It's official. I've changed my major. As of the Winter Quarter I will be working towards and MFA in Arts Leadership. I finally just figured I might as well stop fighting the fact that no matter what I do I'm going to end up in the Arts and just embrace it!

"Tom," said Douglas, "just promise me one thing, okay?"

     "It's a promise. What?"

"You may be my brother and maybe I hate you sometimes, but stick around, all right?"

     "You mean you'll let me follow you and the older guys when you go on hikes?"

"Well...sure...even that. What I mean is, don't go away, huh? Don't let any cars run over you or fall off a cliff."

     "I should say no! Whatta you think I am, anyway?"

"'Cause if worst comes to worst, and both of us are real old - say forty or forty-five some day - we can own a gold mine out West and sit there smoking corn silk and growing beards."

     "Growing beards! Boy!"

"Like I say, you stick around and don't let nothing happen."

     "You can depend on me," said Tom.

"It's not you I worry about," said Douglas. "It's the way God runs the world."
      Tom thought about that for a moment.
"He's all right, Doug," said Tom. "He tries."

-Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

I might be changing my major. From this to this.

I found this job posted on craigslist a few weeks ago. It sounds perfect and EXACTLY like what I'm looking for...part time for now that could morph into something else later. It's with a very small start-up nonprofit called Vittana Foundation. They're a microlending firm that works with people in Latin and Central America who want to go to school, but can't afford it.

Anyway, I sent a resume/cover letter about two weeks ago and haven't heard anything. The posting said, "no calls," so I started looking into how to followup without calling. I stalked the CEO on LinkedIn and Facebook and found a couple of people I used to work with who were connected to him. I contacted them and they sent him messages mentioning my name. Another person I used to work with is friends with one of the guys who is listed as an "advisor" to their organization on their website. She sent him a message and he passed my name along as well. I still haven't heard anything!

What do you have to do to get someone to call you?!

This week has been a waiting game and I'm now terrified about the next two and a half days. The first show at our theatre is a patron/press screening on Friday at 2:30pm. That means everything needs to be perfect by then. So far, we've been waiting on artwork, we've been waiting on hardware and construction projects, we've been waiting on ladders. Now, we have two and a half days to finish everything...and we're still waiting on a few things. I can see Friday morning being insane. Keep your fingers crossed that I'm wrong.

Pictures!

The Mushroom Parade has to be one of my very favorite Telluride traditions. There's a Mushroom Festival the weekend before the film festival and the parade is the best part. It lasts about a minute and usually involves a bunch of people in funny costumes just wandering down the street.


This guy is not a lost member of the Grateful Dead, but a San Miguel County Commissioner.
The annual Schlep/Production soccer game was Friday. Production won for the second year in a row. This is the view you get when you play soccer in Telluride.

I know. I know. I've been bad about updating. We've been doing really well. We're right where we need to be to get everything done by Friday. The seats moved in this morning. The theatre seats that we use go from Telluride to Sundance and are used at their festival. They usually come back a little beat up, but this is the worst I've ever seen them. It looked like Sundance had decided to set up a theatre in the snow and left these seats out in the weather for a while. We spent about two hours cleaning them. There are always a bunch of broken seats and, no matter how hard I've tried, I can't fix them. Last year I tried super strong epoxy glue and zip ties to fix the broken arm rests. Nothing worked until one of the very handy guys that works with us came up with a drill and a bunch of nuts and bolts.

Moving the seats in went relatively smoothly except they brought the wrong truck first. The seats are loaded into two separate trailers that go to Utah and then are stored at the Telluride Airport. The seats should unload so that the theatre fills from back to front. This morning, they brought the wrong truck first so the room basically filled from front to back. It caused a few traffic jams, but it worked out.

I'm taking the night off and hanging out in an empty condo by myself. It's great!

Day 1 Done

Curtains hung along the windows to block the light.

The screen frame being put together.

The screen going up.

The artwork being hung. The artwork created for this theatre was specially painted/designed by Chuck Jones. They're all rip-offs of famous paintings using the Looney Tunes characters.

We actually got everything done that I wanted to today. The good news is that most of the other theatres are done so I get LOTS of help. The bad news is that sometimes they won't freakin' leave. The entire rigging department came up today to help put up the screen. The rigging department is in charge of putting up every screen and curtain at the festival and, more importantly, making sure they don't come tumbling from the sky and clunking someone on the head. They came this morning to put up our screen. It was super crowded in the ballroom for a while. Then, the concessions guys came to set up the concessions stands. Then, the art department came to decide how to completely redesign the concessions banners and paint. There were probably 20 people running around the ballroom and lobby for a little while. The best part for me was running from one person to the other making sure everyone had what they needed and answering any questions. It went well though and we got everything done I had on the list today...except for not being able to hang one set of curtains because we still can't find the cables we need to hang it. I'll either find it tomorrow or have more made.

