A Day in the Life

I looked up 30-day blog challenges for inspiration to write more. While a lot of them feature very personal questions and things I would rather cover in a personal journal, there were a few interesting ones. One suggested post was "Your day, in detailed bullet points." Since every day is a crazy adventure in my life, I thought this might be fun. Let's see how much I remember.

-5:45am first alarm went off
-6am second alarm went off, I got up, dressed, gathered lunch that I packed last night, headed out
-6:36am caught the bus for Sullivan station, the orange T line from there to Back Bay
-7am walked to the BCA Calderwood Pavilion, where I am working for the Huntington Theater Company. There is another show loading in across the hall, covered in swarms of Boston University students, and other companies and such in the building, so it's a little chaotic at times. 
-Waited in our break room and ate breakfast
-7:30am we started working on laying the deck for Our Town, a bunch of 4'x8' sheets of crappy lauan painted to look like golden-brown wood flooring.
-Unloaded a truck of flame retardant-ed trees, boxes of paint stuff, doors/frames, windows
-Worked on assembling a curtain track/its attachment to the front of the set under the supervision of Jesse, a staff member at the Hunt. It's basically a curtain which will hide the kitchen we've been working on until the "reveal" moment, and it slides open and closed.
-10 (ish)am break. Went to the 7-11 for an energy drink and a chocolate bar (saved the candy for the afternoon break, which always means I'll finish the day strong). Worked on my crossword puzzle.
-10:15am Worked on actually attaching the curtain track to the set. It goes on the front of the ceiling of the kitchen with mega bolts, which took a lot of drilling and lining up and lifting the damn thing between several ladders, several times.
-(During all of this, other people worked on laying the flooring more, electricians were working on scaffolding across the stage, the Master Carpenter installed doors and windows, and a few other overhire carpenters worked on various molding projects)
-11am started attaching panels to the black, non-kitchen parts of the set. They have bolt heads to make them look like the theater's normal architecture, as per design with this show.
-12noon lunch! I don't mess around these days when it comes to lunch. Meat and cheese packed sandwiches, granola bars, cookies, yogurt, fruit, chips...hung out in the break room and worked on my crosswords more, enjoyed talking with my coworkers.
-12:45pm back to work: more of the "bolted" panels, to be leveled and screwed in from the back of the set.
-Also worked on crown molding for inside the kitchen (a very cramped space at this point; ceilings are an interesting choice onstage) and fake foam beams for the kitchen ceiling. We think these beams were painted with cow shit, they smelled so bad. Needless to say that job was done as fast as possible.
-Washed hands.
-Unpacked soft goods (curtains, usually) from RoseBrand...sold to us by my very good friend Peter Monahan, who is a sales rep there and a mentor of mine! It was awesome seeing his name on stuff I'm working on. We got a white muslin drape of some sort and a 9'x24' black velour curtain, which I worked on getting up into the track we hung earlier. We need to work on the attachments for this curtain: the higher-ups like the nasty noise of metal carriers for each point of the curtain, but they don't fit properly in the track we have, so the curtain doesn't open smoothly. We looked at plastic vs. metal carriers and have yet to try out the latest decided upon ones.
-I built a block of several 2x4s and some smaller pieces to fit behind the curtain track facing, which would cover one end of the track so the curtain can't be pulled right off the track. Someone else did the other side-- they are custom fit plugs for each side of the track, and mine is not yet installed so that we can still pull the curtain off and try those different carriers in the track.
-3:55pm unloaded custom flooring pieces from the van.
-4pm break. Chocolate bar and crossword puzzle. I feel like picking up the free Metro every day on the T will be a win for my crossword habits.
-4:15pm back to work, with fewer people now: some of our overhire are also crew for the evening shows and they need travel and dinner time. We finished the "bolted" panel pieces, worked on installing fake I beams on the very top of the set (continuing the theater's normal architecture). This took longer than expected, partially due to cutting bevels in the corners of these I-shaped pieces (interesting time getting them on the small chopsaw we share with the BU students loading in a door away) and partially because my partner is a slower worker. That is often my biggest challenge these days: not letting work partners hold me back from doing my best.
-5:40pm clean up. We organized our extra materials and things to still be installed-- very few at this point-- and got our tools and such out of the way for electrics. We also piled the trees out of the hallway of the building and shuffled some carts around.
-6pm Gathered up my things, filled out my time sheet, and left on foot for Back Bay station. I spent my public transit time today listening to music and texting my friend Meg from the summer, who is in Florida working at Orlando Rep. I am already comfortable with my route to the Hunt and the Pavilion, having worked for this company just a few days. I think people find me an interesting sight to see: bandana and work clothes and my tool bag and Joker bag (sorry Mom) but I'm also used to people being taken aback by what I do for a living so it's easy to ignore.
-6:40pm gave up my seat on the bus for an elderly woman. My stop was coming up anyway. (karma points?)
-7pm At my apartment and looking at emails, scheduling work into January at this point, which is awesome! Also planning for December: working with the Hunt and more, I want to see Our Town, see the Memphis tour when it comes through since I will probably get a backstage tour, visit home for my Grandma's birthday and Christmas, and to visit with my friend Meg when she comes up for the holidays.

Busy times!!

And now...it's time to shower and eat dinner :) It might be a Netflix night of Dr. Who and/or Battlestar Galactica. My oldest brother will be proud.

Thank you for reading!