Touches of Fall

I know, it's been three weeks since I've posted. No apologies. A) I've been super busy at work, trying to get the park ready for Halloween. B) I really haven't had anything exciting to post about. But. Now fall is in the air. We all know how I feel about fall.

We've been installing Halloween decorations in the park for weeks, so it's seemed like October for awhile. Now that it's getting cool at nights, fairs and festivals are starting, and I have some autumn decorations up, fall is totally here.

Last weekend, I planned on going to the New Kent County Fair and/or the Hampton Bay Days festival, but then I was lazy and had no one to go with, so I didn't. At the end of the month, the VA State Fair starts, and I'm totally going. Since I missed the Harvest Festival back home, and I probably won't make it up for the Bloomsburg Fair, I gotta get my funnel cake and gyro fixes somewhere!

Howl-o-Scream is finally open at Busch. I might go to the park during the day sometime while it's running. The whole nighttime thing with fog and chainsaws and haunted mazes doesn't really enthuse me. You should go check it out if that's your thing, though. We worked hard to get it up and running!

 ^ Ireland. There's a whole "Fiends"/mad scientist thing.

^ Festa Italia. Clowns.

^ England. Crows, and a death shroud on the clock.

^ New France. Spiders. I didn't actually help with the bridge at all. I was in a lift putting them in trees and on buildings. 

^ Scotland. Pumpkins, scarecrows, and hay bales. There is still hay all over my life.


I actually didn't work in Italy, France, or Germany at all, so I don't have pictures. Italy is the "Lady of the Gardens", France is rats and skeletons, and Germany is vampires. It all looks really good and I have comp tickets left. Just saying.

I haven't started to decorate my apartment for Halloween yet. I have some fall decorations up, though.

Right now, I have 4 different fall-scented candles burning. It smells amazing. Like Yankee Candle threw up in my apartment. That's a good thing. Trust me.

I also have my fall baking list figured out. Now, under the best circumstances, I only get about half of my list made. This year, with my lack of time in the kitchen, I'll be lucky to get a quarter of it done. I have a normal schedule for awhile now, though, so maybe I'll get some stuff made.

- Georgia Pecan Pie
- Caramel Bread Pudding
- Sweet Potato Brownies
- Maple Cream Tart
- Maple Pumpkin Pie with Pecan Streusel
- Pumpkin Bread (I've totally never made plain old pumpkin bread!)
- Apple and Berry Crumble Muffins
- Everything Caramel Corn
- Caramel Apple Pudding with Gingersnap Crust
- Spiced Pumpkin Doughnuts (These have been on my list for the past 3 years. :-P)

It's a little ambitious, and unless I take some of it to work, I'll gain about a hundred pounds, but I'll get some new recipes tested and blogged about if it kills me! I've actually been cooking some, but nothing fancy or blog-worthy. Just stuff like sausage and fried potatoes, strawberry shortcake, tacos.... Nothing that takes effort, basically. Now with a normal person's schedule, hopefully I'll make myself get back in the kitchen more!

So to recap... fall is here. It's glorious. Get out and enjoy it!

Good Times at BG

Today was my first day off, after a 7-day stretch. I did nothing. I'm back on an overnight shift, so with my sleep schedule, I didn't get up till 5PM, and at that point there's not a whole lot to go out and do. I tried to go grocery shopping, but the store closed at 8PM instead of 9PM like the website says, and I got there at 8:15PM. I did stop at Kmart for some spot remover for my carpet, and some insoles for my work boots. Exciting.

Since I have done nothing exciting lately, and have cooked and baked even less than usual, I guess I'll just fill everyone in on what I've been doing at work. I'm not sure what I'm actually allowed to tell people, since they're weird about social media and revealing company secrets and stuff.... But, I don't think letting people know what I actually do, and posting a few pictures of public park stuff will hurt.

 

         ^ Rhine River Cruise boats, covered in net lights and twinkle lights.


So when I got this gig, I'm not really sure what I was expecting. Some kind of park-wide backstage work, I guess. Which... is kind of what I do, it's just not really at all theatrical, and most of the time it feels like I'm on a construction crew or something. I basically work with an outside contractor that they bring in to do all of the decoration for the big park events. We just finished up Illuminights. It was 50 days long, with about a month of set-up before, and a week of strike after. It was kind of a celebration of light and an end-of-summer kind of thing, with fireworks at the end of every night. We covered trees, buildings, bushes, boats, and bridges in strings and nets of lights. Set up a few bubble machines. Blew up some big hot air balloons.

