SuperSatellite ||

Marisol is finally over with.  The play ended well, and ran smoothly throughout.  I think I accomplished my goal of gaining back lost ground.  Everyone seemed to think that the sound was more than adequate.  Memorial Auditorium came through with their stage mic.  However, I think it’s time for a break again.  I enjoy it, but it is very stressful, and I find myself so busy that committing the time to taking care of sound for a show is not the easiest thing in the world right now.  I’d also like a chance to pick up a few new pieces of gear before the next show I do.

That said, I did get a group together after the post mortem today to do a reading of Freefall, my one act that I’ve been writing since finishing Walking.  It went well, and the feedback was very positive.  I was pleased with the comments made on the dialog, something I’ve been taking a lot of care with.  I plan on doing the first round of major revisions now, as well as lengthening it some to address what I found out today.  I could sure use someone looking to direct a new one act, hint, hint.  I do need to start scouting festivals and such to submit to though.  I think Freefall is some of my better work recently.  So, while I don’t want to work on a show again right away, I do plan on using the down time to funnel creative energy into my own projects.

Speaking of creativity, I’m in the middle of redesigning my blog.  I’m about 45% done so far.  I haven’t done a Wordpress theme in quite a while, so it’s been a little slow getting back in to it.  My development environment is also not ideal, it turns out.  It’s just giving me some bugs when trying to work on it at home.  I think you’ll like it though, quite a bit different from the way it is now.  I’m pretty happy with how it’s shaping up, and I don’t normally give myself a ton of credit in the design realm.  It’s not that I can’t, it’s just that to do it well, I generally have to put forth more effort than I want to do for myself, or for free.  Just so happens that this covers both of those.  Sure, I suppose I could pay myself, but where would that really get me?

Michaele and I took advantage of the play being over to start some wedding planning.  June 6th is the big date it looks like.  Next year, not this year.  I’m not that crazy.  I also posted one of the pictures we had taken.  Wal-Mart does pretty cheap portraits, though the other picture came out awfully dark.  It doesn’t help that I don’t photograph well.  I’m not good at smiling on command, as as you can see, I look bucktoothed.  We’re trying to get a budget in line right now.  Unfortunately, I’m a little new to the whole marriage thing, so I’m not totally sure what we should be shooting for.  Advice?

Sorry that I’ve been too busy lately to write much. Marisol is running at the studio theatre at PSU next week, Thursday thru Saturday (I think that’s right anyway…). I’ve been pretty tied up doing the sound design/board op stuff for it as we prepare for full tech rehearsals. I have to make up for lost ground due to Alice in Wonderland (don’t ask). Anyway, sound for this show is shaping up to be quite a spot of all right, and so far the cast has been happy with it. It’s just a time suck, as usual. I stand by the theory that I could go for a shorter year if it meant each day could have a couple more hours to them. Be sure to stop by if you get the chance, it’s a short show. I think once this wraps, I’m going to take a longish break from theatre, and get back to writing (as well as finding someone to produce Walking).

It’s a good thing I’m not actually in it though. My voice is apparently taking a vacation from my body at the moment. I feel fine though otherwise, which I’m hoping isn’t a bad sign. I say that only because of that super crappy throat infection I had a couple years ago that was similar. Like swallowing molten shards of glass. I’m keeping an eye on it, so far there isn’t anything resembling that former pain, so it might just be random sore throat. But I sure do sound funny.

I finished Yakuza Moon last week. It was all right. You could tell it had been translated (some of the language was awkward, and it was far from without typographical errors). It wasn’t quite what I had expected. Very “young lady overcoming adversity,” not so much “young lady fighting the dark shadow of the Yakuza boss father.” It is, however, a fast read, which makes up for some of the lack of details. I just expected a little more information about the skeletons in the closet her family had or something like that. It was just more personal than I expected. But, it was also her first (and so far only?) book. I suspect future work will be a little thicker around the middle, hopefully. I’m probably coming across as very “don’t bother reading this book,” though, and I don’t want to give that impression. It wasn’t what I expected, but it was still a fine read. And it’s short enough that even if you don’t like it, you aren’t out much time.

