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Home:Crystal Ball
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Name: Clawed and Shadow
Occupation: Chewtoy.
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AIM: MadClawed
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And the silence of the shining stone
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like the shattering crystal of the poet cries:
"I the enigma undefined,
the error of my age;
the players and the play defamed
that tread a timeless stage.
Ay! both hero and the rake,
of tragedy and of comic parts;
the dirge at many a wake
and the wit that veins the farce."
Oscar Wilde
Oh - kallaris - that pic of kenshin is here: Swordy Swordy Sword!
So my sister, the Duct Tape Fairy (also known as Sam, short one, and that-little-blonde-idiot) now has her own corner of my server space. She's chosen to upload several desktop images that she made. I'm under orders to tell everyone (actually, if you know her, she'll probably grab you and force you to go look anyway). So go look at them. Link: Company of Shadows
*yawn* as usual, posted in a fit of not-sleepiness. Which is insane because i have to be up at 7 for class and haven't slept well all week, and won't have a break at all tomorrow until I'm done with class at 4.
But, at least, today was a fairly good day. I think I did pretty well on my physics exam, and my Shakespere professor said my paper was an "A" and just needed a bit more tweaking until it was essentially unimprovable grade wise. So I suppose that make up for tomorrow.
Work tonight was... fun. Of a three-person crew, consisting of my stage manager, the sound person (who had knee surgery a month ago and still walks with a crutch) and me, I was the house manager/stage hand/go-fer. So therefore it was I who was assigned to change out one of the house lights that had burned out.
Now, to reach the house lights, one must reach the ceiling. Which means climbing into the system of catwalks.
Did I ever mention that I'm afraid of heights? I'm sure I did...
Ok, so I gather screwdriver, light bulbs (four, since no one could remember what size the lights were and there were two bulbs to replace), and courage, and climb the stairs.
Now, these stairs are built in a very economical way. They are essentially a spiral with corners. And they have no real 'steps' - well, they do, but the steps and floor and stuff are metal mesh. Which means, while I'm watching my feet to make sure I don't trip, I get to see straight through staircase and catwalk down the forty or so feet to the concrete floor where my body will be slpattered if the whole system gives way.
And no, I don't really care that this thing is rated such that if we wanted, we could suspend tanks from it.
So I take ten minutes to go up a flight of stairs and cross a catwalk, to discover - a locked door. Nono, says my stage manager, you just have to pull it really hard. Great. I have one hand holding the light bulbs, and the other in a death grip on the railing. I yank on the door. nothing happens. harder. nothing. Finally I give it one solid yank and it opens, and nearly knocks me over backward.
Once I resume breathing, I turn on the light switch, climb the last few stairs into the ceiling proper, and cross the short catwalk to the Front of House, where the stage lights are hung, and from whence one reaches the ceiling lights.
Fortunately for me, because it is built into the ceiling, I can look at my feet and see, six inches beneath my feet, glorious, glorious beams and ceiling-material and insulation.
Unfortunately for me, I want the next ceiling catwalk.
So I leave the safety of FoH and head back out into the cavernous ceiling area of The Red Catwalk. (inside the ceiling, but this is over the hallway, so instead of forty or so feet of empty air beneath me I have thirty or so. And did I mention that the pipes and stuff in there look like somehting out of Half-life?
Anyways, I creep along The Red Catwalk... reach for the next light... pull the string... nothing. That light is out. So is the next. And the third.
It is dark up there. Really dark. (yes, yes, it's less that 20 feet away from the FoH, which was fully lit. it was still dark in that way in which only theatres can be dark. Someone did, however, paint helpful glow-in-the-dark flourescent little arrows along the huge, white, stuccoed piped. And a neat little star and the phrase "Yes, this way" on the door leading to the rear catwalk.
You, sometime in your life, being up on a metal-mesh catwalk, in the near-dark, inside a ceiling, round a dark corner to be presented with a black door surrounded by vent shafts and piping and a lot of Red Metal and the words "Yes, This Way" painted on it with drippy flourescent paint.
Once my heart started beating again, I opened the door. A Light Switch! I threw it.
All the catwalk lights went out. Fortunately, it also turned them on again.
Well, I found the troublesome light, only to find that it was a stage light (as vs a house light, a stage light called a fresnel had been hung to cover a busted house light) and therefore I could not change the bulb. however, the other one (which was a sickly yellow and about to go out, why I'd been sent up there to replace it) was a house light and therefore would respond to my half-hearted tugs as I was leaning through the bars of the handrail on the catwalk trying to get it to open so I could see the bulb.
I reached for the bulb, only to realize two things.
1) this light had been on since about 7 am.
2) I did not bring gloves.
I had two options: Go back through the Catwalk system, hunt through the dimmer room and find a pair of gloves that fit me, climb the catwalks again, replace the bulb, and then go back down the catwalks, and face explaining why it was taking me a half-hour to change a light bulb. (this from the people that were there when my house crew and I needed all five of us, the stagehand, a ladder, and a chair to replace a light in the lobby... but that's a story for another time). Option two was to melt the skin off my fingers changing the bulb without gloves. Neither option worked.
The only two things I had to shield my hands were some fiberglass insulation lying around in pieces - which would have been very effective, but would have left my hands a lacerated mess - or my own clothing.
Well, I knew that no one else was going to climb up there. So I removed my radio, undid my belt, and pulled my shirt off. Staring down through the hole in the ceiling at the seats in the balcony, I had to wonder what would happen if, were there an audience in the building at the time, which there wasn't, what someone would think if they happened to glance up - because in the position I was in all they would be able to see was my (by this time very dirty) chest.
I didn't pursue that line of thought for very long.
... on an aside note, you know what your clothes smell like after you've ironed them? That's what my shirt smelled like for nearly an hour.
Anyway, I changed the lightbulb out, and put the light back (no small feat in and of itself), and put my clothes back on, to notice - that bulb isn't any brighter than the one I just took out. *great* I just climbed all over the auditorium ceilings and it didn't even do any good - one light is still out, one light is still dim, and now I'm covered in dust and grime.
So I packed up my light bulbs, and made the long trek back down the catwalks. Did I mention that I hate climbing down long flights of stairs anyway? Especially when the damned metal mesh has a tendancy not only to creak, but also to give under my weight?
My stage manager gave me the strangest look when I dropped light bulbs and screwdriver in his lap and told him that I was going to be spending the next ten minutes in the girls bathroom cleaning my brand-new pants off and the next time he wanted a light bulb changed, he could hire an electrician.
I don't get paid enough...
Blargh. Research papers are evil. But at least i got this one done in time for him to review it before I have to turn it in.
*yawn* And now for some much-needed rest. At least my new CD-RW drive came. Now if only my new book would arrive...