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The crazy life I now live in New Orleans, LA

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Location: New Orleans, LA

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

What's that yellow stuff?

That's right...the sun is shining, after a few days of thunderstorms, we have sunshine. Which also means hot, sticky weather. I love this weather SO MUCH. Seriously . It must be some kind of sickness. It is so much better than it be sunny and cold out. There is a 60% chance for storms again today however. Yesterday was fun. Flooding streets, water pressure down at the water/sewage plant which resulted in no running water across town. The AC was off in the building for awhile. That was actually fine because its normally a freezer in here. So it got to warm up a bit in here. A little bit later on the fire alarm started going off. It is the most annoying, nails on chalk board sound EVER. Of course when it goes off suddenly, I nearly pee myself. And almost every freakin time it goes off (which it does often) the phone rings. I can't really answer the phone when that sound is happening. One of these days that thing is gonna go off for a real emergency and we will all sit here in the office working away. Yesterday the fire trucks even came. Too bad the cute firemen must have had the day off. But you should have seen us girls crowded around the conference room windows looking down at the street. Kinda like that old "Coke Break commercial"

Anyway....when I saw the sun today, it reminded me of a funny story. Okay so its probably only funny to Jenny, Sarah (the Estill girls) and myself. But I am going to share it anyway. Way back in 1998 during a weekend out at Kitsap, we were doing a performance of "Fiddler on the Roof" It was a Sunday, maybe the 2nd or 3rd weekend of the run. We normally have everyone down at the theatre at 10, where we do warm ups, run through some songs and maybe some dance numbers. Around 12, lunch is brought down to the theater and we all hang out on the stage or in the house soaking up the sun eating our lunch. The show doesn't start until 2, but the house opens at 1. So we have an hour to kill. Once the house is open, we are all to stay backstage. I make my rounds telling people to clean up their lunches from the house area as well as the stage. Because the theater is older...there is no "overhead" announcement for me to make that "house is open" So I usually start out front, then go from one side of the stage to the other. I usually would have to go down to the creek that ran backstage and tell the kids down there as well. I had a lot of ground to cover. This particular weekend I went through the drill....got everyone backstage, had the stage set and cleared. At some point after I had given the house manager the okay to open the trail (its 1/4 mile hike down to the stage) I was down by the creek rounding up kids. Jenny had wandered out the stage to sit and eat not realizing the house was open, she then got distracted by something and when backstage. I came back up and was talking to one of the ushers by one of the entrances, I happened to look at the stage and noticed an abandoned plate of food on a bench. That hadn't been there before, and now the audience was coming in. I ran down the steps grabbed the plate and ran backstage. "who left their food on stage after I said house was open??" I guess I didn't say it in the nicest ways as Jenny burst in tears and said "me...I am so sorry" at the time she was 8 or 9. It became a running joke for the rest of the run...Jenny making a big production of checking the stage right after I announced that the house was open. Cut to two years later. The first weekend of "Secret Garden". On the ferry ride across the sound it was cloudy and drizzly. The shows open memorial day weekend. Our final dress would take place on Saturday, opening day would be Sunday, with another show that Monday. We ran the show that Saturday and all prayed for no rain. The show goes on rain or shine. After all we were Mountaineers right?? That night as I laid in my tent (yes tent) the rain started. It had to have been around 11 or so. And it kept raining. All through the opening performance....all through the night and all through the Monday performance. It finally stopped around 5:00 PM...when the show was ending. We were all covered in mud (including Lily's white lace dress) wet and cold. It made for a pretty miserable weekend, but we had made it through. Jenny had the lead of Mary Lenox...and Sarah had a fairly large part as the maid/nanny for Mary. Can't remember the characters name. The following weekend it was sunny, wonderful and we had a packed house. I was standing in one of the wing entrances, going through all my upcoming scene changes. All of a sudden Sarah runs up and says "What's all that yellow stuff on the stage?" I freak out ("what?? where???")and almost run out on stage looking for this yellow substance in front of about 400 people when Jenny and Sarah started laughing hysterically. Sarah had been talking about the sunlight on the stage. I, of course was thinking that someone had left something on stage again. In fact for several years following....the kids would try to pull that joke on me.

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