Well, this post has been a long time coming.  One might even say four years in the making, though I have also delayed writing it for a few weeks.  Of what am I talking you ask?  Well, over the holidays Ruth (my girlfriend of four years) and I got engaged.  As a box in a box under her grandmother’s Christmas tree is where she found the ring.  Everyone was pretty excited, especially her grandmother, who thought it was wonderful that I decided to “pop the question” in her home.

The reason that I have not posted about it before now was that we wanted to make sure that our closest friends and family heard from us and not from our blogs or Facebook.  Just remember who we needed to call was not the easiest thing to do.

So, now we have begun the amazingly difficult process of planning a wedding.  It is going to be a lot of work and a lot of pulling hair, but I think it will end up being a lot of fun.  We created a website for us where we will try to keep track of the process and keep our friends and family up to date.  That can be found at http://wedding.ruthandalex.info.

That is about all I have at the moment. More soon I am sure.

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?

We are working on what will probably turn out to be the second largest show of the season at the theatre and it has got everyone at the end of their rope.  The show is Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, the wonderful christmas musical by the good Jewish boy.  Smart guy, capitalizing on the prevailing American culture!  Probably wouldn’t sell as many tickets to a show called “White Chanukkah…”

That being said, the show is amazingly huge, and will look great, but we are working with two of the most stubborn designers.  I like them both, but when they get their minds set on what they want, there is no room to negotiate.  So, there really isn’t enough room for all the lights and scenery in the air.  In fact, we had to move an entire electric last night to hopefully make room for one piece of scenery.

So, going in to work can be an adventure.  People are stressed out and snarky including myself.  Many are just tired, the scene shop actually worked an extra day, coming in on a Saturday.  It is amazing how much blood, sweat and tears go into the shows that we build only to be destroyed four weeks from now.  Such is the life of theatre.

I had hope that this week I would be able to spend more time with Ruth before she has to work on The Nutcracker since her show closed this past weekend.  Doesn’t look like that is really going to happen.  It certainly was not a great week for her family, though her show closed on what I thought was a pretty good note.  Hay Fever was an excellent show, and for any locals who didn’t see it, you missed out.  I went to closing night with Ruth’s sister, and we just about died laughing at points.  It was very well done.

I have another “project” that I have been working on that I mentioned once before that I still don’t think it is the right time to blather all over the internet about.  in any case, it is starting to become a lot more real and with that sitting on my plate it is just one more thing that I am concerned about.  I think that the time to really talk about this will come sooner rather than later, I just want to make sure that the right people know at the appropriate time.

The other thing that I really need to do is learn the Haftorah for this week.  I am supposed to read it at temple this coming Shabbat.  I can already stumble through it, so it should be that hard to get it down.  Lots going on and seemingly not enough time.

I couldn’t really come up with a better title.  I had ideas for posts this week and now none of them seem worth writing about or inspiring or something.  It is quite possible that the recent events of the evening had an effect on that.  I had been thinking about writing something about election day, but that didn’t happen.  It would have been something about how I don’t really know enough about local politics to make educated decisions, though I know that there is too much religious influence on politics here.

Then I thought that I could write about how I ought to start my own Apple-Fix-it service business.  When it comes down to it, though I am not an Apple Certified technician or an Apple “Genius,” I am very good at fixing both software and hardware issues with Macs.  This week I was commissioned to help migrate one of my co-workers to a new machine.  A relatively easy task, all things considered.  Swapping out hard drives and optical drives on the old iBook G4s on the other other hand, is quite the project.  I like working on computers, it is fun, and it is always very satisfying when everything gets fixed.

I had also considered writing about how I think that it is so strange that here in Utah everyone celebrated Halloween a day early, because heaven forbid that anything should happen on a Sunday.  I get that some people justify it as a “school night,” but if you are over 18 and out of high school, there is no excuse.  Then, to top it off, since I totally forgot that Utahans are crazy, I didn’t have any candy for the first time since I moved into this apartment that I actually had trick-or-treat’ers.  Go figure.  I felt really dumb having to tell kids that I didn’t have anything to give them.

I could also have written about life at the theatre and how we just finished Dracula and are moving on to White Christmas. The show went well and people enjoyed it.  In other theatre news, Ruth’s show, Hay Fever, opened on a very high note.  It is great fun and I would encourage anyone in the area to go see it.

I could have written about all of those things, but my mind isn’t quite with any of them anymore.  While I was sitting around at home, killing time before strike, I decided that I would bake some cupcakes.  Now, when I say cupcakes, I really mean mini cakes, because we have the really cute tube-pans that are really fun to make “cup-cakes” in.  As I was about to start pouring the batter I get a phone call from Ruth’s mother.  Her grandfather, who has been very ill, was in the hospital and she wanted Ruth to come up after the show.  She wanted me to go up and tell Ruth because we thought that would be better than a phone call.

So, I rushed up to the theatre to make sure that I was there when her show ended.  This meant that I actually left the oven and the TV on in my apartment.  Yeah, I know it isn’t the safest thing to do, but it was important.  At least I hadn’t put the cakes in the oven before I had to run out the door, that would have just turned into a charred smelly mess.  I did still manage to burn things when I finally got home after strike and baked the cakes.  Some of the batter rose over the sides of the pan and burned in the bottom of the oven.

It has been a long week.  At least I get an extra hour of sleep tonight!