19 November 2019 Dental Tuesday

[KathyB]

I had a very pleasant visit at my dentist's office.   Well, as pleasant as these things ever are. I had one area of tartar that they kept going over and over and over, and I thought I was never going to be out of the chair. But fortunately I have no cavities, and I scheduled my next appointment six months from now. I have no idea what I'm going to be doing in May, other than sneezing.

Now I just need to get through a physical therapy appointment this afternoon.

[scenicdesign71]

I need to visit a dentist before the end of the year.  I've ended up cancelling my last several appointments without rescheduling them, with the result that it's been over a year since my last checkup.

But -- in only-tangentially-related, wildly ambivalent news -- my time may not be freeing up as much as I'd hoped anytime soon.  After struggling with some ambivalence of her own (all of us could use a serious vacation), my boss has decided to join a number of our other MS colleagues in moving directly on to a new show, and has asked me to go with her.  The job will begin with a two-month build period starting in mid-December, and then film through next June or July.

On one hand, it'll be nice to start fresh, in a new space, on a new show -- with some of the friends I've made (in various departments, from designers to dressers), and the knowledge I've accrued, over the past five years.  (I was with MS from the very beginning too, but when we began I understood far less than I do now about how TV shows get made; the last six years have been, among other things, an education).  I know very little about the new show itself, but it seems to be set in NYC right around the time I first moved here, which could be interesting.  (It's not Tick, Tick... BOOM!, alas, although one of our Asst. Art Directors from MS is jumping onto that).  And the studio we'll be working at is a bit closer to my apartment, so it'll be a faster commute.

In the very short term, it makes the next couple of weeks packing up all our stuff from MS feel a little less dismal and more purposeful: instead of all our roadboxes going to some storage facility (and perhaps out of my life forever, for all I knew until yesterday), we'll be sending the entire kit to the new studio, there to organize our (thankfully larger!) shop space next month.

But on the other hand, I was really, desperately looking forward to some time off; I wasn't even planning on looking for work again until next February, and there were plenty of things on my personal to-do list to keep me occupied until then (in addition to simply recovering from the last year and a half of what feels like -- though it hasn't actually been -- solid uninterrupted work.  And yes, I'm aware that there are worse problems one could have than a surfeit of well-paid, relatively interesting work dropping into my lap.  Boo-hoo, where's my two-month vacation?).

Also on the personal front, there's a certain someone... a rather nifty guy whom I'd been hoping to see more of.  Since meeting almost two years ago, we've kept in touch and spent time together on all-too-rare occasions when we can make our schedules work, before recently reaching the mutual conclusion that less-rare would be a goal worth pursuing.  But his schedule is as busy as mine is (when I'm on a job); he's not the nearest of neighbors by NYC standards (he lives in NJ, about an hour from me by train/bus, and we both have roommates); and he travels a lot for work... so we may have to resign ourselves to continuing with "all-too-rare" for the time being.

I'll have at least a week off between the end of cleaning up our old shop and the beginning of moving into the new one.  And not long after that, there should be two weeks off for the holidays.  (In fact, I might even beg off of that initial setup week and just take the bulk of December off).  After that, we'll see; hopefully the change of scenery (literally!) will help me make it through another six or seven months without burning out.

Another upside of sorts: it'll be nice to be finishing a season (and then hopefully taking a nice long vacation) in July -- rather than starting one shortly before Independence Day, as was always the case with MS.

[DiveMilw]

So, David, it sounds like you've made up your mind to take the new job even if you haven't fully admitted it to yourself.     Would this new show be an ongoing job like Madam Secretary?  

But what we really want to know is what souvenir(s) were you allowed to take home from MS?  And what did you want but couldn't/didn't get?