Category: work Page 2 of 3

Football…

On Monday, 8 October, 2007

So, on Saturday I went to my first Baylor football game since I was an undergrad. The library won a “does your department have spirit” photo contest and we were given 200 tickets to split among us. I figured, since it was free, why not? I mean, sure I don’t like football, but watching the game isn’t really the reason I go to sporting events, it’s to hang out with friends (except tennis matches… I do enjoy watching those, but that might just be because I understand all the rules). So I went. There was also a tailgate party beforehand. MB came with me as my “tailgate date”, and then I sat with her and her friends on the student side. We definitely looked like we were having a better time on our side than where my real seats were supposed to be. We were right next to the band, and as MB and her friends are all ex-band members, I had coaches on what to yell when. So, even though we got slaughtered, and Baylor’s level of play was atrocious, I did have a good time. I don’t think I’ll be running out to buy season tickets any time soon, but it’s OK for once in a while. Plus the fact that I had such a good time yelling with MB and her friends that I yelled myself almost hoarse and didn’t get to do any recording the rest of the weekend, so it’s definitely not something I want to do regularly.

Tissue Box Cover

I also made one of these this weekend. Now, normally, I’m not into these sorts of items. They’re too frou-frou for my taste, but it this case, frou-frou was exactly what I was looking for. I made it as a prank for my office-mate, Eric… in pink yarn with little pastel flecks. I’m just waiting for him to step out of the office for a few minutes so I can slip it onto his tissue box. This all started because he and another guy wrapped everything in the girl across the hall’s office in foil for her birthday a few months ago, and a couple of weeks ago, when we were helping him move his desk around, she found the two boxes of foil in one of his desk drawers and decided to take revenge. I’ve been helping her, because it’s fun. I’m getting a little nervous though, because he hasn’t retaliated yet.

Catching up

By admin

On Wednesday, 22 August, 2007

In audiobooks, family, friends, librivox, public domain, theatre, work

Life’s been pretty busy since my last post (hence no posts since then).

So, first off, I started the new job. It’s been fairly quiet for these first few weeks. The whole first week and part of the second all I did was read, because they’d ordered me a new computer (a nice, shiny new macbook!) and we were waiting for it to arrive. The rest of the second week I spent trying to install Windows and Linux on it (some of the things I’m going to be working with run on Mac, some on Windows and some on Linux, so I have to have all three OS’s). Then I went on vacation for a week, but I did finally get the various operating systems running when I got back. Since then, they’ve slowly been getting me started on some of the things I’m going to be dealing with. Oh, and kind of cool coincidence, one of the first things I worked on was a problem a professor was having with his website, which he was running with wordpress… so this blog? Not just for fun! Actual work related learning experience gained from it! 🙂

Now back to the vacation. I went out to Mum’s for ten days. This is the first time I’d been out there since she moved to Palmdale and Paul brought the family up, so I got to see the new house, and of course, all the family. The times at home were fairly quiet. The boys are sort of between activities right now, so they spend most of their time online or playing video games (sometimes both). Mum and Natalie and I had fun though. Mum and I usually try to get out to the Hollywood Bowl whenever I visit during the summer, and this year Natalie came with us. We got to see South Pacific, with Reba McEntire and Brian Stokes Mitchell. It was awesome! Then a few days later, we went to see Wicked. I’d been wanting to see this since I first found out that the book was being turned into a musical, so I did a quick search to see if the touring company might happen to be in the Los Angeles area during that week, and found that there’s a permanent (well, probably semi-permanent) production at the Pantages! I treated Mum to both shows for her birthday present. Natalie came with us to this one too. They didn’t know anything about Wicked, but they were excited to be getting out of the house for something other than work. On the Friday before I came back Natalie’s daughter Debbie was playing in the orchestra for a community college production of Once Upon This Island, so we went to that too. Needless to say, after South Pacific and Wicked, this was a bit of a letdown. Maybe if we’d seen that one first. 🙂 I mean, it wasn’t terrible, but it was definitely an amateur performance (I like to think that we’re a little pickier about our lead roles at the WCT… but I’m terribly afraid we aren’t always).

I haven’t been doing much outside of work since I got back. Though yesterday was my birthday and I did get taken out for lunch. Apparently, the Preservation people adopt whoever works in the office across the hall from them, regardless of what department they’re in, so Eric and I get included in all they do. It’s fun, and I’m enjoying getting to know that group better. I used to see them some when they were on the first floor, but we’re in much closer proximity here and it’s easier.

