Who the heck do I think I am?

But theatre is going well.

I kicked ASS as Vicki, particularly Saturday night. I got all the laughs I wanted and hit everything right. (And there was a reviewer and a regionally high-level director in the house, too.)

And I just got cast in Nunsense as Sister Mary Hubert (mistress of novices) - at Woodland, which is a theatre (and director) I've wanted to work with for about a year. So YAY. (And three shows in a row, basically, with only a couple dud auditions in between. W00T)


I've also booked my travel for Coronation and for Crown. I'm just waiting for Balticon travel until I'm sure about ground transportation and housing... which I hope I'll hear about soon (before the ticket prices go up).


I need a new computer so badly. Job. Then computer. Srsly.


I'm still enjoying Netflix on the Wii - currently going through Slings and Arrows - awesome show! I'm also liking the Fit tremendously, just as I suspected I would do.

Not much else to report, unfortunately. Really my life is very boring.

This Christmas was a holiday of hand-me-down electronics. I got a GPS from Joel that had been his mother's, and then from my mother I brought back her old DVD player. It was the better of her two - I kept asking her if she'd rather we hook up that one to her bedroom TV and I'd take the lesser model - but she kept saying it made no sense.

Last night when I got home from Rochester and opened the back to unload, the DVD player slid straight out and fell on the pavement. On its face, of course. Which meant that the faceplate cracked in about five places.

At first I didn't even realize it was cracked. (Hey, it was dark outside.) But when I did realize it, I plugged it in anyway to check on it, and it turned on and the tray would open and close, but I wasn't ready to test it with a DVD because it didn't make sense to do that until I had it plugged in to a TV.

Well, this morning I got it hooked up to the TV and got it wired through the VCR... and the little "standby" light came on. But it won't stay powered up. When I click the remote power button, it comes on for a moment, displays "Sony DVD" and then shuts itself back off.

ARGH.

I feel really dumb for not making sure the thing was well secured (or for not opening the glass to get it out), or for just putting it on the back seat. It was 5-6 years old, but it was pristine, basically. And now it's toast.

It's old enough that I'm sure Sony wouldn't do anything about fixing it - and I'm sure it would cost just as much to replace the front as it would to just buy a new machine. Well. I've lived without a player back there this long so there's no rush to do that. It's just very disappointing to have broken the damn thing in the first place.

Unless anyone has suggestions for another way to fix it? I don't know what happened between last night and this morning that it suddenly won't run.

Gah.


ETA: First off, the whole faceplate has basically come off now. And second - a little research online shows that it would cost a minimum of $120 to get it fixed ($137 to exchange it through Sony). And used identical models on Amazon start at $25.99 (plus shipping)... And of course there are about 14 newer models for under $75.

The point being that I won't be doing anything about it for the time being, but when I do feel like it there are cheaper alternatives to getting it fixed.

First off, curling has to be the strangest sport ever. On the other hand, I love that there are sports for regular guys - John Schuster of the US, for example, looks like a computer jockey rather than an Olympian. I kinda like that.

Anyway, moving on.

grouchyoldcoot sent me a wicked cool birthday/Valentine's day present. And he was all apologetic that it wasn't a typically romantic present.

It's a wireless all-in-one printer, scanner, copier. YAYZ. I have been desperately needing a new printer! It's WAY better than roses or chocolates!

I had a little trouble hooking it up but I finally figured out that duh, I was using the wrong WEP for my network. Heh. Oops.

Anyway. It now wirelessly prints, but apparently one does have to connect the USB cable to scan documents. That's okay. The point is that it WORKS. Huzzah! I have placed it on the bookshelf next to the desk and now I need to decide if the other POS printer is worth keeping (probably not).

I still don't know just what happened to the HPEF all-in-one - I packaged it and labeled it to be shipped back after Portus, but it never arrived. Since that was really part of the package deal we got on the computer and the other stuff, it wasn't a huge financial loss, but it was a huge frustration. One of the downsides of having assets that have to travel all over the place.

Anyway. Others have blogged that Orlando was fun, very productive, and OMG, Hogwarts is going to be breathtaking! Lots of momentum, which I hope stays with us for some time to come.

Still unemployed. Still looking for the .1% of jobs out there that fit my criteria. But at least now I can print resumes!

Large and small.

Okay, first off: no, I did not watch Show. I did not watch Pushing Daisies. I also didn't watch Bones. I watched "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" on HBO (and missed half of it because of my father!) and liked what I saw. It's charming. And Anika Noni Rose is HILARIOUS.

Then I tried watching some of the "Highlander" marathon until I remembered that the final ER was on, so I switched to that about 20 minutes in. OMG, Ernest Borgnine! I thought he was dead. Yay.

And I cried. And I approved of the ending.


So, I am still way behind on SPN. Meh.


( CELL PHONE WOE! )


There were wild turkeys in the lot behind our building today! I have pictures; just no USB cable to upload them. Two cocks (roosters? heh, I said cock) and a few hens (3? 4? I fail at counting).


Okay, so the other decision I can't make is on Amazon:

Vote for your Favorite Sesame Street Clip for the 40th anniversary DVD.

There are ten clips:

Aligator King (the number 7)
Bert & Ernie (the one where Ernie has tied string to his fingers to remind him - not as classic as the banana, sadly)
King of Eight (Good grief, it's princess number 9)
the Martian Beauty Song (she doesn't like shoppin' cause she doesn't like hoppin')
"What's the Name of That Song?" (YAY JOE RAPOSO and JEFF MOSS)
Pinball Animation (1-2-3-FOUR-5-6-7-8-NINE-10-11-12)
Caribbean Amphibean (he likes to hop in the tropical sea! A frog in the coconut tree)
Big Bird singing about the number 4 (cute number but nothing special)
a Henson ball (which is an impressive Rube Goldberg machine, but otherwise kinda boring)
Elmo's "debut" (which was a bit of a tap-dance routine featuring pretty crappy greenscreening - and therefore disqualified).

