Hooray for shows opening this weekend, which means that anything that isn't a massive horrible mess is no longer our problem. So La Traviata opens tomorrow, and La Cenerentola opens on Sunday. I'm going to both of those with Morgan and a few others, then to the Opera hosted opening night parties afterward. This past week has been pretty uneventful, not much work to be done. Mainly cleaning and organizing so things will be set up nicely for the next group. I took photos of La Cenerentola the night that I went to dress rehearsal, but I'm not going to post them until the show opens, so I can't get in trouble for exposing things early. But I will say that it's a really really fun show, light and silly, the costumes and set are fantastic looking.

Wednesday through the end of the week we came in late, mainly because on Tuesday night about half the opera went into New Hartford to see Harry Potter 6. Morgan and I didn't, but we did go Thursday night to see it. It was super exciting to see Tom Riddle in the jacket that I got to work on the tiniest bit in London. Monday was a normal day and Tuesday we got out early. Though next week goes back to normal hours, as the over hire show is starting up. They hired a group to stay an extra 3 weeks beyond contract to build new pieces for chorus of a show that we're renting out but have a larger chorus. I'll probably end up working on it by value of just being around.

Morgan heads to NJ on Monday to visit for a while before she drives back here on Friday (a week from today) and we head back, hopefully arriving on Sunday night. Though I don't think I'll be back home-home until Monday. Just too long of a drive/ride. I'm looking forward to getting home though, as much fun as this summer has been.

Return from Paris

I got in from Paris about 8pm my time Saturday night. I must say that I throughly enjoyed Paris, and hope to go again with a little more time. Four days is fairly long, but I feel as though I barely scratched the surface of everything available to do there. The food was amazing, the people were all very patient and very nice, and the company was top notch. I spent yesterday captioning, tagging, and uploading my photos to various places. Facebook has a good number, but my Picasa page has all of them. Even the repeats, as I am fond of taking five pictures of the same thing. I used both of my camera cards and had about 500 photos on them. A lot I deleted or were from other things like Emerald Banquet or Lake Ella (also posted up this morning for anyone who wanted them). Well about a hundred were. The others I've sifted through, leaving just about 350 photos that are of decent quality and clarity. I'll go into detail about my trip when I get home from work and the play Casanova tonight. Note to self: Get the new Casanova BBCTV series, as it is hillarious. We watched most of the first episode in class today.
Ok! Off to work!

Skiving Work to Go to The Globe!

No photos yet, as I cannot find my effing camera cord! :( Very not cool, lemme tell you! I was a groundling in the matinee of Love's Labors Lost. It was very exciting. I got to be one of the front 25 people right against the stage, which was very exciting being as short as I am. The stage comes up to my chin! The play was HILARIOUS and amazing. I loved it, laughed so hard I thought I was going to pee. I did unfortunately see entirely too much of one of the male actors. Older male actor. Like he could be my grandpa. Gross, so very gross. Gah. All of the pretty people were very pretty people, even if one of the men had a ripped crotch. I felt bad, I really wanted to stop staring at it... but I couldn't. I think he thought I was obsessed with his.... well. And I am not! But really it was ripped the WHOLE TIME. They did all sorts of antics, with crazy musicians. Speaking of, during the interval (intermission) one of the girls called her boyfriend on her mobile and the drummer walked up behind her and started playing really loud. It made me giggle. :) I got a bunch of photos, and I will upload them as soon as I can to my picasa site. I'll be on the hunt for that cable. Damn thing.

I Hate Fur.

The past two days have been wholly opposite. Yesterday I did absolutely nothing productive for the company, though had a very interesting day and today I did nothing interesting, but very productive for the company.

