food and moths

So last time I wrote we were getting ready to change over to I Hate Hamlet, and now we're in the middle of Godspell, and getting ready for Evita. It's crazy. I'm not going to go into details about changeovers and such just now, but I wanted to post some from pics from a few days ago (although it seems like weeks now). A hotel down the street from the theatre (not that anything in this town is not down the street from the theatre) invited the entire company to a free lunch the other day.

Part of the lounge at the Inn.

Fancy table settings.

The view from our table.

The menu from our lunch, in case you're wondering. If you do read it, notice that they use the word "duet". I got so excited when I read that!! On Top Chef they are constantly making duets and trios and they always sound so yummy.

Finishing off desert.

I continue my love of taking pictures of my food. This was the salad, obviously.

Main course.

And desert.

And after dinner, we took a very brief break before going back to work and ran down to the lake.

I couldn't really get a good picture of it, but if you notice that yellow butterfly, there were literally dozens of those flying around. I grabbed a net and tried to catch one but couldn't.

I have never seen anyone kyaking in any of the lakes around here, but there are 2 kayak shops and little kayak....stands, like this one, everywhere.

That white house is the inn.

This is actually from changeover to Hamlet, but I hadn't posted it yet. There are moths everywhere here! And they're so big and pretty! One day there was an invasion of big black ones all over the side of the theatre. They must have been migrating or something because it was insane! I wish I could have gotten a picture of that.

Hot!!

It finally got hot!
Just in time for changeover in an un-air conditioned theatre.
However, I'm very excited about this change in the weather. It finally feels like summer, not Nov.
Except, now our fave hangout spot, the roof, is too hot to go up on for more than like 15 mins. With a pile of towels. It is still perfect for stargazing though. And tonight there was some wicked lighting in the distance. Awesome.
Ok, gotta get some rest for changeover. I'm always so nervous because if anything is going to go wrong, it's most likely going to happen on the first one when you don't know what you're doing yet.

Road signs, vermont, ect.

Ok! So I've been very busy lately and I'm very tired, so I'm just going to do a quick post on some of the happenings from the last week.
Ummm, not to get into boring details about work, but the light board broke. So we had to take it in to get repaired. The nearest repair shop was in Massachusetts. So me and Jaqci set off on our way.

Starting off the day with Dunkin Doughnuts. At 5:30 am.

We make it to Massachusetts!!

They hyped up this scenic area for a good couple of miles. So I got my camera all ready.

And this is it? Seriously? The entire drive up till now was prettier. This is the least scenic view yet. You can't see it in this picture but this overlooks a water tower. This is the first sign that Massachusetts is just going to annoy me.

To keep ourselves amused we took pictures of funny signs. Well, funny if you are trapped in a car with nothing else to do. Also, it's hard to take pictures from a moving car. I missed the "Low Flying Planes" signs four times! This sign I just liked that the symbol of the Mass Pike is a pilgrim hat. It's everywhere.

Housatonic sounds like it should be a made up word in a Fergie song.
We actually stopped in this town to eat lunch and I looked for postcards because I really wanted one that said "Welcome to Blandsford!" "Greetings from Blandsford!" "Blandsford: Thinking of you!" They only had Boston ones. They are missing out. We found this while looking for food while our board was in the shop, so of course we drove down it.

And there was a lake!! A really pretty lake! These pictures really don't do justice to how pretty this entire trip was.

The only town in the tri-state area that does light board repairs.

Jaqci

Me

For the way back, here's a quick compare and contrast.

Scenic:

Not Scenic

ScenicNot Scenic

Right.
They couldn't fix our board. It had to be shipped to the factory for repairs. So in the mean time, we just swing by Vermont to pick up the old board from a theatre there to use untill we get ours back.

This is the closest I've been to a Target since I left.

