hello i am cold

Feels a little bit more manageable than last week; but lots of stuff to get done today!

Oh, one of the things on here is to go to a nursery and get garden advice. Maybe I can also ask you, my livejournal friends. Ian wants to try growing some vegetables; I would like to try growing pretty flowers that are difficult to kill. Someone said that rather than "tilling" the "soil," the best thing to do is just put some good soil on top of your old crappy soil (maybe with some kind of edging? What does one use? Brick? Wood?) and then going from there. Any basic advice for the very very very very inexperienced gardener?

( So feel free to skip, or read! )

Temporarily relocated here, for those of you who read. Thanks for updating your links!

I think I have life whiplash.

( Here is some cut text... )

Well, we're living at the new place! In case you didn't know, a few weeks ago we started thinking about looking for another apartment. And we liked the first place we saw so much, we just decided to go for it. We have both the old place and the new place for all of May, which means we're moving slowly, basically. But on Saturday, Ian rented a U-Haul, and he and his friend Lance moved all the big furniture, including important things like our bed. So we have no internet in the new house yet, but other than that, we're pretty committed.

There's one negative to the new place, which is the shower. The shower is both tiny and ugly. And the tiles are peach. I took one last shower at the old house this weekend, and mourned the loss of the big claw-foot tub and the cool shower curtain concept. Now I get an ugly siding door. Sigh.

But other than that, the new place is SO AWESOME. It's a small house that we have to ourselves, which means no more neighbors playing skee ball right above our bedroom when we're trying to sleep, or vomiting on our porch. It's full of light, whereas the old place was kind of dark. It seems HUGE in comparison to our tiny old apartment. Walking from the bedroom to the front door seems like SUCH AN ADVENTURE. We have to go through multiple rooms to get there! Our old place had one closet. JUST ONE. The new place has closets galore; I hardly know what to do with them. I'm getting used to the idea that we can actually put stuff away in closets.

We can paint the new place, which is causing me paint selection angst, but is still very cool. (The bedroom colors turned out great, for instance.) The landlord is really super nice. There's a patio, and we will be getting patio furniture and probably a barbecue, so we can have a housewarming BBQ over the summer. But I think my favorite thing might be having our own washer and dryer. In the house. That we can use. Any time. Without needing quarters. This morning before I left for work, I threw in a load of laundry! IT IS LIKE A MIRACLE.

So yeah, there's still a ton of painting and unpacking to do, and the old place is still full of stuff and there's a lot of work to be done. But it's very exciting all the same. And now, the to-do list, and I feel like I've already forgotten 20 items so you know it's just going to get longer...

( Another long long long to-do list... )

So, my mother and father went on a three-week cruise around South America for their 40th wedding anniversary. (We'll also be celebrating over the summer with a family reunion of sorts at a time share in Cabo; my older sister Conny is flying from Holland to attend. Hopefully swine flu will not wreak havoc on this plan.) I called her to hear all about the cruise, and knowing that it might be worth passing on, I also sat at my keyboard and typed. I left out about 50 uses of the word "wonderful." Also, as you will see, she did not tell this story in order. But here it is!

On the last night of the cruise, I tried escargot for the first time and I really liked it! it wasn't in the snail houses, you know, it was on a plate in little circles. So you didn't get the memory of the snails in the little snail houses. But it was still very good!

We got off the ship and I got some sandwiches from the buffet and put them in my purse to bring them into the town. You aren't supposed to take any food from the ship and take it off the ship. But I did it anyway. I did it three times but they never stopped me or asked me for anything I had! So I guessed it didn't matter.

Oh and Dad and I danced a lot at night. The couple that stayed up late with us was Joyce and Arnie. [My parents made friends with three other couples, who would eat together and play cards and go dancing and go swimming together. I didn't catch the other names!] So we'd stay up late with them. dancing until one or two in the morning. And there was a carnival on board. there was a big ceremony when we crossed the equator, King Neptune and all that kind of thing. A big ceremony.

It was the Norwegian Sun ship. Some of our friends on board said that there were bigger ships out there, but it was big enough for us!

