yesterday i worked in cr's in the morning and had two sympathy packages for girls who were killed in the virginia tech massacre. one of them i had seen on the news in a little extended segment. it was rough. usually when we get sympathy packages it's sad enough, and you sort of wonder how the kid died, what the circumstances were...but it was really hard to sit there entering it while knowing exactly how both of them died...and knowing what violent deaths they were. one of them was 19, the other 20. just pups. it was really awful to enter them.
it was one of the few (VERY few) times i felt slightly proud of where i work, only because of the product we were providing at that moment to those two families. ours is a very personal field, which is why i get so peeved when everyone higher up tries to remove as much of the human element to production as possible. but sitting there entering those sympathy packages, realizing how many people in the lab would touch and care for those photos up until the moment they reach family members' hands, made me feel a bit more connected to the shooting that happened last week. i felt like a very small little part of the healing process. i know all i did was hit the keyboard a little and click the mouse a few times, but my hands set those prints into motion.
i don't know. it made me feel good and horrible simultaneously. good that i could be a microscopic part of the healing process for those two families, and horrible that i had to enter them at all.
completely senseless.
as a mother, i can't help but think of the shooter's parents and what they must be going thru.
senseless.
what else.... more work related crap...
i finally had a good day with the 220 splicer today. it's been acting up like a motherfucker this week, yesterday in particular. you have to fix the tape at least two times every time you start to use the damn thing. today i went in there with 24 rolls of film, which was daunting enough for me, what with my lack of experience with that machine, but nevertheless....i wanted to work with it. the more i mess with it the better i'll get, it's just when it gets SO screwed up that i have to ask aj or tom for help that i get made fun of. i spent twenty minutes in there yesterday at the end of another big tray of film, because i had gotten down to the last splice and the film came off of the takeup bar and twisted all up on me. i spent those twenty minutes trying to get the damn thing untwisted, until finally the back of my neck was so hot from aggravation that i came out and asked aj to fix it for me...........you'd think it was the funniest fucking thing in the world. then after he fixed it, i couldn't get the film to feed into the right side of the machine correctly, so my tail splice was coming out horribly and if i left it that way it would break in the processor... so i had to go out again and have aj put the tail on for me..........more jokes. which continued today of course. the jokes come mostly from tom, because he thinks he's cute and clever.... but it kills him if i don't react to his ribbing, so i just shrug my shoulders and roll off my "what-the-fuck-ever"s... he can't take that... so he leaves... haha...
anyway, i went into the darkroom with 24 rolls today...a scary task for me. but i felt like i had to do it to make up for the shit yesterday. the tape messed up after the first splice, while the light was still on, so i pushed the machine around and fixed it pretty easily... put on another blank roll for good measure, and didn't hear beeping again... so i turned off the light, got the first roll on there, and of course..............
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
so i had to pull the machine out again and take the tape out... in the dark... i cut the jammed portion off at the rolloff station and then headed back into the dark... got the tape reloaded and the machine going again, and then i actually got the film to load into the right side of the machine the right way.........IN THE DARK!!!! i was so fucking stupidly proud of myself, dude. the rest of the rolls were relatively uneventful, toward the end of the tray i started getting some speed going, so by the time i had bagged up the reel and was reaching up to turn the light back up i was basically basking in the wonder that is me.
aj wasn't very impressed, of course. but i really don't need his fucking approval, i was happy enough with myself for the both of us.
just wait till i tell tom tomorrow! then he'll make fun of me for gloating!
aaaaaaaaaand............i guess that's all i feel like writing about. it's funny how much differently i write in here than in my other blog. i like the freedom.
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"i crossed all the lines and i broke all the rules
and baby i broke them all for you"
