Dallas 2014 Week 2 - A New Game

[taz_39]

Monday was a bust for me.

I got up early, excited because the circus bus was supposedly going to Northpark Mall. It's a big mall with a movie theater and three levels of shops, and a Whole Foods next door (you KNOW this is what I was REALLY excited about). I got dressed and packed a lunch and hopped on the bus. Twenty minutes later we pulled up to a small mall on the east side of town. Apparently it had been decided that Northpark was too far away.
Gosh, that would have been nice to know.

I got back to the train by noon and ate lunch, then got back on the bus for a Wal-Mart run. It was very crowded, with people standing in the aisles. All of us were wondering how on earth we were going to fit ourselves AND our groceries on the bus for the return trip. Fortunately Daniel (bus driver) sent for a second bus, as there definitely wouldn't have been enough room for all of us on just one bus.

That was Monday. Tuesday we only had one show at night, so it was almost like another day off. It was very hot out and I had nowhere to be, so used the time to relax and catch up on chores. The evening show went well. We found out that our new show is to be called "Circus Extreme". Oh excuse me, that's XTREME.

On Wednesday auditions for new clowns were held. Not sure when we'll hear results of that, but I hope everyone did their best and had a great time! For me it was another day of not much, enjoying a late morning and messing around, practicing the big trombone at the arena and playing Ingress with Jameson.

On Thursday I got up early to take myself to the Northpark Mall since I'd missed the trip on Monday.
I was surprised to see a large group waiting for the 9am bus...apparently there was CPR training at the building that morning!

(photo courtesy Claudia)

But first we had to get to the building. The bus was 1/2 hour late.
We got there, and everyone rushed off to make it to training. I was tempted to go too but hadn't signed up :/
I dropped some things off in the dressing room, then walked to the nearest DART light rail station. Once on the train I took out my phone to play Ingress. There are many portals along the light rail, and I hacked them for items. At the Park Lane station I got out and walked 1/2 mile to the mall, where I spend a little time window shopping but mostly continued to play Ingress for two hours :P This game is dangerous for someone like me who enjoys exploring, because now I have something to DO every time I set out! The mall was a great place for me to acquaint myself with the game.

Here are some pics of what I was doing. The portals are the glowing blue/green/white spots. Green are enemy portals, and white are unclaimed. Blue are portals already claimed by someone else on my 'team'. The portals are located at landmarks such as statues, artworks, or monuments. In this case most of these were sculptures or paintings placed throughout the mall. The little white dots are energy deposits that you can pick up and use to recharge portals or complete other actions. The blue triangle in the yellow circle is me. On the left you can see how the mall looked when I arrived, as viewed through Ingress. The pic on the right is from about an hour later when I stopped for lunch, after having claimed the white portals and linked most of them together.


This last pic is taken from the opposite side of the mall, after I had finished playing and was about to leave. I've made a big blue triangle. There's one green portal left because it was a high level and I couldn't take it out alone without killing the last 5% of my battery.


I walked over to Whole Foods where I did some actual shopping :) Specialty groceries are always a treat. I got some muesli bread, candied ginger, tasty organic soups, and some lemon coconut body soap. Then it was time to get back to the arena for our show. When we are only doing one show per day, the time flies!

Friday I did laundry and cooked, terribly exciting stuff. Another evening show, another day down :)

This weekend was our last six pack of the year! WOOHOO!!!
The Wheel act was back in all weekend. It was a normal two days of work.

After the last show Jameson and I had a date night involving Ingress and sushi. We went to Kenichi right down the street. It was a very trendy place and the sushi was delicious! We both had the Hawaiian roll (spicy whitefish, asparagus, pineapple in rice paper) and flavored sake (he had raspberry 'Purple Haze' and I had Midori 'Green Dragon'). It was delicious! No pics because it was dim. After the meal we took a quick walk down the street to hack some portals for items, and try attacking some green portals. I was able to get to level 5 and was surprised at the damage the weapons do at that level. Jameson is only a few thousand points away from level 5 tonight.

We walked back to the arena and caught the bus to the train. There was a beautiful full moon.

(photo courtesy Jameson)

Now it's off to Fort Worth, only a 3.5 hour drive by car but by train it's sure to take all of Monday :)


Other stuff:

From Nicole Feld's twitter, our white model meeting for the new show. Note that the Wheel act will be around as shown by the double wheel hanging from the rigging, and notice the terrace attached to the portal right above the bandstands. In the bottom picture you can see some guys holding bikes, that's a BMX troupe that will be joining us. And the big dudes wearing black are a Mongolian troupe.