And we had wonderful weather and wonderful food and wonderful tours. And there's this church, I think it was in Costa Rica, I'm not sure. The church. And they buried all the people in the catacombs under the church, so people can pray for them in the church, and they're closer to God. Oh, Dad said it was in Peru. And they buried 75,000 people in the catacombs. And you see the bones and all that stuff! In the 19th century... or was it the 20th? Well, whatever. I think it was the 19th. The mayor of the town decided there was no more room, so now only big dignitaries get buried down there.

Oh Santiago was a huge city, very metropolitan. with a wonderful transportation system. I'm not going in order, but Santiago had a wonderful transportation system. We were in the Best Western hotel there and we asked the front desk if they had a tour and the guy said "my cousin has a van and speaks good English. he can give you a tour." We had a tour brochure that told us how much the tours cost, and he combined the two tours, the wine tour and the city tour, and he combined the two tours for very cheap. It was his cousin Carlos who came the next morning drove us wherever we wanted to go, and it was wonderful. And then we said, Carlos, take us to your favorite restaurant! And we had a wonderful meal like the locals. And I said there's an ice cream store! I'd like an ice cream, Carlos. And he said okay and pulled over. So you wouldn't get that on a tour with a lot of people. An ice cream like that.

The service on a cruise is like... wow, they service you like you're a queen and king! In the morning we'd go to breakfast and they'd make up the room and then at night when we're having dinner, they come and put down the sheets and put a chocolate on it, and they even give you clean towels at night! In the morning you get clean towels and at the night you get clean towels. I was in a restaurant one night and said do you have a toothpick, and she walked half the ship over to the next restaurant and brought a couple of toothpicks over! They just do anything. There was one time at night when we were upstairs by the garden cafe and I had some hot chocolate and I said do you have any cinnamon to put on it? And they said we have it in the back! It's amazing! They just do anything you want! Even 24 hour room service!

And there was a chocolate buffet at night when they had big statues of chocolate, and it was so pretty. and we had a white angel dance where everyone was dressed in white, and they had blacklights, and we danced to the 50s and 60s... and 70s.

I think it was in Chile they have this sight called the sun and the moon sight. and people used to pray over there, the Aztec Indians used to pray. and they made this kind of pyramids and temples on top of temples. there's like seven temples on the way down and they've only excavated two of them, because they sink into the ground, as they put up a new temple every 100 years. and when it was a bad harvest, they would take two young men in the village and would have them duel, and the one who won would be sacrificed, and the blood was sprinkled to make a better crop. All these traditional things they have.

In Lima I think it was when they had the llamas and the dancers. They had these huge statues facing the west. And these dancers would come, and there were dancers there with these beautiful colored costumes. They danced their religious dances. And they took stones on the mountain in the figure of a llama facing the ocean, for bringing in water and the crop.

The first tour we took the first stop we made was in Chile, and she said her name was blahblahblah but nobody could pronounce it, so she said "just call me Miss Chile, I'm Miss Chile in my dreams." She spoke perfect English. She was a graduate from the university and she studied languages. And we went into a museum where you saw this big statue that looks like a big head, like 20 or 30 feet. Like one of those Indian faces, and this boulder came from Easter Island, because it's not that far. Years ago, the Chilean government were the first people to send planes over to Easter Island, and that's why they got a thank you. Because they had a lot of those boulders on Easter Island.

Every afternoon you could have ice cream. We didn't have it every afternoon, but you could if you wanted to. I also had lobster. There were little lobster tails. If you hold your hand up, from your index finger to your wrist. They served them one night and I had three lobster tails! you could order as many as you want. Three lobster tails! Imagine that. You know what else they had, wonderful summer soups, cold soups, like rhubarb and strawberry, they were just delicious. I want to look and see if I can find a recipe for those soups.

I was in the pool, it was a salt water pool, and there was a stage and there would be singing, and the pool wasn't that deep, maybe four or five feet. so when the music came on, then we would stand in the pool and dance, we had to work off all our calories. And it was fun!

So it was just the time of our life! It was wonderful! We wouldn't change a thing. It cost a lot of money because they charged you for the drinks and they had a service fee for the tipping. So we couldn't afford to do it every year. But oh, I wish we could! It was wonderful!

