To Catch a Job

It's no secret I'm on the look out for a new job. I was alerted to a copy writing position that I thought would be a good fit for me. When I started to type up the obligatory "my name is Elissa and please give me this job" email, I thought screw that. I wanted to show these people that I have a funny bone and a creative bone in my body.

I decided to make it look like Entertainment Weekly had interviewed me about my skills as a wordsmith. To do that, I also needed sweet pictures to back up those fightin' words. I roped my dear friend Adrian into a photo shoot that we pulled together in less than 2 days. Seriously, we worked magic.

My favorite aspect is that we were able to get a real anvil. Knowing great people like my friend Mary is like knowing the janitor staff at the Capitol. You get hooked up. The stump that the anvil is sitting on? That'd be fire wood that I rebundled to look like a tree stump. A stump from a stump. We made the legs of the work desk from every hard cover book Adrian owned. I bought a ton of chipboard letters at the HL (Hobby Lobby) and spray painted them black then threw them everywhere. Unfortunately most of the letters didn't even get a cameo appearance in the shoot; but now I have a ton of spray painted black letters if you ever needed to do your own version of Sesame Street.

We set up the shoot on a Saturday morning, and by the time we got it all set up, we only had 20 minutes to do that actual picture taking because I had to go into work. Adrian's an angel and cleaned it all up after. And isn't she a great photographer? She's does weddings if you're interested.

Sunday night I wrote out the "interview" and designed the pages. I'll admit, it's not my best work, but I really wanted to submit it by Monday. You never know when these opportunities will close.

And yes, I did spell out "hire me" with my black letters. It seemed better than silly words like "live," "laugh," or "love."

So far I haven't heard back from them. But if you're another potential employee impressed with my ninja skills, please contact me. I'd be delighted, to say the least.

Here's the interview if you aren't able to channel your inner Superman eyesight:

Elissa, how long have you considered yourself a wordsmith?
Does spelling “change my diaper” in pureed green beans count as wordsmithing? If so, I’d say since I was 10 months old.

That seems abnormally young to be using the written word. Are you a prodigy?
I was a prodigy. Unfortunately, I had to squelch my inner genius for the sake of my parents. I’m sure watching your toddler copy John Grisham novels onto the wall with crayon was a bit unnerving. Instead, I would placate them by playing peek-a-boo for hours; they really loved that stupid game.

We heard that you’ve even written while sleeping.
[Laughs] What can I say, I’m an excellent multi-tasker. While attending BYU-Idaho (where I majored in graphic design and minored in journalism), I would sometimes nod off during class. I didn’t want the teacher to be too offended at their lack of presentation skills, so I’d keep my pencil moving to look like I was writing notes. Sometimes I’d wake up and find I’d written out a dream without remembering it.

Tell me about your brainstorming capabilities
Sorry, no can do. Trade secrets and all. However, I will tell you being a ginger and having no soul grants me special privileges and certain, shall we say, opportunities.

Do you consider yourself a hard worker?
Do I look like a Cyberman? I believe you meant to ask if I work hard. Then the answer is yes. Unless it involves quantum physics or long division; if that’s the case, then I check out faster than Lindsey Lohan leaving rehab. Bless her heart.

You haven’t exactly had a writing job before, yet you consider yourself a wordsmith. Elaborate.
Working at Walt Disney World, driving buses in Alaska, being a copy editor for a small paper, and working in a craft store are all part of my plan to take over the wor … uh, I mean, become a master wordsmith. I like to think of those experiences as manure which has fertilized my idea garden. I tell you, I’ve got some exotic plants growing in my head which are just waiting for the right moment to be harvested.

You lived in Alaska?
Fairbanks, Alaska, to be exact. I even made the choice to stay there a winter. My grandfather may have walked to school in the snow uphill both ways, but I walked to my car in -40 degree weather without the help of my dogsled team or Sarah Palin. I hate to sound prideful, but I’m pretty sure I just one-upped my progenitors.

Well you are just a treasure. Any final words?
I just want to point out that this interview and photo shoot were thrown together in three days. Imagine the things I could accomplish with a team and a paycheck. My name is Elissa, and I’m a wordsmith.

