Alun Clewe's Journal

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Middle-School April Fool
Given the overall, well, let's say mischievous nature of middle-school students, it shouldn't be surprising that many of them seem to revel in April Fools' Day, and leap at the chance to perpetrate some prank.

What did surprise me is that they're so bad at it.

An actual quote of what was apparently supposed to be an April Fool's prank:

"Why are you wearing blue?"
"Huh?"
"April Fool!"

So--wait--the point of this was to fool me into thinking, um, that you thought I was wearing blue when I wasn't? When, in fact, you were actually perfectly aware that I was not wearing blue? I--okay. I have to admit, when you asked me why I was wearing blue, I didn't realize it was an April Fool's joke, but that's probably mostly because, um, there didn't seem to be any actual joke there. Or...any point to it at all. Arguably, April Fool's jokes are pointless in general, but that seemed particularly so.

This probably goes without saying, but the preceding paragraph should be read as an apostrophe to the eighth-grade student who asked the question. And who, incidentally, thought that if something was funny once, it would only become more so by repetition. (Leaving aside the erroneousness of his belief that it was funny once.) So he repeated this same routine three more times--only without the "huh"s on my part, now that I knew what was going on (even if I still don't quite understand why). "Why are you wearing blue? April fool!" When did just spouting nonsense become an April Fool's joke? Doesn't the very idea of an April Fool's joke imply that you're, well, fooling someone?

That was probably the nadir of the attempted April Fool's jokes, but not by a wide margin. "Look! There's a spider on the ceiling!" was about as sophisticated as they got. (And played so closely on the heels of the "wearing blue" bit, this was so obviously an attempted April Fool's trick that it didn't fool anyone either.)

I mean, really. Come on. If you insist on playing an April Fool's prank, you can show a little more imagination than that! Sheesh.

Reconnected
My goodness (to use for some reason another expletive I rarely if ever have actually used before or am likely to use again), it's been a while since my last update. Updates should be more frequent in the future, though, now that I have an internet connection at home again.

Yup. That's right. I am making this post from home.

I said I wasn't going to worry about getting my internet connection back up till my past-due bills were taken care of, but, well, they are. All my accounts have been brought current and below the limit, and most of the people I've borrowed money from have been paid back (and

packbat, I haven't forgotten that I still owe you a drawing of "something cool"...sorry it's taken me so long to get on that), and so I'm finally in a situation where I feel I can spare a little money for semi-but-not-really-necessities like internet access.

In fact, actually, the internet access was connected about a week and a half ago, on the 19th. At least, it was supposed to be, and as far as I know it was, but at the time I couldn't do anything about it. Because, while I may have had a DSL connection, I didn't have...a working computer.

That's right, both the Box and Gaka (as my "old" and "new" computer, respectively, were called) had gone down different tracks toward nonfunctionality. Gaka was first--it actually hadn't been working since, um, actually since I got back from house-sitting for my parents back in September. When I went to turn on the computer, it just wouldn't boot; the hard drive made some nasty noises and a failure message came up on the screen. This was something I intended to look into and try to figure out how to fix--but I had neither the time nor the resources back then, so I resorted to my "old" computer, which, after all, still worked. (Except for its CD-ROM drive, which, annoyingly, did not work at all, but I could do without that for the moment. As long as I didn't need to install any new software, I should be fine.) At least, it still worked until earlier this month, when it suddenly decided it wanted to keep secret its activities, and thus, while as far as I know everything else was going more or less okay, it flatly refused to display anything on the monitor. (And yes, I'm sure it was the computer at fault, not the monitor. In fact, I'm using that exact same monitor and monitor cable now with the new computer.) This motivated me to finally did get around to trying to fix Gaka's hard drive, but to no avail. Any recovery methods I tried just yielded the oh-so-helpful message that the drive suffered from an "irrecoverable error". Yay.

Now, I had one computer with a non-working hard drive (but as far as I know everything else working just fine), and one computer with a non-working motherboard (I have reason to believe it was the motherboard and not the video card, because there were odd things going on with the keyboard as well, albeit odd things that weren't nearly as big a deal.) An obvious solution presented itself: to put the good hard drive in the good computer, thereby making a digital Frankenstein that hopefully would transcend the deaths of the individual computers and rise Aliiive! This seemed like a good idea until I got out Gaka's hard drive...and found out that it was, well, a completely different kind of hard drive from the Box's. To wit: the Box had an IDE drive, the kind of hard drive I was used to and that, as far as I knew, was the standard. Gaka's hard drive, I found to my dismay, was SATA, a new format that apparently is expected to become the new standard, though I hadn't been familiar with it before.

This does not mean, however, that Gaka's SATA hard drive looked completely unfamiliar to me. In fact, I had seen a drive almost exactly like it before--but put in a special casing to make it work as an external hard drive. It was even made by the same company, and bore the same model name. That's right--the hard drive that had died in Gaka was the same type as the external hard drive that had died two years ago and that had resisted attempts at recovery. So, remember I said before I'm never buying a Seagate product again? Yeah. Let me just reiterate that. (Little did I know when I first said that, though, that another Seagate hard drive was already lurking within my computer, waiting to go bad when I least expected it...)

In fact, I don't think I'm going to be buying another Dell, either, given that, well, I don't know what I'm getting when I do. Really, the main reason I'd been buying computers from Dell was because thanks to the Dell Preferred Customer program I could buy them on credit, but...I dug myself enough of a hole by buying things on credit that I don't want to do that anymore anyway if I can avoid it. (In fact, in looking for that post about the Seagate hard drive, I ran across a post that also described a bad experience I had with Dell that I'd forgotten about--so one more reason not to order from Dell again, I guess.) So, from now on I'm getting computers where I can see what's in them before I get them.

Namely, in this particular case, Best Buy, where, prolonged efforts to get together some sort of working computer being unavailing, I finally got yet another new computer. (I'd tried putting the IDE drive in Gaka, but it didn't seem to work; that motherboard apparently wasn't configured to work with IDE drives, and even though, after some effort, I managed to get it to recognize the drive's presence and even to attempt to boot from it, I couldn't convince it to actually read it.) I didn't need a monitor, or keyboard, or anything else other than the computer (including hard drive) itself, but still, that was a few hundred dollars I'd rather not have spent (sure, I'm making money now, and I'm caught up with my debts, but I'm not so well off financially that a few hundred dollars isn't a big deal). I did get a bit of a discount on the computer because it was their floor model (that was the only one of that kind they had left). And then once I got that computer home...getting it all set up and getting my internet connection working was almost anticlimactically easy. So...there we go.

And now I'm left with two nonworking computers, which possibly I can still try to somehow get fixed up at some point, but at least I have a working computer now too. Oh...and apparently I now have Windows Vista, which...I'm still getting used to. There are several things from Windows XP that I really miss, but it's possible that they can be restored through suitable configurations; I'll look into it.

Anyway, I don't think I've lost any really important files; they were all on my external hard drive (the new one, not the horrible dead Seagate one). Still, I don't have everything set up on my new (that is, my new new) computer yet. But I'm working on it.

The newest computer's name is the rather uncatchy ARM0RHJBV3Z, because that's the name Best Buy had given it and I haven't bothered to rename it.

(Before I bought the computer, I did check what kind of hard drive it had. It was SATA--but it was Western Digital. I can live with that.)

Pyramid Scheme
Speaking of acting jobs I was cast in last year (well, I was speaking (okay, writing) about that in the previous entry)...

If you were reading my LiveJournal back last August, you may recall this post. But probably not, because the fact that I decide to write about various happenings in my life in no way obligates anyone else to remember them. Anyway, the gist of it was that I had been in a promo short for a potential upcoming movie, and that the producers planned to use the same actors from the short in the actual movie once it started filming in January.

The fact that January has now passed and I have not written about this since may understandably lead you to the conclusion that this did not happen.

Which, in fact, it didn't. But...that's not the end of the story.

I e-mailed the producers near the end of January to find out what was going on. Their plans hadn't changed; they were still working on getting funding together and getting the movie in the works, and they were still planning on using the actors from the promo scenes. It was apparently just taking a little longer than they had initially anticipated.

"We're working on the informational/documentary website now, which will be the final promo tool to help with funding," the reply to my e-mail read in part. "Hopefully we can move straight from here to making the movie; due to getting funding."

Just today I got another e-mail:

We've been moving forward almost as slowly as if we were dragging an 80-ton stone, but eventually, the STONE CRAZY online package is ready.

We are actively seeking funding, so feel free to spread this thing round like a virus - use it as promo stuff for yourselves and go NUTS all over the forums.

Following was a link to what was presumably the "informational/documentary website" mentioned previously.

So, in accordance with the request in the e-mail, I will hereby endeavor to "spread this thing around". Here's the link:

STONE CRAZY - A Modern Comedy about Ancient Egypt

. Make of it what you will.

(Incidentally, the e-mail quoted above continued as follows: "Thank you all for being a part [of] this - hopefully your schedules will permit further interaction in the near future." So...sounds like they may be expecting something to come of this relatively soon. Hopefully not at a time that conflicts with my teaching job again, though...)

Skipping Work
This will be a LiveJournal entry in two parts. The first part does not concern my missing a work day.

It does, however, concern other people doing so.

Although I now have the teaching job, I never actually quit the job I'd gotten last December at Universal Studios Hollywood. After all, the job did include some decent perks. I just limited my availability to weekends and holidays, and counted on not being put on the schedule much anyway given my low seniority. And I wasn't. In fact, although I'd been checking the schedules I was sent every week, just in case, I wasn't scheduled for any work there since the New Year.