If I ever become rich, I am completely paying for them to go on a yearly cruise. Because, come on. How can you not love this!?!

Wow, I am really sick this week. I started to get sick last Wednesday and Thursday, but Annie was out, so I didn't take a sick day (which in hindsight, I should have, on Thursday). I did take Friday off, and somehow managed to get through the GRE in one piece on Saturday. On Sunday is when it went horribly wrong. I think it was initially just a flu thing, but turned into something worse (mostly involving me being unable to breathe). I went to the doctor on... I think Monday. Today is my first day back to work, and thankfully I have a desk job, because standing up and walking across a room makes me cough. It is hard to concentrate on much. It's just overall gross. (And I am very glad it's spring break, so I don't have to officially cancel class tonight.)

By the way, the doctor I saw seemed really hyper and flaky. She isn't my regular doctor and she said "oh, well, I know you need a diagnosis, so... we'll just say it's bronchitis or sinusitis." Thanks, doc. I have antibiotics and am working on the fluid and rest thing, and Ian has been really good about taking care of me and picking up the slack at home. I can't do anything--I walked downstairs with a load of laundry and almost passed out. (Our washing machine is broken anyway.) Which means I am hopelessly behind at many things. I really just wish I were getting better more quickly... it's frustrating being sick for a week at a time.

Oh, I almost forgot! The GRE was fine/fun. I was expecting it to be really tragically hard; it was hard, but it felt manageable. I had plenty of time, and I felt good with what I ended up guessing. (Even if some of the guesses did turn out to be wrong, I now know.) I didn't really study much on Friday because I was so sick, but I don't think knowing more dates and stuff would have helped much. I honestly don't know how I did; I'm sure it was above 600. I don't think I made it into the 700s, but given that I was really sick, I'll cut myself some slack.

I totally could have cheated, though. They allowed you to get up and go to the bathroom; if I'd had an iPhone with me, it would have been easy. Or even an index card with some answers in my pocket. Not that cheating is right, mind you. But I was surprised how easy it would have been.

Anyway, now on to the to-do list. Don't be surprised if none of these things gets crossed off... (although while I was sick I did manage to back up my livejournal, which had been on the list for a while...)

( cough cough )

I have been having GRE anxiety dreams. At least I know who Jacques Derrida is now. That's something.

( Anything that isn't the GRE or my class can wait until Sunday... )

Hello Monique,we hope you are having a good time this weekend BIRTHDAYmom"scousin wrote a nice e-mail.She told us she found your profile on facebook also Caroline"s what is facebook .they have a big family overthere she is one of 3 sisters who are all still living in s-africa but a lot of their kids moved all over the worldaustalia and one in Philadelphia and one is making an application to go NewZealand.Willie her yougest so lives still at home 27 years old and is acomputorprogrammer /software developer, her computor crashed last year and somehow fixed it again .anyhow we wil keep intouch as I always say,FACEBOOK????? love Dad....

There is a sad dearth of practice materials and practice tests for the GRE in Literature, which I am taking April 4; I seem to have the one book that exists, the Princeton Review book.

I've been studying a little bit over the past week, and today I took the practice test. The book suggests you take it before you really start studying in earnest, because it gives you an idea of where your strengths and weaknesses are.

As a starting point, I'm pretty happy: I scored a 630, in the 83st percentile. (My goal is to be in the 700s somewhere, 90+ percentile. Because that's how I roll, baby.) I guessed aggressively, and that helped me a lot; I used to tutor the SAT so I am pretty good with test-taking strategies in general.

The bad thing was that I took the test in one hour and twenty-five minutes. (I used the "multiple pass" system... go through and answer the easy ones first, then go back and do the harder ones.) It's supposed to take two hours and fifty minutes. So, um, too fast! And I can see that I made a couple of careless errors as a result.

I need to go through the answers and see where the gaps are in my knowledge. Off the top of my head, it would have helped me to know anything at all about Tom Jones or John Dos Passos or Daniel Deronda or, um, Shelley (sorry, I know I have a poetry degree, please don't come take it away from me). Just for the sake of process of elimination.

