field trip!

Well I'm really tired, so I don't want to write much, but Kristyn Brisnehan just sent me some pictures from when we went to Helen Hunt Falls, so I wanted to put them up here. Enjoy!

Kristyn, Susan and me

Helen Hunt Falls... and me

in which i have terrible hours

I haven't written much this week because there really isn't much to talk about. I've been designing the Metro section most days, which is actual news, so I have to work from 2 to 10. I don't want to complain, but what am I supposed to do for five hours while I'm waiting to go to work?
The Metro section is kind of fun, though - I get to learn about the city and I sort of like the excitement of being on deadline. It's a different kind of design, though, one that's more like putting a puzzle together than creating an interesting package. I have to say, I like features design better.
Yesterday, I went downtown in the morning and realized that I had missed the annual Pikes Peak Rodeo Breakfast by, I don't know, half an hour. Dang. When I got there, there were still huge blocks of hay in the middle of one of the busiest intersections of downtown, though, so at least I got some interesting photos.
I also went to the Pioneer Museum downtown. It's actually a lot more interesting than it sounds - it talks about the first people to climb Pikes Peak, and the history of the mining industry in the West. There was also a little section about Native Americans, which I enjoyed. The best part ws that the museum was free. Yep, I'm poor.

hay!

the Pioneer Museum

awesome

Today was such a good day, I don't even want to write about it. That's how good it was.
Basically,
My boss went through the supervisor eval he was supposed to do for me to get internship credit, with only good things to say. Included words "lifesaver," "superb" and "would hire her immediately."
Designed some awesome stuff. (See insert- that ran Wednesday)
Organized an intern movie night to see "Get Smart." While only 3 other people showed up I felt good about it.
Woo-hoo!

photos from denver

on the way to Denver

the 16th Street Mall downtown

the capitol building

Another one of those spontaneous adventures...

This week is weird, in that I am scheduled to work both Saturday and Sunday. Originally my boss had me working all seven days, but I told him that just because I am an intern it is not OK to make me work every day of the week.
So he gave me Wednesday off.
Wednesday, really? I didn't know what to do. I had a couple of errands that I had been putting off till today, but I knew there was not enough to take up the whole day. I needed to return something at the mall in the north of the city, a place that I usually take I-25 to get to. As I was driving, I thought about how I-25 goes all the way to Denver... and so I went. There was a bookstore at the mall, where I bought a Frommer's guide with a nice map, and I had Tom-Tom. There are times when I am extremely grateful for the GPS device, and other times... I want to throw it out the window. In Denver, with tall buildings all around, it constantly lost signal, most of the time at exactly the moment I was nearing an intersection where I was supposed to turn. It was infuriating.
Despite Tom-Tom's best efforts to strand me in downtown Denver, I made it, and really enjoyed the city.
Denver is a pretty big city - Wikipedia says about 500,000 in the city and 2 million in the metro area. I walked around downtown a bit, where there are quite a few tall buildings, and people walking around the streets, but for all that it really didn't feel huge. It felt, well, Western, with big wide streets and the laid-back feeling I imagine when I think of the American West.
I only spent a few hours there, because parking was stupidly expensive: $2 for every 15 minutes. Next time I go, Dave says I should take the tram in to the city.
Denver reminded me of a European city a little: 16th Street is mostly for pedestrians, with shops and restaurants, and a tram running through the city and into the surrounding suburbs, I guess. So that was cool.
I'm gonna post photos in a new post. This one is too long.
Cheers!

well that's funny

I had a good day at work today. I was literally busy the entire time, something that always makes the day go by a lot faster and makes me feel like I've actually accomplished something.
After work I have done absolutely nothing, and I got home two hours ago. I've been looking at the internets, mostly, and found this gem of computer-age wit. Enjoy.

