Housing Hunting ...

Wow, I have to wonder how many students are homeless at the beginning of the semester. It is really hard to find housing less then a month before school begins. Everyone I call is full. Sigh ... I guess I shouldn't have been so picky last semester. I started my apartment hunting last February with my roommate Sariah. I just wanted the best deal ... which really doesn't exist. I now have to hunt and give in to what I normally wouldn't want. Now, I find places that would have worked fine, but are now full. It's my senior year! With my roommates seperating ways, I guess I wanted at least one thing right. Oh well.

I may have one place that is a possibility. I am going to look at it now. It was not the location I was looking for, but rent is cheap and it's a 4 person apartment. It may be just fine with what I need. We'll see ...

Gotta start walkin'. I need to time how long it takes me to get from campus to the complex. It's only five blocks so it shouldn't be too bad! If this place doesn't work out, I'll have to raise my rent price a lot. I only wanted about $240/mo, but those have been long gone. Now I'll have to settle for $280/mo with the way things are looking. Of course that is still cheap compared to other colleges and such, but compared to my $199/mo last year, it's quite a jump!!

Happy hunting!

BYU Ballroom Dance Company in China Tour Slideshow
Found through the BYU Homepage
Images by Jaren Wilkey

Doing well!

I am finally getting into working from home. I had such a hard time at first, but now I am loving it and don't want it to end. It is a bit hard to put in several hours because time goes slowly with these projects. My favorite right now is being able to transcribe the journal of my great, great grandmother. It's difficult to read, but so worthwhile when I am able to decipher each entry. It is a five year journal so there is a little message every single day of the year. It was hard at first because I started with her journal that showed the decline of her last years and I saw the constant sickness and doctor visit and the harder it was for her to write. When I finished with that journal, I went to one written about ten years before and began to find entries about the war. It was very seldem and only in 1942, but it was fun to be able to not only see her day to day life with family, but also catch a bit of events in that time.

I also am able to scan pictures of my grandparents when they were young. Apparently my mother sees similarities of my looks with that of my grandmother in her wedding picture. It's great to learn of our history and be able to see connections with our ancestors.

I also helped my mother with a Christmas gift as I learned to work more in Photoshop and greatly take stress from mom. It was a great project as I was collecting pictures of my grandmothers and great grandmothers. I look forward to my next project which is to take the old children's tapes we had fallen asleep to when we were yound and convert them over to CD. That will bring back a lot of old memories of my childhood. That'll be fun!

Scanning away ...

Well ... I'm home in AZ and all I've been doing is odds and ends around the house to get money for college. Yeah, it's not really doing much, but that would be my own fault. I am scanning pictures for family to better organize photos into CDs and DVDs. I'm also helping with other family history projects here and there.

I'm really enjoying doing some scrapbooking of old memories. I thought I finished my high school years, but found a box of more memories. I've also got to go through my college papers and scrapbook all that, too. It's great to remember the old times. It shows how much I've been blessed through the years.

Back Home

I've had a relaxing family vacation at the Cabin in Pinedale, AZ. It was a nice retreat and we were able to go shooting, fishing, horseback riding, and doing campfires as a family. We are all now home in Mesa. My mom loved having all eight of us together, the first time since Christmas. We hope to try and make it into a tradition to gather together at least once a year as a family to do a camping sort of activity.

Well ... I have shocked my mom at my abilities with a 12 gauge shotgun. Actually, I surprised myself. I haven't picked one up in several years since I bruised my shoulder the first time I shot one. Well, I now find that I can shoot clay pigeons out of the sky during my first and second attempts (each attempt has four shots). I apparently hit more than half. Apparently, I am also good with a gun. I've always liked pistols, but now I've gotten over my fears of rifles and shotguns. I'm hoping to get a group together and go to a shooting range sometime this month.

I plan to rest a lot while I am at home, but my parents want me to look into a possible part-time job with surrounding theatres or work with family history. We'll see what the next two months have in store. For now, I look forward to rest. If only I was in walking distance to the library ...

Keeping Busy

Well, time flies quickly when one is at work. I have finally finished working Stadium of Fire and I now have time to relax and get back to life. I have no idea the hours I’ve worked or what I will be getting paid. I’m a special case because I get paid by one company, was gets handed over to another company for work. It doesn’t always work out very well because I should only work 10 hours a day, but with lighting, we work longer then that. Therefore, I have submitted the hours I was at the stadium, but I do’t know if I will actually get paid for all thoses hours. I’ll find out when my paycheck is mailed to me.

