Difficult Activities At Minimum Cussing

Its weird being in a room full of people with everyone clearly speaking english and still not have a friggin' clue what the hell they are talking about.

I was working for the City of Lakewood today, and my job was to shoot a Special Water Meeting Thing at the Ciy of Commerce. It took some time to get there with all the rain and people that don't know how to drive in the rain. I had to move at least $4000 worth of equipment in storm like conditions by myself, and the door to the building only unlocks from the inside, and I had to push a button to alert some person deep in the bowels of the building to unlock the door. This, also with no shelter from the elements.

Sigh.

I got everything inside with minimum cussing, only to discover that they weren't going to use the room they usually have for meetings. The substitute room was a generic spot with white boards on all the walls, and a Rectangle Table, probably to improve blame throwing accuracy. The acoustics were AWFUL, and I was quick to find myself exiled to an awkward corner of the room. I set up my camera, sound mixer, and shotgun mike and started testing the video, lighting, and sound.

Oh god no the sound.

To my left was a big Emergency Exit double door that was apparently out of cardboard, because I could hear every squeek of every tire in the traffic outside, and every drop of rain. And I was at the other side of the room from the main group of people who would do most of the speaking, this made it so the mike would pick up every stray bit of ambient sound as well as the muted version of the people talking.

So the meeting began, and my comprehension went downhill just as quickly. It was "recycled water" this, and "distributor" that, and "filtration system" this, that before you knew it, over 2 hours were eaten up and spit into the "draining cycle" that. I'm just saying, these meetings are for those that already work there, or those who are engineers. If you're just some bearded dude with a soft spot for comics and movies, you might just be a little out of your depth.

After I was done with that, I headed to Lakewood and returned all the equipment. I then headed out to hang with Aaron and Amy. We got some dinner at Islands (its just not the same without Justin), and conversed.

Topics of Conversation @ Islands: Dreams, idiots, coin change, ghosts, poor decisions, potato bugs, etc.

We headed back to Amy's house to watch Season One of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We watched I Robot, You Jane, The Puppet Show, and Nightmares. I have so much fun watching this show, and it was especially great to watch the Puppet Show again. After that, I bidded them good night I headed home.

Till the next blog.

-Nate