The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd

OK, I finished my 5K this morning. I did a bit better than last time. April 13, my time was 39:53 and today, July 12, my time was 38:28. I could have done better but my costocondritis has really kicked in and I was having a lot of trouble getting my breath. Guess I need to revisit the doc. Ugh.

Max has completed his 2 weeks of Amazing Grace Circus camp and had a ball. He has improved his juggling, is now juggling clubs, and does some pretty impressive diablo routines.

He has, however, decided that riding a unicycle is impossible unless you are 5 years old. We'll have to work on that. Here he is in his classic whiteface clown makeup.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Lifted some photos off work's photo archive (with permission of course!). Here's one of the full stage during the rehearsal on Friday. You can see folks already setting up to claim their spots, the regulars were out by 10 am (late by Central Park standards!) including our beloved favorite guy, bikini man (don't ask!). Everyone was in a good mood and hopeful that the weather gods would be kind to us (they were).

This was probably the last big project I'll be doing with my very long time boss since he's retiring as of September 1. It's been 23 years that I've been in the office working directly for the guy (although he's not always around since he spends a lot of each day on stage). My ex-boss is here on the left and my yet-to-be boss is on the right.

My "xb" is going to Germany for a break and I'm sure it will be very different from being on stage very day. So much less stress and a much altered pace. This photo sort of sums up a lot, one guy being very focused and totally in the middle of everything, the other, while aware of what's up around him, much more casual.

So its goodbye to the stage, goodbye to NYC and goodbye yellow brick road.

The Run Around

Finally getting a bit of my life back after the concert, so I've been running the past few days. I have a 5K on July 12 and need to get back to my workouts.

Here's the world record holder, Tirunesh Dibaba, who on June 6, 2008, set a new record of 14 mins 11 sec for the women's 5K. My first 5K was 39 mins. Ouch! So I have a ways to go even to be good in my age category in Rockland County.

I am totally gun-ho on the iPod for running. Here are a few of my recent downloads I'm running to:

Cornershop - Brimful of Asha
Aimee Mann - Freeway
O.A.R. - Love and Memories
R.E.M. - The One I Love
G. Love and Special Sauce - Peace, Love and Happiness
Iggy Pop - Real Wild Child
Coldplay - Viva la Vida

Lots of great infomation on exercise in the Times, I personally like the "Well" column. For a fountain of youth, put on some sneakers. You can read about it here and here.

Veni, vidi, vici

Well, the concert is now in history and what a week! I never left the park from Monday morning until my first night home Saturday evening, the day after. It was quite a haul. Never having done such a large event (even for Domingo!) it was a stretch of my abilities and sanity. But something to put on a resume, fer sure!

Here are the riggers, 18 of them the first day assembling one of the large LED support structures. The guys (and one woman!) were awesome and rigging gear is way cool. They climbed and hauled in the sun and got that thing up. The tower was about 30' or 35' tall with a 18' by 24' LED screen hanging on it. It also contained our speaker array for the front of the field.

Here's one of the scaffold structures with our green banner on the left side and a bit of the enormous LED screen on the right. You can see the speaker array hanging behind the green banner. There was a second array hanging to the right of the LED to fill the area on either side of the stage with sound. However, if you happen to walk around the stage from backstage to front, the fill was so powerful your ears were ringing.

I had over 100 people on site working for me on Monday and the coffee break bills will prove it. We needed a u-haul to get the Boxes O'Joe back from Dunkin' donuts. Next year we have to look into a craft service to provide everything, but, the cost of the service is quite high. However, I practically needed to hire a PA just to run back and forth to the food store so it would be worth the expense.

We had over 50,000 people at the event. The program, a mixed bill of opera highlights, was so incredible everyone enjoyed the beautiful music and singing.

Our stars were amazing. Not only did they sing the night away but then hung out backstage to sign autographs and speak to every single person that waited. And I mean every single person. Angela looked incrediable in her gowns (she did a costume change half way through the event and then changed again after the concert). And Roberto is such a European charmer. I couldn't believe the patience they both displayed speaking to everyone to came. I just have no idea how all those people got backstage!

The Long Meadow of Prospect Park is a jewel in Brooklyn. It is a buccolic expanse that rolls along as if you are in Cotswold or some other verdent English valley. You can not see any buildings from the field. The field LED's didn't look large on the plan and I was uncertain how the image would appear to the patrons. My uncertainities were ungrounded when, during the show, I walked the length of Long Meadow and saw the crystal clarity of each screen. Once out of the main length of the ballfield area, each screen had it own pod of people, watching as raptly as if in their own living rooms. Amazing.

This photo doesn't really show you each screen, although perhaps if you can imagine that the teeny dot in the middle is the stage, you can see how far out the audience progressed down the length of the field, about 3/4 of a mile. This shows 2 of the four screens that we installed. Once past this point the stage was not visible but this didn't deter a large number of people who extended past the "picnic house".

Now all I have left to do is the paperwork, which I'm sure will take me into the next few weeks. And then VACATION!!!

To read the NY Times article about the show, click on this link, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/arts/music/20oper.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1, the results of my interview are on the 2nd page.

I won't be posting for a bit, tomorrow begins the load in of the Met to Prospect Park for the concert June 20. While the event will be great, I can't say I relish getting to work at 4:30 am!

For information about what's going on, visit www.metopera.org

Party Hearty

I went to the MOST fun party recently. A part of the NYC 'urbs to which I had never visited. Dancing, singing, partying with lots of various folks that made the best mix. Still waiting for some of the photos although they may have been seized in customs. It was that kind of party.

A Bee in His Bonnet

As proof that my husband is either a future visionary or has totally lost his mind, we now have bees. Approximately 15,000 bees. Saturday, Bruce and his friend Jack drove to New Paltz to pick up Bruce's nuc from Chris Harp, bee master extraordinaire.

Here Bruce is transferring the frames (full of bees) from the nuc to the hive. He has dosed them with what I would consider a minuscule amount of smoke but both he and Jack assured me that it was sufficient. Need I say I took this with a telephoto lens?

Meanwhile back in #32 I was inoculating my Cabernet Sauvignon grape juice that I had picked up that morning. So as the bees buzz happily about the yard we have 6 gallons of fermenting juice in our kitchen. This is thanks to the inspiration (although unwitting inspiration) of my brother-in-law Greg, who recently has been producing his own, rather good, beer. While I may not be a microbiologist like Greg, I can follow directions. And the gentleman at the store assured me that it is actually rather difficult to produce wine vinegar. (Of course, that doesn't explain why he was giggling as I walked out).

The bees are buzzing, the yeast is bubbling and it was a gorgeous Sunday. Ahh.