November 4th: Yay for 13 hour workdays!
In case anyone was wondering about that random post yesterday, November is national write a novel month, but for those of us who don't have time to do so (and I was seriously thinking about it, no really) LJ is challenging people to post an entry every day. And since I knew I wouldn't have much time yesterday I just made that short post, and I usually post almost every day so I don't think this will be too hard to pull off.
Anyway, Tuesday was @_@. A looong day, I wasn't kidding about the 13 hour workday thing. Really, I only need 30 hours for this project (but I'm gunna have like, 44 or so?) and I got almost half of those done yesterday. And since yesterday was rainy (I kid you not, they had to order some polling places in NC to issues paper towels so that people didn't get their paper ballots wet and mess up the machines) I was glad I was inside for most of the day. Well, we did almost nothing at the photographers place at all (they are doing more stuff today and tomorrow and a ton next week, why couldn't my project have been then?). Chantal didn't come (so sad, I really did want to talk to her more, and I brought a paper for our oral report since she wasn't quite sure what it entailed) today, I think her host mom couldn't drop her off, and Charlie (the dog) was also pretty sleepy. I spent about an hour and a half helping the photographer think of keywords for the stock photos he was uploading (a tedious process but hopefully they will get some money from this).
Since I brought my lunch I stayed behind during lunch and during/after that time I helped Griffin (the intern) set up for some photos he was taking for his own blog (although to be honest my lunch was really just an apple, I'm really in touch with my Horo side, lol). His picture is going to be this really surreal photo of a women holding a cord that has a lamp attached to it, except the lamp is floating away in the air (as David said in the studio, it is light). He had already shot the background and the model (his girl friend) holding an extension cord coming down, and I helped him set up for the lamp. So I helped set up the background, lights, held the lamp while he was tying it up (it was hanging at an odd angle, if we had tied a piece of fabric around it it would have been at the perfect angle for superhero lamp). I'll see if I can post the picture when he finishes with it, I think I remember the address of his blog, otherwise I know his school so I can probably find it that way. And I'll post photos soon of the set up, actually, since I think I have a candid photography assignment this week (just checked, her website hasn't been updated since the 8th or so) I've been trying to take some photos, and the ones of setting up for a shoot are interesting, like, did any of you guys know that when you take photos in a studio, the people/objects are almost in the lights, literally, if you tripped you would bring them down, no sweat. It's crazy, I have gotta post these photos later, I'm trying to think how I can work them into a powerpoint for my presentation at school, no ideas so far.
Anyway, so I helped with that, I checked out CNN on the HUGE computer, and was sad to learn that no results would be up until 7:30 or so, a little after 6 at the earliest, it was abotu 2:30 when I checked. And during this David had discovered that one of the fans wasn't working, so we had an interesting little tablue. The photographer was on top of a 15, 20 foot ladder, wearing a harness that had him attached to the struts in the ceiling, looking at the wires and trying to figure out why it wasn't working, the lights were out so we had a big lamp point up there, Griffin was holding the ladder steady, Dave was turning the lights on and off, and I was sitting in a swivel chair (yay swivel chairs! I had fun with them earlier, we were in a big warehouse place with plenty of room...), taking a photo and with the dog's head in my lap. Lol, and this is why it's important to know how to do your own wiring, you never know when it will come in handy, and they got the fan working with only a little bit of trouble.
