Stick a fork in me, It's done

See this? It's been the bane of my existence for about a month now. But tonight, it's gone. Why? Because it's the end of the Ring, baby!

Here we all are. 10 Stage Managers swimming in the Rheinmaiden pond. Oh, and an associate director 'cause we couldn't find Clare. This is the best team you'll ever see. What an amazing group of ladies plus one token boy. And oh, what a man he is. For the love of him, we all survived, and we're the better for it.
Mr. Mike, doesn't he look like my twin brother in this shot? He's such a classic man, and now he'll be dancing to Mamma Mia for the next eight months. He's the only single, straight male stage manager I know. And one of the best I've ever seen. Not to mention that he's the sole reason I'm back with Shawn. God I love that Mike. Rockstar. Smooch.
Prom. 2005. At Gotterdammerung. A Walkure and a Flyman.

A fire god, looking so pleased that he gets to go home to NYC in the morning. He's the director for the young artist show we'll do next year.

Oh, it's me and the king of the gods, Wotan. One of the best singers and humans I know, Mr. Grimsley. Not only is he a ridiculously talented singer and actor, he's also one of the easiest people to be with. His entire family make me smile and laugh. I want them to be in every show I do. Oh, and Mom, we'll get dinner with him in Portland- he's doing a Tosca there when you come out.
Mom, you remember Marie, right? She was in Carmen. You sewed Halloween costumes with her in the green room? She sends her love and wants to know why the hell you aren't here. Your stand against Wagner has to end. I mean, like NOW. It's good shit, really. Get with it, lady!
So, that's it. Summer of love, hate, and strange insecurities. Hope it will stick with me in a way that'll make me come back in '09.

For Meganie

If trees could scream like people, would we be so quick to chop them down? I think so. Especially if they screamed all the time, for no reason

Hexe's in School!

Meine kleine Hexe,
I'm so happy for you! Mommy got you into a school! A brand spankin' new one, at that. You get to sit in those little seats for the first time, and make all those newbie teachers know why teaching is the best profession ever. You'll be such a rockstar, and make us all so proud. You'll be smart, sassy, and thoroughly Kiss. Not only can you already read, write, and dance like nobody's business, you can sing like a little Callas in the making. Study hard, young grasshopper, and giggle your way through it because you're going to be the most amazing little woman our genes have ever created. If it ever gets bad, just climb onto the top of your desk, lift that gorgeous head of yours, and belt out, "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, I'm looking for my missing piece, looking for my missing piece." Enjoy it, Hex-

Final night at the Opera

That's it. The Ring is done for me. There's still one performance of Gotterdammerung Sunday night, but my contract's up today. Last night was the final performance of Siegfried. Here's Robin, the associate director, saying goodbye to the bear, Steven.

Last show I'll call at Seattle for.......well, who really knows how long. It's been such a difficult year, as many of you gorgeous friends know. I had no idea what this year would bring, and I sure as hell didn't expect it to be so trying. So much so that my little lactose enzymes would go screaming into the night. Poor belly. But, as we all know, years like this are good. They're amazing for showing us what we're capable of and what rockstars we're slowly becoming.

God, they're so tired. Oh, so tired. Months and months of 8am-12pm everyday but one a week. I never thought I'd be so lucky to grow such affection for most of my fellow Seattle Opera worker bees, but I have never, in all my years in theatre, worked with a more amazing crew.


Fire! Yippy! Lots of it! Surrounding a sleeping ex-God. Wow. I finally get to do big shit.

And, that's it. All scenery getting stored again for four more years, and then it's back. I hope to hell I get to be back with it.

3rd Annual Schwanroast 2005

Every year we do these gynormous Wagner things. Parsifal, Lohengrin, and now.......The Ring. Yes, it was as big as they say it was, but gosh darn it, what a thing to spend a summer doing. Dern thing was huge. So, we had the 3rd Annual B-Bque at Golden Gardens. It's really too bad that I'm always one of the first to get there. I can't light a fire to save my butt.





Madeleine and I were the first to arrive and we had to "save" a firepit by putting our wood on the bench in front of the pit we wanted. Much silliness ensued as the two of us gossiped for an hour looking off into this distance:


See, it's easy to get distracted. Plus, we were gobbling down sunchips and didn't even notice our little box of wood scavanged from her new house's yard had walked off right in front of our noses. We ran up to the pit, turned around and saw our sunchips getting torn apart by voracious seagulls. Holy crap. So, we left the chips to the birds and started marching around looking for our box of wood in an organic artichoke box. We found it, took it back from some frightening "toothless" men (as Maddy continually described them for the rest of the evening) and sat back down on our picnic tables. Where I promptly go shit upon by some seagulls that missed out on the sunchips feast. After screaming and laughing and wiping up of poop, we whipped out our cell phones declaring our shift over begging people to get their asses over here.
And come they did.

