The Epitome of My Nerdiness: Vidcon 2010

Oh. *shuffles awkwardly* It's, uh, been a while. No, things have been fine. Been busy. *looks down* You? Oh that's nice.

So as per usual, I haven't been here in a while. Over a month in fact. Whoops. But here I am now and I have some fun happening this week and I'd like to blog about it.

First, on July 11 is my 1 year anniversary. How crazy is that? It feels like just yesterday I was writing things like this. It's been such a strange journey. I realized just yesterday that I've been in Las Vegas for 7 months. I honestly thought it had only been less than 6. I thought that film school was still not that long ago. It really was that long ago. Time is moving by so fast and I don't know what to do about it.

But for our Anniversary, Husband and I are going down to Southern California to go to Disneyland!!! I haven't been in a very long time and I can't wait to go watch World of Color and visit all my favorite rides. Bonus is we also get in free since we know someone who works there still and will sign us in. Thus making it even more awesome.

But here's the craziest news. There is the conference in Los Angeles called Vidcon. And I'm going. Now many of you are asking, "Well, Twixter Two, what is Vidcon?" I'm so glad you asked.

I'll let the Vidcon2010.com site tell you in its own words: Vid-Con is a three-day conference bringing together the brightest lights in the billion-views-a-day community known as the online video industry. Join us at the first ever gathering of the most influential and popular independent video makers online and the communities that have made them a force in the world.

So pretty much one of the nerdiest things I've ever done. But here's the crazy story of how I ended up with probably 2 of the last 25 tickets available.

Husband and I were going to the midnight premiere of Eclipse (which was awesome by the way. Other update to come for that) where we realized it would be a great place to promote BITE. So we printed out little papers and walked the line selling BITE to random people waiting. I cannot begin to describe how difficult it is to explain to people that YouTube is used for more that just the dramatic chipmunk and Charlie Bit Me videos. There are people making careers out of it and I want to be one of those people.

After walking the line and the getting into the theater, we had about an hour to just wait. So Husband brought up Vidcon. He had randomly researched it while he was at work and wanted to talk about maybe going to promote BITE. Now here's the weird part: That day, I had received a random commission check from the job I hated for the EXACT amount of 2 tickets to Vidcon. The same day Husband randomly looked at Vidcon was the day I got my check. So we decided to just go. We were already going to be in California, we'd just have to extend the trip 2 days. Seemed worth it to us. So we got home from Eclipse around 3:30 AM, bought tickets, and the next morning it was sold out. Crazy, right? I know!

So we're now headed to Vidcon to attempt to promote and network and have an awesome time. I can't describe how excited I am to be there. I've been wanting to attend Vidcon since its inception and now I really get to be there.

So more update posts to come this weekend! Vidcon is Friday and Saturday. Disneyland is Sunday. Fun with Friends and figuring out how I'm finishing school Monday and Tuesday. I'm going to be so tired when we get back.

Miss you all (Especially you, Twixter One.)

--Twixter Two

Culinary Dreams

A few years back, I got this crazy idea in my head that I wanted to drop out of college and go to Culinary School. I even went to visit 3 different culinary schools in my area of southern California. I was smitten. I wanted to wear a chef coat and create amazing scallops on a big plate with green and orange garnish sauce underneath and vegetables stacked perfectly on top.

I've always loved baking and cooking my entire life. It's my sort of zen. If I'm stressed, I usually bake or cook something. I even had the measurements of 1/8 of a batch of chocolate chip cookies memorized. It makes about 4 cookies. I started to put 2 and 2 together, realized I could potentially cook for a living. Would that be so bad? I ultimately decided finishing my undergrad would be a smart back up plan. (This was before I decided to change my major. Idiot).

So I've started researching culinary school again this past week, with 1 semester left of my undergrad. I just found out that the Cordon Bleu in Vegas costs $40,000 for the culinary and $25,000 for baking. W.T.F.?

My private school for 5 years of education will not cost me as much as the Cordon Bleu program.

Now I've chatted with several people that now tell me you don't HAVE to attend the CB and many other schools are regarded just as highly and are significantly less expensive.

But then I researched what life is like for an aspiring chef. It's long, strange hours for the next 10-15 years of my life. Strange hours meaning, 4 pm to 2 am including holidays. Is this the type of life I want? Not really. I want kids. I want to be able to come home and hang out with my husband. I want to be able to go out with friends.

I've heard that culinary is like the film/television industry, in the fact that if you can picture yourself doing something else, you should do the something else. I've magically found myself interested in 2 very niche passion industries.

Can I picture myself working 12 hour days in a kitchen? Yes.
Can I picture myself working on a set for 14 hour days? Yes.
Can I picture myself doing something else? Yes.

Well, damn it. Now what?

My Life is Upside Down

Wow, so it's been quite some time since I updated. After the wedding, my whole life just turned upside down.

I was accepted into a film program last fall that I was insanely exicted about. Problem was, after visiting with financial aid and talking with the husband, we realized that we just didn't have enough money to survive in the film program. (We're not allowed to work while we attend the program). So we decided to withdrawal and move back to Las Vegas. I can be honest: this idea literally depressed me. I hated my job even more and despised waking up in the morning knowing that in a few weeks I would be back in the place I swore I would NEVER return to. But then my life was turned upside down again.

We got a call from the film program; they were offering us a scholarship to come out to LA. Of course inside I was ecstatic, but very, very wary. What if it didn't work out? What if when we got out here, we ran out of money? Was this the mistake we had saved ourselves from making, only to make it again? Aside from all of those questions, we went back to financial aid and a sort of miracle happened. We ended up with enough money to make it and moved out to LA two days later. We are definitely still scraping by and it's not the magical touristy experience we were looking for, but we are here!!

I AM IN LA. The place I have been dreaming about being in for so long. It's completely overwhelming. During the whole first week of orientation I would get home and fall asleep immediately only to wake up early the next morning for another all day long rules lecture. While I was so happy, I was SO bored. It was such a long week.

Now that it's done, the exciting part starts to happen. I'm filming a short film this weekend and have hopefully set up an interview with a production company on a famous studio lot. (This anonymity is fun).

So my life is totally upside down from where I thought I would be 2 weeks ago. Yet here I am. This year should be pretty interesting.