I've stopped organizing my thoughts, briefly.

Something caught the pin on Thursday, which resulted in "the biggest tree in the river bottoms" not falling dramatically in the middle of the show. It also resulted in The Longest Blackout in the History of the World, which itself finally resulted in a rope that refused to come free from the ceiling, and thus the top half of the tree standing perfectly balanced next to the tree trunk for the remainder of the show.

This became terribly funny to me mid-blackout, thought (again), there was plenty of time to reach that place.

Yesterday began with us testing the tree and discovering that we'd apparently shaken something loose during Thursday's attempts at felling the giant. No amount of rewiring, electrucuting the Technical Director (thanks actors trying to be techies), or sheer frustration was going to bring the tree down by power switch. Thus, we held the house until five minutes prior to stated curtain time to allow the production team to string a manual drop system through the ceiling pipes.

Meanwhile, we were redirecting traffic to avoid a large funeral that was supposed to hit somewhere between the two shows. All our attempts to stay out of their way were, naturally for the day, to naught as the full procession of mourners chose to move from the sanctuary to the fellowship hall using our hall instead of going around when they saw the actors moving an entire cabin worth of set pieces off the stage. (They were still moving through for an actor's quick change and the dogs/mountain lion fight, which is why the house manager kept coming into the booth to laugh before returning to be solemn in the hallway.)

Why, yes, of course there are quotes that came out of this (as well as the mainstage opening later that evening):

...That's what we always said at school: "I think it's a metaphor for something."
-So, what is it for this?
Well, I'd take it as, like, look at the amazing dedication this tree showed. We "chopped" it down, we clicked it free, and we tried to pull it from the ceiling, but it's still standing in the middle of the aisle. That's the kind of dedication I'd like to see from all my actors, too.

Stephen almost threw his jacket on some lady!

I'm going to make you a t-shirt that says, "If a tree doesn't fall onstage, and an audience is present, what sound does the stage manager make?"

It's now really ironic that I randomly decided to wear my lucky earrings today.

Um...the sound box just totally lost power.

Don't mess with Hannah, she sometimes has power to make trees fall.

And the slightly more random:

Come to Texas, even the Cheez-Its are festive.

Wow! There's food here! (we were at a supermarket)

I think I just had cheese go up my nose!
-How did you do that?
I don't know, but it really burned.

(supremely paraphrased) Ugh. Tomorrow I have two shows.
-I'll be there for the first one in the morning.
--Yeah, tomorrow morning I'll be curled up in bed...wrapped in my blanket not moving.
-That's because the poisonous snake I put in there would've gotten to you by then.

When you think about it, the Crocodile Hunter had it coming... (this started a good twenty minute argument about the statement's validity)

Honestly, this is better for my abs than any of those videos we've been doing.

Right! The Mom box!

When commericals came on and a fastforward didn't happen, we figured you'd fallen asleep.