Not, that is, until February 17.

Not having been scheduled to work there at all in a month and a half, I was taken by surprise. On reflection, though, I realized it made sense. That was President's Day weekend, after all, a three-day holiday weekend when presumably theme parks would be unusually busy; it stood to reason that that would be a time they'd call in the reserves, so to speak.

Only I really didn't want to work that day. I had other plans. And I seriously considered calling in and saying I couldn't work then. But I decided I shouldn't. It wasn't really fair to take advantage of the job's perks and not actually work there on the few days I might be needed. Like it or not, I figured I ought to go.

So I did, and the leads were very happy to see me, given that I was one of the few people scheduled to work that day who actually did show up. Apparently most of the other relatively new hires hadn't been checking their schedules and were what they called "no call no shows" (a term that should be self-explanatory), and even many of the employees of longer standing had decided to do other things that weekend and so had either requested the days off or, if denied that request (as many were, when too many people wanted to take off those same days), just called in sick and didn't show up anyway. The Jurassic Park ride was seriously short-handed, and had to borrow some workers from the Mummy--which was a little short-handed too, though not quite as much so. I even got a call the next morning asking if I could work that day, too, although I hadn't been scheduled then--they needed people. (I had made plans that day to spend time with an old friend I hadn't seen in a long time (

shigolch), though, so I said no--although it would have been double pay for the holiday (still, double the near-minimum-wage pay for a Univeral Studios ride operator isn't such a big deal--not now, anyway).)

So...that was my first--and so far (and possibly ever; see below) last--day working at Universal Studios since the New Year, and...well, other than the aforementioned fact that they were really short-handed, there's not much to say about it; the day went fairly unremarkably. (Except for my forgetting my password for the clock-in system, I guess, but anyway...) But...checking the schedule I was sent for this week, I saw I'm scheduled to work again for this coming Saturday. It's Spring Break time, busy times for the park again. I have a lot of other plans this Saturday, though, so this time I think I will call in and say I'm unavailable. I have been asked to send in my Spring Break availability (I do have a week off from my teaching job--actually, more than a week off, given that Spring Break here for some reason encompasses an extra Friday), but I haven't done that yet, mostly because I'm waiting to find out the scheduling for something else that I may have to do during spring break (more on which below).

But...at this point, really, I'm thinking it might be better for me to quit the Universal Studios job. I don't want to work there, after all, and I'd been holding onto the job mostly for the perks (well, that, and because I like to leave my options as open as possible). But it's not like I've actually been taking much advantage of said perks (I can get into the park free whenever I want (during normal business hours), for example, but I have never actually done so), and I'm not sure the hassle of being tied up holidays with such a low-paying job is worth a holiday free turkey and a few dollars off bus passes. Plus, if someone from the school goes to Universal Studios during the holidays and sees me working there (which is very unlikely, but certainly not inconceivable)...it could be awkward. So, while I'm reluctant to quit the Universal Studios job, I don't really have any good reason to be reluctant to quit it. I'm going to give some more thought to the matter; I ought to decide this week before Spring Break is upon us.

Anyway, so much for part one of this entry. Part two does concern my missing work. But I have a good reason. And (unlike those who skipped out on Universal Studios during Presidents Day weekend) I gave my employers plenty of warning.

I mentioned that I'd had to take some days off of school in my last entry, but I didn't say why. Well, see, here's the thing. What with focusing first on looking for a job, and then on getting settled in with this job once I had it--not to mention the fact that I didn't have the money to pay for my active membership in the online casting sites--since October or so I've done practically nil as far as pursuing my incipient acting career. It's not that I'm no longer interested in acting; it's just that I had to place a higher priority on a job that would be sure to pay the bills. (Now that I am nearly caught up with my bills, I may start actively looking for acting jobs again--though of course I'll have to limit myself to acting jobs that either (a) are during evenings or weekends or other times I'm not working, or (b) pay really, really well.)

While I haven't been looking for new acting jobs, though, there was one project I'd been cast in last year that hadn't started filming yet. Until last month. Now, I'd already signed a contract concerning this job, so I pretty much had to go through with it. Although when I put it that way, it sounds like I didn't want to act in this project, which isn't the case--obviously I'd have much preferred it not be during a time that conflicted with my teaching job, but even setting aside the contract this was something I'd want to do; it's a project that seems to have considerable potential, and besides I have a really fun role in it. But anyway, the contract just gave me all the more reason to feel it necessary to make arrangements to fulfill my obligations to this project. (That, or to make excuses to myself as to why I had to take off time from work to do it, depending on which way you look at it.)

The project in question is a webisode series, and while I have a recurring role, it's not a terribly large one; I appear in four episodes, and most of my scenes were scheduled to be shot over three days, February 22, 24, and 25. (I say "most" only because I apparently also had at least one scene in the season finale that had yet to be scheduled, but I don't know much about that scene yet; the director has been keeping the season finale a secret as much as possible even from the actors.) February 24 being a Sunday, this meant I would have to take two days off work, February 22 and 25. Well, it turned out that wasn't much of a problem; two days off work wasn't a big deal, especially if I gave plenty of advance notice, which I did. Better yet, the director decided to shoehorn one of the mysterious season finale scenes into the 22nd as well, so I got that out of the way.

(Another thing that had seemed a potential problem, incidentally, was the filming location--Topanga Canyon Boulevard, where the buses venture not, and me without a car. I tried to arrange a ride somehow; as a last resort I even looked into how expensive it would be to get there by taxi from the closest point I could reach by bus--and then at the last moment the shoot location was moved, due to reasons involving unwieldy fire marshal requirements, to Tarzana. Problem solved.)

Then it turned out to be a bit more of a problem. That weekend, the director (I say "director", but he's also the producer and co-writer and pretty much the main guy behind the project), a computer entrepreneur who'd gotten rich developing video compression methods, was contacted by Intel with an offer to buy his company. (Or one of his companies, maybe; I'm not sure whether he has more than one, and I didn't ask.) He had to take the week off to deal with that, and so the filming for that week had to be rescheduled. Which, of course, was rather inconvenient for me, since I'd already taken Monday the 25th off from work (and by the time I found out on Sunday it was far too late to call the school and tell them I could be there after all), but there wasn't much I could do about it.

Then I found out the filming was rescheduled for March 3 and 4. The two days before the school science fair. I wasn't sure how practical it would be for me to take those days off, especially so soon after the other two days I'd taken off, but it turned out not to be as big a problem as I'd thought. So I shot the scenes, they're in the can, and that's all taken care of.

Well, mostly. Apparently I have one more scene to shoot for the season finale. But they're going to try to schedule that for during my spring break. (They have tried to work around actors' schedules--the main reason they didn't work around my work schedule is because they didn't know about it at the time; when they first asked the actors about their schedules, I didn't have that job yet.) So it shouldn't be an issue.

Except possibly with the Universal Studios job. But I'm leaning toward quitting that one anyway, and even if I don't, I can just avoid working whatever day I'm scheduled to do the shoot.

So, okay, the two parts of the post ended up tying together again in the end after all. How about that.

We Now Return to our Regularly Scheduled Programming
I do not mean, by the subject line, that I am now going to go back to posting in my LiveJournal as frequently as I have been. Not quite yet. Not until I have internet access at home again, and...well, like I said, I want to take care of my past-due bills first, and I'm almost there, but it'll probably be another week or two.

No, what the subject line refers to, rather, is that I'm back to the regular schedule at my job.

Of course, I don't think I ever mentioned here that I was off the regular schedule, but hey, that's probably mostly because I hadn't posted in a month. (And, of course, admittedly one might wonder how much of a routine regular schedule I may be accustomed to when I've only been at this job for less than three months--closer to two months if you exclude the two weeks off for the winter holidays--and in fact only been officially a full-time teacher here (as opposed to a long-term substitute) for one month, but, well, that's still long enough to get used to it, I guess.)

So why was I off the regular schedule? Well, two reasons. One, I had to take a few days off. The reasons for this, I shall not go into here; I'll save that for another entry I'd intended to post before this one, but as I didn't, I shall have to post it after, if I post it at all. I'm not sure why I'm suddenly using the word "shall" like that; I don't usually use it, and it kinda looks vaguely pretentious to me. But apparently I used it anyway. So, as I was saying, I'm not going to go into the reasons for my taking time off work, but suffice to say that, although I was a bit nervous in having to take so much time off (four days within a little more than two weeks) so soon after being hired, and especially given the timing right before the science fair, it doesn't seem to have had any negative impact on my situation here. Teachers do take time off occasionally, and just the previous week or two I'd filled in a few times myself for the assistant principal, who also teaches math here, for a few of her classes while she was out sick. So...while I had been a bit apprehensive about the consequences of having to take that time off, my fears appear to have been unfounded. Still, it did somewhat disrupt the routine.

More disruptive, however, was something else I mentioned in passing in the previous paragraph. The science fair. The school where I teach puts a lot of emphasis on the science fair, and requires all students in science classes to take part. And that means almost everything else gets put on hold, or at least put on the back burner, while preparations for the science fair are going on. I was asked not to give any exams or major homework assignments the week before the science fair, but even the week or two before that many of the students were focused enough on finishing their science fair projects that it wasn't easy to get much done. One might think that not having to focus on regular lessons might make things easier, but in fact trying to figure out what to do while the students were so distracted without detracting from their ability to complete their science fair projects and yet without leaving them to their own devices and risking complete chaos or leaving bored and idle those who had already finished their science fair projects was much harder than teaching regular classes had been.

