Seattle Bound

I am so incredibly giddy it is a bit ridiculous.  Ross and I booked tickets for a trip to Seattle last night.  For ten days.  A true vacation...no wedding, no funerals, no conferences.  Just pure, unadulterated rest, relaxation and friends.  Oh.  And beer.  LOTS of beer.

In my search for the must see breweries, I came across what may possibly be the perfect day in my book.

We were planning on heading to Portland for a few days during our trip to visit my aunt.  So our brewery map expanding quite a bit.  Rogue and Deschutes were high on the list, until we saw the 3-4 hour drive each way from Portland that this would entail.  As much as I love Deschutes, 8 hours in the car for one destination didn't quite seem worth it.

Poking a little closer to Portland I found Full Sail Brewery.  I've seen them around here.  I'm sure I've tried their beer, though I can't really remember (I have had over 150 distinct beers already this year and it's only March...it's easy to loose track).  One wonderful thing about this region is the sheer love for craft beer.   Minnesota is getting there, but quite frankly the volume in the Northwest is mind-boggling.  But because of this love of local, wonderful beer, the breweries cater a bit more to their clientele...i.e. tap rooms and tour are usually offered seven days a week instead of being limited to Saturdays and Sundays.  Holy overflowing pint glass!  Knowing we wouldn't be limited to the weekends for a craft brewery fix opened up so many more possibilities!

Which brings me back to Full Sail.  They were a mere hour from Portland and offered a highly recommended tour by Gorge magazine, Trip Advisor, among others and was listed as one of top 8 brewery tours by AAA (not that I suspect AAA is really on top of the craft beer scene...)

Upon further poking and digging I noticed the drive snaked along the Columbia River.  I am ignorant of this area.  I had no idea the day trip drive would entail so many parks, trails and waterfalls.  I was sold the moment that realization sunk in.  Hiking and Beer?  Pure heaven.

As I was digging a little deeper into what the Gorge had to offer when an old classmate mentioned a few hikes and another brewery just outside of Portland.  As fate would have it, both Walking Man Brewery and the triple falls hike were both along the route to Hood River.  It seemed one full day of hiking, waterfalls and craft beer had been booked.

I couldn't be happier or more excited.  This trip is so long overdue.

Oh.  And apparently July is Craft Beer Month in Oregon.  I suspect we may be in trouble...

Sixteen inches

My week off wasn't originally going to involve a home improvement project.  But with the lapse between shows and the frustration I regularly spew at the space that is suppose to be my work room...well...no time like the present.

Monday we bought the bracing, brackets, shelving and counter tops.  The project itself was really no more challenging than screwing the shelf braces into the wall at 16 or 24 inch intervals.  I suspecting the finding of the corner, floor and walls under mountain of chaos that was previous projects would be the challenge.

Well, I found the corner in about three hours.  Unloaded a box of books and three bags of trash in the process.

Finding the studs in  the wall should be easy, right?  In all truth, I only needed one or two braces per wall anchored to a stud.  Not that much weight was going to be supported by the shelves.  Knocking on the wall yielded no change in sound.  And with the drill on its last leg, it was too hard to tell in I hit wood or not on the few pilot holes I tried.  That and our dry wall seems excessively thick and uneven. 

So wait til morning, head to Home Depot.  Buy stud finder.  Get home.

No battery.

Walk to gas station, get battery.  Use stud finder...

Stud finder is either on crack or our house is not build to any known code or regulation.  Sixteen inch intervals my ass.  I think I found one stud.  Maybe two.  After an hour more of putzing with that cheap beeping tool, I've had enough and am eager to just dive in.

Only the battery for the drill...the new one Ross picked up because our old one was barely holding a charge.  The new one that was fully charged and ready to go after sitting on the charger last night?  Yeah.  Ross bought a 12v for our 18v drill.

So onto the charger our old battery goes, in the hopes it'll retain some semblance of a charge this time.

And its only 9am.

And yes, that is a beer in my hand...

Almost There

Tonight was the third dress rehearsal for Diary of a Worm, a Spider and a Fly.  And my third consecutive night of staying up until about 2am working on notes.  The show is finally in a place were I can sit back with some level of contentment of my work.  It's been a long haul.  So much I would do differently if given the opportunity.  Mostly, I feel as though this show never got the full attention it deserved due to work loads being split between the Guthrie and a second show I was designing at Lyric Arts.  There are only so many hours in a day.

But tomorrow is the last preview.  And then the show is handed over to the cast, crew and costume supervisor.  At least until strike. 

Next week, sleep...much needed sleep.

And maybe a hair cut....

