Resume workshop and a shopping cart

So today I did a few exciting things. It started off with fetching a few things from upstairs (yippee, stair-climbing!) and then cleaning strip lights. I bruised my shin pretty good when I picked one up and it swung into my leg because the tilt wasn't tight. That was pretty cool. Then I helped focus a few lights and then it was break time! Woo! I'm in a silly mood tonight, I apologize. Anyway, after break I helped haul truss up to the mezzanine level using the chain motors, which is always exciting. We then cleaned some scrollers. I watched my coworker lose her cleaning paper towel (which she had just minutes before told me to hold onto tightly when doing this) lose her pape rtowel in the scroller roll as she lost her grip and it rolled up. It was kind of funny because it moves really fast and there is nothing you can do once you lose it but turn it off and move the scrollers back manually. She lost it at the beginning of the scroll, so it took a while to get it back. Their scrollers are really cool because they have 2 color scrolls so you can mix to create colors. I throughly enjoyed playing with the handy little color wheel that it comes with. Color mixing never ceases to amaze me.

After lunch I returned to the shop and started wrapping LED christmas lights around a shopping cart, or as it may happen to be, the "pinball machine" in Tommy. I felt pretty awesome, lol. That took me quite some time so I ended up spending most of my post-lunch/pre-2nd break time working on that. I returned briefly after 2nd break to staple some lights to the empty picture frame before bustin' out the portfolio. I showed it to my supervisors, which turned out to be both good practice and very helpful. We also looked over my resume before I headed to the intern resume workshop at 5:15. It was supposed to end around 7, but I ended up staying almost 45 minutes late because I wanted to share my portfolio with the woman running the session, who happens to be the one who does almost all of the hiring at CTC. It was great and I took notes, even on stuff I thought I should already know but just really wanted to remember.

I'm currently waiting for my aunt to get home. I called her at 7:45 and she said she'd be home in a half hour. I'm not surprised that it is already 9:00 and she isn't here. She's usually late for most things (though not work, I would imagine. I don't really know). My plans for the evening are to watch Big Brother (again, because I'm cool like that) and then to focus on sound research for my honors project because I have a hard time focusing on that, unlike with lighting research. I tend to get carried away with lighting research and end up doing it for hours at a time. Sound research ends up boring me or I forget to pay attention to the music I have playing in the background (I've got some Debussy playing right now, but I don't think it is what I'm looking for. Too mellow thus far). Otherwise I've just been chillin', drinking some blue moon and eating the nasty Subway I got from one connected to a gas station at 8:00. I know, terrible idea. But it sounded good until I saw the lettuce and tomatoes. I dubbed them too nasty to eat and settled for the hard cucumbers and dried out green peppers. The spinach was the only thing that tasted okay, other than the chicken. I don't really want to talk about it any more.

So that was my overly exciting day. I'm not certain yet if I'm going to bring my laptop to my other aunt's apartment in Fargo this weekend. If I don't, I probably won't blog until Monday when I return. After tomorrow, I don't work again until Tuesday.

Good Changes

So I changed my background today! I'm sure you all noticed right away. It's definitely different and I like it. :D Anyway, today I got to work with the board operator and we were huge geeks and talked about the differences between the boards that we've worked with. I learned the board language for the Congo Jr. today. The Ion board is a command line board that takes commands like we say them: (channel) X @ (level) XX% Enter. No buttons need be pushed to imply channel or level, as the board understands that this is what you mean (unless you want to specify an address instead, but we won't go into that). Congo and Congo Jr are completely different: XX Chan XX Level @. The first X is the channel, then you need to specify it as a channel. Same with the level. the @ serves as the "Enter" that is required for the Ion. To choose multiple channels on the Ion, we type XX "thru" XX @. We can also capture non-sequential channels by using the "+" symbol. The Congo reads as such: XX Chan XX Thru XX Level @ (or replace the thru with an "+" to select non sequential numbers). Patrick, you're probably the only one still reading this, but I wanted to record this for my own records so I can remember this. If you have any other more specific questions, feel free to ask me and I'll try to remember or I'll go ask or figure it out at work. One co-worker said that this is how most boards work and the Ion and other "more user friendly" boards are taking an extra step to make it work that way. It makes me feel good that I have the knowledge to use both types of boards. :D

The Congo Jr not only needs a different order, but needs you to choose a level that is between 0 and 255. She explained it to me as a part of the pixels or something, but I don't quite remember. It's a bit confusing. The board language requires me to think a bit, but isn't too terribly hard to understand. It's really just the habit that's holding me back.

