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I'm Takin' What They're Giving, 'Cause I'm Workin' For A Living"
Busy week. Very, very busy, complete with hands waving frantically in the air (ala Mike Daisey).
Work continues. My productivity and efficiency levels seem to be adequate so far as my temporary employers are concerned, as they have expressed a desire to keep me on for as long as I'm available and they have things for me to do, which is fine with me.
Although I'm certainly not setting my sights on staying on here for any extensive period of time, for the moment at least, it has the advantage of being a reasonably stable situation, so at I can breath a little easier finance-wise. And the people are nice enough: a small staff comprised about half-and-half of 40/50-ish academic professionals, and 30-something aspiring academic professionals. The main focus of their company seems to revolve around providing non-profit organizations, government agencies and the like with tools to perform statistical measurement of project effectiveness; it all sounds very dry and heady -- and from my perspectvie it is -- but evidentally, they're quite good at providing this service, as they've just moved into an office space about eight times larger than their previous digs right across the hallway (which in real terms doesn't appear to be much larger than my 350 square foot apartment). It's quiet, casual in the extreme (the office manager wears cargo shorts on Fridays), and they pretty much leave me alone to perform whatever task they've handed me that day. In short, it's the perfect temp job -- but it IS a temp job when all is said and done.
After almost four months of relative inactivity, I must say I'm a bit surprised at how easily I've fallen back into the Monday-Friday, 8:30 - 5:00 pattern. Of course, living in a space somewhat larger than two phone booths laid on-edge has made the morning ablutions more than barely tollerable. I walk three blocks to the bus stop, usually grabbing a cup-a-joe or double-short nonfat at the adjacent coffee shop, then have a relaxing 15 minute commute to downtown, where I disembark and take a quick stroll through the Market on my way to the office just up the street. It's a good time of day; just as the fishmongers, produce sellers, and neo-pagan tourist-trinket hawkers are setting up for the day, but before the hoards of ambling lookie-loo's crowd the place to the point where the locals know to avoid the indoor promenades in favor of the relatively clear path of the street outside. All-in-all, it's a pleasant way to start the workday.
In addition to the work situation, I'm smack in the middle of Tax Season, and so that's been keeping me busy on the weekends, and Monday nights helping apprehensive artist-types wend their way through the labyrinthian U.S. Tax Code. One of my associates insisted this year we buy a copy of one of the commercial tax prep software packages, and bless her heart for doing so, because it's made our job so much easier. Even so, eight hours of it can turn one's brain a little mushy, but at least we're getting people some much needed refunds -- eat your heart out with a rusty fork, H&R Block.
In addition to this, I've been spending whatever additional free time this past month helping gut The Union Garage, a small theatre space that for the past 10+ years was a sort of second or third home for me and a lot of other folk in the local Theatre Community. Despite the efforts of two different theatre companies (both of which I've had the honor of long associations) to try to come up with a scheme to refurbish the place and bring it up to code, the expense just turned out to be far more than was either feasible or practical, and so reluctantly the decision was made to give it up. Before turning over the keys however, we had to dismantle a decade's worth of internal alterations -- not an insignificant task. But, the walls came down, the platforms, seating, lights, costumes, props and everything else one needs to "put on a show" went into storage, and we had one final weepy, farewell blowout on Friday night. I took lots of pictures, a few of which will be posted for posterity once I have time to go through the disk. End of an era and all that. Time to move on.
As if that all weren't enough to fill a week to overbrimming, I've been working with my friend Lauren Weedman on a remount of "Wreckage", a solo show she workshopped at the aforementioned Union Garage last summer. She's done a lot of revision to the piece, which IMHO is now more tightly structured, dramatically coherent and just as funny despite the loss of a couple of favored scenes. We'll close that tonight, and then I can look forward to a relatively quiet week of JUST taxes and data entry.
Posted byCOMTE
on 11:06 AM
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