Day 1

The view off our "back deck"

The first day of school. Er. Work. Picked up around 8:30am and we head up to the Opera for the first time. The drive up is brown; I don't know how else to describe it. It's dry, everywhere. We park and are introduced to the Boss, then we tour around the facility and the campus throughout the day.

A "hodge-podge" is an easy way to describe the Opera. Over the decades, technology has been added in addition to, or over top of previous iterations. Tiny offices populate the backstage area, with equipment stored throughout. Road cases here, TVs on carts over there, fabric storage in the corner. One thing that becomes apparent is there's little delineation between "indoors" and "outdoors"...because there are no doors  blocking many of the entrances and exits. If a wicked storm were to roll through, lots of equipment and people would be at the mercy of the elements.

I'm also saying this from an east-coast point of view. The Boss said that there are 360 days of sun in New Mexico, and when it does rain, it's quick and painless. There are lots of high roofs to help with the straight-down rain, but if it gets windy, there's a lot that can get wet. The weather today is gorgeous. Low humidity, 75 degrees. One of those days where pants are necessary in the morning, but shorts would be nice in the afternoon.

There are video, audio and speaker patches EVERYWHERE. Everything seems to be documented well, too, at least from an audio standpoint. Going back to what I said about decades stepping over one another, apparently the scene shop table saw has a breaker in our control room. And the control room lights are tied to a breaker in the costume shop.

The stage crew was hard at work today painting STOP and SIGHTLINE markers on the back deck. The back deck is about the size of a football field, and falls off the upstage edge of the stage. Large scenery is laid out here, or staged before it's moved up to the stage level. There is a lift on the upstage edge that travels from the basement to the stage level, and all scenery has to fit on this lift to make it to the stage. Around the lift on the back deck are SIGHTLINE strips that fan out from the lift. If you're inside the SIGHTLINE strip, it's possible to be seen from the house.

Just before lunch we were issued knee pads, leather work gloves (DeWALT-branded fancy) and a hard hat. It's been said that if you need to walk on stage for any reason to wear the hard hat just in case something were to drop from the catwalks.

We made our way to lunch across the street to Tuseque, a quiet area with a Village Market which served native New Mexican food. I got the Fiesta Chicken, a grilled piece of chicken with green salsa and melted cheese, wrapped in a tortilla. I had been warned on many occasions that the salsa here is different than any other salsa (read: spicy), and I was surprised at how tame it was. The green salsa was full of flavor, and hot, but not "I-want-to-rip-my-throat-out" hot. Just...pleasant.

We get back from lunch and we continue the tour, next up is the catwalks. This excites me, because now I can see something i'm familiar with. There are 8 or 9 catwalks, upstage-to-downstage. There are circuits...EVERYWHERE. All throughout the house, the catwalks, the wings, it's unbelievable. There are six or seven 96-dimmer packs, which means the Opera has close to 700 dimmers. AAAAHHH. Lots to do for this electrics crew, which starts their hang in the coming week. I also noticed on the last catwalk an assortment of VARI*LITE fixtures, including a VL500, VL2000, VL3500 and....a VLX! I think these may be here the whole season, so I hope to get some more hands-on with the VLX.

After that, we played with some of the cameras and the wireless intercoms, and it was time to go home. Tomorrow is when we re-hang the main front speakers, and continue testing the entire rig for the upcoming season.

Cheers!
-Matt

Day 0

So the first day went by pretty well. I got to my apartment around 3:30pm, met my roommates, dumped my stuff in the room and started making phone calls home. The apartments (Hereby referred to as the “Axton”) are Adobe-styled, two-level apartments. They form a U-shape, with a courtyard in the middle. The weather was great outside, but for some reason it was stuffy in the apartment.

The internet here is...touchy. It’s sluggish at best, and intermittent at worst. There are three wireless networks feeding the apartments, but they all have different names (They’re like APT-A, APT-B, and APT-C). I don’t understand why they don’t just make them all the same SSID. It would be easier to manage, and clients would just jump onto the nearest access point. My iPhone’s EDGE connection is faster and more reliable than this WiFi. But I digress...

There’s a TRADER JOE’S within walking distance. OMFG. I swung by and picked up my first round of groceries. I ended up making the hot-dog-and-potato-salad combo that TJ’s had as their demo meal of the day. All great stuff!

