I'm tired, so tired

I have an eight show week this week. That sounds fine, if you distribute the eight shows across seven days. Except my eight shows all happen in five days-- three two show days in a row, and two singles. It's too much. I have another three shows before my day off, and that thought puts me on the edge of tears. Please, Mr Producer, don't do this again! It's too much for everyone, especially the children. Yes, the kids are doing all eight shows too, since we don't do understudy rotation (we don't have the resources). Yes, I'm whining now. I'm tired and I want to get all of this out of my system before I go to work, where everyone else is coasting on fumes too.
Next week, I have four days off. Four! Silly me, I scheduled an appointment on Monday, so my plans to lie in bed like Brian Wilson must wait. Then, one of my friends from college is coming into town. I suspect he isn't a morning person, though.

Days Off

Now that the show is in full swing, and the windows in my house are done, I've had a bit of free time. Free time.On Friday, I used this unexpected furlough to go to the makeup department at Carson's. Surprisingly, nothing caught my eye at the MAC counter, except the brush cleaner that I went in for. They even had their little xmas kits out. Instead, I ambled over to the Clinique counter. I've been a Clinique customer for a long time, even though my aesthetic has been less *subtle* lately. I was quickly whisked into a chair and made over. I love the makeup they sold me, but not the way that the Clinique artist applied it. Why is it that makeup artists must always do one hateful thing that undoes all the wonderfulness of the rest of it? I don't want to have Liza Minelli's eyelashes! I do not like to have crazy, thick eyeliner! I don't need to wear powder and foundation together! Well, that's a series of complaints from separate events, but you get the point. I felt fabulous and lovely, walking around and shopping after the makeover. When I got home, I saw that the mascara had sloughed off into raccoonlike grey circles under my eyes. Very unfabulous. I took it all off and reapplied the Pink Tweed dual eyeshadow combo in a less 80s fashion, then headed off to opening night.

Yes, we're finally open. Of course, I had plenty of problems with the mics on opening night, in front of all of the bigwigs in the company. Sigh. I don't like static, but there is very little that I can do about interference. We're running 22 wireless mics, so somebody's going to pick up something inevitably. Thank god the next show has a much smaller cast. So, a full weekend of shows, then two more days off! Yay! On Monday, I drove into the city and hung out with Lewis. He was so happy when I gave him his much-belated birthday present (it's early for next year, I guess), a striped hat made from Manos del Uruguay. I took the #22 down to Andersonville. A drunk or otherwise socially inept man pestered me at the bus stop until the bus finally arrived. I have two CTA cards: one with $20 on it and one with $1 on it. Which do you think I grabbed when I left the house? I didn't have any change, any cash at all, so I had to ask a woman on the bus for the remaining fare balance. Argh. Several homeless men begging on Clark St. told me how lovely/fine/sexy/beautiful I looked as I strode purposefully towards the bar. Maybe it was the hundred odd dollars' worth of makeup I was wearing, but I'd like to think that my day off happiness was writ across my face. I had dinner with a friend. It was lovely. Today, more errands, and not in any logically mapped out path through the city. I'm looking for the perfect xmas cards. I came across some very beautiful Art Nouveau letterpress ones at Paper Source, but it's awfully hard to justify $1.65/card (before taxes and postage) when I need forty of them. Instead, I bought a print of a fake antique tourist map of Paris for less than $5, and some thank you cards. They're always good to have around.

I just posted a diatribe on my Myspace blog. I must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed today. I was roused at 9 AM to drive my car various places, which was quite a bad idea, as I still was quiet sleepy and had planned a late reveille on my important last day off before tech. I'm going to be running myself ragged, so why start today?
My cat discovered the mail slot today. We've had him almost a year, but he never noticed it before. He can be quite the charmer, which is good, because he gets in his moods sometimes. This afternoon, for example, he was very cranky. The other day, however, he amused me by ringing the bell hanging over my computer. Yes, I realize that it is strange to have a bell hanging like the Sword of Damocles there, but it's part of a hard to describe handmade decoration brought back from the Caribbean by my grandmother. I was sitting in the living room when I heard a bright little ring from the kitchen. I didn't realize that Winston could reach the bell, but there he was, practically standing erect behind my massive 19" monitor to reach the bell. He misunderstood my laughter and took off. Tonight, I must make sure that he doesn't bolt out the door while ajar for the distribution of candy. So, far, only two groups of trick or treaters have come to the door. It's dark, cold, and raining, so I can't say that I am surprised.
My mom bought a new knitting magazine today, published by Interweave Press, called knitscene. Somehow, they've managed to assemble a knitting magazine with a minimum of patterns and maximum of advertising. Sure, they've got loads of lovely photographs of projects in the magazine, most of them composed in a fashion that hides a multitude of sins in a garment/pattern, but only provide a link to their website where the pattern ought to be. All that for the princely sum of $7.99! I wonder if there will be a second issue of knitscene.