Also, my co-worker and I had a lengthy discussion about the difference between follow times and wait times (they're the same thing with a completely different way of thinking and programming. A follow cue goes into the first cue of the 2 that are linked and requires the addition of the cue time to the amount you would like to follow, while the wait time is in the second cue and needs only the amount of time you intend to wait. Neither action requires the operator to hit Go for the 2nd cue to take place.

Other nerdy conversations included the board language involving "cues," "parts," and that one that basically means cues in their board but is called something else. I think it started with a P but wasn't part. Palettes maybe? Anyway, it was a cool conversation and I'm glad I had that opportunity today.

My favorite button on the Ion is the Undo button. This button does not exist on a non-command line board, which is a tad scary to me. She said she cannot undo something once it has been recorded and can only do the equivalent of our "Go To Cue" button of restoring to the latest recorded cue. Any other changes made since the last record cannot be undone without undoing everything that has been undone since the last record. It's definitely something most designers don't want to hear ("I can't restore that without undoing everything we've just done."), but I think it makes the designers more responsible for keeping track of the changes they are making. The board ops need to be very attentive because recording into the wrong cue could be disastrous. All we have to do is hit "undo" and rerecord the cue as the cue # we wanted.

Anyway, the other things I did today were hang lights on the truss, helped with some uprigging of safety equipment, put to use my new rigging knowledge, and saved 4 things from being raised up on the truss, not to be seen again until focus next Tuesday. I also ran some cables (100' socapex multicables are incredibly heavy!) and tied them up so that they were out of the way. I also saw intern Kevin today in passing and am looking forward to sharing my portfolio with Becky tomorrow. It's been something I've wanted to do and I'm glad that she is able to do this. I will be attending a resume workshop tomorrow after work with the production manager, which I hope is very helpful. I'll keep you up to date.

Tonight when I got home I did some more image researching that I think will help me determine the quality and levels of light I would like to use in our play this fall. It also helped me look at the use of texture and how the subtle color shifts in old photographs affect our interpretation of the mood and atmosphere. If I can combine this with the right music for either complementary or ironic combinations to create the right mood. I think this has been a very helpful step in the process.

Last night's grad school search has left me thinking more seriously about two schools (but I'm certainly not done exploring yet!) : Northwestern University in Chicago and Tulane University in New Orleans. I'm very excited to learn more about other programs, but these are ones that have peaked my interest for various reasons. I'm learning more about what I'm looking for and am trying to do the same for jobs by sorting through job descriptions posted online. Whether or not I'm qualified for the job isn't what I'm looking for so much as whether or not I could see myself doing the job. If I could, I think about why I'm not qualified (as is usually the case) and how I could work on those skills. I've also been looking at what grad schools are looking for for portfolio requirements so I can keep those things in mind as I create my production book for this project. I've been trying to keep a very strict handle on my work and want to document all parts of this process. Paperwork is definitely a high priority for me right now.

Learning how the paperwork is used at CTC has helped me realize what role my paperwork will have in my project and how others want to see it organized. The organization at CTC has taught me a lot because it just isn't practical in an educational setting. There aren't enough people invested in keeping the equipment in good shape, let alone the space tidy. That isn't why they are there though, so I get it. It will just be sort of hard to go back, knowing that I'm going to be that annoyingly compulsive one telling people how to perfect it. I'll probably spend more time than I need to in the theatre trying to get all of my shit organized, but I'm definitely willing to do it in order to pull off two very successful designs. I'm overly excited, really.

Anyway, I've been writing for far too long and would like to get back to my research. I'll let you know what I'm thinking when I get some real thoughts formulated. Have a fantastic evening and try to not let the words suck as you're sayin' them!

