So, I got the call from CalArts regarding the job that I went out there to interview for.  After calling all of my references it sounded like they had narrowed down their search to two candidates, myself and one other person.  When they called this morning I was in our bi-annual “State of the Theatre” meeting.  We are in OK shape, and our artistic director has announced his retirement for the end of next season.

That being said, I called back CalArts and they told me that I was their second choice.  They made their offer to the other person.  Of course if the other person doesn’t take the offer or doesn’t work out, I am the next on the list.  They really liked me, but they felt the other person edged me out.  They said I am on their short list, and that they hope to maintain a relationship with me.

Thankfully for me I am not broken up about this, I am in a job that I enjoy and I am happy here.  I also later found out (from our family friend who is on the board of trustees at CalArts) that the main reason they didn’t offer me the job was my lack of formal educational experience (teaching experience).  That is a good thing to know, and it was something I was concerned about.

So, there it is.  At least for now I will still be at PTC in SLC, so come see our shows!

Today was one of the longest days and it was totally overwhelming.  The day really started last night after the show when we had to fix a moving light and some other cabling issues.  I had to totally strip apart one of the revolutions and re-build it, but it seems to be better now.  When all was said and done I think I arrived home around 1AM.  I had to get up at 5AM to get ready for the flight out to California to go to CalArts for a tour and interview.

The logistics of getting to CalArts were certainly interesting.  Flying into Burbank from Salt Lake City is not an easy thing to do.  The flight out today was routed through Oakland, which is about an hour out of the way plus layover.  So, I arrive in Oakland to find that there is an earlier flight to Burbank that is about to leave.  I ask the agent if there are seats available and If I could get on that flight.  Answer: “Sure, but it will cost like $100.”  Ummmm… Hello!  You have empty seats on a flight to the same destination and I have a ticket but I can’t get on the early flight without more money?  That is dumb!  Forget all this TSA crap, they don’t make flying a pain, it is the airlines!

Anyway, I resigned myself to the layover waiting and rustled up some food.  Not a bad idea.  Then I get a call from the people at CalArts about who is picking me up.  I had thought that it was going to be my friend from Ithaca who is here in the MFA program, which is what I had been told.  This was apparently news to the woman coordinating the logistics, which instilled some moments of panic on her part, but all got sorted out and the original plan went through.

After being picked up I had lunch with one of the lighting design faculty and we got to chatting about the job and such.  Informal, relaxed, good way to do things.  First impressions, these would probably be good people to work with/for.  After lunch I got the first of a couple tours of the day and then I got to meet the person who is temporarily filling this position.  Nice kid, just graduated from the MFA program who really wants to get back to pursuing his design career.  Learned a lot about what the job is about and how the day-to-day stuff happens.

The theatre program and the school in general are very intriguing to me.  As they kept putting it, it is a little arts school.  They are making their decisions on acceptance based on portfolio, they don’t really look at test scores and such.  So, the school is full of very “artsy” students.  Nothing wrong with that, just a different atmosphere.  The program is also basically design focused, with tech being something that they know the students need, but not a focus.

What does this mean for me and the position?  Well, the position seems to probably be about 70% management, supervising and logistics, 15% teaching, and 15% hands on.  Probably nothing that I can’t handle, though when I really started to think about it, my lack of formal training in education daunted me.  When i mentioned this to the production manager/Assoc. Dean he said that they don’t mind this as they treat real-world experience with a lot of respect and hope that I can find a meaningful way to pass that on.

In my adventures around campus with the staff and with my friend I got to meet a few of the students and go to dinner with some of the MFA lighting students.  They all seem to be having a good time here.  They took me to a performance of their current show “La Ronde.”  Quite an interesting show, but they certainly have some fun and interesting technology.

After quite a long day I made it back to the hotel and am about ready to crash.  I have been totally overwhelmed by the events of the day.  This certainly would be a fun and interesting job.  I think that I would probably do well here.  I am concerned about leaving PTC in the middle of the season and I am concerned about being able to move here on the short timeframe that they are looking at.  I know, I have yet to be offered the job, but thinking about all these things is a little stressful.  This is quite the big, life-changing kind of decision.  I am not even sure that I have the time to think this over.  Just knowing that I am one of three final candidates puts on a lot of pressure.

