Menu Bar

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Princeton

I just got back from a lovely production trip to Princeton, New Jersey - my very first, growed-up business trip! Pretty darn exciting, let me tell you. Almost all day Monday was spent traveling. The group included Steve Burton (Producer), Steve O'Leary (Sound Master Man), Michelle Ballamis (fellow editor and camera woman), and Curtis (executive man, though he actually didn't really travel with us). We arrived in Princeton in the evening and searched for some food. I asked Siri for directions to a nearby pizza place, and we awkwardly ended up at some sort of food court where the pizza had been sitting out all day and looked extremely unappetizing. So we went elsewhere, Ruby Tuesday's to be precise. I ate spaghetti squash, which I've never done before but rather enjoyed. That's not saying much, though, because I'm not super picky when it comes to food, especially when I'm not paying for it. After dinner we retired to our separate hotel suites - yes, I had my OWN suite. Here's a video:


Pretty sweet, huh? I had fun, anyways...

So, Tuesday we spent all day at the ETS hotel and conference center. The letters ETS should be familiar for most college and grad students because they're the ones who do the ACT and GRE. And you know all that money you pay to take those exams? Pretty sure it all goes right to their hotel and conference center. They provide free amazing fancy buffet lunches to all the people using/staying at their hotel, as well as snack bars with chips and cookies and bagels and such all throughout the building. And an entire fridge filled with free soft drinks. And waiters that bring you glasses of water. The teachers we were filming said that ETS really stands for Eat Til Sick.

We filmed a conference/meeting of about 12 teachers and administrators compiling performance standards for teachers. I was invited to come on the trip because I will be editing the footage for a project called LiveBook. We spent many hours filming the meeting and then many other hours filming interviews. I think that it'll all look pretty nice in the end. Call time was 7:00 AM and we didn't finishing filming until 6:45 PM so it was a rather long day.

We ate dinner at this cool little Italian place right off of Princeton Campus. Princeton looks so much like England! I felt so much at home. We then went back to our hotel rooms and slept. I read a bit of Georgette Heyer, this time it was called "The Nonesuch."

Call time on Wednesday morning was 6:45 AM. We packed up everything - suitcases, equipment, and all - and went to the conference center to film more of the meetings and the last of the interviews. I'm sure the content of the interviews and meetings will be interesting to some people, but I must admit I found myself dozing off a couple of times.

We headed for the airport at 2:30 PM with authentic cannoli that Curtis brought us (he felt bad that he never actually spent much time with us). At 5:30 PM we took off, and we were home by 8:30 PM local time. A quick, but enjoyable trip.


We stopped off by the SINET office to drop off the equipment and I discovered that Seth and Greg had kidnapped my ninjas (the tiny figurines I collect). So we kidnapped their computer keyboards and Greg's lightsabers. In the morning I hurried into work to see their reactions. Not only had they recovered their keyboards and lightsabers, but they had kidnapped my and Michelle's computer monitors! They sent me off to look for my ninjas, telling me they were "out cold." I searched in vain, and returned to my desk to discover my ninjas had been returned - they were most definitely out cold. Man I love those guys! They definitely missed us. They helped me find my monitors and I got back to work. We used my ninjas to ice some Appletini Crystal Light and overall had a marvelous day.

I feel rather refreshed, having been out of the office for a couple of days. It was like being on a paid vacation! Where I didn't actually get to do any sightseeing or relaxing....but it was still refreshing!

No comments:

Post a Comment