Love you!

Tuesday Trussing

Today we put together the truss structure for the fall rep plot. It is for the shows Suessical, Tommy, and Robin Hood. For short, we call it Robin hears the The Who. We all get a kick out of it. I spent several hours hauling and putting together 15' trusses and then spent a good hour labeling cables. After an hour with a fresh role of gaff tape, it hurts to pull it off the roll because it starts peeling off all of the layers of your skin where you're grabbing it and it hurts once you've gotten rid of the dead skin (about 15 minutes in). So I'm a tad sore today (both my back/arm/leg muscles and the skin on my fingers), but tomorrow we're hanging lights. My shoulders will be sore tomorrow, though we can lower the truss to a comfortable level instead of holding lights above our heads like we had to do yesterday when hanging from the bottom of the cats. It should be fun. I'm bringing my super awesome speed wrench that Matt gave me. It should be a good time.

Tonight I came home, cooked a pizza and watched Hell's Kitchen. Then I remembered that I was supposed to call Trevor back, so I finally did that and we talked for a while and worked some stuff out. Namely, the money I owe him from the roadtrip. It turned out to be less than $40, so I'm a happy camper. I also did some grad school research tonight. I have found a few schools that excite me and a few that I know I don't want to attend. I'm still planning on getting some professional experience before applying to schools, but this internship has really helped me figure out what I want to do with my life and the direction I would like to go.

Also today, I had someone check out my portfolio. She told me that I did a really great job with it and that I presented it well. That made me pretty happy and I look forward to presenting it to my supervisor on Thursday.

That's about all of the excitement in my life. I'm tired and going to bed, so suck less with the words, k? Love you all!

Monday

So today was Monday. We hung and cabled lights all day today. It was enjoyable because I obviously love doing it and I felt good because it was something that I knew how to do. It's fun learning the configuration of their stage and just learning all of the little hints and tricks that they use to make things work smoother. They have obviously been doing this for quite some time and have a really good system worked out to make things very smooth. The only thing I don't like as much is that their catwalks aren't very comfortable to work in. I did a lot of crouching today and had to sit down a lot. It surprised me that it was that uncomfortable because our catwalks are fairly easy to sit down and work in. Obviously bending over all day is out of the question, but kneeling is also unbearably awful after a while.

So that was my day at work. I stopped at Walgreens on the way home because I needed milk and cereal, so I thought I'd look for a thank you card while I was there. I happened to find a thank you card with the Cat in the Hat on it, which is perfect for the wonderful people at CTC because we are working on Suessical.

Speaking of which, I'm going to read the script tonight and then (seriously) work on my honors project. I have no other real plans for this evening, so feel free to call me if you want to talk. My bed time is 11pm, so try not to call after that. If you do, I'll probably forgive you. Probably. But that's about it. Don't suck with the words too hard. Have a great night!

A fantastic weekend!

I had the most amazing weekend! It started out with a great day of work (finishing up the moving lights) and talking to Steve. I enjoyed working with him because we actually got to a point where I feel like I could call him a friend. I hope he feels the same way. But on Friday, I just really got a sense of belonging with everyone. I feel like I could easily continue working there because I fit in quite well. I don't feel that anyone talks condescendingly to me. They do treat me like an intern, but only in the nicest way possible. They are very good about making sure that I'm learning, understanding, and trying new things. I've sincerely been enjoying the entire experience.

Anyway, Friday night my aunt and I went to see Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky. It was a pretty interesting movie (in French with subtitles) and I'm definitely glad I went to see it.

