Putting it all out there

Sometimes I wonder about the net benefit of keeping this blog alive. There is a lot of history here, and for the most part it is a pretty accurate representation of the major events of my life over the last 25 years.

But do I really want all of that out there for the world to see?

This came to mind recently when someone we know casually googled my name, found my blog, and decided to use what they learned through that discovery to initiate an unwelcome and unexpected conversation with my wife over some of the events of our lives together.

I want to be clear in stating that I do not believe this was done with any kind of malicious intent, but it was an incredibly bad judgement call and just not good form. I’m fully aware that anyone can search for me, and that there are probably a decent number of people who know me personally who have, but I’ve always thought it was kind of an unwritten rule of the internet that you didn’t actually talk about that kind of thing. Especially when the subjects involved are clearly very personal.

But here we are.

While I’ve done my best over the years to make sure the content here won’t get me fired or embarrass anyone (other than me), who knows how things I wrote back in the early 00’s could come back to bite me in the ass now? Who knows how many times I wrote things that I would regret having people read who know me now and didn’t know me then?

I mean, the chances of really bad poetry happening are pretty high.

I’m not going to do anything about this immediately. Just thoughts going through my head.

I recently wrapped up my first acting gig since 2022 with a performance in Trust Me at LAB Theater Project. To say that it was a satisfying return to the stage would be an understatement. Honestly? I thought there was a very real possibility that I may not have been able to act again. The fact is that I’m still very much recovering from my surgery last June. Don’t get me wrong – I have come a very, very long way and am in a notably better place than I was when I got home in August, but I still feel like I have a long way to go. My energy levels are still pretty low most days, and I haven’t been able to get the motivation back to start exercising again. I managed to make it through the rehearsal and performance process, but it was pretty rough.

Admittedly the solution to this is to get back to exercising to build up my strength and endurance, but one has to have energy to spend to do so and I’ve been very low on that front. I generally average 8 hours or more of decent sleep every night and I still feel like I need to take a nap every day just to get by. And if I’m being honest, just doing the show and having a slight uptick in physical activity from it made me feel better, so I really just need to get off my ass and do it.

In other news, and in no particular order…

  • I’ve been playing Star Trek: Fleet Command and have been absolutely loving it. I started last year not too long before I went into the hospital, but in the last few months I’ve really gotten into the groove of playing. What I like best about it is that, for the most part, it’s pretty passive. I send my little spaceships out, we do a few tasks, maybe mine for some supplies, and occasionally have some light PVP. I’m taking it very slowly as I progress through the game as I understand that the PVP aspect gets considerably more prevalent at higher levels and I’m just enjoying doing my own thing unbothered for now. It’s nice to have something I can kind of idly poke at throughout the day or while we’re watching TV together at night but that I can quickly put down when I need to. The “canon” of the game is kind of a riot, too. Basically, take everything from every show that has been created in the Star Trek universe, drop it in a blender, and you’ve got Fleet Command. I’ve got multiple versions of the same characters in my officers pool, have gone on missions set in both the Kelvin and Prime timelines, and am working on getting some of the crew from Lower Decks. I think the only show I haven’t seen represented (yet) is Prodigy. Hell, they even have content from Galaxy Quest in the game. In a way it kind of reminds me of EVE Online, but with fewer spreadsheets.
  • We celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary back in March, and that fact is kinda wild to me. We’ve been through a lot in the time we have spent together. Much of it good, some of it very, very bad. But in the end we’ve got each other and that makes all the difference. I don’t know if I believe that there is such a thing as a “perfect” relationship, and goodness knows we have our challenges, but I honestly cannot conceive if living the rest of my life with anyone else at my side.
  • We’ve been having some work done around the house, the big project being a new exterior paint job and replacing our front door (which I had to damage to get open after it was severely warped during the hurricanes last year). The house is looking great, and we’ve got a few more quotes coming in to not only enhance the visual appeal of the home but to make it safer in future hurricane scenarios (namely looking to have rolling shutters installed, but also getting a quote to put a drainage system in our back yard to prevent flooding there). We also had to have our fence repaired due to some storm-related damage, but really we were fortunate not to have suffered any more losses. Some of our neighbors were not so fortunate.
  • Lots of “exciting” stuff going on at work, which (if you work in the Business Transformation/Agile space) I’m sure you recognize as “holy crap the world is on fire” mode. Nothing bad at all, just lots of change happening and my team and I are working with the organization to try and make sure we’re still providing the value needed as we evolve.