This is where I fall in love with Vermont. Seriously, I love it!! New Hampshire is pretty, but everything here is kinda trying to be quaint and classy. Vermont is even prettier and it's so very tacky. Another sign picture I wish I'd gotten was for a restaurant called "Chicken and Ribs" and it's slogan was "The 9th wonder of the world". Fabulous!
Anyway, to rest my case, here is where we stopped for a quick bathroom break:

Basketville!! For all your wicker needs (a sign really said that)! And if you're not too distracted by that sign, notice the great old-timey town behind it.

And Basketville did not disapoint.

That's a bike made out of wicker in the corner.

Oh man, I just loved Vermont. Every town we drove thru was just as great. I wish we weren't on a time crunch. And it was so pretty!

They put up Canadian flags!

This is at a gas station we stopped at.

So at the conclusion of our day, and total driving time of 10 hours, here's the loner board that I am using.

So, I just want to say one last boring work thing, about this board. I'm one of the few people my age who knows how to use an old manual light board, and I know how to use the current boards. This however is a problem to me. This is my board, but the old operation system. And unlike computers, board operating systems don't come out very often. The one people mostly use today came out in 1993. So this is old. But fancy old. At the time when it was bought I'm sure it was more than top of the line, it was groundbreaking. Basically, I have no idea how to use it. And I've been trying to figure it out. It's actually the step above the board we sent in to get fixed, just much older.
So if anyone knows how to delete cues on this board, let me know!

I don't know if that price tag is real or not, but it made me laugh.

Check out that awesome 80s font.

Dartmouth

The other day we all went up to Dartmouth to see our artistic director play in a band there. I alway like getting to go place around here, since they're always new to me. It was a really pretty ride up during sunset, and I got to see Dartmouth, which struck me as funny at how stereotypicaly New England it seemed. But it was very nice. I also got a picture of me with a moose head, which is as close as I've come to seeing a moose, despite all the "Moose Crossing" signs everywhere.


Also, driving up there we got very lost for awhile because they don't like to put up street signs. No really. It's the weirdest most annoying thing ever. They also like to just make up traffic laws. When we were asking the people around here about it they were just like "No one needs the signs, everyone is from around here." And it's kinda true. People ask me where I'm from a lot just because they don't recognize me. Apparently not a lot of people some to New England.

There was a tick crawling on the top of my dresser today.

Ticks! (Dad you have been warned)

So, I've never really had a problem with ticks before, but apparently New Hampshire is tick heaven. I mentioned we went on a long walk in the woods the other day, and after coming back, even with all of us in long pants and sleeves, a couple people did have ticks on them. Understandable, we all took showers and we on the lookout for ticks that night.
But then it was like the floodgates were opened. People kept finding ticks throughout the next couple of days. And none of them were hooked onto people, so they couldn't have been on them for long. Just last night, I got up from the couch, went into the kitchen to grab my box of wheat thins, came out and there was a tick on my hand.
And then we kinda hit a breaking point. Me and Jacqi were working in our room this afternoon when all of the sudden she feels something weird on her neck. Sure enough it's a tick, so I quickly get it off her and kill it. I sit back down and start googleing "ticks" so see if they could possibly be living in the house somehow and that's how people keep getting them. And, just as I'm reading a part of an article about how one possible sign of an infestation is seeing them crawling on the walls, Jacqi sees one crawling on wall. Seriously!
Anyway, we freaked out a little. We went and talked to Carol and she immediately said she would get a bug bomb for our room. Then we went and got rubbing alcohol from the theatre in case we came across any more ticks. Then we bought some deep woods bug spray which we immediatly used for our evening walk, even though we were staying far away from woods and grass. And then we took off all our sheets and blankets and took them to the laundrymat. They're drying right now. We also now check the walls as soon as we walk into our room.
So...that's the battle between us and the ticks for now. More updates to come I guess.

Starting up...

