Not that anyone is asking me to.
FYI: "The Boys in the Photograph" is an Andrew Lloyd Webber/Ben Elton Musical, a re-working of 2001(?)'s "The Beautiful Game", which is currently premiering, oddly enough, if Winnipeg. At MTC. Not a bad show, but not flawless.
Act I starts in 1969 at a Catholic boy's school and follows the football (soccer) team from the day of their team photo to the day of the big championship game, all at the beginning, sort of, of the Troubles. Act II starts a couple years later with the wedding of the lead characters and, well, later.
Among the changes made in adapting the show to a post-Occupation audience was a more uplifting ending and a couple more songs. The problems, as I see them, are that the uplifting ending is sort of tacked on, and act II features, towards the end, a couple of long preachy speeches and a long stop-the-show-dead preachy song, all by the same character. Not only is this poor character saddled with these speeches and this song, but for at least one of these speeches and the song, she's all alone on stage. Also, there's no applause break between the John-goes-to-jail song and the visiting day scene, and there needs to be.
Okay, so, here's how I'd fix it.
1) The John goes to jail song will end with John getting seriously brutalized. This will ratchet up the tension between John and the eventual 'choices' he makes and will make the cold, 'I'm a soldier now' John later more resonant.
2) This means we can feature the very pregnant Mary and her almost-due baby with an observation about how much he seems to be healing up from his wounds, as an important moment in John's transition(s).
3) Move Mary's "John Kelly, killed by John Kelly" schene to earlier in the day. John should go straight home after being released. This makes the refusal to see the son and the "I'm a soldier now" moment more devastating. It also makes the 'remember who you were' issue something that happens over the rest of the act and not something that happens with John alone and silent on the docks.
4) Move the confrontation with Thomas to after the above scene. Thomas's revelation about motives and goals should come as something of a shock to John, and be part of the rediscovering of dead-and-gone footballer John.
5) Thomas's "it will never end" song and Mary's "if that's what we're fighting for" song should be reworked somehow to emphasize the parallelism of the dilemma--the impossibility of peace, the passing-the-hatred/hopelessness-to-the-next-generation. Either rework both songs (and give Mary someone to sing to, for heaven's sake--Bernie and the baby are right in the next room, after all), and maybe make it a duet--Mary on one side, Thomas/John on the other, big song, and ending with John's "big" choice. (Well, there's the choice to leave the family, and then the choice on the docks, but this one is the important one of the three.)
6) I'm not sure John needs a song on the docks, but I'd like to see him and Mary, in parallel, contemplating the 'boys in the photograph'. In the end, John shouldn't 'remember who he was' but should ask, no beg Mary to 'help him remember who he was'.
Okay, that's it. Somebody send this to Sir Andrew.
Saturday, 9 May 2009
Friday, 24 April 2009
Thots on international (sort of) travel
In no particular order:
1)Getting back into Canada is easier if you have an unexpired PR card
2)It's definitely worth spending the money to sit in the private lounge if you have more than an hour or so before takeoff--especially if you plan to eat something and caffeinate anyway
3)You think you're going to have a lot of time to get stuff done, especially since *none* of your students forked over any manuscript to deal with while you're travelling, but you don't really
4)American dollar bills suck compared to loonies and toonies
5)American tens and twenties rock
6)Free wifi is just about everywhere one is likely to want to go anyway
7)It's sort of sad that your parents have to get old and doddery, but I suppose that is the way of it
8)Flying is way easier if you carefully select belts and shoes that don't set off the metal detector
1)Getting back into Canada is easier if you have an unexpired PR card
2)It's definitely worth spending the money to sit in the private lounge if you have more than an hour or so before takeoff--especially if you plan to eat something and caffeinate anyway
3)You think you're going to have a lot of time to get stuff done, especially since *none* of your students forked over any manuscript to deal with while you're travelling, but you don't really
4)American dollar bills suck compared to loonies and toonies
5)American tens and twenties rock
6)Free wifi is just about everywhere one is likely to want to go anyway
7)It's sort of sad that your parents have to get old and doddery, but I suppose that is the way of it
8)Flying is way easier if you carefully select belts and shoes that don't set off the metal detector
Monday, 9 March 2009
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Rob falls apart
Actually, not really. I'm holding myself together. Things just got busy and I'm not sure how or when I'm going to dig myself out of things.