Well, being excited and overwhelmed and overtired means that I will probably sleep very well tonight.  I am sure that tomorrow will be another long day before I even get on the plane back to Salt Lake City.  If any of you out there have insight, words of wisdom, or thoughts, please, let me know.

This is the post where I am going to tell about the secret project I mentioned a few times, but that is going to be towards the end of the post…. (just to keep you reading)

Some of you may have drifted by the blog in the last couple weeks and wondered where I have been.  Some of you probably couldn’t care less, and those of you who actually know me probably spent the last two weeks in the same building as me for the duration of said two weeks.  Such is the life of theatre people, when we get into full swing on a show, well, there is nothing else in the rest of the world.  Heck, i didn’t even participate in this past month’s Bloggerstock event because I didn’t have time.  Speaking of which, we really need to come up with a topic for this month and I don’t want it to be something cliche about the holidays.

Right, holidays.  Today is the seventh day of Hanukkah, that means that tonight is the last night.  So for those of you who don’t actually know what that means, tonight we light eight candles (unless you follow the traditions of Shamai instead of Hillel) in celebration of the eighth day.  I have been keeping my menorah in the booth at the theatre.  I thought that it was appropriate as we are working on the nice Christmas musical written by a good Jewish boy, Irving Berlin.  The man was smart, he knew what would sell and he capitalized on it!  White Christmas was bound to sell way more tickets than White Hanukkah would, though you probably could write a similar story about either.  The show is far from dominated by Christmas related songs.

The show.  Well, this production is certainly one of the biggest of the season, it might be the second largest.  I have a feeling that Sunset Boulevard will be bigger in many respects.  However, as I wrote before, this show is so big, it doesn’t really fit in the space.  I can’t remember working on a show here at PTC that had so many issues as we were going through tech and into opening.  I mean even during Les Mis when things just started to fall apart, we made it pretty well into the run first.  Most of the early issues we had with that show were due to operator error or oversight.  This show on the other hand, well it never really worked right until last night.

From day one of tech, after three weeks in the shop and $350 of repairs my moving light that died during Hamlet was returned to us and we promptly discovered that it was not fixed.  At this point I went to the other repair shop in town, and while it took four trips down there and ordering a part that we didn’t actually need, they fixed it.  Turned out to be something so simple that I am kicking myself for not noticing.  One of the fans that cools off the lamp housing was broken and a bunch of the wiring had begun to melt together.  All things considered this is something that should have been noticed by the first shop tech when they had the fixture for three weeks.  Whatever, it seems to be fixed now and we are happy.  During the fiasco while we were in tech, all it did was serve to stress me out.

Then we had Thanksgiving.  Once again, the holiday fell right in the middle of our tech schedule which is a mixed blessing.  We only get one day off, so there would be no visiting my family, but luckily I have a girlfriend with a wonderful family who was happy to add me to their festivities.  There was one stipulation by one of her cousins though and that was that I make my chocolate-butterscotch pudding pie.  Well, not only did I make that pie, I made a gluten free pie for one of the aunts (the host of the festivities), I made a chocolate free pie for Ruth’s mother, and one other pie for a total of four pudding pies.  Needless to say, between Ruth’s father’s deep fried turkey and my pies, Thanksgiving was quite a hit.  Ruth also made some home-made hummus that went very well (I am not a big hummus person, but everyone else like it) and her brother made a blue velvet pomegranate cake that has become a family favorite.  Lots of good food, as it should be.

The next day we were back to work bright and early to try and keep up with the demands of our eccentric and stubborn lighting designer.  This was a day that I won’t forget for a while as somehow I managed to injure my left knee while, of all things, I was walking up the stairs to the stage.  I can’t remember what actually happened, or if I tripped, I just remember getting to the top of the stairs and being in pain.  My knee felt like it was popping when i tried to extend it fully and it really hurt.  I was literally floored by it.  My crew managed to get me off the stage and into the house where I spent most of the rest of the day on the floor, icing my knee.

“Why didn’t you go to the ER?” I hear you ask.  Well, it turns out that one of my crewtons is good friends with an Orthopedic Surgeon who also happens to be the head doctor at Snowbird.  We had been introduced last year and skied together, but I didn’t know at the time that he was a doctor.  In any case, we called him and I described the injury and he said that it wasn’t worth the ER trip.  Do what I was doing and follow the principles of RICE and then see him on Monday.  Of course after seeing him, he wants to get an MRI because he can’t make a definitive diagnosis based on the exam he did.  This is fine with me save for now trying to get workman’s comp to OK the scan.  Yeah, exciting.  The good news is that he thinks it is just a torn meniscus, and this could probably be fixed and healed in time for me not to miss the entire ski season.

