yes i know i need a haircut goddam it

This whole business of actually being expected to look good for work has been a struggle for me. I am chronically clueless about things like Whether My Clothes Need Ironing, or Whether Those Pants Have A Lingering Coffee Stain, or What Makes Some Shoes Cuter Than Others. I can hedge around some of these failings; dry cleaning is a godsend. But my hair is another matter. I have had the same haircut, more or less, since 1984. I like to think of it as Timeless Style.... but really, it's just that I can't wrap my brain around doing anything that requires effort involving my hair. It's very straight and very very fine, and so getting it to do anything other than look a bit like Shaggy Meets Rick Springfield would take both time and hair products, neither of which I have much of. I could cut it off a lot shorter than I usually wear it, but it being so fine and soft I think that what looks all tough and butch and european on some women would read as sad baby duck on me. So I content myself with getting it trimmed and shaped periodically, and put gel in it when I think about it to keep it out of my eyes.

But the lingering problem is that I still don't THINK about it. I'm always shocked when I look in the mirror on some random morning when I really do need to look Good, and find that my hair is about 2" over my collar in back and my eyebrows in front, and looks like utter ass. Yes, hmm, let me see.... last time I got a haircut was before those stupid TV shots for the LEGO Castles exhibit, which was... mmm... Late January. Great. And now, 2 months later, why am I frantically running out to get an emergency haircut today? Because of a TV shot for the new exhibit that opens Monday. If it weren't for exhibit openings, June would roll around and I'd look like Cousin Itt. For god's sake.

In Which I am Utterly Spent

Against all odds, the exhibit that I was assigned not fully 2 months ago is open, or will be in a day or so. It was supposed to open Monday, but the local paper apparently promo-ed it as opening Sunday, and of course people will want to get into it tomorrow. Today we practically had to beat them off with a stick, as you could see into the installation area from the bottom curve of the ramp to the Lower Level. It did my heart good to hear that many kids screaming with anticipation... which was good, because it counteracted the palpitations I experienced during the two final case installations. We borrowed cases from another--VERY GENEROUS--museum to put 2 of the costumes loaned us by Lucasfilm into, as we don't really have large cases just hanging around. Those cases had some... structural integrity issues... during the installation process, which then led to problems with the graphics applications. One thing progressed to another, and by about 3:30 pm I was cussing (quietly) a blue streak while pulling velcro up, moving a large piece of vinyl 3mm to the left, sticking the velcro down, checking the position, unhooking the velcro, moving it 2mm right and 4 mm down, sticking the velcro, looking at it from the front again... Man, it was frustrating. Kudos to all my coworkers who valiantly put up with this and all sorts of other crap in the last couple of days. All told, things went about as smoothly as one could have imagined considering the hugely accelerated timeline. And I'm really happy with it. It was important to me to have a good product at the end of this--not just something satisfactory, or something that echoed the last venue that had these objects, but something new and interesting and cohesive and fun... and I think we did it. Come see it and find out for yourselves, if you can! Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Exhibition will be at our museum til next January 31. Oh, and there's a spaceship in the Welcome Center. Just so's you know.

Things I'm Not Telling You

So my life has been more or less dominated by work since 2009 reared its ugly head. For January it was LEGO CASTLES LEGO CASTLES LEGO CASTLES all the time. It opened January 31, which was amazing and awesome as chronicled earlier here--my first baby, as it were. I was on this exhibit from its inception to finish, and a large part of it is more or less pulled from my own brain, and seeing something like that come to fruition is an utterly new experience. It opened very, VERY well, and has been incredibly popular--which means that about 2 days after it opened, the children had found our weak spots and begun to exploit them. They broke everything that could possibly be broken, and even some impossible things--who knew children could break a welded steel plate? I ask you! Kids are scary. So the start of February was fixing, and adjusting, and tightening and re-welding and replacing and grabbing our heads and going "holy fuck srsly" a whole lot. But in the midst of all of this, another project dropped on us, as it were, from outer space, and landed squarely in my lap.

But I'm not going to tell you about it. Not yet, at any rate. The upshot is, major project, outside player requested that we do a small but flashy exhibit with them, of course we said yes, and the timeline is friggin' insane. A project that would ordinarily take 6 months at least is coming together in the space of 6 weeks. I am utterly confident that we'll do it and it'll be awesome once it's open--but I have a feeling I am about to get a lot more experience laying graphics in trying circumstances.

I'm also not going to tell you about refinancing my house, because that is one goddam sack of joy that I am trying not to think about at the moment. And I'm not going to tell you that for some asinine reason I've got the Eagles' Victim of Love stuck in my head--which let me tell you is NOT a work of lyrical genius; "I might be wrong, but I'm not?" Seriously, jesus--and I'd hate for you to get it stuck in your head too simply because I brought it up here. That's the kind of friend I am. So I won't mention it.

But I will tell you that the frogs are doing great, thanks for asking! I think they're getting bigger, though it's hard to tell. They must be getting bigger, they are eating the frog equivalent of 30 White Castle sliders every damn day and keep peering hungrily at me looking for more. I'm finding I feel a little sorry for the fruitflies, who as tiny insects go are reasonably charming and well-behaved... but then the frogs come along and zap them up, and the sheer coolness of poisonous-frog-speed-hunting in my living room overwhelms the pity I have for the flies. Maybe I'm just getting callous in my old age...