Three Days Off

Memorial Day is here, and I'm some 2,000 miles from the greatest parade in Memorial Day history.  Right now, I know that somewhere on Broadway Street in Philipsburg, Montana, a parade a block long and fronted by red trumpets and Boyscouts is working its way up to the cemetery.  It's the type of parade you would miss by blinking, but to our family it's kind of the only parade worth talking about.  And you wouldn't believe the number of stories we've gotten out of a parade whose entirety fits easily in your peripheral vision.  Anyway, my parents are there today with other Grotbos who hail from magnificent P-Burg, and are probably placing a handpicked granite headstone at my Grandma Jimmy's grave as I type.  A number of my Memorial Days have been spent in Philipsburg, and stopping in the cemetery to see Grandpa Hoke's grave was part of that.  I haven't been since Grandma joined him, but I'm thinking of them today and remembering the weather and the clouds on top of that hill, and my family all together.

Coinciding nicely with Memorial Day in New York is Fleet Week.  It's the time of year when sailors of all ranks flood the harbor and streets of Manhattan.  I've been able to nab a few cell phone pictures for my friend Genevieve (who happens to think an invasion of gentlemen in uniform is about the greatest thing that could happen).  I can report that all of the sailors I've interacted with on the street have been good humored and polite, and I salute them on this holiday, along with all others who have served America and allowed it so many moments in which to achieve greatness throughout history.

Goodbye to Alex (in the middle with his fro-y fro-y hair)

Lately, I've been testing the boundaries of my own ability to achieve.  Between doing the jobs of two people at work and saying goodbye to one of my best New York pals, hello to a couple others, celebrating birthdays, and having visitors, it's been a packed couple of weeks!

At work, the big change in our level of busyness came with the start of on-location filming for the R Kelly series.  This phase of production lasted all of a week before VH1 decided to can the flailing R Kelly series, largely based on the dramatic behavior of its star.  I suppose none of us were really that surprised, but it meant we had to fly into wrap-out mode right away; getting the financials actualized, shipping supplies and crew out of Chicago, copying all of our series documentation to submit as final Deliverables to the Network as per our contract.  All of this in the midst of an office move to a location without solid internet, without an office manager, without furniture, and without office supplies, made for a crazy workload for myself and everyone at ISH Entertainment.  I knew we had two weeks to wrap out R Kelly, but wasn't certain I'd have a job after that.  I was relieved to hear that Mike (my boss and the line producer on the R Kelly series) intended to keep myself, Tanya, and Billie on for another couple of shows they had in the pipeline for June and July.  Somehow, though, it seems that I've become the de facto office manager for ISH at large.  Especially once Donnie, our PA Runner, left for Europe, the burden of fitting our office with keys, an alarm system, working internet, satellite, computer speakers, MS Office and telephone install, a faxer/copier, and a cleaning company fell onto me.  I've been working with vendors galore and managing several interns as well as the potential hire of additional camera people and producer/editors while also ransacking MTV's music video libraries for a side project and still attempting to help finish things on R Kelly.  Needless to say, work has been nuts!  Everyone's been great at acknowledging the ridiculous workload that landed on me and they've been very nice to compliment what a great job they feel I've done.  I've been overwhelmed more than once, and I seem to do a lot of literal running of errands around the office and outside in the big wide island of Manhattan, but the greatest part of all of this is that I feel strong at the end of the day.  I feel like I'm meeting a challenge head-on and growing immensely.  I can compare myself as I was during my very first internship in New York, and it helps to give me perspective when I'm being too hard on myself for messing up any minor detail.  At the start of my first internship, I had only been in New York for a month.  I remember my boss, Inbal, asking me to go put some quarters in her parking meter and giving me a vague description of the street and the color of the vehicle, and I remember how terrified I was the moment I stepped outside into the hustle of Union Square without a clue of how I was going to find this car.
Now, my boss Mike asks me to get something from point A to B and involve people X Y and Z, and I figure out a way to do it without taking a moment to doubt that I'll be able to pull it off somehow.

My future with ISH is still up in the air, but with their slew of oncoming projects, I suppose there may be a chance I could stay with them for long enough to learn a few more things and hopefully segue into more of a creative role.  I still very much want to go into design:  website design, graphic design, layout design.  I realize that my real talent has always been making something out of nothing, or out of the unexpected at least.  I need to find a way to make a career out of my creative leanings, or I know I'll never be fully satisfied.  As much as I've gained from going through the organizational exercises of film production, I realize that I don't have the same brain for it as, say, someone like Billie (our Production Coordinator), whose mind works in systems and grids.  I'm more abstract and like to think of the possibilities rather than the realities of accomplishing things sometimes.  But, if this job has proven anything to me about myself, it's that I can truly get things done in reality, too.  So the push continues.

I'd like to make an abrupt transition from that speech to this brief one:  neighbors in New York are great. A few weeks ago, my friends Nick and Kelsey had Allison and I over for home-made falafel.  It was delightful and just the sort of social break I needed to remind me of all the good times one can have in this city that don't involve a paycheck.

Yum!  I'm taking the dinner thing seriously and hosting an Indian Dinna party this coming weekend, up on the roof of The Princess Building.  Wish me luck, because this girl has a lot of work to get through first.