Monday I finally was able to get onto one of the industrial machines because it was me, my supervisor Lady and the Turk( mind the Turk not the Kurd). I made a bag actually yesterday. It's covered in crazy stitching that you can actually track my progress on the machine on. The industrial machines are still scary though, as they are very very fast and powerful. It really doesn't help that everyone tells me to mind that I don't stitch my fingers to it. The bag is pretty fun, covered in moderately straight lines, zigzags and sin waves. Yeah, I'm a dork. I put an A on it too, with the reverse pedal. For those of you who know or even care, you lift the foot with a pressure petal that you push with your knee, and you wind the next bobbin while you sew. There is no way to turn off the needle movement to make the bobbin. It was very strange. The slowest constant setting on there is the fastest I've ever seen any domestic machine do. The Turk showed me all the really interesting different machines they have in the back, like two button holers, one to make normal rectangular button holes and one to make "key hole" or the rounded button holes. And even a button sewer!! HOW AWESOME! NO MORE HAND SEWN BUTTONS!!! MOM WE NEEDS IT! (only not really.) Plus the three 4 string sergers they have in the back too. The pattern maker and Fashionista man Skinny came in to work really late in the afternoon and I did a little bit of cutting for him and a jacket and skirt he was making for a fairly famous person's entourange girl. It is covered in sparkles and really pretty. I got to see pictures of the Turk's granddaughters who are adorable. He's very proud of them. I like him a lot, as he tends to take care of me by helping me more than any of the others really seem to have time to do, even though they will when I need them too without letting it be a problem for them. Then I wondered down to the National Theatre to see Chatroom/Citizenship. Both where really good one act plays written for 14-18 year olds to do in High and Middle Schools. I enjoyed them. Came home and went to bed.

Today though, I cut out "ermine" tails from black rabbit's skin. I hate fur. It is the devil. It gets everywhere. I had to wear a woodworker's mask today to keep from stuffing my nose full of loose fur. Skinny said I looked like a cat the way I kept pawing at my nose. I felt like one , and by the end of the day looked like I'd shaved one. COVERED in fur. White fur, because I had to cut a caplet out of the white that the "ermine" tails were going to be attached to. We couldn't even turn the fan on in the shop because the fur fluff would have gone everywhere. Ugh, I am still finding it in places, like my socks. The only excitement there was to be had today was a mouse. That came from no where. I tried to pick the thing up and take it outside and it bit me! It didn't break the skin, but it took a mighty tumble down the pattern card stock and straight to the ground. I was apparently very brave trying to take it outside. We think it ate some poison because of how confused it was. Boss tried to get it outside humanely too, as it survived the fall, but it ran into a corner we can't get too right now. Which means it's going to stick to high heaven in a few days if it did eat poison. Skinny complemented me on my vocabulary today, as I was able to use the word 'colloquialism' in a sentence to explain how English works to the Turk and the Kurd.Until that point I didn't realize it was a word people don't use very often. Flatmate E has just informed me that WE have a mouse in our kitchen. Exciting. As long as it doesn't get into my cornflakes we're peachy. I'll probably end up going to tell the front office tomorrow. Tonight though was bowling! Amazing bowling! Flatmate C made a strike from rolling the ball between my legs! It was CRAZY! This place was really really cool, great music, a lot of fun without being as noisy as normal bowling alleys. There were only 4 open lanes in there actually and a really cool bar in the back. I actually didn't do too terrible and had only one frame where I missed on both balls. We've got some great photos that I am going to have to pilfer off Facebook when the others post them. I forgot my camera in the room, so I wasn't able to take any. And Babe, if you are able to come over, we are so going bowling. I promise.

