2021 Christmas Letter

This Christmas I decided to do a Christmas letter, this was something I've thought about doing for years, though part of that was also because I've wanted to do a FAKE Christmas letter writing a fictionalized version of my year, but that's not this. This is a real Christmas letter, updating my family, and now also my 3.5 blog readers about my 2021. And part of 2020, because that was also relevant.

Anyway, here's the letter. No guarantees of a 2022 version, but maybe I'll do that fictional version next time.

~

Dear Everyone,

 

I'm doing a Christmas card! Or at least a Christmas letter. But probably by the time I send this, it’ll be a New Years letter. I've kind of always wanted to do one of these, but I just never have, partly because I've never had anything to write about, and partly because usually the only people who do these are moms with kids, who want to give updates on their perfect, adorable families. And I'm a single 35-year-old with no kids and two podcasts. 🤓

 

Well, who cares. I want to do one, so I'm doing one. Will this be an every year thing? Who knows. We'll see. Let's just do year one first and see how things go.

 

Well, I guess for starters, I finally got a job this year! If you read my blog, which, be honest, you don't, and that's fine. I barely even update it these days anyway, because I have so much more going on. My blog hit its peak in 2011, 2012, and it's been all downhill ever since. Though I might recycle this letter as a blog post, because, well, free content. I'm a big believer in recycling, which includes digitally. 😆

 

I suppose I should preface all this by going back to the first half of this year, (and even last year) because SO MUCH HAS CHANGED. From January to June I was working part time at Hy-Vee in Harlan as a personal shopper. I moved back home last year because I got a job with the census. I had been living in Ames with my Grandma after graduating. I was working overnights at a hotel, and part time at the grocery store there. I would do an 8-hour overnight shift, then go work 4 hours at Hy-Vee in the morning, then go home, crash, wake up, and do it all over again. So fun.

 

Not really. Anyway, I got a job with the census early 2020, and started making plans to move back home. Since I still had my permanent address set to Harlan, even though I lived in Ames, they wanted me to work in Harlan. Of course everything got delayed because obvious reasons, but then everything did eventually start up again, and I moved back home. And then Hy-Vee in Harlan wanted me back too, as they were desperate for help doing personal shopping which had become huge during the pandemic. And that's what I'd been doing since the end of 2020.

 

And even though Hy-Vee was part time, it was nearly full time. They wanted me to work just enough hours so that I would still be classified as part time, but not enough that they would have to do insurance, benefits, etc. But a lot of weeks I got full time hours anyway, because we were so short staffed.

 

Anyway, that brings us up to this spring, when, as I wrote in my ONE big blog post this year, I actually FINALLY found a job in what I went to school for! In June I started a job at Harlan Municipal Utilities, (HMU) which as the name implies, is a water/power/telecom company in Harlan, IA. Shockingly, the town where I actually live. I say shockingly, because I never in a million years thought I'd find a job in my field in Harlan. I barely thought I'd find something in Iowa.

 

I've been applying for jobs since 2017 when I graduated, (Not counting 2019, when I took a year out of the job search to do a long-distance internship with my friend Rachel Wagner in Utah) and for the majority of the search, I mainly focused on Des Moines, and Omaha, because those were the two big cities within driving distance, and I figured they were my best bet for finding a job in advertising. Little did I know, I would end up finding a job in marketing right in my own backyard. Funny how these things work sometimes, isn't it?

 

So, even though my job is in "Marketing" this job has surprisingly little actual marketing duties. To be sure, there is a lot of Marketing in this job, however, HMU has three local cable channels, and the vast majority of my job has been making content for those channels.

In fact since I’ve now been here over 6 months, and have been making content all that time, pretty much all the old content that was running when I got here, has now been cycled out, and I would probably say that at this point, about 90% of what is currently running on those channels now is programming that I filmed and edited myself. And the other 10% is church services, submitted by local churches for replay.

 

The fact that I now do so much work with video editing is actually kind of amazing, because in addition to that internship I did, (Which was a lot of video and podcast editing) my main extracurricular activity since I graduated has been to start a YouTube channel and my two podcasts. I learned some video and audio editing in school, but I would say the vast majority of it I have taught myself in the past 4 years of podcasting, and I'd like to think that that experience is part of why I got this job.

 

And even if it somehow turned out that wasn't why I got the job, it's certainly why I have felt so comfortable doing a lot of what I do now, because there is SO MUCH editing in this job, and I had no idea how much it would be when I first applied.

 

The first of the three cable channels is not video though, it's basically a local bulletin board. We sell advertising here, which is where the bulk of my "Marketing" job happens. I also have some marketing/graphic design to do for HMU itself, but most of it happens here. I either make ads for companies who buy space here, or make/update local events calendars, I even make all the local obituaries that we run on the channel.

