Neglect and Disrepair

A quick fly-by bullet-points list.

• I am still injured.  I have run exactly half a mile since buggering up my ankle, and that was out of sheer stubbornness and stupidity.  I suffered a setback of several days' healing time.  I'm hoping that I'll be able to try again sometime next week, but I ain't gonna hold my breath.  But hey!  I'm only limping a little bit now!

• Work is still destroying any semblance of routine (even as far as theatre goes, which is Not Very).  I have had the WEIRDEST schedule for the last two weeks.  It'll improve after the weekend, though.  The bizarro three-way-tech is over.

• I've stalled a bit on the quilt.  My sister says she's not concerned about getting it soon (plus she knows me really, really well), so I'm not worrying much about it.  It's just hard to work on outside of daylight hours, because the light in my sewing room suuuuuuuucks.  It'll get done... eventually...

• I have a knitting project so close to finished I can smell it (smells kind of woolly) and I am so excited!  I've been looking forward to this pretty much since the day the yarn arrived in the mail.  Rest assured, I will post it here.  

• SPRING IS VERY NEARLY HERE.  I cannot express in words how this thrills me.  If I were the video-making type, I might express it with a dance, but you'll just have to use your imagination (it's a very flaily, butt-wiggly, right-ankle-favoring kind of dance, in case you were curious).  I have my minuscule backyard garden all planned out, I'm expanding my collection of potted things, and I have made the majority of my seed purchase.  I'm not a flower gardener; they are very pretty but they don't go well with steaks and pork chops.  I'll be growing cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, snap peas, pole beans, tomatoes, sweet peppers, Swiss chard, carrots, radishes, salad greens, and herbs.  YES.

• There are only about 8 or 9 weeks left on my contract for the season.  Time to start thinking about a summer job... meh.

• Snow sucks.  I like it at Christmastime and then I want it to go away and never come back.  Until the next Christmas.

• Standing water in the backyard also sucks.  

• But the standing water is also kind of welcome because it's not snow or ice!  Yay!

• Just as long as it's GONE by the time I need to till my garden plot.  Grr.

• Garden, garden, garden.  I might have to temporarily change my name to Knit - Stitch - Run - Dig for a few months.

• Yay dirt!

In Which I Whine Like A Little Bitch

I'm injured.

Pardon me for a moment....

WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH NO NO DAMMIT NO

That was me, throwing a temper tantrum.

It's my own damn fault, really.  I know I am not a "biomechanically efficient" runner.  I've got knock-knees, high arches, and every joint in my body sounds like bubble wrap.  Not the happy little crackly stuff, but the big fat heavy-duty stuff that sounds like a cap gun.  Seriously.  I can pop the arches of my feet.  Surely that is not normal.  So I need to be a little more cautious than those to whom running comes as easily as breathing.

Over the last several weeks, I've been doing more running indoors.  For one thing, it's been snot-freezingly, eyeball-crackingly cold, and for another, we got this little tiny ice storm last week that hasn't melted yet.  (Not to mention the fact that I've been working oddball hours lately, and I generally prefer running in solitude, which is hard to come by in the heart of downtown Indy.)  I do not have a treadmill readily available, so when the weather's being a bastard, I came up with the genius solution of running at work.  The lobby in the theatre has a second floor mezzanine which makes a decent running track.  It's quiet!  There's no traffic and not many people!  The carpet is all cushy underfoot!  I don't have to bundle up!

The problem lies in the size of said track.  19.5 laps to a mile.  That's pretty short, my friends.  If I was already in good running shape, maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal.  If I did a lot of balance and stability exercises, maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal.

I'm not.  And I don't.

Did you know?  Tight corners, and lots of them, are maybe not something you should do with any regularity when you're still building a base.  And just the basest of bases, too.  This week was going to be a 12-mile week.  But now it's a zero-mile week, because I have developed what I suspect is peroneal tendinitis, most likely from turning corner after corner after corner during the vast majority of my runs over the last few weeks.