marriedtothesea.com

an evening with ira

Today, joy of joys, I got to see Ira Glass speak at Colorado College. He's the host of NPR's This American Life, which I've been listening to fanatically for a little over a year now. So imagine my shock and awe to find that he was coming here, to Colorado Springs! It's like learning that the actor you've had a crush on since, like, forever, is going to be in your town. I was ecstatic.
I met Rina, fellow intern and Ira fan, who had somehow found out that doors opened at 7:30 and gotten good seats. When he came on stage my heart literally skipped a beat. There is just something about seeing a celebrity in person that can't be matched no matter how many times you see them on TV or hear them on the radio.
Anyway, it was awesome, he talked about storytelling techniques that he had learned in his years of working for NPR, and how he met his wife. He also played a couple of stories he had worked on, either as a producer behind the scenes or as a reporter actually doing the interviews, and talked about how the stories came to be. I was fascinated.
Here's a photo that I took secretly.

Ira Glass

Today I also read a book the park, got a little sunburned, wasted too much gas, considered renting a moped, walked around Old Colorado City (which was stupid), tried to find a skirt at the mall (also stupid), and watched part of "Semi Pro" (which I turned off because it was stupid). So Ira Glass really made up for a long day of things that could have been a lot more fun.
Cheers!

oh, and i totally forgot...

I went to see a punk show at this venue called the Black Sheep with my friend Willow, a copy editor, and one of the interns, Rina, who's a grad student at Berkeley and the arts intern. It was about what you would expect at a place called the Black Sheep: a couple scene kids, a couple hipsters... the usual punk show crowd. But there in the middle was one couple who stood out not because of their multicolored hair or odd clothing choices, but because they looked like they were going to a rodeo. Hicks, like I haven't seen since I left Columbus.
So the bands were pretty good, I hung out with some interesting people, and left with a ringing in my ears so loud that I think Rina and I were shouting at each other in the car on the way home, but I'm not really sure. All I know is my ears were still ringing when I woke up this morning. Like I needed another reminder that I went to a show — the huge black I'M UNDERAGE x's in sharpie on the back of my hands (still there as I'm typing right now) were reminder enough.
So that was my first Black Sheep experience.
...Can't wait to go back.

I wasn't really allowed to take photos... this was with my phone. I like this guy's pants.

p.s. read this

best day ever!

Ok, that's exaggerating a bit, but today was a pretty damn good day. It's about 10:45 right now, and I'm going to start from now and work my way back to morning. Yep, I'm going to describe my entire day. That's how good it was.
As a preface, I have never seen a fight. I've heard about fights, and people getting arrested, but in my almost-21 years of life and through all the places I've been I have never personally witnessed anything remotely close to a fistfight. Consequently it has become a sort of obsession of mine to see a fight first-hand. Tonight I came close: Driving home from the movie, I saw flashing lights at the end of my street. please let it be a fight, please let it be a fight, please let it be in front of my house. I was half right. As I got closer, I counted at least four cop cars... but nothing else. They were in front of a park about a block from my house, and as I passed (windows open, driving 10 mph) I could hear a guy yelling at the two cops holding him. Yessss, witnessed my first arrest. I made it to my house and locked the door. A good ending to a good day.
I was coming home from seeing The Incredible Hulk, which came out today. I went by myself, half thinking I wouldn't make it since I didn't really know where the theatre was. But I made it, literally just in time - I found a seat as the first trailers were starting. The movie was great; I had a lot of fun, even though I was by myself. That is to say, the movie was entertaining enough that I wasn't bored enough to think about how I was watching a movie by myself.
Before I went to the movie I made myself a real dinner, chicken and pasta. I'm really proud of myself, since I don't cook very often, and most of the time if I do cook it's a Pasta Sides or Velveeta Shells. So my dinner tonight was delicious.
Work was good, too — this morning I sat in on a meeting about a graphic for an upcoming story and ended up with the "winning" idea after everyone else spent about 15 minutes discussing and then someone asked what I thought. How exciting! I really haven't done a lot of graphics (read: no graphics), so I wasn't sure how well it would turn out. I worked on it most of the day, and am still not done with it, but I'm pretty happy with it so far, people have said it's going well. I also have been working on a food page, which I may or may not put on my other blog (www.beckyrother.blogspot.com) tonight. I think I'm supposed to wait till it runs, which will be Wednesday. Anyway, my boss came up to me today and told me how much he liked where it was going. I'm realizing now how much other people's opinions mean to me...
There was also an intern welcome party sort of thing this afternoon, since the last intern just arrived. I finally met everyone. I'm the youngest intern (not a surprise, most people don't do internships till after junior year), but all the interns seem really friendly and pretty eager to do... something... we all decided we need to get together, but no plans were made. Whatever.
And I had Toaster Strudel for breakfast.
So an overall good day.
Cheers!

