more miscellany

things you don't often hear fron conductors
"I don't know what that instrument is, but could you play it louder?"

what all that kale looked like

(click through for notes)

for reference, those are full-size bell peppers; I had to stand on a chair to get the full shot.

more things the cats have destroyed
makeup brushes, which were somehow extracted from my zipped makeup bag and thereupon drooled all over
about 30 q-tips, pulled from a not-quite-closed bathroom drawer, drooled upon, and scattered throughout the bathroom and hallway
cotton balls, likewise
bathroom rug, repeatedly
bathroom towels, not destroyed but climbed upon and coated in cat hair
my sanity, increasingly

what I'm yearning for lately
another thanksgiving furlough

how I only partially missed halloween


I didn't dress up this year -- until the last minute, I thought I'd be working all three nights of halloween weekend -- but a certain someone and I did at least pick and carve pumpkins. I think I like his better. it's sly. plus, the face of mine (on the left) is very obviously rotting at the bottom. we can't all be beautiful all the time, I suppose.

rehearsal notes, etc.

serious issues discussed in the production meeting for hansel & gretel
the relative size and color of cuckoo feathers versus partridge feathers
bubbling sinks
the logistics of getting crew members to physically hold up a set wall mid-show

things I've discovered my cats eating, chewing, or otherwise destroying in the past week
newspapers
my bike tires
my bike pedals
thumbtacks off the wall
the carpet
the fuzzy throw on my futon

ways I was a big girl on my 30-mile bike ride yesterday, because sometimes you have to celebrate small milestones
I rode on the street
WITH CARS
I remembered how to ride no-hands
I crossed several major streets without falling off my bike or getting run over
I rode on a really big street. with cars!
I lost my way 3 times, biked off onto 3 small adventures, and then resumed my journey

oh by the way
I forgot to tell you I bought a bike back in September.



Portland is simultaneously the nicest place to bike -- because it's so bike-friendly -- and the scariest, because everybody and their grandma is a cyclist and I haven't been on a bike in 5 years. Of course there's that stupid tired old cliche about how you never forget, and while that's true in the vague sense, you sure do forget how to turn properly, steer, or angle your pelvis so your butt doesn't turn to hamburger. Fortunately I remembered how to do these things now, mostly.

excerpts from the rehearsal notes from hansel & gretel
"could the jello be taller?"

"thanks for the beads today -- they saved rehearsal. thankfully, no one tried to eat them."

"Super Maggie is the cake car driver."

"The cake car makes horrible squealing sounds when rolling around."

"Could we try 2 nasal aspirators full of glitter?"

"Please ADD a child's head in a plastic bag for the Act 3 refrigerator dressing."

"One of the kids is dropped to the ground by the Witch. This explains some of the previously existing dents."

"Please give the lard some weight."

"The hand with the removable finger has broken."

maybe the best rehearsal note ever, from our 2005 Tosca:
"The main curtain was blowing upstage, hitting the writing desk at the end of act II, the desk in act III, and causing the dead Cavaradossi to come alive to pull his arm upstage before the final curtain hit."

what stress can do for you
last Thursday (day 29) I ran a 6:46 mile. (no. 16). I wasn't even trying.

bread crumbs

I walked in to this late last week.



they're the gingerbread children for hansel & gretel, which began rehearsals today. that's right -- gingerbread children. not how you used to bake them, are they? I like to just call them "the children." I love how perfectly horrifying they are.



it's been a tough time for me in opera land. the parts for the opera are in our library, but although I knew they were heavily marked and quite old, I had no idea the extent of the damage they have taken over the years. we have not done this opera since 1992, but it looks as though the parts have been rented out since then and were last used in some sort of excerpt concert.



each part had about 25 cuts marked, all of them in heavy pencil.



some of them in red pencil, which we only use when we don't want something to be easily eraseable. the edges of many parts were yellowed with age. the piccolo part had sustained water damage.

even in its original state, the music must have left much to be desired. the oboe part was clearly photocopied from an original master by the publisher:



and contrary to the norm, the parts that were in the worst shape were the wind parts. usually it's the strings you have to contend with; they are constantly marked and erased as bowings are added or modified, and so the paper takes a beating, and sometimes the ink does too. however, for no obvious reason, our wind parts were just awful. they were marked to the hilt, and in many cases -- piccolo, horn iv, trombones, timpani, & harp were the worst -- the ink job had faded to an unacceptable degree. like, the staff lines were missing.



there's no glare on that photo. the staff lines in the harp part were virtually non-existent. I could have ordered new versions of these parts (and in fact in two cases I will) but because I have no intention of keeping the set, there's no use in buying a smattering of wind parts. what do you do instead? you take a ruler and a pen -- ballpoint in this case, because all your nicer ink runs on this paper -- and you re-ink.



doesn't that look like fun.

the parts were just set out this morning, a week beyond when I normally set them out. the orchestra, accustomed to having their music three weeks before their first rehearsal, began frothing at the mouth sometime around tuesday afternoon and badgered me so persistently that I refused to answer my phone on wednesday, knowing that if I answered every call that came in I very sincerely would probably spend at least an hour on the phone. a precious hour of marking bowings and re-inking music. needless to say, they're happy to be picking their parts up today, and I am happy to have them out, although I still have 6 parts to mark: I ran out of time and opted to give two of the string sections practice parts until I could finish their "real" ones.

did you know that a very real hazard of doing nothing but pencilling and erasing parts for 2-3 weeks is that you vaguely lose feeling in your fingertips from holding the pencil for so long? I am not kidding.