Photo Shoot!

Yes, a very unoriginal title this time. I got lazy. And this will probably be the smallest text post ever. Yesterday, a friend from back home posted on facebook that she wanted to do a photography session. So shoot, I volunteered! I went over there today and had an absolute BLAST! She asked if I had ever thought about/done modeling and I said "not really" (it doesn't really count when you're 6-years-old) and she said "well you should!" It made me smile. :) Anyway, here are a few pictures from the day! Enjoy! :) (and might I add... after 23 years, I think I have finally figured out how to do my own hair and makeup. haha)

PS, all pictures are by Kati Henshall - she's fantastic!

It Just Keeps Going and Going, and...

Wow, I haven't gotten this behind in quite some time! Let's see... where do I even begin? I finally renewed my gym membership last week and I'm trying to go at least 3-4 times a week if not more. We'll see how well that works out. I went country dancing again last Wednesday and it was probably one of the most fun times I have ever had, and I was only there for about an hour! But for that hour, I was dancing literally nonstop. I have never had so many people ask me one after the other. It was crazy!

Thursday, I went up to SLC to meet with Ty, the DP for the film I'm starting, to look at the sound equipment they have available to them and to let them know if it is all the necessary sound equipment. Oh yeah, I got work on another film! It's called "The Kane Files" and we start filming on Monday. However, though we haven't started yet, I feel like I have been kept plenty busy this whole week. I'm the sound mixer on this one (usually I'm boom - this will be the first feature I have been the sole mixer) and so that means that I am involved in all the pre-production side of things and have been talking back and forth with the producer multiple times a day. It's a whole new experience, but it has been really good for me.

Fri-Sat we had a Relief Society retreat... I was originally not going to go, because I normally hate RS stuff; but I decided I should probably give it a chance and ended up going. I was so glad I went! As it turns out, I am in a ward with hardly any girly-girls! The evening consisted of hot tubbing, mafia, and a Wii. haha I thought it was awesome.

Saturday afternoon I went to a football party to watch the BYU/SDSU game. A guy in our ward has a party for every away game and he always has a really good turnout. Afterwards, my friend set me up on a semi-blind date (turned out I had actually met him before) and we all went to the Corn Maze at Thanksgiving Point. It was actually pretty fun.

Sunday I got to play Settlers after church again! It was a fun tradition back in April/May and I'm happy that I now have friends who *do* play every Sunday! So I played it with Shark and Rob (FHE brothers) tonight and then we went to ward prayer. Afterward, we had yet another highly successful round of ward game night at my place! :) A guy in our ward told me and Karie that we are "the popular apartment" now. Haha sweet!

Yesterday I went with my great uncle (my mom's uncle, Roger) to visit his friend who owns "this studio." The way Roger was talking about it though, it sounded like this small studio where a few things come through every now and then. Oh no. This studio... MASSIVE. It was where we filmed HSM3! We pulled in and I said to Roger, "I've been here before!" Yeah, this place is no small thing. It's a massive warehouse with multiple stages and sets, a 50-foot green screen, and it's pretty much amazing. And the guy who owns it, James, basically gave me an open-ended offer to come and work for him whenever I want! He knows that I'm about to start work on this film, but told me that whenever I wanted to come in, just let him know! He even has an office for me! Awesome! Oh and below are some sweet pictures of the awesome set they are currently creating for this film called Area 51.





Afterward, I went to the production office for the film I'm about to start and got everything squared away with that, signed some paperwork, got the paperwork for my boom ops, and headed home. However, when I got onto the freeway, I suddenly felt like I was in L.A. traffic again. We were moving ridiculously slow and I knew something had to be up. We finally passed one accident and I thought I was home free... wrong! After talking with my mom for 40 minutes and only going about 11 miles, I decided to ditch the whole freeway idea and take back roads all the way home. After all, I have a GPS now!

