Category: Not awesome

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"Other people" Not awesome Work

No means no

Where I work there’s a series of volunteer front-desk greeters (they might not actually be volunteers, but in my head they’re the people who made it through the volunteer usher boot camp and this is their reward).  Weeks ago as I was leaving work, I happened to glance at the computer screen that one of these women was using, and I couldn’t help but notice she was on the Yelp page for the Make Out Room, which is a club in the Mission.  I found this hysterical.

This week I just happened to glance at the screen again…and she’s now on a website listing sex offenders.  I know it might not be a funny story…but that’s still kinda funny, right?

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Not awesome Sentiment

Hormones

My parents say that I didn’t go through a really long angry-teenager phase where I slammed doors and hated everyone.  They said there was a week or two where they would say “Good morning” and I would say “Shut up” and then one day it was over just like that.

I have one specific memory of getting into this big blow-out fight in the car on the way home from somewhere, it might even have involved all four of us.  I remember stomping into the house, fuming, slamming the door to my room and turning on the radio.  The song that came on was one that my friends and I had been listening to nonstop, and we loved it.  The familiar melody instantly calmed me down, and I sat down on my bed and listened to the whole song.  Then I went back out into the kitchen, smiling and ready to make up after our fight, and instead of being grateful to have a happy daughter back, my mom exclaimed in annoyance, “What happened to you, why are you so calm?!”

And that magical song, my friends, was LeAnn Rimes’ “How Do I Live.”

Categories
Beginnings Not awesome Theatre Work

Pay no attention to the girl behind the curtain –

– because she is just taking a break and counting up all the hiccups tonight.

Today, while we were having our customary pre-opening-night rehearsal (mostly notes, super laid-back), Happy Now? by Lucinda Coxon was having their first read-through and rehearsal.  The MTC Production Manager told the Happy Now? stage manager that she would have more time for them, now that we, 9 Circles, were opening.  To which he responded along the lines of, “I don’t know, I have a feeling about that show, I think it may be cursed.”

Here is what went wrong today:

– Major sound issues, which because they spent all afternoon working on, were all fixed by the performance.  But they did spend 3 hours troubleshooting basically every single piece of the sound system to find out what was causing that mysterious hum in the speakers.

– Since the Stage Manager, Production Manager, and Master Electrician were all consumed with that all day, around 5:30 I texted Jen the PM to ask if she wanted me to go pick up the dry cleaning.  When I got it back to the dressing room I found out they had shorted me a silk Banana Republic blouse, very heavily altered and quick-rigged.  Jen and I went back to the dry cleaners and they searched for it but couldn’t find it.

– While I was sorting out the rest of the clothes one of the actors called me into her dressing room to tell me her toilet was broken (and used, by the way) and who should she tell about it?  So I pushed up my sleeves (and took off my rings) (and took my phone out of my pocket because I am always dropping it) and fixed the chain in the tank.

– The laundry from Sunday, which I had assumed would get done by the Wardrobe Supervisor on our day off, didn’t get done.  But I didn’t know that until after 6:00.  So I tried to finish it as quickly as possible but lots of stuff got carried back downstairs without being washed (it’s not really dirty anyway) and one actor had to wait until 7:48 to get his undershirt because

– It took 40 minutes to dry a single wifebeater.  Darn ribbed material.

– The actress’ hair clip went missing…someone stole my Diet Coke out of the fridge (I suspect someone who was in the Happy Now? read through)…because I was dealing with everything falling to shreds in my hands I didn’t get a dinner break.

But, the show went awesomely and the audience loved it!  And they had delicious food afterwards.

(Also, if you’re curious, we had a revelation that part of the quick rigging on the silk blouse is magnets – it sounds weird but actually works really well – and thanks to a quick trip back by Jen, the blouse was discovered stuck to the inside of the dry cleaning machine!  So that particular piece will get handwashed from now on.)

Happy opening to 9 Circles!  This is the part where my hours get severely cut back, yet I’m somehow making more money.  Awesome.

UPDATE: One more thing! In all the opening night excitement I totally spaced getting the valuables back to the one actor who locks them up.  So she went all the next day without her wallet…

Categories
Endings Not awesome Sentiment Tomato

*Insert air violin*

RIP tomato plant.

