Please to be putting ur memez here.

Poll #1341359 Semi-Annual Census, 2009
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None

Are you still reading?

For curiosity's sake: If you can't be bothered to click twice, I figure that counts as not really reading. So yeah.

I figure after about a week, I'll stick this on a floater. The one that I made last month that was *just* a floater got backdated, so it hardly got looked at at all. Hmmn.

Finally finished the last two discs of Horatio Hornblower last night, and I have to reiterate how different and disappointing I found the writing on the four last ones. The ultimate ending though, just left me cold. Meh.

On the other hand, I fiddled with the pink linen pocket hoops, and now they just need a waistband and are done.

...Which means I have, theoretically, a week to bodge out a polonaise for Costume College, seeing as I'm busy with prep for Hubba Hubba most of this week. On the one hand, I've heard good things about this pattern and that it goes together easily. On the other hand, it's a pattern, and not my own drafting, which means it's guaranteed to not-fit in some embarrassing and highly-technical way. I'm tempted to find some big calico and make an American polonaise, just to work out the kinks in the first draft, before cutting my wonderful pink striped silk. And then I look at the calendar and groan.

Still need a sewing icon, sigh.

And I'm sitting here idly wiping photo-shoot foundation off, and hearing a salsa beat in the hum and throb of the dishwasher.

Time to sleep, gah.

Thanks guys, really. I was making a joke, and instead I get the rundown on how much I really *don't* know about this stuff.

Way to make a girl feel useful.

Nothing like realizing that you'd need to go back to school just to get the crap job that's out there.

Can I just have my old job back? I was really good at it.

Symptomatic of my monthlong inability to focus:
I went out to the studio ostensibly to play around with some shiny new pen nibs.

I returned an hour later, with three pairs of mended trousers, and some ironing done.

If I seem a bit out of it lately, it's because I am. I feel like my brain is running some sort of indexing process in the background, taking up all the cycles with no noticeable result, and having a detrimental effect on realtime performance.

I sat down to write last night and totally failed to get the storyitch twitching behind my eyes out on the keyboard, and when I woke up this morning it was gone.

The red and black lozenge tightlacing cincher is done, and OMG SQUEE. It is *the* most comfortable cincher I've worn to date, and the line it gives me is absolutely stunning. Holycrap!

I'm friggin' exhausted, and it somehow got to be one in the morning, so I'll sum up:

Friday, ran up to the City at a sort of dumb hour of the morning, and spent all day loading shells for electric fire on the SF Municipal pier. Fun times, realized that Charlie from Ceilidh does pyro too, and got to see some 1.2G mortars. By which I mean, got to haul around some big freaking rusty lengths of metal pipe, and watch someone else put them into barrels of sand. Skipped Baxtalo Drom and went to Alameda for dinner with Josh and ostensibly a movie - but Alameda movietimes didn't mesh with our schedule and we ended up just walking up and down Park street and chatting. Quelle interessant, I know. Crashed at Auntie and Sherman's place, slept like a log.

Saturday morning, woke up at oh-dumb-thirty, showered, and put on my newly-altered Spring Dress. Brownie and tea were had, and then off to parade site, where we ran through some of the choreographies for grand march on the run. Some float up from us ended up playing Michael Jackson, which led to us all doing the Night Fever in our Victorians, for the public. Yes, we may do Victorian ballroom at Fezzis, but we are first and foremost *historical* dancers, and the term doesn't descriminate. The 70's were a historical period, too. The parade went well enough, though we have some tuning to do on the playlist/logistics front if we're not going to have a dance-on platform truch next year. Who knows. It was fun, and exhausting, and did I mention exhausting? Oh, and ran nearly an hour late. By the time I'd picked up Josh (driving, still in corset and splits and modesty petticoat), changed out and got on the road it was already 2-ish. We stopped at In-N-Out burger and I scarfed a burger and fries (with extra salt), remembering belatedly that I had eaten a filched brownie and some tea for breakfast. Oops.

Made it into San Jose for pyro about 45 minutes late, but dad was even later. The racks were already built, thanks to Jeff and his nailgun. (Which we were later to regret. Siiiigh.)

Argh, and I'm falling asleep. So this'll have to be fast:
Josh shot his first show, Dad shot his first hand-fire show. Food good, pyro good. Sleeping in good.

Pyro tonight too. More 3" shells, one flowerpot and one delay-fire. Cold evening, smaller show. Make sure to nail racks with duplex only, or else spend all the time saved in hammering out the cleats. Bleh.

Home, tired as hell, going to sleep now.

The thing that unemployed people do, apparently, is go see matinee-priced movies. And since I am both that and a Johnny Depp fan, I went and did that this afternoon with cuddlyparrot.