Annie opens next weekend at the Civic. I got cast in it, but then I found out that Linda had cast about 60 kids! I told them that I’d just started a new job and we were starting a big project and that I wasn’t sure how much spare time I was going to have in the evenings (all of which is true), so thank you but I was going to have to turn down the part. I will be ushering, though. Beth is playing Miss Hannigan and I’ve heard that she’s hilarious, so I’m looking forward to watching her.

I’m still working on El Dorado for Librivox. It’s an interesting story, but I keep putting off recording because Armand, from whose perspective most of this story is told, is driving me spare. He’s being such an absolute infant that I keep wanting to smack him upside the head. This one’s longer than the other Orczy book I did too, much longer. I originally picked it because it’s the other book they generally use when they’re making a film adaptation, so I know parts of the plot.

Yesssssss!!!

By admin

On Friday, 13 July, 2007

In movies, theatre, work

I got the job!!!

Yes, yes, I know I usually agree with PTerry on multiple exclamation points, but this is a special occasion. 🙂

They finally called me Wednesdy evening to offer me the job. The HR lady who likes me had told me to expect the call, and to pretend to be surprised. So I pretended, and needless to say, I accepted! I’ll be starting Monday week, but I still don’t really know what it’s going to involve… other than some amount of programming. I suppose they’ll get to that eventually.

I went to see HP5 Tuesday night with some friends from the theatre. MB bought the tickets ahead of time, and at the last minute a couple of people had dropped out, so I invited Eileen to come along with us. It was pretty good, considering it was the shortest movie so far – and based on the second longest book. They left out ridiculous amounts of stuff, but what was there was good.

In other news, I’m going to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) at the Hippodrome this Saturday. It’ll be the first time I get to see the Cachinnator act; Don Boscoe is also going to be in it, plus a third guy I don’t know. I’m going with MB… Sherry was up for it, but was going to be out of town that day. Also, we’re finally going to have our Music Man intervention this coming Tuesday. Huzzah!

Come on, just make a decision!

By admin

On Thursday, 5 July, 2007

In theatre, work

So, I still haven’t heard back on the job I interviewed for over a month ago. There’s a lady in HR who likes me and is rooting for me, so she’s been keeping me up to date on where they are. She asked me for one final piece of paperwork this morning, and said it was the last thing they needed before they can make an offer. Needless to say, I had the form in the mail within five minutes of getting her email (I’m just ready for the waiting to be over, either way). She said I might hear by the end of tomorrow. Please, God, let me hear (preferably a job offer and not a “thanks for applying, but…”).

In the meantime, it’s time for One Acts again. Carlos is directing alone this year, as Mark has moved. He asked me to assistant direct for him, as he’s taking classes. I agreed, as long as I get to do lighting design again (I had fun with that last year). I’m going to be in one called For Whom the Southern Bell Tolls, which is a parody of The Glass Menagerie. There were enough women who tried out (who were good) that he didn’t have to double cast, so that’s the only show I’m in this summer. Some of the men did get double-cast, as (as usual) there were fewer men who tried out than women.

No sign of Kelita this year, though Carlos said Jack knew auditions were coming up; if he hadn’t said that, I would have guessed that she hadn’t checked her email in a while. But we’re getting some old friends back – Mandy (for sure) and Larry (if he can). Yay! Haven’t worked with either of them in a couple of years at least.

I’ve been searchin’…

By admin

On Thursday, 7 June, 2007

In librivox, movies, public domain, work

For a job, that is. I haven’t had a whole lot of luck, but I did have an interview here in the library Friday before last. They said that they hoped to have the rest of the interviews done by last Friday and make their decision some time this week. It’s now Thursday and I have yet to hear anything, so I’m starting to lose hope. Still, fingers crossed until I know for certain.

I finally finished Tales from Shakespeare on LibriVox, which I’d been working on since March. I didn’t remember them being so dry and dull. The only way I got through was by bribing myself with reading a chapter in a new project every time I managed to finish one of the Tales. The two projects I bribed myself with were What Katy Did at School, which I’ve since finished, and Anne of Green Gables, which I’m about two thirds of the way through. I’m planning on doing another of the Scarlet Pimpernel books next; I’m leaning toward El Dorado, the one where they rescue the Dauphin.

We had a SKVE meeting on Monday and watched How to Steal a Million with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole. So now we have several new quotes on our SKVE board. And let me just say that Peter O’Toole was hot back then! 🙂 We still need to have our SKVE Music Man intervention with Regan and Melissa, because we never did get our schedules worked out during Mattress, and they can’t keep going through life without having seen Music Man!