It’s been getting shabbier and shabbier, and while there are still lots of green tomatoes on it, they didn’t seem to be ripening or growing any bigger.  I still watered it and fed it, but I wondered if the weather lately (ping ponging back and forth from hot to foggy) had done a number on it, or maybe it had gotten sick, or maybe I just inadvertently killed it somehow.

Last Tuesday there were people here, and one of them, acting unknowingly as my grief therapist, assisted me in first pinching off all of the dead leaves.  From there it was a slippery slope to me shouting “Let’s just pull it!”  A few people had told me that even if the plant is dead, you can take the branches and hang it upside down and the tomatoes will ripen.  When we tried to pull the plant out of the dirt, the entire 5 gallon block of Miracle Gro and roots came with it, which is when it occurred to us that this kitty litter bucket might have been too small for the size of the plant.

My therapist suggested we cut it in half and plant half in another bucket, but plants don’t come with dotted lines down the middle, and I was in a state of exhileration at this point.  So we hacked off the branches with fruit on them and hung them upside down, and then kicked all the crunchy leaves on the floor off the balcony.

The next day when I peeped out onto the balcony I beheld the saddest sight: some leaning over, leafless, scrawny branches, a mess of carnage on the floor, and a couple branches tied up with baby blue yarn, bearing tomatoes that I have to admit to myself will probably never be edible.

The weird thing is that I don’t really remember what prompted the slaying.  It feels sort of like looking back on a drunken or just very late night.  It’s somewhere between the “Oops, I shouldn’t have cut my own bangs” and “Oops, it wasn’t a good idea to slaughter my pet pot bellied pig and serve it up with barbecue sauce.”  Thank God this was “just” a plant and not a pet.  And thank God I never got around to naming it.

My basil is dead (although I didn’t really expect that to work out either, as I just bought a little basil plant from Trader Joe’s and stuck it in dirt) but the rosemary seems to be thriving.

I’ll try again with the tomatoes next year.

I had to clean everything off the balcony and get rid of the evidence because it was depressing me.  And making me feel a little guilty, honestly.

I’m not leaving you with a picture because I want you to remember the good old days, the days of lushness and prosperity.

I close my eyes only for a moment then the moment’s gone…
Dust in the wind…All we are is dust in the wind.

Categories
Being a girl Not awesome

I don’t read my mail anymore, man, it just makes me paranoid.

So WEEKS AGO I got a notice in the mail from Prudential saying that my IATSE Annuity Fund had been inactive for 6 months and that I needed to either tell them to keep it open, or if I said nothing, they would cut me a check for the balance: $13.62.

I have no idea why I would have an account through IATSE (which is the union of “professional stagehands, motion picture technicans, and allied crafts” – but not stage managers, who are part of the Actors Equity union) but I checked with Marin anyway, and they said no of course.  So then I carried this letter around with me for like 2 months, and never got around to calling to find out what it was from.

On Thursday night my parents stopped by our apartment on their way to San Jose, with a grocery bag full of pears, another grocery bag of vegetables, and a stack of mail.  One of the pieces of mail was a check from Prudential for $13.62, which I was like, Score!  Every little bit helps, right?  But this morning, I determined to figure out why I was getting this money (especially since technically I’ll have to claim it in my taxes next year), so I called the phone number listed on the letter.

I went around and around with the automated voice messaging system, trying not to put in my social security number and just get a person on the phone.  But it was stubborn so I finally just did it, said “I don’t have one” when asked for a PIN, and gave my date of birth.  They said they couldn’t find an account for me and to call back during the hours when they had someone working there.

Jeez, this makes me nervous.  A Google search for “Prudential scam” returns nothing of consequence except the standard page on Prudential’s website that says generically, “Sometimes people use our name in scams.  Call your bank” or whatever.  Part of me is like, This is the most thorough scam ever, if you don’t give in to your curiosity and give them your social, they still send you a check.  I don’t know.  I’ll have to call them first thing on Monday to allay my fears, but in the meantime I just hope it’s all right.  It probably is.  I should do a credit check anyway, I guess.

One of the other pieces of mail was a new credit card, like, with my name on it and everything, that I absolutely did NOT sign up for…but the other part of me is like, take it and activate it and never use it.  So I have to figure that out today.