(I was asked to be a judge at the science fair, as well...which also gave me some apprehension, since I'd never even seen a science fair before, let alone judged one. But that, too, will perhaps be the subject of a separate entry.)

But the science fair was yesterday--and the last day I had to take off was the day before--so all is now back to normal, and we're getting back to our regular schedule. Which, frankly, is something of a relief. Okay, I'm not one who enjoys getting into ruts--I've always liked variety, perhaps a bit more than may be fully healthy--but sometimes there's something to be said for a routine.

So, anyway. Back to the regular schedule, at last.

(And, aside from that, in a few weeks when my finances are finally sorted out, other things will be back to a previous state of normality as well. But more on that in...yeah, okay, I'm getting sort of repetitive.)

Onomasticon
A number of students in the classes I teach have names I would consider rather unusual. Now, the school I teach at happens to have a very high proportion of international students, but it's not them I'm talking about; many of the local students have very unconventional names. I don't know how much may be due to this being a private school, and perhaps wealthy parents being more likely to bestow odd names upon their offspring, and how much may be due to there just being overall a trend toward unique names nowadays...though there are other possibilities, too, such as the possibility that these names aren't so uncommon for this generation, or that the concentration of unusual names in these classes is just coincidence.

Actually, there must be at least some coincidence to it, because looking at things more closely it seems that one class, in particular--the seventh grade pre-algebra class--, has by far the greatest concentration of unusual names. But the concentration of such names in that class is quite striking. There are only two students in that class whose names--Sean and Nicholas--I would consider really normal. Then I suppose Lana and Reagan don't strike me as too exotic, and Jaclyn and Ethyn aren't so much unusual names as relatively normal names given unusual spellings. But then beyond those we've got Bryanna, Fergus, Illiana, Jelani, Mtume, and Ryder, none of which are names I've ever encountered before. (Well, not associated with actual people...I mean, certainly I'd heard of the name Fergus, but I'd never known any Ferguses (I'll resist the temptation to write "Fergi", although since I did write it in this parenthetical comment I guess I didn't entirely resist that temptation after all).) For bonus points, try to guess which of these names belong to males and which to females. I don't think I'd have guessed all of them correctly, at least not otherwise than by pure luck.

In fact, what the hey, just because I can, I think I'll formalize that guessing game; seriously, try and guess (the first two or three, I think, may be easy, but perhaps not so the last few--I'll give the answers in comments later):

Poll #1133009
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Bryanna

View Answers

Male
0 (0.0%)

Female
6 (100.0%)

Fergus

View Answers

Male
6 (100.0%)

Female
0 (0.0%)

Illiana

View Answers

Male
1 (16.7%)

Female
5 (83.3%)

Jelani

View Answers

Male
1 (16.7%)

Female
5 (83.3%)

Mtume

View Answers

Male
6 (100.0%)

Female
0 (0.0%)

Ryder

View Answers

Male
6 (100.0%)

Female
0 (0.0%)

I'm not trying to be critical here, and I definitely don't mean to be insulting toward my students. I rather like unusual names, and I'm certainly not saying there's anything wrong with these names. I just don't remember having encountered so many uncustomary names in one place before, and it struck me as somewhat remarkable. And I do wonder a little how representative this is of the naming trends of the coming generations...

School Days
And now, it's time for my monthly update!

No, seriously, I do plan to resume updating much more frequently...um, eventually. Lately, things have been very busy; I'm no longer in quite the financial straits I was (I'd dug myself enough of a pit I'm not entirely out of it yet, but at least now that I have a job I'm slowly making my way toward something resembling solvency), but the job has kept me occupied. First, there was the matter of trying to pick up where the previous teacher left off, with no notes or guidelines left by him as to what the class had done or was doing. Then, there were final exams, and then the preparation of the final grades. But the final grades were turned in this Tuesday, so...it's the start of a new semester now, and hopefully one that won't be quite so hectic for me.

Okay, also not helping the issue was a certain student--the Spanish exchange student I mentioned near the end of a previous entry--who wanted, well, basically as much tutoring time as I could possibly supply. He really wanted to pass his final, so he wanted to essentially review four months' worth of material in three weeks. I was spending probably an average of an hour a day with him, not counting transportation time--and really, taking the bus to his place, especially on weekends, ate up enough time that transportation time really should be counted, so it's probably several hours a day in total. Fortunately, now that finals are over, that's in the past. (Unfortunately, he ended up failing his final miserably despite the tutoring, but really, I'm not too surprised--he had no appreciable understanding of the material when the tutoring started (what had he been doing all semester?), and trying to cram that much material into that little time was really a hopeless cause.)

Oh...another, related factor in my lack of updates is the fact that I, uh, still don't have an internet connection at home. Yes, I'm getting paid now, but for now the vast majority of my income is going toward paying off past-due debts; I haven't got caught up enough yet that I really feel justified in spending the money to get my phone line and DSL reconnected, as much as I'd like to have it. Getting my delinquent credit card bills out of collections took priority. I ought to be on the internet again by early March at the latest, but I'm not sure it'll be much sooner than that (it may be much sooner, but I'm not holding my breath). Oh...if anyone's noticed that my webcomic site is down...similar reasons. I hope to get that up again soon, too, but, again, I can't really make it my top financial priority.

So, anyway, my last two entries have been about my seasonal Universal Studios job; maybe it's about time I made an entry about my real job, that is to say, my teaching job. Well, so far so good. I teach five periods (I get the two periods right after lunch off, which is kind of nice), ranging from sixth grade (my largest class, with almost thirty students) up till eleventh and twelfth grade. As I said, finals were last week, and the final grades were turned in this week, so...I'm glad that's over.

One of the hardest things to adjust to on the job has been getting up early. I have to get up no later than 6:30 to get to school on time, and even that is cutting it close; to really leave myself some leeway I've been getting up at 5:30. (More accurately, I've usually been waking at 5:30, selecting "Snooze" on my cell phone, which serves as my alarm clock, repeating a couple of times, and finally actually getting out of bed around 6:00.) Now, I'm going to try to make it to school a half hour earlier to have office hours, which means I'll have to be getting up even earlier. I mean, I've been managing it--I've never been late to school--but it has been an adjustment.

Most unpleasant moment so far: As I was correcting the finals to my third-period class, I found one where the student had very obviously copied from another student's exam. When confronted, she strenuously denied having cheated, but the evidence left no room for doubt. (The most blatant evidence of her copying: a problem where she had apparently actually misread the paper she was copying from, and mistaken a less-than-or-equal-to sign (≤) for a five, thereby producing as her answer a string of gibberish inexplicable by any other means than, well, her having tried to copy the other student's exam and having misread it.) I took her down to the dean of students and went over the matter with him and the assistant principal; the student was left in tears, and I felt bad about it, but she had clearly cheated, and I couldn't let that slide. What was eventually decided is that she would take another final (the final from the assistant principal's class; she happens to also be a math teacher), and we'd average the two grades. (She did miserably on the second final.) So...like I said, that was my most unpleasant moment so far; I didn't really like putting the student through that, even though she had cheated and brought it on herself. But overall, moments like that aside, I've been mostly enjoying the job.

You know, there was a lot more I wanted to say here, I think, but it's late, and I ought to be getting home and getting some sleep so I can get up tomorrow at 5:00. But I'll try not to let quite so much time pass between updates next time...

Work Complete
When I made my previous post about my Universal Studios job (which I am now happy to be done with, at least until the next peak season), I had the nagging feeling that there was something specific I had wanted to post about, something I was forgetting. Of course, there was, but I didn't remember exactly what until after I had posted it. I had meant to post about all the things I had done wrong. You'd think that being an amusement park ride operator would be something of a no-brainer, maybe, but I managed to make quite a few mistakes.

But to relate those mistakes would require first explaining how things are supposed to go.

The start time is the time the employee is actually supposed to clock in, at his work location (that is, in my case, at the Jurassic Park ride itself). This means he has to arrive at the park some time earlier--I've found I need at least fifteen to twenty minutes, and that's cutting it close. The worker goes to the costume department and says the number of his "locker", whereupon the costume personnel retrieve it for him--the "locker" being a hanging garment bag with a combination lock. The worker then goes into the changing room and changes into his costume, including all accouterments--for the Jurassic Park ride operators, the costume comprises a blue shirt (pink for women), khaki pants, a belt, and a red neckerchief thingie. Oh, and the nametag, of course. The worker is expected to supply his own underwear and shoes--white tennis shoes, for Jurassic Park ride operators. (This was the deciding factor between my choosing to work at the Jurassic Park ride rather than the Mummy--for the latter, I'd have needed brown tennis shoes, which I didn't have at the moment.) Once fully dressed, the worker puts his street clothes into the locker and returns it, to be retrieved after his shift is over, and then heads down to the work site. (Which in the case of the Jurassic Park ride means heading down what I have heard referred to as the world's longest escalator (actually a series of four separate escalators). Or down the stairs to the side, but that's not much better.)

So. How many ways can this process go wrong?

Well, for starters, my first day there after training--which, um, I guess would have been Christmas Eve--I realized on my way there that I had forgotten my locker combination. I searched my pockets to see if by chance I might still have the slip of paper there with the combination on it, but didn't find it. So I strove to recall it to memory, and managed to remember a few details--I remembered the last number (which was easy; it was the largest possible number appearing on the lock), and I remembered that the three numbers were in ascending order. Unfortunately, I didn't remember the first two numbers. But I did remember that they were both odd. And they both were between 11 and 19. Or...were they both even? And/or both between 1 and 9?

