Both Sad and Happy

I am sad that I am having to give up working on movies for the reality of having a steady income. I've been out of work for three months now and there are not even any rumors of movies or shows starting anytime soon. The good news is I may have already found a job. I still have to pass a background check but I've been offered a bookkeeping position at an upscale apartment complex. I'm pretty nervous about trying to settle into a corporate style job: it doesn't really suit my preferences, but having an income does and the company seems so far to be a good company to work for. I have met two of my supervisors and they are very nice and I think I will easily 'fit in' with the other employees. No more jeans at work though, which makes me sad. I'm also interested in the job and its duties and it seems like there may be some opportunity for advancement. I guess if it doesn't work out I can always go back to movies but in the meantime I'm really going to give this my best effort. Now I need to give my best effort in cleaning my house up a little. Yuck!

Is it Possible?

Since one of my goals this year is to buy a new car I've been trying to think of creative ways to raise the funds to do this. So far my best option has been Ebay. Right now I'm running an experiment. There is an item on ebay that I found at a Thrift store for $1.99. Listing it cost about another dollar. A similar item just sold on ebay for $97. I would only have to sell about 275 of these items on Ebay to raise the total funds needed for my car. Whether or not I could find 275 of these items in thrift stores is uncertain, also the selling price is uncertain. My experiment ends in 4 days, we'll see how it goes.

Cold Cold Cold

One little ice storm and Austin shuts down. I was supposed to go back to work today but they called this morning and said everyone is staying home, possibly until Wednesday afternoon.
This is fine by me. Even though I was glad to be going back to work today, I have lots of projects to do around the house that I usually don't get up early enough to work on. Now I just hope I don't tinker around on the computer all day and waste all of my time.

New Year's Resolutions: 2007

So, obviously one of my resolutions is not to keep up with this blog, otherwise I would have made this post much sooner.
My resolutions this year are both much more complicated and much more structured than in years past. It may seem like a lot but I think it is not too ambitious to at least attempt.

Resolutions '07

1. Improve Finanaces
-Create a budget and stick to it
-Pay off credit card debt
-Open a Roth IRA & Start saving for retirement
-Buy a Toyota Prius (maybe even a new one)
2. Remember Birthdays and Keep Up with Friends More Often (so far I'm not doing to0 well with this one)
3. Improve Personal Appearance
-Become more physically fit (goal measurements 36-28-38)
-Spend more time caring for hair, skin, nails & teeth
-Update & Improve wardrobe
4. Maintain a Clean and Organized Household
-Clean & Straighten house often
-Finish all renovation/remodeling/improvement projects

And that's it!
I'm halfway through January and only about 1% active on any of these goals. Okay, maybe 7%. I'll check back in a month or so with a progress report.

New Year:New Deal

Its 2007 already. I can't believe how quickly last year went by. Does each year speed up now until I shrivel up and die? I hope not.

I was checking over some of my resolutions from last year and the only one I really made was to give up smoking. I think I can say pretty confidently that I am no longer a smoker although I do still cheat every once in a while. What does that mean, I wonder? I did pick smoking up again pretty heavily while I was in West Texas but had given it up again by the time we came back to Austin. Now I restrict it to times when I am drinking with friends who also smoke, and even then I'm down from 10 cigarettes over the course of a night to more like 3. I have noticed that I don't get as tired in the middle of the day as I used to. Is this a result of my cessation? I don't know, but if I'm even partially as successful with this years' resolutions as last years then I'll be in great shape come 2008.

Josh and I just got back from a two week vacation in New Orleans. I had never been there before and Josh grew up there so it was nice to see the city from a somewhat native perspective.
The primary focus of our trip was FOOD. I've mentioned a million times before how Austin restaurants can't hold a candle to really good restaurants like you find in Houston and I can now include New Orleans restaurants in the higher regard reserved for such fine establishments as Star Pizza, Backstreet Cafe, and Barnaby's.

Star was our first stop, by the way, and in Josh's words it "lived up to its hype, somehow". The pizza and salad and dressing and everything was as good as I remember it being, if not better.