Categories
Being a girl Not awesome

Cue lightning

The scene: Katie, my parents’ second-most skittish cat, is sitting on the windowsill, pressed up against the screen. As I walk past her to the fridge to get more Diet Coke, I say in the babytalk voice I can’t seem to shake, “What are you looking at? What do you see out there?”

When I turn back to look at her, she’s looking at me with big eyes. To cover my bases, I say:

“Nothing. The correct answer is, ‘I see nothing out there.'”

I’m currently reading Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and I’m really into it, but I’m hesitant about settling down to read it if I’m going to keep pricking up my ears at every little creak. Katie just took off running and skidded on the hall runner, which slid along the floor! My stomach just growled! Oh jeez…

[I was trying to insert a picture here from the movie The Grudge, of the little boy looking absolutely terrifying, and shirtless. The computer knows better than me, though, and is refusing to upload it.]

UPDATE 7/15/10: Well, at first both cats settled in on either side of me to guard me, but then they got bored, so I woke up about 10 times last night, each time one would run across me or jump onto the bed. All in all not a very restful night. Also I’m now covered in cat hair and see no way of ever getting myself clean again.

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Not awesome

A Bit of Science. Maybe.

So Fastrak seems like a good idea, and maybe it is, really.  But lemme tell you something, when I got the darned thing, the “replenish amount” (what they charged your credit card at a time) was $X, and the “replenish threshold” (the lowest amount it would get to before it would charge your credit card – with no warning, mind you) was $Y.  Okay.  So then I’m crossing the Golden Gate Bridge every day and man, does that thing add up.  $6 without a Fastrak, $5 with.  Yikes.  So I’m using it every day and then the replenish threshold goes up to like $1.5Y and the amount to like $2.5X.  (This is kind of vague, I know.)  Also, there were several phone calls early on in the Fastrak usage about trying to get a credit card saved onto the account, because they weren’t saving it, and then they were charging fees for not saving it…lots of phone calls.  We got it all worked out though, and I paid my $2.5X whenever it would drop to $1.5Y.  Not that I had a choice because they just charged the card.  Fun! 

One day the replenish threshold went up to something like $2.2Y and the amount to $3.2X.  Wow.  But okay, I can handle this.  I mean I am using it 6 times a week and that’s just me.  Then I spend all this time counting the tolls and the days and checking the account online and making sure I can make it until the next payday – and before I know it, a few weeks ago, Fastrak ups the amount randomly, ups the replenish threshold to $4Y, and charges my credit card $5.2X, putting it over the limit, BTW.  WTF?

Well, I was incensed.  Well, I was annoyed.  And I felt like there should have been some kind of warning.  Especially since my usage hadn’t changed and I’m thisclose to being done with the MTC job and not going over the bridge 6 times a week.  Oh well.  I guess it’s all fine now.  And I’ve been watching the account online very closely and leaving large amounts of space between the current balance and the current replenish threshold (so scientific-y), just in case.  And I only have 4 more days of work up there in Mill Valley.  And so the last few days I’ve been just paying cash because even though you save a dollar using Fastrak, I save $5.2X when it doesn’t charge my credit card.

The point of this story is to say that the people who work in the tollbooths on the Golden Gate Bridge are extraordinarily and surprisingly nice.  They are just pleasant nice people who I could really get into a conversation with if it wasn’t foggy and drizzly outside and there weren’t cars behind me.  And that is refreshing, because I’m pretty sure that tollbooth workers in New York would be bitches.  Except I don’t remember any tolls on bridges in New York.  So maybe New York wins this round.  But the nice people will always win in the end.  At least that’s what I’m told.

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"Other people" Being a girl Endings Not awesome

Sunday Night Adventures and Heroes

So Sunday night, the end of an 8-show week, I’m worn out and over it and my attitude is souring fast.  Everyone still keeps asking for things, right up to the end of the second show (“The bathroom in the boys dressing room is out of soap.” “Okay, use the other bathroom, it’s like 20 minutes until the end of the show.”) (Although then I totally did refill the soap for them.) (I can’t exactly figure out whose job that is, which makes me think it might fall under the “production assistant” umbrella).  Anyway, it’s been a long week.