So, while I have a few mins, I figured I'd write about what was happening here.
So we're begining our second week, and things are starting to pick up. Basically the first 3 weeks are crazy and disorganized, and then you finally start to get in to a routine. But I'll get into that in a second.
So, this place is divided into different groups of people. There are the interns: they are usually undergrads. They are mostly actors, but there are a few tech interns as well. They are pretty much the manual labor around here. The acting interns do a lot of the daily cleaning of the
theatre, and act in the shows, and help out with the tech stuff for a few hours every day. The tech interns just work on tech stuff all day.
Then there is the staff. This is mostly grad school/just graduated. It's people like the Master Capendar, Master Electrician, Props Master, ect. Then there's the designers, who are often also sometimes staff, like me (lighting designer/master electrician) and the costume designers (designer/head of shop).
Then there's the higher ups: the management and administrative staff, the equity actors, the directors, ect.
So, all last week the only people here were some of the management people and the staff. We spent all week doing inventory on our shops, cleaning shops and offices, or in my case, lights, and enjoying all the quiet and excess food before all the actors showed up.
But now the actors are here and things are starting to get crazy. Before we can get into any sort of routine they have to have costume fittings, clean the theatre, learn all the jobs they have to do, learn all the safety for all the shops, audition for the first couple of shows, and start learning the first two shows (also move in). We are starting off the season with a straight play and also something called the Strawhat Review, which is apparently a free show that the locals just adore, giving us publicity and just kind of showcasing what we're doing this summer.
So I've been kinda relaxing a lot lately, which I'm not going to get to do for the rest of the summer I'm pretty sure. But with no shows yet, and all my lights ready to go, there's not much for me to do for a few days.
The staff (other techies) here are really great. We've started a routine of going for a walk every day after dinner. Last night we decided to go on a new trail and accidentally ended up 5 miles out of town, forced to walk down the side of the highway to get back (either that or brave the tick-infested woods at sunset, which none of us were too keane on). The best part of this accidental 2+ hour walk was that we did discover an ice cream place at the end of it and all had an ice cream to celebrate. I hope our walks can continue through the summer but I'm not getting my hopes up .
They feed us 3 or 4 times a day here. Breakfast is just kind of fend for yourself, but they leave out bagels, cereal, things like that. Lunch is leftovers, sandwiches, and maybe something little like soup. And then dinner is a full meal, and so far always delicious. In fact, the only trouble I've had with food so far is that the coffee they supply is terrible. So me and my roomie have started buying our own and using the coffee pot in the "rehersal space" - really our living room- to make our own coffee every morning before we go to breakfast. In some ways it's really nice anyway because we can drink coffee and check our e-mail and get ready. The dining room is right next to the theatre, about a 10 min walk.
It's really pretty up here. So far it hasn't been more than warm, although it's also been very rainy and every time it rains the temp drops a lot. The town itself isn't that pretty, but every once in awhile you get some glimpses of the hills, which are beautiful. And I've been to some of the towns in the area already, so I've kinda seen what it looks like around this area. Apparently the state flower is lilacs, and that makes a lot of sense. There are lilacs everywhere!! And they're just now blooiming, even though they've already bloomed and died in Missouri. It's really great.
I think that's all for now. I'll post again when I have more news.

How I spend my time off: pull 'n peels, pastels, gel books, a novel and my ipod. My gel books are there because I try to do all my non-computer work outside. Carol offered to find me an office to work in, but for now I'd much prefer just to work in the house. I made myself a little nook next to the window, I sit in an armchair with a tiny tabel just big enough for my computer, my notebook, and a cup of coffee. And the window faces west so it picks up all the breezes. It's much better than any office.

This is our normal walk, when we don't get lost in the woods. We live at the very top of that opposite hill.

Me, Jesse (the master carpendar) and Jacqi (my roomate) very excited about finding the trail in the woods. This was before we accidentally walked 5 miles.

NH pictures

Here are a couple of pictures from my first days in NH.

My bedroom, Jacki's side.

My side.

Hallway

Living room/sometimes rehersal space.

The house from the outside.

The inn across the street, which is also the view from my window.
The theatre.



This is just a field behind the grocery store.