Well, maybe today was just not meant to be a good one. Lets start with the fact that today was the first ten-out-of-twelve (10/12) for “A Christmas Story.” It is very slow going with all the kids and the fact that every 2 pages of script we are moving all kinds of scenery. It will probably end up being a fun show, but right now it is slooooowwww. We have run into some funky problems and technical issues, it happens. At least I will cash out on the overtime!

So, move forward in the day and Ruth is home preparing a nice dinner when the drain pipe for the washing machine (which we don’t have yet) started to overflow. Turns out that it was clogged and when the new neighbors (who just moved in yesterday) ran their washing machine. I am sure that is was a lot worse for them in the water everywhere department, especially since they probably had stuff in boxes on the floor and such, having just moved in.

Needless to say, the flooding put a big halt on the dinner prep activities and delayed Ruth from getting everything in the oven by about 45 minutes. So, I get home on my break at a little after five and started the mashed potatoes and the extra stuffing. Yeah, we were making more turkey because we felt like the Jones family Thanksgiving was a little bit of a let-down.

So, I worked away on the details while Ruth was out rehearsing her show. Things just continued to go wrong. First, as I was boiling the potatoes, I smelled something burning. Well, I figured that it was just something in the burner pan, and ignored it. At the time, there was no smoke or anything. Then I turned around again and there was a fire on my electric stove. So, I moved my opt to another burner and smothered the flames out.

I got the potatoes finished and cleaned up from the fire and got the dishwasher running. Ruth got home around six and we just started on the last details of dinner. Now, the little thermometer in the turkey had not popped yet, and we don’t own a meat thermometer. The cookbook said to cook for almost an hour more than we had so far. So, we waited. Waited until I had about ten minutes before I had to go back to the theatre. We cut open the turkey and it looked cooked, so we cut it up.

I had to rush through dinner and get back to the theatre, and I was late. I felt, and still fell really bad for Ruth who spent so much time and effort working on dinner that I had to rush through. She was also the one who had to deal with the flooding and everything, so it was really a rough day for her. I wish that there was something that I could have done to make things work out. I don’t know what I would do without Ruth, and I just feel bad about the dinner. I did get her today’s woot! shirt, which I think will make her happy. She is off doing our laundry now, and again, what would I do without her?

So, it was a crappy day, here’s to tomorrow being better.

Thanksgiving is in two days, and once again I won’t be able to be with my family due to the crazy schedule here at the theatre. We work tomorrow (Wednesday), pretty much all day day. I have a production meeting in the morning and then we have dry tech in the evening. We are back at it again on Friday. So even though we do have Thanksgiving day off, it would be completely impractical and amazingly expensive to go visit the family.

I don’t really understand why the schedule is laid out this way. In fact due to the layout we end up working on two University holidays, the day after Thanksgiving and New Years Day. It seems to me, in these times of tight budgets and whatnot, that it would not make sense to bring everyone in to work when you have to pay them overtime. Also, we knew that “A Christmas Story” would be a big seller at the box office, we are getting close to sold out. It would seem to me that if we ran it for an extra week (taking Christmas off) that it would make a lot more sense and alleviate at least one of the holidays we are supposed to work on.

On the other hand, some of my family is coming to visit me the week after Thanksgiving, which will be nice. As my mother said, we don’t need a holiday to get together and be thankful. I won’t be running the show, so I will actually have the time to spend with them. We might go skiing, we might head down to souther Utah and do some hiking, it will all depend on the weather.