I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes

Things that have been happening lately:

• Awesome visits from out-of-town friends (with more on the schedule).
• One band gig. Not a lot of audience, but some nice photos. Next one is Sunday evening, Sept. 29 -- watch this space!
• Work is kicking my ass. We have entered crunch mode before start of school. I expect it to be running at high gear from now until approximately Chanukah (= Thanksgiving)... except for the part where we have off roughly half of the month of September, due to holiday timing, which will both ameliorate and exacerbate the strain. At minimum, I'm gonna need to get my butt into work closer to 8am all the coming week or two, because there is no freaking way I can hope otherwise to get everything done that I need to by start of school. Gah.
• Coworker crush still operative. Awkwardness resulting from certain ill-advised episode* at department retreat 5+ weeks ago finally beginning to die down. (*Seriously, though, I asked for permission a good 12 hours ahead of time, and got it, so it wasn't like I jumped him out of the blue.)
• Handful of dates, non-dates, or semi-dates with various people at various levels of interest.
• A few surprising episodes of breakup grief being triggered by various things, particularly a couple of the aforementioned *-dates. Okay, THAT part is not exactly surprising, but it's always surprising when things suddenly rise up at you, isn't it?
• Awesome beach day yesterday with ZZ.
• Some well-received design work for BHT. Also for shul (new member welcome booklet for high holidays). So it begins.
• Oh hey, I sold another art piece online recently (this one). I love when that happens.
• Working on G&S music for Rockville (Ruddigore and Grand Duke). Also, there was a Pirates of Penzance living-room sing in Brooklyn today, which I did just for fun.
• Did I mention that I have a paid gig for the High Holidays? Singing backup again, basically, for the services at Ohel Ayalah. It means I'll have to trade off some time when I'd otherwise be at T&V singing with the choir, but it'll be nice exposure and a really fun thing to do... and I will get to sing one of the three iterations of Kol Nidrei. Solo. For reals. For a congregation of like 200+ people.
• Sleep has been poor of late (my body has decided 5 hours at a stretch is all it wants to take in... sort of like when my phone battery was wearing out, and couldn't take or hold enough charge anymore. That, at least, I could replace and give it a whole new lease on life). Running on fumes seems to be catching up with me, as I started to feel noticeably iffy today, and need to go to bed within the next hour in an effort to stave it off.
• Got back more seriously on the no-sugar wagon for the past week or so. Not sure if this was related to today's crash or no, but I ended up carbing it up tonight just to see. After which, I am feeling slightly better, so I dunno.
• Booked trip to see my dad (and hopefully some assorted friends) in Indiana the first days of Sukkot, Sept. 19-22.

Whew.

Mikado is officially over. It's been a total blast to work on. Plus, I made a pro blog post over the weekend about my program design work (which, if I may say so, was very well received) for this production: Designs for the Blue Hill Troupe’s 2013 Mikado

justom's class is having its LA Showcase performances today, starting in just a few hours (2pm PDT)! Wish them broken legs, or whatever non-fate-tempting expressions of luck you prefer.

And speaking of California: holy crap, my trip with my mom is just 3 days away. I'm packing tonight. Assuming I ever get out of the office tonight.

*hurriedly buckles back down*

This coming Sunday is a major work event for which my entire department is working late nights all week trying to get ready.

The weekend after that is Arisia, when I'll be working 9-hour days at the MuffinButtons vendor table. I am super excited about this, but have also decided that my priority outside of vending hours will be... going to sleep as early as I damn well feel like it. (Maybe I'll get up at 6am on Sunday morning and catch the *end* of the DJ/80s dance, which I totally forgot about last year and kicked myself for missing.) Any other early birds who want to hang out for breakfast in the lobby around 9-10am, please do -- I found that that was one of my favorite times of the con last year.

The weekend after *that* is a Shabbat dinner with my synagogue choir, and special choir performances at both Friday night and Saturday morning services, in honor of Shabbat Shirah (the Sabbath of Song, so named because we read about the Israelites' crossing the Red Sea and their ensuing Song of the Sea). And, um, I got recruited to coordinate the dinner signups, which is cool because it's basically "put together a fancy signup sheet and then hound everybody until I hear from all of them, and then hound everybody some more until I get all their prepayments", at all of which I am an old hand, but... it takes some cycles.

Also, the ASL 2 class (8-week sequel to the 6-week ASL 1 class I took in the fall) starts up tomorrow night.

Also, I am lead program designer for the Blue Hill Troupe's spring show. The hard part of my job is more-or-less-almost done, but I still have to set up a bunch of article templates based on the design specs we've settled on.

Also, remember that book project that I'm trying to get out the door? Maybe by the end of this month?

