May 2006 – Page 3 – Priscilla Spencer

Ashley: Um… the interviewer knew it was Joss from the start. He was playing along. :D

Stephanie: Both were pietas. Season Two has a plethora of pietas. Why would you say Season 2 does not have a plethora of pietas when you do not know what a plethora is?

Ko: Mac/Cassidy was the thwarted OTP. Like Charlie/Claire, (Blankety-Blank) /(Blankety-Blank-Bleep), and to a much lesser extent, Harry/Murphy. And Wash/Zoe! And Neville/Luna! Some cruel force is methodically kicking my OTPs to the curb! Booooo to thwarted OTPs! Anyway, VM Season 2 is out on DVD August 22nd. (Here’s a better shot of the DVD artwork, and here’s a list of the contents)

Anyway, I will now recount the events of the past week, which has been chok full of awesome! Except for Saturday, which was chok full of psycho. You’ll probably want to skip over Saturday (as well as Thursday and Friday) entirely.

SATURDAY (the 6th):

I struggled with my demo reel up into the wee hours of the morning. I kept trying to render out a DVD-quality file, only to have AfterEffects run into errors in the last few seconds of a half hour-long render. Then it stopped letting me save even the smallest files, or infinitesimally small changes to existing files. Around 5AM, I realized that I had exceeded my 2 gig quota on the Fine Arts server, and they had suspended write access. I deleted some big files that hadn’t rendered properly and had write access instantly restored, then saw that it would be unlikely that I would be able to render anything out at top quality, as my demo reel required a gig and a half of source material. I don’t understand what changed since last year quota-wise, as Little Old Lady Land used over 5 gigs of source material! Animation is CRAZY.

I left around 5:30, fed up and without a high-quality file. I packed desperately, pausing at 7 for the promised Eggs Benedict at Philly Diner, and finished my boxes-to-be-stored around 10. I spent the rest of the time from then until 1 packing my bags-to-take-with-me, attempting to find a printer to print out shipping labels for my boxes-of-books-to-ship-home only to find out that they were asking $60 for a box I could ship for $20 at the place across the street, and running around the campus like a chicken with its head cut off looking for packing tape, which was not to be found ANYWHERE.

At 1, I headed back over to the animation lab to see if my last attempt at rendering had worked (it didn’t) and to burn all my source files and low-quality renders to DVD. On the way, I got a text message from CollegeBoxes, saying that they would be there to pick up my stuff at 1:30. 1:30 was the time I was planning to give up, get someone to dormsit my boxes, and head off to New York, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to wait a little bit longer. I was back in my room by 1:25, taping stuff up obsessively, as the only tape I was able to find was pretty sketchy. Then I just chilled in my room, waiting for them to call me.

Around 3, I got fed up waiting and went downstairs to get a wheeled box-thing so that I could transport all my bags and book-boxes downstairs. I realized that my bags were insanely heavy, and that there would be no way I could carry all three of them through the train system to New York. I also found that the elevator lobby and the fight to get an elevator resembled the hordes of people clammoring to get a lifeboat on the Titanic. Yay.

CollegeBoxes finally called around 3:30, and a guy came up to pick up my boxes around 3:45. Then we were off! I checked out and wheeled my cart across the street at great peril to my life, and from then on it was smooth sailing. The employees were prompt and helpful, and the ground rates were inexpensive enough that I was able to ship the two heavier bags, so that I wouldn’t have to carry them with me. I hopped a taxi to 30th Street Station and got a ticket for a train leaving for New York in five minutes. My timing ROCKS.

I got a sandwich from the food cart, as I hadn’t eaten since 7AM, then catnapped on the train. I arrived at the hotel with just enough time to eat a cookie and unwind a few minutes, then Mom and I were off to Sweeney Todd!

The show was extraordinary. The cast was riveting, the score was highly memorable, and the set and lighting design were deliciously innovative. Yet in spite of all this, I had difficulty even keeping my eyes open in the second act. Thirty-plus hours without sleep and several days of non-stop stress (did I talk about my CSE exam or my Independent Study final project on Friday? I didn’t? Well then!) were taking their toll. I managed to get through the show without nodding off and immediately collapsed in bed.

BTW, THURSDAY AND FRIDAY (the 4th and 5th):

I’d been working all week on my Independent Study project using Macromedia Director, the most hated of software. Director wasn’t functioning properly on my computer: it would open and I could write code and debug and such, but it wasn’t displaying animation correctly. I spend most of Thursday packing and studying for my CSE final Friday morning, then in the late afternoon, I headed for the Fishbowl lab on the other side of campus (a 15-minute walk).

I was nearly all the way there when I realized I didn’t have my DVD that had all the tutorial examples, which I would need to reference, so I walked back to the dorm. I did a bit more packing, then walked back to the fishbowl, only to find that I had forgotten to click the “Attach” button on the email I sent myself, so I didn’t have my project. Gmail had been down for several hours that day, so I was relying on Penn Webmail, which operates differently. So I walked back to the dorm, sent the files properly, watched Smallville to soothe my annoyance, and went back to the lab, grabbing dinner on the way. When I ran my project on one of the lab computers, only a small portion of the animation was working. Joy. I decreed “screw it!” and went back to the dorm to study for my CSE final. I emailed Norm, my Independent Study advisor, and asked him if we could delay my presentation to 4 or 4:30, instead of at 3, giving me a bit of extra time.

