Friday, July 30, 2049

Apparently that's when I'm going to die, according to deathclock.com. Sounds about right to me. Just putting that down for posterity so I can go back on my 72nd birthday and remind myself it's almost over.

Who the hell decided to settle in this god forsaken land, anyway?

I would also like to say that I went back to my inaugural blog back in February or March, where I was bitching that it was the coldest stretch in 11 years, not supposed to get above 0 for 86 hours straight. And I mentioned that in a few months I'd be bitching that it's so hot.

Well, IT'S SO HOT. OK, today it's really nice and it's getting cooler now. But for most of July and half of August (and it'll probably be back), it's been pretty much in the 90s. I'm sure there were a lot of upper-80s days, but WAY more 90s days than I ever remember. TONS. This while I am now no longer working in an air-conditioned office. Man, when it's 95 degrees with 70%+ humidity and you're either in an smelly, stuffy, airless warehouse putting up hot lights or outside in the direct sun (working with large pieces of black fabric, no less), mostly moving heavy things around and climbing ladders (which makes me sweat no matter what the temp is -- I'm CONFRONTING my fear of heights, getting AROUND it, but I'm far from OVER it), that adds up to a lot of damn sweat. I reached the point where I stopped caring if I looked/smelled gross pretty quickly, but it does get old.

So let the tomato throwing begin. I guarantee that in a few months I will bitch about the cold. That is what it means to be a Minnesotan.

Sleep? That's so 1987.

Not that much new to write about, but thought I would update that the 2 jobs this week went well. The 2 paying jobs, in addition to the 2 free jobs that I did over the course of 4 days. The thing with that is that, although my feature has weird-ass hours, when you mix the weird-ass hours of FOUR different jobs together, crap, man.

Friday night I got 3 hours of sleep between my late shoot, my inability to go to sleep immediately when I got home, and my early shoot the next day. Sat. night I got 5 hrs., which would have been OK if I had recovered from the night before... Sun. we had a dawn shoot, so we were there at 5 am. Did our thing then had about 6 hours off (was only able to take an off-and-on nap for 2.5 hours) and came back until midnight. However, I wanted to stay up as long as possible because of my overnight the next night, so I went to bed at 5 am -- over 24 hours with a 2.5 hour nap. Mon. night was overnight 9pm-7 or 8am. Had a couple hours to unwind, then went to my NEXT JOB at 11 am. At about 7:30pm started to get quite delirious, having been up for 27 hours. That is, the 2nd day in -- well, I can't count the days because it's hard to tell them apart, but my 2nd >24 hour day in maybe 4 days' time. Got 8 actual hrs. in that night. Then got up before 5 for a 14-hour day Wed. (which is really nothing at this point). Today was AWESOME -- we shot from 11am-3pm. And we were DONE. What the hell? So tonight I'm going out, just to make sure I'm not too rested for our 9am shoot tomorrow.

I really don't mind being tired and all, except that I know I'll get sick if I keep it up. Hopefully the last couple days will be OK, and then I'm back to having nothing lined up yet, so we'll see. I'd still rather do this and not sleep than any of my stupid day jobs.

What Babo lacks in mind power, he makes up for in love

"Babo will protect you. Having a bad day? Someone giving you a hard time? Babo's got your back. What Babo lacks in mind power, he makes up for in love. He will stick with you to the end, and when something scary happens, he will send you a nice greeting card from wherever it is he runs away to."

Beware: you are entering a long drawn-out ranty-rave about how just super great everything is, Pollyanna. Consider your ass warned.

A few years ago when I was having one of my notorious strings of bad luck (I think it was the time my grandpa died, my car died twice, and I fucked up my hand and had to go to the emergency room and later have my finger re-broken, all within one or two weeks), a friend gave me the above Ugly Doll keychain for luck. I used it until I got my widdle buh-buh (now giant cat-man Neko) last summer (when I had to hide everything of such kittenly temptation), but honestly, it was always just a cute trinket to me. Little did I know the power it held.

On Monday I was looking for something else and came across the ugly little thing (now kinda grubby) and stuck it on my purse zipper for the hell of it.

Tuesday, while out having a great time with my old work friends (and $.75 PBR pints? Gotta love suburbia), I got a call, a hopefully very lucrative job working on corporate videos for a locally based corporation. Hopefully as in maybe it will turn into a lot more work.

Then I got the check I'd been vaguely waiting for from cashing out my pension when I quit my job. Didn't really know when it would get here (they possibly only paid out twice a year, so I was thinking January), so I wasn't counting on it for anything. Not only was it here, but, uh, it was a LOT MORE than I had expected. Nice reward for my years of doorknob shit, I have to admit. And to clarify, this wasn't money I put in and am losing some of now, this was 100% contributed by my otherwise shitty employer.

Wednesday was fun, nothing terribly lucky, but it was the wrap party for the movie I just worked on and I had a very good time.

Then today I randomly got ANOTHER job that actually pays actual money. And anything local that pays (most of my paying stuff has been "passing through" TV and such) will hopefully lead to more work too. It was a referral by someone I respect, the girl who called me sounded really nice (good first sign that it won't suck), etc. So hooray. Pays well too.

Later I went to a little industry happy hour with a friend and might have helped her get some work (introduced her to the people I knew there), had a good time, and got back on the freebie but fun job tomorrow that I thought I wasn't going to be able to do. Not only that, they were so sweet about being happy I was going to be there. The one who I saw at the happy hour called after I left to see if I could work because someone else would be gone, and was really happy I said yes. So then I called the director (or producer, I forget now, oops) to tell him I was coming after all, and he got all happy and told me I was a bright spot in his crappy day! How cute is that? So those last bits aren't really luck, but it was a good day.

Anyway, I'm scared to death now that I'm going to step on a crack, break a mirror, or something else to end my string of goodness. But it's been an awesome week, and if things stay this good, my head just might explode.

Well, this fucking bites.

I was in a bar about a mile away from this bridge when it happened (and have proceeded to get a little drunk, sorry). Hadn't driven across said bridge in a week... Which is a little creepy since I can't remember the last time, before the shoot that brought me to the area last week. Not that it's about me and my non-close-calls. My landlord was the first person to ask if I was OK, via text message, and I was like, OK, me? Sure, why? OHHHHH, because people like US were ON that thing. Not that I didn't realize it, but that's when it really hit. Now I'm worried about everyone. Not that it matters whether I knew the affected people or not -- I got worry enough for everyone.

Things like this don't happen in Minneapolis.