The Wheel Came Off

...which added a little more grunt factor, but still hasn't slowed me down.

I've been doing great for several weeks now. I wake up before my computer does. My internal clock is pretty faithfully getting me up even when I set an alarm to some unusual (and early) time to get to one of the varied gigs of late.

Worked a shift down in Mountain View, which took about three hours to get to by Caltrain. Did my crazy budget show. Then a lighting hang for the ballet. Started with 12 hour days, went into fourteens; in four days I'd collected twenty hours in overtime alone. Which are not actually particularly long hours, not by theater or my standards, even without lunch or dinner breaks (although I did get up to fifteen minutes to quickly eat something). But over half of it was lighting, dragging heavy gear around and crawling up tall scary ladders and it was quite physically taxing.

Just finished a gig in The City, which while figuring out the buses I managed to get an average of two miles a day hiking up and down those famous San Francisco hills humping a bag full of laptop, audio adaptors, video adaptors, script, MIDI keyboard, test and repair tools, etc.

But that wasn't as bad as dragging two floor wedges and three wireless microphone sets (plus the usual cable and test gear and power supplies and so forth) on BART. Which is when I used a cheap dolly from Orchard Supply, which inevitably threw a wheel just as I got to the station.

I have no idea what cause and effect is, but I feel good at the same time I'm doing lots of physical work. And I'm also conscious that on those days I'm doing well, I'm eating less than I'd like, sleeping less than I'd like, and often being rather colder than I'd like (standing around near Fort Mason at night waiting for a bus....brrr!)

It is also possible my sense of physical well-being is tied pretty directly to my sense of financial...well, "slightly betterness." In a total reversal of the last decade or so, the last half dozen or more jobs have paid me more than was agreed to. This goes back to Nutcracker, who slipped me a cash bonus, a gift card, a bag of coffee and a bottle of wine in thanks for my work. Even the gig I'm on right now (a wee nothing of a children's theater at a really lovely masonic center in The City) is talking about adding a couple more bucks...if for nothing more than the loaner gear I humped out there on my broken dolly.

Now all I need is the time and concentration to build some of the props I'm contracted for!