Learn Your Lessons Well

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Early morning today. Up to bake the cinnamon rolls. Kyle was there and asking all sorts of questions and I looked at him sort of like, “How long does it take for you to learn that I’m not competent before 8 a.m.?” Unfortunately, I also took them out a little soon (though I’m sure the one I looked at was done) so they didn’t cook all the way. Bummer. Still good, though.

We got all packed up and loaded the car, ready to hit the road. Kyle was driving, and I was hoping to get at least a chapter done in my book, but a few pages in, it was time to nap! I woke up just before entering the town where we’ll be spending the next few days. We joined Craig and had lunch at a great little burrito joint- college towns have the best food!

The venue is great, if only my college theater was that set up. The TD is a woman, and totally on top of life. Sarah keeps telling me, “That’s you in a few years.” Crew was good. It was Dana’s first day, and she did a good job, but has a lot to learn. I was teaching her terms like trim and in/out and explaining to her what I was doing during focus. It was kind of fun. The ME is pretty on top of life, and there was another girl on electrics, only she has never hung or focused a show before. Since we had lots of time and nothing to lose, I opted to let her focus, even though it took a lot longer. I told her and the TD that since we had the time, I’d love to let her learn some things on my show, knowing full well that there were plenty of times I was learning things and it took longer for me to do it than those who were teaching me, but they were patient, and so I was able to learn it. I look forward to working with them more over the next few days. Today was just load-in, so we have another day of rehearsals and then finally shows!

The big triumph of the day for me was addressing DMX on the new dowser. It’s not like the others that I’ve used with rollers or dipswitches, but a digital one, and when they designed it, they thought they’d make it really simple, so only put one button on it. It went along quite well with the manual including both typos and lots of information that was neglected. But eventually we prevailed! That was more thinking than I’ve doe in months!

Once we were done, we went to a nice little pizza joint with “slow service, but great pizza!” And how true! All of us enjoyed dinner and followed it with some ice cream. And to the hotel. The first hotel of tour. We got our new music director, Stacie, today, and our new head teacher, Amanda. I met Stacie, but not Amanda. Tomorrow will bring all sorts of new adventures!

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Photos

Explosion
The initial explosion of my suitcase at Mirembe House.

Crew
Dana, Kyle, Sarah, me at dinner

Signs
This was at the pizza joint. What exactly do they mean by "immobilized"?