Fossil Fuel

I've driven my car a lot over the past few days. Not a ridiculous amount. I haven't driven out to the curb to collect the trash cans after collection or anything. And I've had really great parking karma. Friday, I drove out to the theatre in Indiana for a recording session and impromptu dinner with a colleague. I then took the Skyway (lead foot, IPass, and badass attitude in evidence) into the city to go to a cabaret. Yes, cabaret, but there were no scary Liza Minelli eyelashes in evidence. But first, I had to swing by a friend's place on the other side of town. Who wants to go to a cabaret alone? We had to circle for about ten minutes before getting a really good space. A lot of people were out--in crazy costumes--in Wicker Park for Halloween parties, presumably. We saw a trio of girls in bizarre pink plastic wigs. I don't mean fake hair wigs, I mean frightening pieces of plastic in the approximate shape of hair worn on these girls' heads. I suspect that they were dressed as manga characters. The cabaret was interesting. Even though we had comps, the two drink minimum was not waived. This was explained to us in a rude manner by our sassy gay waiter; he didn't bring us the drinks or the tab, just the attitude. I enjoyed the show, even though the sound lacked finesse.
I got embarrassingly buzzed on a single martini (served in an ugly glass), so Lewis drove my car, to the sounds of Peaches' Teaches of Peaches. He wanted to hit an ATM before we went to the diner for some late night carbs, which lead to a sad stoner version of all those Chase commercials on tv. I wonder how long he would have driven around looking for a Bank One, as they've just gone on a sign-changing spree this past week. They even have commercials showing off the new signs, scored with The Beatles' "Hello Hello". At first, I was disgusted to hear a Beatles tune in an ad, but then I realized that Michael Jackson needs the money.
The next day, I had a business meeting back in Wicker Park. On the way there (ha!), I stopped by Women and Children First, in search of a Canadian indie zine. They didn't have it. Neither did Quimby's Comics, but I had very nice conversations with clerks at both bookstores. Afterwards, I swung by Nina (even finding a free parking place less than a block away) to pick up a skein of Manos. This was the second store that I checked in 24 hours for the yarn needed to complete my scrap hat. They didn't have the color needed either. Instead I bought a couple of skeins of Lorna's Laces sock yarn to knit a pair of socks for some lucky relative. The owner (I think) and I had a nice chat as she wound the skeins for me with her lovely wood swift. She was amused that I'd pinned my usual messy chignon up with a pair of bamboo knitting needles. Usually, I use pencils, but it's easier to find a pair of needles in my house. Imagine that. Then I drove home. Thank god I filled the tank with cheap Indiana gas.
Today, I went back to the theatre to do some pre-production work for my show that goes into tech on Tuesday. I thought that I would be there for a few hours, but ended up staying for ten. Still, I managed to program mute scenes for the entire show into the board, sort out the wireless microphones and transmitters, and watch amusedly as the designer played with his new P-Touch labeller. That labeller was worth its weight in gold, as everything needed to be tagged in our new configuration. The theatre bought a new mixing console (huzzah!), microphones, loads of rechargeable batteries, and some cable. All of this had to be sorted out before tech starts on Tuesday morning. As they don't have a sound person on staff, this responsibility fell largely to the sound designer. So far, I like the new mixer. It's more ergodynamic than the last one, and it works.
I have tomorrow off (though I guess it's today now) to have my last lie-in for a while, get a bit of knitting done, and maybe go to the library. No big Halloween plans. I'll probably just hand out candy to the kids, perhaps while wearing my red wig and sequined horns (from Scotland!). We haven't had that many trick or treaters the past few years, but, as my grandmother observed, the price of gas has really gone up. Maybe people won't drive their kids to more generous neighborhoods this year.