I am not a wuss.  I can generally take my aches and pains in stride (heh), with the exception of when I'm eating and I bite my tongue or lip and make that horrible "OH THAT EFFING HURTS" face and whoever I'm eating with goes "Are you okaaaaaaay?"  Yeah.  No matter how much I love that person, if I'm bleeding in my mouth and swearing profusely and they say "Are you okaaaaaaay?", I want to punch them.  Repeatedly.  With both fists.  And possibly bite them and say "Are you okaaaaaaay?" and see how they like it.  The moment always passes pretty quickly, but I really wish they would just not say a damn word... ANYWAY.  We were talking about my ankle. 

...

What?  I have really pointy teeth.  Accidentally biting myself usually result in chunks of flesh going missing.  It sucks, okay?

Whatever.  Back to my story.

I tried running the day before yesterday.  My ankle was a little tender right above the stick-out bony part on the outside, and had been for a few days, but I wasn't sure if it was a brewing running issue or just a mystery bruise (you get lots of those when you work in theatre).  I was going to have to run on the mezz, again.  Snore.  Since I had gone through the ordeal of developing and then fighting shin splints last year, I knew that IF I was working on screwing up my ankle, running through the pain was NOT going to help.  I know the wisdom of stopping as soon as pain alters your stride, and sure enough, two miles into my three-and-a-half, I was limping.  Noticeably.

An hour after I stopped, my ankle was screaming.  I iced it, tried wrapping it but had to take it off because even the slightest contact was agonizing, and ate a few ibuprofen.  If any of that took the edge off, I can't imagine how it'd have been had I just left it alone, because it huuuuuurt.  I was reduced to hopping down the steps at work on my good leg, and my boss even offered to send me home (I declined, because as I told her, it was either sit at home or sit at work, and I didn't want to admit that much defeat). 

After a couple days' rest, it does feel better, although it's still sulking pretty doggedly about being so thoroughly abused the last few weeks.  As I said, I only suspect it's peroneal tendinitis.  I Googled my symptoms, and the all-knowing search engine pointed me to several sites that indicate exactly that.  Overuse injury, often related to activities involving frequent changes in direction, like, I don't know, maybe turning 78 sharp corners in the span of one mile.  I'm not going to the doctor for this (yeah, I'm one of those who tells other people to not hesitate to go to the doctor but I have to be on the brink of not caring if I live or die to go myself).  I know it's not broken; there's no reason for me to have developed a stress fracture, and there's been no traumatic injury to my ankle.  It's certainly a soft-tissue injury.  So the only way to get a definitive diagnosis would be to get an MRI which I definitively cannot afford. 

And even if I did get a professional diagnosis, what then?  Either I'm told to STOP RUNNING FOREVER because OMG HUMANS WERE NOT DESIGNED TO DO SUCH A PHYSICALLY CHALLENGING ACTIVITY YOU ARE GOING TO DESTROY EVERY BONE BELOW YOUR PELVIS AND BE CRIPPLED IN FIVE YEARS or I'll be prescribed rest, ice, NSAIDs, and probably some mild stretching and strengthening exercises, all of which is just plain old common sense that I can figure out for myself.  If the doctor had a magic wand that would fix it on contact, then sure!  I'd go (as long as my insurance covered it).  But he doesn't, so I will rest.  Ice it.  Take NSAIDs, just enough to dull the edge so I can go about my daily activities and get plenty of sleep.  And when it stops hurting I will stretch, strengthen, and ease back into running, hopefully in a couple weeks or less.

Sigh.

LESSON LEARNED, ankle.  Lesson learned.  I'll cut you a deal.  I won't make you run on the mezz anymore, if you stop being a little bitch.

I present to you a photographic montage with a dramatic reading from Robert Van Winkle

"Yo, VIP.  Let's kick it!"

"Alright, stop.  Collaborate, and listen.  Ice is back, with a brand-new invention.  Something grabs ahold of me tightly; flow like a harpoon, daily and nightly."

"Will it ever stop?  Yo, I don't know.  Turn out the lights and I'll glow!  To the extreme, I rock a mic like a vandal, light up the stage and wax a chump like a candle."

"DANCE."

"Corrupt the speakers that boom.  I'm killing your brain like a poisonous mushroom."

"DEADLY."

"When I play a dope melody, anything less than the best is a felony.  Love it or leave it, you better gain weight!  You better hit bulls-eye; the kid don't play.  If there was a problem, yo, I'd solve it.  Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it!"

