Now that's a load off my mind....

Happy Super Bowl Sunday! That's as much as you're getting. I couldn't care less about the game today. Well, that's not true. I could care less about it if the Cowboys were playing. I hate the Cowboys. But I don't really care about the game. I never do unless a team I root for is in it. I think it's going to be interesting, and probably a good game. I think it's great Arizona's in it, but I don't think they're going to beat Pittsburgh. But it doesn't matter to me who wins. Arizona's a better story, but that's as much preference as I have. So goooooooooooooooo ADVERTISERS!!!!

Yesterday ended our rehearsal process. We had our run for Spring, then we worked some last-minute things and loaded out of the tech space. Doesn't sound at all heinous and exhausting, does it? Well it WAS. The run for Spring did NOT go smoothly. I think everyone was a little wiped after the week we had, and a bunch of little, inconsequential-in-themselves-yet-damning-in-quantity things kept going wrong throughout the show. All in all, though, Spring liked what she saw. The worst, for me, was Tell-Tale. I spend way too much time in my head about it during the story, and that keeps me from being relaxed about it. Hopefully, getting to run it a bunch of times without having to constantly worry about what Pat's thinking will help. Of course, how badly i felt about Tell-Tale was still in my head as we went into Sleepy, so that was all over the place as well. Thankfully, little of that seemed to translate to the audience in either story, because Spring was happy with everything. Which just goes to show that I have no ability to gauge anything anymore. But thankfully, it was over. Load out, on the other hand, was a long, painful (literally) and taxing process. 

Schneider and I were pegged as the two guys to be on the truck packing everything that was brought in. Me because I kinda knew where things are supposed to go, and Schneider because he's the only other one in the cast who can do all the lifting with me. And he works a mean ratchet strap. (For those of you poo-pooing such a skill, trust me, it's harder than you think...) The load was going slowly, since we were trying to remember exactly how everything went in (we were working off of photos from the last pack) and because some of the equipment boxes for this tour are slightly different sizes and shapes than the equipment boxes for the last tour, whose pictures we were using. But eve though it was going slowly, it was also going relatively smoothly. Spirits were pretty high, or at least as high as they can be when everyone is exhausted and just desperately want to get the hell out of there and either home or to whatever alcohol they can get their hands on. But we were moving forward with nary a cross word being said in either anger or jest, when disaster struck. As we were lifting the cart that carries all our platforms onto the ramp (yes, we had to lift it up onto the ramp, as the ramp was stretched over a huge snowbank onto the loading dock and the dock was higher than the truck, resulting in a lip of about three inches that we had to get things up and over) Levitt got her finger caught under one of the wheels, crushing it between the wheel and the ramp. That resulted in her bleeding all over pretty much everywhere, and having to be taken to the emergency room by Kato, who took Carol with them so that he could return and help us finish. It turns out she broke the bone in the very tip of her finger, and will probably lose the nail, but it could have been far worse. This type of injury only takes a few weeks to heal, and she is able to drive (though we'll probably try to keep her from it as much as possible) She has painkillers, but as they have codeine, she's going to try to stay off them as much as she can, although I would love to see how the show gets called if she doesn't. :-) And if she does stay off them i do hope she'll share.

We finally got everything loaded in the truck, and then had to load things back into the van that had to be taken back to the rehearsal space and carried back up the flour flights of stairs. Things like a microwave (an OLD microwave, y'know, when they were roughly the size of TVs) and an extra prop bed that was replaced by another that Pat liked the look of more, along with various boxes of odds, ends, and sundries. When we were done, everyone scattered to the four winds so quickly, you saw little puffs of action smoke stay behind like when the Road Runner takes off. I had to go back to the tech space with the van so Kato and I could go drop off the truck. Flo came back with me, and took the truck to the storage space as well because she wanted to go drinking and didn't want the stigma of doing so alone. (It's so cute when they're still at that stage...) So Kato dropped both of us off at the un-Irish Dublin House, and Flo and I had a lovely time at dinner discussing things ranging from how insane Levitt and Kato are as a couple to how intimidating everyone who runs Chamber tries to be, from the comparisons of Catholicism to Evangelical Christianity and how both of them stack up to the harsh light of rationality and my own brand of skepticism (Flo was actually the first person to give me an answer to why the Devil tortures those who follow him if he really is working against God--now I have to watch out for her...) to why Latin hip-hop really sucks. (I can't take you seriously as a badass gangsta type if half your song has mariachi music in it. I can't be scared of anyone whose posse wears spangly sombreros....) Alice begged off the drinking extravaganza because her family was in town and she went to hang out with them.

Today is reserved for getting laundry done, and vegging out and NOT watching the Super Bowl. We head off to the hotel tomorrow afternoon for Tuesday's show, which Spring and Pat will be at (because they never REALLY let go... they're like maternal pit bulls...) I do feel very optimistic about this group. No-one seems like the type to start snipping at each other when they're frustrated or tired, nor do any of them seem like the type to disappear for as long as possible before getting to work. If those appearances aren't deceiving there may be a lot less venting in this tour's blog and a lot more ranting about world events (which will be diligently researched.....)