Saturday morning I woke up and got ready to go to the Flugtag! We watched one team break the world record: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Im8VtLQgh4 It was very exciting to see and I'm definitely glad I went. Going to see it was Trevor's idea. We got there at 10:40 and the gates opened up at 11. We claimed a space and saved it for Matt and his family. We were hoping to see Patrick and Patty, but they didn't make it until later. At that point, we had already left in hopes of beating the traffic. It wasn't too bad to drive in, despite my lack of city driving experience. Then we came back to my aunt's apartment where we watched "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" (well, almost all of it) until Matt & I had to start getting ready for the aquentennial fireworks party that I had been invited to by my supervisor. We went and got a tour of his apartment. It is super green-friendly and there is a computer control system for all of the LEDs in his place. It was really great! My supervisor also really knows his history of this area so it was great to hear what he had to say about the surrounding area. I especially enjoyed the beautiful view he had from his patio. He played his own music for the fireworks show, which matched up surprisingly well. I also had a fantastic conversation with a wonderful woman named Christine (spelling?) whom I also found very inspiring and encouraging. It was great to talk to her about what the real world of theatre is like and how it is different from the educational setting. It gave me the confidence that I needed when she told me that I have been doing a lot of the things I need to do in order to prepare for life after graduation.

Anyway, it was fantastic. Matt spent the night with me and then we woke up and ate the waffles my aunt had made for us. We then watched an entire disk of Friends (Season 5) and then ate a fantastic lunch. My aunt made 3 dishes: one from Laos, one from India, and one from Malaysia. Because she has actually visited each of these countries, she has learned how to make the food authentic. It's really great, though one of the dishes (the one from Laos) was a bit too spicy for me. I don't really know the names of any of the dishes, but I can ask her later and get those for you if you would like to know. After lunch, I drove Matt home and we joined his family on a trip to a beautiful park where we walked around for about an hour. After a quick dinner at Culver's, I decided it was time to head home. Now here I sit, writing out my blog and wondering what I'll be doing at work tomorrow. I'm excited for my final week of maintenance and am looking forward to tech as well. It's all just been overwhelmingly amazing and I'm sure you're sick of hearing me say how much I love it. But think of it this way: It's better than listening to me bitch about it. Be glad I didn't start a blog last summer. If you don't know that story, call me and I'll tell you about the exciting adventures of my last summer internship.

In the meantime, I'll be working on a few things and heading to bed here soon. Have a fantastic evening and don't let the sucky words make you.

Inspiration

I went to a session today with the Production Stage Manager at CTC, Jenny Friend. She inspired me to just be courageous and to work hard. Those of you who know me know that I actually enjoy working hard (even though I also enjoy bitching about it), so it's pretty cool to meet others who have and do work hard and lead very enjoyable lives. Tonight I'm going to look up some more things about graduate school and write her a thank you note. I want to have a more in-depth discussion with her that focuses more on what I would like to do, because I feel that she would be willing to help walk me through that. Also, I want to talk to the Technical Director. She (that's right, it's a woman!) is also a very hard worker and I feel that she would have a lot to offer in a conversation. I am going to try to set up times to talk to them and I would love to find time to talk to my lighting supervisor as well, though she has seemed overwhelmingly busy getting ready for all of the shows that are getting ready to open in a few weeks. I'll definitely make sure to ask her though, because at the very least, she should be able to find a time for me after the shows open and my internship has finished. At that point, I will be able to meet with her at any point in the day while I'm still here in the cities. In the meantime, my goal is to do some research on what I would like to do with my life and come up with some really concise questions for them.

As for the rest of the day, it was spent fixing moving lights with Steve. It was cool, but not exciting enough to write about tonight. The only other exciting thing is that Matt will be back in the cities tomorrow (yay!) and I'm spending time with him and Trevor on Saturday. I'm going to stop there because my carpal tunnel syndrome is massively irritated from the work we've been doing. Have a great night and try not to let the sucky words you say get you down!

Moving Lights!

Today I got to clean moving lights. It was pretty cool getting to see the inside of the lights before I had to figure out how to track them during tech. Having never actually worked them before, I'm pretty clueless as to what the various instruments can do. My favorite part was the itty bitty gobos that they put in there. I don't know a lot about how computer chips work, so I found it overly fascinating to look at the inside of the instruments. I even got to help replace one of the computer boards that we thought wasn't working, but as it turned out, it was actually the little 'dmx'er that wasn't working properly. Either way, it was cool to get to open it all the way up like that and get to play in it. Unfortunately, it took a while so we didn't finish cleaning up all of the T-beams. I'm sure we're going to finish them tomorrow though.