Slowly but surely our reinforcements arrived with goodies. Thank god for beer and the opener that lives in my little Mazda since Karen and I needed to open a bottle of wine somewhere off the interstate in Kansas.









Maddy loves our big sunglasses.



Grillmaster Rob brought his own.












And now, the fires can begin........













Is that not the most beautiful place to have a fire on the beach?


The fire was so nice, and then we made smores. I think it'd be kinda like camp, except I never went.









The stagemanagers got kinda loopy, but lord know we should have. It was such a long, hard summer, we deserved a night like this.

This is my Mom

The Ring....ugh

The Ring. Such an enormous undertaking. So long, so complicated. So tired..... But, there's a bit of fun in the midst of it all. Here's Anna, plugging away in the office at the theatre making light of the 16 hours of paperwork she's most likely in the middle of. She's an ASM, and a darn good one at that. There's Anna and ASM #5, Emma. Emma's the lovechild of Wotan and a Valkure. Not quite sure how that worked out in Wagner's strange plans, but since Wotan rides a vespa this summer, it seems all is a bit up in arms.


















Look. We're so busy Maddy had to get a haircut at the theatre by the Hair and Makeup designer, Joyce. Maddy's another ASM, and, like Ms. Anna, ridiculously good at her job.




Here's Marta. She looks a little dazed. As do we all this summer. But dern it she's cute! Just about the best intern you could ever ask for. An smart. She speaks Chinese and spent the summer trying to learn the ring musical motifs on harmonica. There's nothing better than that.







Thank god for booze.
The Balducci brothers. One's an electrician, the other, a flyer of Rheinmaidens.

The head flyman, Jeff Mosher, is trying to lick my hair. I'm not quite sure what that's about, but I hope it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I keep dancing during the opening of Rheingold while calling fly cues. It blocks his sight of my clocks so he can time his cues. Poor sucker. I'm sure he didn't think he'd have to deal with a dancing and singing stage manager. We're such freaks.

Leftovers

So, this batch is actually from Sunday, 8/21.

Oh, actually, also from the night before. See, we went out to dinner with Clare's Mom and Dad who were in for her triathalon. We went out to dinner at a new Italian rest in the neighborhood. Got to sit outside while the sun went down over the Olympic Mountains. I still can't believe I actually live here. Clare had registered for the athletic even, so those are her numbers. She's so proud! I can't tell if her or her sister, Melissa, have bigger guns.
Here's me and Pam, Clare's daughter, showing our dinner to the camera.

Clare's somewhere in this huddle. Swimming is the first part of the triathalon. She had a goal of 1:45 for this mini race. Rockstar that she is, she finished in 1:31.

Oh, it's such a good Friday so far

So I got off the phone, grabbed my keys and enormous purse and headed out to spend money I shouldn't. Started at Staples.










See, the new camera needed a nice, large memory stick so that I could take copious amounts of silly pictures like this one to illustrate my complete lack of technical language. There's a $30 difference between each of these otherwise identical memory cards. Why? I asked the nice man at the counter and he couldn't tell me. I then said, " is the only difference between memory cards the brand name if the GB are the same? You know, like TDK vs Memorex blank tapes?" He said, "well, like blank CDs now". I felt he was mocking me in some small way. Turd.
Moved on to grocery store.

It's about 5 miles from my neighborhood. It's in Ballard, and aptly named:

I spent way too much time trying to stop myself from buying all the vegetables that are good for me because they're not actually doing any good if you don't consume them. Simply sitting in the fridge gives your body really no nutritional value. So I got some apples, a musk melon, and some grapes to freeze. Yum.



See, it's getting so full. The strange brown tub is freshly ground almond butter. I'll never go peanut again. See, sadly, that's the whole reason to drive five miles to freakin' Ballard. Fresh almond butter.

This one is for you to prove that Jesus candles can be bought even in the whitest towns in America. And hey, they're only 99cents!

See, in the Pacific Northwest we do beer.

We do it very well, and with much weight. In fact
When my silly Chicago ass buys a beer at the bar in the middle of a HOT spell (for Seattle) I wisely choose a bud. That's what you do. You drink light, cheap beer. 'Cause it's too freakin' hot. My friend Mike rolls his eyes very dramatically and almost guffaws when I do it next to his very cool Mirror Pond beer. Here's the selection in your average grocery store. Yeah, it's great. I bought a local brew from he Pike Place Brewery here in town called Naughty Nellie.

I'm heading home at this point over the Ballard Bridge. There's all sorts of cool sculptures on it. See, 'cause we're a really artsy town. Better than your town since we put art on the fuckin' BRIDGES.

Turning the corner to my little place....oh! look! it's the space needle!

And now, dear, it's time to get some crap done. Dinner with Clare and the family tonight, then perhaps drinks with the goths.