And the weekend just started

I swear that if my ears don't stop ringing soon I'm going to go crazy. Seriously. But what caused them to ring was a ton of fun. Last night two of my flatmates and another girl got all gussied up and went out to a bar that we knew had a dance floor to have a little dancing fun called O'Neils. They ended up having a live cover band that was really really good, playing better songs than the DJ was before them. Apparently the Brits sure love the song Sweet Home Alabama which threw me off something terrible. Flatmate C got to dance with a really sweet cute kid for a while, I got harassed a few times, the friend got followed around by a creepy dancer guy and flatmate T... well... not too much for her I'm sorry to say. I'm not what about us made half the guys there think we were desperate for their not so sexy attentions. Maybe there have just been a lot of easy Americans in the place before. I dunno. I let it roll of my back, the guys stopped and left me alone when it was obvious that all I wanted to do was dance, not follow them home. I did have a lot of fun dancing real silly like with one guy, he was fun and not creepy. It was a silly Charleston/ Swing thing that was a lot more fun than the bump-n-grind everyone else was trying. He gave me his number with a little note that said I "Look lovely!" and asking me to text him. I don't think I'm going to, but it made me and the other girls giggle. We ended up leaving early because the other girls felt uncomfortable with their respective followers after a while. I was fine with that, I didn't want them to feel harassed or pressured by the guys, though I was REALLY enjoying the band. We went down one floor (the bar had 2) and ended up meeting a couple of banker men who gave T some attention. Which was very good, as she wasn't getting much before. We really did leave after T got the guy's business card! We all thought it was kinda weird, but harmless. After we got home I passed out rather soundly. Dancing is a lot of work, and work yesterday was a lot of work.
Well, mainly sewing a billion and one jewels onto belts and armbands for ice skating Native Americans. I got to design the pattern that was put on the front of the lead male's vest, which was very exciting. Near the end of the day one of my coworkers put on one of the skater outfits, and at first he tried to put on a ladies'. It was funny! He's pretty small, the same size as most of the skaters so it fit him well. They all just wanted to see how the pieces were coming together and how to attach certain elements. It's pretty funny though to see a skinny whinny PALE little British man in an outfit made to look like a Native American.
Thursday was the day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon. It was such a cool little town! It's where Shakespeare lived and died. We got to tour his house, but no pictures were allowed inside, of course some people snuck them, but I didn't. I may peruse Facebook later to see if I can't pinch any. I got a little bust of Shakespeare to put on my charm bracelet. We ate a a pub called the Black Swan, because it is across from the famous Swan Theater. The actors all call it the Dirty Duck so it actually has 2 signs, one on each side with each of the names. It was good food, but I hadn't had anything fried in a while, so it made me quite sick during the show that night. My camera batteries died half way through the day, so I had to take a lot of my photos with my film SLR camera. I'll be looking for somewhere with batteries and film development later today. The show we went to see was Twelfth Night with John Lithgow playing Malvolio, the head butler. He did a wonderful job, as did most of the actors. There was a lot of gender bending that I didn't understand, like casting Viola as a man. So she is a man playing a woman pretending to be a man. It wasn't even that all of the roles where played by men, as that would have made sense. It was very strange, but still enjoyable. I did end up buying a really cool t shirt at the theater. It's a white shirt with dotted lines as to where all measurements are taken. one across the bust, around the waist and arm, down the front from shoulder to wait and shoulder to hip. I thought it was quite smart. We weren't able to stay late to meet John Lithgow because of our 3 hour bus ride home for us. We ended up getting home around 1 am, and I couldn't get to sleep before 4 am. That really was what made yesterday so long, but man did I sleep well last night.
Today I have plans for laundry, then going out again tonight. Hopefully this time there will be a little less of an attempt on my honor as there was last night.

St. Joan and the day at home.

As one of my flatmates described today I was "delightfully domestic." I washed the dishes, cleaned up my portion of the room, knitted a bit. Actually finished one of my wrist warmers, Dashing from Knitty.com. I had to change them a bit, as the are designed for a man, mainly just making them shorter. When I finish the second one I'll take photos of them.
I did have to go see a play tonight for my Intro to Theatre class. St Joan by George Bernard Shaw at the National Theatre. It was AMAZING. I loved it. The girl playing Joan was really good, and looked appropriately androgynous for being Joan of Arc. The set was really minimalistic and crazy. I actually may have to write an essay about it later in the week. But for now, bed. To get better, to go back to work tomorrow.