Blah-ditty-blah

so. . . the end of last week was all about the christmas parties. first there was a staff party/dinner held at this shwanky restaurant called vanessie. . . we all got out of work a couple of hours earlier in order to clean up before the party. . . you know how dirty us production people are!

there was drinks, dinner, raffle awards, and christine brewer singing christmas carols (i guess she's a big name opera singer)

overall, very lovely.

i spent the next couple of days preparing for the poshy christmas party held in the scene shop for the donors of the opera. . . now why they like having it in the scene shop, as opposed to the brand new rehearsal space, stieren hall, i don't know. beautiful hardwood floors. . . heating. . . . clean and readily available bathrooms. . . i guess these donor people like to pretend to rough it, by having us open the bathrooms that are closed for the season. . . clean the entire shop (including moving our tool cage into the basement, and all the work tables into the props shop, or the basement) and decorate it with different pieces of scenery from this past summer, and jerry rigged lighting. (oh. . .and close off the hallways to the bathrooms so we can set up heaters there too!)

there was one 'fun' moment when one of the shop guys was moving a 55 gallon drum of flex glue from the scene shop into the propr shop. . . he hit a rack in the floor and the whole 55 gallons of glue went spilling onto the floor. everyone arrived shortly after his cries for help and grabbed dustpans, shovels, and a squeegie to gather up what we could. . . we ended up getting about 50 of the 55 gallons back. . . not bad. . . and an interesting way to spend the first 45 minutes of the morning. . . after wading in the glue i had to walk around with paper glued to my sneakers so i wouldn't leave a glue track around the shop, until i got to clean the bottom of my sneakers.

then i got to know the inside of the mao walls much better than this past summer. these walls are about 25 feet high and 25 feet wide, maybe. . . with a space about 8 feet wide in the middle for us to crawl around in. (there are wood supports throughout that create this twisted not so fun inside jungle gym) for this past summer we had to wire the inside for these really 'cool' cold cathode tube lights that were inset in the set piece. . . well, i got to climb around the inside to rewire it a bit for the christmas party. . . then again today to unwire it because we found out we can now scrap the walls. . . . after all the wiring was out. . . the carpenters took great pleasure in pushing the walls over and letting them float/fall onto their bellies (there is quite a bit of air resistance to them) so they could cut them all up and toss them out!

anyway. . .i'll have a bit more. . . in a bit.