for 30 more hours.

Tales of the Traffic Law Challenged Part 8

I hesitate to put this in Tales of the Traffic Law Challenged because the problem may be mine, not the other drivers'. You see, I think my car is invisible. What other explanation could there be for 7 (Count 'em ... seven) drivers in the past two days pulling their vehicles in front of mine and nearly causing collisions? Could they have been blinded by the sun? No, because I was facing the sun. Besides, two of the incidents happened at night. Were they driving emergency vehicles with sirens blaring and lights flashing on their way to a horrific accident or fire? No, they were just regular people pulling out of parking lots and driving through intersections. Were they freakin' morons who don't know how to drive and/or have no consideration for other drivers and traffic laws? Uh, yeah. Probably. I guess this post is titled correctly after all.