 

The second channel is the local programming channel. This is where most of my duties began when I first got this job, as the main thing that the people keeping this department going were doing was updating this channel every Monday with the local church services.

Oh yeah, I suppose I should mention that when I got this job, it was kind of in chaos. There was literally no one in marketing, and they were barely holding the position together. They had lost literally the entire marketing team within a few months of each other, and by the time they hired me, it was two guys from the telecom department doing the bare minimum to keep the marketing department functioning in addition to doing their own jobs on top of that.

 

The head of marketing had retired last year, then HMU decided to fold telecom and marketing into one department, then one of the two remaining marketing associates was called to a church in a different state, because he was also a pastor, then the last one was diagnosed with cancer not long after, and she quit almost immediately.

 

And I think it took them at least three months to hire me, because I missed it the first time they advertised the position, and it wasn't until May when Mom saw the ad in the paper, which led to me getting hired by the end of the month. And of course I gave Hy-Vee two weeks' notice, so I didn't start until mid-June, months after everything in Marketing had fallen apart for them.

 

So needless to say I was kind of thrown into things, and have pretty much had to learn everything on the fly. And half the stuff I've almost had to teach myself. Thankfully my boss and one of the other telecom guys had been able to figure out some things after the other team was gone, so I wasn't totally thrown in blind, but still, my boss's main job is running the telecom side of things, so, back at the beginning, I was on my own for more than I would have prefered.

 

Anyway, where was I? Okay, back to the second channel.

 

This is where a LOT of my time has been focused the past few months, way beyond just getting local church services on the air every week. One of the first big projects I was "Thrown into" was the Shelby County Fair. HMU is responsible for a lot of the local coverage of the fair, and people around Harlan expect to be able to watch the biggest events on TV.

 

So the whole week of the fair I was there bright and early filming the cattle show, the swine show, sheep and goats, the crowning of the Fair Queen, the parade, the talent show. I was everywhere, and I was exhausted by the end. That was a long week. And of course I also had to edit everything too, so when I wasn't filming, I was editing, basically turning all the footage I'd collected into a television show. When all was said and done, I figured I had made at the very least, a Netflix season's worth of television, 100% by myself.

 

Oh, and then, not to interrupt myself again, but right after this, I got Covid and ended up in the hospital for a week. And all in all I was out of work for almost an entire month. 

Thankfully this was right after my health insurance had kicked in, so in the long run, I was out of pocket for very little. I am SO thankful that I got this job when I did, because if I'd have ended up in the hospital while I'd worked part time at Hy-Vee, I would probably be in debt till I died.

 

Okay, so again, back to the cable channels. Right now we are right in the middle of a whole bunch of sports seasons. I filmed almost every single game that our local football team played, right up until they hit the semifinals, because at that point the rules changed, and a bigger company owns all the rights to film and distribute those games. Our team ended up winning the entire 3A Championship, and I somehow was actually invested? (Here comes another tangent.)

 

I have literally never cared about sports in my life. No one in my family cared about sports enough to watch them on TV. My dad moved here from Canada when he was a teen/young adult and the only sport he cared about was hockey, which we couldn't watch here, so I didn't even inherit that.

 

But somehow, throughout the last several months of filming every game for our hometown football team, (Including away games, which I traveled for, sometimes staying overnight in hotels) I actually found myself caring, enough so that when they ended up going into the semi finals and championships, I actually watched them on TV, because I cared enough about seeing them win.

 

If you had told me a year ago that in a year's time, I would care enough about the Harlan Cyclone football team to attend every game, and then watch them on TV, I would have laughed in your face and assumed you were the absolute worst psychic to have ever lived. And yet here I am.

 

Will I continue to watch and enjoy football? Ehh, I don't know. I'll continue to watch and enjoy Harlan football, as that's now literally my job, but I'm not really invested in any other teams right now. But I guess the moral of this story is, you never know what the future holds.

 

Okay, back to my job. Currently we are in basketball season, and even though I do not travel for this one, (We only cover away games for the football team) I am filming a LOT more games than I was for football. I guess I never knew how much more basketball is played than football, at least in terms of the numbers of games played. I guess part of that is that both girls and guys play basketball, so that does double the number of games I have to film, but it sure seems like I am filming a lot more than I ever did during football.

 

And sports aren't the only thing I'm filming now anyway, because we don't just cover sports for the school, we do as much of the arts as we're allowed, (plays are copyrighted so no filming allowed unless it's written by someone locally) and this mostly entails concerts. And unlike sports where we only cover high school stuff, we cover concerts for all ages. And we're right in the middle of the Christmas season, so there have been a not insignificant number of non-sports events to film as well.

