But here is one reason why yesterday sucked.

One of the set pieces we have to deal with is a large fake log half-buried in a snowbank. It's a very cute effect. The snowbank was painted green for a Summer Conservatory show. My set designer - the Diva's sister - decided it would be too hard to paint it back and instead decided that someone should hot glue white sheet batting to it.

spaceyacey523 spent what had to be at least 3 hours gluing stuff to this log. We only had 1 piece of sheet batting, so that went across the front. It had kind of a funky fold in it, but no big deal. After that one sheet was in place we were left with nothing but the kind of batting that you use to stuff stuffed animals. It hot glued into place like puffy while blobs, or perhaps warts, but the show opens tomorrow and we had no choice. I burned 2 of my fingers badly and accidentally pulled the blister off one in my haste to remove the burning hot glue from my poor finger. Then spaceyacey523, not ten minutes later, did the exact same thing. It was very hard not to call her monkey-see-monkey-do for the rest of the night.

Finally the log was done. It didn't look great, there were places that looked rather diseased, but people kept reminding me about the 20-foot rule. The first thing my tech crew did was scrape fully 3/4 of the white stuff off the log while trying to move another set piece around it. But, finally, after 2 days of tech, we made it to act 2 and the log came out on stage. There certainly was something to that 20-foot rule - the log looked completely different than it had backstage. There was a moment of silence. Then a small voice from the back of the house rang out.

"Oh my God, it looks like a giant penis."

That voice was mine.

When the crew finished pissing themselves with laughter I asked my lighting designer, name_ommited if there was anything he could do to make the log look less like a dick.

When that round of hilarity passed, I ventured a glance at the stage again. Nope, I still have 2 boys with a sled sitting on a giant phallus.

"name_ommited," I pleaded. "Isn't there anything, a wash, a special gobo, anything at all you can give me to make that thing look less like we castrated the Abominable Snowman?"

I got a blackout.