"ICE, ICE, BABY."

"VANILLA ICE, ICE, BABY."

"Now that the party is jumping, with the bass kicked in and the Vegas are pumping, quick to the point to the point no faking.  Cooking emcees like a pound of bacon." 

[I was not aware there would be bacon at this party.  Suddenly I am a lot more interested.  Continue, Robert.]

"Burning them, if you ain't quick and nimble.  I go crazy when I hear a cymbal and a hi-hat with a souped-up tempo.  I'm on a roll!  It's time to go solo!"

"Rolling in my 5.0 with the rag-top down so my hair can blow.  The girlies all stand by, waving just to say hi."

Did you stop?

"No.  I just drove by, kept on pursuing to the next stop.  Busted a left and I'm heading to the next block.  The block was dead, so I continued to A1A."

"BEACHFRONT AVENUE!"

"Girls were hot, wearing less than bikinis; rockman lovers, driving Lamborghinis, jealous 'cause I'm out getting mine.  Shay with the gauge, and Vanilla with the nine."

Um.  Robert?  This is getting ridiculous.  And a little weird.  Can you wrap it up, please?

"Yo, let's get out of here."

"Word to your mother."

Ice, ice baby, indeed.  Happy February!!!

*This post brought to you by too much coffee and hazy lyrical recollections.

Eat Like A Caveman: Shepherd's Pie

Jason's been following a Paleo diet for a few months now.  He's having excellent results from it--he feels good, he's lost some stubborn weight he had been struggling with, and he's running better than ever.  There are some other interesting side effects he's noticed--for example, his skin isn't dry and itchy anymore, even though we've had one of the coldest winters we've had in years.  I personally haven't switched over, although I have cut back on a lot of non-Paleo foods, simply because we live together and it's just easier when it comes to making dinner to go along with what he wants.

I did the same thing when I was dating a vegetarian, only this is way better.  WAY WAY BETTER.  (Not just because of the food, but that's not the point of this post.)

It's just... you don't get much bacon in a vegetarian household.  And I'm not okay with that.

Anyway, what this all means is that I've had to adapt some of my old favorites to fit the Paleo profile a little better.  Jason's okay with not eating strictly Paleo, which is good, because butter is not Paleo, but there's really no substitute.  Olive oil will work for most things, but there are some things where only butter will do.

I like butter a lot.

One of my favorite adaptations is my Paleo shepherd's pie.  It's way better than the vegetarian version I tried to make once.  I mean... come on.  Shepherd's pie.  'Shepherd' as in 'herd of sheep = mutton on the hoof.'  IT HAS TO HAVE MEAT.  IT JUST DOES.

So anyway.  Start with some kind of ground meat and a chopped onion.  This version was made with ground turkey, but seriously, any kind of ground animal will work.  You'll also use a small can of tomato sauce and one of those wee tiny cans of tomato paste, just not right away.  They just bombed this photo, that's all.  (The papaya and the avocado bombed it too, but they're not involved tonight so please to ignore.)

Chop chop.  Love that knife.  Hate the chopping board.  IT SCOOTS.  THIS IS NOT OKAY.

Brown them together in a pan with a little olive oil, salt and pepper.

Ground turkey looks gross until it's cooked.  I mean really.

Gather whatever frozen vegetables you have on hand (use fresh if you want, but make sure you chop them up small.  Big chunks are obnoxious in shepherd's pie).  I usually put in about a pound's worth, using whatever I have on hand.  Tonight I used half a package each of frozen spinach and peas-and-carrots.  (The peas are an example of not-strictly-Paleo, which is why I said you can use whatever.)

If you don't have out-of-focus ones, that's okay.  In-focus vegetables work too.

Use whatever spices and seasonings you want.  I don't like a lot of "heat" (I hate that word) so I use milder things.  Black pepper, ground mustard, paprika, chili powder.  And dried thyme. 

I love this picture.  It's very 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It needs a dramatic musical score or something.

Hey, wanna see our spice rack?

Yeah, it's pretty awesome.

Once the meat and onions are thoroughly cooked, dump in the tomato sauce and paste, the veggies, and the seasonings.  Stir it up and let it simmer until the veggies are cooked.

