Well, that was a very, very busy September. Busy enough that, in a pattern that goes back – well, the rest of my life – once my body caught the slightest whiff of any time off, it declared, “Aha! Well, here’s the physical collapse you’ve been putting off all summer.” The fact that the body started it two days early didn’t help matters much. The Saturday night show was achieved largely by dint of Dayquil and chutzpah. The show must go on, you know.
So Sunday? I was pretty sick Sunday. I took Nyquil that night (alright, store brand whatever) and woke up a couple of times the next morning, dehydrated as hell. Drank some water, went back to bed. All in all, I slept some 14 hours, and felt better for it. Which is good, as I was behind in everything, Work, The Secret Project. All behind.
Yes, I am involved in a Secret Project. I can’t tell you anything about it, because it’s Secret. Duh. Don’t be silly.
Oh, the Huge Manatee!
This is entirely different from my other project, which is trying to get Animal Planet or possibly Nickelodeon or Disney interested in my new TV reality show, Those Fucking Cats. The show was conceived when I began wondering how our cats were gaining entrance into my bedroom, although the door was closed. Turns out the younger cat, Tubby (who was named Eva until she ballooned to the size of a manatee) was simply hurling her bulk against the door until the latch mechanism gave way, allowing the older Hideous Mutant Cat (named Nicodemus, with polydactyl claws and a propensity for eating plastic wrap) to get inside, knock everything off every level surface, and – I swear to you – leaving one of those extra claws embedded in the mattress exactly where I will sit down. Those Fucking Cats.
I bought a new doorknob to replace the ancient one Tubby had managed to jimmy and tried to replace it Sunday before I completely collapsed – this after a couple of nights of barricading myself inside my bedroom, using a suitcase and a wooden table. And let me tell you, there is something beyond annoying about hearing a small thump thump THUMP against your door at midnight as a confused furry manatee tries to gain entrance to its new kitty wonderland) Anyway, the doorknob I bought had a defective latch mechanism anyway, so I didn’t have a door so much as a slab of hinged wood with a hole in it. I gave up and let the little monsters sleep in the room with me Monday night. They are, at least, fast learners, and have figured out that when you jump on the fat guy in the bed, he tends to wake up screaming, thrashing, and hurling whatever is on top of him against the nearest wall. So I slept pretty well that night.
The next day I felt much better, went to work, got a little caught up, returned the doorknob and got a new one, went grocery shopping, and replaced the doorknob to the dismay of Those Fucking Cats. Ta Dah!
So. I’m trying to ramp back up on The Secret Project. Met my work deadline. I’m no longer running audio for City Council meetings, and I have to say that’s sort of like missing episodes of a soap opera you only had on in the background anyway. I’ll miss the catchphrases and the extra money, but that was one of the things that contributed to the collapse.
Also, I’m likely cutting back to only one show a week with my murder mystery dinner theater; the owner made an odd decision, earlier in the year, to do not one, but two of those twofer deals, Living Social and Groupon. Just one of them would have been bad enough, but oy. Both assured her there wouldn’t be that many sold – and of course there were – and certain other assurances were made. The best screw-up was when the Groupon salesman, in the comments for our offer, contradicted Groupon’s own terms of service, and told customers that the Groupon covered gratuity and the like. So we got to tell several hundred people that he was lying.
Parallel to all this, I was reading a webcomic by Kevin Church and Paul Salvi called [The Line], which is about a restaurant, and in their current storyline, they are dealing with the fact that their owner/chef, an autistic cocaine addict, has entered into an agreement with a similar outfit (the arc starts here). [The Line] has kept my boss sane in the intervening month, because the stories about the entitled louts who feel they are entitled to everything because they clicked on a two-for-one coupon are all true. I am sort of used to dealing with people who have never seen an actual theatrical performance before. These folks however – I’m not sure they have ever dined anywhere more upwardly mobile than Denny’s.
Now, to be sure, most of the folks were decent sorts who enjoyed the show, and only some of them treated the show as if it were the TV in their family room, and it was perfectly all right to have a conversation at normal volume with the person across the table. We always gotten those. But we were getting a lot more of them.
Well, by doing shows on Friday and Saturdays, were able to move most of them through, and now the coupons have expired. (Best thing so far: “I have this Groupon, and it expired yesterday. Can I use it in November?”) This means we’re likely slipping back to one show a week, and this – like not doing City Council – means less money.
Hence, I need to get back up to speed on The Secret Project. And remember, call up Animal Planet and demand to know why they’re not showing Those Fucking Cats.
There, I can produce 1000 words of bitching and moaning, just like anybody else.
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