None of the above, it turned out, as, after checking out my locker, I tried every possible combination of numbers satisfying those criteria. Though I had, fortunately, arrived somewhat early, in anticipation of having time to grab something to eat before starting work, so I had time to try all those combinations, there was not, of course, time to head all the way back to my apartment and search for the combination there. In desperation, I searched my pockets again, hoping that just maybe that slip of paper might be there after all, and I had missed it on my first search.

It was, and I had. I'd been very close about the combination, too. Both of the first numbers were indeed odd...and they were both between 21 and 29. Urk.

(Yes, I realize I've just given away my locker combination--pretty much, anyway; I've narrowed it down to ten possibilities. But I'm sure there's nothing to worry about; even in the unlikely scenario that someone did, for some reason, want to get into my locker, I haven't said my locker number. And besides, there's nothing there worth getting into anyway.)

So, I got to work on time, though I made one mistake there. At the loading area, when a "guest" motioned that he wanted to ask something, I stepped forward to talk to him. Unfortunately, the boats had already been readied to go, and while I had tried to motion to my coworker at the panel to stop them, I hadn't used the correct signal, and, well, they were still readied, and started moving as I was there. Which is considered something of a safety violation. Not enough of one to get me fired, or anything, but still...

Anyway. Day two, the day after Christmas. I had just returned from my parents' house, and was running late. Especially since I had wasted a little time, on stopping by my apartment, trying to get my computer--which had shut down in my absence, and refused to turn back on--working. (It later turned out the problem wasn't with the computer, but with an apparently (and annoyingly) defective power strip. But that's beside the point.) Still, though I was cutting it close, I might have made it on time...except for one thing.

Those white shoes? Yeah. I forgot to change into them. I got there still wearing my sandals. Oops.

Eventually, the problem was more or less solved by the costume department loaning me some sort of black rubber shoe covers I could place over my sandals--they weren't white, but they were at least, well, not sandals, and as it turned out they were good enough for the moment. (Though they did rub the backs of my ankles raw. I've still got scabs there.) So anyway, I got changed as quickly as I could, and made it down to the ride area only a few minutes late...

Only to realize I'd forgotten my nametag.

But anyway, apparently wearing big rubber shoe covers and not having a nametag was good enough for one day, and I still worked normally that day. There was another slight glitch--a row with six guests in it, while only five were supposed to be allowed. But that (as I was told later) hadn't technically been my responsibility, since that was one of the rows that the person on assistant load was supposed to be checking. What was my responsibility--I was at the control panel this time--was the fact that I had unnecessarily hit the Station Stop button to stop the boats to get the extra person off, when all I'd really needed to do was push the green button that readied the boats to unready it again. (There's another verb that applies instead of "ready" here, actually...but I can't remember it at the moment. Oh, wait, "enable", I think that's the word they use.) But that, I was assured, wasn't a big deal; it's not like I'd really hurt anything by that, and the important thing was getting the boat stopped and getting the extra guest off, even if the way I'd stopped the boat made things a little more complicated than they'd needed to be.

Anyway. No real mistakes worth mentioning later on (except maybe the one time when I was at "preload" (sending guests to their rows) when the workers at load were calling out "10-3" to me and I didn't remember what that code meant ("small child"; they were trying to signal me to measure a child to make sure she was tall enough for the ride)). I will, however, mention one more thing:

Most Unexpected Occupational Hazard: Seriously Chapped Lips.

No, really. They're pretty much recovered now, but my lips were about as chapped after a few days of work there as I remember them ever being before. And I have no idea why. Huh.

Job's Done
Happy new year, everyone! But that's not what this entry is about.

My posting has continued to be infrequent because, well, I continue not to have internet access at home, and coming all the way to campus just to use the internet is kind of a pain. Within a week or two I should be connected again, though, and my posts will be more frequent again. That is also not what this entry is about.

I came up with a new idea for a business of sorts, or rather I thought of a slightly different approach to an old idea. It is an idea for a business centered around a commodity--for lack of a better word--that I don't think anyone has ever centered a business around before. Certainly many businesses have developed this commodity as a part of other projects, and in fact that is what I had originally intended to do, until the idea occurred to me to separate out this commodity and try to make a company just for it. Of course, this is one of my long-term plans. Actually, that's not entirely true; I have much longer-term plans. This is one of my medium-term plans, I guess. The point is, it's not going to be happening for some years yet.

And, of course, it's not what this entry is about either.

What this entry was primarily intended to be about is my Universal Studios job. As I mentioned before, though I got a (much better) teaching job, I figured I may as well still work at Universal over the holidays, since I wasn't teaching then and since I'd already gone through the training. So I did. And that is what this entry is about.

Anyway, my work there is now over (at least until the next holiday); today was my last day of work this week, and next week school starts. So I guess it's as good a time as any to look back on how it's been.

Which is...well, not too bad, I suppose, though I'm glad I don't have to rely on it for a full-time job (for reasons aside from the low pay). I mean, sure, there are parts of it that are sort of fun, I guess, and I do kind of like being able to go "behind the scenes". (And actually, having such experience with working at a theme park might actually be beneficial to one of my plans. But then again, I have so very many plans that it's almost inevitable that anything has to be able to work in with at least one of them.) But, yeah, it gets old pretty fast.

Not that I've been showing that, or at least I've been trying not to, and apparently I've been having some success, because one "guest" (i.e. person who went on the ride) asked me at one point how I managed to stay so enthusiastic. I just lamely responded that I was new there (which admittedly was something of a non sequitur), though in retrospect what I probably should have said was something more like "My apparent enthusiasm is actually a carefully constructed veneer over a hidden core of seething hatred." Of course, had I really said that, I would have quickly added that I was joking. Which, of course, I would have been. Hatred is a very different thing from frustrated self-loathing born of the inescapable feeling that I should be doing other things that would make better use of my skills and talents, and that my very presence there is a mark of dismal failure. But the latter takes too long to say and isn't as funny.

But anyway, my failure to come up with a snappy reply in that instance doesn't mean I've always been at a loss for words. I've tried to keep things as entertaining as possible both for the "guests" and for myself by tossing off the occasional humorous line. One such line I had thought of before I actually started work: "Welcome to Jurassic Park. Where the past comes alive. And tries to eat you." As it turns out, however, this is a line I've never really had an opportunity to say, as when we're welcoming people it's generally just as they're walking by, and there isn't time for that full bit. I have come up with a few different lines to rotate through when I'm at the unload station (and have a bit more of a captive audience), and a couple on load, but I won't bother repeating them here. And I've gotten in the occasional spontaneous bit of wit, or at least what might pass for wit in dim light and with its back turned. For example, here are three quips from last Friday:

"And if you look to your left, you'll see the rare furniture-moving scene. This is a real treat; you don't get to see this often. I haven't seen the furniture-moving scene before in all the time I've been here. Which is about a week."

"Well, it looks like someone in the front row gets a free poncho. Oh! And the fourth row gets a free spoon! We're just giving away the prizes today!"

GUEST: "What happened to the Back to the Future ride?"
ME: "It's now in the past."

(Yes, in that third instance I did go on to give a more complete and informative answer.)

Okay, I know, these lines aren't very funny, and are kind of corny. But sometimes at the theme parks corny seems to go over well. I've actually gotten some people laughing out loud at some of my lines--which honestly I find kind of surprising, because frankly, I don't think I'd laugh at them.

But really, that's the high point of working at an amusement park. Your job is to help people have fun, and when it's clear that the people are having fun, well, it feels good; when people laugh at your jokes, wave back to you as you wave good-bye as their ride vehicle starts off, even give you a high five. You know you've helped make their day a little better, and really, that is a good feeling.

Which still isn't to say this is something I'd want as a full-time job. Even six hours a day really started seriously dragging. So I'm glad it's over, and I'm looking forward to having the next few days off to catch up on some things, and then to the start of school after that. (Well, I'm not exactly looking forward to the start of school; sure, in a way I'd rather have more days off. But I'd rather be teaching math than working at Universal Studios.) Sure, the job has its good points, but...it's best in small quantities.

A side note: I have had much more occasion to speak Spanish on the Universal Studios job than I had in a long time. And I discovered my Spanish is even rustier than I thought. Oh, I can communicate, but with a lot of stumbling over words; at one point when a Spanish-speaking "guest" asked what kind of ride it was, I couldn't remember the word for boat. ("It's, uh...I forget the word...a vehicle that goes on water..." "A train?" "Uh...no.") It also didn't help that I didn't know the Spanish word for "ride". (Turns out it's "juego"--the same word as "game". Huh. Then again, I guess if you think about it, that's really not necessarily any stranger than "ride".) And some words are just different in the Spanish here from the Spanish in Spain--for instance, in Spain a line (as in the kind of line you wait in, what in England I think they'd call a queue) is a "cola"--at least that's the word I learned--but apparently here it's "fila". But it's not just the occasional forgotten or wrong word; I was stumbling over the grammar much more than I should have, accidentally using the informal form of "you" (which is very common in Spain but, from what I understand, not so widely used in Latin America except among friends and family) or not using the subjunctive or what have you. Bleh. Like I said, my Spanish is apparently a little rusty. (Well, not that I'd necessary say I ever was really completely fluent.)