So, now I am hobbling around the theatre not able to climb ladders and barely able to do my job.  Then we run into yet more snafus.  The network node that is our main control output for the lighting system seems to have died.  I spent a day trying to cobble the system back together into a workable state.  We did it, but it sure isn’t pretty.  I tried getting in touch with the manufacturer but they have yet to respond.  I did get int touch with the competition, who happen to have some of these nodes stashed under a desk in the factory, so they are sending me one at no charge.  I don’t know how to thank them for that.  We will hopefully be back in operation at full capacity by the end of this week.

To cap off things with the show, my grandparents came in for a visit on opening weekend.  They got to see the show on opening night, which was one of the better performances of the weekend and I got to visit with them before they head to Israel for the better part of the winter.  It was nice to get to seem them as I was not able to join my family for Thanksgiving.  In some ways, not being able to ski on account of my knee made it a lot less of a dilemma on spending time with them or skiing!  We had a good weekend together.

So, the last major thing.  This probably could deserve it’s own post and may get one in the next couple days.  I applied for a position at CalArts, they are looking for an Electrics Department Supervisor.  I didn’t want to talk about it here before I told my boss at the theatre.  I wasn’t really looking for jobs, this one just happened across my desk and it seemed like an opportunity that should not be passed up.  At the time, things were moving slow with their process, but now they actually are flying me out there for an in-person interview.  It is both exciting and nerve racking at the same time.  I think that I job like this could be a step in the right direction for me, I will certainly know more after I go there to visit.  Working in the educational arena is something that I have thought of for a while and this would probably be a great way in to that.  So, as things move along with this I will keep you all updated.

Yup, that is where I have been, stressed out, tired, injured, baking, and going to California.  By the way, what day is it?

There are nights that we finish up work at the theatre early and we head out to some local place to hang out with the crew.  Sometimes we head over to The Pie, which is a great pizza place right around the corner where they serve heart-attack-on-a-plate (basically more cheese than you have ever seen even on an extra cheese pizza).  Sometimes The Bayou, which is a great bar with the longest beer list in the state: Beervana!  And when we have the young-uns but still want a drink we often hit up Squatters, a local brewery and restaurant.

So, why do I tell you this?  It all has to do with a keeping up morale.  My personal philosophy has always been that you should be happy doing whatever it is that you do.  It has always seemed so strange to me that people go off into the world and take jobs or positions that they don’t really enjoy.  It seems even stranger the people who go through all of their schooling studying things that don’t really make them happy or excited.  I know that not everyone does this, but it seems to me that a lot of people do.

In my line of work, theatre, there are very few of us that are doing this for the money.  Most of us are in this business because we love doing it.  I think the same goes for most people who work in fields like education as well.  We find the jobs exciting and rewarding, and even on the long and hard days that we don’t feel motivated to do anything, we still do it.  There are definitely days that I would rather be at work than sitting at home, even if there isn’t much to do.

There are a few things that I tell all the people who I hire to work for me.  Most of these people are college age and recent post college age.  First of all, I tell them what I just stated: “If you are not having fun doing what you are doing (whatever that may be) then you are doing the wrong thing.”  I want to see people here who want to be here and enjoy the work that we do.  it makes people much more productive when they are excited about coming to work.  So, I try to make sure that I always provide an atmosphere that encourages that kind of excitement.

Second, I tell them that if they are not having fun while we are working, let me know.  I realize that we can’t be chipper and happy all the time, 24/7/365.  It is just impossible.  Everyone has off days, people get tired and start to burn out and get snappy.  However, I do my best to make sure that we don’t get too far down that road, and I hope that my crewtons will let me know when we do.  Whenever we drift that way I can feel our efficiency slip and many times we will get to a point where we are better off calling it a day and coming back later to finish things up (unless we need to meet a deadline).

So, how do I keep my people happy.  Well, I try to really establish a family atmosphere.  We get to the point over a season where we know how everyone works and we work very well together.  If people get edgy we figure out how to work with it.  Sometimes people just need a break.  However one of the most effective things to keep people happy is good and drink.  So, we go out and enjoy when we can.  I try to go out with my crews and have some fun at least once every show.  It is usually pretty effective.  I am also hoping to be able to organize a group paintball game after we open the last show.  All things that help us bond and gel and keep everyone happy.