I knew I’d need a decent night’s sleep in order to do well on my exam, so I went to sleep at midnight and woke up around 6. I crammed like a madwoman until the exam at 9. I think I did well. As it turns out, I did indeed! Just a couple points below the mean, which is jim-dandy as far as I’m concerned.

At 11, I headed over to Amy’s office to unload a bit, when I ran into Professor Mintz, the professor I’m TAing for in the Fall. He told me he needed to give me my course pack. “It says 592, but it’s really 260,” he explained. HUGE rush of relief on my part. I had thought I was going to be sole TA for a graduate level course, and that I would have to lead a Recitation and everything. Not a fun prospect for one’s first TAing opportunity. “THANK GOD!” I exclaimed, clasping my hands above my head and imploring the heavens. “I thought I was TAing the graduate version!”

Of course, it quickly became evident that I had misunderstood him, and that I was still slated for the graduate version. And my reaction must have somehow given him the impression that I had Unspoken Issues about TAing his course. I can’t imagine how. :D He asked me to his office to discuss it. I really didn’t have time, but I conceded 15 minutes. We eventually decided that it would be optimal to have me as a sort of co-TA. I would attend the class, help out with grading, answer questions on the Newsgroup, and maybe hold office hours. Still a large responsibility, but 1) I wouldn’t be alone, and 2) I wouldn’t have to hold recitation! We haven’t decided if it will be for the grad or undergrad version, but either way, I’m happy.

I grabbed lunch and returned to the lab to work and eat, finally convinced that I had everything I needed. Then every computer I tried in the lab refused to acknowledge my DVD’s presence. It just showed up as blank. This was a cause of much tearing of hair and rending of garments, as this DVD contained everything I’d done for school since 11th grade. It was the only place I had the Maya files for “Little Old Lady Land” or my Jabberwock or Imperial Walker or Nightmare Before Christmas scene. It was the only place I had the original Photoshop files for my Sandman project or my stuff from AP Art. It was the only place I had my old papers. In other words, it was pretty freakin’ important.

I returned to my dorm, trying not to cry. To my overwhelming relief, it worked fine on my laptop. I immediately copied all the files to my computer and burned a backup DVD. Then I emailed myself all the tutorial files and burned them to a CD, because Murphy’s Law clearly was out to get me.

I was now 1:00. I returned to the lab and saw that Norm had emailed me back, saying that he wouldn’t be able to come to work today and that I should arrange a time with Jan of the HMS lab to present my project. I emailed Jan about what time would be most convenient, then banged my head against the keyboard for an hour, trying to figure out why the tutorial animation was working but mine wasn’t. I finally got the animation working around 2. By 4:30, when I met with Jan, I had accomplished quite a bit! Much more than I could have dreamed I might accomplish in such a short timeframe. There were a couple features that weren’t working properly, but I was still pleased as punch.

Jan was joined by Amy, my advisor and candidate for the most awesome person in the universe. It turned out that the reason Norm couldn’t be in that day was because his son was getting a heart transplant (!!!!!!). Apparently he had been on the waiting list for ages. My presentation went as well as could be expected, then I went back to my dorm to do some more major packing. I headed over to the animation lab at 10 to start my demo reel. And that’s that.

SUNDAY (5/7):

I slept in. Later, we saw The Color Purple, which was absolutely wonderful and exceptionally moving. That evening, we did a bit of shopping, and I got some adorable 3/4 length pants, shorts, and a really cute top. We visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral and took a lot of pictures. I only used up half a roll, so it’ll be a while before I post them.

MONDAY (5/8):

We went to the Met, which was crazy keen. We saw the Munch exhibit, which was jaw-drop-worthy. It was a side of Munch I’d never seen. I just associated him with The Scream and similarly-styled paintings, but that was only a narrow sliver of his full body of work. While at the Met, we also saw a printmaking show, a photography show, and a collection of art by Iraqi and Iranian women. I also got some really cute shoes.

TUESDAY (5/9):

We went gallery-mad! We went to the Frick Collection to see a selection of Goya’s later works, then saw the Permanent Collection, which was astounding. Then we went to the Dahesh Gallery and saw their Permanent Collection and their show on Illustration in the late 1800s-early 1900s. The show was excellent, but some of the works they had in their permanent collection were extraordinary. Zounds. Then we went to the newly-reinovated Morgan Library to check out the illuminated manuscripts, ancient artifacts, and famous literary and musical manuscripts. They had original works by Beethoven and Mozart and Bach and Wagner on one side of the room, then Jane Austen and Willa Cather and Johnathan Swift and Edgar Allen Poe and the three Bronte sisters on the other side. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! It was mindboggling.

Then we flew home.

MORE RECENTLY:

Friday, my Aunt Shere came to visit! I hadn’t seen her in years, so it was such a treat to reconnect. We both got in our Mexican food fix, and she and my parents discussed geneaology. More claims that I am a distant cousin of Winston Churchill and Princess Di! (Yeah, pull the other one.) We shared art work, and she gave me a Flash 8 tutorial! I’m definitely going to have to learn Flash. Then she gave me and my mom detailed horoscope readings, which were AWESOME.

And now it is Mother’s Day! I would like to take this opportunity to state that my mother is the single most fantastic, wonderful, loving mother in the entire universe, and this is not up for debate.

I LOVE YOU, MOM!

Now we’re off to brunch at Lawry’s. Exceptionally posh and crazy delicious. Three cheers for Mommy Dearest!