After I got home in June of 2009, I decided to take some time off of ships to spend time with my family. I then accepted a position as the Audio Engineer/Production manager for a christian trio called "Beyond the Ashes". Through them, I got a lot more experience in a lot of different venues/churches which gave me lots of experience learning how to EQ the sound system each and every time we set it up.
Around Thanksgiving of 2009 my sister had called and told me that my dad was in the hospital and discovered that he had had a heart attack and come to find out, probably had it a week or so earlier. I spent as much time as I could up with my mom and dad while still touring with Beyond the Ashes. A little before Christmas, my mom had called again to let me know they were on their way back to the hospital. Come to find out, the medicine they had him on had caused his blood to thin out way too much and when he would check his blood sugar, his blood was not clotting. Christmas Eve, Seth(my son) was able to go to the waiting room on my dad's floor and my dad came out to see Seth. Seth didn't really like seeing his grampy looking like he was in pain. Christmas morning, my dad had a really bad night and ended up having a 3 hour nose bleed. Over the course of the day, we had several different issues and they were really worried that because his blood was so thin and he basically had no platelets, that he could potentially start bleeding on the brain. He eventually did start bleeding on the brain and we had to make a major decision. My dad ended up dying around 530 Christmas night.
2010 wasn't very eventful(at least not that I remember). Continued traveling with Beyond the Ashes and "Living the Dream"
In Jan, 2011, I decided that I needed to go back on the ships for a little bit to be able to pay my bills and support my family a little more. I then had my next contract on board the Liberty of the Seas. We started out in Miami and I saw even more of the Caribbean, at the beginning of April we repositioned over to Barcelona Spain and got to see Spain, France, and Italy. It was a great experience but I missed my family.
Now, through this whole process, I had been applying for my "dream job" every 6 months or so. Finally, around the middle of July, I had gotten the call I had been waiting on for 3+ years. Disney called and wanted an interview. I had several interviews and then by the end of July they had offered me a position as an entertainment tech with the Walt Disney World Resort. I signed off of the Liberty on Aug 14 and went almost directly up to see my new nephew that was born at the end of March. He is such a really cool kid. Less than 2 weeks after leaving the ship, I was moving to Orlando, FL to start my dream job at Disney. I started at Disney the end of Aug. and am currently working at Disney's Hollywood Studios at the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular.
I hope to be more regular at updating everyone.
Rick