Once I get to describing New Orleans restaurants everything becomes a blur. I know that the first place we went, Domilisi's for Po-Boys, was not very good and was one of the dirtier places I've ever been in. Standout's for excellence include Irene's, Palace Cafe, Maspero's, R & O's, Adolfo's and of course Cafe du Monde, where I instantly became addicted to beignets and their mounds of snowy sugar. We also had an excellent Muffaletta at Central Grocery and yummy ginger creme brulee at Cafe East. There were a few disappointments, but overall I ate myself silly and gained 7 pounds in the short time we were there.

We had a really great vacation, but New Orleans is such a sad city. Bourbon street was boring to me (its just a bigger 6th street where you can take your drinks into the street with you and the bars don't close at 2am, big whoop). A year and a half after Hurricane Katrina prices are still gouged and trash and debris lies in every street, begging for some moderately industrious person to just come by and pick it up. We saw "Now Hiring" signs in the windows of almost every business we visited, and one restaurant we dined in had only 2 servers working despite a full dining area, probably a third or fourth of the needed staff. Having never been there before the storm, I don't know if things were always that way, but I can't help feeling a little disgusted. Meanwhile I hear stories of 'refugees' in Austin, San Antonio and Houston, turning middle class neighborhoods into slums and the coinciding rise in the crime rate (up to 40% in many areas, if not more). I don't mean to seem callous but seriously, enough already. My patience and sympathy with the situation are completely eroded. There are real victims, like Josh's grandparents who lost everything they had and whose home was reduced to its foundation and brick walls. At 84 and 89 they have relocated to a 2 bedroom apartment and have carried on with their lives as best they can. They are the one's that deserve additional help, not the countless hordes who sit front of their playstation's in some reduced rent apartment waiting for someone to come along and do the next step for them.

Whoa, so, on a lighter note...

I'm visiting my grandmother today and her health has improved so much since moving in with my mom, I'm so happy for her. I'm a little worried about my parent's though. Problems with my brother continue to grow and there's no hope in sight for them. I guess the only thing I can do is just stay out of their way and try to find a new job for the new year. I am very hopeful that another movie will start again this month. I have been hearing rumors of one for a few months but nothing concrete yet. If not, I will probably have to move or leave the business, but I'm not making any decisions this week.

I've got to leave soon to get back to Austin. I need to pick up my mail from the Post Office (I had it held while I was on vacation) and then I'm finishing up some laundry and going to the gym. Maybe later I'll get to watch a movie with my sweet boyfriend:)

New Orleans Partial Post

I am on vacation and g.d.it, I don't have time to blog. I am too busy living my frigging life, okay.
When I get home I will take the time to chronicle my trip. In the meantime, I'm having a great time!