My mom picked me up a bit before 4, so I was at the house from 4:15 to about 4:45, long enough to check a couple of things on teh internet, post that entry, and play a bit of zOMG! (and they have the severs working and the lag was a lot less noticeable!). So maybe I only did a 12 hour workday overall, but I'm so tired that it doesn't really make a difference to me. My mom then drove me over to the newspaper and without much trouble at all I met the reporter I was shadowing for the night and tomorrow (so as I am writing this, today), Amanda, who covers the city beat. She showed me around a bit and then we walked down to the courthouse thinking it was a polling place so she could ask people about the bonds story she was writing about. Battling flipping umbrellas (well, in my case anyway) we discovered it wasn't, checked where some of the places were, walked back to the newspaper parking lot, got in her car, and drove over to the local public high school to talk to people there. And there was almost no one there, in the half hour of sort-of rain and wind that we stood out in (but nothing bad) we saw about 5 people go in to vote. And it's like, 6:30 or so, the polls are open for another half hour, but almost no one was voting anywhere. It seems like now, after almost everything has been tallied, that a large precentage did early voting (and the voting there reflects the voting done on election day pretty well) and that those who did vote did it early in the morning, afraid that there would be long lines during the day, so the longest lines were then. So yeah, I think the voter turnout was about 60% or so, I am told this is higher than average, but it doesn't seem like it's a lot higher than average (I just can't get why people go to the trouble or registering to vote and then don't vote, that's the easiet part!). Back on topic, we talked to some of the um, I don't think they are called pollsters, they're the people with the signs outside the places, yeah, you should have an idea of what we're talking about. One women had all of these crazy conspiracy theories about the city council members, and I signed a petition for creating more green jobs (and alternative energy) in NC. We then grabbed coffee (in her case) and an apple juice box (in mine) and headed back to the offices where the first glitch of the night occured, pizza was late. But it got her, pizza is good for this stuff, we ate quickly and headed off to the collusieum where there was going to be A) The Democratic Party party/Kay Hagan party and B) Public viewing of the local results as they came in, and since my reporter was covering the bonds this is where we were also hoping to find her people.
Well, the viewing room was almost empty, and when we got there at around, can't remember if it was 7:30 or 8:30 they only had the early voting results so it was way to early to call anything. But as more results trickled in, it turned out that the early voting was a good prediction of it (so it looks like the early voters are more people who would vote anyway rather than people who don't normally vote, and almost no one in NC who can vote and is registered can say they didn't have a chance, y'all had TWO WEEKS and you could even register then vote during early voting!). And, to our amazement, three out of the four bonds were passing, we weren't expecting any to pass. She was expecting that if the bonds were tanking we wouldn't find any of her people there, and even though they were passing (and those three bonds did ultimely pass), still none of her people were there!
So we headed up to Kay's party which was PACKED. They had a live band (some nice jazz/country-ish muzic) and two bars (but I'm told they weren't free, hey I'm under 21 I wouldn't know!) as well as a ton of tv cameras. There was one or two cameras in the room downstairs (if anyone got the local news, I was the girl in the purple t-shirt, jeans, and medium brown hair) but there was closer to 20 camers upstairs, well, maybe closer to 11, I have some photos we can contest over later. When we came in they were calling PA and CT for Obama so everyone started cheering, and it was really interesting to see the diversity in the room. There aren't many Asian people in the south and I don't think I saw any there, but there were tons of whites and blacks alike, both genders and a real range of ages. I saw at least three, I think four classmates there (all girls who had really done a lot with the Kay campaign) and even ran into Fiona from the Obama campaign for a couple of seconds. Oh, and at the very end, right as we were leaving actually, I ran into one of the women from the Obama canvassing on Sunday, someone who I had met only briefly, but she remembered me as well! It's a small world af~ter all....
My reporter got to talk to the mayor and some of the coucilwomen there (she covers thecity council members so she's pretty friendly and familiar with them, she's been in the city for about a year I believe). Oh course, as soon as we walk into the room to look for people one last time, my dad calls (thank god my phone is always set on high and vibrate) and I have to tell him I'll call back in 15 minutes once we get back to the office. I do and so got picked up at about 10, got home a little before 10:30, tell my mom what was going on, stay on the CCN/google news sites until 11 watching Obama get more and more states (he was up to 220 when I went to bed, I had also been watching on the three tiny tvs at the office and people told me not to get too excited, but if he gets the votes first it's over!) and got to bed around 11:30, after leaving a note on my door for my mom not to wake me up before 8.