So I started on the back roads and turned on a traffic/news station to hear what was up with I-15 S. Turns out, there were not one, not two, but THREE separate accidents down I-15 S! My goodness. All in all, it took me nearly two hours to drive what is normally only about 45 minutes. Yikes.

THEN... I got home and ended up talking with a friend who is an aspiring photographer and wants people to practice on... so I'm going to her place tomorrow at noon for a photo shoot! I'm so excited! I have actually always wanted to do one just for fun, but have never had friends who just "need the practice" so I'm pretty stoked about it.

The rest of today just involves about a million things to do to get ready for this film that starts on Monday, plus regular mundane things like laundry and room cleaning. But, with everything going the way it has in the past month or so, it sure is looking like moving back to Utah - for now - was definitely the right choice! :)

Life is Either a Great Adventure, or Nothing

Wow, talk about eventful! ...yet, thoroughly exciting! So my FHE group went to a corn maze tonight and took 3 different cars to carpool up there. I rode up and back with this one guy in our ward, Rob (same one from the dinner last night), and 3 other girls. On our way back home, we passed by this 'entrance' to off-roading up the mountain and he said "who wants to go off-roading!?" I wasn't sure if he was serious or not, so I replied in a way that could be taken either joking or serious but implying that I actually thought that it sounded like fun. Of course, none of the other 3 girls were up for it at all, so we drove another 2 streets back to Deer Haven (our neighborhood). But then I found out that Rob really was quite serious about it, so shoot, of course I went!

We started on one road and he saw a pathway that he hadn't taken before and said "ooh let's take this one!" We were going pretty fast - as far as off-roading goes - and then all of a sudden this MASSIVE rock (more like boulder) came into sight --> but not in time. We smashed SO hard into that thing! We stopped (obviously) and both gave each other this "oh crap" sort of look and I immediately opened my door to see what kind of damage we were looking at (we hit the passenger's side). I figured that he was going to have this massive dent in the side of his car, but to my surprise… nothing! I was really confused as to how that was possible, and then I heard this hissing sound. We had a flat. The tire took most of the fall.

Pretend this is the path, and the rock on the right is what we slammed into (though it was more on the path than this).

So since we were not on ANY sort of steady or flat ground, he said “alright let’s go as quickly as we can with what air we have left and try to get to some flat ground.” So we turned around and started going the way we came, but we turned the wrong way at the fork and had to back up a bit to get on the right road... and in the process, the car suddenly began to tip to the right. It seriously felt like the car was balancing on something and that was about the point when he said "Lean left!!!" So we both leaned as far left as possible while he put it into the right gear for this maneuver and then said "Let's hope this works...!" Luckily, whatever he did worked and we managed to get to the other road without tipping over. Although, it would have been quite the experience to actually be IN a car as it tipped over...! :)

This, however, was by no means the end. We got the car to semi flat ground and knew that the tire was completely shot and that the spot we were at would have to be good enough. We got out, grabbed the tools, and he started jacking up the car. But in the process he remembered that the back of his four runner (I think that's what kind it is) was jammed and nearly impossible to open (the only way to access the spare is with that open). But apparently WD-40 usually did the trick... So we called up Stan (his roommate) who managed to successfully find the neighborhood right below us. However, we still had to climb halfway down the mountain in order to get to civilization. haha. But Stan found us and we went to the gas station down the street and got some WD-40. Then he took us back to that neighborhood and from there, we climbed back up to where the car was.

Unfortunately, the WD-40 wasn't working. No matter what we tried, that thing wouldn't budge. Then, we saw lights ahead and a car came all the way up to us and stopped. Turns out, it was a Utah County Sheriff car. He asked if we needed help and between him and Rob, they were finally able to get the darn thing open. Shortly thereafter, the flat was off, the spare was on, and we were good to go.