notes on an evening

Tonight after dinner I went to Starbucks, ordered an iced coffee and sat outside to enjoy the warm summer night. I had brought a book to read, but ended up just watching people go by. The Starbucks is right downtown, so there were a lot of people to watch. I decided that there are pretty much three types of people here: rich outdoorsy types (A), college students from Colorado College who might be rich but try to hide it (B), and homeless people (C). Fascinating.
So while I was sitting there, a group of A's, a guy and three girls, came up to me with a camera and asked me to take a picture of their group, who had presumably just finished a run judging by their short-shorts and tennis shoes. I smiled and agreed, of course, what else do you do when someone asks you to take their photo? So as I was standing there, holding the camera, the guy of the group turns to his friends and says to me "Now don't you think about running off with our camera..." What? Did this jerk in Nikes just threaten me? Also, do I look like the kind of person who would run off with someone's camera? Frankly, I'm insulted. Honestly.
So, um, Colorado Springs is a great place to live, but, seriously, I'm a little frustrated with group A.
On the plus side, I had a pretty good day at work. I stayed pretty busy all day (which is good, since normally I am bored for at least about three of the eight hours I work). More interns arrived, and most of them are really friendly. It's making me feel pretty good about myself — one just graduated from Yale, one's in grad school, and one just graduated from another school. And then there's me, who just finished my sophomore year in college. Win. Also, I got my first paycheck today, which was smaller than I expected but still not terrible.
So that's what happened to me today.
Cheers!

oh also, don't forget to look at my new blog that I'm going to update when I make interesting things on the computer. Right now there's not much up there, but I plan to make more soon. Coincidentally, if you are in need of a graphic designer who's into typography and making things look good, please please please let me know. I have a pretty reasonable rate, too.

i can has cheezburger?

I am creating a new blog, possibly as you are reading this, exclusively for clips from my job and things that I make independently. Another thing you can look at when you get to missing me terribly and this blog is the only thing that makes you feel better.
That's sarcasm. I do still have a phone, you know. It still works, even all the way out here in Colorado.

I really don't know who I'm talking to.

http://beckyrother.blogspot.com/

little boxes, on a hillside...

...and they all look just the same.

oh the places i've been

Ha.
It's been a good weekend. Yesterday I went to see "Kung Fu Panda," the new Pixar movie, with a friend from work and her friend. It's always nice to hang out with people outside the office.
So that was fun.
Today I went to Helen Hunt Falls with some people I met through a group I'm in. They're an incredibly nice family, and I had a great time exploring Colorado Springs. Helen Hunt Falls is a fairly small waterfall about half an hour away from downtown. The area around it has some nice-looking trails, so maybe I'll get to go back sometime and do some hiking.
We also went to the Broadmoor. It's The hotel/resort/golf course here in the Springs, and pretty much everyone I have talked to has mentioned the Broadmore at least once in conversation. It's a big deal. Actually, the Senior Open is being held there this year, so a lot of golf (here pronounced gof) fans are excited about it. I'm less impressed, probably because the five-century-old buildings I recently finished touring were a little more exciting than looking at a building that was built in the early 20th century. Still a nice place, though.
I hate to keep mentioning Europe, because I know that sooner or later I will inevitably sound like a douchebag: "Ah yes, this stone structure reminds me of the thousand-year-old castle I saw in Spain." and "Oh, you like trains? You should have seen the panoramic train I took through central Europe last month." and "But it's hard to put something so earth-shatteringly awesome out of my head completely, so you'll just have to be patient.