Star Wars is on SPIKE! All the original trilogy. Gonna wrap this up and finish watching. See you tomorrow!

Flying

UPDATE: Landed, trying to find my shuttle...

I’ve always enjoyed flying, from being really young and flying with my grandfather in hi 4-seat Piper, to flying with Alan in the Diamond, to the various trips at 30,000+. The logistics, the environment, the adventure has always fascinated me.

I told myself when I was young that I would get my pilot’s license, and I still hold that hope. It’s gotten pushed aside for other things like school and the Harley (I don’t have to rent the Harley for $100/hour), but I still have the flight bag, maps, and the headset I got for christmas one year. I don’t know if i’ve used the headset yet; I received it around the time Mom and Alan bought the boat, and fun on the water beat out fun in the air.

So for someone so in love with flying, you think I would have the logistics of getting to my gate with as few hassles as possible. My checked bag was slightly overweight (by 5 pounds), so to avoid the $50 fee for the overweight bag, I had to pull out some things to go into my slightly-stuffed carry-on. Security was much easier, thanks to the new Timbuk2 bag with the separate laptop compartment. I crammed my phone, wallet, keys into my bag, and dropped my shoes (I still have to take these off?) and my belt into a bin. A TSA agent put her purse on the belt before my stuff, and as I went through the detector to grab my bag, the X-ray agent goes “Woah...heh, what’s this?”

“Where do we start?” I say in my head. My camera, or lenses? The laptop? the GPS? the books? the dozen cables?

“No, it’s okay, it’s her’s” says the TSA agent manning the metal detector. My bag never gets touched, and I grab, zip up the laptop, and grab a seat to put my shoes back on. All told it was about 30 minutes from drop-off to gate. Not bad.

Now, i’m 3 episodes into Season 4 of “Weeds”, about a 90 minutes left on the laptop, 500 miles out of ABQ and my GPS won’t get a signal. Boo. 38,000 feet closer to the satellites, you think it would work. But I have the aisle seat and i’m in an aluminum tube, so that might be contributing. Captain says we may get into ABQ at 12:10, which now makes me wish I kept the 12:45 shuttle to Santa Fe. Oh well. I wonder if they’ll let me take it anyway.

See you on the ground...

Goals

So I figure if i’m going to document my adventures across the country, I should set some goals for myself. It’s one thing to go and have fun and work hard, but the satisfaction of achieving at least one goal is so fulfilling. I think the summer is a short enough to keep the goals reasonable, and long enough to get significant time to invest. Here goes:

1. Run. A lot. Or at least lots of cardio. When I was in Hershey last summer, a bunch of us played basketball in the morning. Eventually, the several games-per-week became two or three, then one, then none. But that hour or so of cardio felt GREAT, and it put my ass back in shape (I really slacked off during that first month). There’s a 7,000 foot elevation difference between Baltimore and Santa Fe, and those who have run in those higher elevations say it takes a little adjustment, but it’s easy to overcome. Also, if I decide to run in the Baltimore Half-Marathon, i’m pretty sure my endurance will increase because there’s more oxygen.
2. Take photos every day. And not just snapshots on my iPhone, I mean real compositions with my D300. I’m in freakin’ New Mexico, there’s gotta be PLENTY to photograph. Most people I mention my trip to say it’s GORGEOUS (they really do speak in CAPS). Think of a Project 365, but just for the summer. Who knows, maybe it will keep going past that. A few rules for this goal: Multiple photos can be taken in the same day. However, photos from one day cannot roll over to a new day. Every day needs fresh photos. Also, photos from a photo shoot COUNT. If I do headshots for someone, I will count those photos since i’ve dedicated that time which could be used to photo something else.
3. Eat well. Apparently there’s a Trader Joe’s within walking distance of my apartment. I mean, splurging isn’t out of the question, but my day-to-day meals shouldn’t consist of cafeteria food, or grab-and-go burgers. Yes, it will be a little more expensive (or not?) but I think a summer is long enough to try it.
4. Update this blog regularly. I’m not a writer. I’m sure my thesis professor would disagree, but it helps keep in contact with people at home. And I finally get to put iWeb through it’s paces.

So the flight leaves in 33 hours, but there’s still plenty to do before I go: Wine and Herb Festival, deliveries, drop off vehicles. Oh, and sleep. Good night.