    My God, that sounds so very corporate speak.

    I’ve been learning more about PowerBI and Product Management since I’ve been back to help, and if I’m being honest I’ve had a blast doing it. I’m using Prompt Engineering to help enhance my data transformations, and a lot of that has resulted in learning more about Python. My big frustration is that I’m no longer a developer at my company and I don’t have the access rights I did back when I worked in IT so a lot of my code ends up getting blocked by our security software. Frustrating, but I totally understand why. There’s a possibility I may end up having a virtual desktop created so I can play in our sandbox at work and go through the “proper” code review scenarios, but for now I’m still doing my own thing as much as I can.

I could probably go on but this is getting lengthy and I’m kind of just rambling for now. [insert promise to write here more often that will go unfulfilled]

Live blogging from the Nortons

Will post updates here as the night goes on and the inspiration strikes.

6:52 PM – Power outage! An auspicious start!

6:57 PM – Playing with pictures!

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7:10 PM – This event is not starting at 7. We were lied to!

7:22 PM – The variety of dress here is quite amusing.

7:42 PM – We’re actually seated!

7:54 PM – Wonder what the odds are of this thing starting on time?

8:02 PM – Community theater? Oh, Jen.

11:10 PM – Ok, so…Clearly I didn’t actually keep Live Blogging. I started to, but then I realized I’d spend more time updating the results than I actually would have watching the ceremony and I didn’t want to do that. Next year I’ll actually plan it in advance and have the post per-formatted so all I need to do is update the winners. That said, a quick summary of the recipients for those who did not make it (those that I remember anyway…my apologies for the ones I’ve already forgotten)

Best Costume Design

  • Adrin Puente (American Stage)
  • Jennifer Cunningham (Gorilla)
  • Katrina Stevenson (Jobsite)
  • Mike and Kathy Buck (Stageworks)

Best Supporting Actor

  • Richard P. Watson (American Stage)
  • Christopher Swan (Gorilla)
  • Spencer Meyers (Jobsite)
  • Slake Counts (Stageworks)

Best Sound Design

  • T. Scott Wooten (American Stage)
  • Lynne Locher (Gorilla)
  • David Jenkins (Jobsite)

Best Lighting Design

  • Joseph P. Oshry (American Stage)
  • Megan Byrne (Gorilla)
  • Brian Smallheer (Jobsite)

Best Supporting Actress

  • No nominees from American Stage
  • Jonelle Meyer (Gorilla)
  • Summer Bohnenkamp-Jenkins (Jobsite)
  • Gloria Bailey (Stageworks)

Best Set Design

  • Jeffrey Dean (American Stage)
  • Jake Kavanagh (Gorilla)
  • Brian Smallheer (Jobsite)
  • R.T. Williams (Stageworks)

Best Director

  • Todd Olson (American Stage)
  • Bridget Bean (Gorilla)
  • Karla Hartley (Jobsite)
  • Karla Hartley (Stageworks)

Best Actor

  • Richard B. Watson (American Stage)
  • Christopher Swan (Gorilla)
  • Paul Potenza (Jobsite)
  • Joshua Goff (Stageworks)

Best Actress

  • Christine Decker (American Stage)
  • Caroline Jett (Gorilla)
  • Fanni Green (Jobsite)
  • Heather Krueger (Stageworks)

Winners list updated with information from this article at TBO.com.

Full Circle

Sometime around October of 2001 I got a phone call from my friend “ranney.” He was directing a musical with a young theater company in Tampa and he was having a hard time casting one of the characters. He had directed me in a musical adaptation of The Birds that he wrote while I was a student at the Polk Community College and he felt I was a good match for the part. I came in and auditioned for him, and a few days later I got the call offering me the role.

The show was Maxwell: A New Rock Musical By Joe Popp, and it was the first paid acting gig I ever got. It was also the beginning of my year relationship with The Jobsite Theater. I was very much an unknown factor in this production, and I had the extra baggage of being recently divorced with the need to occasionally bring my five year old son with me to rehearsal. “ranney” put his full support behind me, though, and he managed to convince the Powers That Be to give me a shot.