This is from when we drove up a mountain today.

wow...

I had heard there was a tornado in Edinburgh, about 20 minutes from my house, but it hadn't really registered what that meant until I saw this photo on a "week in pictures" slideshow from msnbc. No one was killed, the caption said, but the storm caused about $20 million in damage. And now I hear that both US 31 and I-65 are closed around Columbus because of flooding.
It's a scary thing to know that such major destruction has been going on almost in my backyard, while I'm a thousand miles away and unable to do anything. I mean, I really couldn't do much if I was there, but I feel kind of guilty being away while the rest of my family was probably sitting in the basement waiting for the tornado sirens to stop. At least, I guess, at least I don't have my dog to worry about anymore.
Well, Columbus-ites, I'm praying for you.
Be safe.

sometimes the truth hurts, or, i'm tired of frosting

To be blunt, I left Columbus for the summer to get away from the pettiness that inevitably comes with living in a small town. I came to Colorado Springs, a city of 500,000, hoping to find something of the anonymity I felt in London, where I could walk down the street and not feel strangers' eyes on me, judging me. Instead, as I stroll through the streets of Colorado Springs, I feel even more self-conscious than I did in Columbus. Colorado Springs is like a giant suburb without a city to make it legitimate.
When I first got here, all I could see were the mountains. To a girl from the midwest, waking up every morning to look out at mountains was like waking up in a fairy tale. Then one day fog hid Pikes Peak and the surrounding mountains, and I saw Colorado Springs for what it really is: a silly little town with a couple squatty little buildings.
Maybe it's being alone a lot of my free time, but I still feel a little like an outsider, and that's kind of given me a negative opinion of things. And I guess I just need to vent a little, so definitely take things I wrote with a grain of salt. Most people are nice.
Whew.
I feel a little better.

And now random thoughts.
I listened to Bright Eyes for the first time in a while today. That guy is the definition of emo.
It takes being away from someone for a long period of time, thinking you're going to see them in a few days, and then finding out they're not coming to realize how much you can't live without them.
That's not true. I've known it for a while.

what i'm doing with my life

Today I finally got connected to the internet my rent is paying for! So I put a couple pages I worked on during my first few weeks at the Gazette on newspagedesigner.com. Well, two pages. The other pages I uploaded are all from the Daily News at Ball State. But anyway.
Here's one page I did last week or so. It ran on Monday. I'm pretty happy with it... especially since it's my first front page of anything (it's the cover of the Life section). And Dave, the guy I'm renting a room from, is the writer, which made this even more special.
Nothing interesting really happened today. I left work about an hour early, after sitting around for about a hour. Sometimes I feel like they really didn't need an intern — they pretty much have things under control and never really have any work for me to do. Most of the time I take other people's work and they end up, I don't know, doing other things. Whatever, I'm here to learn about journalism. So far I've learned that it's a scary place with no job security. Too bad I really enjoy newspaper design.
I guess we'll see...
Cheers!

i have good news!

Today as I was leaving work I honestly thought "wow, I can't believe I just played with Illustrator and InDesign all day got paid for it." Seriously.
I had hoped this summer would help me figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life, and, kind of surprisingly, it has already. I wasn't sure at first, but I really enjoy working at a newspaper. It's kind of a relief, to know that the thing you've planned to do for years is actually the thing you want to do.

Me with Pikes Peak in and some of Colorado Springs in the background, taken when I had dinner at a friend's house.