Jamaica we have a bobsled team!

So I am lapsing into longer and longer periods between writing.  Oh well.  You can deal, right?  I should try to establish a routine maybe.  Or do more interesting things that give me funny stories I can tell.

So the Alpha Psi group went to see Urinetown in Wichita at the Century 2 theatre Friday night.  If anyone likes them some funny musical theatre and will be in Wichita, I highly recommend going to see it.  What was crazy was what I found when I got home.  The picures below sort of explain it.  Yes, that is a cactus balanced on the faucet.  My only guess is that my cat decided that the cactus no longer belonged in the window, and decided to rectify the problem with some unique rearranging.  How the clumsy ass managed to not skewer herself is beyond me.

I have decided to buy a house I think.  My landlord is looking to sell the place I am renting, and while it is cheap and convenient, I’d rather not deal with the hassle of a new landlord, new rules, and potentially higher rent.  Besides, at this point I’m really just throwing away $375 each month when I could be building some equity.  Making an investment.  There are some cheap, cheap houses around here that need some work, that when done, would net me a tidy little profit.  I talked to him about buying my house and the duplex next door, but it turns out they are substantially more valuable than I would have ever guessed.  I looked at a couple places Saturday, and am gonna look at another tonight or tomorrow.  We’ll see.

So I was over at Fark.com this morning, and I found this article about Dinosaurs Attack.  It was awesome because I have the complete set.  And the cards are every bit as cool, vicious, and graphic as they describe.  If you ever want to check them out, let me know, I’ll be happy to share.  Imagine if someone tried to market these today.  Really, I would suspect they just managed to slip through the cracks, but still.  Ahh, childhood memories…

After several days with the new guitar, I really am 100% pleased with my decision to buy it.  I couldn’t ask for a better sound for the money I think.  Granted, I’m wearing my fingers down to the nubbies, but it’s good for me!

So, I now take my first step forward in the world of t3h intarweb. I completed my first video blog last night and got it uploaded. I apologize for it being a little long and lacking of fancy bells and whistles. Once the musical is done, I’ll put some more effort into my After Effecting in them. I’ll try to do one every couple weeks. Let me know what you think! Enjoy!

By the way, the pop machine at work gave me another free drink yesterday. That’s 4.

So uh…I bit off more than I can chew…yeah.  I went ahead and registered my own domain (fienen.net) yesterday and set it up for DNS (Domain Name Service) with No-IP.com.  Turns out, I’ve got my work cut out for me.  I can’t just have it work, mostly because Cox is a bitch and blocks port 80 (the port the internet works over).  So I have been fighting, quite fruitlessly to make things play out how I want.  Oh yes, the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) works fine, but the address bar in the browser replaces it with the site’s IP address instead, which is tacky, and I want to use subdomains (like blog.fienen.net) which apparently results in all sorts of weird things with my settings.  Damn it all to hell.  Needless to say I wasted a lot of sleep time getting nowhere last night.  And trying to figure out which problems are Apache and which are DNS is a bitch.  I will make it work though.

On that note, I do have a plan for switching to a new blogging system once I get the technical stuff worked out, and don’t worry, my MySpace readers won’t be left cold.  I think in the end it will be a good transition.

Enough technical bullshiat.  I neglected to mention that I have started in with The Music Man rehearsals now.  Boy I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.  But that’s okay, out of the house, with good people, too bad they don’t have wireless internet in that building, heh.  I’ve been taking picture that you’re welcome to look at.  Naturally those galleries will eventually migrate to my server once I get that DNS crap nailed down.  I think after this I am taking an extended break from theatre all together.  I don’t know what it is, but the enjoyment I lost for acting is creeping into everything else.  I can accept not acting anymore, but I don’t want to ruin it all for myself.  I keep hoping I’ll see tryouts for some play that just makes me say “Wow!  I have to be in that!”  I don’t know what it would be, or what it would take, but I’d like that feeling back.

Is everyone ready for the weekend?  1…2…3…GO!