It was a great experience! I hung out will all the old guys I knew from the two previous years. I worked with the lighting crew the whole time, and got some more experience and learning fro it all. For the show, I was one of the four spot operators, and to help out, I assisted the spots in calling parts of the show that I knew. It went well enough. We did lose power to a spot halfway through the show, but it didn’t cause too much problems thankfully.

I find that Stadium of Fire is more stress then it is worth. It is already going around that one does not want to be a lighting designer for the show because it is way too frustrating. They can’t begin designing until the sun goes down which puts in all nighters, then they usually have to wait for rehearsals to finish before beginning, which doesn’t happen until past midnight each night.

I felt so bad though because we had an amazing sillouette number that really would rehearse all night to get it perfect, but when the time came, to perform, it was cut. I don’t know if it was due to a problem with the screen, or if there wasn’t time to do it. The dancers put in so much work and it was an amazing patriotic number. It’s aweful that they were unable to perform it.

For strike, I was put in charge of cable world so I stayed in the tunnel with all the cases and directed people to where all cables should be place and the organization of cases for all the lighting equipment. I got three other girls to assist me and I put the men to work. It was slow at first as we had to pull the cables from the stage and field, but it went quickly. People kept coming to me with questions and equipment, and I was able to easily give them idrection. It was great to know I am finally learning how to be a leader. When all cases were packed, I enjoyed ordering the people of which cases to roll to the parking lot first. I was running around, giving directions of which case needs to go and we had such a huge group of labors, it was a constant flow until all cases were out and loaded. We finished up at 4:30am.

Now, the wise thing for me to have done would to go to bed, but I wasn’t tired at all. I stayed up until 6am looking at tour pictures that were just posted for the group. I was then very tempted to jump on a bus and begin heading north, but thought sleep was a good idea. Unfortunately, as soon as I fell asleep, it was impossible to get me up again. I didn’t get out of bed until 2pm. I was so frustrated with my lack of self-discipline because I wanted to be on my way to Roy before noon. Grrr …

I did catch the 811 bus at 2:55, then connected with the Sandy Trax, then onto the new FrontRunner. It was a fun trip that only took 3 1/2 hours. I was able to spend time with family - aunts, uncles, and cousins. It's been so long since I've seen some of them, one family I haven't seen for at least eight years. I spent the night in Roy, then was able to return to Provo with my parents Sunday evening.

My Next Adventure ...

So, on Monday I began work with Stadium of Fire 2008. It was HEAVEN!!! I discovered on Saturday that the Louisiana Boys (my connection to working SofF) were not hired on this year. Therefore, I was worried about what I would be helping out with this year. When I walked into the Stadium, I met the lighting guys from last year. I automatically got onto their crew! They kept asking where I had been and had hoped that I would be available to work. It felt great to hear that they remembered me and are eager for me to continue work. The first thing I did was be in charge of running DMX and addressing the moving heads. Jaimie, the Master Electrician, gave the job all to me, so I counted cable, organized, and ran cable. I only made one mistake (which is good for a DMX hang) because the plot was hung differently then it showed on paperwork which threw me off a bit ...

On Tuesday, work began at 9am and it was a hot day! I'm sure it's hotter in Arizona, but working outside did wear me out. There were a lot of moments where we just sat around (due to scenic issues), but I did climb up and down 20ft towers running cables and addressing moving heads. I am so sore, but it could be the fact that I got a nice sunburn on my arms - or it's because I ran cables for the front of house for a few hours. I worked until midnight, even though there were still a few more hours to work, but I wasn't doing much and what was left is programming lighting positions, which is for the Lighting Designer to do.

I love Stadium of Fire! Although I plan on leaving Provo next year and prefer not to return, I will come for one week out of the year to work Stadium of Fire. I would love to make it a yearly job opportunity ... I should really look into that, whether I consider joining one of the teams who are hired on, or to keep my name with the task force. We'll see how it goes. John, the man in charge of lighting, is really helping me out with networking as he introduces me to several different people working this show, so we'll see what the future brings ...