On the plus side, though, a Spanish exchange student I'm tutoring says my accent when I speak Spanish is very good. So...there's that, I suppose.

But anyway. That's not what this entry is about.

Perquisites
Okay, now that I have a job and I'm no longer spending so much time job-hunting and such, I really don't have a good excuse for not updating more often. Well, I guess I sort of do, in that the job itself has been taking time to adjust to on my first couple of weeks. Still, I'll try to get in the habit of updating more often again now that I once have a regular source of income and don't have to worry so much about where my rent is going to come from. (Okay, granted, the fact that I don't have an internet connection at home at the moment is also contributing to the infrequency of updates; that should be fixed by mid-January at the latest.)

Speaking of jobs, I've mentioned before that the Universal Studios job, even worked just part time over the holidays, carries with it some nice perks. Among them is the discounts I get on not only various amusement park tickets (which I'm not likely to be taking advantage of) but also MTA passes (which I am). But also, all employees--even new hires like myself--get a special gift for the holidays. In addition to a pass that lets the employee take three people into the park free (but which, unfortunately, is only good till December 31; still, I'm using that as my Christmas gift for my sister and her family), the gift includes a whole turkey and a big pumpkin pie. Both of which are still sitting in my freezer, because I don't have a working oven, and don't want to thaw the pumpkin pie just to cut out a slice for myself and refreeze it--I'm certainly not going to eat the whole thing myself in one day. I was going to bring them to my parents' house for Christmas, but my mother said her own freezer was full of Christmas stuff. So maybe for New Year's, or something. (Also, at the place where the employees went to pick up their Christmas benefits, there was free hot chocolate and cider and cookies, brownies, or miniature apple pies (depending on the day)...)

But the food-related perks don't stop with the Universal Studios job. Apparently one of the benefits of teaching, at least at a private school, is lots of gifts from the students and their parents. Most of which consist of food, or at least of candy. (By the way, though it's tangential to the current post, I've since gathered that the story Mr. S had told me about the science teacher position I'd originally applied for becoming no longer available because the previous science teacher had been leaving for health reasons but had decided he was feeling well enough to stick around after all was apparently a half-truth. The prior science teacher wasn't leaving due to health reasons; while he did have some health issues that contributed to his having trouble handling stress, the proximate reason he was leaving because he found it too frustrating to deal with the kids. And while he was sort of sticking around, he was doing so as a sort of an on-call permanent sub; the school still hired a replacement for him. Perhaps I didn't get the job because of Mr. D's misgivings, and Mr. S concocted the other story to spare my feelings; anyway, it's pretty much a moot point now, I suppose.)

So...my (figurative) larder is well stocked at the moment. Added together with the big plate of leftovers I got from the CAG holiday party, and, um, I'm sure there's something else I'm forgetting...anyway. Whatever else the holidays may have brought, they've certainly given me plenty to eat...

Creepy Sight of the Day
Seen on the bus:

A small girl, perhaps two or three years old, staring at me intently, her chubby lips dripping with what looked like blood.

Okay, I know it almost certainly wasn't blood (maybe tomato sauce from something she'd just eaten?), but still...

Ditrochee
Yeah, yeah, I haven't posted for a while, once again. See...remember when I said that "come December, I ought to be fine"? That...that, it turns out, was predicated on a few false assumptions. I thought the worst was over. I thought it would be smooth sailing from there. But it turns out the reason I thought that was that I thought a few other things that turned out not to be true. For one thing, I thought I'd have a graveyard shift security job almost immediately that would be bringing in some money. Nope. The company I got the guard card through had led me to believe that once I got a guard card I'd be immediately assigned a post; turns out that, to the contrary, all that happens is they can tell me places they are hiring that I can go interview at. And there aren't many places they have in their records. And they run their office so inefficiently that going in there to ask about anything involves a couple hours of waiting around. So...anyway, no security guard job. Also, there was a loan that I'd thought I'd be getting (not that I wanted to get into any more debt than I was already in, but I had enough overdue debts I figured I kind of needed this one, with more generous terms, to start paying them off) that I ended up not getting after all. Oh, yeah, and that after-school teaching job didn't happen anyway, though that one I hadn't really been counting on.

So, December, I wasn't fine. After a brief period of misguided relative stress-free-ness, once I realized that all that had fallen through the stress went through the roof again. The landlord was demanding payment and threatening eviction, and I didn't have money. Things were looking grim. (Why didn't I post about this here? Well...partly because I didn't want it to look like I was asking for money again; I still feel kind of embarrassed about doing that once. And partly because my mother reads this, and I didn't want to worry her again. But things were bad. If I didn't have the money by December 10, the landlord was going to evict me. I managed, though it wasn't easy, to talk him into extending the deadline to the 13th, but that was as far as it seemed he would be willing to yield. And I didn't have any apparent means of getting the money.

Then, Monday night...

I'm still doing those tutoring jobs...the one in Pasadena, and the one I got through Mr. S, the science department chair at that private school where I'd interviewed for the science teacher job (which fell through because the teacher for whom they were looking for a replacement decided not to leave after all). Regarding the latter job, I had arranged with the student to meet Monday evening at Mr. S's house (the meeting time was late enough Mr. S wasn't going to be at the school). I was running late, but that turned out not to matter, because the student--who, in lieu of calling "the student", I might as well refer to by his name, which is Cameron--wasn't there. Nor was Mr. S, who was still at the school after all. In fact, as it developed when his wife called him, Mr. S didn't even know about the plans for the meeting--Cameron had said he'd call him and set it up, but apparently he had never actually done so. (Though it's not particularly relevant to this story, it later transpired that Cameron had had a choir rehearsal that night and had forgotten about the meeting.)

However, Mr. S wanted to talk to me, and said to go to his garage office where he'd call me on his other line. So I did, and was told that a math teacher had just unexpectedly quit at the private school. Did I want the job?

It wasn't immediately a sure thing. Mr. S still had to clear it with the head of the school, Mr. D. But, as it turned out, the head of the school agreed, and I went there Tuesday morning to get the paperwork filled out, and started work on Wednesday.

So far, so good. In fact, things seem to be going quite well. Mr. S said Mr. D had had some reservations, since he thought (from when we had met before during my interview for the science teacher) that I might be somewhat antisocial. (Which I suppose explains, incidentally, why Mr. S had kept having more people to interview for the science teacher position back then, despite the fact that I was pretty sure I'd made a very good impression on him. I gather I hadn't made such a good impression on Mr. D, and while Mr. S may have wanted me for the job, Mr. D was insisting he interview more people first. Anyway, Mr. S assures me that any antisocial impression Mr. D may have gotten of me would have been simply due to the fact that he, as Mr. S puts it, puts "far too much value on bulls***".) Mr. S had talked Mr. D into hiring me despite his reservations, and he told me today he had talked to many of my students, and was extremely pleased with the way things were going; I was proving Mr. S right and Mr. D wrong.

Though I do have a bit of an advantage in that the previous teacher was, um, not very popular, so in comparison to him I almost can't help but look good. He definitely knew the material, but his teaching methods and his interpersonal skills left something to be desired. (Which may explain why Mr. D would be so sensitive to any perception of antisocialness; he may have wanted to be sure to avoid a repeat.) At least, that's what Mr. S told me--he said the school wasn't planning on firing the teacher, but that on the other hand perhaps it was for the best that he resigned--but the students' reactions seem to bear that out. Not one student seemed at all upset to hear that the other teacher had left, and a few of them even cheered (albeit quietly). And today, I was amused to hear one of the students in my sixth-grade class say that the previous teacher "had problems", and another that he "didn't like children". (Okay, maybe the amusing part wasn't so much what they said, but how they said it; I guess you kind of had to be there.)

Then again, there's also a bit of a disadvantage, in that I'm trying to pick things up without any notes of what was going on. My predecessor's resignation was very sudden; I gather he just told them on Monday he was quitting, without having given any prior notice, and that was that. (Mr. S theorizes that he left because he was tired of getting so many complaints.) So in many ways it hasn't exactly been a smooth transition. Still, it seems to be going very well so far. Anyway, more on this later; this post is getting long enough as it is, and I only have another five or ten minutes before the students start arriving for the next period (I'm writing this post from the school during a period when I don't have a class).

Now, this didn't immediately solve my financial problems, and in particular the immediate need for rent money--I wasn't going to be paid before Thursday. But since I knew I was going to get fairly decent pay from here on out, I was a little more emboldened to ask some friends for loans, and managed to get enough together to cover the rent money. So the landlord has been paid, and I'm safe until January. And with the money I'll get from the teaching job, plus the tutoring, and Universal Studios (the friends who've loaned me the money have assured me I don't need to pay them back right away, and that they can wait a few months), I'll be fine then, too.

Oh, yeah, the Universal Studios thing. The phone call about the teaching job came right in the middle of the traning period for that. By then I figured since I'd gone through most of the training, I might as well finish it; the Universal Studios job would have some nice perks, after all, and the days they most needed people to work were the very days I'd have off from my teaching job, so if I finished the training I could probably stay on their roster as a seasonal employee and still get those perks and all. There was some time conflict, but I got things worked out and got the okay to come late to the last day of training, so it all turned out okay there too.

