Himmy
02-09-2007, 12:38 PM
(My timeline here is not exact. When you do this as much as I do, it all starts to blur together. The rest of this is strictly fact, however)
Since everyone (well, not technically EVERYONE, but alot of you) have been asking me where I've been, I figured I'd share. I am a Lighting Engineer for a major regional production company out of San Antonio Texas. We mostly do corporate work, and thus we slow down by alot during the summer. The logic behind that is that most of the corporate people are taking their vacations, yadda yadda yadda. Well, between the end of September and May is when the trade show world really starts to pick up. Right around Halloween I did ten one-off shows in ten days. Music events, despite my claim to doing mostly corporate work just a few sentences ago. Doing ten one-offs like that is fucking hard, I don't care who you are. There's no time to unload the entire truck, much less turn around the entire rig before you have to head out for the next show. It sucked. Most particularly during that period was the San Antonio stop for Kenny G. I did the lighting on that and it blew. Hard.
The next day, after those ten dates, I was in the shop prepping rigs for four major trade shows. After it was all said and done and the doors on all the trucks closed, I hopped on a tour bus and went regional with an international act for a week. Got home and flew out to Denver the next day. Set up the Sonance booth at the Cedia trade show. Flew out of Denver after load in and out to Palm Springs to do the production for a convention on banking software. Flew from Palm Springs back to Denver to load the Sonance booth out. Then I was home for a few days. No rest for the wicked, however. Two days later, I was out in Orlando. Amway happens to be one our biggest clients and they do an event called "Achievers" every year. It's for their medium selling people. Really gigantic production though, I mean the budget is just stupid. Anyway, I was there for three weeks before I came home. Got home, had a day to rest and then I was back on a tour bus. We hit Kansas City, San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, McAllen, and Laredo in as many days as locations. When I got back home, I had another day of rest before I was prepping two different rigs for two different events in California. Then I was on a plane to Newport Beach. Did another Amway event there, lasted a total of 8 days. Then the next day we drove to Anaheim and started our load in for Fender Guitar's booth at Winter Namm. That show lasted however long, and I actually had three or four days at home before I had to do anything else.
In the midst of all that chaos, we had loaded up two 45' containers full of equipment and shipped them off to Maui. Which is where I am currently at, working on another big Amway production. I'll be here until the 20th. Then I'm home for a day before flying out to Palm Springs for another show.
And there you have it, for anyone curious. That's a few months in the life of Himmy. Busy as hell, ain't it?
[Edited to add] Sometime in there I was in Vegas for a couple weeks doing a logo reveal for Univera LifeSciences. I forget when exactly it was, but I'm thinking sometime right before my 10 one-offs. It's all the same.
Since everyone (well, not technically EVERYONE, but alot of you) have been asking me where I've been, I figured I'd share. I am a Lighting Engineer for a major regional production company out of San Antonio Texas. We mostly do corporate work, and thus we slow down by alot during the summer. The logic behind that is that most of the corporate people are taking their vacations, yadda yadda yadda. Well, between the end of September and May is when the trade show world really starts to pick up. Right around Halloween I did ten one-off shows in ten days. Music events, despite my claim to doing mostly corporate work just a few sentences ago. Doing ten one-offs like that is fucking hard, I don't care who you are. There's no time to unload the entire truck, much less turn around the entire rig before you have to head out for the next show. It sucked. Most particularly during that period was the San Antonio stop for Kenny G. I did the lighting on that and it blew. Hard.
The next day, after those ten dates, I was in the shop prepping rigs for four major trade shows. After it was all said and done and the doors on all the trucks closed, I hopped on a tour bus and went regional with an international act for a week. Got home and flew out to Denver the next day. Set up the Sonance booth at the Cedia trade show. Flew out of Denver after load in and out to Palm Springs to do the production for a convention on banking software. Flew from Palm Springs back to Denver to load the Sonance booth out. Then I was home for a few days. No rest for the wicked, however. Two days later, I was out in Orlando. Amway happens to be one our biggest clients and they do an event called "Achievers" every year. It's for their medium selling people. Really gigantic production though, I mean the budget is just stupid. Anyway, I was there for three weeks before I came home. Got home, had a day to rest and then I was back on a tour bus. We hit Kansas City, San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, McAllen, and Laredo in as many days as locations. When I got back home, I had another day of rest before I was prepping two different rigs for two different events in California. Then I was on a plane to Newport Beach. Did another Amway event there, lasted a total of 8 days. Then the next day we drove to Anaheim and started our load in for Fender Guitar's booth at Winter Namm. That show lasted however long, and I actually had three or four days at home before I had to do anything else.
In the midst of all that chaos, we had loaded up two 45' containers full of equipment and shipped them off to Maui. Which is where I am currently at, working on another big Amway production. I'll be here until the 20th. Then I'm home for a day before flying out to Palm Springs for another show.
And there you have it, for anyone curious. That's a few months in the life of Himmy. Busy as hell, ain't it?
[Edited to add] Sometime in there I was in Vegas for a couple weeks doing a logo reveal for Univera LifeSciences. I forget when exactly it was, but I'm thinking sometime right before my 10 one-offs. It's all the same.