Am I weird that I found this whole excursion incredibly fun and exciting? First of all: off-roading. I don't know why, but I actually think it's really fun - and I never get to go! So I was excited about that already. Then, smashing into something that hard with no visible damage to the car was pretty exciting (and somewhat miraculous) as well. And having to climb down a mountain and back up it again (in the dark, with very slippery shoes)... well, I'm always looking for adventure and that sure was adventurous! It was just really fun!! It made me wish I had a beast of a car to do crazy stuff with. But then again, maybe it's a good thing that I don't have a car capable of that... :P

Post title: quote by Helen Keller

Dinner and a... Game

It's kind of sad that today was only my second FULL time at my new ward. I went the first week I moved in, but then something has happened every week since that has caused me to be out of town for it! Oh, and then one week I was sick too. Anyway, --oh, I need to preface something first. We got new FHE groups a couple of weeks ago and the guys in our group are really cool, and Karie and I decided that we should have them over for dinner sometime or something (there is only one apartment of guys that actually comes to FHE). We just thought it would be fun. WELL... after church today, Shark (one of the guys in that apartment) came up to Karie and me and invited us to dinner tonight at their place. I do have to include though, how he invited us, because it was really funny.

Shark walked up to the two of us and started with "So... the other two girls bailed..." haha! Stan (one of Shark's roommates) happened to overhear how Shark started with the invite and said "Dude! That's not how you ask!" Oh my goodness it cracked me and Karie up. We gave him a hard time by saying something like "we guess we'll come, since we're your backup and all..." It was so funny watching Shark trying to backpedal. But, they're cool guys and of course we accepted the invite!

We got there at six and I was quite impressed at how much work they'd put into it! We had pears as a starter, a salad, 'juice' (ie Kool-Aid), and a main dish (some sort of Mexican dish that was actually really good). Afterward, we even had homemade peach cobbler! Stan is a mean dessert maker (he made one for FHE last week too and it was delicious!) and when we commented on his skills, he said "... I like to eat...!" haha.

As soon as we finished dessert, Erin (the other girl there) had to leave, and Rob had pulled his whip out and wanted to give a demonstration. So we all went outside to watch. Yeah, that thing could do some serious damage. After that, Rob left, and Stan, Shark, Karie, and I started playing a game of Settlers of Catan. I was so excited to play again because I hadn't played since May, and I used to play every single Sunday! But then we had ward prayer and then ward game night was at our place again, so we had to cut the game short (first to 6 points instead of 10 -Karie won!) BUT... it was still fun! :)

Catch Me When I Fall

Wow, it has been quite a few days and quite a lot has happened, but I'm just going to quickly summarize this week instead of writing it all out ...

Monday: We have a new FHE group, it's awesome, and I love it. We are severely lacking in guys, which is a bummer... but the apartment of guys that actually comes are all awesome so I guess it somehow makes up for it. Tonight we played "in the manner of the adverb" and it was actually really fun! Afterwards, I went to the dollar theatre with my friend Jamie and watched The Proposal.

Tuesday: A group in my ward plays football every Tuesday evening and I played with them tonight. It had been so long since I played football, and it was a blast. Afterwards, Karie and I had our first ward movie night (Iron Man)... and might I add, it was VERY successful! We had every seat filled, and every open floor space as well! I think about 25 people total came.

Wednesday: I got a job interview scheduled for a desk job (hey, work is work and right now I'll take just about anything) and made plans with an old friend for Thursday. Then I went to a friend's birthday party and caught up with a bunch of old friends from last year's ward.

Thursday: I quite possibly may have work on a film! Oh yeah, the job interview... turns out it was only a part time job and they were asking for a year commitment, so that didn't work out. But a friend with whom I have worked on other projects called me up and told me to contact these guys about mixing and/or booming for a new feature and miraculously enough, they were still looking for someone!
Friday: Talked with the producer about the feature and they are trying to give me RIDICULOUSLY low rates so that is yet to be determined. I have to call the producer back Monday or Tuesday to discuss details with him. I also went to this really fun party in Sandy tonight, where I knew the most random combination of people. I think everyone there had ties to someone who either currently lives or has lived in Roman Gardens. I didn't think I was going to have as much fun as I did only knowing a few people, but I ended up staying until 1:30!

