tigerpants's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm on a BREAK It�s been a while. I�ve been to NY to visit some friends and to FL to visit my family, and returned to LA to head straight back to work on my latest gig. Here�s how that all went. NY was lovely. My poor friend V that just moved was treated horribly and cruelly by her movers, and had to wait what certainly felt like a decade for her things. Moving to a new city, starting a brand new job, and generally pulling the rug out from under yourself has got to be rough, and when all you want to do is come home from said new job and sleep on your own stupid bed, but you can�t because the crap movers haven�t brought your stuff to you from the hinterlands of New Jersey, or whatever nonsense they came up with that day, you just kind of want to shoot yourself in the head a little. I�d guess. While I was there we had a lovely time camping out on her floor, though the smoke alarm going off in the middle of the night terrified me so badly I couldn�t really sleep the rest of that particular night, kind of killed the campy feel for me a bit. But it�s a lovely apartment, and now that her things have arrived and she�s gotten all sorted out (can you tell I�ve been watching BBC America all afternoon?) I�m sure it�s fab. And V claims the thank you note I sent matches the living room, so now it lives there, and I feel like I�m still there. I got to see a number of people I hadn�t seen in a while, and met a few new people, and missed one person I�d hoped to see, and visited several museums that I�d never seen, including the Lower East Side Tenements� Museum, which made me very happy to live today instead of 100 years ago, what with all the heat and the lack of AC and all that stupid clothing you had to wear, and the Jewish Museum, with its Maurice Sendak exhibit. So it was a full trip. I also successfully navigated the subway on my own twice, though the second time I did get lost in Central Park, and ended up back on Central Park West, which made me want to rip my hair out, but I still beat M to the museum I was meeting her at, so I guess it wasn�t that big a deal. I then headed down to Florida, which I think was actually cooler than NY, though that may have just been all the central AC. Visiting my family is never any sort of a vacation, so I tried to mentally steel myself on the way down. Surviving the week was a challenge, but only because I�m fairly selfish and prone to needing more alone time than most, I think. My dad wasn�t quite out of the hospital yet when I arrived, but Mom was sitting with him, waiting for good news from the doctor. I was sort of trapped at my brother�s house without much to eat, but that wasn�t such a big deal. He�d set up his nice new HDTV in my room for me to watch while I was there, which was very nice of him, and I started on the laundry. Anyway, no need to go into a play-by-play of the week. My father improved steadily throughout my visit, which we suspect was due to us guilting him into eating regularly. It�s amazing what calories will do for you when you�re underweight. He was able to stay awake for most of the day before I left, which was quite the accomplishment. My brother is exactly the same, and has still barely even moved into his beautiful new home. I can�t for the life of me fathom being reluctant to decorate, but that�s me, and I�m not him. After I left, he did finally bring in a decorator to help out, and I think that�ll be brilliant. I�m looking forward to seeing the place at Thanksgiving, and what changes have been wrought. I hope he ends up with a place he loves, and loves to share. I even made friends (sort of) with the dirt dobber that built a little home outside on the front porch. His name is Larry, and the exterminators destroyed his house, but Larry was back the next day, persevering. It�s a fact of life in Florida that bugs and pests are just there. I�m still terrified of roaches, but I�m usually ok around other bugs, until they dive bomb me, like Larry did at one point. Even after I�d said such nice things about his dedication to his house. Another guest at my brother�s house is Marvin the lizard-thing. There are a few types of lizardy things in Florida, and we�re not sure what kind Marvin is, so when he scurries up the sliding glass door, we just cheer Marvin�s efforts to eat the ants, and leave it at that. Marvin is a good egg. He finds kitchen pests yummy, and what could be better than that? I don�t know what to say about Mom. She�s very dedicated to Dad and my bro right now, since they seem to need her so much, and that�s ok with me. I was pouty about it while I was there, but I know deep down that if we�d done lots of shopping and running around, I�d have gotten annoyed at that as well, so it�s just silly to complain. She really got me once I was gone, though. I called to let her know I�d made it to LA safely, and she told me that Dad had watched me leave, walk away at the airport, until he couldn�t see me anymore, and that he�d been very, very happy to have me home. And I�m crying right now just thinking about it. She really was just trying to thank me for coming home, but still. Ok. Moving on! And now I�m back in LA, and things are very much the same here as well. I went back to work the day I got back, though they were nice enough to not kill me the first day I came in. Things are still a mess there, and they seem to be more confused than usual even though the project is 4 hours shorter than usual, but whatever. I just hope it goes well enough to not drive me insane. It�s nice to be working with a group of people that I like, even if they�re so scattered. It�s not really their fault, after all. I�ve got a couple things I�d like to give a try in the next few weeks. I�ve always wanted to learn voice technique, and maybe do voiceovers as a secondary way to make money, and recently I learned about a coach in Burbank, so I�m going to look into that. I�d like to get more done on my documentary. And I�d like to create my own podcast, but about what? That kind of stuff. I had a bunch of funny stuff I�d thought of to put in my latest entry, but I just don�t think it�s going to work now. If you�ve got ideas for the podcast, I�d love to hear them. I like to think of myself as a Renaissance woman. I know a little bit about a bunch of things. But is there something I�m really good at? That I know a ton about, and could pontificate on for hours at a time? Not so much. So the podcast is a challenge. I just read The DaVinci Code while I was away. A fun read, but it�s books like that that make me realize how little I know about stuff in general. No one would ever call on me to help them solve some sort of mystery. I will never be Robert Langdon. Ooh, but if you liked The DaVinci Code, try a book called The Eight, by Katherine Neville. Way, way too much fun, and better woven than DaVinci, in my opinion. It took me way longer to read it. Anyway, that�s it for now. I hope M is happy with the time she�s been able to kill at work by reading this. And if the neighbors think their little party is going to last much beyond midnight, they�re sorely mistaken. Shut it down, suckas! �2004-2005 Tigerpants Nation (Rebecca Gross) 10:21 p.m. - 2005-08-14 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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