Anyway, the Lit GRE is fun times. I really wish there were more practice tests... I'd be taking them all the time!

We got a hard drive full of wedding pictures from Nonk this weekend, and Ian found a disk full of pictures from Wendy that he had filed away somewhere, so I've been uploading some of the approximately one thousand wedding pictures to Flickr! I realize we got married a year and a half ago, but better late than never, right? Wendy and Nonk are both so talented... the pictures are fantastic.

In other news, I have things to do this week. Like I do every week. I didn't really get much done this weekend; I had a list, but basically I watched a lot of movies (Ghost World and Cold Comfort Farm) and television ("ER" and "Amazing Race" and "Top Model") and went to a party and spent most of Sunday recovering from the party. I did manage to get a few errands and some schoolwork done, but I didn't make it to the gym or to the grocery store, nor did I do the laundry. Oh well. I had such a great time at the party (Annie's birthday) so it was worth it.

( Here are the things I need to do. )

I worked all this weekend but I also managed to run some errands and hit the gym and get back to something resembling a routine. One thing I did not do? Any grading whatsoever. So that's at the top of my to-do list for the week. I have three days. I think I can do it!

I feel bad just dumping my to-do list on you without anything exciting to add. But my weekend was not very exciting unless you count work as exciting. Which it kind of is not. Or the fact that Beyonce is now on my workout playlist. Which kind of is! How are you guys doing? Anything exciting?

I give up.

( Here it goes again (yeah here it goes! here it goes!) )

I'm working this weekend, which sucks, but it could be worse. If I only worked five hours, I wouldn't get any overtime at all. But I worked a bunch yesterday and am working again today, so I'm getting some overtime. Since I'm trying to build back up my savings account, and since I am working from home in my PJs, and since "work" currently consists of "waiting for them to send me things," and since Ian made me some fancy Blue Bottle coffee this morning and even went out to buy me some milk to put in it, I really can't complain. But still, I'm stuck here in front of the computer until the work is done. So here I am.

I just updated my book blog (since my web host finally got their shit together and fixed my FTP problem) and my reading list. Here are the books I read in the first two months of the year:

1. Cruddy, by Lynda Barry
2. The Lady Elizabeth, by Allison Weir
3. Georgiana, Duchess of Denvonshire, by Amanda Foreman
4. Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell
5. Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
6. Houston, We Have a Problema, by Gwendolyn Zepeda
7. How to Ditch Your Fairy, by Justine Larbalestier
8. Shopaholic, by Sophie Kinsella
9. The Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith

Notice anything? They're all by women! This kind of makes me want to see how long I can keep the streak going, for absolutely no reason other than random coolness. Although I am reading Infinite Jest. But hey, it's long. I can squeeze in a few more books by women before I'm done. Maybe I'll read Ripley and some of the books on the Time booklist. I'm going to go to the bookstore and check out The Man Who Loved Children, The Blind Assassin, Under the Net, The Death of the Heart, and Play It As It Lays, all possibilities from the booklist.

As soon as I can leave the house, that is...

So my friend Brian started a blog about his hobby of collecting random stuff, such as dinosaur skulls and cool Roman artifacts and old-timey bugs and a butter churn. Not only does he collect and write about all this weird crap, he does it in a clever way. Seriously, it's a fun read.

But here's the thing: I linked it on Twitter and some people followed the link. (If you already saw this on Twitter, I apologize.) Then our friend Steve linked it on Facebook and Brian's blog got more hits. More hits! 74, to be exact. And then Brian is all, "He's clearly more internet famous than you," and I'm all, "oh no you di'int!" 74 hits? 74? BITCH, PLEASE.

So I'm asking you to go visit Brian's blog and help me beat Steve in this completely pointless internet pissing contest. Not all of you even have to do it; just 75 of you would be great. And if someone leaves a comment, that would be even better! TAKE THAT, STEVE.

(Also, geowench, you might like this entry especially.)

(P.S. I don't actually think I am "internet famous," by the way. It's just Friday and I'm punchy and on cold medicine.)