Blogging Tired

Last night I was blogging tired. I'm not sure why I was so sleepy but I could barely keep my eyes open and my mind wasn't working as well as it usually does. I think that it must have something to do with when I come home to visit my folks.
My parents live in a teeny tiny little town in central Texas. Even though its only 2 hours from Austin, its so far removed from the rest of the world. Here people don't have computers, they don't use cell phones and they still write checks for everything. From the moment I arrive here everything starts to slow down. It drives me crazy and reminds me of all the reasons I had to get out of here as fast as I could when I was a kid.
Aside from the effects it has on me (and my metabolism...I eat 10X more food here because I'm so bored), living in this town has turned my parents into a couple of hermits. I can imagine them 30 years ago living in Dallas, going to parties and hanging out with friends. These days, my parents don't really have any friends, don't go to any social functions except their once monthly domino game, and have no clue what's going on in the world around them. They're just not exposed to it. I think I wrote about this last year around this time when I was trying to convince my dad that he and mom could be on the same cell phone plan and not have to pay two separate bills for each of their phones.
My main reason for coming home this week is to help my grandmother get settled into our house. She has been ill and the doctors finally told her it was time to go to a nursing home. Of course, she would have none of that so it was agreed that she would take over my brother's former room. I still think she's not that happy about it but this is an easier arrangement for my mom who will no longer have to take care of both houses.
Speaking of my brother, my enabler father has given him our lake house to live in. This makes me so f'ing mad. The lake house is supposed to belong to the family. With him there, no one else can use it. When he's done using it (read:when he goes to jail finally) it is doubtful that the place will be in any shape to be used by the family unless we invest major elbow grease cleaning it up. The last time I was there he had been the last one to use it and it took Josh and I a full day of cleaning to make it tolerable and even after that we didn't walk on the floor barefoot.
Last night I had half of an Ambien and slept like a corpse until 2pm today. I wanted to get up earlier and was a little frustrated with myself for being such a lazy bones. I'm going to aim for getting up early again tomorrow so I can finish organizing my mother's freezer. Today I reorganized the refrigerator and the pantry and although she wasn't pleased with me "messing up her system" I didn't care because both areas really needed some form of organization. My mom is one of those people who will buy something every time she goes to the store whether she needs it or not. The items she frequently buys are white chocolate candy coating, cream cheese and artichoke hearts. I'm only halfway done with the process and already have found no less than 10 packages of candy coating, 12 packages of cream cheese and 4 big jars of artichoke hearts. I also threw out a ton of stuff including spice jars I recognized from childhood.
I get so frustrated with my parents because they are crazy pack rats. There is no logic in some of the things they have squirrelled away and our house is becoming less of a home and more of a storage facility every time I come to visit. All of the drawers in my room have been filled by clothing outgrown by my family, games never played, bed linens and comforters from every decorating scheme used by my mother since we built the house in 1979, books and notepads from when I was in grade school, etc. These are just the areas I have access to, I shudder to think what lives in their closet or in my dad's office or in the attic.
Someday I will have to go through it all. For now I'm just going to help myself to another piece of pie and pretend its not there.

Movies I want to see

Among thousands of others:

Household Tips

It always suprises me when I come across a household tip that I never heard of before and that is so useful I wonder why I didn't think of it myself.
I just stumbled across this website that has such interesting tips as partially draining your hot water heater every couple of months to increase its energy efficiency and make sure your fan is spinning in the correct direction for the season. Okay, I had heard the fan thing before, but the hot water thing was completely new. And even though these aren't the traditional household cleaning tips (like using ketchup to clean brass plated metalwork) they are money saving tips that can still be put to use by modern girls like myself.

Throwing in the Towel, for Tonight

The dishwasher installation has reached a standstill. I can't mess with it anymore today. I started working on it at 11 am and its now 10pm. After having an impossible time trying to remove the old dishwasher (I had to pull of some of the tiles in the kitchen to get it out), the new dishwasher went in and was a piece of cake to hook up, but now the hot water shut off valve won't re-open: the threads are corroded and the bolt is too stripped to turn. I'll have to have the landlord shut off the main water inline tomorrow and then replace the entire valve unit, reattach the washer and then hope there are no leaks.
In a previous post I talked about one of the cons of my apartment was that the dishwasher was old and stinky and had a colony of roaches living in it. I talked with the landlord about this and he agreed that we should replace the dishwasher. I knew I could do it myself and offered to do so as an incentive for him to reimburse me for the materials. Same agreement went for the sink. I found a dishwasher on craigslist and a sink at home depot and was ready to go to town today until the hot water valve kinked my plans.
Meanwhile, my dishes are piling up and I really just want to be done with it. OVerall it has been a good experience. I knew I would be able to do it I just didn't realize how much trouble it would really be. Especially with the old dishwasher being blocked into the hole by poor construction. I haven't even started on the sink yet, I was waiting until I got the dishwasher running before I removed my only other means of cleaning my dishes. I guess I could wash them in the tub, but that sounds as gross as I'm sure it actually would be. By the time I'm done with the place its going to be a veritable palace. Probably this will happen a few weeks before I have to move out.

Shopping Queen Scores again

So I finally tanked my bank account. Pretty sad news for this unemployed gal. But I did manage to score on my last outing. I've been shopping on Ebay for a space saver toaster oven, you know, the kind that goes under the cabinet. Anyway, they go for like $40-$50 bucks on ebay because they're no longer in production. I was about to start bidding on some when I had a brilliant idea. I popped down to ThriftLand (Manchaca) and not only found one, I found two and they were $1.99 each! Of course I bought them both and now one is hanging beneath my glassware and one is about to go up for auction. I may have found a new way to make a little dough! And then I'll toast it.

