Hard Day's Night

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Today was early. 5:30 wake up, then a few-hour drive to be at load-in on time. Due to some miscommunication or something, there was no local crew as we were expecting. The TD was here, but it’s a student house, and they were all in class. We were assured they’d be around for the afternoon (which is conveniently the part of the day we need them the least.) Before I left for tour the first time, Dale told me to make sure and use the locals- to not do everything myself- or else I’d get too tired to quickly. Today was not a good do for me to have to do it all on my own. We made it work, though.

Most of my day was spent reprogramming the show (weird board issues, shouldn’t happen again), rigging, fixing things the boys broke, and troubleshooting. I didn’t feel too well, but still was mighty productive.

We’re at the point where we’re starting to see who on our team sees problems and who on our team are problem-solvers. There are so many times people say, “this won’t work because…” and someone else goes, “and here’s the quick and easy solution staring you in the face.” I think part of it is we’re all so exhausted. Today I was thankful that the TD was so competent- I let him focus the whole show while I was working on projector problems. The only issue with that was that he was the only really competent one, so he was troubleshooting sound and helping with all sorts of other things.

The other thing I was extra thankful for today was offline editors and demos. I had Crossover on my computer last year (a program allowing me to run Windows applications on my Mac), and the offline editor for the light board I used. But my computer crashed, and I lost Crossover and the editor, which I never thought about until today. The light board was having issues (but we’re getting a new one next week) and wouldn’t read my entire disk. So I grabbed my external floppy drive (which I almost didn’t bring) and plugged it in. First I needed to find a copy of Crossover. I didn’t really want to pay for it, but there is a 30-day trial version of it. Thank you, Jesus. Then I downloaded the editing software (free) and got to work trying to load my show onto my computer. Crossover has been updated quite a bit since I used it, so navigating took a bit of time. And I remembered that I had to open things in a certain way in order for it to work right, and coming up with that again was a bit of a challenge. Eventually, though, it was all working and I could view my cues in the computer to write into the light board.

The really weird thing today was that things kept unpatching somehow. I’m not really sure how that happens even, especially since I checked it all before dinner and saved it, and by showtime realized things weren’t turning on like the should be. Other than that, the show went pretty smoothly.

Tomorrow is a no-work day! Sort of. We have a 4-hour drive and an airport run to make. And supposedly Kyle and I are supposed to do lots of advancing, but I’d much rather wait until Monday. It’s been a lot of long working days in a row, and all of us are fried. But because of the airport run, we have to get up early anyway.

As you are praying, please keep the health of the Choir in your thoughts. Two of the African adults and a few of the Western chaperons are sick. We’ve been working hard and our bodies are wearing out, and we can’t really afford for the kids to get sick at this point. All of us are emotionally drained as well.

Highlight from today: “My name is Claire. When I grow up, I want to be a stage manager.” Wow. Sarah went nuts! This was a new development from just today. Kids say the darndest things.

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