What a day, that just took waaaayyy too long to type, hopefully editing it for school won't take nearly so long, signing off!
Anyway, Tuesday was @_@. A looong day, I wasn't kidding about the 13 hour workday thing. Really, I only need 30 hours for this project (but I'm gunna have like, 44 or so?) and I got almost half of those done yesterday. And since yesterday was rainy (I kid you not, they had to order some polling places in NC to issues paper towels so that people didn't get their paper ballots wet and mess up the machines) I was glad I was inside for most of the day. Well, we did almost nothing at the photographers place at all (they are doing more stuff today and tomorrow and a ton next week, why couldn't my project have been then?). Chantal didn't come (so sad, I really did want to talk to her more, and I brought a paper for our oral report since she wasn't quite sure what it entailed) today, I think her host mom couldn't drop her off, and Charlie (the dog) was also pretty sleepy. I spent about an hour and a half helping the photographer think of keywords for the stock photos he was uploading (a tedious process but hopefully they will get some money from this).
Since I brought my lunch I stayed behind during lunch and during/after that time I helped Griffin (the intern) set up for some photos he was taking for his own blog (although to be honest my lunch was really just an apple, I'm really in touch with my Horo side, lol). His picture is going to be this really surreal photo of a women holding a cord that has a lamp attached to it, except the lamp is floating away in the air (as David said in the studio, it is light). He had already shot the background and the model (his girl friend) holding an extension cord coming down, and I helped him set up for the lamp. So I helped set up the background, lights, held the lamp while he was tying it up (it was hanging at an odd angle, if we had tied a piece of fabric around it it would have been at the perfect angle for superhero lamp). I'll see if I can post the picture when he finishes with it, I think I remember the address of his blog, otherwise I know his school so I can probably find it that way. And I'll post photos soon of the set up, actually, since I think I have a candid photography assignment this week (just checked, her website hasn't been updated since the 8th or so) I've been trying to take some photos, and the ones of setting up for a shoot are interesting, like, did any of you guys know that when you take photos in a studio, the people/objects are almost in the lights, literally, if you tripped you would bring them down, no sweat. It's crazy, I have gotta post these photos later, I'm trying to think how I can work them into a powerpoint for my presentation at school, no ideas so far.
Anyway, so I helped with that, I checked out CNN on the HUGE computer, and was sad to learn that no results would be up until 7:30 or so, a little after 6 at the earliest, it was abotu 2:30 when I checked. And during this David had discovered that one of the fans wasn't working, so we had an interesting little tablue. The photographer was on top of a 15, 20 foot ladder, wearing a harness that had him attached to the struts in the ceiling, looking at the wires and trying to figure out why it wasn't working, the lights were out so we had a big lamp point up there, Griffin was holding the ladder steady, Dave was turning the lights on and off, and I was sitting in a swivel chair (yay swivel chairs! I had fun with them earlier, we were in a big warehouse place with plenty of room...), taking a photo and with the dog's head in my lap. Lol, and this is why it's important to know how to do your own wiring, you never know when it will come in handy, and they got the fan working with only a little bit of trouble.
