Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Stuck with it

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in a while. We've had a lot going on that's kept me away from my computer. First we got iPods. We had debated on whether we wanted to spend the money right now on them, but finally after finding an 1GB Nano online for sale we said, "screw it, let's go for it." A couple days later.... our computer crashed. Apparently they had nothing to do with each other, just a coincidence. However, the hardrive is gone. We had to spend a bunch of money getting a new hardrive and of course we didn't have as much info backed up as we should have, so besides not being able to post anything new, we lost a bunch of pictures, a few sketches we wrote, updated resumes and who knows what else. Luckily some stuff was saved in emails and the most important pictures from our wedding are on disks, but it's still frustrating. A good friend of ours here is going to try to do some disaster recovery for us which is super nice. In the end, saving a few bucks on iPods doesn't really mean much after all that money we unexpectedly spent on the computer.

Luckily my hair biz has really been picking up, so that helped with the money part. I'm going to get a website in the near future, but part of that depends on if we can recover the before and after haircut/color pictures I've been saving on my computer.

Yesterday Second City had a women's only TourCo audition. This was the second time I've auditioned for them. There's a few things to know about these auditions. Every improviser in the city is going after the 3 or 4 spots and pretty much no one gets in on their first audition, often it takes several tries. I know someone who auditioned 7 times and someone else who auditioned 12 times before they got in. You just don't go in expecting to blow the director away and make it on to this big comedy career. You basically audition to get on the director's radar and get better at auditioning. Of course in the back of your mind there's always a little hope that you'll be the exception to the rule and your magical, amazing talents will shine through and they'll put you on the road the next day. This did not happen to me.
Last year when I went to the open auditions I totally panicked. I was stuck in my head the whole time. You pretty much have 3 scenes to "wow" the auditors. In one of my scenes last time, I did a teaching scene (a no-no in improv) in which I instructed my partner to smear brownie mix on the bottom of her shoe. When I realized that this was stupid, I started freaking out in my mind and began inventing stuff, hoping to fix it... "put the brownie mix on your shoe and walk around... you know, so that the mob will slip on it... when they... you know...come into your house". It was embarrassing how horrible it was. Hilarious in hindsight, but still. This time I was much calmer. I wasn't really nervous and though I'm fairly confident in my improv skills, I didn't do a single memorable scene for them. Oh well, no Second City stage yet, but at least a step in the right direction.
The audition was at 11:20am in the afternoon. You'd think that since my company is technically a bank we would've had Presidents Day off, but we didn't. Because it was a last minute audition notice and since Corey had the day off, I played hookey. We had lunch together and I took a long nap later in the day, it was nice. When I came into the office today I had to turn my fake sick voice on. I figured it was more suspicious if I was too sick to come in yesterday, but perfectly fine and back to normal today. So, I greeted my coworkers with a gravely, nasal, congested sounding voice this morning and now I'm stuck with it. I have to use this voice even when I talk to Corey on the phone in case anyone overhears me. Though I am convincing and really getting a lot of sympathy, it's pretty annoying to continue to do. I think I might have gone a little overboard because I really sound like I should be back at home in bed. It's like on Friends when Ross started teaching his class in an English accent because he was nervous. He had to find a way to fade it out. I'm just glad that tomorrow I'll be feeling better.

9 comments:

Steaming bowl o' Calderone said...

iPods? Seriously? I thought I taught you better than that. It's all Zen baby! Do you mind me asking how much you had to spend on a new HD? I know what they run and I hate the thought of you guys getting ripped off.

At least you have someone willing to help you try to recover some of the old data. That's a nice plus.

Anonymous said...

I don't mind telling you how much I spent, but it's probably just going to depress me because I wouldn't be surprised if we did get ripped off.

Total, with diagnostic, install and a bigger HD and it was around $300

Steaming bowl o' Calderone said...

How big is the HD?

Anonymous said...

I don't remember, what are my options?

Randman said...

Too bad the Second City guys couldn't see your acting skills when you returned to work still sick, but well enough to come in. That should have landed you a spot.

Sorry bout the crash. Sucks to lose all your good stuff. Hopefully the disaster recovery works!

Anonymous said...

I'm telling you, my performance was Oscar worthy. Of course what goes around comes around.... I had a (real) migraine all night long. I had no choice but to go to rehearsal. It was horrible. Everytime I'd do a scene or the group would hoot and hollow as they often do, I'd have to hold back from throwing up.
Guess I deserved it.

Steaming bowl o' Calderone said...

There are way too many choices to get into. Perhaps we could stop boring others with our tech talk and just continue this via email?

Anonymous said...

Good call.

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