The Last Ones

They bulldozed the rest of the trees today. BASTARDS.

Machine vs. Nature

This morning I was awakened by bulldozers tearing down a brake of trees behind my house. Obviously they are making way for some sort of new housing development. The sound of the wood cracking and splitting was gruesome. It was like the soundtrack of a horror movie. Thankfully, they seem to be leaving a small row of trees between my property and the tract behind it, but I wonder what happened to all the deer and racoons and other creatures that lived in that little wooded oasis here in the big city? I wonder if the contractor who is behind this development EVER stops to think about the life forms he displaces by his industry? I think that some people must justify that by saying "Oh, people are more important and we have to keep housing costs low enough to be affordable and so we have to continue to expand". I agree with that theory, but not the practice. Because why do we have to expand out? Why not up? Instead of all of these POS 2 and 3 floor apartment complexes why not have a 20 floor building with parking beneath and the housing above? They would of course need to be positioned and spaced so as to avoid the canyon effect. But then again maybe there's something I don't know about this type of housing...after all, I'm no expert on the subject and know very little about architecture and city planning in general. I'm glad they're starting to build these structures downtown but as yet they are not affordable housing. Hopefully if those are successful they will begin to copy the idea in other neighborhoods.

Recently I had an emergency internet need and was in the middle of nowhere Texas. I had to think fast and find a place with wireless. There was a Starbuck's an hour away, so I drove there to use the internet only to find out the service is provided by T-Mobile and costs $9.99 for a one time access (or you can subscribe for a monthly charge). I'm so used to every coffee shop in Austin offering free wireless that I was really shocked and irritated. Starbuck's has a high enough profit margin that they can well afford to offer this service free as well. I actually went so far as to write Starbuck's a letter of complaint (yes, I'm that woman) and they gave me a non-response.
Then I had heard about this coffee region thing in Ethiopia when NPR did a story on it. Basically, Ethiopia is trying to assign a system
similar to French Appelacians for wine to their coffee, in essence copyrighting their coffee and entitling them to a larger share of the profits (they currently make about 3 CENTS per cup of coffee sold).
Here's a link to the petetion to get Starbuck's attention. Until they can get their acts together, if you must have a frozen latte please visit a locally owned coffee shop. I guarantee you can find one just as tasty and they are often quicker and less expensive. In Austin, I love Epoch coffee on North Loop and in Houston Cafe Brazil is always a good bet.
I guess if you personally have stock in Starbuck's you might not agree with this. But then again, if you have stock in Starbuck's you're probably not reading this...
I have to say I'm getting pretty sick of my generation and their apathetic ways. The older generations are creating a huge mess for us that we're going to spend the rest of our lives cleaning up and dealing with, all because we are too busy shopping to vote or get involved in our communities. I have a friend who has been volunteering with me recently and all she can talk about is how her involvement with the organization has not resulted in a return on investment. I tried in vain to explain to her that wasn't quite the point.
I guess all I can do is keep trying to care for all of us and hope that it catches on.

House Hunting Continued

After deciding to stick with my current apartment and investing a small but pretty penny into improvements, I realize that ultimately the reason I may have such a hard time feeling satisfied and settled in the home that I have is because it is not my home, it is a space I rent from someone else and which ultimately I do not own. It is not permanent and I can not posses it.
Sadly, this is the plight of myself and so many other people I know. I've spent a lot of time researching purchasing a home and can find no way in which it is a viable option based on my current means. A friend of mine found a place a few blocks away from her that is in the $130,000 range. Its affordable because the backyard backs up to some train tracks that, although not a busy thoroughfare, is still in use. Even at that extremely low price, a 30 year mortgage would be something like $900 per month and would end up costing more like $330,000. Not to mention maintenance and property taxes. How do I get away from renting when the hard numbers prevent me from even entertaining the idea of this being a possibility for me? My current rental payment is a little over half of that amount, and it's essentially my comfortable ceiling. Add a car payment and student loans to that and even my *good* income gets stretched very thin.
I guess all I can do is continue to focus on my goals and also continue to research alternatives to the traditional mortgage path. Maybe I'll get really lucky and a relative I don't even know will leave me enough to buy whatever house I want. Ahhh, a girl can dream.