Still haven't done anything about the spectrogram. Although so far no one has e-mailed to complain. I'm starting to think no one is paying attention. Maybe I'll go to a quarterly schedule. Not that it'll make it any less late.
My father's 90th birthday is in a couple of weeks, and I'm not going to make it back. Part of the busy-ness on this end is that we have a job candidate coming in that week (and the week after) for interviews/job talks/etc. I was going to try to make it during mid-term break last week, but a) time got too short to plan anything and b) I was the only one around willing to do InfoDays, the two-day open-house thing for the high-schoolers. Argh.
At InfoDays, my computer started to die. It took until Sunday night to successfully run CHKDSK and locate the bad sectors and do something about them. Now all is fine. For the moment.
I have an event coming up at PTE that I'm sort of in charge of. It's a cold-read party (someone suggested Open Read and Group Yammer, but I couldn't put that acronym on a flyer), where we're going to put together some scenes and ask the actors to just cold read them. Fun for all.
I've got exams to mark (that's Canadian for 'grade') and enter into the computer, and a couple of homeworks to plan. Today I have to give a make up exam, meet with a student, and find my pictures of the skull, which I didn't have in class yesterday when I needed them. Argh.
I have a review of a resubmission to finish for a journal. Finished the paper the other night. Much, much improved (to the point that it's probably worth publishing, but I have lingering concerns, and I'm not sure this journal is quite the right one). But at least I've finished the paper.
I have a department meeting on Friday that I probably need to do some prep for.
And I still need to clean my house.
And my office.
So things continue. Hopefully I'll have something useful to say here soon.
Still haven't done anything about the spectrogram. Although so far no one has e-mailed to complain. I'm starting to think no one is paying attention. Maybe I'll go to a quarterly schedule. Not that it'll make it any less late.
My father's 90th birthday is in a couple of weeks, and I'm not going to make it back. Part of the busy-ness on this end is that we have a job candidate coming in that week (and the week after) for interviews/job talks/etc. I was going to try to make it during mid-term break last week, but a) time got too short to plan anything and b) I was the only one around willing to do InfoDays, the two-day open-house thing for the high-schoolers. Argh.
At InfoDays, my computer started to die. It took until Sunday night to successfully run CHKDSK and locate the bad sectors and do something about them. Now all is fine. For the moment.
I have an event coming up at PTE that I'm sort of in charge of. It's a cold-read party (someone suggested Open Read and Group Yammer, but I couldn't put that acronym on a flyer), where we're going to put together some scenes and ask the actors to just cold read them. Fun for all.
I've got exams to mark (that's Canadian for 'grade') and enter into the computer, and a couple of homeworks to plan. Today I have to give a make up exam, meet with a student, and find my pictures of the skull, which I didn't have in class yesterday when I needed them. Argh.
I have a review of a resubmission to finish for a journal. Finished the paper the other night. Much, much improved (to the point that it's probably worth publishing, but I have lingering concerns, and I'm not sure this journal is quite the right one). But at least I've finished the paper.
I have a department meeting on Friday that I probably need to do some prep for.
And I still need to clean my house.
And my office.
So things continue. Hopefully I'll have something useful to say here soon.
Friday, 9 January 2009
Whew
It's Friday. January 9th. I still have to do something about the January spectrogram, which I may play with this weekend (using Praat, &deity; help me), but otherwise, I'm taking a deep breath.
The New Year caught me by surprise. I had planned to spend Christmas back in the Seattle area seeing friends, family, eating Mexican food and Red Robin burgers, but, well, the weather didn't cooperate. The Monday flight got cancelled, and with more snow coming in Tuesday night and Wednesday morning (Christmas Eve), I decided a) the plane might not be able to land at all and b) if it did, I'm not sure I wanted to try to drive the three hours on the freeway in fresh snow. So I cancelled the trip. I'd say I'm going to try again in February, but I'm on a hiring committee where that week is probably going to be an Issue.