I found a couple of balls of Manos Stria yarn left over from a sweater I made last Spring when I was cleaning, so I decided to make a hat. A nice, simple hat takes about 110 yards, depending on the weight of the yarn and the size of the head. I'm making it for my sized head, which is not freakishly large, but not small either. So, I carefully knit a "random" stripe pattern to maximize the rose color, of which I had less, and planned on using the cream as the primary color. Even though the cream ball was larger, it wasn't large enough. I got all the way to the conic section of the hat (aka the top), then realized that I am going to run out of yarn. I don't have any more odds and ends of this yarn, which means that I'll have to buy another skein to finish my "thrifty" little project.
I got three Netflix DVDs today. They're all Felicity episodes, which is apparently cliche central for me. I really don't spend all my time watching Felicity, or Lifetime Television for women and gay men. Yes, I like the Gilmore Girls, but that isn't shameful. So, three dvds of Felicity, which I haven't watched yet. I, like many other people, watched the first season of Felicity, It was interesting, since I was in college at the time and had a penchant for mixed tapes. But after she cut her hair, I really didn't watch it anymore. It wasn't the shear job, really. They kept moving it around on the schedule where I lived, and I started running shows, which essentially kills any primetime tv viewing. So, no Felicity for me. Then I happened to catch an episode from the last season on We over the summer. I got sucked in, so now I'm trying to fill in the gaps. Apparently, Felicity's hair grows back. The first season was hard to revisit, because she was so goddamn earnest. We all like to pretend that we were never like that!
Did anyone else see the letter to the editor that John Cameron Mitchell wrote to Time Magazine? I love, love, love, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, so I was disappointed to see their one sentence, conservative, reactionary description of the film in their recent article about gay teens. So was Mr Mitchell. I wonder if the author of the article has actually seen Hedwig, or just had it described to him by someone else. It features some universal themes, if the viewer can move past the fact that the protagonist is an East German tranny. Maybe I'm expecting too much from Time. It isn't the New Yorker, after all.

Today, men were supposed to come and cut a giant hole in the side of my house, then leave me with wonderful modern window replacements. Yay, I thought, no more drafts while watching MASH late at night, or cold breezes in the shower in the middle of winter. Much furniture was moved to facilitate this. Except for one small problem. The installer is stuck in a shelter in Cancun, riding out the hurricane. Why, why, why, would you go someplace on vacation AFTER a hurricane was predicted to make landfall there? They can't reschedule the windows right away, so most of one of the walls of the house will be removed during the second week of November. November in Chicago! Poor Winston was even taken to the vet for the day so that he wouldn't be tempted to stage the great escape while the window was out. He was fetched a few hours later, so that he can play in whole new areas of the living room where he's never sniffed mysterious invisible objects before.

I spent a good chunck of the day asleep, since I'd stayed up all night transferring all the music from my ipod to my hard drive. There are programs that allow you to do that (since Apple had to make a deal with the record companies promising that ipods wouldn't be the little engines of music piracy that they are), but none of them work cross-platform. That is, none are written for people with FAT32 drives on their ipod moving files to a Mac OS. Macs can even "see" Windows ipods, but not vice-versa. They're just going to drag that out forever, aren't they? So, I had to hack the ipod (super easy, despite what Apple says) and transfer the files to my PC, then transfer the files via sneakernet to the Mac. This took, perhaps ten hours. That's an hour a gig. I lost all my playlists, except the one that I scribbled out on a legal pad before taking a deep breath and reformatting my ipod's hard drive. Well, it means that I'm rid of all the vestigial lists that never get played anymore, and some restructuring of my "Hard Living" playlist. It's a work in progress.

So, no knitting today. I did spend a few minutes rounding up all my needles into my big pink knitting bag (from France!), and putting patterns into my binder. It's so much better not to squint at crumpled pattern sheets, when I can squint at patterns in page protectors. I'm currently working on a bag made out of Cherry Tree Hill Melange, knit on the bias. I think it may need a lining when it's done, due to the snagginess of the yarn. It reminds me of production notes that I read in a book about Edith Head, where she states that she chose fabrics that would snag for Tippi Hedren's suits in The Birds, so that it would really show where the birds pecked at her. Design is all the little details that tell the big story! Anyhoo, there's a picture of the bag in progress, not looking like a bag at all.

I'm multitasking this post. It's time for the Late Show with Craig Furgason. I think he's the cat's pyjamas. He doesn't do a regular monologue like the other talk show hosts. He just tells amusing anecdotes in a droll Scottish accent, like a recent story about his obsession with a pinball game he bought over the weekend. His humor is so dry and smart, it's completely lured me away from years of Conan watching. He is awfully tan for a Scotsman... He often tells patently false stories about life in Scotland, such as people in Scotland being so repressed that they have sex through the mail. "I love my inhibitions," he said, "They save me from my ... hibitions". He went on to explain that kilts are practically guaranteed sex, and that men would be arrested if they acted the way that women act around a man in a kilt. Maybe you should give Mr. Furgason a chance, on CBS after Letterman.