 

PLUS, I haven't even told you about the third channel yet! The third channel that HMU owns and operates is the local government access channel. And I film and edit everything there too.

 

This includes not just our own board meetings, but city council meetings, school board meetings, county supervisor meetings, and even hospital board meetings! Plus any other special government things that happen locally.

 

And I only just started getting back into those after the football season was over, as my boss has been trying to ease me into everything slowly. Which I am grateful for. I would have been totally overwhelmed if I'd have had ALL of this thrown at me when I first started.

 

So, as you can tell, this new job keeps me VERY busy. And I somehow have been able to keep my podcasts going all this time as well. I have had to cut way back on the number of episodes I make, but I would never want to give them up entirely, I have friends all over the country that I keep in contact with through the podcasts, so that alone makes it worth it for me to keep them going, even if my spare time is now far more limited than it used to be.

 

So, I guess that's all my updates from the year. I know some of you know a lot of this, but I still thought it would be fun to write this, and it was. We'll see if I end up doing this again next year, I did have fun with this, so if anything worth writing about happens, I'd say chances are pretty good I do it again, but, like with literally everything that's happened to me this year, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

 

Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, Happy Birthday, Bye!

 

Your friend, son, grandson, nephew, uncle, cousin, etc.

Jonathan

I FINALLY Have an Internship!

So, kind of big news, okay, who am I kidding, HUGE news! I finally have an internship! After almost two years of applications going nowhere, and (almost) never hearing back from anyone, I finally have an internship!

And now for the twist. This will not be a traditional internship. In fact, I am basically making it up as I go! I had to get special permission to do my internship this way, but it will count as the final credit I need to officially graduate and get my degree!

I've mentioned my YouTube channel here before, I don't talk about it a lot here, but if you follow me on my public social media pages, then you'll know I almost always make at least one video a week. Some of those videos I do with other people, and one of those people is Rachel Wagner.

I mentioned her in my last post, you may have seen the pictures from January when I made a scarf and hat for her for a late Christmas gift. Rachel lives in Utah, and she and I met through the Rotoscopers. We both write for the site, and she's the main reason I finally bit the bullet and started my own YouTube channel.

We've become pretty good friends over the past few years, and for the past few months I have been occasionally doing some freelance editing for her. Rachel has two blogs, two channels, and two podcasts, (In addition to a full time job, completely unrelated to YouTube) and sometimes, on weeks where she has too much to do, she'll have me edit an episode or two of her podcasts for her.

In mid-January I started thinking, I have been getting some decent experience with this, I wonder if there is a way I could expand on it and make it count as an internship. I didn't say anything right away, like I said, I have been applying for internships ever since I graduated, and I had just applied for some at the beginning of the year, so I was waiting to see if anything came from them. Shocker, nothing ever did. Story of my life for the last 22 months.

Finally in February, I proposed an idea to Rachel, if I came on as an unpaid intern, would she have enough work for me to do on a consistent basis? It was an immediate yes. Like I said, she's very busy.

So, as for the unpaid part, I know I've said since I graduated that I was not going to do an unpaid internship, since it would almost certainly mean quitting my job while working on it, and I have bills to pay. I can't afford to be without income for 3 months, or however long a full-time internship would last. I had a plan for that, but since this internship is very unconventional, having it be unpaid would only work out if everything came together perfectly.

So, Rachel has actually been paying me since I started working for her, but knowing that she requests my services only when she's really needing some extra help, I figured it would be best to propose it be unpaid. That, and at this point I really just want to get this thing over with. I figured this way it'd be a win-win for both of us, as long as everything worked out the way I wanted it to.

Since January I've actually been working full time at the hotel. At first it was because someone went on vacation, but then there have been, (and are still continuing to be) a bunch of schedule disruptions. People quitting, getting promoted, moving to a different parts of the hotel; it seems like every week a new person leaves or is hired. At the beginning of February, one of the night auditors was moved to days temporarily, so I've been working five nights a week until things can go back to normal. Even if I wasn't working full time at the hotel, I am still employed at Hy-Vee, so I have full time work either way.

With that in mind, I am definitely not interested in quitting for an unpaid internship, no matter how much I need to get this thing done. So my idea in proposing the unpaid internship to Rachel was to keep working at the hotel, but work on the internship on the side. Normally internships are ten, 40 hour weeks. Basically it becomes your full time job for around three months. The way I was planning this, it would take much longer to reach the required 400 hours, but at least I could still have a steady income, and do the internship at the same time. Any other internship, unpaid or not, would not have this kind of flexibility.