I finally get out of the building, get in the car, start digging for my iPod, Himself has been off work and I just want to get home and sit around and watch TV with him…and I remember that I left my food in the fridge, and I was going to eat it tonight.  I debate for about 3 seconds, then get out of the car, slam the door, and start striding back toward the building.  Feel for keys in my hoodie pocket, and…nothing there.  Keys in purse, which is actually in my hand?  Nope.  Keys in the ignition of the locked car?  Check.

I call Himself because I’ve heard you can use a remote fob thingie and unlock a car from far away, through your cell phones.  He’s not at home but heads back there.  There may be a little bit of crying as I explain what happened, because this is just embarrassing.  I locked my keys in the car like an idiot because I had to go back inside to get my food?  Come on now.

I climb up onto the trunk to sit there and mope, with maybe a few more tears.  Suddenly Ted the sound designer/mixer calls from behind me to ask if I’m okay.  Instead of responding how I’ve been responding to any personal inquiries all week – “I’m fine” – I let it out.  He pulls his car around and parks next to me, asking questions like “Power windows or manual?” and “Have you ever broken into your car before?”  Which, funnily enough, I haven’t.  At some point, Himself calls back and we try the remote-unlocking, which of course totally doesn’t work.  So he and the two friends he was out to dinner with start the drive to Marin.

Ted works diligently using a heavy-duty coat hanger we steal from the costume shop (I also shamelessly pick up the oh-so-important food), while I hold the flashlight and make helpful comments like “Seriously, thank you so much.”  At some point the stage manager comes out of the building and stands near us, but I get rid of him pretty quick.  About 5 minutes in I get the brilliant idea to see if the passenger side window is down any further, which it is, and even better, I can wrench it down another inch or so.  So we’ve got about 2 1/2 inches of room to work with, and luckily Ted has little girl wrists.  He sticks with it though, and it’s 15 minutes later, maybe 20 minutes tops, that he pops the door lock with the coat hanger.

I call Himself and tell him to turn around (luckily he hadn’t made it very far) and tell Ted about ten times that he’s awesome.  I’m home by 11:00, which is only maybe half an hour after I’d planned to be home.  Not exactly the relaxing Sunday night I had envisioned but it could have been a lot worse.  So I’m bringing Ted a 6-pack of Stella today, which will come in extra-handy, since they had a 5-hour music/sound rehearsal today at which I wasn’t needed.

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"Other people" Being a girl Drew Family Not awesome

The Wedding Photographer from the Black Lagoon

So, I got married last November.  It was a wonderful affair, with wine and family and dancing and cake and guests coming from New York and Spain to help us celebrate.  It was really much better than I expected and lots better than I even wished for.  The caterers were thorough and invisible when they were supposed to be, the DJ played all the right music and none of the wrong music, and the cake was 5 layers, not 4 like we were expecting, because the baker wanted to give it some extra drama.  I love me a 5-tiered cake.  The photographer and his assistant were everywhere at all times, stayed from 11 in the morning until 11 at night, and didn’t mind when our set-up shot plan changed 3 times.  They left the reception when we did, and promised us our pictures in “4-6 weeks! by Christmas!”

Here is a timeline of how the next 4 months have gone.