So I spent Christmas by myself, not cleaning my apartment, which now has shredded paperwork all over the floor because I tipped over the shredder trying to muscle my suitcase around and I just haven't gotten around to doing anything about it.
I did get some work done, in the sense of doing stuff that needed doing, although none of it is 'finished'. And the next thing I knew, school was starting. The first week is over, which I survived with only a single class. But it was still more exhausting that I would have liked.
The Unpleasant Medical Procedures Fest continues. On Wednesday I had to cancel my first class meetings for an abdominal CT scan. I've never had a CT scan so that was sort of interesting. What wasn't interesting was the stat bloodwork they needed to be sure my kidneys were functioning normally.
At least, that's what I assume they were doing when the checked my creatinine. Which was fine, but they've taken me off one of my antidiabetic drugs because it can also affect kidney function, and I assume the danger is that if the injection they gave me to help image my insides doesn't cause my kidneys to fail, the combination might.
So for what basically what turns out to be 5 minutes of lying in the machine, there's 4 hours of absolute fast, about 10 oz of icky peachy (it had to be peach) stuff that if you liked peach might actually not taste bad but blech, with stuff in it to help image the intestines, then another 10 oz about 30 minutes later. And again about 30 minutes after that. Which is when they decided they need a blood test, so then it's another 20 minutes while they wait for the results.
Then there's an IV with more stuff in it, this stuff presumably the stuff that can do something bad to your kidneys.
Then on Thursday, I had to have more blood drawn, and urine taken, for my hemi-semi annual trip to the endocrinologist on Tuesday. I got them to draw from the back of my left hand, since I figured I'd been poked cubitally twice the day before, and how many times can you get poked in the same vessel before you risk vascular collapse?
For those of you who care, the answer is 'quite a bit', because vascular collapse happens when you loose too much blood volume, not when you poke a given vessel a dozen times. But presumably it doesn't help to poke the same vessel 30 times a day, which is why if you're in the hospital and they know they're going to take blood several times a day they leave the needle in.
But anyway, where was I? Poke for the creatinine. Poke for the IV. Now poke for the endo. And this morning, Friday, I had to go in to the clinic to have another creatinine test (poke #4), to see if my kidneys have failed and if not to resume my drugs.
And in February, I get to go for another colonoscopy. Not because anything is wrong, but because, apparently, I have an interesting looking ileocecal valve. Good thing this is Canada and it's all free. I can just imagine what the doctors who examined me when I immigrated would have said if they could have forseen all this.
Never let it be said that I'm not getting my money's worth out of the Canadian medical system. And Canadians love to complain about waiting times for various tests and procedures. But so far, that hasn't been a problem. Granted, I haven't had anything that was 'urgent', like debilitating pain requiring hip replacement, and I'm not on a waiting list for any organs. But in my experience, 'getting into the system' isn't the problem. Getting out of it, well, that's a different story.
Remind me to bespeak a picture of my ileocecal valve to post here.
So at the moment, I'm mulling cider and toasting pumpkin seeds for a party tomorrow for one of my colleagues who is moving on to new adventures. That's what we're calling it. And I woudl be working on the spectrogram, but like I said, I'm taking a deep breath.
The New Year caught me by surprise. I had planned to spend Christmas back in the Seattle area seeing friends, family, eating Mexican food and Red Robin burgers, but, well, the weather didn't cooperate. The Monday flight got cancelled, and with more snow coming in Tuesday night and Wednesday morning (Christmas Eve), I decided a) the plane might not be able to land at all and b) if it did, I'm not sure I wanted to try to drive the three hours on the freeway in fresh snow. So I cancelled the trip. I'd say I'm going to try again in February, but I'm on a hiring committee where that week is probably going to be an Issue.
So I spent Christmas by myself, not cleaning my apartment, which now has shredded paperwork all over the floor because I tipped over the shredder trying to muscle my suitcase around and I just haven't gotten around to doing anything about it.
I did get some work done, in the sense of doing stuff that needed doing, although none of it is 'finished'. And the next thing I knew, school was starting. The first week is over, which I survived with only a single class. But it was still more exhausting that I would have liked.
