Staunton, pt. 2: the glamorous life of an intern

Wow, guys. It has been a long while since my life was this busy! I write you in my slender period of free time, after breakfast but before work, longer if I get up early but that's a bit difficult to justify when the workday never ended until 1030pm...

I should say, right now: I love my job. Long hours notwithstanding, I'm having the time of my nerdy little life here at the ASC. We'll get to explaining that in a minute; first, the pictures I promised you!

Don't spend as much time here as I'd like...

See that desk chair? That is an AMAZING desk chair.

First window looks down at the neighbor's tin shed roof. Picturesque.

This is where I sit and spy on the neighbors while pretending to work on my blog. Or I would, if they  ever appeared.

So tiny even Google Maps couldn't find it.

My next-door neighbor. He's got a bit of a cold.

Downtown, as viewed from my street corner.

That about does it for my at-home environment. It's a pretty quiet neighborhood here; at night, all you really hear is the rain and/or the train roaring through. Sunday and Monday afternoons, I had the chance to explore the town, and the people here must all have amazing quads, because (as you may be able to see in my picture of downtown) all the streets slope at at least a 30-degree angle. It's even worse if you're trying to get to the library...

Hello, friend.

...because it's a murderous half-mile or so up the hill to that end of town, so steep you nearly fall backwards if you don't stand carefully (that's where the college is, too - I have no idea why anyone goes there!). I walked it at about 3 in the afternoon, after the Virginia sunshine had had lots of time to bake into the pavement and shut up all the birds. Possibly not my best tactical decision ever.

Tired legs are tired. And out of shape.

There were, however, very definite consolations. For one thing, I got to see almost the whole of Staunton once I had gotten up high enough. Also, I discovered that this town's library has a startlingly good comic collection.

They only let you check out two if you don't live here. But still! Lookit!

Ran across this sweet thing on my way home. Hello, beautiful.

Anyway, it's a good thing that I did my exploring when I had the chance, because after my orientation on Monday (met one of my bosses, got the tour, etc. etc.), my work schedule's been roaring by.
My days, so far, go something like this:

- 7:30. Alarm goes off. Roll out of bed with extreme reluctance. Ponder the competing values of sleep versus productivity. Go back to sleep, possibly without bothering to crawl back in bed.
- 8:30. Get up for real. Make coffee. Also breakfast. Eat breakfast while waiting for coffee to kick in. Read, write, keep up correspondence. Plan lunch and dinner. If any laundry or blogging or social-ness is going to happen today, it had better happen here.
- 12 noon. Leave for work. Do not fall down while descending the hill. This is priority.
- 12:15. Get to work. Say 'good morning' to everyone (technically incorrect, but no one ever contradicts me), give the day's schedule the once-over, get assignments from my boss/help one of the other ASMs with whatever prep work they're starting on.
- 12:30/1-ish. Everyone arrives. Troupe-wide work is gotten down to. I run errands between rehearsal rooms, sit with the prompt book, repair props, move furniture, fetch coffee, and do whatever else I'm told.
- 4:30. The actors leave for dinner break. ASMs set for whatever show/preview is happening that evening. The faster that gets done, the sooner we can leave to eat/nap. We move fast.
- 5:45. Break's over. Come back to make sure everything's ready for Go at 6 or 7:30, depending on what the evening's event is. By this point, we might get passed off to Props or Wardrobe to help them if they need us. Otherwise, it's our best attempt at preemptive clean-up, or waiting around in an alert fashion.
- 6 or 7:30. Show time. Either I'm on book duty or I'm downstairs, working cleanup/prep for the next day's adventures.
- 9:45/10-ish. Show's over. Make sure the actors have all their props put away (that's right, they put away their own props; we aren't allowed to touch them) and haven't left any personal items backstage. Then we rearrange the backstage, mostly set pieces, so that what's needed for tomorrow's show is most accessible, and whatever we've just used is safely stowed away. Backstage is tiny, some of our pieces are delicate, and we have to pay attention to fire codes (i.e. no stacking things too close to or in the immediate path of doors) so this is a touchy, Tetris-like business.
-10:30-ish. Once the SM dismisses us, we can go home. 'Good night's all around, turn off the lights, lock the doors, make the trek back up the hill (still without falling down, preferably).
-11. Shower. Sleep. Or, shower, cook, read, Skype, sleep, which is more likely but involves, sadly, less sleep.

Rinse and repeat.

Maybe next time I'll have pictures of the theatre...? Maybe. If I have to chance to take any while I'm up there. But yes; as you can see, I spend most of my day in a buzzing, busy hive of work, and while it's hard to carve out time to do much else, I still think it's a great place to be. In the meantime, I have to leave for work, so if there's anything in particular you want to hear about next time, please tell me so in the comments! Thanks for reading!