Beyond all the Twittering and Facebooking and Flickring, I doubt I'll write anything extensive here about the wedding and Vegas and Rob's visit and all of that. I may manage to do it, but I'm feeling a little felled by flu-like symptoms and I don't know if I could Capture the Magic anyway. It's been hectic but really, really amazingly fun. And I have the best friends ever, bar none, on earth. I am a lucky person.

( Ain't no party like a to do list party... )

So yeah, the Jimmy Kimmel thing was CRAZY, right?

Originally Ian was going to be on the show Wednesday, a day that I was teaching, and I wasn't going to be able to go. But they moved him to Thursday and so I immediately bought a plane ticket! And then we arranged audience passes for all our friends and family--we had 15 people there in all, plus Ian. (here is a picture of many of us. I love this picture because of how much I love all the people in it.)

I don't really know how they found Ian in the first place, although he was almost on the show back in 2003. It probably had something to do with his recent DListed appearance, which came soon after the food network re-ran his episode of Unwrapped.

So on Wednesday night I taught my class, and then raced to the airport with the giant oversized box of macaroni and cheese (as seen here). The reason I was carrying it is that I had a car, and Ian would have had to take it to work and then to the airport on BART. But that didn't make me feel any less stupid carrying it through the airport. The TSA agent was like, "you can only have one carry on and one personal item." I was like, "It's my husband's personal item! I'm meeting him at the gate! He didn't want to take it on BART! Ha ha! It's a giant box!" She was decidedly unamused, but let me go through. The real irony is that the airport was empty, and the plane was only half-full. Really, is now the time to harass people about their giant novelty boxes of processed food? Really, TSA?

We got a car and driver to the hotel, which was the Roosevelt, a famously haunted Hollywood landmark. I did not see any ghosts, however. It was quite strange to be staying in a hotel in Hollywood as a tourist, when my parents live in North Hollywood, ten minutes away. Strange but very cool; the hotel is AMAZING. It's a mix of old-timey (since it's historical) and super modern. I want to steal every single element of their bathroom decor for my own. From the window, we could see my mom's (and John Ritter's) alma mater (they graduated the same year) and the skyline.

The next morning, Ian had to go to the studio to drop off his boxes and go over some stuff with the producer. (He never met Jimmy, by the way, until he walked on stage.) I got coffee, and stopped by Grauman's Chinese Theater to see the footprints; I literally can't remember the last time I did that, and felt very touristy. I put my hand in Dick Van Dyke's handprint, BECAUSE I LOVE HIM. Then I went and hung out by the (supposedly haunted) pool, where the drinks were $20 each and industry types were making deals on their cellphones. Ah, Hollywood.

Not knowing how long Ian would be there, I'd made plans for lunch with my cousin Michelle, and Brian, and Steve. It turned out that Ian was out of there within an hour (they just wanted to show him the stage and get his boxes to the prop department) so he came with us to Roscoe's where he had, what else, macaroni and cheese.

After that, Ian decided he wanted to go back to the hotel room and decompress (SPOILED FAMOUS PERSON ALERT) while the rest of us walked down Hollywood Boulevard. But before we'd gone half a block, we were back in front of the studio, where Ian's name was listed on the chalkboard and two guys were giving away tickets to Jimmy Kimmel Live! Here's how that went:

Ticket Dude: "Do you want free tickets to the show tonight?"
Steve: "No thanks, man, I'm already going. I know Andy Garcia."
Me: "Yeah, me too, I'm friends with Kristen Bell!"
Ticket Dude: "Well I know the macaroni and cheese guy. He's the best one!"
Steve [pointing]: "She's actually married to him."
Ticket Dude: "No way!"

Of course we called Ian, who came down from his fancy hotel suite and met his adoring public and then took pictures with the sign. He went back upstairs (TOO GOOD FOR US) and the rest of us went into some cool shops, found John Ritter's star (guess whose idea that was?) and stopped for drinks at the Pig n' Whistle, where Mr. Famous, discovering it's lonely at the top, decided to come and meet us. It was kind of a nervous delirium at that point, and Brian and I each had like three beers and were kind of goofy drunk.

