I'm all growed up (part 1)

I'm back from my first business trip! It was very overwhelming. I had some idea that it was going to be whirlwind and hectic, but I had no idea that I'd be pulling 16 hours a day for 6 straight days. Seriously, the hours were that long. One day our call time was 6:30 am, which I thought was horrendous, until the next day, when it was 5:30 am.

Now, I like to think of myself as young and spry and upbeat, but I have discovered that I am actually frail and whiny. I think I said some permutation of "I'm so tiiiiired" about 6.4 kabillion times throughout the week. I was the youngest one on site, and also the wimpiest and whiniest. I think that will be the major impression everyone else takes away of me. Not the most professional impact to make, but hell, I'm just glad to still be alive after this trip! Screw stoicism!

Anyway, I was sent there to work on this very large three-day convention my event production company was putting on. I had never been on-site before, and this was the biggest show we have ever produced, so it was cool that my boss chose it to be my first. I was the production assistant, otherwise known as the person who all the bigwigs get to wipe their muddy shoes on. Basically my week involved running around the huge convention center, helping all the producers and tech people with random stuff, and making approximately 56 runs to local Office Depots/Wal Marts/Staples/food courts. I now know the layout of Salt Lake City better than I know my own neighborhood. (It's actually a very well-designed town: from the square in the city's center, all the streets go out in multiples of 100 and are labeled South, West, etc. So every location is given as coordinates, like Office Depot is 400 South 900 East. Fascinating, yes? Ahem.)

The long hours hit me really badly on Wednesday, which was the last of our rehearsal days. My dad called me on my cellphone and I happened to have a lot of time to talk, and I just totally lost it and hid in a dark corner backstage for, like, 20 minutes, blubbering about how much I hated the production industry and how homesick I was for DC (that second point proving that the level of my insanity at that point was dangerously high).

For some reason after that night I felt better, and not so homesick or depressed. The actual convention went very well, and I think I did a pretty good job with all my tasks. And! My boss nicely gave me tomorrow off, which I think I will spend sleeping, eating takeout, and watching TV. I have Immortal Beloved from Netflix right now, so that should kill a good 3-4 hours. I will also make a big effort to type and post "part 2" of this trip saga, of which I will give you a teaser: it involves my enormous embarrassing crush on the show's technical director. He was hot, and we shared sexy eye contact all week, and I am now deeply in love.