^ France! I spent half of install here, screwing in bulbs and hanging garland and Fleur-de-lis.


Once everything was in place and the event started, I was on the maintenance crew. We basically just walked around the park and replaced bulbs, fixed problems, plugged and unplugged stuff, etc. It was mostly just a lot of walking. I would say the loop in the park is over a mile and we would have to walk the whole thing anywhere from 5-10 times a night. Now you see why I didn't join a gym!

                             ^ Ireland. There was a bit of a rainbow theme.


A lot of the lights and decorations are on the sides or tops of buildings, so I spend a lot of time in aerial lifts, 30-60ft off the ground.  I also drive forklifts, and 12-, 16-, and 24-foot flatbed trucks. See where the whole construction crew comparison comes in?

^ Giant chicken coops in Germany. We had to replace strings of lights constantly. Pain in the butt.


While this whole thing might not be quite what I expected, at least it's close to my field, and I'm getting lots of new experiences. I like most of the people that I work with, and there's rarely a dull moment! I have come to realize that this probably isn't what I want to do with the rest of my life, but it'll be good for a year or two, and I can keep expanding my skill set, making connections, and looking for my dream job. Gotta start somewhere, and I do love the area. I think I'm where I need to be for the time being.

 ^ Fireworks! I didn't have anything to do with these, but they were pretty. :-)


Now that Illuminights is over and everything is taken down, we start install for Howl-o-Scream. None of that has gone public yet, so I can't reveal anything or post any pictures. It's pretty creepy, though. If you like the whole Halloween thing, you should probably come check it out. It runs Sept. 14-Oct. 28. If I like you enough, I could even get you a comp ticket. :-P

My New Life

Wow.... Three weeks since my last post. That is just unacceptable. I feel like all I do anymore is sleep and work. I'm really going to try to get back into cooking and baking and all that jazz. Lately, I've been doing a lot of PB&J's, Easy Mac, and buying supper at work. I'm going to attempt to start trying one new recipe a week and blog about it. Ideally, I'd be doing two or three posts a week, but come on. At this point in my job, that won't happen. One post a week is a heck of a lot better than one post a month, right?!

It's not even that I'm working 12-hour days or anything... well, most days. I'm scheduled till midnight, 6 days a week, but some nights there's nothing to deal with and the park clears quickly and I get out at 11PM. Some nights there are major things to fix or the park takes forever to empty, so I don't get out till 2 or 3AM. The whole issue is that no matter what time I get done, I end up sleeping till noon or later the next day, and I have to start getting ready for work around 2PM, so there's just no time to spend in the kitchen. Hence the lack of recipe-sharing. I do have a Christmas project that I've been working on that I'll share once I'm finished. (I know it's July. Shut up.)

So until I make myself get on as normal a sleep schedule as possible, and get back in the kitchen, I thought I'd share some stuff that I've been doing. My mom and her friend came down to visit me for a few days and we went and saw some sights on my day off and in the mornings before I had to work.

On Saturday, when I had the whole day off, we visited some wineries in Yorktown. The Vintner's Cellar Winery and River Fruit Tropical Wines. They were just wine shops, not vineyards, but we got to taste about 25 different wines at Vintner's for $10, and we got a free tasting of as many as we wanted at River Fruit. I ended up getting a Pineapple Riesling at the first one and a Florida Grapefruit wine at the second. I'll definitely be going back to River Fruit. They had a Banana wine that tasted like Laffy Taffy and a Kiwi wine that I need in my life.

In Yorktown, we walked along the river for awhile and checked out some shops.

It's beautiful there. There are little shops, restaurants, museums, coffee shops, the winery, and a beach along the river. It's just a little ways from colonial Yorktown. I'll definitely be going back there to poke around. The day we were there, it was over 100 degrees, so maybe I'll go back when it's not so boiling.

The rest of their trip, we went shopping, tried some new restaurants, and went to the Lee Hall Mansion.

It's an old plantation that was used as a Confederate base during the Civil War. I'm not a big Civil War buff, or big on the whole history thing, but I love old houses and stuff like this. It was pretty great! The basement is kind of a walk through the war and what was going on in the area and with the soldiers who occupied the house. The top two floors are a restoration of what the house might have looked like, so there's reproduction wallpaper and period furniture and it's all set up like it might have been at the time. It's definitely worth a look if you ever happen to be in Newport News and looking for something to do!

My mom is coming back down in August with my cousin, so I'll have to start looking for more stuff to check out. Anyone familiar with the Newport News/Williamsburg/Yorktown area and have any suggestions??