Meanwhile the Gold Unit will be getting Built to Amaze: Gold Edition!


These guys did a lot of work on our train car this week. Eternal thanks.

(photo courtesy Eric)

Happy Birthday to Ryan (lighting) and our Ringmaster Andre!!

(photo courtesy Oscar)


(photo courtesy Daniele)

Comments

Train Life

[(Anonymous)]

I just discovered your blog a short time ago, and it is so awesome! Through some convoluted brain channels, I've recently been very interested in what it's like to live on a train, particularly a circus train. There are some tidbits here and there online, but your blog is the only place I've found so far that discusses all sorts of everyday aspects, like what the inside of the living quarter cars actually look like and that the sink gets noisy on train runs.

There are still some things I'm very curious about, and I hope it's not too intrusive to ask. If it is, go ahead and ignore my ramblings, or if they've already been mentioned in a post I haven't read (though if you could then point me to that post, I'd appreciate it).

How do you handle closet space? From my eyeballed calculations from your pictures, your room has about a 2'x2' closet, right? You go to some super hot places during the summer and freezing cold places during the winter, so how do you juggle a summer and winter wardrobe with the space you have?

Also, you have a lot of limitations on kitchen appliances, but you always have things like fish and cooked foods. Do you cook that stuff on train stops outside your room, borrow stove/oven use from friends on the train who have one, or something else?

Re: Train Life

[taz-39.livejournal.com]

Hello! Thank you for reading! I'm glad you enjoy the posts :)

Originally started to let my family know what I was up to, over the course of two years this blog has garnered more interest from circus/train fans than I ever expected!

Since you mention the sink, here it is LOL:
http://youtu.be/slal99iDK0E

That plug is important to me ;D

Thank you for asking your questions, I'm happy to answer the best I can!

The closet in my room (and in almost every room I think) is roughly 22"L x 18"W x 78"H. It is behind the door, and is about as tall as the door, and extends all the way back to the wall. So it's a decent size. I currently have at least 20 items of clothing in there on hangers, four of which are coats, along with my large trombone, a box of office supplies, and my shower caddy. In addition to that closet, we also have what are called 'gauchos', storage spaces beneath the 'chairs' in our rooms.

There are some 'ok' pics of my living space in the DITL posts: http://ditl.livejournal.com/1718822.html and http://ditl.livejournal.com/1749097.html

There's also my very first post: http://taz-39.livejournal.com/749.html
Here you can see pretty much everything BUT the closet, which is behind the door in the second picture. In the first picture, notice the 'sitting area' with the green cushions on the lower left. Under those cushions is a wooden panel that can be lifted up, revealing a rectangular storage space.

I've just remembered there's a pic of that space (full of stuff, but you get the idea):
https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5578/14272728563_497afeaf85_z.jpg

So in addition to the closet, we also have two of these 'gauchos', plus the drawers and cabinets, plus compartments lining the top edges of the room, plus space under the sink, over the microwave, and above the closet. So there is actually a lot of storage space :)

For varying weather, I just have a little bit of everything! I'm not a clothes horse so this is not a problem for me. When buying clothing or anything really, I am careful to consider whether I really NEED it and where I will PUT it. That's really all there is to it! I have t-shirts, dresses, jeans, shorts, sweaters...everything you'd find in a normal person's closet. Maybe just fewer of them ;) I'm sure many of the higher-maintenance women here on the circus have a different viewpoint! I've always wondered how our dancers navigate the train yards full of gravel, broken glass and rusted metal in stilettos!!!

Cooking is not as difficult as you might expect. Although our rooms are too small to accommodate a stove, most of us have hot plates which are perfectly fine for cooking anything you'd normally cook on the stove. For Christmas my parents got me an induction cooktop; it cools very quickly so I can store it right away. They also got me an infrared oven, so I can cook small amounts of food oven-style (including baked goods! See the DITL links for pics of these appliances). These two items take up very little space in my room. Many people also like to grill in the train yards. Some yards have rules about open flames, however.

If people want to do any large-scale baking or roasting, there are larger rooms on the train that do have ovens. All you have to do is ask the resident to use their stove, and most are willing to share that convenience :)

I hope that answers some of your questions! Thanks again!