I felt pretty proud today though because they told me that I'm not as needy as an intern that they've had in the past. They credited me with being the reason that they are ahead of schedule for maintenance. It's not so much that I'm just that helpful, but that I don't take away someone from other work in order to help me. I think they appreciate that I like to try things on my own and just ask questions when I'm not certain I understand instead of trying to make everyone constantly watch or just needing supervision because I suck. I'm glad I'm not sucking, lol. I do feel that I'm learning a lot and I'm definitely appreciative. I try to make sure everyone who is helping me is aware of the fact that I am in fact learning and that I am very glad that they are helpful. I make sure to thank each person after they give me little hints and tips so that they know that I am not mad that they are criticizing me, which I know some people would do if you tried to give them advice. I really do appreciate it, so just saying "thanks" each time they give me advice is how I'm trying to show it. I'm also planning on sending thank you cards to each person because they are definitely all very helpful. I have worked with almost everyone one-on-one which has given me the chance to ask them about their experiences and their advice. People like to give advice and expertise, but they don't always like to do it in front of others, so I try to ask personal opinions when we're working one-on-one. I've heard a lot about the union, jobs to take and what to watch out for, how the interns have been helpful (or not), and just got to hear a lot of their stories. It's really been very exciting for me and I'm of course learning a lot of technical skills, some of which I didn't even know I needed. It really hasn't gotten too boring, though the days occasionally feel long, but I think the fact that I'm not getting paid and that I should really work on my honors project are weighing on me and making me wish I had more time in the day, or at lease more energy when I get home at night. I do get quite tired. Tonight, I'm quite exhausted. This is probably because I did a lot of lifting today when we shuffled lights around, but I certainly don't mind the muscle definition I've been getting.

Sorry this is just a long stream of conscious blog. I guess this is just what has been on my mind today. I'm not even going to pretend that work is going to get done for my project tonight because I'm going to bed in about 20 minutes. The words aren't really even coming anymore at this point, so just try not to suck in the ways with the words that I do. Good night!

Tuesday

Yes, it's Tuesday! I didn't write in my blog yesterday because I was a lazy bum. I didn't really do much that was exciting at work yesterday. I cleaned some instruments and learned about gel condoms. Don't worry, they're only for light bulbs. Today, I cleaned truss and moved a few lights. It was exciting. Not really, it was pretty much how it it would if i were actually working, except that I'm not getting paid. However, it wasn't bad. Just unexciting. I also attended a production meeting today, which was more exciting because I got to meet people and see how the give-and-take works for a a low-budget, minimal support show for children works. It sounds like a great show and I hope the kids have as much fun as it sounds. They were just cast today and the show is in less than 3 weeks. Some of those kids are pretty young, so I hope that they enjoy the process. I don't have a lot to say today, so I apologize for the unexciting-ness of this blog, but I did promise people that I would keep them up-to-date. So if this blog sucks, blame them for wanting to know what's going on in my life.

In other news, I will be watching the aquentenial fireworks this weekend from my supervisor's condo. He has graciously invited the entire crew over to his place because he has a great view from his patio. I'm excited to get to hang out with my co-workers in a casual environment and really get to know them better.

Last night I made a depressingly long list of everything I need to accomplish in the near future. It makes me slightly unmotivated because it's so long, but at the same time it's a kick in the butt to get me moving. Yay for long lists of things to accomplish! Anyway, I'm going to go reread the script for my honors project and make sure I'm still going in the same direction with the music so I can change my mind about mood or add/remove cues that I had looked at before. I should also call Trevor, because I promised him I would. So have a great night and try not to let the words make you suck too.

Christmas in July!

Merry Christmas in July!

So I spent the weekend with my parents at our camper. We celebrated Christmas in July there because we're cool like that. If I don't get the pictures to upload tonight, I'll be sure and get them on by tomorrow. I'm waiting for them to upload to Walgreens so my mom can pick them up and have hard copies to show to everyone since we won first place in the outdoor decorating contest. We go a little nuts, in case you haven't seen my house at Christmas. It's a lot of work, but fun. Like my internship!