*Yes, I did also send them a regular resume so they knew where I went to school and those kind of boring details.

Trailing the stars

Y'all are going to be super impressed. I have yet to miss a day in my photo a day challenge to myself. But I am on to another pet project. Star trails.

Star trails are pictures of the stars that makes it seem like the stars are moving across the sky, when in fact we're the peeps that are moving (well, the earth is, anyway). I've always wanted to take these type of pictures, and now I have the chance. I live up in the hills where there's not a lot of light pollution, it's currently dark (although we're gaining daylight like mad, so I won't be able to take too many more of these), and I'm up all night anyway. Great combo.

They're fairly simple, you do have to have patience, as well as some special equipment. First night I did it, I didn't even look online for directions. Probably because the internet was down (yep, I remember now). I knew it had to have a long exposure, so I figured I'd just set up my camera and come back in a couple of hours.Which is technically true, but not how I thought. I also didn't have a tripod (mine met an untimely death in a certain car accident we had last summer), but I'm real good at stacking junk together to place a camera on top of.

It was about 2 degrees and when I came to get my camera 2.5 hours later and there was frost forming on the lens (my camera may die at a younger age). The camera had also turned off, because of the battery dying. When I plugged the card into the computer, this is what I got:

 

I was stoked. There were trails of light! Okay, it was obviously way over exposed and the composition wasn't that great, but I felt fairly satisfied with my limitations (read: freezing, no tripod, not a lot of knowledge). For those photo nerds, the exposure was a little more than 30 minutes at f11. 

Here it is again, but I messed with the levels: 

Cool, right?

The next night the internet was working and I found a decent tutorial: http://www.jamesvernacotola.com/Resources/How-To-Photograph-Star-Trails/12233655_V7cX4D . There are a ton more, but I didn't want to waste time reading them.

I learned that you have to take many exposures and then combine them into one as well as set your f/stop to as high as it will go, like f2.8. Right.

To take multiple exposures and then combine them, you CANNOT move the camera. That means not even touching it. Luckily, I have a remote. I won't get into the technical details of it all, but I really need a lock cable release, but the remote was the second best thing.

Still not having a tripod, I used a hymn book (my mom said "It's nice you were able to use a hymn book for something other than hymns." Thanks, mom) and a cardboard box and set it all up on the snow/ice covered driveway. I'm in Alaska. We're hardcore.

Here's a short exposure (30 sec) so I would be able to tell what my composition was:

 Good to go. I decided I'm come back every 10 minutes or so to stop the exposure and take another one. Unfortunately, after doing this a couple of times, the remote wasn't working (human error) so I gently touched the button. Remember when I said you can't even touch the camera? This is five images combined, but because I moved the camera, you can tell things don't line up. 

It had potential. The faint green you see is part of the northern lights. They have not been coming out when I've been looking, so I got over them, and now I don't want them out (well, I still do, just not a lot) because my picture would just be a sea of green. It was said that this Friday and Saturday they're supposed to be out really strong, so I'll switch back over to northern light photography if that's the case.What can I say, I'm flexible.

Quick astronomy. You may notice the lights are going in a circular pattern. That's because of the north star, you know, the one that doesn't move so sailors can navigate by and such. If you look up star trails online, a lot of them have the north star as a kind of focal point so you see a complete circle of stars. I obviously did not position my camera this way (maybe because at the time I couldn't find it and was using a hymn book anyway, okay?). 

Tonight I asked Doug if he had a tripod (I know, I need to buy another one). He did. Turns out tripods are a lot easier to work with than random junk or hymn books. I set this shot up on the deck right outside the family room so I it wouldn't be as much as a hassle to take another picture every 10 minutes. And...

Sweet!

Tomorrow night I'm planning on going out into the semi wilderness so I can get cooler foreground stuff and perhaps a better view of the whole night sky so I can be a cool photographer with the north star in the picture. Let's pray I don't get eaten by bears.

It's really incredible how fast the world is moving, even after 10 minutes the streaks of stars have moved a considerable distance. Stars may be my new favorite thing. Besides hot country singers.

