News from today's meeting with my boss. * My phone now works and I can take and answer ALL THE PHONE CALLS! yayyyyyyyyyy shoot me now. I hate my future. * Look, she's being as nice about forcing me to do something I hate and am awful at as possible, but....y'know. * I also have to start going back to the office next week. At least next Wednesday to deal with the international mail. I don't know if I am already being put onto A Schedule as to having to go in all the time quite yet, but international mail is enough of a fucking disaster that she wants me to go in and she will go in with me to deal with it. There is drama about having to get permission to go into the office, we can't have too many people in there at once or on the wrong days, etc.... * I pointed out that we have a ton of people wanting special shipping in the fall (I note that we already can't handle the demand of the ones right now and we're taking 3 weeks to somehow do it all) and she was all "Do you think the comm going out early helped?" Me: "........... I don't know what to say about the comm........" (Actual answer: since I emailed everyone literally separately, that seems to have actually gotten people's attention and high demand better than comms did...if that one had gone out, which it did not....) Anyway, I will have to handle all of the mailing by myself in the future, of course.

Sigh.

Also, my younger employee buddy who was having issues awhile back is having issues again--specifically, she got told X by a financial institution, and then they were all "Nope, you owe money." Meanwhile I have looked on said financial org's webpage and they do NOT specify anything with regards to their particular issue. I hope that helps her argue her case, because that's a big fail on their part not to spell out what they meant, especially since she got told that doing X was okay and then apparently it's NOT.

This weekend is supposed to be hugely hot again--like 118 tomorrow. I have bought a ticket to go see Black Widow during midafternoon for the air conditioning. I sweated through my shortest shorts during rehearsal all week and then hand washed them and put them out to dry this morning circa 7:45 a.m. and they were almost entirely dry by 3 p.m. I'm seriously considering just walking directly into the pool and walking out again just to get wet. Also because I am dirty/sweaty AF and my hair is hideous after being in a wig cap every day for a week, but I don't see the point of showering until tomorrow when I will leave the house voluntarily. Call it conserving water, y'all....okay, never mind, I caved in and showered, I was too gross to wear clothes any more :P

On a related note, there's now a TV show, "Monsters at Work" (har har), taking place directly after Monsters Inc. with the new Laughing Regime in place and Mike and Sully running the joint.

Episode 1: Meet poor newbie Tylor, who's just gotten a job as a scarer....and the orientation video NEEDS SOME CHANGES. Does Tylor have any other skills? Can he be a hat rack? He gets moved into maintenance because his parents own a hardware store. His new employee buddy Val is a babbly college dropout girl who's cute but hard to keep up with in conversation. Having been reasonably freaked out by the rest of the MIFT employees (one guy is only known as "Banana Bread," someone feeds him lubricant, another guy attacks him for being a job-stealer on his first day), Tylor tries to make people laugh instead, and that doesn't go well. "I appreciate the opportunity that I have completely blown, I will never see you again." (Hahahah, I have had those thoughts.) Mike and Sully are sympathetic, and Mike gets the idea to start a comedy college.

Episode 2: Tylor's mom is all "this team can't possibly be as weird as you said they were." Uh-HUH. tttere is a monster equivalent of a HAMSTER. There is also a creepy initiation ceremony. Well, at least most of them are welcoming and friendly, except for Duncan the paranoid job guy. However, Tylor can't help but notice that nobody actually seems to be able to fix anything? Meanwhile, there's only a few laughers, power outages, and Mike has to teach a class. The MIFTers follow Tylor to comedy class at lunch anyway. Val was an improviser, of course. Then Mike has a power outage while within a kid's room and MIFT has to go to work. Tylor's big ol' arms come in handy to save Mike, and a party ensues. Oh, and "Banana Bread's" real name is Winchester and somehow gets promoted to the laughing floor. Huh? '

Turns out Robert has a girlfriend. OF COURSE HE DOES. IF ANYONE IS REMOTELY ATTRACTIVE THEY ARE TAKEN.

