The Branson Trip

The weekend started at 12:00pm Friday when me and one of my co-workers left for Branson, MO. I knew very little about the town before this trip, so I was excited to go out and see some of Missouri, at least as a passenger for once. The first thing I noticed was the shear amount of trees and hills on the way, things I didn't really notice while driving to STL. As we neared Branson, my co-worker kept cracking jokes about the show signs which made the last two hours of the trip more interesting.

Branson Landing is a pretty nice place. We stayed at the Hilton there, which is also quite nice. The hotel is connected to the strip and made going from the room to "the shop" pretty easy.

The shop is actually really cool. My co-worker was telling me that I'm pretty fortunate to see a shop so early because he didn't see a shop until 7 months after he started working for RZ. It really does make a difference to see your work in the shop. There were so many little kids, mostly boys, on Friday night. It was refreshing to see people so excited about something. You definitely can't find that kind of enthusiasm just anywhere.

Fortunately, Friday night was only a sneak peek for those who RSVPd, so we were able to go at about 8. Around the same time, Kelsey made her way down to join me for dinner at the Landing. We noticed quite quickly that there weren't that many restaurants that really sounded good. We eventually settled on Garfields, the last restaurant on the strip. After the drive and working around so many kids and dinner I was pretty tired. Good thing the hotel bed was so awesome.

Saturday

I got up at 7AM thinking why the eff am I up so early. Oh yeah, I gotta be out there at 8. Damn. I started by making some product to be crushed by our main feature of the day: Big Foot the monster truck. The truck it self was pretty impressive, especially when its on. I'll just show you the pics.

Here is the front of RZ during the Sneak Peek on Friday.

The "ZEO" Larry cuts the chain to the new store on Saturday. Open for business.

Big Foot the monster truck, complete with RZ flag on the back, crushes a row of old cars as part of the weekend's festivities. Needless to say, it was loud.

Big Foot crushed some cars as part of the marketing thing. Here are the RZ cars with the real ones in the background. Big Foot made a mess out there.

After the show it started to rain. Luckily we were pretty much done so we left right after. My co-worker and I stopped at a few places for some really bad food and made our way back to STL. I was quite tired and still am at 4PM on Sunday. Maybe I'm just tired regardless of what I do nowadays.

Sunday marks one week in STL. I recently learned where the nearest mall is and made a trip down there for some stuff. I got some shoes and made my usual stop to Pac Sun. That store isn't good for me. I wish I had one more day for the weekend. Oh well.

Maybe I'll try and work out later tonight. Gotta get some energy first.

That's all for now.

Monster Trucks and Movies

Friday I, as well as others from RZ, will travel down to Branson for a big store opening. I will assist in making sure everything is set for the sneak peek as well as the grand opening. The interesting thing is that there will be a monster truck there crushing old cars to celebrate. Not sure how I feel about monster trucks...

Of course, I have been recruited to shoot a little bit alongside another guy from the office. He's never held a DSLR let alone used one to shoot an event. He said the camera they were renting looked like "the effing Millennium Falcon." Not sure if you can compare a Canon 1D Mark III to a space ship, but if you were going to pick a DSLR model to resemble one, that beast would be the closest thing to a space ship. Whatever Canons resemble, they're ugly. If you ask me they look like giant magnesium and rubber turds.

I will also use this opportunity to hang out with Kels after she conducts her own business in Branson. Who knows, maybe she'll be able to check out the new store haha. We got into this discussion a few months back about how all I ever watch while at Kels and Breia's apt is chick flicks and horrible reality television. To combat this, great britten agreed to start watching more masculine movies. We started with The Bourne Identity, which of course is a great movie to kick start the guy movies. I only mention all of this because Kels said she was going to see Sex and the City in theatres and made some reference to how I would enjoy it. I'm sure it has its redeeming values, but I'm kind of on this guy movie thing nowadays (I'm sure I'll revert back to the old ways when the semester starts again). I think maybe Iron Man would be worth seeing at some point since I've heard good things about it.

Anyway, I just noticed that the TV has is on and has been on the whole time since I got back to the apartment four and a half hours ago. ::Reaches for remote:: There, that's fixed.

Here are my predictions for the NBA Finals and Stanely Cup Finals:
NBA - The Celtics will meet the Lakers in a battle royale. Celtics in 7 games.
NHL - Red Wings will take it in 5 games. Simple.

While watching the news earlier I was reminded that I have major league baseball games at my disposal. Maybe I'll go see one at one point. I have plenty of opportunities since they play about 600 games every season.

Hmm... what else can I blab on about...

Nothing.

See you later.

P.S. Kelsey, you can't feel bad about getting a new computer and I have more justification. My bro informed me that my old computer is slow as shit now, even after upgrading RAM. No matter what he does it just lags and lags. Good thing I upgraded. Justice served. 

Work - Day Two

Not a bad second day at all. I guess it's true that the first day is always really hard on people. Maybe I was just lucky to have a good day or maybe it's just me settling down and getting used to my surroundings.

Today was also a productive day. I was given many tasks and even have a list of things to start on in the morning. Awesome! Now maybe I won't be twiddling my thumbs. Today was really interesting because one of the designers took me into the BaB headquarters which is right next door. The business complex where the garage resides is pretty inconspicuous, but don't let that full you. The garage might be a bit small by corporate standards but the BaB HQ was HUGE. Everything you see reminds you of the store, and I mean everything. The walls, trim, all the doors, everything is painted in a pale yellow/navy blue color scheme. Needless to say, it was hella bright in there. On top of that, they had elevated ceilings and skylights. Jealousy! It seemed like a great work environment (if you can stand the yellow) and the office space was filled with a maze of people and material. They also had a wall full of their product, sort of like a hall of fame timeline thing. It was just a really impressive setup. Who knew? The building looks so plain. Never judge a book by its cover. There were a ton of people in there. Now I know where all that traffic comes from on the main street. It's all from them.

I ate at Burger King for lunch while talking on the phone with LP for the duration of my lunch break. BK wasn't exactly my favorite venue but it was the closest thing and I didn't feel like going out and looking for somewhere better.

I also talked to Breia via email all day, and even convinced her to open a gmail account so we could talk on gmail's IM feature (Kels, you need to hit that up, I can talk to Breia and Carter on gmail now. Look alive). Hooray for email. I wonder how anyone in America did business before email. It seems like the world revolves around email in the professional world. Must have been horrible.

Sorry there haven't been any photo updates. Hard to shoot when all I do is work and go home and be lazy. Maybe if I get enough energy to do something after work I will. I did, however, find the energy to go to a camera store that is actually in the plaza right outside my apartment complex. Great, a camera store right next door for me to play in. I got to play around with the Nikon D3 and 14-24 f/2.8! Exciting! That lens is ridiculous on a full frame sensor. Just insane. The store employee seemed to be just as much of a dweeb as me when it comes to camera system enthusiasm. Turns out he freelances live events in the area. I ended up talking with him and this other guy for like a half hour, just standing there in the store and farting around with the D3. I will make another trip there to see how much I can get for my D200.

Anyway, that's really all that's going on.

More to come later.