Finally, it was time to meet up with everybody and go into the green room, which featured zero celebrities, but lots of free drinks. We weren't allowed to take pictures though; I had to check my camera at the door. My parents were there, along with many of our closest friends, so it was incredibly festive and chaotic.

We briefly got to see Ian's dressing room (a three-room suite with a jacuzzi tub) and approve of his outfit (which was picked out for him by his friend Carlos) and then we were seated in the audience for the show! Which went by in a blur. First Kristin Bell, who was cute and funny, then Andy Garcia, who was I-don't-remember-because-I-started-taking-Valium, and then Ian!

I thought the segment was pretty funny; the warmup guy had made some mean jokes, so I was nervous, but I thought Jimmy was funny without being mean about it, and that Ian came across as self-aware about how goofy his collection is. The seven minutes went by very quickly. (During Andy Garcia's segment, I kept looking at the clock, thinking, wow this is a long segment... oh god it's only been three minutes... seven minutes is forever... oh my god.) But Ian's went by fast.

Afterwards, we went to the Roosevelt for a celebratory toast and then, like all truly fancy people, to In n' Out for dinner. It was really similar to when I was on TV---this euphoric feeling that it had gone well, or at least hadn't gone badly. And since then, the video has gotten almost 35,000 views on YouTube! So the clock still seems to be ticking on the 15 minutes of fame...

Okay, clearly the long-winded entries that I had dreams of writing are not to be. The short version is that I went to Big Sur and the condors were magnificent. I took a ton of pictures and tried to be very frugal about what I put up on Flickr but there are still an awful lot of pictures of condors up there. Ian's parents hosted us, and took us out for amazing meals (BREAKFAST AT THE BIG SUR BAKERY. CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES AT THE BIG SUR BAKERY). And I love the California coast so much.

I also went to Dallas and trip was very short but very awesome. Got to meet Julie and Schuyler after all these years, and they are both delightful. And I went to the release party for the paperback version of Rob's book, and Julie's friends told me they enjoyed my book questions, which may have been a lie but I AM COOL WITH THAT. And I got to see the JFK assassination site! I love morbid/historical stuff. (And yes, on the plane ride home I read Assassination Vacation and loved it.)

The long MLK weekend was good, and I got a lot done and did a lo-o-o-t of socializing. (Saw my friend Steve and his wife Melissa, who is pregnant, had the first meeting of our new writing group tentatively called C-4, played pool for my ex-wife-in-law's birthday, went over to Annie's to see Big Love, and probably did other things that I'm forgetting.)

AND NOW BARACK OBAMA IS OUR PRESIDENT. They keep calling him "President Obama" and when they say "the president" they mean him, and I CAN'T GET OVER IT. It still feels like a glorious, glorious dream.

( And now, on with the show... )

So I just called my mother to ask her about taping "True Blood" and then I typed up everything she said. (In case you didn't know, she and my dad were chosen from their square-dancing club to be extras.) Reading it over, I see there is a lot about stealing stuff and/or wanting to steal stuff! Anyway, here is her story....

Before all the commotion I went over to makeup and hair. I had to have makeup and hair. I had a wig on, my one that has the black in the middle. My "modern" wig. They liked it, but the hairdresser took both sides and made puffed-up ponytails. And I wore a cowboy hat. A white cowboy hat with a silver emblem on the top. with sparkly stuff. It looked very good, I loved the cowboy hat, but I couldn't keep it! I couldn't keep anything!

Then, because I had my whole outfit on, with a beautiful dark blue petticoat, I asked if I could buy the petticoat, and they said no, you can't buy it! You can't have anything. I wanted to buy my costume, too. So at least they gave us a picture. But it's not such a great picture. We took better pictures ourselves. We weren't supposed to bring our camera, but we did anyway.

So I'm going from hair to makeup, and it's all in these trailers, you know, where you have to hold onto this metal stair... and I come out of the chair going up to the trailer, but you can't see the steps because I have this POOF POOF skirt on, so I kind of push it to the side, holding onto the railing. And then you know what? My petticoat falls down! Because there's a drawstring, and they had not put knots on it. And PLOP! the petticoat fell down. And so I put my foot in the air and went WHOOP and kicked my foot in the air, and kicked it right into the air! And a young man walking by caught the petticoat! And he said this is my lucky day! and asked if he could help put it back on, and I said no, that's okay! ha ha! the flying petticoat!