The hat unseen

If you attend a Long Day's Journey into Night at the Guthrie, do me a favor (if you can wrench yourself out of Helen Carey's heartbreaking performance).  After intermission, peak into the entryway of the house.   See that lovely row of men's hats neatly hanging up?  Now look down on the bench.  There she is.  Isn't she beautiful?  The hat that's never worn...

This past week was dress rehearsal.  All week the designer, Ann Hould Ward (of Beauty and the Beast, Into the Woods and Dance of the Vampires fame) was insistent that I watch a run through of the show with her.  She has an amazing painterly eye.  I had heard many a story where her costumes are dyed, painted, and stripped and dyed, and distressed and painted some more.  An absolute eagle eye for detail.  She knows exactly what she wants.  She knows how to get exactly what she wants.  I was more than a little intimidated.

But all of the information is right there in her renderings and research.  Throughout the process, however, I kept running into a wall with her.  She would ask for some distressing or toning.  I would ask what color, warm, cool, how far, or some other question trying to discern the specifics of her request.  Usually I was met with an "i don't know, I can't answer that, you really need to see it on stage under lights."

And so she insisted I watched the invited dress with her. 

That persistence gave all of us pause.  We, in the shop, weren't quite sure why she was so adamant I attend a run through unless she had a lot of specific notes she wished to dictate as the show unfolded, instead of relying on a cryptic notes on paper delivered to me by her assistant.  It's always helpful to see the problem first hand, but her was so, so determined to have me up there with her, despite the three days of practically no notes.  Many of us thought there may be a huge wave of work coming down the pipe for me that she had yet to vocalize.

So last night I sat next to Ann Hould Ward and had my soul ache for Mary.  The lights came up.  Tears dotted most of our eyes.  And on m y page were a mere half dozen notes...mostly toning a hat a bit more, steaming a jacket, breaking in a pair of shoes...

In all reality, it was three hours of mentor-ship.  Three hours sitting alongside the woman who probably demands the most out of any painter/dyer in the industry.  And she was content...

Au Revoir 2012

New year's eve....I'm back to work after a week off. Though my week off was anything but. Ross forbade me from working on my shows at all on Christmas Day. However the rest of the week I spent with my nose to the grindstone slowly chipping away at the pile off work ahead of me. It did not seem to diminish. 

Finally, Saturday, after a twelve hour pull, I once again felt on top of things. I still had Sunday and Tuesday. So I took my leisurely time Sunday. Slept in a hair.  Enjoyed my coffee. Ross and I went shopping for tonight (2012 was not kind to either of our waistlines). We enjoyed lunch out. I managed a few returns for one of the shows, but we didn't get home until seven.

I was in a bit of a panic. A whole day wasted, no work accomplished. I sat down to a movie with a pile of hand sewing determined to cross at least one item off my list.

And looking back this morning, between that bit of sewing, the returns, and the paperwork and receipts I had putzed on, I still managed to spend nearly five hours working.  Only the pile doesn't get smaller.

Tonight I will enjoy myself. Tomorrow I buckle down again.

Happy 2013.

Long Day's Night

Days like today are hard. Not because of too much planned, or pending deadlines. But because I need to head ought the door to catch a 6:15 bus.

The early hour doesn't deter me. The darkness does.

At 6:15 nothing stirs. The houses are dark. Cars are still. No one is around. The frost simmers in the street light. Only the faintest suggestion of a glow hints at the eastern horizon. If I weren't so familiar with our city, I could easily dismiss the ambient light as downtown.

The moon still glows from her peak.

And she will likely be in the same station when I head home tonight.

This is the worst of winter.  And perhaps the most serene.

But how I do long for the sun...

Worms! And stuff

What day is today?  I forget.  A lot. 

We used to have a dry erase calender in the kitchen loaded with all of our monthly events.  However since we gave into technology a few weeks back, broke down, and purchased smart phones, the dry erase board has been left by the wayside.  It is wonderful that our calendars are now synced.  But I do miss our month at a glance every morning.

Though if I actually saw everything on my plate at the moment, I may have a minor stroke. 

I, being the sadist that I am, agreed to do two shows simulatneously.  On top of the regular 9-5 job.  And of course the shows tech back to back...with the Guthrie show inthe works as well.  Two weeks of dress rehearsals for three shows.  Nuts, I know.  I will have earned that week off come January!

I believe the logic behind my brief lapse in sanity was that both shows were fairly small...combined comprising less work than some musicals I've done.  The first show I had been slated to do for a while.  The second came about last minute.  I was recommended by my boss to this theatre.  It's a kids show.  With child actors.  And they're all bugs.

And after teching out how worm is actually supposed to work, it is far past my bedtime...