Ten years later and I’m still working with them.

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Hello my friends we meet again…

…It’s been a while. Where should we begin?

Ok, I own up to it. I’ve utterly and completely neglected my personal blog because I’m all over social networking and any time I feel like expressing my thoughts, feelings, or what is going on in my life I do so using 140 characters or less.

Wheew. There, I said it. Acceptance is the first step towards recovery, is it not?

Although I’m not entirely certain I really WANT to recover.

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I don’t wanna brag and I don’t wanna boast…

Thumbs UpThat’s a lie.  I do, actually.

Earlier today I was thinking about how busy I’ve been recently, and it occured to me that I’ve done a lot so far this year.

  • I was in a record breaking production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile with the folks at the Jobsite Theater
  • I took on a huge amount of new responsibilities at work
  • I’ve lost 14 pounds and gotten back into the habit of exercising at least five days a week
  • I quit smoking
  • I took three classes towards my B.S. in Technology Management and I believe I have A’s in all three of them
  • I started a business with six of my friends and can officially add Chief Executive Officer to my list of titles
  • I took a major step towards getting my finances back under control by consolidating several of my higher interest credit cards into a loan from my employers
  • I managed to score 38 Studios and Cartoon Network as guests for this years Dragon*Con MMORPG track.

That’s all I can think of at the moment, but…wow!  I’m pretty impressed with my list of accomplishments so far this year, and it’s only May!

Oh, and for the record….I do like toast.

Twitterpated

I haven’t made a post here in almost a month, and all I have is the really lame excuse of “I was busy with the holidays and rehearsing for a show.”  I’m still really busy, actually.  I just started a new semester of classes at Saint Petersburg College (I’m taking the classes necessary to get into their B.S. Technology Management program).

That being said, my creativity is kind of at an all time low – which really sucks because I’m working on a super-secret new project with some friends that is going to require quite a bit of creativity from me in very short order.

The preceding two paragraphs were a lame setup for the cheesy premise of the post that follows.  I’m going to take some of my tweets from the last month and expand on them.

So lame.

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Crewcuts due on Monday!

I wrote here, several years ago, about running into Kerry Glamsch at a performance of Girl’s Guide to Chaos.  In that post, I remarked on how it would be interesting if he was putting on a production that involved Edward Gorey stories.

I ran into him again recently when I went to see Woman in Mind.  I mention this mainly because in a month or so I’ll be auditioning for a role in Gorey Stories, a musical based on the works of Edward Gorey.

Strange things, indeed.

It’s always interesting to talk to Kerry.  The fact of the matter is that when I was a freshman in high school he was about the coolest guy in the fucking world.  Why?  Ok, above and beyond the fact that he didn’t act like a “teacher” in any sense of the word he probably taught me more about acting in the year I was working with him than any other teacher I’ve had in my life.  Not only that, but at a VERY insecure time in our lives he treated us like people.  We weren’t just kids to him.  He made us feel like we were peers learning together.

It was an amazing time in my life, really.

He actually started to apologize for that in our conversation the other night.  He said he was just on the tail end of his “wild” years, and that he was afraid in retrospect that he was a bad influence on us.  Hopefully I helped to ease his worries on that, and I got to thank him for everything he’d done for me.

“You and Carlyn,” I said (referring to the teacher who gave me my first “major” role in high school but who also terrorized the crap out of the majority of us), “were the most influential teachers I’ve ever had.  Both for VERY different reasons.”

“Interesting,” he deadpanned.  “You know we fucked?”

After my eyes bulged out of my head he assured me he was kidding, but it was a mental image I REALLY didn’t need.

He also said one of those “simple but poignant” things that makes you step back and think about your life.  He asked me what I was doing these days, so I started to tell him about work and being in management and all that fun stuff, and he kind of shook his head and cut me off while saying “And why aren’t you acting?”

To which I kind of hemmed and hawed and made excuses, but I really don’t have a good answer to that. 

Yeah.  Looking forward to the upcoming Jobsite auditions.  I think if I pull a goose egg on getting cast again this season I need to try to find something else to do this year. 

Maybe I’ll see what Kerry is up to over at USF.

Heh.