So obviously I had Rachel on board, now I just had to convince my faculty adviser and the school's internship adviser. My adviser was pretty easy. Once I told him what I wanted to do, he thought it sounded like a great idea, and a great opportunity. I couldn't believe it! I thought I was going to have to work so much harder to convince him! Rachel even wrote up a huge long list of her qualifications, education, and achievements, and he hadn't even seen that when he said he liked the idea!

But then I had to make another appointment with the internship adviser, and I was sent a whole long list of guidelines, and forms to fill out before our meeting. And one of those guidelines was that the internship had to take place at a physical location, and I could NOT work from home. There were no exceptions listed anywhere in these rules, just that students MUST go to an actual workplace environment.

Well, I figured that was the end of that. I still decided to keep the meeting with her, I figured I'd at least TRY to explain everything on the very off chance that she could bend the rules for me, but I was no longer hopeful at all. I wondered if maybe my adviser didn't understand that I had planned to work from home before he given me the green light to move forward. At that point I had basically accepted that this was not going to work out. So the rest of that week I was not in the best mood.

When we finally had the meeting she seemed very hesitant about the idea, but when she heard that I had already been freelancing for Rachel, and that we always keep in close contact when I'm working on something for her, she seemed a lot more open to the idea. Apparently the biggest reason for the no working from home rule is that the students typically have a hard time keeping in touch with the person who is supposed to be their supervisor. The fact that I am always in touch with Rachel, made it pretty clear that that wouldn't be an issue.

The other reason they don't allow students to work from home is that the school wants students to get the experience of working in a professional environment. However, when she realized that I already work full time for the Gateway, that pretty much sealed the deal. I may not be getting the "Professional Environment" from the internship, but the fact that I've already had an office job for almost a year now, is great experience in and of itself. So the fact that I'm getting that experience somewhere, paired with the fact that I already have a great working relationship with with the person who would be my internship supervisor, she thought that this could be one of the VERY rare instances where they actually approve a work from home internship.

Of course this wasn't the end of it though, I still had to write up a formal proposal, the school had to get in contact with Rachel, and I had to go through all the official steps to actually register for the internship as a class. And then I had to wait more than two weeks for my registration date to open up, so I could actually submit the paperwork and actually get officially registered. Which finally happened today! Or, yesterday. It happened on the 26th. I work overnights, I can't keep days straight.

Right now it still hardly feels real. Over two years of applying for internships and I finally have one! Not to mention, I'm practically creating it as I go! I'm still full time at the hotel with a very unpredictable schedule, so I haven't fully gotten into everything, but my internship adviser told me, back when she officially gave her approval, that I could go ahead and start counting hours. So I have been working on a few projects here and there since then, but hopefully work will get back to normal soon, so I can get into the internship work on a regular schedule.

So anyway, that's my news for now! I probably won't do too many updates here along the way unless something really interesting or exciting happens, but I'll definitely follow up when I finish. Right now that's looking to be around September, but like I said, since I'm already working full time, I'm just counting hours as I go, so I can't predict an exact timeline. Either way, things are finally moving forward, and I'm just excited that this is actually happening! Before the end of the year, I should finally have my Bachelor's Degree!

Random Picture Update!

So, I haven't posted any pictures on this blog in awhile. Like, real photos from my real life. In fact, let me check and see just exactly how long it's been!

~

Well, I guess it was like 6 months ago if you're counting funeral posts, but it's been almost 2 years since I posted pictures from my graduation! And as far as non funeral/wedding/massive life event pictures, from what I can tell, I haven't posted any pictures since March of 2016! Three years ago! And those pictures were from the trip I took with Shaina and Sasha to visit Uncle Nathan and Aunt Ruth in Colorado, in 2014!

Edit: (A few days later) I found a few other more recent picture posts, but the most recent one still seems to be from mid-2017, and they were all catch-up posts containing several-months-old pictures as well. So either way, it's still been awhile, and either way, I'm still bad about posting pictures. I mean, I got right on the "Big Event" pictures, but I knew there were a lot of people waiting for them. To this day looking at my analytics, they are among the most viewed posts I've written.

So, for the past 5 years, I haven't done too much with pictures. At one point it was the main thing I posted. I even had, have, a photography blog, but I just checked there as well, and the last post was from the end of 2016. And that was also some pictures from the Colorado trip.

I took a LOT of pictures in 2017, but I still have yet to post them. The summer after I graduated I lived at home, worked part time at Hy-Vee (Like I have for 10 years now! Good grief I feel old...) and I spent my free time doing things with Sarah. That was the summer I started my YouTube channel, so we recorded a lot of videos, but every couple of weeks we would make it a point to go somewhere, and do something, (usually free) and I took a lot of pictures on those mini trips.

