Ordinary Extraordinary

A Day In The Life

And now for something entirely different!

A lot of people have asked me lately what I do. They know that I work in television, and that I do something involving logistics, but my actual job is a bit of a mystery to most. In reality, I have two jobs - I work for the same company as both a Studio Coordinator and Technical Coordinator; the former is my primary job and the latter is something that is added to my plate during certain parts of the year. 

But what do I do? Lemme 'splain. No, there is too much. With a bit of inspiration from VT over at pantagruel, lemme sum up:

A Day in the Life of a Studio Coordinator

• Groan and fumble around for my Treo when its alarm goes off at 5:30 in the morning. Try in vain to snooze for a few more minutes while Oscar meows incessantly in my ear that he is staaaaaarving.
• Stumble around the house doing all of the usual morning things. Field a phone call at 6:30am that one of my crew members is sick and won't be coming in. Shit.
• Piss of countless wives, girlfriends, and freelance crew members when I wake them up with my ass-early phone call. Finally find someone who grudgingly agrees to work. (Hello, I am paying you. Ingrate.) Decide that I really need more tea before I face traffic.

Memento mori

dum loquimur, fugerit invida
aetas: carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.*
-Horace, Odes 1.11

It's a little after 8 on Sunday night and there are a lot of things I "should" be doing.

I "should" be hauling my clothes down to the laundromat. I "should" be cleaning my kitchen, or tidying up my living room. I "should" be scrubbing the ceiling in my bathroom so I can paint it (finally). I "should" be getting a head start on the absolute mountain of work that I'm facing come tomorrow morning.

Instead, I spent the afternoon reading and now I'm sitting in my un-tidied living room, thinking about the evanescent nature of life.

Our lives are so achingly short, and they can turn in an instant.

Though I haven't said much about it in this public forum, I have been reminded more than once in the last year that tomorrow is promised to no one.

• In June, I buried my friend Curtis.
• In September, Apollo's betrayal ended ten years of love and friendship in less than twenty minutes.
• In November, my father was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer. Although his doctor caught it very early and prostate cancer responds extremely well to treatment, he's still my father and cancer is a scary thing.
• In March, a member of my Santa Barbara family found a growth in his lung that, for several terrifying days, appeared to be extremely aggressive lung cancer. (Fortunately it turned out to be a rare but treatable infection instead)
• This month, a dear friend's wife had a miscarriage and Natara lost her best friend to a sudden heart attack.
• Next month, Rauri deploys to Baghdad.

Those are just the things that have happened to me personally, nevermind the ongoing tragedy of lives being lost in this quagmire of a war, or the casualties of a marginalized madman with a gun.

How many times must the Universe show us in brutal detail that life is so fragile, so tenuous? Why do we continue to cling to things that are so small, so petty, so completely inconsequential?

The old wisdom of What would you do if you won a million dollars? Why aren't you doing it right now? holds true. There is no perfect time, perfect place, or perfect set of circumstances. We will never be as ready as we think we need to be and there is no reason to waste time waiting. The Universe has reminded me of these things time and time again during the past year.

So perhaps you all will understand why, when The Fireman called me to tell me that he loves me, that he has always loved me, it ended up being the simplest thing in the world to let myself fall.

I have never felt my heart open the way it did when he said:

I have wanted you since the day that I saw you sitting under that tree. I couldn't say anything because I was with **** . . . But I'm single now, and so are you, and I needed to tell you. For years, I've needed to tell you. I wish I could have kissed you that first day and I've wanted to kiss you every day that I've seen you since.

I fought against it at first. I tried to be logical and cautious, to live within the walls I've built out of past hurts, but he & I were talking one night last week and suddenly I just felt my resistance break. It was palpable, as though I'd been bound with rope and suddenly cut free, and I drew what felt like the first truly deep breath I'd ever taken.

It was, without a doubt, the strangest and most wonderful experience of my life.

Memento mori my friends; remember that you are mortal. Whatever you've been meaning to do, or to say, do it now. You may not have the opportunity tomorrow.

-----
*Even as we speak, envious time runs away from us: seize the day, for you can believe very little about the future.

Who was I to make you wait?

I know... I've been cryptic lately.

Lets just say that you'll probably be hearing a lot about The Fireman from now on.

For shame, jackals

I have no words.

No, wait, I do have words.

To all of you who have taken this opportunity to spout off about how guns are evil and should be banned: Fuck you. Again (as always) the gun is not the villain here, Cho Seung-Hi is. He may have bought them legally but he also went to extraordinary lengths to conceal his identity and the serial numbers of the guns. This was a pre-medidated attack - if he couldn't get the guns legally, he would have bought them on the black market.

To all of you who have taken this opportunity to spout off about how video games are evil and are turning our young adults into psychotic monsters: Fuck you. Is there any evidence that this man had ever played a video game in his life? No. Do we know ANYTHING about him other than that he was an English major and that he shot himself after shooting almost 50 people? No.