Today: I FINALLY got my new phone! And oh my goodness I absolutely love it! It's the EnV Touch (Verizon) and it is awesome. I didn't think I would like another phone as much as my Chocolate, but this one rocks and does so many cool things! I have been playing with it all day.
Karie and I went to Nate and Matt Seeley's tonight for the football game and yay! we won. It was a fun game to watch, too.

There, now you are caught up... haha. :)

The Fuel in the Furnace

I am going to start with two quotes:
(1) Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement. -Brian Tracy.
(2) The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret to outward success. -Henry Ward Beecher.

Can you guess what I'm going to write about? Goals!! Last night was awesome. Karie and I hosted our ward game night (which was a blast, by the way) and then afterward, she and I just sat and talked for a while. Amidst the chat, we came up with a brilliant idea that we are both quite excited about. Each week we are going to make a list of 5-10 goals of things that we want to achieve and/or accomplish that coming week. After we write them down, we share them with each other so we are even more accountable for those goals. Then, the following Sunday we report back to one another to see how many of our goals we achieved.

I love it! We both made a list of about 10 goals of basic to intense things. For example: one of hers was "get my oil changed" and one of mine was "get a new phone." But then another of mine was to get a group together in the ward and go sing hymns to people in nursing homes after church on Sunday. I was in a ward once that did that and admittedly, I didn't go very often that year, but I still thought it was an awesome idea. And I have been wanting to do something service-y for a while but haven't been able to find something. You wouldn't believe all the crap you have to go through to volunteer at a hospital!! I wanted to go to a children's ward and just visit with and play with the kids there, and I think it might possibly be more difficult to do that than to get a job! Sheesh! So, throughout the week we shall see how many of these goals we accomplish. I am really liking this idea, though. I think it will help me get more things done during the week - especially since I have no real schedule as of right now. I will report back next week!!

General Conference is Amazing

I don't know how it happens, but inevitably, I end up going to at least one session of conference. It's so weird, because I don't even try to get tickets - they just sort of appear out of nowhere. Last conference, Martin had some and we were dating at the time... so naturally, I went with. The time before that Jeremiah had some... and again, we were dating at the time... so I went with him. The year before that, a friend had extras so again, I went. And this conference I went with my friend Rob. He's from Australia and is visiting for the week (we met in a BYU ward 4 years ago) and randomly stopped by earlier in the week and while we were talking, said "Oh! I have an extra ticket to conference - do you want to come?!?" ...Why stop the trend now? lol. So of course, I went.

I actually had never been to the Sunday morning session before (at least, I don't think I have), so it was really cool because we saw the whole "music and the spoken word" thing too. Their final song was "Come Thou Fount" and that is one of my all time favorite hymns, so I was excited to hear that one. They started singing, and I found myself humming along... to the alto part... of this particular arrangement. Suddenly, I was incredibly confused. "How do I know the alto part to the MoTab arrangement?" I thought. The song continued for another 30 seconds and then suddenly it hit me - this was the arrangement we sang in YAs! (Young Ambassadors) This was our closing number for each and every fireside we did throughout that whole year. I must have sung that version of "Come Thou Fount" 30 times or more. No wonder I still knew it!

After the morning session, Rob and I walked a few blocks to a church building where there was some sort of Vietnamese reunion (he is Vietnamese-Australian and served his mission Vietnamese-speaking) where they had a ton of food. It was all Vietnamese, but I love trying new foods, so I took a little bit of everything. Most of it was pretty good, and the few things that I didn't like, Rob did - so he ate it for me. haha. After lunch, I drove home and listened to the first half of the 2nd session on the radio (because I'm in Utah again and can do that now) and the rest I watched when I got home. Elder Holland's talk was quite possibly one of the most powerful talks I have ever heard, and so I am going to include the video for it in case you missed it. Because he is pretty much amazing.