Just How Cold Is It In Fairbanks? Part 2

Last week it dumped snow. That's not even the best part. The best part is it got up to 20 degrees. As in 20 above 0. I think that lasted 1.5 days. It snowed so much they canceled school because the buses couldn't get through it (Fairbanks is used to snow, but it was over a foot in a 24 hour period and they just couldn't keep up with clearing the roads). It was my day off, and I had plans to go out and do things, but Deb told me not to try to drive anywhere because the roads were so bad.

Luckily, by the time I had to go to work the next day, the roads were basically cleared. Deb said when this much snow happens at once they have to haul it out of the city, because you can't exactly keep making a snow wall on the side of the road. I guess technically you could, but then people would get really mad.

Speaking of a snow wall, at the university they make an ice wall every year. As soon as the temps start dropping below freezing they start to spray water onto this 35 foot frame and before you know it, ice wall! You can then rent gear to climb it. Like rock climbing, except slightly colder. And slipperier. And colder.

Remember how I said it got up to 20 degrees? Well I'm pretty sure the weather was climbing an ice wall and suddenly fell off because within 30 hours or so it dropped to -40. That's a 60 degree difference. On my laptop it says it's currently -46. Today we only had the first hour of church because of the temperature. Winter church regulations: -30 church is 2 hours, -40 church is 1 hour, -50 church is optional. It's because they don't have outlets in the parking lot so we can't plug our cars, meaning they will literally freeze if left out in those conditions too long.

It's too cold even for ice. Let me explain. There's a lot of ice sculptures around here, because, well they can make them in November and they'll last until April and why not. But if it gets too cold, the ice gets brittle and the sculptors can't work with the ice and then the wings start falling off angels and then you have to glue them back on and then Tinkerbell dies. Tragic.

Coming home from work tonight I'm pretty sure I small icicle formed on the corner of my eye. I wanted to give it a name, like Squishy, except Freezy, and it would be all mine. Instead it melted and died.

The ice fog was the worst I've seen it tonight. At one point I only could see 10 feet in front of me. What's ice fog? Ice fog is when all the car exhaust, pollution, smoke from wood burning stoves and other particulates freeze and get trapped in low levels. So exactly like regular fog, except this stuff is miniscule ice crystals of crap. When you're driving behind cars you have to have a greater following distance because the exhaust immediately freezes and it's like driving through Puff the Magic Dragon, minus the drug references. 

In fact, a couple of weeks ago Fairbanks had the worst pollution in the whole nation, and greater than most places in the world, besides big cities in China. Thanks China -- we didn't want to be number one in that category. Don't worry, in the summer there's hardly any pollution, unless there's a fire, then there's a bunch of ash, so take that and smoke it.

Here's me in a frozen sleigh with a frozen Santa in North Pole. He also had 8 ice reindeer, but I didn't feel like straddling something that would undoubtedly chap my thighs and perhaps sterilize me from ever having children.



Now I need to clarify something. There are few things in my life that I am able to have bragging rights over, and living in Fairbanks during the winter is one of them. Someone (I won't mention names...) challenged me because she stated that she had lived in a certain southeastern Idaho town where there's a certain LDS owned college and once it got to 50 below.


Being the good researcher and humble bragger that I am, I checked up on that. The coldest it's gotten in that certain potato growing village was -30 back in the 80s. It rarely drops below -20.

Whew. Glad I got that off my chest. I feel better.

And for those of you going to warm destinations for Christmas, like, I don't know, Hawaii... I hope you have a wonderful time. And that the ice machine in the hotel starts spewing ice into your room. That is all.

Oh Gee, It's Denali!

I've been getting requests to write more often. Unfortunately, I haven't been getting any monetary reimbursement for my efforts, so I don't write as much. What I'm trying to say is - money talks.

Since the Ice Museum, I've done some ish.

Like get my CDL license.

I can now legally drive a 45 ft. bus. With people on it. By myself. Maybe one day I'll detail what goes into driving a motor coach, but it sometimes hurts my head so not today.

When we're not driving buses and sitting through good employee training, we usually hang out at our place and stay up way too late. I tell you what, this sun staying in the sky all night really messes with you. Like right now, it's 10 p.m., and it looks like it's 5 p.m. How are you supposed to want to go to bed with the sun being all sorts of rebellious?