The Unpleasant Medical Procedures Fest continues. On Wednesday I had to cancel my first class meetings for an abdominal CT scan. I've never had a CT scan so that was sort of interesting. What wasn't interesting was the stat bloodwork they needed to be sure my kidneys were functioning normally.
At least, that's what I assume they were doing when the checked my creatinine. Which was fine, but they've taken me off one of my antidiabetic drugs because it can also affect kidney function, and I assume the danger is that if the injection they gave me to help image my insides doesn't cause my kidneys to fail, the combination might.
So for what basically what turns out to be 5 minutes of lying in the machine, there's 4 hours of absolute fast, about 10 oz of icky peachy (it had to be peach) stuff that if you liked peach might actually not taste bad but blech, with stuff in it to help image the intestines, then another 10 oz about 30 minutes later. And again about 30 minutes after that. Which is when they decided they need a blood test, so then it's another 20 minutes while they wait for the results.
Then there's an IV with more stuff in it, this stuff presumably the stuff that can do something bad to your kidneys.
Then on Thursday, I had to have more blood drawn, and urine taken, for my hemi-semi annual trip to the endocrinologist on Tuesday. I got them to draw from the back of my left hand, since I figured I'd been poked cubitally twice the day before, and how many times can you get poked in the same vessel before you risk vascular collapse?
For those of you who care, the answer is 'quite a bit', because vascular collapse happens when you loose too much blood volume, not when you poke a given vessel a dozen times. But presumably it doesn't help to poke the same vessel 30 times a day, which is why if you're in the hospital and they know they're going to take blood several times a day they leave the needle in.
But anyway, where was I? Poke for the creatinine. Poke for the IV. Now poke for the endo. And this morning, Friday, I had to go in to the clinic to have another creatinine test (poke #4), to see if my kidneys have failed and if not to resume my drugs.
And in February, I get to go for another colonoscopy. Not because anything is wrong, but because, apparently, I have an interesting looking ileocecal valve. Good thing this is Canada and it's all free. I can just imagine what the doctors who examined me when I immigrated would have said if they could have forseen all this.
Never let it be said that I'm not getting my money's worth out of the Canadian medical system. And Canadians love to complain about waiting times for various tests and procedures. But so far, that hasn't been a problem. Granted, I haven't had anything that was 'urgent', like debilitating pain requiring hip replacement, and I'm not on a waiting list for any organs. But in my experience, 'getting into the system' isn't the problem. Getting out of it, well, that's a different story.
Remind me to bespeak a picture of my ileocecal valve to post here.
So at the moment, I'm mulling cider and toasting pumpkin seeds for a party tomorrow for one of my colleagues who is moving on to new adventures. That's what we're calling it. And I woudl be working on the spectrogram, but like I said, I'm taking a deep breath.
Sunday, 21 December 2008
The real me?
Okay, I spent a few free minutes last week building avatars of myself. Simpsons style (courtesy of Burger King's Simpsons promotion), South Park style (sp-studio.de) and manga-style (faceyourmanga.it). Which one comes closest to capturing the real me?
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Did I mention
At the moment, it's 8:51 pm, and according to the Weather Channel's Vista sidebar gadget (which isn't quite the same thing as WeatherEye, but whatever) it's -27C. If we're lucky, we'll make it up to -16C tomorrow. Although the wind is picking up...
Not that you hear me complaining. I'm not. But I am going to Mountain Equipment Co-op to buy one of those over-the-face neoprene scary Hannibal-Lechter-looking mask things.
Not that you hear me complaining. I'm not. But I am going to Mountain Equipment Co-op to buy one of those over-the-face neoprene scary Hannibal-Lechter-looking mask things.
Gastrointestinal update 3
Well, the abdominal CT adventure has been scheduled for January 7th. It doesn't sound too bad, prep-wise. It actually sounds kind of interesting, although I'm not sure I can hold still for the two hours it may require without some serious assistance. We'll see.