I liked the movie. I also thought it was sort of horrible.

Things I liked:
-It was a movie about a bank robber in the 1930s, starring Johnny Depp.
-It has lots of fabulous and seasonally-appropriate tailoring in it.
-Lots and lots of well-done womenswear and all the ladies look appropriately made up and coiffed for the era. (Perhaps unrealistically so though. Who has a perfect marcel still on a boiling hot day while lounging around the house in a robe, with a fan pointed at you?)
-Period makeup, that looked cakey and waxen in places. Okay, so this probably would horrify a bunch of Hollywood types, but if you're filming in HD, go all the way and use authentic makeup that'll clump, run, cake and smear like it really would have. Nifty.
-Very well dressed sets, complete with period *everything*: furniture, tableware, light fixtures, periodicals. Even the industrial sewing machines were correct for the period.
-The one old, intelligent, honorable cop.


Most of my issues actually fall under two categories: Bad film, and bad writing.
( Cut to spare you )

Managed to slip into a major depression without realizing it until I got home this evening.

So much I'm doing - it's never good when you realize that your life is so tight-packed and tightly wound that when one thing gets out of place, everything else suffers. I am wound so tight these days that the orbits of my activities brook no changes of itinerary. I keep repeating to myself - just until the 17th. Just until the 17th. And then I realize that... it'll be longer. I still haven't gotten a single response to dozens of resumes.

I'm beginning to question myself and my worth again, about the same time the tired-and-lonelys are kicking in. I guess this is an explicable depression. This shit is fucking *hard*, and I am fucking *tired*. I just want to sleep and keep sleeping, and not deal with it.

So, lets see.

Pyro: Wheedled my way into prep for a big show, except that I'm volunteering (so no pay, not like there was going to be any elsewhere though), and then mom called me to ask what my plans were, because I'd forgot I was going to bring dad along on setup again. Shit, I don't know.

Fezzis: Fuck if I know. I may be stage managing, or I may actually be quitting this year. Depressing too, because we've got a very promising crop of potential newbies this year. I'm just having another attack of the existential blahs: Why do I do this? I don't actually get much out of it anymore.

Oh, and pyro may mean that I'm unavailable for the entertaining adventure that is Fezzi-ing in a parade, woe is me. :(

Hubba Hubba: I don't even want to think about it right now. Need to alter the costume, reconsider my fake blood, reconsider my prosthetic appliances, arg arg arg.

Pride: Skipped it. Feature of my depression is a desire not to be around big happy sun-baked crowds.

Conclave: Totally fucked and stressing me out. Shin cannot wrap her head around modern scheduling technologies, and safety lead is bad about communicating promptly. I showed up in Santa Cruz last night for practice that was not actually scheduled. Taping was tonight, which I refused to fuck up my now-several-week-old plans to make. I'm probably out of Conclave. If so, I won't be getting a staff-rate ticket, and I won't be going, period, end of story, tadum tadaa. And this after someone on Cafe staff tried to whinge his way into getting me to give them a bunch of free tech writery labor - when I think about it, it'd be about a $20k contract over four months... and they're trying to get volunteers to do this shit? No way.

I'm suprisingly depressed about the potential for not going to Burning Man. I guess it's not all chores yet, like other things I'm doing.

Bella Donna: Golden Gate is, for all intents and purposes for me, off. I still mocked up a sleeve, which took all freaking day. The sleeve body itself went together in half an hour, but I spent another four looking at period cuts of sleeve patterns. Do I use the slash and spread one? Make panes over an underheader? Use the a modification of the Tudor giant-pleated-football? They all look about the same, FFS. Murbelty.

This means, however, that I could be working on:
Costume College: I still have a half-finished pair of 18th c reeded stays that I need to clip and bind before I can even begin work on my polonaise. Days are ticking away, and I'm starting to feel like I could be doing more productive work just sewing for myself than in firing endless resumes out into the void.

Debating making more of my cannibalized cargo pant hip bags, and setting up an etsy shop. Meh.

Love life: None to speak of. I think I've hit this whole "dating" thing like a wall: I keep having coffee or dinner with nice seeming gentlemen, and keeps going nowhere, and as nice and interesting as they all seem to be, there's nobody who inspires anything more than warm "that was a nice discussion" feelings. I'm about ready to give up like for reals yo. I'm freaking tired.

The one good note is that I seem to have found someone to take over for me for PEERS. Which is good, because I won't be in town for the first of the month for the next... several months. Woo.

I have an admittedly limited amount of official chronological experience in the writing field.

However, my skillset perfectly describes what all the listings are apparently calling "Senior" writer positions: interviewing informants (to borrow the anthro term), layout management, fully generating content, multimedia creation, responsibility for continuous updates.