And then I never posted any of them. Not even our longest trip where we hit three states in one day on our way to watch the eclipse. YouTube just kind of became the main focus of all my free time. I mean, I edited and shared a vlog from the eclipse trip, but still not pictures. And then when I got the job at the hotel, between that and Hy-Vee, I barely had time for YouTube either. Someday, I swear, I will get those pictures up. But today is not that day.

Today I just wanted to share some random pictures I've taken recently. I don't take that many pictures these days, but if something interesting is happening, I have my phone, so I take some pictures.

~

The biggest thing that's happened around here recently is the snow. At the moment it has almost melted, but at one point there was a LOT.

Before I get to the good pictures, I had to share this one that I took one morning after work, when I went shopping. I didn't know it at the time, but there was a huge snowstorm in the forecast. This is the bread isle at Aldi. I just started laughing. The stereotypes are true! Apparently people panicked, and wiped out the bread! Good thing I didn't need any! 😂

 

This was really one of the worst winters we've had in awhile. Grandma even got a snowblower for me to use, which was a lifesaver. Until it broke right before the winter just went completely downhill. Technically I've seen worse than this winter in the past, but this was the worst I've seen in Ames, and the worst I've seen during a time when snow removal was up to me. So for most of February, I only had the shovel to rely on.

At its worst, the depth of the snow reached well over a foot in some places, and probably close to two feet at the end of the driveway, after the snowplow had passed. I took some pictures on the day the snow was at its highest. This one is the end of the driveway, the morning after the biggest snow. I work overnights, so I came home to a mountain in the driveway. I could not pull in to the driveway. And this snow was dense. This mess held my weight, I didn't even sink in an inch, when I climbed over to walk up the driveway.

 

And when I say two feet, that's probably how deep it was in the shallowest part. We had gotten so much snow in the days before this that the "Mountains" on either side of the driveway were over three feet high, and I couldn't keep the snow I was scooping from flowing back down at least somewhat, and I could just barely keep them apart enough to pull one car through. I'd taken to parking in the street on days I knew grandma would need to get out. Working overnights I sleep during the day, so it was just easier to park in the street than have to wake up to move my car for her.

This is the driveway the morning after the foot of snow fell. You can see where the newspaper people had walked up before I got home. They couldn't pull in either.

 

And now that I think of it, I think the snow had been falling for two days. It was snowing when I got home the day before, so I waited to scoop when I got up, but by that point it had grown to near blizzard conditions and I decided to wait until I got off work instead. Either way, the amount that fell all at once, was huge, and by the time I came home from work the next morning, this was the result.

At this point I didn't want to even be bothered with the snow. I just wanted to go to bed. I figured I'd scoop when I got up, but I wasn't expecting to even get close to finishing. There was no snow in the forecast for a few days, so I figured I could take my time and not kill myself on the two feet of snow-cement at the end of the driveway.

 

That afternoon I got up, got all my snow gear on and went upstairs to get the shovel, and found this!

I had told grandma how solid the snow at the end of the driveway was, and as soon as I went to bed, she went to the phone book, and found someone who was apparently right up the road who had some kind of industrial snow-blower, he came over with his son, and apparently their machine chewed right through the ice in the driveway! She said they had it clear in less than a half hour! I couldn't believe it!

Thankfully that one awful storm was really the worst of it, and the few times it has snowed since hasn't amounted to much at all.

My other thing this winter has been getting back into knitting. Apparently it's been two years since I started learning according to Facebook's memories feature.

I seem to do a little knitting around Christmas every year, but not much past that. This year I've actually made quite a few projects past the official holiday season. One of those projects was a late Christmas gift for my friend Rachel in Utah. I actually brought it to work one night after we lost internet access. 😂

 

I had my coworker Dominic take a picture of me to share with the knitting/crochet group that my sister-in-law Alex made on Facebook, but I thought it would be good for my blog too. :) And then Rachel sent me an Instagram Story after she got the package, so I asked if I could share that here as well. :)

Speaking of work, here's a random picture. Apparently a Red Bull representative left a case at our hotel for the employees to drink. It was a long night, so I decided to try my very first real energy drink.

It wasn't that great. I mean, It wasn't as horrible as I'd been led to believe, but it definitely wasn't good enough that I'd ever actually purchase one.

Oh, and here's another random picture I took recently. Not sure how I managed this.

I didn't take many pictures this Christmas but I did take a few cute ones of Jackson and Kadin.

I have a LOT of old pictures of my nephews from random events all last year. I'll probably eventually do a catch up post for those.

These kids are too cute. The paparazzi is always following them around. :p

Last year my cousins lost almost all their pets within just a few months. I took a few pictures right after they started getting some new kittens. I could have sworn I got some of all three, but for now, here's Sarah with Tadashi.