I'm not saying that my financial troubles are completely over, of course. Unless I have a big success with one of my creative projects (which could happen, but I can't count on it), it'll be a few months before I'm really financially comfortable, and probably years before I have my credit card debts completely paid off. (And to those here who sent me money via PayPal...I do still definitely plan to pay you back, with interest, but it looks like it's not going to be in mid-December; I hope it's not too much to ask you to wait till January for repayment.) Still...I'm no longer in danger of eviction; I'll finally have a decent regular income; and I even have a little money left over to, you know, eat, and stuff. So, even though things are still going to be financially tight for a long while yet, compared to my situation for most of the last few months I'm doing very well indeed now. Things are finally turning around.

500 bonus points for anyone who can explain the subject of the post.

Orientation
Thanks to those who posted advice in response to my last entry. It came a bit too late--I didn't actually get a chance to get back online and read the responses till after I'd made my decision--but that's my fault for having posted so close to the day of the orientation. Still, I do appreciate your weighing in and offering your advice.

I'm afraid, though, that maybe I was unclear in presenting the nature of my dilemma. It's certainly not that I had any fears of blacklisting, or that I thought my backing out might seriously hurt the company. It's a matter of principle--whether or not it would have negative repercussions for me down the line, I just wasn't really comfortable with not following through with a commitment I made. And trying to rationalize that Universal Studios is a big company that won't be damaged by my actions (or inactions) doesn't really help. Sure, the company would continue, but still someone would have to fill that position--either staffing services would have to find a new hire at the last minute, or the existing staff would have to be stretched thinner to fill in the gap. And yeah, maybe one person wouldn't make a significant difference, but if a lot of people skip out at the last minute...well, that could be causing someone serious problems. Not Universal Studios as a whole, of course, which will get through, but the people who have to find a way to work around the short-staffèdness. Universal Studios may be a big company, but there are actual people working at that company who could be potentially inconvenienced. Anyway, what it comes down to is that it just didn't sit right with my conscience to go back on a commitment, whether or not it was really going to hurt either me or Universal Studios.

I talked to my parents Thursday night, though, and my father brought up an option that--well, was obvious in retrospect, though for some reason it hadn't occurred to me. Rather than backing out entirely, he suggested, I could explain the situation to Universal Studios Staffing Service, tell them I had some scheduling issues, and ask if they still wanted to hire me if my schedule could be worked around. This seemed to be a reasonable compromise, and is what I ended up doing. Or rather, what I would have done had I been able to find any e-mail address listed anywhere for Universal Studios Staffing Service, either on the webpage or the conditional hire paperwork I'd been given. I could have called them on Friday--but by then it would be the day before the orientation anyway, and it seemed kind of pointless that late; at that point, I might as well just go to the orientation and iron out the scheduling issues there.

(And, okay, to tell the complete truth, I had another motivation for wanting to get out of the orientation that I didn't mention. Wednesday night, I'd received a phone call offering me a part in a film I'd auditioned for back in October--but which would be shooting this weekend. Obviously, this conflicted with the Universal Studios orientation on Saturday. Now, admittedly, this shouldn't have been a big deal to me, since it was a student film, and it wasn't paying, and, as I said before, I'm at the point I don't really need more footage for my reel if I can get copies of the footage of things I've already been in. But it seemed like an unusually elaborate student film, and one that could be fun, and I didn't want to pass it up if I could avoid it. Unfortunately, though, as much as I wanted to be in that film, I couldn't really bring myself to back out of the Universal Studios new hire orientation, so I called the filmmakers back on Thursday night and regretfully told them I couldn't make it. Again, this shouldn't have been as much of an issue for me as it was--I shouldn't care that much about a part in a student production, certainly not enough to contribute to my wanting to pass up a real (albeit low-paying) job. (Though that wasn't the only reason; the other reasons I gave in my previous message were true.) Well, anyway, I did end up making what I think was the right choice...but missing out on that student film bothered me a lot more than it should have.)

So how was it? Well...not bad, actually. While it doesn't pay well and it certainly isn't something I plan on staying with in the long term, it seems it may be an okay holiday job after all. And it turns out the perks that had been alluded to before really are kind of nice...the fact that I'll get at least 45% discounts at all Universal-owned retail stores during the month of December (and a 70% discount at the Studio Warehouse!), for example, means I know where I'll be trying to do at least some of my Christmas shopping. And even the schedule may not be as much of an issue as I feared. First of all, the schedule will be set during training (next week), and I'll be able to specify times I can't work, so I can avoid conflicts. (And if they're disappointed that I have less time available than I said on my application, well, plans change, and I hope they'll understand--though I really don't think that'll be an issue.) And, of course, their busiest time is around and between Christmas and New Year's Day--when I won't be doing any tutoring and when my schedule will be wide open, which means they'll probably be more forgiving of conflicts at other times. In fact, it looks like this may be a job that might be worth keeping for some time after all, in a way, since I can keep it without actually working most of the time--they don't need as many people in the off season, and seasonal employees can stay on the roster and just be called back in during peak times, like now and Spring Break. Since these are times I'm not likely to be doing anything else anyway...eh, what the hey. (Oh, yeah, and as for the conflict with the security guard job: well, that hasn't started yet after all (and the particular position I was anticipating may not materialize at all, though there are other openings I can apply for), but even if I do end up working till 7 a.m. on the days I have training starting at 7:30...well, again, if I understand my situation, I'd imagine the training staff will understand.)

For what it's worth, even though I did end up going, there were a lot of no-shows, apparently: one of the staff members conducting the orientation mentioned near the beginning, seemingly with some dismay, that they'd expected a full room. The room was only about half full, which means a lot of people were missing. And no, I gather this rate of no-shows is not the norm, since, well, if it were, they would have been expecting it, and they wouldn't have expected a full room in the first place. So...hm. Not sure what happened there. Oh well.

Most of the orientation was, well, about what you'd probably expect: being given a folder full of papers and sitting in a room watching videos and listening to people talk. In the middle, though, was lunch, preceded by an hour we were given to wander the park and find the answers to a "scavenger hunt" list of questions (half of which, however, could be answered just by looking at the park map--though others were more difficult). We were also told that if we wanted to go on any the attractions during that time, we could, as long as we were back in time. I decided to go through a new attraction, the House of Horrors. I'm...not really into horror, and not a big fan of "haunted house" attractions, so why did I choose this one? Well, I guess mostly because it was the one that I figured I could get through the quickest and be sure to have time to get back to the meeting place on schedule. Now, I do startle somewhat easily, and I had some trepidation that the scares in the House of Horrors would be mostly of the "someone in a costume jumps out and startles you" variety. Which indeed they were. So I guess I was scared, in that I didn't really want to be startled and was (rightly) afraid that something was going to pop out and startle me. Different people have different defenses against fear, I suppose, and apparently mine is to try to hide my fear by acting as cheerful as possible. I'm not sure why, because it's not something I really do consciously--maybe my subconscious thinks if it makes me act happy enough, it can convince me I'm not really afraid? But anyway, I went through the House of Horrors greeting all the springing spooks with a cheery hello. I'm not exactly sure, because most of them had full face masks on, but I got the impression most of them found this response somewhat disconcerting, although this wasn't my intent. There were nevertheless a couple of times, though, that I was startled badly enough to cry out. Still, these were followed by chipper responses. I told the Wolfman, "Okay, you managed to startle me there. Well done," and gave him a thumbs-up. (After a bend in the path, though, he tried to lunge out at me again and was less successful in scaring me that time.) And when a bang in Frankenstein's laboratory elicited an "Aah!", I followed it with an upbeat "That was loud!", and then turned and amiably greeted the hunchbacked perpetrator. Overall, I guess the House of Horrors was, well, good if you like people jumping out at you and startling you. Which I admit I don't, particularly, although I still thought it had its good setpieces, including a nicely confusing Psycho mirror maze (where, inevitably, Norman Bates jumps out and startles you, though it's fairly obvious when it's about to happen), and the elaborate aforementioned Frankenstein's laboratory, which you pass through twice--once from above, on a catwalk, and the second time down below (where Igor and the Monster can, of course, jump out at you).

The orientation was scheduled to end at 5:30, but got done about an hour early, and we were told that we were still officially on the clock and would get paid for the full time regardless and could leave now if we wanted to, but that we were also free to go back into the park and go through more attractions. I considered going home--I had the Xecution tonight (incidentally, it's now down to eight, and I'm still in), and had planned to go straight there from the orientation, but a brief stop at home in between might be nice--but decided while I was there I may as well take advantage of it and see the rides, especially the one I'd actually be working at. (I'd been to Universal Studios once before (that I remember; I think my parents may have taken me there when I was a child, but if so my memories of that are so hazy that I'm not even altogether sure it happened), but on that visit I think the only attraction I managed to make was Backdraft...) So I went on Jurassic Park and Revenge of the Mummy. Both of which were...a little disappointing. Oh, they had some good moments, and they were fun enough while they lasted, but they both seemed kind of short. But maybe that was just my mistaken impression. Well, okay, there was one thing that bothered me a little--in one of the stegosaurs in the Jurassic Park ride, there were places where the metal mechanisms were clearly visible through gaps in the skin. Anyway, I don't know; maybe I'm judging Universal's rides a bit too harshly because I've been spoiled by having been to Disneyland so many times. Still, I think ride-wise, Universal Studios could do much better than it's currently doing...not that that's really any of my business.

Ah, yes, one ominous quote from the orientation I wanted to mention: "Universal Studios merged with NBC, and both NBC and Universal are owned by General Electric, which is the biggest company in the world. So now you work for General Electric." Why is this ominous? Well, because as anyone who has seen any near-future science-fiction movies knows, the biggest company in the world is always plotting world domination and, in its attempts to extend its dominion, will inevitably accidentally release some apocalyptic horror upon the Earth. And while it's possible that one rogue employee may be instrumental in restoring some semblance of order and safety (at least until the sequel), most of the employees of the biggest company in the world will be among the first ones destroyed by the horrors it unleashes. So...that's something to look forward to.

