It's been two weeks since my last post. Sorry. Things have been quite busy. In that time, I've had a visit from a good friend from Chicago, been on a couple of interviews, and finished my contract with the theatre. I also found a cute lavalier microphone in the Full Compass catalog for a ridiculously low price---one I could actually afford! Now, I impatiently await its arrival in my mailbox so that I can begin recording essays and letters to my other av nerd friends.
The theatre finally looks like a working theater. In a few days, it will even have its first show. So, I'm glad that the open house was so close to my last day. It was a wonderful party, a great change of pace from the stress in the office. I even ran into a few people that I hadn't seen in years.
My boss didn't say anything about my last day. In fact, I am not sure that he realized that it was my last day. I didn't want or need a big fuss. One of the wonderful stagehands took me out to lunch and I received many offers of coffee, drinks, etc. from my coworkers. Still, it was odd not to receive any sort of acknowledgement from the boss. I wonder if he'll call on Monday asking where I am!
I finished knitting the Kroy socks that I designed for a friend. Ideally, they would have been finished while he was in town, but alas... I had problems with fiber splitting while finishing the toe of the second sock. It looks "homemade" in the derogatory sense of the word, but it was too damn hard to take out and fix. So I'm already working on another pair of socks with a spiral rib pattern, out of beautiful variegated pink and red soft wool.
My good pal Amy and I went out after my last day of work to take in a screening of Mulholland Drive in the Village. The acting and art direction were incredible, though I think that it requires repeat viewings to discern its nuanced clues. It was quite a mind bending experience. I've had "Crying" stuck in my head since I left the theatre, though not in Spanish as it appears in the film. At least they didn't sing "Oklahoma!".

I found a great website devoted to the charming medium of the minidisc. Yes, the minidisc, spelled with a c, not a k. It drives my spellcheck crazy. The website is , which has many resources for the minidisc user or afficionado. Some of the people involved are a bit more...fervent about it than I am. It was nice to stumble upon a community of other MDers.
I've used my minidisc player almost exclusively since I bought it. It skips far less than my discman (I won't jinx it by saying never, but it has yet to happen), and also has more economic battery usage. I haven't burned many of my cds to md, so it's been a restricted playlist, but I have no complaints. Now, I have only to get a microphone for it, so that I can make field recordings and personal voiceovers a la Felicity to send to my friend Willie in Iowa.
Which reminds me--I've figured out why all of the big Broadway sound designers are hard of hearing. It's not from work. The subway here is so damned loud, I'm surprised that anyone can hear. Though years of ringing out the house, etc. probably has something to do with it as well.

Oh, I forgot to mention my latest adventure in things technical. My boss's ancient mac died, possibly due to the move. He refused to give it up for dead, I suspect because he probably hadn't backed it up. So, he pried it open and pulled out the hard drives to install in his "new" computer. His "new" computer is at least six years old and has different protocol than the previous one. You know you're in trouble when you have to upgrade to a machine that the tech support people call a doorstop! So, he had me carry it over to Tekserve in a big box, where I waited patiently for service. Tekserve is an interesting place. Their waiting area looks like a lounge at the airport and features an old coke machine that dispense little glass bottles for ten cents. I drank several in my hour long wait, while watching early video art projected onto a giant screen. It was a piece that I'd seen before at MassMoCA featuring complicated chain reactions, all done in a single take. The service estimate was predictable. They promised nothing, which is what I suspect will be received.
When I returned to the office, I told a couple of the tech staff about it. This sort of thing is typical behavior for my boss. The head of IT told me that he has a brand new Dell that my boss refuses to use because it isn't a mac. He prefers to try to revive a machine that was state of the art while I was in grade school.

It's official: TWO of my relatives read this blog! I suppose that I could just sit down and write letters, but that isn't gadget-y enough for me. I like gadgets.
I am recovering from the flu. I had to leave work early on Friday because of it. Luckily, one of my stage manager friends came to meet me at work and took me back to her apartment to nap and recover. Matzo ball soup, homeopathic remedies, and an incredible amount of sweat seem to have flushed it from my system. I'm still not 100%. The brain moves slower when you are ill. I also have a chapped nose. I'm trying not to be a big baby about being sick, or as little as possible considering that I can't breathe through my nose.
I'm supposed to meet one of my friends at the Goethe Institute tomorrow for the reception of a photography exhibition, but that looks unlikely. There are a lot of exhibitions on the subject of New York up now. I went to one at the Jewish Museum a couple of weeks ago, which I mentioned in a previous post.
Now, I am downloading a big update to my antivirus software. I already downloaded it once this morning, but the file turned out to be corrupt. There was much swearing involved.

My dad recently said, "everything I know about my daughter, I read on the internet". So, at least one person is reading this site! Today was a fairly easy day at work. The calm before the storm? We're waiting for our equipment to arrive so that we can convert and install it. There will be a big push to get everything up in the space once the conversion has been done. So many delays have occurred.
I'm still knitting up a storm. I'm about halfway through the foot of a fair isle sock. Some nervousness that I've made the leg part of the sock too long and will run out of yarn before I reach the toes. Hard to say. The foot is always the least interesting part of the sock.

Today was a much needed day off. A day to run errands! In the rain! Alas, most of the places that I wanted to go were closed. It seems other people had the day off as well. I was not upset about this turn of events, oddly. After a frightening turn of tunnels, ramps, and sheet plywood in TImes Square Station, I decended to the NR platform to hear a woman playing Bach on a saxophone. It was a revelation. The saxophone is not, I believe, a baroque instrument. And yet, lovely sounds issued forth from her shining horn.
The purpose of this venture was to obtain a copy of the new McSweeneys. I knew I should have subscribed to them years ago, when they offered a lifetime subscription for something like $100. Oh well. Luckily, St. Marks was open and had many copies. I was happy. Happy enough not to be upset that all of my other plans for the day fell through. That is the beauty of the legal holiday; it frees you up not to care about little annoyances.
I finished my green and blue socks yesterday. I wore them today with a pair of Birks. It was perhaps not the best choice of footwear for a rainy day. Of course, I have begun another project, a pair of Fortissima Fair Isle socks. The pattern is printed onto the yarn, so it requires no tedious color work.
I am still looking for another job. That is, a job to replace my current one. I would prefer something related to my chosen field, but mostly, I'd like to earn enough to live on. Enough to live in New York on.