No, I am not “Sick and Tired” in the sense that I don’t like what I am doing, I am actually sick with a little head cold and very tired.  I am thankful that tomorrow is Sunday and that means we get to sleep in and have a pretty relaxing day.  I do have to say though, I would rather be sick now, at the beginning of the summer rather than in the middle like last summer.  I am sure that once I kick the “camp crud” that everyone gets at some point each summer, I will be fine.  I am sure that it is just the adjustment to the schedule and demands that wear on you here and I know that I will bounce back strong.

One of our little games has begun for the summer.  Being part of the IA/FA media services team or “Geek Squad” (we even have t-shirts) means that you get to play fun photo games.  Rich (the staff photographer) and I are often on the lookout for funny “bubble” pictures.  Last year we had quite a few and the games have begun anew this season with this photo:

Um, so yeah, that is me on the horse with Rich's thought bubble...

Yes, we love to make fun of eachother.  I just thought it would be fun to have a photo of me on a horse in my duster.  I wanted to have my hat as well, but rules are rules and CJ won’t have any photos of people not following the rules, so a helmet it was.  Funny thing was, that while I don’t really know much about riding, I have ridden before (though I don’t know if I have ever ridden English Saddle, or if that is even the correct term), but I think that I surprised CJ in that I knew something about what I was doing.  Of course in Rich’s eight years at camp he has yet to get on a horse so I won’t have any funny shots of him riding…

Beyond that, it is the second day of camp and we (Rich and I) are already running around like crazy.  I have racked up like 70 miles of driving for camp business, and most of that is just going back and forth the 2.2 miles between camps.  I made at least four trips today I think.  The problem is that both camps had big events that needed our services at the same time.  We have decided that we actually proved tonight that we are interchangeable.  Rich is supposed to be the photo guy and I am supposed to be the video guy, but we both can do both and did do both tonight because there was no way that we could both cover both events. (let’s seem how many time i can use “both” in one sentence)

For the most part the boys don’t really pay us any mind, but when either of us walk into the girls camp with a camera on, we are the most popular people in camp.  Every ten steps there is another gaggle of girls asking us to take their photo or to film something they made up.  Almost every girl in camp stops to say hi to us, it is quite amusing.  Some of them seem to think that I am a jungle gym, but there are worse things.  Needless to say, they run us ragged here and it is only day 2!  At least I can usually go to bed at a reasonable hour whereas Rich stays up sorting photos and uploading them for the parents to see.  If Rich misses a daily upload people call in asking about their kids and sometimes they even ask if Rich is OK.

My first video of the summer was shown this evening, but I don’t think that I can really share it on the tubes.  I am not sure that the people in it would appreciate that.  It was a fun project and the campers enjoyed it.  I will have other videos that I can share as the summer goes on.

Just another day in one of the best places to spend the summer.  Even if I am sick, tired and over-worked, it is still fun.  Don’t ask me how that can be, just know that it is!

Today is the preview night for our production of “Touch(ed),” a brand new play by Bess Wohl. It is a great show and for anyone in the SLC area I would very much recommend that you come see the show. It is a very moving story about two sisters, one who has been in a psychiatric hospital and the other hoping for her recovery.

I have been pretty happy working on this show and it has been interesting, but it certainly has not been a cakewalk show from my end (lighting). This is the first time that I have worked with lighting designer Phil Monat outside of a large musical. The last three shows we did together were the season openers, so huge productions. This was supposed to be a small one, but I should have known better…

We finally finished hang today, after Phil called me to tell me that he just had to add one more light. One more light? That has been the story of my week. I understand when the director and playwright change the show around and scenes are not played where they used to be or new content is added. I understand adding fixtures for that, but for things that were on the groundplan originally, one would think that you could figure out how everything worked (like shots around legs).

On top of everything I have not been feeling great over the last couple days.  I have had a head cold and just felt generally crappy.  I am sure that contributed a lot to my not being happy about all the extra work that I have had to do on this show.  I am finally starting to feel better, but my nose is still stuffed up and I am really tired.  I think that my general bad humor over the past days has rubbed off and I don’t think that it makes Ruth happy,  but I don’t mean to be so grumpy.  It is just hard to not be grumpy when you are sick and tired (literally).  I have been sucking down DayQuil and Airborne and as much liquids as I can drink.  I just hope that I feel better by the time my parents get to town.  I have to lead services at temple on Saturday morning , so it would be nice to be able to breathe again!

Apparently I am not the only one who is not feeling well today though.  Our two female leads were not in great shape prior to curtain tonight.  We know that at least one of them was puking and the other was feeling nauseous.  So we have the barf buckets out backstage and the understudies waiting in the wings.  It has just been a rather ominous start to the run of this show.  We had issues with the house lights not going out last night during the invited audience performance, and we had issues with worklights being left on tonight.  We just can’t seem to win.

On the upshot, my photos from last night came out great.  Thanks to Nikon for conveniently releasing a new firmware update for my camera that seems to have made it work so much better.  If you are interested in seeing the photos from last night you can find them at http://www.ptcphotocall.com

So, despite everything the show is really amazing and worth coming to see.  I think that now that we are open I will feel a lot better.