Here we go!

It's raining in Telluride. It is supposed to rain all week. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that the rain will move out this week because we're scheduled to do a bunch of outside work next week. I'll be buying a raincoat if this mess keeps up.

This was my one slow day before the madness starts tomorrow. We have approximately 10 days to get the theatre together. Our first show is Thursday, September 3rd at 2:30pm. Thankfully, every other major theatre is pretty much done so we'll be getting a lot of help. It'll happen. It always does, even though it's always a mad dash to the very end. All I gotta do is make it until September 5th and I'll get a day off!

I should be packing...

...but I'm not. I've always been a last minute packer. At the moment, I'm doing laundry. I should also be cleaning the house to leave it all nice and shiny for the boys. But I'm not. I'm watching the Golden Girls. I have to say, daytime tv never really changes all that much. It's off to Atlanta tonight (red-eye) and off to Telluride on Sunday. So, here we go!

between receptionist friends

J: i just feel like it's such a waste of my life sitting here
me: I feel the same way! The only thing I've gained is an amazing knowledge of popular culture.
J: at least you gained something
me: haha! oh yeah. it's been great.


17 days and counting!

Is this a Southern song?

I really don't think so, but Anders says he's never heard it.

Do your ears hang low?
Do they wobble to and fro?
Can you tie 'em in a knot?
Can you tie 'em in a bow?
Can you throw 'em over your shoulder
Like a Continental soldier?
Do your ears hang low?

Writer's Block Topics from my good friend Amanda

Your job: I go from feeling confident that my job/company are okay to being completely freaked out that I will come to work tomorrow morning and find a boarded up office. I don't even have to watch the news to find out about layoffs and cutbacks because information about this stuff hits my email before it even hits the newspapers. I am sick and tired of being a receptionist, but I think I've resigned myself to weathering this storm as best I can from behind this desk.

Your ideal vacation: My ideal vacation is not the one I just had in Hawaii. While it was great to lie on the beach and read silly books for a straight week, I feel like I saw a resort and not Hawaii. I like to stay in cheap hotels and make the locals tell you where they would go to eat and drink. Actually, my ideal vacation is the one I had in Cinque Terre, Italy. I met some great people who were travelling alone. The hostel was full so we asked one of the guys at the desk where we could stay and went and talked to some old woman in a restaurant. We ended up in a beautiful apartment, ate dinner in the same restaurant and ended up drinking wine with the cook until 4am. The next day we went hiking along sea cliffs and drank beer in every town we came to. That is the kind of vacation I love.

Favorite movie (mwahhahahahah!): This is an evil topic! A few, in no particular order:

Casablanca - I truly believe this is one of the best scripts ever written. How do you get so many memorable scenes and great one liners in one movie?

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Both for the beauty of the film and the way it made me cry for 20 minutes in the corner of the theatre when it was over. The scenes between the old dad and the son killed me.

Rope - My favorite Hitchcock. I love the psychology of this movie and I get to reference it a lot in conversation!

There are more, but I can't think of any!

On living FAR from "home" (discuss): To tell you the truth, living so far from home is not as hard as I thought it would be (given the situations that arise from time to time and make my family nutty). I don't like talking to my parents and hearing how tired and depressed they sound and knowing that I can't even be there to make sure they're eating. I love Seattle and I don't plan on leaving in the forseeable future. That being said, as my parents get older and, depending on where my brother's life takes him, it will be harder and harder to be so far away. I do see myself moving back towards the southeast at some point. I figure I have a good 10 - 15 years to do my own thing before the task of taking care of my brother gets passed on to me. As I told Scott, "when my parents die, I will suddenly have a kid who's only 3 years younger than me."

Ha!

The Director of Photography who was the focus of Christian Bale's freak out on the set of the new Terminator movie is the guy who was the DP on Drumline (which I worked on a lifetime ago). He's kind of a douchebag. This story just got even more hilarious!

I don't think that I'm going to wake up on Tuesday morning and suddenly, all of this nation's problems will have magically evaporated. Although I am proud that this country finally managed to elect a president regardless of the color of his skin, I don't see Barack Obama as the superhero that a lot of people seem to. When it comes down to it, he's still just a human being and, maybe more importantly, he's still just a politician. That being said, eight years of the last administration is definitely enough. It's time to get some new blood in the White House and see if they have any new ideas to get us out of this mess. So, as a goodbye to Mr. Bush, I give you, W's Greatest Hits.