Also, I, um, agreed to serve as production stage manager for Utopia Unlimited's next opera production, La Fille du Regiment, which is dress-rehearsing the last week of January for performances Feb 1-2.

Basically, I've now decided that if there's anything I haven't already promised to do for someone in February, I am not doing it. (So, BHT yes, ASL yes, shepherding book through manufacturing yes, everything else no.) Seriously -- I had signed up to participate in the synagogue Purimshpiel, but I emailed them yesterday morning to back out, because no. I just don't need a whole new set of Sunday-afternoon rehearsals shoehorned into my month. Even if it is a short month.

March will be Lunacon, and then -- holy crap, it'll already be Passover. Where does the time go?? (But, 10-day stay-cation!!)

... Speaking of Lunacon, I am thinking of vending there too, but I already bought a personal membership, and now the table fee comes with one (and they won't credit me for the existing one). Anyone want me to transfer a membership to them for this year? I'll sell it for the $30 I paid in October; they're already up to $50.

Yeah, well, so. I pulled together a bunch of old material in the first few days of November, did a bunch of timeline research for the year(s) I intend to set the story, and started framing out an outline of scenes. But I got lazy/complacent/"busy" after that, and haven't done much more since. ( excuses, excuses ) In short, I didn't commit very hard to actually making the time for this in the month of November, and it shows.

Returning to my resolutions goals for 2012 ( LJ | DW ), I was actually rather amused to see that I had listed "Complete a draft of a novel" as the 10th goal. (Of the overall list, four have achieved successful completion, two show essentially zero progress, and the other four have progress bars ranging from about 25% to 50%... or might by the end of the year. For now, I will leave the identifications as an exercise to the astute reader.)

Supposedly it's possible to "come up from behind" in the last week of November and still finish in time to "win" NaNoWriMo (by completing 50k words within the 30 days). I had good intentions (as usual) of putting in a great many hours over Thanksgiving, and that weekend I did finally sit down and do a couple hours -- once. But one session isn't going to get this story written. One session every single week, maybe. (In 30 weeks?)

I do feel like I've gotten enough of a foothold that I will push through and finish the draft. But at this point, I'm not setting the expectation that I will really get it done before the end of the year, at least until after the book project is safely at press. (Though, um, I also agreed to be the lead program designer for the Blue Hill Troupe's Mikado this spring. Which is a 120-page perfect-bound monstrosity. But I'm pretty excited to get to do it.)

So I think it's going on the goals list for 2013.

In the meantime, I have acquired some nice articles about the fiction-writing process, which have already been useful to varying degrees:

How To Write A Novel: 8 Essential Steps
http://www.more.com/member-voices/your-stories/how-write-novel-8-essential-steps

More "Writing Tips from Masters"
http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/269

Target character and conflict with a handy checklist
http://www.writermag.com/en/Articles/2011/12/Target%20character%20and%20conflict%20with%20a%20handy%20checklist.aspx

Wow, nothing like four days of travel to knock me right off the LJ wagon. (Work conference in DC the end of last week, then a whirlwind Boston trip where I never got farther than 100yds north of South Station.)

So, yeah... but happily I'll be in Boston again this coming weekend with possibly more chance to see folks. Current plan looks like this:

FRI

Arrive Boston ~8:15pm (shabbat shalom!)

Possible quick swing through dinner chez ablock

10pm: Pirates of Penzance (Club Oberon). General admission, so if you want to join me, feel free to order a ticket ($20), and let me know so we can meet up. -- Oh, I meant to point out that the troupe performing it (The Hypocrites) is a company from Chicago who did the production of Cabaret a couple years ago that my little cousin was in (as the Littlest Nazi). Small theater world!

SAT

~10am (ha, ha): services at tremontstshul
(I was briefly thinking of an outing to Picco before the matinee, but I'm actually planning to make it to shul and see my dear ones there, so maybe next time.)

2pm: Hotel Nepenthe (Calderwood Pavilion, BCA). General admission, so if you want to join me, feel free to order a ticket ($20), and let me know so we can meet up.

6:30pm: birthday festivities, Cambridge

~10:30pm meet up with justom and the denizens of La Mancha?

SUN

brunch plans, anyone?

1pm: theatreatfirst scriptreading

6:30pm: return BoltBus Megabus

In more personal theater news, I am auditioning tonight for the Blue Hill Troupe's fall musical, Grand Hotel. Not sure there's a solo role in there for me, but it sounds like they're going to do a fairly significant ensemble and therefore it's likely I will get to be in it somehow. Yay!

Oh, and also a BHT contingent (including me) is performing a FREE half-hour set of lesser-known G&S favorites this Thursday evening as part of the 2012 Make Music New York festival. We'll be at the Seward Park Library (Lower East Side) between 6:15 and 7:45pm. NYCers, come on down!