Ketchup

Blame Brigadoon. I haven't been on here since last month. Long story short, Hell Week has been a disaster. The staff did not slap down the strident babbling of the SM, who started us too late and kept us too late every night. She finally got bullied into using the set crew for about 10% of what they would like to have been doing. Cast members are doing most of the scene change work, which is ridiculous.

The show is getting better, but not enough. We are not ready to open tomorrow night. The best thing about opening is we run the show without stopping. This has not happened yet. As a result, the leads don't know their lines, and they often cannot be heard when they do know them.

There are a lot of talented dancers, being over-worked.

So the director has not allowed the sword dancers to practice with the actual real swords. They will see them for the first time tomorrow. They have been given different prop swords every rehearsal. This is going to be dangerous because even with the prop swords they keep kicking them when the idea is to dance between the crossed swords on the floor. Horrible choreography for that bit too.

The dancers missed their cue to get offstage before my solo last night, which threw me off, I muffed half the words. At halftime the music director said I did great. Sigh. Well, I guess an audience would not have known.

Enuf except to say last night I walked out as soon as I was out of costume/makeup. No way was I staying for SM's half hour of babble. Apparently that was a smart move because this morning she sent a page of email babbling about how she has some personal problems at home etc. Rule #2 in theater is leave your baggage outside the stage door. Rule #1 is "do it first".

In other news, work has been a festival. I finally got a board for my test machine which I have needed for a year. Google's paranoid cretin IT came in and shut down most of the networking in the lab, claiming there were some computers in there infected beyond repair. There is no such thing as infected beyond repair. Neanderthals. Our pretty sharp local IT guy managed to get them to loosen most of the screws, but not all. Sheesh.

Once again my weekly report took longer to write than the work I'd done. I did a lot of testing where one test resulted in 5 or 6 bugs being cleared. Much fun.

We had the head boss give a town hall session, and as always he had a lot of useful info, he's an engaging speaker, and he's technical enough. We're getting closer to closing the sale of our piece of the company, and while he is not allowed to give many details, he was able to share some clues.

The cats have been missing me. I turn on the catcam app and see them both looking at the front door from about 8 pm on. Kaan is usually right at the door when I come in. Domino not so much.

Finally had a chance to make a Costco run, spent $150, and that was without them stocking Haig & Haig. I'll need to hit BevMo tomorrow for that. The plan was to buy things which would cook up easily into a few days' dinners, since I will be home evenings Sunday - Wednesday.

Plans for tomorrow:
Bevmo
Maybe Safeway
Theater by 6:30
Opening night
With no stops, the show should be done by 11. Add 10 minutes for women's room lines at intermission.