It's been quite the week. Well, sort of. Still no solid job leads, although I've applied for lots of stuff, both at VAFB and "regular" jobs in Santa Maria, Lompoc, and SLO. (Mrs. S wants me to work at the newly-opened Panera so I can get discounts for her =) ) I saw Mr. C tonight, and he said that his team is working on a contract bid, and if it wins, he's going to need officey types and will have quite a bit of pull on who is hired, so think good thoughts for his contract! Anyway, this week in (boring) review:
Monday: Met with an advisor at Embry-Riddle. REALLY liked her, she was not only very informative and helpful, but also extremely supportive and enthusiastic for me. We decided that the program that actually seems to fit what I am looking for the best is a Masters Degree in Aeronautical Science with a focus on Space Operations Management. Classes usually meet once a week, often on Saturdays, for 4-5 hours, and only one or two classes are offered per term (every nine weeks). Of course, a masters degree also costs more than a bachelors, so now I'm not only job-hunting, but also scholarship hunting as well. Fun! Oh, and no class on Monday cuz of Veterans' Day (I didn't make the schedule).
Tuesday: Didn't do much of anything productive other than more job hunting, but did get to go to FIGHT for the first time in what seemed like years. My guys are awesome, and I missed them! I took an elbow to the eye from Gil (it didn't bruise, although the tenderness still hasn't completely gone away) and drilled a left hook into Frank's stomach when he decided to do his brick wall impression during a drill (hey, he moved!). Mr. R and Morgan taught, since Sir was visiting family in Minnesota, and other than Morgan's continuing love affair with planks, it was great. Ma'am was there too, and we partnered up for most of class. We did a drill where one person is on her back, with her legs wrapped around the waist of her partner, who is on her knees. Then the person on the ground crunches up like a half-situp and throws four punches to her partner's hands. The partner then "retaliates" by throwing four punches to the stomach of the person on the ground (teaching you to tighten your abs and breathe out when you take a hit). Ma'am and I have done this drill lots of times before, and it didn't bother me at the time, but man, my abs (right under my rib cage) were sore for the next two days! I felt a little mollified when Ma'am confessed tonight that she'd been sore from it, too! (Although I do feel bad about her bruise. But she's a big girl and knows to say something if people hit too hard, so it's only a little bit bad. She said to hit her harder!)
Wednesday: Sat in the booth for the matinee and started learning the call of the show at the first understudy rehearsal. (Yes, someone FINALLY listened to our rants about doing understudy rehearsals on the Sunday after Opening and moved them. We are SOOO grateful!!!) With two exceptions, it's not nearly as difficult a call as I thought it was, and it's most definitely not the hardest show I've ever called. We did, however, have the weirdest stuff happen in the audience that day - people falling, cars catching fire in the parking lot, school kids wandering, etc. Ended up working from 12:30p until 11:30p that day. Worked on the final part of CP2 and ran out of yarn with about 40 rows to go. Of course, no one in Santa Maria carries the color I need. Ugh! So I started CP3 (the big scary one) under duress. Not a good way to start a project.
Thursday: Sat in the booth again for a brat mat after tearing two actors into pieces for sleeping through their alarms and being EXTREMELY late (one actually missed his first entrance, and is a student that normally does not exhibit such behaviour. He apologized today with coffee, flowers, cookies, AND a card, though, and I'm sure it will not happen again with him!). I have little sympathy for actors coming in late to brat mats when the crew has already been there and working for at least a full hour before the actors are even called. Sat through the show, went to the office and helped teach the kids how to handle the audition tour appointments that are starting to show up, then went BACK to the theater and did a second understudy rehearsal. So yeah, I was at work from about 8:30a until 11:30p that day. And people wonder why I'm not exactly broken-hearted about leaving.
Friday (today): Got new tires for my car! Yay!! I felt so bad for my poor little car once I realized how badly the tires were worn down. I kept picturing my car as having sore "feet" but having to keep running anyway until I could get them fixed. But she got a full pedicure today and I swear I heard a sigh of relief when they raised her up on the lift. (Okay, I know my car is an inanimate object, but I did feel bad!) She still needs some new brakes and an oil change, but that will have to wait a few weeks. And, btw, the guys at Big Brand Tires here in Santa Maria were great, even though I did get a lecture on tire rotation. Apparently, the tires were in such bad shape that they figured the alignment must be WAY out of whack, but no. The alignment is pretty close to perfect - the tires just hadn't been rotated in far, FAR too long, whoops! Went to the office for a couple hours after that, then skipped the show tonight to go to class. (I told Chrissy way back when we started rehearsal that as soon as we were in performance, I was going back to class on Friday nights. I feel slightly guilty about it, after all, the crew and actors don't get any days off at all, but none of them (well, except maybe Michael) have been working straight through since March, either.) Sparring was great, as always, and pizza and beer were a lot of fun, of course, but what was really interesting was the aikido class. Gil's teaching it, and tonight was the first time I've been able to go. It's a really interesting style - lots of joint manipulation and locks - and very different than the other two styles. It's incredibly non-aggressive, for one thing, and relies a lot on pressure and balance. On an episode of Fight Quest, one of the hosts commented that "Western martial arts are about forcing your will on your opponent with power; Eastern martial arts are about getting your opponent off-balance and then helping them fall over," which became very clear to me tonight. Takedowns were the hardest thing to get used to. In aikido, throws go straight into some other kind of arm/elbow/wrist lock to simply keep control (although the locks can be plenty damaging done quickly, controlling the opponent is more desirable than damaging him). In FIGHT, and even in tkd to an extent, takedowns generally end with dropping a knee onto your opponent's ribs and a triangle punch to the neck - damage your attacker before he can damage you - and I didn't realize how ingrained that had gotten into my body until tonight. The hardest habits to break are the ones you didn't know you had, I guess. Yeesh! We'll see how sore I am tomorrow after all the throws and rolls (which we don't do in tkd). Gil promised us sore wrists tomorrow, so we'll see. He seemed to like having me in class, though - I'm "his girl" in FIGHT and he told the tweenybopper I was partnered with that I was a fighter and not only wouldn't just give him anything, but I'd also try to squirm and wriggle my way out of everything. The tweenybopper wasn't quite as bad as I'd feared, which was nice. There is hope.
The weekend (upcoming): Saturday and Sunday are both going to be spent at the theater all day, shadowing both Chrissy and a crew member I'll have to cover next week. (Mr. C and his son, TKD Grandma and her grandson, and Ma'am are all going to come see the show tomorrow night!) Luckily, I was able to find ONE skein of the color I need to finish CP2 at Beverly's in SLO today, so I'm hoping that that project will finally get completely finished this weekend. CP3 is actually going surprisingly well, sort of. I started it, realized that I didn't quite know how to do one portion of it, and so moved on to the next portion thinking that I could live with the way that I'd fudged the first portion. It started really bugging me today, though, so I frogged back and have been asking around. We'll see if anything useful turns up. If not, at least I know how to fudge it better now! Monday is the consultation with the oral surgeon about my wisdom teeth coming out. It'd be nice if they could do it over Thanksgiving break, when I have several days off and don't have to talk to anyone, but that might be too soon. Yikes, I don't really want to think about that...
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