I’m bad about updating this thing. Not that I don’t have stories to tell – I actually have quite a lot, as things are really busy and I’m doing more recently than I have been in a while. But the blessed busy period I find myself in lately doesn’t really lend itself to doing a great deal of writing outside of what I’m doing for work.
Still, I wanted to take a moment to note what I’ve been up to, and what’s in the cards for the next while.
I know it seems odd to write a post about a car, but Squee was more than that to me. A culmination of years worth of wishing I owned an awesome hearse, combined with the right place at the right time, and hard work creating enough money to buy him.
Squee was my dream car.
Much like other people covet old-school mustangs, or other hot rods, I’d always dreamed of having a large, sleek hearse to call my own. That’s why when I had the chance to meet some other hearse owners in Louisville, KY, I jumped at it. When one of those owners took me to the place he’d purchased his beautiful ride, I thought I’d died and gone to car heaven. There he was – with steely grey lines and perfect chrome – just waiting for me. That was in 2001. I paid approximately $2,500 for him, and he had just over 42,000 original miles.
We’ve been inseperable ever since.
Today, I had to sell him to someone else. The good news is that the new owner is planning on rehabbing Squee and giving him all the TLC I could never quite afford to lavish on him. He won’t just wind up as a parts car for someone to pick apart and eBay, thankfully – which is what I was originally afraid would happen to him.
This makes my heart hurt just a little bit less.
Still, he was my baby, and as corny as it sounds, having to sell him is like losing some little piece of my youthful happiness. We took a lot of really awesome road trips together, and he was an amazing workhorse when I needed him to be.
I will never forget piling people in the back and taking him to concerts. I will remember many nights parked in front of Fuel, where so many people admired him. I won’t ever forget how much Jimbo from The Reverend Horton Heat gushed about how amazingly beautiful he was, and how he was thrilled to take a picture with Squee (and me).
I hope his future owner loves him half as much as I did, and takes him on all the adventures we never seemed to get around to. If he does, then Squee will be in good hands.
Ride on, my dearest baby. Ride on.
Know that somewhere out there, someone who once owned you loves you very much.
I’m really bad about updating here.
Of course, this really goes without saying. I never think my life is interesting enough to blather about, and I already have other outlets elsewhere for most things I do talk about that aren’t my life.
That said, the run for boom! is over with, and I learned quite a bit, with many thanks to everyone who was involved in the process. It was more fun – and hard work – than I had initially expected. I miss having them all in my regular life, but know I’ll see them all again soon as we work together on other plays – or at various parties, etc.
That’s the exciting thing that’s come out of this all, really. It appears that I did well enough that X (the other stage manager) is going to really focus and get me concretely trained in all aspects of Stage Management. The hope is that I’ll be able to take on a play of my own (perhaps next season) which is both nerve-wracking and extremely exciting at the same time.
Never let it be said that I don’t enjoy a good challenge where I’m learning something new.
So, yeah. Looks like I’m going to be set up as “co-stage manager” on the upcoming production of Dead Man’s Cell Phone. The intent is to give me a lot of responsibility and see how well I do with it while X is around to oversee the whole thing and correct any errors I make.
Maladrin is also the director on this show, which means I’m working with someone I’ve known since we were both teenagers. This makes me really happy, as we’ve always been good friends and he knows he can be as blunt with me as he needs to be. The lines of communication are solid there, which is really important to me.
It’s going to be a lot of hard work, but I’m excited about the challenge.
I also feel like my writing is finally shaking off its wintry coat, and with the arrival of spring, I’m really raring to go. This year I wanted to expand my writing out, and take my little musical side-project to a slightly more regular basis. While I did miss some time on Radioactive State during boom! I’m pretty certain I’ll be able to record those more regularly now that I have the bare basics down that I was so frightened of messing up. There’s so much more music out there to find and share – and music is such a huge part of my life, even if I’m not gifted enough to be able to sing or play it.
On that note, I’m off to attempt my hand at bocce under a warm sun.
Happy Easter, Spring Equinox, Ēostre, Chocolate Bunny Ear Nomming Day, or whatever you celebrate. <3
- Shazari on Flickr, used under CC
This is going to sound weird, but I need to gather 300+ bottle caps. You know, the plastic ones from 20 oz sodas or 2-liter bottles? Yeah, those. I also need them as soon as is possible.