What to do, what to do... My former lead said that I was doing ten times as much (in terms of variety and responsibility) than they were hoping to get from a simple "junior tech writer" hire, so maybe I really am senior?

If so, crappity, I now have to go back through my job-hunted websites checklist and go examine every. single. listing. again. to see if I don't better fit the "senior" roles I'd skimmed over.

Golden Gate Faire moved to the middle of Costume College.

I think they're going to be missing a good chunk of people now. I certainly won't be at Golden Gate.

And now I can come down:

This evening, brookswift and I performed a burlesque sort of number for a real live audience at a real live venue. I was scared shitless. It didn't go perfectly, but it went well enough that we've been asked back.

VICTORY.

::thud::

So much to write about, and so little desire to do so... But I need to keep my hand in at writing, or the muscles go stiff and useless.

Let's see... I haven't written about the layoffs, which is hard. Suffice to say that my producer, who we all felt was one of the main reasons our team was hit so hard, just asked me for a LinkedIn recommendation, which I decline to give. How do you recommend the person you feel *could* have been there to argue your continued usefulness, except that 80% of the time, he was gone? And only half of that time was announced, or even had contact from him. Yeah, how about no. Perhaps I'm being harsh, but I feel like the one person who could've helped us escape layoffs just couldn't be bothered to come in and do so.

On the other hand, I've been writing recommendations for the folks I've worked with. I had to stop and re-write Neal's (the documentation lead - so kinda my boss/supervisor, but more like a peer really) because it started sounding a lot like an eulogy. I'm still totally floored by the amount of camaraderie in this industry - I just wish there were more writing gigs available in it.
Upshots to be had though: I got my first EDD form in the mail, and the Economic Stimulus Bill is paying 65% of my first 9 months of COBRA (which means I get to keep all of my bennies for $110 a month, instead of getting the kneecapped ones for $150). Much as it sucks... well, it's kinda awesome.

Spent part of this week camping with Paul. It was just what I needed, though I really wish we'd had longer. We drove up leisurely on Wednesday, with a stop at Nona's for a late lunch, then made our way twistingly up north to Pomo Canyon, on Willow Creek near Russian River. We made camp, made spaghetti and s'mores, watched stars- Oh, and there were raccoons. OMG, raccoons. When we got back from stargazing, they'd *ripped a hole in my tent* and gone through the food bag, taking bites out of our bread and rifling our other stuff. So we dragged it all the way back to the parking lot, and I patched the hole with duct tape. Thus commenced a new addition to our logistical planning that made me feel like if I took the cabbage on this trip the fox would eat my rabbit.

Thursday we went hiking, and took the over-the-hill route to Shell Beach. It was a long walk, but absolutely gorgeous and through beautifully varied terrain. I found myself wishing for more stamina to keep walking, but what I really should've been concerned about was water. The beach had pit toilets, no running water, so we lunched on supplies and drank our bottle of lemonade sparingly, then trekked down the coast, watching the sea over the cliffside. It was gorgeous. The trek back up the creek to the canyon was... well, not so much. Partly because we were out of water, and partly because it was the end of the route and we were tired, but I still maintain mostly because it was nearly four miles of twisty gravely road, and I wasn't sure which bend the campsite was around. We seriously spent about an hour going "It's just around this next bend, I swear..." When we finally made it back to camp, we sat by the one running water spigot and just drank until we felt better. I then proceeded to collapse into the tent for a nap. All told, we walked about ten miles that day.

Dinner was more spaghetti, but further hilarity ensued when we went to make s'mores and discovered that the marshmallows were nowhere to be found. Everything went back in the car, and we made a late night dash to the nearest gas station several miles away for replacements. Back at the campsite, we later saw the empty marshmallow bag in some nearby bushes, obviously dragged there by our masked raider the evening before. Later, we were returning from putting the food back in the car and ran into a bunch of newly-graduated high school boys, standing stock-still and terrified in the dark near the trash cans. One of our fellow campers had spotted a pair of bobcats, and mentioned this around the site, and these kids were heading back to their car to flee when they heard rustling and decided that it MUST be some sort of feline. Did I mention they had no flashlights? When we looked around, we saw... tadaa! our masked friend rustling around in the bushes. They were relieved, and decided to get the hell out anyway. Of course, when we got back to the tent, we found it slightly more open than before, and the floor covered in muddy pawprints. Said raider had found a way to open the zipper (couldn't he have done that the night before and saved me the repair of my tent?!) and then gone nosing around in my backpack for some gummi bears I'd forgotten about. That he didn't, evidently, get. Little fucker.