Dec 15, haven’t heard anything from him, so I email him just to find out if he’ll post them soon. We’d love to sit down with our sets of parents and go through the pictures.  Photographer doesn’t respond.
Dec 22, Facebook informs me he’s going to Mexico for Christmas.
Dec 22, I email him again because I haven’t heard back.
Dec 23, Photographer informs me via email that he’s “out of the country” for the holidays and will return after the New Year.
Jan 6, I email him again asking because I haven’t heard anything.
Jan 6, He writes back saying he’s almost done!
Jan 11, They’re posted! We’re so happy. I email him back asking for a couple others shots – one, a group shot with the girls I used to babysit, which I definitely remember being taken. Two, anything, from any point in the night, of me and my mom together. He tells me he’s out of town until Jan 17 so he’ll get back to me.
Jan 26, I call him. No answer.  No callback.
Feb 12, I email him. No answer.
Mar 2, I call him. No answer.  No callback.
Mar 6, I call him around 9:30 in the morning..  He answers!  Holy cow!  He tells me he’s “just looking at the pictures” and he can’t find the one of me with my babysitting girls.  Also, he says, “this has never happened before” but he can’t find anything of me and my mom.  He’s “never had to set that up before, it always happens naturally.”  I basically give up and say sweetly through my teeth, “Okay, well, everything else is great, so can you mail us the DVD?”  He says he’ll do that right away.
Mar 11, Silly me, I assumed “right away” meant he’d mail the DVD on Saturday, or Monday at the latest.  No DVD has shown up yet and shipping from San Francisco to San Bruno shouldn’t take long.  I email him asking if he’d sent it because I wanted to take it to my parents’ house over the weekend (not true).  He writes back saying he’s at a “wedding photography convention” in Las Vegas to get some new slick DVD cases that he likes.  He’ll overnight one to my parents’ address, if I’ll give it to him.  I give it to him (anything to get a copy of that DVD!).
Mar 12, In the morning he leaves me a voicemail saying he’s been to the post office, UPS, and FedEx and no one can get it there by Saturday.  I text him saying to just send it to me here.

Today we got home and there was a (granted, pretty slick) DVD case leaning against the door.  Which means he just brought it by and left it at some point today?  There are 2 DVDs inside, one saying in Sharpie, “Copy 1” and the other, “Copy 2.”  For needing to be placed in such a slick case, the DVDs are pretty unimpressive, but if I pop them into the computer and my wedding pictures exist thereon, everything will be forgiven (if not immediately forgotten).

So here it is, over 4 months later, and we have our pictures.  The next step is to upload all 600 onto some photo sharing-and-purchasing website, send the link to everyone, and then order the prints.  Now the only thing to kind of bother me is the fact that everyone else has that one great the-happy-couple-kissing-in-a-very-posed-manner-in-front-of-a-tree picture, and we, for some reason, have none of those.  I mean, we have lots of good candids and that’s what I wanted anyway, so it’s all good.  I just kind of miss not having that gazing-at-each-other-lovingly-in-front-of-a-pond picture.

Oh yeah, and I need to write that photographer a scathing review on Yelp.  My only question is, is this the kind of thing where I should warn him beforehand?  Or should I just cut into him via the faceless internet?  Major dilemma.

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"Other people" Not awesome

Trouble in Mill Valley

Yesterday I saw a couple high schoolers scam an old man.

I was at the Safeway in Mill Valley, one of the ritzier parts of already affluent Marin County, and the Safeway happens to be across the street from Tamalpais High School, so every afternoon it and the shopping center around it are flooded with high schoolers making trouble and buying energy drinks.

I was in the checkout line, with an older man behind me buying mostly yogurt and high fiber bread, and a high schooler behind him.  Another kid comes up to that kid.

Wandering kid: Hey Aiden, loan me a dollar.
Kid in line (Aiden): No, why?
Wanderer: I don’t have any money and I’m starving.
Aiden: Why didn’t you go home?
Wanderer: I missed the bus.  I’m going to have to sleep here tonight and I need dinner.
Aiden: You’re sleeping here again?
Wanderer: Yeah, I’m going to sleep at the bus stop.

At this point, the old man behind me pulls out his wallet and passes the kid money, I don’t know how much but it sure looked like more than one dollar, and the kid goes, “Really? Oh, really? Thank you sir!” (At least he was very polite.)  Then he kind of leaves but lingers in the aisle behind us looking at ice cream toppings, which he was surely not going to buy for dinner.  The kid in line very kindly helped the old man unload his groceries onto the conveyor belt and then kind of…left, at which point I realized he didn’t have anything to buy anyway.  Then I also realized the poor sleeping-at-the-bus-stop kid was the one that I had seen walking back and forth across all the checkstands (casing the joint?), deliberately making his shoes squeak, which I noticed because it annoyed me.

The thing is, it was pouring rain and for a minute I felt bad for the kid too, like, I was wondering if I should buy him a sandwich with my nonexistent money.  But then I became pretty sure that if he’s going to high school in Mill Valley, dressed as well as he was, he’s probably not starving or stuck without a ride home.  Although if it was a scam, it was sure a polite one.

Then this reminded me of The Great Fake Scavenger Hunt…but that’s a story for another time.