Sometimes I Just Sits

Lots of stuff going on, missed writing yesterday because I got caught up in some other electron streams. A friend in Thailand who was a Peace Corps volunteer a few years before me, had been holding off on commenting on the current nastiness there. He ha started emailing updates and articles from various sources for the enlightenment and amusement of his mailing list, all of us have a more than passing knowledge of an interest in Thailand. I've been participating in that conversation.  For those of you who joined in late, several thousand people from the northeast of Thailand came to Bangkok to try to achieve regime change. It's a long complicated story, but in a nutshell they want their homeboy Prime Minister back. The one who was convicted of corrupt business dealings, and whose party leaders were banned from politics for 5 years due to massive voter fraud. The one who fled the country rather than attend his trial. The government only froze half of his $3billion savings, and it's clear he has been using some of the other half to fund the protests. Things blew up - literally - when the police broke through the barricades and arrested the leaders. Other followers took this as a signal to burn down several major shopping centers in Bangkok, as well as a few government centers up-country.

Wednesday I had a call-back in San Jose for Music Man. I was there way too early, because it's in an awkward location for me to get to from work, and one little traffic snag could have made me late. And of course they were running a bit late. So after 45 minutes of waiting (only 10 of which was their lateness) I got to read the page and a half of monologue they had given me at auditions Monday. And then a second time, with some directions from the director, which I suspect I didn't quite fulfill. SO about 5 minutes. There was one other person who was called back for the part, but he had a conflict so I didn't get to hear the competition. While I was in the front room waiting, the candidates for Mrs. Paroo (Marian the Librarian's mother) were also waiting, and one of them asked where she knew me from. I didn't recognize her, but she figured it out - she had seen me at Sweeney Todd auditions. She said she enjoyed my audition song, liked my voice, asked me if I was cast as the judge - which is the part I was going for.  I told her I had blown the callbacks music audition. Anyway it was a nice compliment. I have no idea who was cast - something strange here, because they normally would have cast it over the weekend, Monday at the latest, and here we are at Thursday night and the cast list on the web site is empty, with this note:
We are very sorry for the delay but we continue to evaluate our casting and will post a cast list as soon as possible.
Very odd.Usually if they are only up in the air about a couple of parts, they will put up what they have, and TBA for the others. And it's also common for directors to fill out the ensemble during the first couple of weeks of rehearsals. I guess it's not so bad, they don't start rehearsing till July.

Today was my day for surprise contacts. Phone call from a former Cisco cow-worker who does in North Carolina what I did in Milpitas. Good to hear from her, not good to hear she is still over-worked and hasn't found an escape route yet. She says the only person left in my Milpitas group is the crazy vegan, and he's probably gone as soon as he finds something because they are trying to make change him from a bit-head automation programmer to a hands-on tester. Had an IM message from someone I always enjoy hearing from, too bad I was up to my ears in work, monitoring a network sniffer, I'd have liked to chat more. And one of my teammates returned from a long stay in India, she left only a week or two after I joined the group.

Tonight was rehearsal in Los Altos for Ye Olde Towne Band. I need a new lip. Way too many high notes this time. Concert free to the public Sunday, Shoup Park in Los Altos 1:30 pm. At 4 pm there's a photo shoot to help a new model build up her portfolio. I'll try to get there after the concert.

Saturday I'll spend at Anime, looking forward to getting hall costume photos and hanging outside the masquerade for costume shots there. 

Working Monday - contractors don't get paid if they don't work, and my boss said there's plenty of that. The tests I was running today took too long because the device was failing in only partially predictable ways, some of that may spill over into Monday since I'm coming in late tomorrow. How late depends on in which part of the 9-11 am window AT&T arrives, and how long it actually takes to install Uverse. They say 4 hours, but looking at what is involved in the setup for someone who already has cable, I'm guessing less than half that.