Hot mess, kiddos.  Delicious, hot mess.

Now, the crowning glory (kind of literally).  I actually start the topping first, but I wanted to save it because this, my friends, is what separates traditional shepherd's pie from my beloved Paleo version.

Mashed.  Parsnips.

OM NOM NOM NOM NOM

Where the potatoes would go, use parsnips instead.  GENIUS.  Proceed just as you would for making mashed potatoes--give them a rough chop, cover them in water, and boil until they're soft and easily pierced with a fork.  If you start boiling them first, by the time the hot mess is simmering, they'll be about ready to mash.  I always put a bit of butter and a crapload of garlic in them (cheater garlic in a jar FTW), along with some salt and pepper.

No, the pan's not dirty, that's just pepper stuck in the starch from the boiling water.  IGNORE IT.

Oh, and about that mashing?  Old-school masher, all the way.  Don't you dare use an electric beater.  It's not necessary and it ruins the texture.

I'M SERIOUS.  NO MIXERS.

Put the hot mess in a baking dish and top it with the mashed awesome.

So close, kittens.  So very close.

Bake it in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes or so, just enough to slightly brown the parsnips and let the flavors blend.  THEN DIG IN.

Yes, there are only two of us.  Why do you ask?

So there it is!  Sunday night dinner.  Comfort food.  Leftovers.  Easy to make and very good for you.  Who needs a box dinner full of crap and science?  We don't, and neither do you.

Adventures in Live Theatre

This isn't turning into a theatre blog, I swears it.  But I did mention workplace shenanigans at one point recently, and oh, do I have a story to share.

Friday night.  Opening night for The Diary of Anne Frank.  It was about 7:15 in the evening; the show was scheduled to start at 7:30.  I was sitting in the booth, reading Catching Fire (liked the series a lot; didn't love it as much as did the friend who recommended it to me and nowhere NEAR loved it as I love the Potter series but it definitely held my attention), when the Stage Manager, Nathan, came crashing into the booth.

"Shanelle, there's all this water pouring out of the wall upstage, you need to go back and make sure the strip lights are okay."  Crash back out of booth.

My immediate thought went to the spigot near the loading doors; it's for the rare occasion we need to hook up a hose in the stage area.  We tend to shy away from water in the theatre, because hello, water and electricity just can't play nicely.  But people know about that spigot, and if it had been accidentally opened, they'd have been able to shut it off pretty much immediately.  So I followed, at a slightly less-crashing pace, and to settle the marbles still spinning from being wrenched away from my book, asked "Wait wait wait... water where?"  Nathan paused long enough to say "Upstage above the loading doors!" and leave the unspoken "...dumbass!" hanging in the air, then took off rushing to the lobby, presumably to look for staff members who know how to deal with crap like this.

Above the doors.... the aforementioned spigot is down near the floor.  I took off in the opposite direction, hating myself for thinking "This is gonna be good."

Here's the thing about live theatre.  As a concept, we don't like crises.  They throw massive wrenches into our plans.  They're inconvenient and almost always mean more work for someone (or several someones), possibly work that will ruin a weekend or vacation.  In the case of severe damage, or cancellation of shows, it can cost the theatre a boatload of money. 

But in the rare event we do suffer a meltdown of some kind, oh my God, does it make things exciting.  Believe it or not, our schedule can get kind of tedious.  It changes constantly, yet it's always the same.  Particularly for those of us who are directly involved in the day-to-day running of each production.  Imagine reading the same magazine--or watching the same movie--every.single.day.  For six weeks.  Sometimes twice or even three times a day.  It doesn't take long to be completely over it; three performances is about all I personally can take.  Since we do at least three previews before we open, this after a good 3 or 4 days of rehearsals, I'm mentally done by the opening weekend. 

So having an angry, smelly waterfall pouring out of the ceiling on opening night is really, really, really exciting.