Speaking of, I didn't do any real hard work on Friday. We had a rigging seminar on Friday from Bill Sapsis Rigging Inc. The actual Bill Sapsis came and lead our session, and it was both interesting and humbling to learn about the safety of rigging. However, the information he told us over an 8 hour period got a tad long and I may have drifted off during some of his personal stories and some of the more dry, detailed technical information. It's mostly because I don't understand everything that he was saying because I've done essentially no work with rigging unless you count using our two janky fly pipes at GAC. Either way, I took 3 pages of notes on rigging and received a packet to help me remember it all, so I should be good should I ever get the chance to work in rigging. However, I decided that being a stagehand and working in rigging in particular is probably not a life path I would like to take. This is partly because the average life span of riggers is shorter than that of non-riggers. Blame the careless of the injured individual or of any of the dozens of people who touch the rigging and safety equipment that s/he is relying on. I just don't trust anyone enough to put myself into such dangerous positions and trust that everyone else has done their job to perfection so as to ensure my safety. Basically, I just assume that people like shortcuts and being lazy, which means that things don't always get done up to par. That means safety is not always first. I know it sounds overly cliche, but when your life is on the line, safety matters. I don't feel that I can really share much more about the rigging online, but if you want to talk to me about it, I would love to have a conversation with you. Call me!

This weekend also included a meeting for a group senior honors project that my classmates and I are doing. I'm very excited about the project myself and am hoping that everyone stays as dedicated to it this fall as they are now. We're busy, but we're trying to make time for it anyway. I've been mostly listening to music, which is helpful for me, but I really need to get more organized and start selecting pieces for others to listen to. I shared a few things with the group, which got mostly positive responses. I still need to send the directors my links so they can listen more in their leisure time (if they can find the time) because I want them to form real opinions and give me honest feedback. This is my first sound design and I will not be offended if they don't think my music choice matches what they are thinking for the scenes. I want to stimulate conversation, not force musical choices on them. I need a mood from them to get me started, but since I haven't gotten that from everyone, I've just started making a few selections on my own. I'm certainly not married to them and in fact don't even like all of them. It's very hard to get started on a project on your own without knowing what the others are thinking, so I'm hoping that we can really get some good information out of the next meeting. I should have some more music by then and hopefully some light renderings (if I can find the motivation after work some night) after I get a rough sketch from our scenic designer. Other than that, I think things are moving along nicely and most of what we need for this point in the process has been figured out. I might just crack down on each director's scenes for the next few nights and come up with ideas for each one, then call each director and ask them to listen to a few clips. That way I can talk directly to them and see if I'm anywhere near what they are thinking and make sure that there is a cohesive whole for the design process. Again, this depends entirely on my summer motivation and how much energy I have left at the end of the day.

I had a great weekend and got to see Denise, Matt, Dan (and his brother and sister-in-law!), Noah, and much of my family. I'm back here at my aunt's getting ready for tomorrow.

Speaking of which, I should get to bed so I can get up bright and early for work. I'll try to get on again tomorrow night with any exciting new things that I know. In the meantime, remember that if words begin to fail when coming out of the mouth on your face, just know that you with the words, suck too.

Less exciting day

Today I cleaned fixtures until around 11am. Then I went on another tour-filled adventure with Dave, who is just great. He tells me all about the building architecture and loves to say what went wrong with the construction and all of the surprises they encountered. It makes me wary to ever build a home, truth be told. Anyway, my brag of the day is probably that my boyfriend is the model for the corpse flower for July 14th, 2010. Just kidding, that's his brag. Mine is actually that I sorted through over 1200 gel frames today. Then I had to pull staples from the paper frames before removing over half of those gels (all frost gels stay in the paper frames, for those of you who are wondering what happened to the rest). I spent from 12-12:30 and 1:30-3:30 pulling staples and finishing the gel sorting. I then put away the gel frames and spent the remaining time wiping off each individual gel and inspecting it for dust and fingerprints.

