the ’Zine

Memorial Day Long Weekend

May 29, 2007 by Heather Wilson

Filed under: Behind the Scenes / 0 comments

To ease the burden HMX buys everyone dinner during the week and lunch on Saturdays. They also award comp days at the end of the project, comp days are like extra vacation days. It's a really supportive atmosphere to work in. Sure you work hard, but the company really gives back when you do.

So this past weekend I tried to fit in as much summer stuff as possible. I saw two movies with my friend Laura (yes, one of them was Pirates 3 - totally worth seeing!). I visited the Boston Aquarium, where they have some new seals that I'd never seen before. Had a bonfire. Had a barbecue, complete with grilled pineapple, that's chunks of pineapple covered in sugar and grilled (fricken' amazing). Installed some bulkhead doors at a friend's house (same place as the barbecue). Got to see my very drunk friend Mike wrap toilet paper around his head like a mummy. And got very little sleep. There was also a friend's thirtieth birthday party complete with a pony, bunny & chicken petting zoo, and water fights. All in all it was a pretty busy and awesome weekend.

My department doesn't usually crunch the same way the rest of the team does, but since I am part of the writing team there still might be some Saturday workdays in my future. On the writing team I work with DanT, Maria, and Helen. Every week I do some writing and send it to Helen and Dan for critique. Once I get it back I'll make any changes they've suggested, or push back on them to keep something I really like, and then send it back for another review. After that I put the text I've written into the game. Once a week we all get together for a writing review meeting where we look at the text we've put in the game to see if it fits well and note any changes we might want to make. The writing I've done the past has been more academic* and less fun so I've really been enjoying stretching myself in this way.

*before I started at Harmonix I was a reference librarian so my published stuff centered around that.

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