Remember our awesome car? Mitch named it Poc. For Piece of Crap. I told him to treat it kinder. But we had to get our CV axle replaced. Thankfully, we have a really good friend named Daniel who is quite handy with cars and he changed it for us. We had a car party (different from a dog party at the top of the tree) at a member's house.

Mitch was pretending to be a man and help out. The most he got out of the experience was a grease unibrow.

One day for work we got to go to multiple down town restaurants and sample their food so we can tell our guests the best places to go. We got paid for doing that.

Then yesterday was the best day ever. You could even say it was the day of great giving. We got to go to Denali National Park. And before you start freaking out at the awesomeness, we did not climb Denali.

I'm going to put on my tour hat now, so hold onto your socks. The famous mountain is legally named Mt. McKinley after a U.S. president who never even visited Alaska (rude, right?), but all the cool people call it Denali (meaning "the great one" in Athabascan).

It is 20,320 feet tall and is the tallest mountain in the world, but not the highest (because its summit elevation doesn't reach as high as Mt. Everest, but measured from base to peak it's the tallest. Comprende?). In fact, it's so tall it creates its own weather and is usually surrounding by clouds. And it's uber hard to climb, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say I probably won't be climbing it this summer. You have to be flown in to the base camp. This ain't no day hike.

Taking tour hat off now and back to our trip. We took a coach down while we got a tour (because this will be one of the tours we will be doing). It takes about 2.5 hours in a coach. We saw moosen and Dall sheep. I didn't get any pictures of the moosen because you speed by before you can get a good picture, but I promise one of these days I'll get a good moosen picture.

These are Dall Sheep. They were high on the cliff and far away and we were moving, so you should be pretty impressed by the shot I did get.

 These are what Dall Sheep look like up close: (courtesy the world wide web)

I know. I want to pet one as well.

We then went to the hotels where we will be picking up/dropping off guests. They're pretty shnazzy. This hotel is super high up and to get to it you have to drive 958 dirt road switch backs (only exaggerating a little bit). It has an awesome view, but thankfully we don't usually have to go there.

The funny thing is none of the hotels in the area have an actual view of Denali because the surrounding mountains are so tall. And I don't know the reason why they weren't built closer. I'll get back to you on that one.

For lunch we got to go to a dinner theater where we were served salmon, prime rib tips, red skinned mashed potatoes, succotash (corn, edamame, and red bell pepper), biscuits, salad and apple crisp for dessert.

Mitch and Hillary getting their grub on.

We were then entertained by a cute little musical about the climbing of Denali. Our table was the loudest and proudest, and this is us drinking it up to the 2012 motto of the season: "Get Some!" Its meaning is up to your own interpretation.

In the late afternoon we went to the train station to wait for our train ride back to Fairbanks.

This is a lot of the driver guides, minus me because I was taking the picture. See if you can spot Mitch.

Princess and Holland America have train cars that travel from Anchorage to Fairbanks hooked onto the Alaska train, hence why we got to experience train travel. I highly recommend it.

I should have gotten a better picture of what the inside of the train car looks like, but imagine a narrow moving restaurant with booths and awesome views and that's about it.

 

 I can't help myself posting a million pictures of the train. It's so pretty.

This is me going down the stairs to the outside platform. That's right, you can stand on the platform outside for the entire train ride. Bet you can't do that in a car.

You probably can't see me, but that's Max and me on the other side of the Princess car. Don't worry, no grizzly bears jumped on us.

It was such great scenery, so I invite you to bask and be bored in scenery pictures, which really don't do it justice.

That's the road I'll be driving on. This is also the road that connects Anchorage to Fairbanks. There are only about three highways in Alaska, and this is one of them. In other words, it's pretty hard to get off on the wrong freeway and suddenly end up in Compton (true story from my life).

The train from Denali to Fairbanks takes 4 hours, but you don't mind at all (well I can't speak for you but I'm speaking for me). We got dinner on the train, which was Butternut Squash Soup (delicious with a capital D), grilled chicken, baguette, salad and key lime cake or carrot cake. People, I got paid for this whole day. How often does part of your job description include getting paid to eat, enjoying a leisure ride on a scenic train and being in a famous national park? I didn't think so. 