Seriously, though, all in all, I'm glad I did end up going. And hey, whatever else comes of it, at least I earned about fifty dollars today just by going to the orientation. So...there's that.

Job Prob
Wow...it's been a week since my last post? Sure doesn't seem like it. Time flies when you're, um, broke and trying desperately to fight off the wailing specters of complete destitution.

(Okay, slight exaggeration there; I did say before that the worst was over. Which...turns out, maybe, not to have been entirely true--things got much worse this last week than I expected, and there were some times I was worried--but seriously, come December, I ought to be fine--still strained, but fine. Just a few more days to struggle through first...)

Anyway, I mentioned--or, at least, kind of implied--in a post last week that I was sort of overcommitted, jobwise, for December. And...yeah, this is something I'm going to have to figure out how to deal with. See, the thing is, like I said, after that job with the private school that I'd sort of been counting on fell through, I wanted to make sure I didn't repeat that mistake, so even after it seemed a sure thing that I had a job, I kept applying for more, just in case. Which turns out to also have been a mistake, in the other direction. Because now I have too many jobs.

One too many, at least, that one being the Universal Studios job--which is to say, that's the one that I wish I had a graceful way out of. Sure, part of me thinks it could be fun to work at Universal Studios, and another (albeit perhaps overlapping) part of me is curious just what the "perks" are that the hiring materials vaguely refer to. But...well, for one thing, it's going to interfere with not only my tutoring job, but an extra part-time teaching job or two that Mr. S is offering me. (Which is fewer hours, but enough more money per hour to nearly make up for it--to more than make up for it if you include the tutoring jobs.) And, for that matter, it looks likely to have a bit of a conflict with the security night job, too. Not that I know my final schedule yet, and not that the two jobs are going to be actually at the same time, but, well...some of the training days for the Universal Studios job start at 7:30, and those are days that the security job runs from 11 to 7. How exactly I could get from downtown to Universal Studios in half an hour...well, without a car, it would be pretty much impossible, and even with a car it would be very iffy. And it's not like the Universal Studios job pays well; in fact, I got a call from the temp agency I'm registered with a few days ago offering me a two-month 9-5 position that pays seventy-five cents an hour better; I had to turn it down because of the Universal Studios job. Well, okay, honestly, with the security job, I probably would have had to turn it down anyway--two full-time jobs would be way too much to handle--but still, with the Universal Studios job, I don't even have that option...and there are certainly possible better jobs out there.

So, as much as a part of me was kind of looking forward to it, overall I'm now really regretting that Universal Studios job. The problem is, at this point, I'm not sure what I can do about it. The new hire orientation is this Saturday, so it's a bit late now for them to find someone else to fill the position. I don't want to--well, what I kind of want to say is that I don't want to burn any bridges, but that's not strictly accurate. That implies I'm concerned with my prospects for employment there in the future, which I'm not; it's not like giving up the possibility of getting a minimum wage job as a ride operator is really something worth losing sleep over. It's more that, well, I don't want to leave them in the lurch; it just seems inconsiderate to back out of the job and leave them holding the bag.

On the other hand, it's not like it's necessarily much better to ignore the problem and try to work both jobs, if it means not doing a good job at them--showing up late to Universal Studios because I couldn't get there from the guard job in time, for instance. So maybe it would be better not just for me but also for them to let them know as soon as possible that I, um, kind of made a mess of things and that maybe it would be better for them to find someone else for the position.

Hm. The matter came up in conversation (separately) with two people--my uncle and Tim, the friend I mentioned in a previous post--and they gave conflicting advice. My uncle said I was being too nice and that I should just tell them I have another job and that I'm unavailable; it wouldn't be much of an inconvenience toward Universal Studios, and even if it was, well, they wouldn't show me the same consideration. Tim said it would be a good job to stick through, because he knew people in similar jobs who rose up in the ranks to much better-paying positions. Now, my uncle, having worked for both Knott's Berry Farm and Disney (not at the same time) and having had some unpleasant trials at both places is perhaps jaded enough about amusement parks to have his perception somewhat colored by his own experiences. On the other hand, Tim, an entertainer by profession, seemed to be thinking of working at Universal Studios as a career move, rather than the temporary part-time job that was all I ever intended it to be; prospects of future advancement in the ranks aren't particularly enticing to me, especially since his ideas of those prospects seem rather optimistic compared to what was said at the interview. (Better positions are available after six months of working there...I definitely don't plan to be working at Universal Studios for six months.) So...I don't know.

I'm leaning toward sending a polite e-mail (if I can find an e-mail address for their Staffing Services department) diplomatically explaining the situation, or as much of it as absolutely needs to be explained, and apologetically suggesting that maybe it would be best if they found someone else for the position. I don't like it, but I like the alternatives even less.

Still, if anyone has a better suggestion, I'm open to hear it. Like I said, the new hire orientation is this Saturday, so if I am going to try to do something about this, it should probably be as soon as possible...

Extemporizing
Well, I said I'd make three posts today, so here's the third. I've posted about my search for other jobs, since I wasn't making nearly enough acting to get by; now for a post about what's going on with the acting lately.

Which, under the circumstances, isn't much. (So this'll be a shorter post than the last one.) The job search hasn't left me time to pursue it as assiduously as I had been, and within the last couple of weeks my accounts at some of the online casting sites have lapsed due to lack of payment anyway. (They're fairly cheap--only about ten dollars a month--but that's ten dollars I don't have to spare right now.)

Still, that's not to say there's been nothing going on there. For one thing, there's still the improv.

Yes, I'm still in the running in the Xecution. The numbers have been winnowed down--both by people "executed", and by people dropping out--enough that the two groups that had been going on separate nights have been combined to one--so I'm doing the Xecution on Saturday nights instead of Fridays now. (It's not going on this Saturday, though, because of Thanksgiving.) Last Saturday--well, last Saturday, I think I did the best I've ever done. Part of that was due to a bit of a lucky break, though...circumstances ended up playing right into my hands. See, there are various "improv games" that the contestants are asked to undertake--the same kinds of improv games that are done by regular improv groups. There are a handful of improv games we've usually done before, like "Oscar-Winning Moment", when two people start an improv scene and at some point in the scene each of them is called on to deliver his Oscar-winning moment, whereupon he steps forward and delivers an over-the-top monologue; and "Silent Tension", where the participants start out not speaking, but moving and acting and somehow setting the mood for when they do finally break the silence and start speaking. This last time, though, the judges (the "parole board", as they're referred to in the Xecution) chose improv games for the participants to do, and many of them--most of them, actually--were games I'd never done before (and neither had most of the others). Each contestant ended up doing two different scenes, with two different partners. The first improv game I was called upon to play was "ABC", in which each line of dialogue began with the next successive letter of the alphabet (and yes, that means at some point someone gets stuck with X--in this case, it was my partner, who, after something of a delay, came up with "X-ray yourself!"). That one went...okay, I guess, but it was the next one where I really shone.

That game was "Tony-Award Winning Moment". It was like "Oscar-Winning Moment", but instead of a monologue the participant steps forward when called upon and delivers a song, as if he was in a musical.

I'd never played this improv game before--but, heck, I have written songs. And, well, from the reactions I got afterward, I really nailed this one. One of the judges commented that if I had that level of confidence in my other improv performances, I'd definitely be one of the front runners.

Which got me to thinking a bit afterward, though, why had I been so much more confident with that? I mean, sure, I'd written songs before, but I'd written plays before too, and it's not like I had a lot of experience making up songs as I went along. Maybe I'm just more confident in my singing and songwriting abilities than in my acting and things-besides-song-writing abilities? I dunno. But it's something to keep in mind, I guess; if I act with more confidence, I'll do much better in improv in the future. I think I may actually have a chance of winning the Xecution. We'll see, though; there are still eight or nine other contestants left, so there's a way to go still.

The improv group has had one other unexpected side effect, too. Apparently a casting director for a national commercial decided to cast people from Ultimate Improv, and contacted the head of the group, J.D. Walsh. J.D. contacted the rest of the group to tell them about the audition--but also asked them to contact people who had recently taken improv classes there and invite them too. Which is how I ended up going to my first audition for a nationwide commercial. (Yeah, I've been in two commercials--the eBay one and the VISTA bus system one--but one of those is for internet distribution (supposedly, though as far as I know it has yet to actually be officially shown) and the other is a local commercial for Ventura County. An actual nationwide commercial...well, that's another matter altogether, and--significantly, for my current situation--nationwide commercials pay really well.

Of course, getting an audition and actually getting the part are two very different matters. Still, I'd never even had an audition for a nationwide commercial before. The audition took place at the Ultimate Improv theater; most of the people there were from the regular improv group, though I did see a few other "trainees". The casting director had people audition in groups of two or three, so I ended up auditioning with two of the regular improv players (Darren Lanning^* and Justin Abarca).

^*Incidentally, for whatever it's worth, Darren looks much better in person than in than photo on his MySpace page. In fact, that photo looks so unlike him that I wasn't even sure it was the same Darren Lanning until I checked out the comments and the friends and found the references to Ultimate Improv.