There was one scene where it was us and we were in costume, and the sheriff and the sheriff's wife. Dad and I were in costume and the sheriff's wife was also in costume. And we come walking into the saloon and the sheriff is holding the trophy that we just won first place for being square dancers.

We rehearsed it where we walked in behind the sheriff and did a do-si-do, and we rehearsed it three times, and then they didn't like it, so they wanted us to come in first. The lady who was the sheriff's wife did not like it that much. And the sheriff's wife did not like it that way because she is in SAG, and the camera was on us when we first walk in, and not her.

And then we walked up to the bar, and we did other scenes. And they called us back for one other scene at the bar, where I was sitting and dad was standing behind me, and the sheriff's having an argument with this guy, and we're supposed to lean back and listen about the fight.

We're supposed to pantomime everything, we can't say anything out loud. The sheriff's wife is looking also, so we're all involved. The sheriff lady said "don't lean back so far, because if I can't see the camera, then the camera can't see ME." She wanted to be really in the spotlight.

It was a beautiful old bar, it was shellacked and everything. And there was a wine glass in front of me with red wine in it. And I said to Dad I'm supposed to pick up the glass and take a sip. Dad had a beer, actually it was an o'douls but it was in a beer bottle. And I took the glass and it was... grape juice! ha ha!

I had my costume and my silver purse that was my purse, that the director liked, and I kind of put the napkin into my face for a second and then squished it into the purse. It had the name of the bar on it, you see! I wanted the napkin with the name of the bar!

It was an adventure.. I really enjoyed it. It was a long day. It was in a stage, but they had all this mist on the stage. Because it was supposed to be Louisiana, like a misty area. Dad didn't like it so much because he gets antsy sitting around. He went to go see what they were doing, and one time he got chased back by the security, he was not supposed to be there while he was filming. And he doesn't do suduku [sic] and all that, or talk to the people like I do. He said he would not do it again.

But it was good money! Between dad and I we got almost $400 for the whole day! $150 each and then an extra $50 because of the dancing. I'm so happy that I got to experience it! It was just the luck of the draw. The director saw the pictures of us and liked my hair, which was the same wig, and my silver purse.

Also when I was waiting to go to makeup and hair, there was a folding chair, and one had a paper laying on it. Hmm! So I sat on the chair with my big dress and I saw that nobody was looking and squinched up the paper and put the paper in my silver purse. And dad said "oh! this is a call sheet! how nice." Not from THAT day but from the day before. But it still is a call sheet that says True Blood. I like to have things like that.

And now we know what Michelle does! She is a PA and she moves people like us around. We had someone like that moving us around. A PA.

The show is going to be on HBO. It is going to be on the next season, which starts in June. It is the first episode of what they call "the next season." Is there a way to make a videocasette of that? We don't know. We don't have HBO.

Oh! There was catering but not the fancy catering. Just fast service. But they had some soup and they had a sandwich. Apparently last year they had steak! But they had all kinds of coffee you could have, and munchies and things. For us it was enough.

Oh, and I heard from Dad that they won a Globe! The show! Dad is so interested now in the show, we don't watch the show, but now every time he sees a little article in the paper he cuts it out.

And anyway, that was our adventure! I would do it again. it was good money!

Last time I tried to do a combination of to-do list post and post-with-a-photo-in-it, it made the coding all weird. So I will write about my trips later! Maybe even figure out how to put TWO Flickr pictures in ONE Livejournal entry. Since I took TWO trips, and they were SEPARATE. I don't know why I am writing in ALL CAPS.

( Behind a cut, for your ignoring pleasure... )

I've been thinking about my resolutions entry for a while, but have avoided looking at last year's list for some reason. I guess if you complete your resolutions while paying attention, they don't really count? Anyway, first, let's talk about travel! I love looking back to where I've been and ahead to where I'm going. Join me, won't you? Heh.

( Travel and resolutions and blahdi blah. )