These are my favorite pictures. I don't think I need to explain why.

This next week we start getting guests. I know, I'm freaking out a little. When I post a picture of me vomiting all over my first bus of guests you'll know things didn't go so well, but I'm hoping that Kodak moment won't happen.

Also, I've really been dying to show this great and totally embarrassing video of myself dancing with an old drunk cowboy at a bar, but we've been having technical difficulties getting it onto my computer. I promise it will come soon.

Icy Hot

I know you're all dying to know if I've hit anyone while driving those 40 foot monsters. I've only hit air pockets and frost heaves, thank you very much. In all honesty I'm doing pretty good. But when we're not driving buses, we're looking for other ways to get in trouble.

Like going to an ice museum.

The ice museum was pretty small, but pretty sweet. It's kept at 20 degrees all year, so I guess you could technically say that for most of the year they have to heat it (get it, because it's usually ever colder outside?) Actually, I have no idea. I just know everything inside is made of ice.

They give you jackets to wear inside the museum, isn't that nice of them? 
 

I'm pretty proud of myself because I didn't bring in a tripod but was still able to get some cool (and I do mean cool) pictures. The colors come from little colored Christmas lights, and the ice is usually melted right around where the light is.

The detail was pretty impressive. They had a bar inside where you could pay more money to drink a martini out of an ice glass or some touristy junk. Instead, we brought blow dryers and drank the sculptures.

The ice museum is located at this place called Chena Hot Springs. It is a natural mineral hot spring in the middle of the mountains, so it's pretty legit to take a dip when it's -40 outside. The day we went it was like +40, so still cool enough to have some dramatic effect, but not extreme enough to have your body suddenly break in half due to temperature extremes. Although they are open year round and people do like to torture themselves.

We had packed a picnic dinner, and even though it was nice outside, the mosquitoes weren't so nice so we ate inside. If you've ever heard legends of Alaskan mosquitoes, they're all true. They're known as Alaska's state bird because they're so ginormous.

I'm sure you're thinking "well how do they survive the winter?" which is exactly what I thought, but rest assured the mosquito eggs have this special incubator gel in them so they are able to lie dormant over the coldest part of winter (just the eggs, not the actually sucking birds).

Once break up happens, things start to melt, but there is no where for all the melted ice to go, and we all know (or will know now that I'm telling you) what happens when there is a bunch of stagnant water: mosquitoes.Thankfully, they usually go away by the end of July.


Speaking of suckers:

In other random blog worthy news, I got a bad cold this past week and so I've been out of touch with reality.  Don't worry, I haven't had too many delusions of grandeur.


We've got a nice little posse; once season starts I think it might break up because everyone's schedules will be so different. For the time being we do everything together, and it usually happens at our place. To be honest I haven't had this much fun in life since Attila was a Hun.

Here's a picture I took of the sun setting, which I think happened around 10:30. At night. Crazy, right? I'm pretty stoked for the midnight sun. They don't have fireworks on the 4th of July because it never gets dark enough!

Today we went to a co-worker's house for a bar-b-que. Her husband is an ice trucker and is on the reality TV show Ice Road Truckers. She was telling us all sorts of crazy stories about what goes down in the life of an ice trucker. They actually spray water on one part of the highway so that it will freeze more evenly and he actually drives out on the frozen ocean in the Arctic to bring supplies to the rigs.

One time there was a camp of 200 men who hadn't received food for several days due to harsh weather, so for four days her husband hand shoveled snow to get his truck across to the camp. Keep in mind you have to keep your truck running the whole time or everything will freeze and you're in a whole lot of trouble. I've never seen the show but we're going to have a marathon and watch all the episodes. She said that besides having to re-enact dramatic scenes, the danger they portray on the show is spot on.

I tell you what, this is just the beginning of all the interesting people I'm going to meet this summer.

I'm in Alaska.

Carlos Norris

Today I was sad. I needed something to make me happy. I photoshopped Chuck Norris in his true identity -- Carlos Norris. Yep, that's his real name.

