Elf on Tour: Erie, PA
We spent Monday mostly on a charter bus to Erie.
NETworks charters only one bus, so the majority of us have to share seats. I got lucky because one of our trumpet players is traveling with his girlfriend this city, so I ended up seated by myself. Spent the first half of the ride air-tromboning through a show that I'm hoping to do next year.
The rest stop was in Cleveland, at a mall that was really more of a business/transit center. So instead of following the herd inside, I walked a few blocks to a Constantino's Grocery. This is a family-owned chain, I've been to the one in KCMO and it's quite good. This one was small but had a hot bar, so I got to enjoy Italian sausage with peppers and onions for lunch.
Back on the bus and about two hours later we arrived at our hotel, about four miles from the theatre but conveniently close to a shopping area including a Giant Eagle grocery store. I was surprised to find new flavors of some of my favorite products here!
Also, since we're in PA, there are big jars of pickled eggs on the shelves.
If you haven't experienced these, it probably sounds weird, but they are SO GOOD. IYKYK.
The beet eggs are my absolute favorite. I've never had the mustard ones and want to try them someday.
Got my goodies back to the hotel and spent the rest of the night desperately trying to finish this transcription.
I'm on the last hour of audio, and hope to be done by tomorrow. Then begins the edit/review process.
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Up early on Tuesday to have the free hotel breakfast and work on transcription.
There was lots of good stuff to steal at this breakfast including bagels, Nutella, peanut butter, and chocolate chips. They also had a chocolate raspberry coffee, which was very good and strangely nostalgic to drink (my stepmom was into flavored coffees so that's what I drank when home for Christmas. Back when, you know, everyone was alive.)
I got to lunchtime and STILL was not done with transcribing this godforsaken case.
Like...I don't know how to describe to you what's going on, but not only are there Punjabi terms to look up and spell correctly, there's also terrible audio quality, a judge who speaks in metaphors and streams of consciousness in a Southern lingo/accent, a lawyer who has such a strong accent that I can't understand her at times, and so many numbers and acronyms being thrown around that I am barely getting everything down on the page much less getting a correct formatting for it all.
I was so frustrated, in fact, that I ended up calling my supervisor. Not that I expected him to DO anything, but ultimately I guess I was afraid that the proofreader would receive this absolute disaster of a transcript and have to deal with it, and I would be seen as either incompetent or having slacked off. The supervisor reassured me that for a lot of things, there just IS no "proper formatting"...for example, there's one part where the judge was singing to himself with nonsense lyrics, how does one transcribe that?? Or there were times when everyone was talking at once, and even with isolating each individual audio track the overlap was so bad that I STILL couldn't tell what people were saying and had to use [indiscernible].
This is probably stuff that seasoned transcriptionists are used to, but I am NOT. And between the stress of being on tour and trying to do this job and also trying to practice for holiday gigs and fallout from the election...I think it all was just too much, today.
The supervisor suggested I step away for a while, but I CAN'T, and that's the problem.
So instead after I got off the phone with him I had a frustrated, angry cry, ate my lunch, and sat down AGAIN even though my butt was numb from being in this damn chair since 8am.
TL;DR I finished the transcription around 1:30pm.
Walked around outside a bit even though it was quite cold, just to clear my head and move a bit after sitting in an uncomfortable chair all morning. Soon enough it was time to ride the bus to the theatre (we are about 6 miles away here.)
It's a pretty old theatre.
Here is Neil with an absolute HEDGE of woodwinds. There are ELEVEN (11) instruments in this photo. (To be fair, the oboe is not used in the show, he brought it for personal practice.)
I'm always blown away at how versatile and skilled woodwind players are for being able to switch between so many instruments (in this case it's 5 instruments each.) But also, this makes me sad because there should simply be more musicians in the pit to play all of these. But, you know, then you'd have to PAY them.
The backstage area at this theatre is renovated, so there were nice bottle fillers and modern facilities ("renovation" is always the preferred word to hear over "restoration" haha.) And once again this week I had my own dressing room!!
In all my years of touring and performing, I've had my own dressing room less than ten times.
Usually I'm either forgotten about and left with the male band, or I am put in the female ensemble dressing room (both of these options are completely fine with me, btw.) Having my own little space for the duration is a luxury, but also makes me feel a bit lonely, like I'm my own species or something. It doesn't much matter because I rarely use dressing rooms anyway.
The sound check and show went well. The drums were remoted (in a separate room and watching the MD via a video feed) so we were all worried about the tempos, but everything was surprisingly all right. After the show I packed up my trombone and practice mute and brought them to the hotel so I can run Disney music tomorrow.
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Wednesday I was up at 7 to do laundry, eat breakfast, and buckle down on finally getting this transcription project out of my face.
It took until 2pm to finish transcription review. God DAMN. I hope to never get a case like that again (but I probably will.)
Absolutely had to lie down and take a nap after that. There was no avoiding it.
Then got ready for the show and practiced my Disney music, only getting through half of it before dinnertime.
At the theatre, gave my trombone a bath since I've got this nice dressing room at my disposal and it has hot water.
Here's a random picture of the "remoted" drum setup this week.
The drummer can only see the conductor via that little monitor, and hear us through his Aviom.
Someone put a candy cane at each of our spots tonight...perhaps Production again?
It was a kind thing to do. I decorated my mic with it.
The show went well, no shenanigans. That's a wrap in Erie, PA.
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Thursday: All-day bus ride from Erie, PA to Stamford, CT. There is a Japanese grocery close to the hotel/theatre and I hope to get dinner there!
Friday: Hopefully a day to just take a walk and decompress. I need it.