I had been unsure at first whether or not I ought to go to the audition at all. The message from J.D. had said the casting director was looking for guys between 18 and 25...which, of course, I'm, um, not. Though Ashley, who had taught the improv class I'd been in, had said she thought I looked 25, I wasn't sure just how true that was. Ashley was the one who had forwarded J.D.'s message to me, so I e-mailed her back and asked her, and she reiterated that she thought I looked 25, and urged me to go--"An audition is an audition, and having one is better than not having one." Apparently she was right, because on Monday I received a phone call saying that I got a callback for the next day. This involved some shuffling around of my tutoring schedule, but hey, a callback for a nationwide commercial...that was something I didn't want to miss. So, I got there to the casting office in Santa Monica, and after some initial confusion I was there waiting. Waiting rather a long time, actually; they were slow...

This was an unusual auditioning experience, in that usually one is not auditioning with people one knows. In this case, however, there were a number of people from Ultimate Improv there chatting. Oh, not everyone from the initial audition made it to the callbacks, of course; neither Darren nor Justin was there, for instance. In fact, aside from me, I think there were only four other guys from Ultimate Improv--two from the regular group, and two other "trainees" (one of whom was, like me, in the Xecution). There were also a number of women from Ultimate Improv--three from the regular improv group (including Ashley, who was wearing the same blue polka-dot outfit as in the photo on her IMDB page) and one "trainee", I think, though there could be one or two I'm forgetting. (There were also a number of people not from Ultimate Improv; while the casting director had specifically wanted to audition actors from there, clearly she had been auditioning actors from other sources as well.) Anyway, the atmosphere was very friendly; even though I guess technically we were there as competitors for the same parts (well, that is, the guys competing with each other and the girls competing with each other; obviously the guys were there for different parts from the girls), we were all just talking and getting along. (Though, when it comes to it, the same thing is true at the Xecution, really. Sure, eventually all but one person is going to be eliminated, and presumably everyone wants to be that one person, but in the meantime all the competitors are friendly with each other and sympathetic towards those who get "executed".) So really, being there at an audition among friends...it was kind of a fun experience.

Oddly, they had me read for a different part than I'd read for in the initial audition. The casting directors paired everyone up into sets of one guy and one girl; I ended up being partnered with one of the women from Ultimate Improv, Elizabeth Triplett. (Incidentally, I just noticed Justin and Elizabeth have links on their homepages to each other's pages. Huh. I wonder if they're going out.) We went in to audition; I think the audition went fairly well; and that was pretty much that. Ashley was kind enough to offer me a ride home, or rather a ride from Santa Monica to a Red Line station, since she was going in that direction anyway. (It was much appreciated; Santa Monica is not the easiest place to get to and from by bus.)

I won't know till next week whether I got the part (or whether they might want me to come in for another callback). I'm not counting on it; sure, I made it to the callback, but there's still enough competition that my chances aren't that great. I'm hoping to get the part, of course--not only would it be fun to be in a nationwide commercial, but of course I could really use the money--but realistically I know the odds are against it. Still, even if I don't get the part, having gone to an audition for a nationwide commercial was a good experience.

So, anyway. That's most of what's been going on in acting for me lately--which is to say, again, not all that much. December, when I'm going to be so busy with work, things are likely to be similarly slow on the acting front. Then again, I guess if there was any time to be neglecting an acting career, this would be it, what with the Writer's Guild strike putting a stop to so many productions. Anyway, though, if December is going to be a slow month acting-wise (if a very busy month in other respects), in January things may pick up in several respects. The TGAH project starts filming in earnest then, and there's also that pyramid movie that's supposed to start shooting then--we'll see if anything actually comes of that.

Okay, you know, this post didn't end up being as short as I thought it would. Sorry about that.

The Trials of Jobs
So, since I've said I've been spending most of my time lately searching for jobs, maybe I should make a post about that.

See, I said in an earlier post that the main root of my financial problems was that I put off searching for jobs too long. That's true, but it's a little more complicated than that. I actually started looking seriously for work back in May--then I stumbled into acting (I've told this story before), and, well, then I got stupid again and pretty much stopped looking for work when I was pursuing that. Even then, though, it's not as if I just started looking for work in November. Back--hold on; I can check my e-mail and date the matter precisely--back on October 17 (okay, so admittedly still fairly recently), I went looking for work, and found an ad on Craigslist for a middle school science teacher at a private school. According to the ad, the job would pay about $35,000 a year--not a huge amount, maybe, but, well, much more than I've made before, and certainly enough to overcome my immediate financial difficulties.

And, had I gotten the job, I would be in much better shape now. (Which, of course, doesn't excuse my waiting so long to look for a job; I should have been looking much earlier.)

Things looked good, at first. (I've told some of this story before very briefly here.) I got an interview with the chair of the science department--whom from this point on I shall, in keeping with my reference to the professors I work with at USC by their initials, refer to as "Mr. S"--, and we seemed to hit it off well; I got the impression he really liked me. He asked me to return the following week and teach a sample lesson so he could see my teaching style; that, too, went well, and he said he had a few more interviews to make but that he should be able to give me an answer about the job within a few days. They desperately needed a new science teacher, he explained, because the previous teacher had had to leave suddenly due to health reasons, and they'd had trouble filling that post lately. I asked him, if I did get the job, when I'd be starting; his answer: "Last week".

Sounded good; I needed money badly enough that I did indeed want to start as soon as possible, and he seemed to be impressed enough by my qualifications and to like me enough that I figured unless one of the later candidates he interviewed ended up really blowing him out of the water the job was very probably mine.

And there was my mistake (well, the most recent, at that time, of many; as I said, I should have been looking for a job much earlier, which was another mistake)--instead of counting on that job, I should have still been searching for other jobs in case that one didn't come through. Which it didn't, but not for the reasons one might expect.

When I hadn't heard from Mr. S by the stated time, I called him to ask whether he had made his decision, and was told he still had a few more people to interview the next day, but that he would know by the day after that. The day after that...still no decision, although he did have sort of a different job offer for me in the meantime: there was a student who needed tutoring in both physics and math, and he didn't want to do both himself; would I be interested in serving as his math tutor? So I made regular visits to the school thereafter for that, and when finally, several weeks after the initial interview, I asked him again about the teaching job, he said that he'd just found out that day that the old science teacher, the one for whom he'd been looking for a replacement, had unexpectedly decided he was feeling well enough to keep teaching for a while after all.

By this point, though, it had been long enough I'd already--well, not given up on that job, exactly, but decided I couldn't wait indefinitely to hear back about it--and started looking for other jobs a bit. Some of them, naturally, didn't pan out; I got an interview for a position as a math or science teacher at a charter school, but, while the interviewer seemed impressed with my résumé I didn't realize that charter schools, unlike private schools, still require their teachers to be officially credentialed, which I'm not. (I looked into enrolling in a credentialing program, but for the moment the requirements are prohibitive--I did apply for a credentialing internship program with the LAUSD, but they don't make their next hiring decisions until January, and even that is hiring for the 2008-2009 schoolyear.) At a friend's suggestion, I applied for some graveyard-shift hotel jobs (a graveyard shift job would, after all, still allow me to pursue acting to some degree), but I didn't hear back from those...well, actually, I did finally hear back just this week, but by that time I'd long given up on them--and didn't want those jobs anymore, anyway, since I had other jobs by now.

And...that's, um, maybe a bit of a problem. See, now my problem is that maybe I have too many jobs lined up. Besides the student I'm tutoring for Mr. S, I registered with a tutoring company and I'm tutoring a student in Pasadena. While the tutoring is the only work I'm doing this month that actually pays (though even that doesn't pay till the end of the month), though, it has one unfortunate side effect in that the tutoring schedule would interfere with most normal 9-to-5 jobs. (Not that I really want a normal 9-to-5 job anyway, but, well, by this point things were getting desperate enough I'd have taken almost anything--I was even regretting not having pursued those theater jobs that I passed up because of the schedule required.) But I went ahead and kept hunting--and this time, even after it seemed likely I already had a job lined up, I kept hunting, both in case the expected job somehow ended up falling through again, and in the hopes of finding something that started earlier, since I had a lot of urgent bills coming due.

The upshot is that I didn't find anything that started right away, but I have...well, several jobs and possible jobs lined up for later. For one, there's the one job that I did find at that job fair that I thought might be worth pursuing--a job as a security guard. Not great pay, not loads of fun, but, hey, graveyard shift. So on the first of November I went in to the company's office downtown to see about that. Turned out there was a delay there, though, because I'd need a guard card, and to get a guard card I'd need to go through a training session, and the next open time for that was on the 12th. Even after that, it would take two to four weeks for the guard card to be processed, and I couldn't actually get a post and start working till after that.

I went ahead and registered for the training session, but I wanted to start work earlier than that--it sounded like the guard job, even if it was probably more or less a sure thing, would still be a month or two off. So I kept looking for other jobs in the meantime. A friend, Tim (the same one who'd recommended the hotel jobs, actually), said he knew a comedian who he thought was looking for an assistant of sorts to run some errands for him, and that he'd talk to him and see if that might be a possible part-time job, but as it eventually turned out, though, his comedian friend was out of town until December 1, though the possibility was still open after that. (I did get some money through Tim, though, in that he and his wife went out of town for the week of Thanksgiving and paid me fifty dollars to water their plants and look after their apartment while they were gone (they live about half a block away from me). Which was nice; like I said in my last post, in my current situation every dollar helps.) But I did get a job at Universal Studios as a ride operator--it's a seasonal job, so it's only temporary, and only part-time, but as it turns out that's a good thing. Because the guard card came back much quicker than