As much as I love the cuteness of the Alligator, the King of Eight, the Maritan Beauty, and the Caribbean Amphibean, and as much as I would hate not to see another Raposo/Moss song be highlighted, I think it has to be the Pinball Animation - because ANYONE who's ever seen Sesame Street can sing that and it sorta symbolizes everything about Sesame Street's goal to teach counting and basic skills.

But oh, I love those other clips. You should go vote!

I should do some freaking work today....

A couple little things:

First off, the programming deadline for Portus is MONDAY. Get your programming proposals in! We need round tables! Papers! Panels! There's a wonderful article about all the programming options, with LOTS of great ideas, that went out in an email which you can see here. The "Call for Proposals" is avaialble here.

C'mon, folks! Rediscover what made you fall in love with HP in the first place! The Portus team have some amazing plans in store, and I can't say enough about making friends and meeting like-minded geeks at one of HPEF's events.


Second...some errands to run today. My phone has been acting up, so I need to take it to the Spring store and see if they can fix it. Problem is that this is my only phone, so I can't leave it for a week while they do whatever they do. Has anyone else had this come up? Will they give me a temporary phone, or is the tendency just to switch it out for a new one (in which case, I don't want to pay for an upgrade, really)? I do have technology protection, thank heavens.


Third...I'm very smart. I outsmarted myself: in a nutshell, I sat down with my finances last night and discovered that six months ago, when I started the new job, I started budgeting as if I were already paying a car loan payment of a reasonable size. This means not only that I actually have some money (not a lot, but some) socked away for a downpayment, more importantly, I don't have to go back and figure out how to squeeze my budget--because I'm already squeezing!

Now, I'm not going to run out and do anything frivolous, like go to EyeCon (sorry!), because I still think money's tight and it's probably not the best idea to plan for that. Especially since

Three-A: The gods must have figured out that money wasn't quite as tight as I thought around the same time I did (or maybe a little earlier). Because this morning, in the post, I received a notification from my insurance company that they're slapping me with a surcharge because of the traffic ticket I got last October. The one I'm appealing next week. I have to find out if there's some automatic retraction deal, where if my appeal in traffic court is upheld, the surcharge is dropped, or whether I still need to then appeal the surcharge, as well--to the tune of $50 non-refundable filing fee (half the amount of the ticket in the first place) and the increase of my insurance by about $300 for the next three years. It's the gift that keeps on giving, folks!


And fourth...I auditioned the other night for Mystery of Edwin Drood. And...it didn't go very well. That is, I thought it was going fine. I did something both wise and stupid, in that I changed my mind about my second song and decided to sing something in my top range (to show I had one), but I went up on the lyrics, due to not having sung the song seriously for something like 15 years. Yeah...I know. But in the grand scheme, that wasn't all that important. The dance went fine--I was actually one of the better dancers in the group they had. But when it came time for the readings, I sat...and sat...and she let me read for the role of Drood ONCE. That was the only time I got up to read all night.

And when I did? Okay...a couple people were trying their hand at accents (with varying rates of success). Just before I started, I asked the director, "Do you want the accents or not?"

Theatre folks, you know, and the rest of you, let me 'splain: This was not a stupid question. Some directors *do* want you to show off and give them what you've got in an audition situation. Some director's *don't* because they don't want to be distracted by the accent, or they don't want you to be worrying about intonation when you should be thinking character, OR they plan to go through some dialect coaching later with the whole cast and the accent question just isn't something they want to deal with in the audition process.

So it wasn't an inappropriate question.

Her answer? Was totally inappropriate and uncalled for. She said, in a HIGHLY condescending tone, "Well, that would be your choice. But," and here she took on a sing-song kind of rhythm, really stressing her iambs, "If it were me-ee, and I were auditioning for a role where accents were reQUIred... I might think about throwing one in, if I had one."

Seriously? I wanted to punch her.

So then I read, and I sat some more, and then she had virtually EVERY OTHER WOMAN in the house read a particular Drood/Rosa scene...except me. Yeah, thanks, lady. Thanks for your professional conduct.

Okay. Realistically, I know that being in Sound of Music creates some conflicts, but honestly? They're not horrible. I did go up after and clarified the performance dates and the major rehearsal weeks, which admittedly do sound like they'd be a bit of a problem for the major rehearsal period of the show. So a large part of why I didn't get to read may have been that she just looked at the conflicts and decided "No Way."

But here's my MAJOR PET PEEVE about auditioning. If you're not going to ask me to read again? Just fucking let me go home. Don't torture me by making me watch EVERY OTHER PERSON there get to read the role you know I'm interested in, while it becomes more and more clear that you're not going to ask me to read again. Moreover, you could at least ask me to read again to even things out and not make it so BLATANTLY OBVIOUS that you're already favouring someone else in the room.

So, if I ever decide to cross the divide and direct? At auditions, I pledge that I will *either* let people read as evenly and diversely as I can, OR if there's someone I just know I'm not going to need, I'll read that person FIRST and then LET THEM GO HOME.

Gods, I hate that. And when they call me to tell me, sadly, that they can't use me, I'm definitely going to say something about her attitude during the audition itself. There was just NO call for her to be so bitchy about a simple and reasonable question.


Well. Laundry should be done, so time to get going. Oh - there should be fic, maybe later this evening. I have a chapter to beta *and* I really need to move my ass on reviewing the submissions for "Bad-Ass Faeries II."