As you can probably tell, it was a less exciting day than I've previously been having, but that was all made up for when I met up with Trevor for dinner at Chipotle. I got lost on the way there, but I figured it out eventually. We ate (I had a carnitas fajita) and then walked over to half-price books where I bought a $5 book about wiring. We then parted ways and I came home and watched the episode of Big Brother that I recorded on my aunt's DVR. Yes, I know, it's pathetic, but it's funny. They're all so stupid. Tonight was especially a showcase of stupidity. I then decided that I would be productive, so I am listening to classical music and organizing my thoughts for a meeting I will be attending for my senior honors project on Saturday.

I'm going to keep this short tonight because I have to get up early tomorrow (6 instead of 6:30) to be at work early for a rigging seminar. It should be fun (and especially in comparison to today, should have a bit more to learn). I'll probably not post again until Sunday or Monday because I have iffy internet signals at our campground where I will be this weekend, but I will have my computer for the meeting.

Anyway, have a great night and I hope to hear from more of you! :D

Day 3 of my amazing internship!

So today was pretty exciting. I went to a production meeting (where they talked about curtains for a great deal of the time), completed the remainder of the tour of the building (I think), cleaned and bench-focused some lights, and met some new people! Here's the in-depth version:

The allocation of resources is something that we've talked about at work before. No matter how much shit you have, you're going to want more than you can have. Of course, someone has to say no and then you need to cut back. Or sometimes you say no as a designer for a variety of reasons. At dear old GAC we tend to say no because of a lack of resources or simply because we no longer have that sort of time and energy to give to that particular project. However, today I heard the lighting designer say no because she only has 2 electricians to complete the changeover in the alloted time frame. I know that changeovers can be stressful, but it was a reality check that I would be a part of this frenzy in a few weeks after hearing her say that we just couldn't do it. Afterwards, I talked to her later and found out that I would be giving focus notes to the staff electrician and master electrician while they climbed around on the trusses supported by a harness or hung lights from the genie. It's pretty cool, actually. I'll be in charge of the paperwork in a very fast-moving environment, which I hope will give me the professional experience of fast-moving theatre that we just don't get in Gustavus's cushy educational setting. Don't get me wrong, we get shit done fast, but usually just because we want to go home. Here, it will be do or die. I hope I don't screw up because I'm trying to keep up, but I think I have a fairly good handle on the things I need to accomplish. As it is an internship, she expects to take the time to go through how to do focus charts, track moving light palettes, and use Lightwright. I'll gain all of those skills and be able to use them while I'm working on my senior project.

At the meeting I also met the sound intern, Kevin. He'll be around for the TAT show (which stands for Theatre Arts Training, as I read on the sign I've walked by everyday this week without realizing it) so I should be getting to know him better then. He seems pretty cool, so I have high hopes that it will be a fun working environment (despite the fast pace!)

Anyway, I toured the remainder of the theatre today with Dave, who is super awesome. He pointed out all of the features that make their lives easier or more difficult, talked about the history of the architecture, fixtures, dimmer system, and staff as well as the stages of building that they underwent during the construction of the Cargil Theatre. Dave showed me each lobby and the various areas of the grid and catwalks, talking about the initial plans, where they got cut or messed up, and how that's affected what they do. It's pretty interesting to hear about what they wanted and how they had to cut back in some places and also just the few mis-communications that ended up changing a few things. For example, they didn't know that the building company was going to put the remainder of the AC vents on the top of the old theatre and got an unexpected surprise when there was a giant section of their dimmer room that was suddenly walled off. It meant that they couldn't install as many dimmer racks, which was sort of a bummer, as you could imagine.

Also, yesterday I wrote about climbing up to the mainstage grid. I wanted to clarify that the floor I was standing on was 73' feet above the stage height. It was sweet, but climbing the straight ladder was freaky. I still feel cool that I did that.

Also, I cleaned some fixtures today and realized that it is very easy to put a source four together "upside down." If you don't know what I mean, come visit me at school and I will show you how some of our instruments look and how they need to be put together correctly. Or take my word for it.

I also learned a lot while bench focusing today, which basically means putting the hotspot of the light in the center and making sure that it isn't too hot or too flat. It's a bit tricky, but definitely worth fixing. I would love to bench focus the source fours at GAC before I'm forced to use them for my lighting design. There have been a lot of times when we need to have the lights fixed, but we're not supposed to touch the bench-focusing knobs (because we could make it way worse if we don't know what we're doing, so I get it), but my supervisor who happens to do five million things, doesn't exactly have time to sit and bench focus lights during tech. That's why I would want to do it before hand. I'll let you know how ambitious I feel later and we'll see if that gets done.