Be happy about what you do, enjoy work or school.  If you are not enjoying what you are doing, do something different.  Try a new sport or a different class or even a whole different job!

What do you do to keep your job or school exciting?

The impetus for this post comes from a discussion on the topic over at 20SB that was started by Heather over at A lust for Words.  Also of note, I wrote this post yesterday and held it for today, just because.  Much of the text is is the same as the response that I posted in the discussion linked to above.

By now I would imagine that most Americans know that the Health Care Reform bill was passed.  The question on most people’s minds seems to be: “Is this a good thing?”  While I am pretty sure that this bill does not fix all the issues in the current system I do think that it is a step in the right direction.  It is unfortunate that we have not made the dramatic changes that really need to be made (like just throwing out the current system all together), but maybe we will get there eventually.

People are concerned with a number of things that this bill may effect.  One being the drive for medical students to become general practitioners going away.  Why?  Well, as with all things American, money.  Heaven forbid our doctors can’t have their second homes and sailboats.  Another concern is the cost to the public.  Isn’t that cost worth your health though?  It has to be less than needing to go to the doctor when you don’t have insurance.

We, as Americans, have dug ourselves into this hole.  Healthcare is expensive because of the insurance companies.  Doctors and hospitals make lots of money because they know that the people are not paying for it, the insurance companies are.  In some cases there are clear double standards where the people who are uninsured get larger bills than the people who are insured for the same procedures.  It will ultimately cost you more to go without insurance if you ever need serious medical treatment that it would to buy government subsidized insurance.  Of all the things that my tax dollars could be used for, keeping people healthy seems to be on of the better choices.  Certainly better than fighting pointless overseas wars simply on the basis that the USA has a bigger penis.

The real question is this: “Why are we so resistant to actually changing to a universal health care model?”  I mean seriously, it seems to work very well in the countries that do.  Would it really be so bad to kill off some of the insurance companies and HMOs who are guilty of creating the issues that plague the system now?  I suppose one of the questions is whether people in this country think of  health care as a right or a privilege.  Frankly I think that people should have the right to lead a healthy life no matter what their financial status.

Reforms like this have some of the same principles as the health care benefits offered by many of this nation’s [labor] unions.  Many unions offer a health care pool, every member of the union pays in X% each month and is therefore covered.  Every member pays the same percentage no matter how many jobs they are working or how much money they make.  On the flip side though, a member of the union cannot forego the union coverage in favor of private insurance even if the private insurance is better coverage and cheaper because of the obligation to the other members of the union and the communal pool.  So, the union would let you get private insurance as long as you still paid your insurance percentage to the union pool.  As I understand it, this is pretty similar to how most universal health systems work, you can elect to get private coverage to make up the deficit in what the government covers, but you are still required to pay into the communal pool.

I happen to have been lucky in that I got a job that has great benefits, but I see many of my friends who are worried about getting even the slightest bit sick because they can’t afford to see a doctor let alone buy a prescription drug if they needed to.  How is this OK?

If you don’t currently carry insurance, what value do you place on your health?  Without insurance I would imagine you probably don’t regularly visit the doctor or go to the dentist.  So, is your health only worth something to you when you are ill or injured?

As a member of the 20SB community I think that it is important to recognize that this reform does a lot for the twenty-somethings who are in college or just trying to star making it on their own.  It mandates that non-dependent children can continue to be covered under their parent’s health care plans until the age of 26, which is three more years than currently available.  This is a great thing for people, especially right now when it is hard to find a good job with good benefits.

So where does this leave us?  The system is still not perfect.  In the end it sounds like it won’t really affect people like me who have good coverage at a decent price already.  Some argue that the people on the low end of the totem-pole may be “tricked” into thinking they are covered for things that they are not, but maybe a little education for such people would be in order.  In fact I am sure that a little education for the American populace as a whole on the subject of health care would be a good thing.  I believe that most Americans blindly stumble through life in this country without really having an understand of what is going on.  I probably fall into that category myself every now and then.

It may not be the best step or the best foot forward, but it is a step in the right direction I think.  Change can’t happen overnight, we are probably one of the most stubborn nations on the planet.  It is that stubborn-ness that founded this country in the first place.  I suppose we shall have to see how it goes and if we continue to make some progress.