Since I know I won’t drink 300+ sodas in the next couple of weeks, I figured I’d turn to you, my friends, and see if you could help us out – or help us out by passing it along to others who might be willing to send caps along. After all, I’m not asking for money or anything that many would value, but it would help us a great deal!
As to why they’re needed?
Well, I’ve recently started helping out with the Jobsite Theater group, which is a local not-for-profit theatrical group. Thanks to a combination of sponsored donations and ticket sales, they manage to bring some really great plays to the Tampa Bay area. They also have exposed audiences to brand new never-before-seen plays by promising new playwrights. And much as I’m sure they’d love to, these aren’t folks who do this for a living. They have families and jobs and still manage to carve out large portions of their life for the joy of bringing good theater to the Tampa Bay area.
With that said, we need caps to help create portions of the set for the upcoming production of boom! I don’t want to give away too many details on precisely how they’ll be used in the set; it ruins the fun of seeing it. However, in exchange for your gracious donation of plastic bottle caps, I’ll post some behind-the-scenes photos out here of rehearsals; the Straz center; the cast; and things of that nature. I’ll also be keeping a running tally on how many we’ve received to date, for those interested. (Who knows, perhaps we’ll get buried in bottle caps within a week! It would be awesome – and greatly appreciated.)
So if you have a few stamps, a few caps, and would like to take part in this really strange but 100% serious call for help for a very deserving theater company, here’s where you can mail them to us:
| Caps for boom! c/o Jobsite Theater P.O. Box 7975 Tampa, FL 33673-7975 |
Caps for boom! c/o Krystalle Voecks P.O. Box 47542 St. Petersburg, FL 33743-7542 |
As soon as I get 25 caps, I’ll post the first behind-the-scenes shot; so send those caps in and check back! (Or watch my Twitter feed.)
Thanks, everyone!
Only this time they’ve stolen Sony Online Entertainment‘s figurehead for EverQuest II, Antonia Bayle, as their chesty lure. To add insult to injury, they’ve added in a charming blue halo around her breasts.
This has to be seen in its animated glory to be appreciated.
So, rabblerouser that I am – I captured the .swf file from the site and have uploaded it to my server to provide a stable, easily referenced version. 
Talk about a sucky way to make a living. No, not me. I mean the people who invade other people’s accounts, steal everything they’ve worked hard to accomplish, turn it into virtual cash, and then sell the cash to someone who wants it.
This is why I simply cannot abide people who buy gold in games where buying gold is against TOS. Where do you really think it comes from? Even if they had nothing but bots farming it up in every single game out there, there’s no way in hell these companies can realistically supply the demand from people who want their MMO time to be easier. (C’mon. Easier? Really? I like harder MMOs. Perhaps I’m just an aberration.) So they invade people’s accounts, strip their characters, empty their banks, sell everything, transfer the cash, then leave the empty husk behind for the owner to recover.
Sure, I grok that everyone has to feed their family, but damn. Really? These people don’t aspire to make something more of themselves than to steal someone else’s stuff from a game? I can’t even imagine the ethical mindset of people involved in this trade. Does it ever make them stop and think that they’re taking someone’s time, not just their stuff? Do they really think this is a victimless situation?
Okay, so new start. Same old me. Slight blog look tweak. For 2010 I decided to finally take the dip and change hosting companies since I’m so damned sick of how GoDaddy treated me as a long-time customer. (Don’t get me started or we’ll be here for hours.) So far, HostGator seems to be a better deal and pretty solid in terms of options and workings.
Now, as to the reboot…
This blog is likely to contain a huge mish-mash of things. Sometimes I’ll just post pictures. At other times I’ll probably ramble on about whatever I happen to be thinking about at the time. I don’t promise that it will be the most interesting read to anyone but me, members of my family, and perhaps the occasional odd person. I’m also not going to edit myself as heavily nor fret about what I’m posting and whether or not it’s as politically correct as what I’ve written in the last few years.
It will, however, be honest.
It may suck. It may not.
Guess we’ll have to see.
Work scribblings
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