You let it DIE!

I went to the football game tonight - and it rocked. I hadn't been to a game in so long! Well, I hadn't been to a football game that I wasn't *working* at in a very long time. It was nice to watch a game as a fan again. Afterwards, I was supposed to meet up with Karie and her friend Chad at this YSA dance, but instead I ended up in limbo for the next few hours. My phone is in very, very sad shape. It only lasts for about an hour or two after I take it off of the charge. If I sent 4 or 5 texts, it's done for. If I make more than one phone call, it turns off. Today was the worst, and it is now not just something I want, but an absolute necessity to get a new phone!

Let's rewind for a minute. I bought the ticket from a friend of a friend and when I got it, I saw that it said "STUDENT" in big, bold letters. Well... I am not a student anymore and thus this was going to present problems as to how I was going to get in with a student ticket and no valid student ID. One might think "why not just use your student ID from last year?" Trust me, I would have... except the first semester I was out of school, BYU decided to change the format of the IDs (see picture), so mine doesn't look a thing like current IDs! Blast. So I called up my friend Alyssa (Johnson) and said "I have a random question for you - can I borrow your ID tonight?" She laughed, but agreed. So I drove to her place, and she was nice enough to just drop me off at the stadium so I wouldn't have to worry about parking. In return, she got to use my car for the duration of the game! (she doesn't have a car)

The plan was that I would call her when the game was done and she could come get me and all would be well. However, my phone decided to die about 5 minutes before the game ended. Perfect. I had to play the "on/off" game with my phone 4 times before I was able to successfully retrieve her number from my phone before it died. I then used my friend Matt's phone to give her a call. Since Matt was driving back to Sparks/Arcadia, I just got a ride home with him. So I was calling to tell her that she didn't need to come get me and that I'd be there momentarily.

However, she had tried to send me a text telling me that she was at Wyview (really close to the stadium) and that I should just go there. Drat. So I went back to Sparks, and she was still at Wyview doing laundry. Sooo... I just sort of meandered throughout Sparks saying hi to old friends. I stopped by Apt 10 for a little while, but it was Ian, his friend, and Jason... and about 7 giggly sophomore girls who are way too girly for me. So I meandered some more and ran into Jake and some of his friends in the clubhouse and ended up playing ping pong and whatnot until about 11:30 when I decided to go see if Alyssa was back. I went to her place and hurray! She was back.

But since I didn't get my car back until 11:30, the dance was most definitely out. It's kind of sad how much we rely on our phones these days. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that cell phones didn't even exist! What did we do back then? Set up a time and place for us to meet and hope it worked out? What if there was a misunderstanding? Tough! So yeah, I felt very strange not being able to call or access any of my friend's numbers tonight. Definitely time for a new phone!!

post title: part of a line from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

What A Difference A Day Makes

Or in this case, what a difference a light makes...

So, I realized that while I may not be on the lighting crew when I work on films, I have been around it enough to know the basics and how to improve the lighting of a room, especially for pictures and video. I got bored yesterday and realized that my profile picture on facebook was incredibly old. I thought, "hey, I should probably take a new one..." and nowadays, people will take pictures of themselves for the sole intent of creating a new profile picture.

So I grabbed my camera and set it up on my stereo, with only the white background of my wall visible. I set the timer, and ran back for the picture. The only problem... it was too dark. Sure, you could still see the picture, but it didn't "pop" or anything like that. Nothing was screaming "nice picture!"

I don't exactly have any kinos (see above picture) or 1ks, 2ks, etc just laying around, so hey - ya make do with what you've got! I grabbed a standing lamp from our rec room, unscrewed the top, took off the cover, and had just the bulb shining. I placed it accordingly, and tried again. Voila - instantly better pictures! Alright, so it had a bit of a yellow tint due to the bulb, but hey it was still a lot better than *no* light! Anyway, here is a before and after picture of my escapades!

(and yes, I touched it up before posting the far right one as my profile picture. :P )