Wednesday, September 9, 2015

When pigs fly

I have just had an epiphany.

I am looking forward to going to work tomorrow.

David: Ok...?

Clearly, this doesn't seem to be as big for other people as it is for me. Let me put it in context. I can't remember when I've ever looked forward to going to work.

1st job: Administrative assistants assistant. And I was a foolish young teenager in Turkey. I made a chain out of paperclips and cleaned the coffee machine. The building had air conditioning and people mistook me for a Turk. I had no idea what I was doing. It was... interesting. And, from what I recall, short lived.

2nd job: Stagehand, Iowa State Center. The hours were bad.

3rd job: Scheman Staff, Iowa State Center. The hours were better. All manual labor, but there was this boy I liked... (David. Ended up married. In case you didn't catch that.)

1st internship: Camera Monkey, Iowa Cubs. Pretty awesome, actually, for an internship. But long and hot. Good skills, though. And paid! And free stuff and baseball.

2nd internship: Reporter, with a person that shall not be named. Let's just say I survived. Possibly scarred.

4th job: Cashier, Panera Bread. Yeah, the food was good. The micromanaging was not.

5th job: Valvoline Instant Oil Change. Working on cars was fun. But let's just say I wouldn't take my car there...

6th job: Place that shall not be named. Took me a good 3-6 months to recover from being fired.

7th job: Stagehand, CY Stevens. Infrequent, but interesting. I enjoy being there, once I'm there.

8th job: My current job!

So, I don't remember if I mentioned this, but I run video camera at church. My uncle got me into it, saying, "it's really flexible." I like flexible and I had experience (see first internship), so I volunteered. (note: Uncle flaked out)

Sometime later, the director offered me a ppt summer job with Channel 12, the local station for the City of Ames. Also, flexible. I like flexible.

Basically, Derek has an intern or two lurking about at any given time, but sometimes he wants another camera monkey, and so I was that monkey. It netted me a few extra hours during the summer and some fun evenings at the Ames Municipal Band concert, as well as an education on all the other buttons on a camera that I never had to deal with in Cornerstone Church or at the I-Cubs (like ND filters and Gain and White Balance).

Derek's intern left back for college. Oddly enough, it took my mother saying, "Well, why don't you be his intern?" for me to even consider it.

He made me say nice things about my boss (him), but in the end offered me the job. Which includes using cameras, getting footage, attending meetings, going to shoots, editing video (new skill), and laughing at his jokes. Or him. Maybe I'm doing it wrong...

So this is the first week that I've really been scheduled for more hours and he's teaching me editing. And that's all very fascinating (although I still need to be led like a child through editing), and I am enjoying it.

And looking forward to work tomorrow. Which I didn't think possible.

So I guess the zombie apocalypse is next, or the sky falling, or Russia nuking us, or something.

Friday, September 4, 2015

Tragedy

I was biking home from the grocery store with a box of wine, a jar of raspberry preserves with seeds (because what is the point of raspberries without seeds?), and two Snickers bars in a bag hanging on my handlebars.

The end of my brake line was scoring the bag when it swung that way, but I wasn't planning on keeping the bag, so I didn't care. And then I went over the bump at the end of my driveway. The (rather heavy) jar of raspberry preserves jolted through the broken part of the bag and shattered on my driveway.

I scooped up the bulk of it in one hand and fumbled with the keys to the garage door with the other. I couldn't get in the door to the house; it had stuck, as it does occasionally. David was home, I knew, so I pounded on it. Nothing. I then went to the front door of the house and let myself in there (more key fumbling) and then splattered the kitchen floor with preserves as I pulled out a tupperware. I tried picking out the glass shards and then scraping off the whole front of the preserves still clutched in my hand.

On rather sound advice, I abandoned the preserves (after making one sandwich, which did not end up having glass in it).

So don't drink wine! It's bad for you! Or your preserves. Or don't bike? Or don't go to Fareway? I don't know what the moral is, but any story that ends with me losing my raspberry preserves has got to have a moral somewhere.

---

Derek: Oh, oh, I know the moral. Pick me!
Me: What is the moral?
Derek: Don't carry your preserves in a bag with your box wine while biking while your break line is scoring the bag.

Thanks, Derek. We'll all take that to heart.