I somehow managed to make it to the Knitting Factory and photograph Versa Emerge for Hide & Seek today despite all of fate conspiring to muck it up...

I left my house at 2:30 to get to the Factory by 3. I had hoped to be about 10 minutes early to give myself time to set up and unload. I first pulled into and parked in the wrong garage. It took me hauling my pelican case and camera bag into the building and asking the juice bar girl where the knitting factory was to find out that I was on the wrong block! So I put everything back into my car, paid for the 2 minutes of parking I had participated in, and sped off. On the way out I double checked with the parking attendant which way to turn to get to the venue. "Left" to get to the KNITTING FACTORY? "LEFT" ... I was supposed to turn Right onto Hollywood. Fail. So I managed to scoot through tourists up the wazoo and newly found construction and 10 minutes later was parked in the correct garage. I unloaded as much as I could carry, now it's 3:10, and made my way to the entrance. I found someone who looked like they were supposed to be there and told him I was there to photograph Versa Emerge. "Nobody told me anything" Just then Mike, VE's tour manager texted me telling me to meet him at the load in. Hey friendly guy who knows nothing, can I walk through the venue? "You can walk out to Hollywood and up the street to the load in" Gee wiz thanks! So I hiked a full lap around the venue half running. Dumped all my gear at the load in and then sprinted back down the ramp (yes the ramp to the garage is directly next to the load in) and grabbed the remainder of my gear, sprinted back up to the load in and into the venue. By this point I am a disgusting ball of sweat and frizzy hair. I started setting up my lights and put my hand down into my softbox to pop it open and one of the rods snapped loose and cut my hand. This incident also left the softbox unuseable. Thank god for that new umbrella I just bought! Somehow I managed to get my gear set up. By this point sweat was literally pouring off my face, and I feel like a sweaty penny. Then I waited... I Twittered some expletives about my day and before I knew it the band was ready! From then on everything went as planned, THANK GOD! Well except I forgot to change my camera from JPEG to Raw. FRICK! Thank goodness I have the camera I do, because the files are perfect anyway. Hooray! After the shoot I found out they couldn't get me on the list, but Mike told me to basically just hang out and act like I was supposed to be there. That is the hardest thing in the world for me because as many of you know, I am the most AWKWARD human being possible when I'm stressed out or am instructed to "act normal". I spent the soundcheck sneaking around backstage and avoiding eye contact with anyone. Every time someone of importance walked by I immediately pretended to be on the phone so they couldn't ask to see my pass. Yep. I'm awesome. Bidwell came to the rescue and got me on the list somehow and I was able to stop being a freak for the remainder of the afternoon until show time.

So that's my story of today. I'm going to go eat a bowl of cereal and go to bed. GOODNIGHT!