I'm now 24 hours behind schedule, that is, where I thought I would be on Monday. Yesterday turned into a great black hole of non-accomplishment. Today I finally got out to my favo(u)rite coffee place at the Forks and did a lot of marking (test-grading). I still have an essay-answer question to mark in one of my stacks of papers, and the posters from Communication Disorders. But then grades will be done and in and all will be well.
Okay, so tomorrow is Friday. I plan to a) finish marking those exams, b) get some solid work in on the review I'm doing for Language and Speech which is now two weeks late, and c) maybe get Xmas stuff to the post-office. Maybe. Depending on the weather. And my indolence.
Next week, it's letters of reference, and possibly a PhD defense that I have to 'Examine', which means I go and read the official statement of gravitas from the Faculty of Graduate Studies and make sure no one pulls a fast one, but otherwise I don't think I have to do anything, critique-wise or anything, so I'll use it as something of a deep-breathing and meditation moment. Then on Thursday there's the Dean's holiday reception on campus and at 7pm the Fringe performer lottery at MTC Warehouse. Woo hoo!
I'm now 24 hours behind schedule, that is, where I thought I would be on Monday. Yesterday turned into a great black hole of non-accomplishment. Today I finally got out to my favo(u)rite coffee place at the Forks and did a lot of marking (test-grading). I still have an essay-answer question to mark in one of my stacks of papers, and the posters from Communication Disorders. But then grades will be done and in and all will be well.
Okay, so tomorrow is Friday. I plan to a) finish marking those exams, b) get some solid work in on the review I'm doing for Language and Speech which is now two weeks late, and c) maybe get Xmas stuff to the post-office. Maybe. Depending on the weather. And my indolence.
Next week, it's letters of reference, and possibly a PhD defense that I have to 'Examine', which means I go and read the official statement of gravitas from the Faculty of Graduate Studies and make sure no one pulls a fast one, but otherwise I don't think I have to do anything, critique-wise or anything, so I'll use it as something of a deep-breathing and meditation moment. Then on Thursday there's the Dean's holiday reception on campus and at 7pm the Fringe performer lottery at MTC Warehouse. Woo hoo!
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Periodontal update
Well, not good news. Well, not bad news, but not good news. I used to have a 9mm 'slit' across the root of my lower left first molar. I underwent a periodontal graft, and now I have a 6mm slit at the back of my left first molar. Periodonist is very upset with me. Fortunately, he's not talking immediate second surgery. We're going to see how it goes for six months and if it doesn't get any worse, we might just live with it for a while.
So the good news is that this is presumably the last time in a while that I'll have to get up in time to make a 7:45am perio appointment. .Which is good because it was supposed to have been yesterday. But I had a mind-blorf.
Thursday it's the ophthamologist, then I'm off the hook until the first week in January, when I have to have some blood work done in preparation for my Jan 13 endocrinology appointment, and my Jan 15 dentist appointment.
Still no word on scheduling the CT scan of my ileocecal valve (and, one presumes, adjoining areas), but I expect to be hearing about that shortly.
Never let it me said that I'm not getting my money's worth out of Canadian medical care.
So the good news is that this is presumably the last time in a while that I'll have to get up in time to make a 7:45am perio appointment. .Which is good because it was supposed to have been yesterday. But I had a mind-blorf.
Thursday it's the ophthamologist, then I'm off the hook until the first week in January, when I have to have some blood work done in preparation for my Jan 13 endocrinology appointment, and my Jan 15 dentist appointment.
Still no word on scheduling the CT scan of my ileocecal valve (and, one presumes, adjoining areas), but I expect to be hearing about that shortly.
Never let it me said that I'm not getting my money's worth out of Canadian medical care.
Friday, 21 November 2008
Gastrointestinal update 2
Well, 72 hours later, and the GI doctor is having second thoughts. Just to be 200% sure, he says. Biopsy showed only normal tissue, but he still wants to have another look. So now he's talking about a CT scan. Which would actually be sort of interesting, depending on what sort of unpleasant prep would have to occur first. And possibly another colonoscopy. As long as the same drugs are used, I'm okay with that, I guess. And this is Canada, so it's all free.
But this time, I want to see an actual image of my ileocecal valve.
But this time, I want to see an actual image of my ileocecal valve.
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