Here's Chuck Norris, the one we all know and love:

And here's Carlos Norris, the one too scary to even make jokes about:

I feel happier.

Math and Sleep

It's 1:22 a.m. and I should be in bed, but I hate going to bed. It means disturbing dreams and having to find motivation in the morning. I'm still looking for it, but it's proving to be an elusive bugger.

I got a job.

I'm a part time office assistant working for a man who works from home who sells ink cartridges for a fraction of the price (here is his site, WholesaleToners.com . He's getting a new one and I'm helping with a new logo.)

I've had it for a week but didn't really want to tell anyone until I made sure I actually had the job. (Remember this story?). So of course I feel super blessed, and the guy I work for is really great.

One of my favorite teachers/people of all time, Caryn Esplin, invited me to go to Photoshop World with her and some students this September in Vegas. This was my reply to her:

Sis Esplin,

Photoshop world, huh? Do you realize what happened by you just mentioning the mere fact that I should go hang out in Vegas with one of my favorite people (you, not an Elvis impersonator) at a convention that is the equivalent of Hogwarts for a wizard? This is what happened:

1. I got really excited.

2. Then I did a little mathematical equation in my head.

     If a+b=c, then (a)me going to photoshop world + (b)you also being there = (c)me wanting to purchase CS5, more lenses, an external flash and a bodaciously big beautiful Mac. But we can't forget theorem e.

     Theorem e states that "if one has been graduated from college for over a year and finally just got a part time job as an office assistant making $8 dollars an hour all the while trying to pay off student debts, then this person has little money."

     We can then safely assume that a multiplied by c divided by b and squared by theorem e equals the the exponential circumference of an elephant's trunk.

     I think what the math book was trying to say is, "Man, I wish it could somehow all add up to a logical explanation and that theorem e wasn't a variable. We can only hope that *theorem x might become a variable of this hair brained equation." 

    *Note: Theorem X states that one with little money is miraculously granted a large sum of money due to a leprechaun, a really big raise or a scholarship for having tendencies to fall asleep everywhere."

3. I'm still trying to recover from the mathematical equation I did in my head.

But you know what? I'll think about it. And pray for Theorem X. 

And that's life in a pineapple shell right now.

Apple of my Pie

My aunt wants to start a pie blog. All pie all the time. So she wants me to design it. Being the gracious person I am, I said yes. It gives me purpose in life.

The most important first step was coming up with a great name, which my sister actually thought of, "Apple of My Pie." But, that domain name is already taken, even though they haven't posted anything yet. And even though we could do .net or something, I didn't think it was a good idea unless we could have the .com. Other names were given, like "Princess and the Pie" or "Pie Politics," but she decided on "Pie Parade," (which just so happens to be a name I thought of. And an old Betty Crocker cook book -- didn't find that out until after).

Step two: design beautiful blog. Step one of step two is figuring out theme/banner/logo, because the rest of the blog design will fall into place. Yesterday we had a pie party so I could take lots of pictures. I really wanted to do a photo shoot resembling this banner (isn't it gorgeous?):

But ended up with this.

I knew mine wasn't going to turn out like that guy's, because he's a professional food photographer. But a girl can dream. I took some of my favorite elements from the shoot to create this collage, which reminds me a lot of my friend Melissa's floral inspiration boards -- thanks Melissa!

I really like the collage, I'm just not sure how I'll incorporate the name. Oh, woe to the little details. Here are some other photos; tell me what you think, or if you have a great idea for the blog banner/logo. My aunt and I were thinking the theme should be county fair/americana, with blues, reds and creams. And if you're in the area and we have another pie day, and you gave me a really good idea or led me to my future husband, I'll let you have some pie.

 Side view. Duh. 

Above: My mom and Aunt Quenta setting it all up. And my dog Captain chilling.

Fun fact, the pink quilt as the semi-back drop was made by my great great grandmother, the doily under the lemon pie was made by my grandmother and the picnic table was made by my father. And the trumpet, well that was just my brother's, but the fun fact about it is that there was $150 in a wallet in the trumpet case that my other brother had put there to "hide" like three years ago and we rediscovered it yesterday. You know your money is well hidden when even you forget where it is.