At a loose end…

By admin

On Wednesday, 16 May, 2007

In theatre, work

The show ended last Sunday, and now I’m feeling at a bit of a loose end. This is normal; it’ll take me at least a week to get used to it. This is the first show I was in where we had to have stand-ins for three different actors (as opposed to understudies, who are prepared to take over from the beginning of the run). In each case, it was illness in the family of the actor that pulled them away from the show. There was a rumour running around that someone mentioned the name of the Scottish play early on in rehearsals, and that’s why we had so many problems; others said it hadn’t actually been mentioned, just talked about without using the name. Lise mentioned something about “reverse luck” or “reverse superstition”; I can’t remember her exact phrasing, but the idea was that we’d been really careful to observe all the usual theatrical superstitions, such as not whistling in the theatre, not mentioning the name of the Scottish play, etc, and still ended up with awful luck.
We had one fabulous audience the second weekend, that was everything one could wish for in an audience; responsive, not afraid to laugh aloud, enthusiastic… and, of course, every audience after that seemed a let-down (though there was one that would have seemed dull even without that comparison. Good grief, it was like pulling teeth to get any sort of reaction out of them!).

I’ve pretty much given up trying to find a grown-up job in Waco. I heard back (unofficially) on one of the two remaining applications I had in at Baylor, that it had been offered to someone else. So, since most of the family is now in So. Cal. (Alondra and the boys moved up to join Paul and Mum last weekend!) and not planning on moving to OK, as they had been for a while, I’ve started applying for jobs in the Pacific states, to be closer to them. I’ve been looking at jobs in universities in Washington, Oregon and Northern California. I always did say that if I ended up leaving Waco, I’d like to move somewhere with a cooler climate. I’ve got four applications in so far, and that’s just in Washington, some in teaching and some in IT. We’ll see how it goes.

Man, what a Friday!

By admin

On Sunday, 1 April, 2007

In random, work

It all started around quarter to nine when the power went out across most of campus. We could hear sirens of some sort going past fairly close, and there was a rumour flying that someone had knocked over a pole… but then we heard that the fire-engines and EMTs were over at the SLC… so who knows. They never did announce what had caused the problem (the PTB’s at BU aren’t terribly good with communication).

So, we just sat in the dark at the ref desk and chatted and listened to my radio (thank goodness the batteries which have been in there for the past… ooh… three years? at least! still worked!). Not that there was any relevant news on, so we just listened to the oldies station. For an hour and a half. In the dark.

As if that weren’t enough to make the day weird, just as I was getting my stuff together to go home (that would have been right around 4:30pm), the tornado sirens went off, and we were all ordered into the basement. I grumbled,Â but I went.

There was a small group of us standing around grumbling by the door to the stairwell, when we saw one of the downstairs staff members heading out the door. E asked her why she was leaving, and she said they’d had a tv on in the back, and the tornado was down near Moody (south of our area, and way south of home, for me).

Well, that decided us; it was time for us to go home, and darned if we were going to stay for a tornado that was down in Moody! But we weren’t as brave as L, to leave through the front door, so we snuck round the back, and took the service stairs up to the first floor, and then started across to our building… but our unit leader was at the circulation desk! Darn it! So back into the stairwell and up to the second floor, then across the breezeway to our building and down and out our front door! Phew! Man, we should have been spies! We would have aced the covertness tests… except for the giggling.

Anyway, it took me about twenty minutes to get home (five minutes usually), because the freeway was clogged, and I decided to take a shortcut, which also ended up having fairly heavy traffic. But still, home safe, if a little damp. We may not have had any tornadoes in my area, but it was raining pretty good! The lawn between my building and the next was turning into a lake; the drainage ditch outside the complex had overflowed its banks, as had the Brazos; and my apartment windows got a good rinse, because at times, the water was falling horizontally (this despite the three foot overhang of the roof).

I kept the tv on the weather reports most of the evening, just to be certain, but all we got in my area was thunder, lightning and rain. And that was plenty, let me tell you.

Sadly, the bad weather meant that rehearsal got cancelled, and we also decided to reschedule our SKVE night/intervention. Just as well, I suppose. With so much water on the roads (even after the storm passed), it was safer not to be driving on them.

As if to mock the previous day, yesterday was gorgeous! And today’s shaping up to be more of the same. It’s like Nature had a hissy fit on Friday, then took a nap and woke up all sunshine and smiles.

I hate stress!

By admin

On Monday, 12 June, 2006

In school, theatre, work

So far, this summer has been pretty awful. We’ll start with classes.

