When It Rains...

As I write this, I am rolling my eyes at the irony of my title, considering I'm writing as rain is beating down on central NJ, threatening to drown anything and anyone outside the shelter of their home.  I got a nice shower running from the garage to the house.

Anyway, the real reason for the blog.  An update on my life.  Things have gotten veeeeery complicated as of late.  Perhaps in a good way.  Perhaps in a bad.  I'll find out in a month.

More about that later.  If you didn't know, I had my first tests last week.  They were back to back (Wednesday and Thursday morning).  I think everyone in class was freaking out.  Most of us hadn't taken a test in more than a few years; for some it was a few decades.  But in the end, the worry was for naught.  A 100% and a 92% kept me happy and on the path of sticking with MT.  :)  I can't say the same for everyone in the class though.  I think in the next few weeks, we may lose some people... I'll be sure to update.  And these tests were just the first level of information that we need to know, so from now on it's gonna get harder.  Can't wait.

I have another exam on Monday for my hands-on class.  More like an evaluation though, but it is still worth 20% (!!!!) of our grade.  We are being graded on our body technique and the movement of the massage, not necessarily if we do all of the steps.  We have now learned the Swedish massage for the front of the body and we will have to massage it all in 45 minutes.  No more, no less.  Yeah, that's not as easy as you think.  Each body part only gets about 4 minutes of work.  4 minutes is not a lot of time when you have about 8 things to do to that body part.  Needless to say, I am freaking out a little bit.  On Thursday, I tried to test myself to get ready.  I got it done in 56 minutes.  And my client/partner had one comment: "Slow down, you felt rushed."  Aaarrrrrrrgggggg.  I'm just going to have to keep 1 eye on the clock and 1 eye straight ahead (we aren't supposed to be looking down at our hands)  :)

Outside of MT, my life has gotten a bit busy.  I spent the weekend doing scene painting for a theatre in central NJ.  3 days, 25 hours of work.  Yay for money!  (No matter how many times my husband says that it's okay, I still feel a bit bad for going back to school and not working.  So weekend work is how I make myself feel better).  I think that will be all the painting I do for a while, at least until the show loads in.

But the big news that I've been freaking out about on Facebook is that I was asked to prop master an exhibit in NYC.  More specifically, I am recreating Leonardo Da Vinci's studio/workshop for the Time Square Exhibition.  This is the part where I grab my face a'la Home Alone.  This all happened in the past few days, by the way.  Don't you love how just when you think you have your life under control, a pie comes out of nowhere and smacks you right in the kisser?  And that pie's name is Opportunity.

The upsides: This is a very popular place (it's where the Titanic Artifacts Exhibit are right now).  I am working with a different designer, one who works in NYC vs. working with the usual designers in NJ.  So that's a great contact.  I also get to show off my mad skills to the production manager, who I interviewed with for a position at his theatre this past summer, but didn't get it.  The exhibit is for 6 months, so my work will be up for a loooong time.  Yay.  Oh yeah, and it's paid.

The downsides: I have 2.5 weeks to essentially dress a full set.  While going to school full time.  And this is Italian Renaissance.  Some major furniture is needed and I am just short of enough money to be able to buy all the furniture.  So I'm gonna have to work some magic with rentals.  While the prop list isn't terribly long or difficult, I am working on a whole different level than I'm used to.  I'm used to a theatre mentality: The audience is 20 feet away, so everything doesn't have to absolutely perfect.  For the exhibit... people are walking THRU it.  They are practically sitting in the seats.  It. Must. Be. Perfect.  The designer said it pretty well, "If someone who knows their stuff comes thru this exhibit, we need to have gotten it right."  So yeah... no pressure!

So right now... I want my pie.  I'm gonna have my pie.  I'm terrified that the pie will end up looking like a 5th grader made it and I'll never work in this town again.  Oh yeah, and that I'll have lost my sanity by the time I'm done. 

Shakespeare may have said that "an overflow of good converts to bad."  I'll have to see if I can prove him wrong.

Hopefully, this won't be the last blog for the next 3 weeks.  But if it is, please know I'm working hard somewhere (or I'm in a padded room mumbling about pie).

Cheers all!  And stay limber.