My mom picked me up a bit before 4, so I was at the house from 4:15 to about 4:45, long enough to check a couple of things on teh internet, post that entry, and play a bit of zOMG! (and they have the severs working and the lag was a lot less noticeable!). So maybe I only did a 12 hour workday overall, but I'm so tired that it doesn't really make a difference to me. My mom then drove me over to the newspaper and without much trouble at all I met the reporter I was shadowing for the night and tomorrow (so as I am writing this, today), Amanda, who covers the city beat. She showed me around a bit and then we walked down to the courthouse thinking it was a polling place so she could ask people about the bonds story she was writing about. Battling flipping umbrellas (well, in my case anyway) we discovered it wasn't, checked where some of the places were, walked back to the newspaper parking lot, got in her car, and drove over to the local public high school to talk to people there. And there was almost no one there, in the half hour of sort-of rain and wind that we stood out in (but nothing bad) we saw about 5 people go in to vote. And it's like, 6:30 or so, the polls are open for another half hour, but almost no one was voting anywhere. It seems like now, after almost everything has been tallied, that a large precentage did early voting (and the voting there reflects the voting done on election day pretty well) and that those who did vote did it early in the morning, afraid that there would be long lines during the day, so the longest lines were then. So yeah, I think the voter turnout was about 60% or so, I am told this is higher than average, but it doesn't seem like it's a lot higher than average (I just can't get why people go to the trouble or registering to vote and then don't vote, that's the easiet part!). Back on topic, we talked to some of the um, I don't think they are called pollsters, they're the people with the signs outside the places, yeah, you should have an idea of what we're talking about. One women had all of these crazy conspiracy theories about the city council members, and I signed a petition for creating more green jobs (and alternative energy) in NC. We then grabbed coffee (in her case) and an apple juice box (in mine) and headed back to the offices where the first glitch of the night occured, pizza was late. But it got her, pizza is good for this stuff, we ate quickly and headed off to the collusieum where there was going to be A) The Democratic Party party/Kay Hagan party and B) Public viewing of the local results as they came in, and since my reporter was covering the bonds this is where we were also hoping to find her people.
Well, the viewing room was almost empty, and when we got there at around, can't remember if it was 7:30 or 8:30 they only had the early voting results so it was way to early to call anything. But as more results trickled in, it turned out that the early voting was a good prediction of it (so it looks like the early voters are more people who would vote anyway rather than people who don't normally vote, and almost no one in NC who can vote and is registered can say they didn't have a chance, y'all had TWO WEEKS and you could even register then vote during early voting!). And, to our amazement, three out of the four bonds were passing, we weren't expecting any to pass. She was expecting that if the bonds were tanking we wouldn't find any of her people there, and even though they were passing (and those three bonds did ultimely pass), still none of her people were there!
So we headed up to Kay's party which was PACKED. They had a live band (some nice jazz/country-ish muzic) and two bars (but I'm told they weren't free, hey I'm under 21 I wouldn't know!) as well as a ton of tv cameras. There was one or two cameras in the room downstairs (if anyone got the local news, I was the girl in the purple t-shirt, jeans, and medium brown hair) but there was closer to 20 camers upstairs, well, maybe closer to 11, I have some photos we can contest over later. When we came in they were calling PA and CT for Obama so everyone started cheering, and it was really interesting to see the diversity in the room. There aren't many Asian people in the south and I don't think I saw any there, but there were tons of whites and blacks alike, both genders and a real range of ages. I saw at least three, I think four classmates there (all girls who had really done a lot with the Kay campaign) and even ran into Fiona from the Obama campaign for a couple of seconds. Oh, and at the very end, right as we were leaving actually, I ran into one of the women from the Obama canvassing on Sunday, someone who I had met only briefly, but she remembered me as well! It's a small world af~ter all....
My reporter got to talk to the mayor and some of the coucilwomen there (she covers thecity council members so she's pretty friendly and familiar with them, she's been in the city for about a year I believe). Oh course, as soon as we walk into the room to look for people one last time, my dad calls (thank god my phone is always set on high and vibrate) and I have to tell him I'll call back in 15 minutes once we get back to the office. I do and so got picked up at about 10, got home a little before 10:30, tell my mom what was going on, stay on the CCN/google news sites until 11 watching Obama get more and more states (he was up to 220 when I went to bed, I had also been watching on the three tiny tvs at the office and people told me not to get too excited, but if he gets the votes first it's over!) and got to bed around 11:30, after leaving a note on my door for my mom not to wake me up before 8.
What a day, that just took waaaayyy too long to type, hopefully editing it for school won't take nearly so long, signing off!