So, I’m three classes away from graduating, and I was hoping I’d be able to take two classes in the summer (one each session), and just one in the fall, mainly because tuition is cheaper in the summer, so I’d have less tax to pay on it. Well, come registration time, I find that the IS department wasn’t offering any graduate level classes second summer session. Well, fine! So I registered for one class in the summer (one that I wasn’t particularly interested in, but I didn’t have much choice), and two in the fall. A few weeks later, I went in to print out a copy of my schedule, and I noticed that it was only showing one class for the fall. What the heck!? I went looked for the missing class in registration and it was gone! Poof! They’d cancelled it and not even had the decency to send out an email letting people know! So I’m looking around for a class to replace that one and in the meantime I email the professor who was teaching my summer class to see if he’d send me the reading list so I could start trying to get the books. He emails me back and tells me that he doesn’t think the class is going to make, because I’m the only person registered for it. *scream* So I’m down two classes, and it’s looking like I might not graduate in December. Well, I finally decided that I would switch my one remaining fall class to the summer (it was being offered both times) so I’d at least have a summer class and could give myself a bit of time to try to figure out what to do about the two other classes I needed. I finally found another class in the fall that I hadn’t already taken, and then I decided to email the professor of the fall class that got cancelled (happened to be Java), to see if he’d be willing to teach it as an independent study. I still haven’t heard back from the man. So instead, I asked the professor who’s teaching my summer class if he’d be willing to do it, and he agreed, so I’m finally back to my three classes, and I’m actually doing what I’d originally planned; two classes in the summer, and one in the fall! But good grief, the stress involved in getting to that point!

Next stresser? Well, the powers that be at the library decided that it would be a good idea to consolidate the three reference points (and the reference collections) into one central location. Ok, fine, that would probably be a good idea, if we actually had an area in the library big enough to house all three reference collections. But since we don’t, and parts of the reference collections are still going to be scattered around the library, it makes no sense to me. But they didn’t ask my opinion, so I guess it doesn’t count. (Can you tell I’m vaguely annoyed by this whole thing?) Anyway, as soon as I got back from vacation, I was told to pack up all my stuff and bring all the departmental supplies to the supply person downstairs. We then sat in our offices for over a week, waiting for the IT people to get around to moving our computers (why we weren’t allowed to move them ourselves, I’ll never know). The move itself was stressful enough, but having to sit in clutter for a week while we waited to move was worse! So last Friday we finally got to move, and I’ve lost my lovely windows (I had two walls made of windows in my last office) and now I have to share one window with three other people and I’m not even the one closest to it and I’ve no privacy and… well, I keep telling myself I’m graduating in December. I still have no idea what’s going to happen to my student workers. At one point they said they were going to be shifted to the departments that are taking over responsibility for the journals and reference collection that were left upstairs; then on Friday I was told to email them and tell them to check in downstairs from now on. I wish they’d make up their minds so I can tell them something definite. My students who aren’t working this summer know absolutely nothing about what’s going on. Grr! Ok, enough ranting for now.

On a more pleasant note, I’m going to be directing the melodrama (The Drunkard) at the theatre this summer. Auditions are this weekend and the show goes up July 21st – 23rd. It’s my directorial debut, and it should be a fun show. It’s a small cast of only five people, which is generally lots of fun. I’ll keep posting on how it goes!

Back to the old grind…

By admin

On Wednesday, 24 August, 2005

In family, school, theatre, work

Well, that’s summer over. Two more classes under my belt, and just six to go before I finish my masters. Yay! If all goes well, I’ll just have to endure one more Texas summer! I really, really want to move somewhere cooler when I finish.

Just got back from vacation. Second day back at work, today. I spent a week in California with my mother. Among other things, we went to the Hollywood Bowl and saw their production of Camelot. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that they had Jeremy Irons in the role of Arthur. Very, very cool. Needless to say, there were a whole lot more people there that day than the time I went to see Regina Carter.

Now I’m just trying to get through Seussical. Hmm… that makes it sound like it’s a complete drag, but it’s not. I’m having a great time, it’s just that it’s very time consuming, and I’m always tired. I guess it doesn’t help that I’m both stage managing and acting in it. Still, just a week and a half more of rehearsals and then we open. Scary thought! Should be a really good show.

Fridays rock!

By admin

On Friday, 8 April, 2005

In work

I would just like to say, “IT’S FRIDAY! WOOHOO!” Dances around the library like a crazy person. At least there aren’t any patrons in right now.

Just needed to get that out of my system. For some reason, while this week has gone by fairly quickly and it hasn’t been a bad week, each day has seemed to drag on forever and I’m just glad it’s finally over.

Going to a conference tomorrow morning and while I am looking forward to it, and to spending time with the friend I’m going with, there’s just something… unholy? Yeah, that’s a good word for it, unholy about having to set the alarm to get up early on a Saturday.

Random quote of the day:
“When I see a spade I call it a spade.”
“I’m glad to say I have never seen a spade.”
From Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest