Ugh. We were loading in the set for 7 hours yesterday, until 2 AM.

My body was already tired, and now I've spent the whole day coding, tiring out my eyes.

And we have rehearsal until 1 in the morning.

Meanwhile, I'm plunging into a neurotic state about my body. "I want a snack! NO! Carbos are bad! But I'm hungry! What about my costume? Think of your stomach!"

Thanks, American culture.

*****

Most of my grad school agression is now squarely directed at Brenda.

I know - how is that different from before? I suppose I believe now that it's really just Brenda who embodies all that I hate about this program. (Sometimes the directors do, but not always.)

I think that during our little mediated meeting with Jesse, she lied through her teeth to make her look like the good guy.

She is an actress, after all.

I also think that she feels a little threatened by me. She's seen me act, and she knows I'm good. Oh, and I'm smarter than her when it comes to technology - a fact that she loathes.

But I couldn't care less about all of that crap, as long as she keeps it to herself (which she doesn't.)

What really gets me is that she can't stand to be out of control. At our client meeting on Friday, she wouldn't shut the fuck up. Talking the whole time, taking complete control of the meeting.

Attention Brenda: You are not the leader of the group, you're the advisor.

Her picture is in the city paper today in an article they did about the program. Grrrr. And she gave her name to them as one of those pretentious hyphenated names. Ew.

I did get a little bit of vindication at the meeting, though. I had spent all week on designing and implementing an interface for the kids to use to pick their puppets. It was all in Macromedia Director, and even though it lacked artistic polish, I was pretty darn pleased with my work.

When we finally got around to showing the museum staff, they liked it. They really didn't have anything bad to say about it.

"I like the wording - it's simple but effective -- It's got everything it needs to have -- It's adorable."

Brenda, hearing none of this praise, starts to pipe up. (God forbid that it should appear that Brenda doesn't have creative ownership of a part of our work:)

Brenda: "What about just having the interface with just voice?"

Staff: (visibly perplexed) "What, you mean without the text?"

Brenda: "Yes, just voice prompts and pictures."

Staff: "Well, I think this text is all very good."

Brenda: "Well, how much work would it take to just make it use voice and pictures?"

Me: "The text is a critical part of the interface. It would be possible, but it would need to be completely redesigned."

Brenda: "Right, so what if we just spoke the text and used only pictures?"

Staff: "Kids will be with their parents. Besides, we'd need to make it accessible for the deaf."

Brenda: "Oh."

The conversation isn't exact, but it's close. It really reminded me of the old "You could fly standby!" routine from February.

Afterwards, one of the museum staffmembers turned to me and said "This is really elegant!"

I was very happy that the museum people shut Brenda the fuck down. It was totally ridiculous to be challenging my work when we've been talking about this interface for weeks and weeks. If she wanted it to be voice-only, she should have brought it up in a group meeting. (notwithstanding that it's not a really viable idea to begin with.)

She should NOT have begun challenging my work in such a forum. Especially not after the museum was HAPPY with it. I swear, she only hears what she wants to hear. But the museum wasn't having any of her crap that time.

Of course, I will be penalized in my process grade for being "difficult" and not considering her suggestion (even though it was the museum that shut her down.)

Most of the time, she doesn't even provide her ideas as suggestions. In today's meeting: "Athena, can you add a music choice selection screen to the interface?" First of all, no, I don't have time, it was never discussed. Second of all, I don't think the kids need that much complexity - our tests last week indicated the music was fine as randomly cycled background fare. This isn't supposed to be an involved selection process.

A better way to breach the subject is, for example: "What does everyone think about giving the power to select music instead of randomly playing it?"

God, she makes me so annnngrrryy.