While bench focusing, I learned about the various instruments. There were some pretty cool innovations that were made along the way, so it was fun to see the progression throughout the history of just the lights that they have at CTC. I can write more tomorrow or you could ask me any questions you have, but in short, it was absolutely fascinating.

I didn't work on my sound design project last night. I talked to my aunt in Fargo on the phone for 45 min about the storms that hit there last night and all the exciting reality tv shows that we watch. I will shamelessly admit I watch Hell's Kitchen. It's fantastic. I even got my boyfriend Matt hooked on it. Speaking of him, you may want to check out his brand-spanking new blog: http://chembromance.blogspot.com

Now that I've bored/entertained you for the evening, I hope you have a lovely Thursday tomorrow. I certainly will, as I'm meeting my awesome friend Trevor for dinner. And wouldn't you know it, he has a blog too! So in case you want to read that one (Cuz his is by far the least nerdy of the three of ours), his is here: http://theorangesplotch.blogspot.com/

Have a great night and I'll hopefully be back tomorrow to tell you about my sweet internship. Remember, when the words fail you, you'll probably still sound cooler than me.

Internship!

Writing a blog...I never thought I'd do it. I'm usually fairly far behind on the technology (unless it's for the theatre), as is proved by my basic model cell phone with no texting or internet access and 1st generation nano. That being said, I thought I'd start a blog to keep you all updated on my internship and, after graduation, the job I hope to get. I'm terrible at writing letters and remembering to call people back before obscene hours of the night, so now you can stay updated without trying to get ahold of me. It's both convenient and creepy! And now, for the post!

I started my internship at Children's Theatre Company yesterday. I am the electrics intern and will be serving as the Assistant Lighting Designer for the TAT show in a few weeks. What does TAT stand for? I don't remember. Teaching Arts something, I think. I'll let you know when I remember, but I've been told so many things in these last two days I can hardly remember acronyms. It's been really exciting though, to see a different theatre and how they do things. I definitely have learned some things I want to take back to Gustavus, like a more efficient way to coil cable, hang it on the electrics, and more about different lighting technology. If you want to know more, talk to me. I won't bore the non-theatre people in my life with the details, but CTC has some pretty sweet technology, especially in caparison to what little I've been exposed to at Gustavus. I've also learned a great deal about the history of CTC, like how they've adapted the lighting and how the architecture of the building affects the productions.

I had the opportunity to climb the straight ladder up to the very top of the theatre today, which admittedly freaked me out a bit, but I certainly didn't want to pass up the chance to see what it was like up there. It's totally safe once you've reached the top, but climbing that ladder is just a tad scary. I also pulled up a socapex cable (which can handle 6 lights, so you can imagine how heavy that is) from the floor all the way up to the top grid, which I believe is 80 feet in the air. It got considerably lighter as it neared the top and I had less to pull, but it was ridiculously hard at first. I'll be pretty ripped by the time I'm done working there! I plan on keeping in shape after it ends by belly dancing since I'm already gaining the arm, leg, and back definition I need. I've been feeling ridiculously energized by the endorphins because I'm not used to doing heavy lifting for 8 hours a day, especially in the summer. I usually just kick ass for a day to hang lights or again to take them down, but this has been 2 days of striking lights in 2 theatres, which is both awesome and a lot of work, but I knew it would be.

Anyway, I shouldn't make this too long or no one will actually read it. My goals for tonight include working on my sound design project for the fall and possibly going for a jog. Again, after sitting for a bit when I get home, I get restless and want to move again. Or maybe that was just the ice cream I had yesterday...you know, the one with all the sugar.

Anyway, you all may certainly comment on this blog and tell me about your summers (or link me to your blogs) or you could just be a creeper and read about me without telling me anything about you. That would be disappointing for me though, so maybe make an effort to comment every now and then, okay? Until next time, remember that when words fail you, they've probably already failed me too.