Saturday and Sunday: Two shows each. My sister is supposed to come out for a matinee but we will see.
NETworks charters only one bus, so the majority of us have to share seats. I got lucky because one of our trumpet players is traveling with his girlfriend this city, so I ended up seated by myself. Spent the first half of the ride air-tromboning through a show that I'm hoping to do next year.
The rest stop was in Cleveland, at a mall that was really more of a business/transit center. So instead of following the herd inside, I walked a few blocks to a Constantino's Grocery. This is a family-owned chain, I've been to the one in KCMO and it's quite good. This one was small but had a hot bar, so I got to enjoy Italian sausage with peppers and onions for lunch.
Back on the bus and about two hours later we arrived at our hotel, about four miles from the theatre but conveniently close to a shopping area including a Giant Eagle grocery store. I was surprised to find new flavors of some of my favorite products here!
Also, since we're in PA, there are big jars of pickled eggs on the shelves.
If you haven't experienced these, it probably sounds weird, but they are SO GOOD. IYKYK.
The beet eggs are my absolute favorite. I've never had the mustard ones and want to try them someday.
Got my goodies back to the hotel and spent the rest of the night desperately trying to finish this transcription.
I'm on the last hour of audio, and hope to be done by tomorrow. Then begins the edit/review process.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Up early on Tuesday to have the free hotel breakfast and work on transcription.
There was lots of good stuff to steal at this breakfast including bagels, Nutella, peanut butter, and chocolate chips. They also had a chocolate raspberry coffee, which was very good and strangely nostalgic to drink (my stepmom was into flavored coffees so that's what I drank when home for Christmas. Back when, you know, everyone was alive.)
I got to lunchtime and STILL was not done with transcribing this godforsaken case.
Like...I don't know how to describe to you what's going on, but not only are there Punjabi terms to look up and spell correctly, there's also terrible audio quality, a judge who speaks in metaphors and streams of consciousness in a Southern lingo/accent, a lawyer who has such a strong accent that I can't understand her at times, and so many numbers and acronyms being thrown around that I am barely getting everything down on the page much less getting a correct formatting for it all.
I was so frustrated, in fact, that I ended up calling my supervisor. Not that I expected him to DO anything, but ultimately I guess I was afraid that the proofreader would receive this absolute disaster of a transcript and have to deal with it, and I would be seen as either incompetent or having slacked off. The supervisor reassured me that for a lot of things, there just IS no "proper formatting"...for example, there's one part where the judge was singing to himself with nonsense lyrics, how does one transcribe that?? Or there were times when everyone was talking at once, and even with isolating each individual audio track the overlap was so bad that I STILL couldn't tell what people were saying and had to use [indiscernible].
This is probably stuff that seasoned transcriptionists are used to, but I am NOT. And between the stress of being on tour and trying to do this job and also trying to practice for holiday gigs and fallout from the election...I think it all was just too much, today.
The supervisor suggested I step away for a while, but I CAN'T, and that's the problem.
So instead after I got off the phone with him I had a frustrated, angry cry, ate my lunch, and sat down AGAIN even though my butt was numb from being in this damn chair since 8am.
TL;DR I finished the transcription around 1:30pm.
Walked around outside a bit even though it was quite cold, just to clear my head and move a bit after sitting in an uncomfortable chair all morning. Soon enough it was time to ride the bus to the theatre (we are about 6 miles away here.)
It's a pretty old theatre.
Here is Neil with an absolute HEDGE of woodwinds. There are ELEVEN (11) instruments in this photo. (To be fair, the oboe is not used in the show, he brought it for personal practice.)
I'm always blown away at how versatile and skilled woodwind players are for being able to switch between so many instruments (in this case it's 5 instruments each.) But also, this makes me sad because there should simply be more musicians in the pit to play all of these. But, you know, then you'd have to PAY them.
The backstage area at this theatre is renovated, so there were nice bottle fillers and modern facilities ("renovation" is always the preferred word to hear over "restoration" haha.) And once again this week I had my own dressing room!!
In all my years of touring and performing, I've had my own dressing room less than ten times.
Usually I'm either forgotten about and left with the male band, or I am put in the female ensemble dressing room (both of these options are completely fine with me, btw.) Having my own little space for the duration is a luxury, but also makes me feel a bit lonely, like I'm my own species or something. It doesn't much matter because I rarely use dressing rooms anyway.
The sound check and show went well. The drums were remoted (in a separate room and watching the MD via a video feed) so we were all worried about the tempos, but everything was surprisingly all right. After the show I packed up my trombone and practice mute and brought them to the hotel so I can run Disney music tomorrow.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday I was up at 7 to do laundry, eat breakfast, and buckle down on finally getting this transcription project out of my face.
It took until 2pm to finish transcription review. God DAMN. I hope to never get a case like that again (but I probably will.)
Absolutely had to lie down and take a nap after that. There was no avoiding it.
Then got ready for the show and practiced my Disney music, only getting through half of it before dinnertime.
At the theatre, gave my trombone a bath since I've got this nice dressing room at my disposal and it has hot water.
Here's a random picture of the "remoted" drum setup this week.
The drummer can only see the conductor via that little monitor, and hear us through his Aviom.
Someone put a candy cane at each of our spots tonight...perhaps Production again?
It was a kind thing to do. I decorated my mic with it.
The show went well, no shenanigans. That's a wrap in Erie, PA.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday: All-day bus ride from Erie, PA to Stamford, CT. There is a Japanese grocery close to the hotel/theatre and I hope to get dinner there!
Friday: Hopefully a day to just take a walk and decompress. I need it.
Saturday and Sunday: Two shows each. My sister is supposed to come out for a matinee but we will see.