Trying to Be Professional

Okay, seriously, I get sick to death of all the actors out there who don't know how to be professional. This is the Entertainment INDUSTRY and being an actor is a JOB, it is not a right or a priviledge. I guess I was lucky in that when I was a model and an actor I received training on the business side of things from my agency, Page.713, which used to be Page Parkes Talent and I think has changed its name again. Now that I'm on the other side of the casting table, I see people come through with the most ridiculous attitudes and behaviors and everytime I want to just yell at them and tell them to stop and then throw them out on their ears. Our most recent project featured someone who not only was high maintenance, rude, and often late, but this person also tried to steal wardrobe from production and rolled their eyes at the director when he gave direction claiming "I know the character better than you do". Oh really? Because last time I checked the directors created the character, not you. Oh, and their performance, well, lets just say it wasn't star material.
So, to anyone out their in the talent field who may be wondering what it means to be a PROFESSIONAL actor, here's a few words of advice:

• Be On Time...In fact, be early.
• Be Polite...Those are not the 'little people' helping you put on your clothes, makeup, telling you where to stand, etc, those are your coworkers and without them you wouldn't have a role to fill. Also, you never know when that PA you snubbed is going to be the next huge director or producer who will never hire you because of your attitude.
• Know your lines. I myself am guilty of this one and can tell you from experience that it is disruptive to production and other actors and is something of which to be ashamed. Planning on improvising to be a more natural character is selfish and unrealistic. Know your lines first, be able to deliver them in the way the director desires and improvisation may fit later.
  
• Be Flexible...Things don't always go as planned. Don't throw a hissy if a schedule or location changes. Always have your cell phone on so you can be reached in the event of a change. (Side Note, if you want to be an actor you absolutely must have a cell phone)
  
• Take Direction...If you don't know how to take direction without getting line readings every five seconds, try another profession.
• And Finally: Don't make demands or expect special treatment...until you are an established star upon whom the movie is "banked" you have no leverage. Don't be an asshole. This includes thinking you will be able to keep wardrobe, props, jewelry, etc from production. Just because they belong to your character does not mean they belong to you. Often, production will need to keep those items in storage to ensure continuity in any possible reshoots. In low budget productions, lots of items will be returned to the store or to the person from whom they were borrowed. They are not yours unless someone offers them to you, and you shouldn't ask either. Its tacky.

Always Remember : You are extremely replaceable.
There's a lot of other things that bug me about the talent pool here in Austin, and it probably reads true for many other areas, but ultimately I really wanted to get this off my chest and was specifically asked not to write anything like the Lohan Letter so this is what I chose instead.

When Technology Works...Life Can Be Easier :)

I'm the type of person who geeks out over lots of things, especially technology. I get really excited when something works the way its supposed to and beside myself when somebody combines a series of steps into one simple thing that works. Case in Point: Google. Not only do they offer a good email system (gmail), but they incorporate that system with photo sharing and calendar creation through google calendar's and Picasa.

From Production St...

I'm jazzed today because I discovered that Picasa's web photos feature hosts your photos for myspace and blogs, so no more logging onto photobucket or kodak or hello or any of those other album sharing websites because you can invite anyone to view albums on your Picasa Web Album and it uses software you already have installed. Yay!

Housing Woes - Joys

I spent the beginning of this week looking for a new home as my friend Shannon and I were planning on moving in together at the end of November. Then, night before last, Shannon called me and said she was going to continue living with her ex(?) boyfriend Keith. I'm not sure if she is considering him still in the boyfriend light or just in the roommate light but either way I'm glad this came up now and not after we had already moved. Fortunately, my landlord had not received my move out notice yet and so I was able to rescind it.
This, however, brings me to an interesting conundrum. I have wanted to move out of my apartment for several months for the following reasons:
The foundation settled over the summer and there are now cracks in the walls and around the floorboards.
The air conditioner is not a very efficient model and so it stays very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter.
The dishwasher is an older model and it is somehow broken because it gets clogged up with food particles and these food particles get moldy and smelly.
There are now roaches living in my apartment. The dirty, nasty European kind. They hang out mostly in the dishwasher.
And perhaps the strongest reason to move...I live in the Ghetto and sometimes I worry about my safety.