     

Tadashi loves my sandals. Also you can tell how long ago I took these, because I wore my sandals that night...

Anyway, that's all for now. Like I said I have a LOT more pictures. I just need to find time to actually do something with them. I think my next photo post will probably be more catch-up on family pictures, the majority of which will likely be nephews, but I do have other stuff coming. I may even try to do a photo-blog post one of these days. We'll see. I make no concrete promises, aside from that it'll happen. Some day. 😂

I Have a Podcast!

So, I have a podcast! The first episode went up on the first of February, but haven't told that many people in my real life, so I figured it was about time that I advertise it a little wider than to just my online friends.

This is something that's actually been a long time coming. I've been planning the show since last year, and editing episodes since January. With working two jobs since last April, I have had less and less time to edit videos to the level that I like, so I've been thinking about transitioning to (mostly) audio for a while.

If you've watched any of my videos on YouTube, then you'll probably be familiar with the format that I've settled on for my show. I decided to call it the I Heart Podcast, as it's a natural extension of my I Heart Animation series, but it really follows the same model that my Wonderland Wednesday series eventually developed into, with longer, more in-depth discussions.

The show is not just "I Heart Animation: The Podcast" though animation is a regular feature, I wanted the podcast to function similarly, but to be able to highlight really anything that I or my guests love. In each episode we pick a topic, usually a movie, but it really can be anything. If I had a guest who wanted to talk about Marmite or ceiling tiles, I'd be down for that if they thought we could get a decent episode out of it. The point is just a fun discussion with a friend.

At this point, the podcast has mainly focused on bringing shows from my YouTube channel into a new medium. A few episodes I have taken from my YouTube channel, and reedited them for the podcast. Back when we originally recorded them, most of the time we'd have rabbit trails, and the conversation would veer off and suddenly we'd be talking about something totally unrelated to the movie at hand. 

Those detours would be the first thing edited out of a YouTube video trying to stay under 10 minutes, focusing only on a movie review, but in a podcast, it's a lot more acceptable to have asides now and then. I actually enjoy some shows more when the hosts banter and get off topic. Keeping that in mind, I went back to the original files, and reedited a whole new, longer episode from each of them!

Now, I'm not doing this for every episode. The main reason I wanted to start the podcast out with some reedited episodes, was to give new listeners some context for what I've done before, as well as get them up to speed with one of my favorite series, that will now be a regular feature on the podcast.

Last year I started a show on my YouTube channel to review every Disney movie from the beginning. After only two episodes I realized that that was going to be a LOT more work than I had time for, (not to mention YouTube's broken copyright system throwing a wrench into the series) so I decided to pause the series and move it over to the podcast as soon as I launched it.

Of course I didn't want new listeners to miss out on the episodes I'd already done, so reediting seemed to be the best compromise between recycling an old episode, and making a brand new episode. And then I did the same thing with a couple episodes each of Wonderland Wednesday, and I Heart Animation.

And just reediting isn't all I've done to refresh these episodes, I've also brought guests back to do a Q&A session with them. So when I reedited a review I did with my friend Sol, I decided to bring her back, and just let the listeners get to know a bit more about her. I did the same thing with my friend Rachel, and I have another episode coming soon with my friend Mark. I haven't done one with my cousin Sarah yet, she's co-hosted a good chunk of my content, but we don't video chat like I do with my online friends, so once we have a chance to get together and record some episodes in person, we'll probably try to get one done.

So far the show has been a good mix of old and new, but once I put out our Pinocchio episode, there probably won't be that many more old episodes for awhile. I'll still do a reedit occasionally, but my goal is to eventually get to 100% brand new content.

My most recent episode was a new one with Rachel, and we talked about our top 10 movie releases of the past year. A few episodes before that, my friend Sol and I ranked all the animated releases of 2018. These are quite different than things I've previously done for my YouTube channel, but those discussions were a lot of fun, and I think they made for a great podcast.

If you think this sounds interesting, and you'd like to listen, my show is now available for download on just about every major podcast platform, I publish through Anchor, but you can find it on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and more! I'll link you to my homepage on Anchor, and you can get the whole list of platforms there.

https://anchor.fm/iheartpodcast

So that's my big news for now, I actually have a couple more posts planned for this month, which, if you've seen my blog recently, is kind of a big deal for me! I've actually been working full time at the hotel since January, so I haven't had much extra time, and the blog has kind of fallen by the wayside. I have a few pictures to share, which I haven't done in ages, so check back in a few days for those! I'll see you soon!

I Have a New Job!

