Don't look now! **BLAM** A new post?!

I got forshamed the other day for not posting since April 3rd so I have decided now is the perfect opportunity to dip my toe back in the water.

First thing that comes to mind is the "These things I've seen" speech by Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner. I'm still waiting to see starships on fire off the coast of Orion but a lots happened since last post.

April was a most disastrous month for my midsection. I decided I would forego the gym and let my bum shoulder heal so I could workout properly. Little did I know this meant I would do no exercise for the almost the entire month. I got soft. I hate soft. Before leaving for New York I ventured back out to begin cardio training anew and i am always shocked by how far one can fall when being lazy. First week in NYC, felled by a head cold. Pros and Cons are as follows: I hate being sick. I lose weight. Head cold now gone, I was going to proceed with rigorous and painful trips to gym but I think my coworker has the gym tag on her keyfob and she's currently arguing loudly with her husband in Italian, so I keep my distance. Only thing I keep hearing is "Shamo!" which I think I know the meaning of.

New York is the same animal it always has been and always will be. You run the race, if you stop you get knocked down and trampeled. It is a place I love but I can never relax here. There is always a million things pinging through my head like excited atoms, ready to explode.

This trip the problem is that the job I have done the same way five times in the past four years is changing. I had gotten to the point where I could sleepwalk through it. All of the pieces get prepared when we take the show apart the season before so it can be unpacked, re-established and voila! Done. This year everyone has decided they want to change one big part of it. I have had that part thrown in my lap like a flaming bag of shit. So all I do all day is think of problems that might arise and how they can be solved. Tiring.

I am expected to succeed in giving everyone what they want when I have less time than usual and no money. Failure isn't an option. I have a list of obstacles. Can't attach anything to anything is always my favorite. Can't touch anything myself is always particularly frustrating. And my minions: the union crew. The bain of my existence for a few months every summer. A band of douchebags who expend more energy creatively not working than they do working, complain about everything, and when they do work manage to do it around half the speed of a normal person.

For example. The space we use in New York exists, we just need to cover the walls and the stage and put up a runway. In New York it takes a lead man plus four guys each day five days to complete. In Los Angeles the space does not exist. In Los Angeles it takes me plus four guys who make significantly less money four days to do it from the ground up. Being forced to watch the guys do it in New York easily qualifies for deep levels of hell, maybe like eleventh or twelfth level. You know, the ones the devil refuses to go down to because they're too awful to bear.

Funny conundrum is I love New York but I think I like it less every time I come here to do this job. And I moved to Los Angeles specifically to work and I'm finding I like it more and more the longer I stay and it keeps getting harder to leave.

The shitstorm really starts tomorrow morning, in 9 hours. It will last two weeks. 14 days, up to 8 of which will be spent in union hell. My incredible powers of deduction already tell me there will be many days of biting my tongue and playing politics, followed by a few of not biting my tongue and unleashing an often scary pent up fury (go Irish!), followed by it all coming together one way or another and the storm subsiding and everyone becoming friends again.

Fingers are crossed. After this one I may need to rethink a lot of things.