Siege - Day #8

Working from home seems pretty great today!

It's the first warm, sunny day of spring.  The windows are open and there's a lovely breeze wiffling by as I sit here and, through the window, I can see budding branches move with the same breeze.  Gorgeous.  Even my new tomatoes are reaching up toward the sun...

I've spent most of the day finishing up the "gathering" phase of doing my business taxes: totaling receipts, figuring out my studio's share of utilities, and adding up mileage etc.  Tedious work, but necessary if I want to save some of my extremely-hard-earned-cash from Uncle Sam.

public domain image found HERE

Siege - Day #7

On the theater front:  I've suggested to some friends that we should come up with some theater-by-proxy project - I'm not sure what, but maybe puppets (with sets and props of course!) we could film?  Something that will let us play together at a distance.  We'll see if we come up with a good idea.

On the work from home front: the whole household is now - finally! - working from home.  Part of today was spent getting an extra desktop organized.  As a set designer it was my duty to point out that the Hickory Dickery Dock Clock kid's mural (left over from nursery days) might not be the best background for his Zoom meetings with clients.  (Ha!)

Still plugging away at taxes.  I've now got all the business receipts sorted and entered into The Book.  

The tomato plants look good so far.  Like us, here at home...

Siege - Day #3

Well, yesterday was weird.  

I had a doctor's appointment.  Traffic was strangely light for a Wednesday afternoon.  All the parking lots I passed - retail or business office - were almost empty.  It was like an early Sunday morning.  At the medical office building, which is next door to a hospital, the parking lot was pretty full but (are you sitting down?) there were empty spaces near the door.  No valet parkers standing near their podium - because they were sitting inside, wearing protective gear and masks, next to the biggest bottle of sanitizer gel ever.  No one waiting for an elevator, but another bottle of sanitized hung by the buttons.  (I took the hint.)  No one in the upper lobby.  Only two patients in the waiting room.  (We gave each other 12 feet of separation.)  All the office staff was discussing was the virus.  

Then a perfectly normal doctor consultation.  (Knee problems I thought were due to theater wear n' tear up and down ladders etc. but turns out to be arthritis, yea!)  Much washing and decontaminating once I got home.

Tell you what...  I won't be moseying near medical places voluntarily again anytime soon.

Today is, so far, more washing and decontaminating, doing normal laundry plus clearing off much-used surfaces so they can be scrubbed more easily, more frequently.  And I'm trying to create a sort of Virus Mitigation Chamber in the front hall - just to keep all the cooties in one place.  A place to store things like briefcases and outdoor shoes and jackets and to wash down and power up phones and such.  (I haven't quite gotten to the wipe-down-all-groceries stage of paranoia but I'm sure I'll get there.)

Hark! The dryer is singing its chirpy little clothes-all-dry! tune...

On the theater business front the only action is on Facebook 'cause everything is canceled.  

Except taxes.  And distractions from taxes...

I work using the messy-desk/more ideas system.

General feeling on FB is that there might be the possibility of shows in September - maybe.  I have Young Frankenstein to read for then so - who knows? - maybe it'll still happen.

Tax Swamp

Tax Day is always fraught... but they are finally done and sent!

Meanwhile, our Dear Leader is getting an extension for his apparently.

I STILL WANT TO SEE TRUMP'S TAX RETURNS!

Tax Payers

I'm paying my taxes...

IS TRUMP?

Demand to see our president's tax returns. 

Yeesh

Sorry for the arid desert between posts here... it's Tax Time.  'Nuf said.

There's something about going through last year's mileage records (really?  I drove to Fort Worth again that day?) and old pay stubs (really?  that little?) and badly folded receipts (really?!  that much!) that makes me feel all jaded and Wordsworthian:

"The world is too much with us; late and soon / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers..."

I love my theater design job, but annual tax up-gathering sure can suck the juice out of it.  Like a bad review.  (Not much like W's "sleeping flowers," all these shekels.)   

Meanwhile, actual reviews have been good: Gidion's Knot at Kitchen Dog Theater is getting good press.  A tremendous clash of actress power in this show!  (The set's getting nice notice too - "meticulously executed."  I'll take it!)

Here's the full Wordsworth piece for Today's Poetical Pleasure:

         THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
          Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
          Little we see in Nature that is ours;
          We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
          The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
          The winds that will be howling at all hours,
          And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
          For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
          It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
          A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;                        
          So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
          Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
          Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
          Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

A moonlit sea by Carlsen - a public domain image from Vintage Printable

Catch-Up

Okay, okay, I've been slow about posting lately - blame the IRS.  The tax deadline is breathing down my neck.  Day after day - or so it feels - I sit at my board sorting receipts from the whole past year.  (To sketch for yesterday's production meeting, I had to total yet more receipts just to free my drawing board.)  I find taxes stressful.