So, for the few of you left that don't know, I have a new job! No this isn't in advertising, as nice as that would be, I'm actually working for a hotel, which, weirdly enough is actually something I've kind of wanted to do since I was a kid. I blame movies like Dunston Checks in and TV shows like The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. :p

I am now working as a night auditor for the Gateway Hotel and Conference center in Ames, Iowa, and I have to say, I kind of love it! Don't get me wrong, this job, like most jobs, is not perfect, but even with the small issues here and there, I am still really enjoying it so far! As a night auditor, I am working overnights, but I actually adjusted to my new schedule pretty easily. I'm already a night owl, so all I had to do was stay up a few extra hours!

Now, I will say, that this job is not at all what I was expecting it to be. I originally applied for just a regular front desk position, day shift of course, and I never heard back from them. I believe that was at the end of last year, so I just assumed I never got it and moved on. I've been job/internship hunting for over a year now, so I'm used to never hearing back from people.

Then at the beginning of March, I got a call! Apparently I'd given up on them too soon, because they wanted to set up an interview! I went in the next week, and somewhere during the interview he brought up the subject of a night position. I had never even considered that as an option. We have a night crew at Hy-Vee, but I would not want their job. Far more manual labor, and zero customer interaction. (Though I suppose in some ways, that could be a positive... :p) But I actually like working registers at the store, most days we have great customers in Ames, and it's the closet thing to 'fun' you can do there. (For me anyway.)

Anyway, the more he talked about the night position, the better the job sounded. Better pay with full-time hours, and it's usually pretty quiet, and you almost never get overrun with customers. All in all, it just seemed like a quiet, low-stress job. After the interview was finished, he told me I definitely passed the first round, and they'd call me once they'd finished all the interviews. A week or two later I had a second interview with HR, which I thought went great as well, but then I didn't hear anything for well over week. They'd told me I'd hear back from them in just a few days, so when I didn't hear back from them by the end of March, I was pretty sure I hadn't gotten it.

I was back at home by then, I had gone on a quick weekend trip with my cousin to see a crane migration in Nebraska, (I'll blog about that eventually!) and I started making tentative plans to move back to Harlan for the summer. Hy-Vee wasn't giving me many hours at all, and I figured I'd have a better shot at hours at the store in Harlan. On my last day home on that trip, I decided I'd call the hotel and get a definitive yes or no. If no, I was going to make plans to come home for the summer, because I have bills to pay! However, when I called, it turned out, the manager had been planning to call me that day! Actually, he had scheduled the call for not even an hour after I'd called him! I got the job!

I've now been working here over a month, and it is very different than anything I expected, and very different than anything I've ever done before. For starters, I kind of expected I'd just be sitting at the desk all night, maybe checking people in for a couple hours, and then out in the morning, and then nothing in between. That's not how it is at all. There is a ton of paperwork, computer work, and audit work, which you may have guessed earlier by the job title.

We have a restaurant in the hotel, and if guests charge things to their room, we get those receipts, and have to enter them into our system, to make sure they are charged. We make sure that direct bill charges line up with the records, and we sort all that paperwork for the "real" auditor who works during the day. We have cash registers around the hotel which we have to count as their respective areas close, as well as a safe which we also have to count, once we've refilled the cash registers (if need be) and all the money around the hotel is accounted for.

After the last guests check in, or 3:00 am, which ever comes first, we "run audit," which is essentially resetting the entire system, causing a ton of paperwork to print, which we have to sort, scan, email and file to all the respective locations and managers.

A bunch of that paperwork is also check-out sheets for guests leaving in the morning. Those all get sorted, and then we have to deliver them all over the hotel. We have 8 floors and almost 200 rooms, so between the walking and the the bending over to slide the papers under doors, that can end up being a decent workout if we have a full house.

Then we have to unlock the kitchen and make coffee for the lobby. That's not too strenuous, until it comes time to carry the coffee downstairs. That's a workout by itself if we have two full restaurant-sized pots. After that we wait for the guests to start getting up, because we usually have some who want to check out first thing.

And all of this doesn't take into account that we'll have guests calling or coming down to the lobby at all hours for lots of different things. More pillows, extra blankets, wake-up calls, toiletries, coffee packets, microwaves, fridges, you name it, if we have it, we'll get asked for it, and if we don't have it, someone will still want it. Thankfully this doesn't happen all the time, but some nights are worse than others.

Some nights, if we have a lot of guests, especially if we have large groups of people here for conferences we'll be busy all night. There's a lot more paperwork, more money, and more checkouts to do. However, on a good night, the bulk of the work will only take up about half the night. Not all at once of course, different things have to happen at different times, but in between jobs, we have downtime that lets us do, sort of whatever we want!