Yeah.  Smelly.  Somewhere on the fourth or fifth floor of the building, the HVAC system suffered a burst pipe.  No idea when it started; it clearly had been gushing for a while.  It trickled down through the floors and walls of our 85-year-old building, and by the time it hit the floor on the ground level it was cloudy and greenish and stinking of God-knows-what.  When I reached the most-endangered lights on the ground floor, the girls who take care of things backstage were running around, soaked to the bone and bailing bucket after bucket from a cluster of about a dozen under a ten-foot-wide swath of chiller vomit.  They'd collected every towel in the building, and even a binful of dirty towels from the hotel next door, and had tried to form a sandbag line of sorts to prevent the water from getting downstage where we use lots and lots of electricity.  They were doing their best, but holy crap.  There was a lot of water.

During all this, the audience had no idea what was going on.  They only knew that it was 7:55, the show was to have started nearly half an hour ago, and they were getting "restless."  Well.  The House Manager called them restless.  I'd have probably used "agitated" or "disgruntled" or most likely "pissy," but that's why he has that job and not me.

Anyway.  It all wraps up quickly.  The Artistic Director and Managing Director went onstage for the preshow speech and deftly downplayed the horror that was still unfolding thirty feet upstage of them.  The show started, minus the lights in the line of fire (which was unfortunate, because they were the only things lighting up the sky behind the set, so the entire first act looked like it took place at the same time of night).  The Maintenance Supervisor, whom we regard as a semi-supernatural being because of his awesomeness, managed to get the water shut off quickly, and it was just a matter of time until the remaining water flowed down through the walls.  Some other members of the staff went to the third floor to assess the damage, which was considerable (floors in two rooms are being ripped up and rebuilt this week, luckily there was no damage to electronic equipment).  By intermission, the cascade was down to an increasingly-sporadic drip, so we pulled the tarps off the lights and went ahead with Act II as planned.

And... that was that.  No more excitement.  Hopefully, no more at all for this show.  It's hard enough, what with the starvation and the cabin fever and the Nazis.  We don't need Operation Havasu Falls on top of everything else.

A Look Behind The Scenes: Sharp Mouthfeel With An Extremely Sour Finish

This past week, my blogging has suffered at the hands of my job.  That's one of the hazards of working in theatre; every so often, usually around every 6-8 weeks, it takes over your life to the point of becoming your life.  I do not like this.  I like to keep my life and my job very, very separate (the exception being the fact that some of my friends are through work, but that's kind of typical).  However, there's nothing I can do about it, so I just have to deal. 

"Oh," you may be saying, "you're exaggerating.  Everyone who has a job goes through that now and then."  I'm not whining or trying to play the martyr, but I promise, I am not exaggerating.  Behold:

•  Sunday.  I have a final performance of our theatre's more-or-less resident dance company.  I go to work at 12:30 pm.  After the show we have to strike (which is a really funny word for "work really really hard and take all the lights and set and crap down as fast as possible").  Wrap up around 8 pm.

•  Monday.  Day off for me; coworkers are beginning to load in (set up) the lights and stuff for the next show.  I am not having a restful day.  It's always a bit of a toss-up: sit around and try to enjoy a day off but end up stressing about all the non-job work that needs to be done (laundry, dishes, taking down Christmas tree, grocery shopping, etc etc et effing c), or do all those things and not have any time to sit and enjoy a day off.  Either way, I'm screwed.

• Tuesday.  Continue load-in.  "Normal" work day, as in we start in the morning and finish in the late afternoon just like the rest of the world.  It is, however, a day of pretty continuous physical labor, so we're all bone-tired by the end of the day.

• Wednesday.  Same as Tuesday, only we work a little later, into the early evening, because the next day requires that we have a certain amount of things finished.

• Thursday.  FOCUS DAY.  Sometimes it's not bad.  Sometimes it suuuuucks.  It generally goes like this: morning and early afternoon, tidy up loose ends from day before.  If we're quick, we get a longish break before beginning focus at 4 or 5 pm.  That usually doesn't happen.  As soon as the carpenters/painters/props folks get the set more-or-less ready for us to take over, we starting focusing lights, which is a fancy word for pointing them where they need to go and making them look the way the designer wants.  If it's a small plot with easy shots, this may be a four-or five-hour process.  If it's a big plot, or the set creates a lot of difficult shots, or the lights are shoehorned in, it could take two or three times that long.  This particular plot was on the small side, but the set created enough difficulties that the lights are really crammed together.  We wrapped up at a quarter after midnight.  (My longest focus to date was a few years ago, when we called it quits at six in the morning.)

