The REAL time in a bottle

This is what my day's last Culinary Adventure contained (thanks to a coworker for that perfect word combo!). It began with trying to conquer the poached egg. Alas, a second failure, despite having googled advice and technique from the internet. I even got brave and used balsamic vinegar, but that just made a more colorful mess as the whites ran a muck in the roiling stew of water. Patting it all back together with a slotted wooden spoon made for a pathetic little pile of goo in the plate. Not unpalatable, but not right and definitely overcooked (that part was my own fault, I have a feeling, as I didn't want to toss the mess into cold water to stop the cooking). Everybody out of the pool!

So, I end my day with something less predictable, but more prefab. I'm really just trying to stay awake after my graveyard into this morning so I can flop back for more, though different, in the morning. It's harder than you might imagine, to stay a demotivated lump on the couch after being up for more than a day, thoughts of productivity dancing in your head, AND still stay awake. It's the kind of thing that seems reasonable right up to the moment the key hits the lock on the way in the door. But, with a little help from my darling, coffee, and, later, my long-time associate, Dr. Pepper, the battle is nearly won. That and some lively Facebook posting has kept things humming along. It really is better to be up in the late evening. I don't care what other people say.

Now, why is it that I feel like I'm going backwards in my so-called career? Well, my friends, a "regular" schedule will do that to ya after a few years, I guess. Event stagehand work is like being on a never ending hamster wheel, no end in sight, even when the LED is shining directly into your eyeball and they are slapping you around telling you to go home already. Just because it is a "different event" doesn't mean it's not the same hamster wheel with the same shavings and alfalfa pellets. Since I've never quite gotten it together to get any goals going, I guess I might have already arrived and didn't know it. As Peggy Lee sang, "Is that all there is?" Only my feet hurt, so I'll pass on the dancing for now. Just pass the monkey butt powder instead. Gee, thanks. Yeah, it's a brave new world even when it's the same old shit. Strange. And yet, oddly familiar.

Here's the view I'd rather be enjoying right now.

Work

So, I tried to phone blog today from work, but this time, it didn't want to connect up to the blog like it had before. Lots of glitches on this site! Whadya want for free, right?

So, instead, an after-the-fact, instead of a blow-by-blow boredom moment. Is that less relevant, less "of the moment"? I dunno. Certainly less timely. I'm still working on the gadgetry, afterall. But after a lot of tedious typing into the phone, I discovered a 435 character limite and a service glitch. Nice. Made the day's boredom almost exciting as the new ground covered.

Long day, even if it was only two hours OT. At least the OT was fun, on-rope practise to keep in touch with my inner SPRAT cert. But then into the regular day, which was the usual. Better than yesterday, which felt like a real half-brain, two cell day. But, after more than four years of the same show, the threads (mental, that is) are showing. My techniques for avoiding utter brain-numbing madness: Humor where I can find it (sometimes difficult due to the unwavering bitterness/grumping of a certain crew member), attention to detail (no gelling out--it's just not safe...or smart), tons of "what-if" scenarios to get any possible contingencies into the brain continuum, watching for anything out of the ordinary on stage (ya never know: live theater), my exercise interval (about ten minutes during the show when there is nothing to do but drool or get gig butt and end up doing the former "gelling" routine--again, not wise), creative thinking about numbers, like contemplating the following news item: Ford CEO paid 28 million American dollars for 4 months of work, while Ford simultaneously plans to let, oh, about 30,000 employees go. Belt tightening of course. But not for certain overvalued individuals, of course. Oh, and the $28 million was not his entire compensation, btw. The usual. Chump change in comparison with the total for the workers fired. But, hey. Why can't they ever start with Joe Overcompensated for the Job Who Could, With One Paycheck Retire and Never Work Again?? I just don't get it. I wish I had copied the poppycock PR sentence the company/board used to justify this guy's salary, too. Utter Dilbertian nonsense. One of the many things that signals that this civilization is going down, as I like to say. Hello late Roman Empire. My little watch calculator came up with an error message, the number was so big on the lost worker wages (AKA "savings for the company"). If you just did a ballpark figure of 40K per worker (pulled straight outa thin air, in case you wondered), multiplied by 30,000 of them, probably a really low number, I'm thinking, that'd give you a cool 1.2 BILLION in savings. What could you possibly be doing wrong with your company that you went "whoopsie! gotta ditch a lotta personnel!"?!

Goin' down with help from Ford Motor Company. And not in the good way, either.

Especially hard to swallow (over and over again...just cruise the business section on a given day, if you dare) when study after study shows that CEO compensation has zilch to do with actual performance or company stock performance. Nice. I'll try and remember that the next time I hear another corporate monster declare how tough the economy is and how much it costs to offer affordable health care to its workers (you know, the ones who actually do the majority of work every day).

So I guess that makes another way to avoid boredom on the job: get disgusted by the latest news headline. Does take energy. Probably burns a few more calories of indignation too. That's always sorta fun, if not overdone. Don't want to hasten an overuse injury. It would be so easy, depending upon the day. And that story was a bonus, 'cause I didn't get more than a couple headlines into the CNN list before my little calculator was buzzing and error-coding. Yes, I admit that I was lazy and didn't just add the zeros together in my head. Hey! I'm trying to do a show here too, ya know! OK, so I didn't get much into my exercise interval, what with all the righteous indignation going on in my head.

How did this post begin? Daily grind. Avoiding boredom and danger (AKA mistakes). I'm sure this will be a continuing thread, since it is so very near the surface so often. I've been good, better than the vast majority, but even my mighty powers cannot overpower the stultifying power (is that an oxymoron?) of monotony. Ups and downs and the search for something new, something progressive, something positive, something that will give an extra laugh to the day without completely flinging away the last shreds of professionalism left. Or at least not carelessly so. It's touch and go at times, I admit. But I think it's in the company's interest to have a minimum of long brewing insanity cropping up, don't you? It's nice to be in accord, isn't it? We already know we can't all get along, but it doesn't have to be morose while we're at it, does it?

All you folkies out there, sing along: ...to the bottom of the...husbands and wives, little children lost their lives, oh, it was sad when that great ship went down... Great lyrics.