When I first got the job I was planning to bring my laptop and edit videos for my YouTube channel when it was quiet. But then I found out that we were only allowed to use the computers at the front desk, since we have to be up front and available in case anyone shows up or calls. So instead, I've taken to blogging and writing articles for the Rotoscopers, which kind of means, in a roundabout way, I'm actually getting paid to write!

Honestly, this is probably the best part of the job for me. I like most parts of the job, it's definitely a great change of pace from the grocery store, but the fact that I can write while I'm working, is kind of the highlight. I actually wrote this whole blog post and two full articles for the Rotoscopers over the course of two nights at work!

So anyway, those are the highlights for now. I do have one story to tell you about something really weird that happened on my very first night, but I think I'll save that for another post. This one ended up being really long as it is, plus, I need to save something to work on for future nights too. Stay tuned! :)

Graduation 2017

Well, it's finally over. Mostly. I still have to do an internship before it's official, but I am finished with my classes. Last Friday and Saturday were the graduation ceremonies. I didn't get many pictures myself, I was a but busy, but I gave my dad my camera, and my friend Rachel was there and took quite a few great pictures as well.

Friday night was the convocation ceremony for the graduates in the schools of LAS, Liberal Arts & Sciences.

We all got a medal from the school to wear during the ceremony.

Advertising was the first school into Hilton Coliseum, so I was one of the first ones in.

And since we were first onto the floor, we were also the first up.

The woman on the end in black, one of the people reading our names, was actually one of my favorite teachers from 4 years ago when I first started at Iowa State! Her name is Jane Cox, and she taught my History of Theater class, before I switched majors, when I was still going for the design degree. I actually even wrote a whole blog post about her, which you can find HERE. I'm sure she didn't recognize me, I was in a class of probably hundreds, but I recognized her immediately, and it was nice to see her again.

Afterwards we tried to get some pictures.

But the lighting was not very good, so this is the best we have. :)

That was convocation. The big one was the next day. To begin, every school went to a different location to line up. We were supposed to be there by 12, and the ceremony didn't start until 1:30, so there was a lot of sitting around.

My location was the Cyclone training arena.

I rarely take selfies but I did that day.

I took a picture as we walked out on the field of Jack Trice stadium. You can see just a fraction of the people graduating here. The ceremony was huge. I think there was almost 5000 people graduating here. Little did I know, I got my cousins Shaina and Sasha in this picture, as well as Rachel.

She texted me until I saw them. :p

She also got a picture of my family all the way on the other side of the stadium.

And Dad got a picture of them. :p

He also took a picture of Jackson. :)

Here's a game for you.

It's similar to Where's Waldo, but you're trying to find me. :p

Does this help?

I am there, but good luck finding me.

This was the picture published on the school newspaper's website the next day.

That's a lot of people.

Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of Boeing, and Iowa State Alumni, gave the commencement speech.

LAS was the second school to go, so I was up rather quickly, in comparison to the whole ceremony.

We all went through a photo tent to get our picture taken by a professional photographer before we went across the stage, but they didn't tell us what the tent was beforehand. My dark sense of humor imagined something nefarious going on in there. In particular I was thinking of a scene from an episode of Doctor Who were people were lined up to enter a building in order to be "upgraded" into a Cyberman. Yes, it would not have been very funny if it had been true, but I have a weird sense of humor. :p

No one got a very good picture of me actually getting the diploma (cover) but Rachel did get a great picture of me on the giant screen over the field.

The rest of the ceremony lasted until after 5, and by the end pretty much everyone had left. I didn't want to be one of THOSE people, I didn't want to seem rude and leave just because it was more convenient, so I stayed.

I suppose I should have just left; in the end, staying got me nothing but a sunburn. :p

But a girl gave me a streamer wand to shoot confetti, so I guess that was one good thing. :p

Afterwards I took another selfie while I waited for my family.

And then we went back to grandma's for a reception.

And Rachel insisted I pose for pictures with people. :)

Shaina

Rachel

 Sasha

Alex

Shaina and Alex

 Joel

Joel and Jared

Mom and Dad

That night, after everyone had left, I found this attached to my car.

Not sure who left it there, or why I didn't notice it earlier.

Mom thought it was Joel, but I never heard for sure. :p

And that was the day! I am glad that Rachel and Dad (and Sasha with my phone) were there to get pictures, because only like 5 of these were mine. There were of course official photographers there, and I should be getting a copy of those pictures, but I don't know when those will be coming. I'll probably do another post whenever I get those pictures.

As I said before, I won't have OFFICIALLY graduated until I've done an internship, and I am currently working toward that. I'm spending my first few weeks of summer building a portfolio/website. I'm making mostly a lot of new art and taking a lot of new photos for the site. I'll probably share some of the new stuff as I create it, and I'll of course share the website when it's finished. Stay tuned!