The reasons I have not been able to move before and why I won't be able to move now boil down to one simple thing:
I can't afford anything else.
Sure, I could get a dinky little efficiency in a nice neighborhood somewhere, but then I'd be unhappy to be in such a cramped space. I could move into a huge apartment complex in the Arboretum area, but then I'd be annoyed by my hundreds of neighbors, the commute, and the boring floorplan.
So, I've decided to stay put and instead invest a little time, effort, and money into making my current home better. I think its the healthiest solution available at this time.
Not sure what all I'm going to do yet, but I'm sure it will be fabulous.

Post Production: Alright, Already

I think that it's Friday. I'm not sure and its hard to tell because when I'm not working its really hard for me to keep track of dates. I didn't even get out of bed until 6:30pm today which means my schedule will be wacked out for the next three days. The worst part of that is I missed early voting today which means I'll have to go next Tuesday with everyone else. I'm programming my phone to remind me or else I'll miss that too.
I've spent a lot of time this week trying to decide what the next steps are for me as a producer. We finished shooting the short last Friday and managed to get everything in those five days except for one little scene that will be picked up next Tuesday. I still can't believe how well the whole production went. I've wanted to produce a short and have tried twice unsuccessfully over the last two years, so when I began this project I assumed I would face a lot of the same problems I dealt with on previous attempts. I think it speaks loads about the merit of this project that none of the problems that have become hurdles in the past reared their heads.
We were able to raise almost enough money with minimul effort on our part. We've recently discovered a website called Revver which hosts content we provide (in our case, outtakes) and shares a portion of the revenue generated when viewers click on the advertisements at the end of the clip. Here's one of the outtakes:





This is a great discovery for us and has got Josh and Craig really excited about creating more content for the revver site. I've been trying to encourage them to submit Soft Shoe for a few smaller festivals as well in attempt to generate interest in our upcoming, as yet untitled, short. Since its already been available for viewing online for a few months, I don't see any point in premiering it at South By Southwest, which I think is their plan. I think it will detract from the excitement for the untitled short.
Aside from that, I'm having a hard time figuring out what my role as producer now entails. I'm working on thank you stuff for the various people who helped make the movie possible. Adrienne is working on the press kit. I guess I should just continue researching festivals and marketing/distribution opportunities. Oh, and I need to start planning our spring fundraiser.
I guess that's enough to keep me busy for now. I'm looking forward to going back to work already, I don't realy operate that well without some sort of structure to my day. Tonight I'm going to really push myself and try to finish cleaning my apartment.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one

Craig hasn't been blogging much lately either, and I know its because he's too busy working on the short, and I'm too busy working period, so that gives me my excuse. Finally got the dishes done last night, but then I cooked dinner tonight and made another mess...oh well.
I'm looking forward to this weekend. I've contacted several of my friends to really light the fires under their bums to get their garage sale donations to me asap. I'm going to spend Sat and Sun doing pickups and running other errands. I'm also looking forward to spending some time with my bud Shannon on Saturday morning. Its been too long since I've been able to hang out with her and she's always such a solid and inspiring person to be around so I'm hoping she'll give me that little nudge of creativity I need to figure out how to keep producing this short.
Truth be told, I'm really an ancillary member of this production team. With my current work status, unfortunately most of the work is falling on Josh, Craig, and Kimberly's shoulders. It seems like every time I take 15 minutes from my day to make phone calls and check emails, it turns into 45min to an hour, and then I've used up my lunch break and I'm stuck chowing down my soup at my desk, spilling it all over my papers. I'm starting to leave a little earlier each night, which I feel bad about, but I actually think its somewhat expected and that people are a little suprised I'm there as late as I am. I am super bummed I'm not able to be more involved. This is something I want to make a career of and if I can't get any experience then I'll never go anywhere with it. I did spend some time on this festival website tonight scoping out potential festivals to submit to, but I don't really understand the process yet and shit, we're not even 1/4 of the way done with our press kit materials and the movie isn't made and I need to go to sleep.