Any one else?  Raise your hand.

Anyway.  More posts will be forthcoming eventually.

Meanwhile, I can heartily recommend other reading: the historical mysteries of Barbara Hambly set in the New Orleans of 1833 and later, with hero Benjamin January.  Start with Free Man of Color.  Good reads!  I happened across these because I'm researching a slightly younger New Orleans (1790-1820).

I haven't written too much here about my trip there last fall (afraid to dissipate my head of steam), but I can say that it's fun to take a vacation with a research goal.  It adds more interest to sightseeing when you're always mentally editing your surroundings: was this here then?  Would historic character X or Y have stood here like this?  Would character Z have smelled this?  Tasted that?  Been cold and muddy or sun-baked?  Surroundings become populated with ghosts you bring along with you - DIY haunting!  Of course, New Orleans is an especially easy place to do this because history just oozes out of the brick, but if you do your homework most places have more history than you'd think.  For instance, there's a mundane-looking hardware store just blocks away where I'd never work - never shop - because I remember the ex-employee of the ex-sporting goods store who slit the throats of several ex-coworkers for the sake of the weekend till and boxes of expensive sneakers.  Digging through old newspapers would turn up those facts... if you looked.  (The place has gotta be haunted.  Not that I'm superstitious - ha!)

Lately I've been dabbling in history.  The Journal of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, one of America's earliest and most distinguished architects is a fascinating read.  He visited New Orleans in about 1818 - died there too.  As did his son, also an architect, and yet another Greek Revival architect, Barthelemy Lafon.  All of yellow fever.  We forget how lucky we are to live in a time and place when epidemics are not the scourges they were.

This period of the War of 1812 - which we hardly remember - turns out to be an important turning point in the U.S. and Europe, laying foundations for later events: the industrial revolution, both the plantation system and slavery's abolition, the Trail of Tears and western expansion...  History is more interesting than I'd guessed.  But then fifth grade Texas History left out all: pirates; cannibals; slave smuggling; slave-smuggling, knife-wielding not-so-heroic heroes of the Alamo; and beautiful quadroon slaves offered up to Mexican generals as a military strategy.

The battle of the Alamo - public domain image

All the interesting stuff!

HERE's a link to what I did write about New Orleans - a bit about Plaza d'Italia, that post-modern fountain.

Lull? Not So Much

The speed of this set designer's life is picking up again:

Today there's an interview with an almost-new client.  I worked with them years ago for basically what change they could find under the sofa cushions (plus tasty cookies), but this time it's all a little better funded and at a new address.  Meanwhile, I've learned that the builder for another set will no longer be building - there's going to be a scramble to see how that gets done.  Waiting on a director's phone call on a third show (I better nudge 'em, that deadline is approaching).  A forth show has had a sad delay, but now a production meeting date is set... for which I need to get a sketch in gear.  Oh!  And I've accepted the offer of a favorite show in - wait for it - Prague!  Cool, huh?  You'll be hearing more about these shows: Mistakes Were Made; Boeing, Boeing; Ruth; Sweeney Todd; and the Dallas Theater Center's Summer Stage program.

Plus, of course, I've been figuring out income taxes.  If you have your own business, taxes get, um, annoying.  All those receipts!  Mileage!  (Man! I drive a lot of miles to theaters.)  Calculating the exact square footage of the home studio versus the entire home in order to prorate the costs of electricity etc. as business versus personal costs...  Taxes are very annoying.  Especially if you replaced a car this year, as I had to.  (Saga of Scenic Rides 1 & 2 HERE and, for those of you who find other people's struggles with taxes as funny as I do, here are last year's rants: Tax Rant #1, #2, and #3.)

That explains why there was no post yesterday: I was too annoyed!

Sigh.

Van Gogh's Almond Blossums, believed public domain image

But it's Spring!  Easter almost.  I'm feeling better - family and friends are well.  The taxes look like they'll turn out okay.  And the recent tornadoes that ripped through DFW spared my neighborhood.  So life's good.

Taxes!

Aaaargh!  Hate doing taxes.  I'm figuring mileage... apparently I did nothing last year but sit in the car (some days did feel like that), because my business miles are way up from the previous year.  Then again, much of my work was in Fort Worth (a 100 mile jaunt) and I had a show in Oklahoma City.

Why am I surprised?

Designer's Taxes

And where on the form does "theater died owing me money" go?

Designer's Life

Sure as death, there's taxes:  I'm wrestling with a year's worth of receipts - some reimbursed, some not - and all the weird expenses a theater designer accumulates.  Somehow there's never an obvious space on the forms for "waterlilies, silk" or "grandfather clock rental" or "bought my own paintbrushes 'cause the theater's are ##$*7!!"