• Friday is spacing rehearsal, which means the actors get to go onstage for the first time since starting rehearsal.  They've been working in a rehearsal room up to this point, with only tape lines on the floor to represent the set, so this is where they get comfortable with the walls, stairs, and different levels.  They take the stage at 2 pm, which means we usually come in at 9 or 10 am to continue wrapping up loose ends.  This usually involves "practicals," which are props or set elements that light up, like table lamps, car headlights, appliances, things like that.  May I note here that 9 or 10 (depending on how much we need to do) is non-negotiable; if we finished at 3 in the morning the night before, we still have to be there on time to make sure things are ready for the spacing rehearsal.  The aforementioned 6 am finish?  Yep.  We were back at 9.  I didn't even go to bed.  I went home, showered, had a massive breakfast and a bucket of coffee and went right back to work.  If the shower wasn't necessary I wouldn't have even gone home, I'd have just gone to Steak & Shake for a couple hours.  ANYWAY, once the actors start onstage, the lighting designer may start writing cues.  They are allowed to work until 10 pm, and they usually do.  This week, we lucked out; the designer chose not to cue through the second half of rehearsal, so I was done at 6:30 and I made it home in time for dinner with Jason.  That rarely happens, though.

• Saturday and Sunday are the same thing: "ten-out-of-twelve," which means the actors' union allows them to work ten hours in a twelve-hour span.  At my theatre, it's always 10am-10pm with a break from 3-5.  For the technicians, that means we come in before "go", usually at 9, to make sure we're all ready to start and to take care of any notes that came out of the spacing rehearsal.  Once we start, I sit at the light board, with my headset, programming the cues as the designer dictates them.  At the break, we take care of notes that come up in the morning session.  My boss is good about making sure we all get an hour away from the building, which is awesome.  Sometimes I'll go for a walk, even if it's crappy weather, because it's the only daylight I'll see.  The evening session is more of the same.  The actors leave at 10; the production staff always has a meeting to discuss the next day's schedule and goals, which usually takes a half-hour or so.  If I'm lucky, I'm home by 11 or a little after.  Sunday comes along, lather-rinse-repeat.  IF we are able to work our way to the end of the show, which happens about half the time, we will do a run-through on Sunday evening and often are released once we finish.  That didn't happen this time.  We worked right up to the bitter end.  

• This brings us to today, Monday, which is my day off.  Hallelujah.

There you have it.  Not exaggerating.  Particularly from Friday-Sunday, I worked and slept.  This coming week is worse, because the tech process starts on Tuesday, not Thursday.  Some shows are more difficult than others.  This one is more difficult, not because it's a particularly high-tech show, but because it's a hell of a downer.  It's about a young Jewish girl, hiding from the Nazis with her family and a few others during the Holocaust.  It's called The Diary Of Anne Frank, maybe you've heard of it?  Anyway.  It's an excellent script, the set and lights and costumes are exquisite, but WE ALL KNOW THE ENDING AND IT'S TERRIBLE. 

Last night, as we were approaching the end of the show, there was a lull in my programming and I was sitting in the booth working on a crossword puzzle.  After a few minutes I glanced up at the stage to see what the holdup was, and there was a goddamned Nazi on the stage, pointing a gun at the family.  Okay, it wasn't a real Nazi, it was an actor in a (fucking terrifying) black SS uniform, but my stomach still lurched and I started shaking.  Yeah, I knew it was coming, but I was tired and they caught me off-guard with their sneaky silent entrance.  I can guarantee you, when we get an audience in the theatre, there will be audible gasps and quite possibly tears when that happens.

Huh.  I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to ruin your Monday with Nazis, but they tend to ruin everything so I guess I'm not surprised.

So yeah.  That's what I have to look forward to this week.  70 hours on the clock and Nazis.  Now I'm depressed.

Drive-By Blogging

There will be times in my life when I just don't have time to sit and write a blog post. 

Today is one of those times.  This whole week, in fact, through Sunday, is pretty bad for us, dear blog.

Theatre.  It's more than a job.  It's a relationship. A very needy, demanding, one-sided relationship.