Also, JiffyPop is awesome made over a campfire. And when it's not, it makes really good firestarter for the next day.


I've been pretty intensely rehearsing with Christophe for a sort of tango/burlesque/blues number that popped into my head thanks to Shevek showing me this A Perfect Circle song. We're doing it again tomorrow night at the Uptown, in case anyone wants to see it. It's really the high point of the Storyseeds/Storyseedling story arc, which I need to cloister myself away with so I can get it pounded out on paper and out of my head. Living with an angsty fallen angel in your head is unpleasant.

We did perform it last night, to a punk show held in honor of on Vaudie. The venue was in Oakland, and as punk venues go it wasn't bad. At the same time, there was too much pot, too much cigarette smoke, too much incomprehensible music, and I couldn't even drink because a) I was afraid I would flub my dips and b) I had to drive to the DNA afterwards theoretically for Foundry. At 4:30, Laurie helped me put on the prosthetics I'd made (yes, you heard me right when I was twittering about latex casting), we did a runthrough at 5:30, and we were supposed to go on at 10:55. Yes, you read that right: nearly six hours before we were *supposed* to go on. Note that we did not, in fact get to go on until 12:15, and this was because the @#*!$ douchebag band that was supposed to be AFTER us jumped place in line, and so we had to wait. This was fucking awful for my rapidly intensifying nervousness; imagine you are in a venue full of dirty, black-clad combat-boot wearing folks, in an all-white silk ensemble, about to try and do something graceful and poignant. I was afraid they'd throw stuff at us.

Instead, by the time we took the stage, I was so flamingly enraged that... well, first I yelled at the audience (who were mostly other performers who'd been watching me pace backstage all night) to shut up so I could hear the music... and then I did it. I didn't even think. I don't remember it. But it went off nearly flawlessly. And I was so fucking *angry* that it gave me a whole 'nother angle to think about for Mariel, and it gave a whole new meaning to some of the moves in the routine, and... well, I did full extensions with a lot more force than I'd been doing in rehearsal. So I'm sore in new and interesting ways today.

But it went well. Apparently the way to cut through nerves or fear is to piss me off. Gee.

I shucked out of my costume and ran to the DNA, in time to circle the area in my favorite figure-eight hunting pattern three times. Mostly, this was because my favorite parking spot back behind Costco was being systematically checked out by three black dudes who were peering into car windows. Once they'd gone, I took my favorite spot, and raced in to the DNA, arriving about 1 AM. I didn't realize the event ended at 2, or I probably would've gone straight home. But I was pissed, hungry, dehydrated, and on an adrenaline decline, and home was probably not the place for me to be anyway. I got on the box one song away from close. Oh well. Lots of good socializing to be had - I really do need to make it up to the City more and hang out.

I got home a bit before noon today, and belly flopped into bed. I woke up sometime around 2:30 and stumbled around the house until I realized that the last *real* food I'd eaten was a bean burrito in Alameda about 6pm yesterday - and that gummy worms and chocolate milk in a gas station in San Bruno DID NOT COUNT. Mmm, food.

You really do have a lot of tiny, tenacious hairs all over your arms.

And they really hurt when you yank them out because you applied liquid latex to them without shaving first.



OW.

(Also, do not use latex or casting latex while wearing your favorite shirt. Siiiigh.)

On the other hand - it makes really good realistic-ish-looking (I mean, I PERSONALLY would add more brown for that oxidized iron/hemoglobin effect) wet-look blood. And it's evidently durable enough I shouldn't have to worry about it peeling under my gloves.

I wish I could view the unique visitors to my profile.
Because it still freaks me out to see that someone hates me enough to keep checking my Maranel "Friends of" dealiebob every other day or so. I mean, shit, man, get a real hobby already. I don't count.

I was paying $150 a month for crappy health insurance when I had HealthNet. Soon, I will be paying $150 a month for the low-end Kaiser plan.

Well, okay. At least I get a functional, centralized appointment-making website, right?

Already losing track of time: thank god for calendars.

So many places to make post-layoff connections, so many places to send feelers, and so I'm doing just that without actually having a resume to send out.
Yeesh. And then in the attempt to get Word back onto my lappy, I end up catching up on something like six or eight months of filing to uncover my old removable drive.

Two good leads, and several people asking around for me. And here I was planning on taking more time off! Just thinking about it is sort of exhausting, and I'm finding myself unable to commit to either working or relaxing. I spent most of today oscillating listlessly between the two. Bugger.

Sleep soon, lest I get on the up-till-4 schedule again. I need to do most of my latex casting stuff in the daytime!

So, what should I do now

(Merely a tongue-in-cheek call for suggestions.)

I got laid off today.