Shrek Performance #1: Dannette has a cookie sheet behind her now! Adam had a hard time finding green makeup. "You're in freaking Hollywood, how can you not find it?" (Steve) All of those places are shut down now, Adam says. "And now to Mrs. Doubtfire this." "I'm going to need to talk to the cast before we start." "Uh-oh, what did we do?" -Steve and Adam. "Vocal warmups. You think I'm kidding. I am." -Steve. "I have no idea, I'm making this crap up as I go along." -Steve "There's a Jew boy, in the tower...." Steve Steve: "Bork bork bork." Adam: "Swedish Chef, the musical." Robert: "We can hear you." Steve: "I'm holding a finger up. You can guess which one. It's my PINKY." There's 11 tickets sold tonight. Robert: "I think we'll feel a lot warmer if we do a cold reading." Steve: "That was TERRIBLE." Robert: "I'm going to leave now, I see we don't connect well." Steve: "Yes, we do." Jan: "I walk out for 2 minutes and..." "We're having a big fight now." Robert: "It's not opening night without a riot with your director!" Steve isn't the director. Robert: "Oh, pardon ME." Steve: "We could just duplicate more of you." Hugo got Morgan a Fiona doll. Awwww. "I still want to know where my donkey is, Hugo." -Judah On Funko Pops: "Can you believe they already have one of Alligator Loki?" -Dannette. Arthur finds a photo. "It's A Small World" is Steve's purgatory. Hugo strips and some "oooh" noises happen. Judah changes his name to "Dokey" and when razzed, changes it to "middle finger to Shrek." Andy and Adam were making some kind of short jokes on Facebook, I take it. It's pointed out to Carter that when he and Arthur are "lifting weights" on Farquaad, it's not three across. That looks goofy. What do we do? Who knows. Carter fools with settings and flips himself upside down: "Missed opportunities, we could have been hanging from trees." Arthur: "Carter's hanging from the ceiling again." Adam: "This is really weird." Carter: "You're a crackpot magnet."

Actual performance: (a) Found out RIGHT AT SHOW STARTING that oh, we're not going to be able to see the videos at all and are going to have to go on Steve prompting us to go on. Makes for suspense for us and also kinda dull on our end. Also, Steve said he redid "everything" after the rehearsal and now I'm kinda bummed I can't see if/'what he did differently. We can hear a bit of the singing and that's about it. (b) Adam's actual roar is apparently being overdubbed now? Did not know this ahead of time. (c) The bow on my shirt is GLUED ON and decided to come off right after my first scene as I was doing the quick change. Lucky for me that I have like over an hour to deal with it. I debated whether or not to hand sew it back on but ended up pinning it on for the time being instead. I was all "fun fact..." in the chat mentioning this. (d) Per Andy in the chat after I mentioned this had happened: "Another fun fact: peeing in the Farquaad suit is medium difficulty, right in the middle between "able bodied human" and "CatDog." I posted "looks askance at Donkey" to this and Judah was all "LOL." (e) I NEVER STOP LOVING BOOTY TAMBOURINE DANCE I KNOW IT'S TODAY OOOOOOOH (f) Steve: "You just killed the bird." as a cue as to what is going on. "And the butterfly is dead NOW." (g) Steve: "Not yet, he's going to smell the gas. He's throwing up. He's crawling. And you're on." (h) Carter is the only one "helping" Andy "weighlift," Arthur is now just watching like a spotter. Good job on the last minute adjustments, guys. Andy: "Don't strain yourself." I feel like that was improv... (i) Morgan air-guitars while she waits, then checks her phone. (j) "He's doing his Tina Turner right now." -Steve (k) I realized that I somehow could line up my head with the swamp background so that I looked like I had a unicorn horn, hah. (l) Steve had some kind of major trouble with getting the Fiona transformation scene to turn on (Judah was improv-ing) and then he kept talking on our end about how he added all this stuff to it and I'm thinking, "we can't see it, Steve." Robert in the chat was all "the saying goes, we can't see through closed windows." However, in this matter we can't see through closed windows."

Jan came on at the end to say she somehow only saw the last 20 minutes of the show(!!!). It finished around 10:30 for us, so not as long as usual (2.5 hours rather than 3).

Otherwise, I did great, thank you very much. Costume on at all times, background on at all times, no missed lines, silly actouts, kept green screen shenanigans to a minimum, perfect!

8-9:14: first act, then ten minutes.

Mysteries of Fiona: (a) How does she like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain while being stuck in a tower? (b) If there's no door, how did she get in there in the first place? (c) She's got a hot plate and chamber pot, but how on earth is she getting food for 20 years? (d) How is she a good bowler? I doubt there's room for a bowling alley in there.

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