Daily Archives: August 24, 2019

anniversary

I’ll bet if you looked up ‘anniversary’ in the tag cloud, all you’d find would be rather gloomy posts. Finally there was a happy anniversary for me. Sepi and I achieved one year of marriage 2 weeks ago. Yay!

Amazingly, I had the night off so we went out to dinner. We had drinks and a glass of wine with our food. Perhaps not the best of ideas when you’re really tired, but we got through it.

It’s been hard for Sepi to hear all my stories of my work difficulties. It’s all she can do to not go down to Davies and knock heads. She’s gone through may similar situations so she’s given me much practical advice. Most importantly, she’s kept me grounded with the long view.

Sepi is also my most consistent reader and commenter on this blog. Hi Sepi! I love you!

“smoke ’em inside”

I’ve talked to Jeremy and Sarah, too, about my job travails. Sarah has been conventionally supportive. The last week of the Symphony season in July she was in the orchestra while I was running the last three shows. She gave me good, practical advice on some technical things but also a lovely text which I will not quote here. She stopped by my post at the stage manager’s desk often with a quick smile.

Jeremy I only talked to once or twice. His advice was more metaphorical. We had only a couple weeks before noted the death of Jim Bouton, author of the seminal baseball memoir, Ball Four. Jeremy reminded me of Bouton’s mantra as he struggled to revive his baseball pitching career in Seattle: “Smoke ’em inside.”

view from my bed

It’s been a hectic month. Almost six weeks, in fact, since I was offered the Symphony stage manager job. Incredibly, I officially started less than a week later. Partly because of that accelerated schedule, I had leftover commitments to JJ so I worked several nights and weekends for him after that.

At the Symphony, during the regular work week, I had personnel issues, new computers, new computer systems, new (to me) software. I had to plan for six orchestra moves in the first ten days of the season. Almost like being on tour!

I haven’t toured with the Symphony yet so that’s a little cheeky to say. At least I’ll be sleeping in my own bed each night.

Speaking of bed, I slept in this morning, seemingly for the first time in weeks. As I was waking up, I saw this view:

For months I had kept Hobbes in a box, along with many other personal things that there just wasn’t room for in the new house. One day a couple of months ago I happened to see him and thought that this little spot behind the lamp would be good for him. To be completely honest, I hadn’t noticed him or thought about him very much but today I did.

I have thought of Zach a lot during this past month of stress. He would have given me valuable insight into strategies for organizations and people. I’ve been thinking of the 4th anniversary of his death upcoming this fall. That seems important because it is supposedly the end of the statute of limitations on criminal charges surrounding his death. For a long time I wanted to beat on the Baton Rouge DA to reopen the case and charge Shawn Allen with vehicular manslaughter. Or something more than speeding. Or implicate the other driver, who I believe was complicit in the whole thing and got away with nothing. This post tells more about my feelings.

Anyway, I think I’ve let go of the whole idea. As I’ve said before, nothing will bring Zach back and the Baton Rouge authorities are not interested. My plate is full with this new job so I’ll just go on hoping Mr Allen still has nightmares and try to think of good things.

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