To all of you who have taken this opportunity to spout off about how much safer the campus would be if everyone were armed: Fuck you. No seriously, fuck you. This isn't about guns, it's about one evil man who perpetrated a horrific attack. And do you really think the body count would be lower if hundreds of terrified, untrained college students had been running around with loaded guns?

You should all be ashamed of yourselves for trying to pull a soapbox out from under the bodies of 32 innocent students.

Growth

In February, this long-neglected patch of dirt wedged between my pantry wall and my dining room was home to a dead rose bush, a riot of weeds and leaves, and one sleepy Jerusalem Cricket* (discovered snuggled up to the roots of the aforementioned rose bush).

Now it has two thriving tomato plants, six huge bean plants, and a lone ichiban that is trying valiantly to stave off the encroaching bean army. I noticed this weekend that both the bean plants and the tomato plants have flower buds which means that I will have fresh vegetables relatively soon!

If my luck with the back garden can carry over to the seeds that I planted in the two front beds, I will be a very happy woman indeed.

-----
*Now that I've read a little bit about them, I'm really glad I didn't kill the one that I found. They're solitary, utterly harmless, and help enrich soil by feeding on underground plant matter.

Little Wonders

As I was sitting in my living room this morning, pondering a conversation that threw me for a (huge, potentially wonderful) loop, the haunted MP3 player spoke thusly:

let it go,
let it roll right off your shoulder
don't you know
the hardest part is over
let it in,
let your clarity define you
in the end
we will only just remember how it feels

our lives are made
in these small hours
these little wonders,
these twists & turns of fate
time falls away,
but these small hours,
these small hours still remain

let it slide,
let your troubles fall behind you
let it shine
until you feel it all around you
and i don't mind
if it's me you need to turn to
we'll get by,
it's the heart that really matters in the end

our lives are made
in these small hours
these little wonders,
these twists & turns of fate
time falls away,
but these small hours,
these small hours still remain

all of my regret
will wash away some how
but i can not forget
the way i feel right now

in these small hours
these little wonders
these twists & turns of fate
these twists & turns of fate
time falls away but these small hours
these small hours, still remain,
still remain
these little wonders
these twists & turns of fate
time falls away
but these small hours
these little wonders still remain

-Rob Thomas, Little Wonders

I am, indeed, living in interesting times.

Would Have

Wow... Friday already. How did that happen? I had several blog posts planned for this week, but somehow life kept getting in the way.

• On Monday, I planned to write about The Texan's visit and how we all sat around at home on Saturday night drinking cocoa and playing Scrabble. I was also going to tell you a funny story about Ken Watanabe's dog.


• On Tuesday, I planned to write about this article in the Washington Post detailing an experiment in which Joshua Bell posed as an ordinary street musician and played in Washington's L'Enfant Plaza Metro station during the morning rush hour.  I can't imagine not pausing to listen; I love the sound of the violin so much that its song could stop me in my tracks.


• On Wednesday, I planned to write about the goat rodeo that is my move to a new cubicle.


• On Thursday, I planned to write about Lee Iacocca, and how I can't wait to read his new book.


• Today, I planned to write about Don Imus and how ABSURD I think his firing is. Phil Mushnick of the New York Post says it better than I ever could: Brainless hypocrites win again.

It would have been a week of quality blog posts... if I'd had time to write them.

Shake Your Bootie

Listen up people, there is only ONE place to be this Saturday night and that place is BootieLA!

All the cool kids are going to be there shakin' it to the sounds of Party Ben & DJ Axel - we're even importing cool kids from Austin for the occasion!

Come on, you've been meaning to join us at Bootie for months - make April the month when you follow through and get your ass out on that dance floor!

I guarantee fabulous music, reasonably priced drinks, an awesome crowd, and dancing until you can't dance no more.

There may even be bacon afterwards. Do you really need more of an incentive than that?

I didn't think so.

Do-over, please

You know it's going to be a good day when:

• You receive a call from your bank saying that the Visa number on your check card has been "compromised" (read: stolen).
• Your card has therefore been canceled and they're sending you a new one, in 5-7 business days.
• You have absolutely no cash on hand and need to get gas before going to work.
• You have to be AT work before bank branches open.
• The guy at the gas station laughs at you for paying for $11.23 worth of gas entirely in change.

Also? It's 57 degrees and drizzly. In Los Angeles. In APRIL.

I'm going back to bed.

(I am grateful, though, that it was just my check card number and not my bank account number. That would have been far worse.)

Crossing Things Off

Less then six months left to complete my 101 in 1001 and progress continues, albeit slowly.

I've reconciled myself with the fact that I probably will not complete some items on this list before August, particularly the ones that involve large amounts of cash, but I'm happy with the progress I've made so far. I'm especially pleased to see that section with the most items crossed off is "Personal Improvement;" it shows that I've been making some positive changes to my life since November, 2004.

143 days to go!