a bit of an update

Things have slowed down a bit here because most of my free time has been trying to catch up on classes. I'm half way through my first full week of classes and its going.... mostly. It has been a rough week. I haven't really gotten into the teaching swing and I'm trying to make things work but its a lot of rough and stumbling through until I get the feeling for how to do it all. So most of my classes aren't so great. Generally the middle schoolers are a decent group of kids they are nice and enjoyable, but as for that class I absolutely hate it. Mostly because it isn't part of the upper school so there is no set plan as to what it is supposed to be. The other computer class is the other bane of my existence mostly because it is stuff I've never actually had to teach. So we did a simple start project and I'm going to jump into animation soon since I have a decent background in that.

The tech class is pretty good. I'm struggling to make the material last as long as it needs to but after a nice long talk with them today I have a better idea and I'm excited to do a lot of things that are strictly just theatre. So they will be getting to see a lot of screamster related stuff these few weeks to talk about the tech side of all that and my experiences and they're going to get to watch Season of Screams which is a fantastic documentary about Knott's Berry Farm and the start of "Haunt". An upside is that after a few of my screamster stories one kid left saying, 'Oh man Mr. Smith I respect you so much more now." so that's always good.

Seussical is going pretty well, I've given up most of the design control and it is a mix of my ideas and the art teachers now so I have a little less responsibility which is a load off my back, but not how I'm used to doing it so it is kind of jarring and hard to let go, but I'm getting used to the idea. Here's a few updated sketches:

Not my drawings, The Jungle of Nool look we settled on, hopefully (if I can find a net) still doing my textured fabric approach which will layer it and give it a foliage look and fly in and out.

 

Also the current thinking for Horton's nest to hatch the egg he is charged with, not sure how we'll implement that just yet though.

Today was also the first day of building officially.. and it went very slowly. So here's the scoop. The school requires students to have activities. This means they either have to do a sport or theatre or some other thing, because of this we get lots of help and it is great (though I have a few more kids than I can deal with because there just isn't enough to do) I have the "senior staff" as we have dubbed them, that know the ins and outs and have done it all before they are pretty good with building and cutting. The other kids are somewhat worthless it was like coaching the worst 141 students in BG's shop. BUT they tried and they are learning. I tasked them with making 2 4x4 platforms in an hour and if both groups had combined their work they made one of them. separately we have one framed out and one with the top screwed down in 4 places.  Still not terrible for a first day's work. According to the seniors, last year they would have only gotten 3 screws put in at that point. So we're all happy we're accomplishing stuff faster.

So there's a pretty huge update. That has consumed my life. Edgar the cat has been pretty sick lately, he was throwing up a lot yesterday and apparently did some today as well, and mao-ing loud and pathetically as if to say I feel like crap guys... do something. However he got some milk earlier and is moving around and generally seems to be feeling a lot better now so it looks like he's doing alright.

Also for those who read Game of Thrones, and didn't see my facebook update, when Heather and I finally get a dog (whenever that may be) we shall be naming it Hodor. It was a dumb side suggestions I made and the second I said it we both stopped and said, WE'RE NAMING THE DOG HODOR.

Also as a side note I think it is dumb that Dany named one of the dragons Drogon... because I feel like it is someone who can't pronounce dragon. "Drogon hiss and be angry at you. Don't anger drogon because drogon is being big with claws and drogon fire."

that is all. Long update over.