Ja'mie Dramatically Pulling Off Her Mask and Saying "Drama!" as the Camera Dramatically Zooms Out

I had a doctor's appointment today.  Got there about ten minutes early, checked in, and sat down, prepared for a half hour wait at the least, because I've been to the doctor before.

However, there was a woman in the waiting room who had apparently not been to the doctor before.  Ever.  Any doctor.  Because she went up to the receptionist about ten minutes or so after I arrived and said, "I asked you twenty minutes ago and you said I was next, but I have watched six other women get called back before me."

The poor receptionist was trying to explain that there are four doctors/nurse practitioners in the office, along with the people who are coming in just to get sonograms of their babbies, but the woman kept interrupting her.  She absolutely refused to understand that she was next in line for her doctor but that there were other doctors in the office along with the sonogram technician and they all had their own lines.  The woman got belligerent, and the receptionist said she would go back and see what was going on.

She came back riding upon a wave of righteous anger.  "THE DOCTOR IS RUNNING LATE.  SHE SAID YOU ARE NEXT IN LINE.  SHE SAID YOU CAN EITHER SIT DOWN OR YOU CAN LEAVE, BUT THAT IF YOU ARE NOT RESPECTFUL TO THE PEOPLE WORKING IN THIS OFFICE THEN YOU CAN FIND ANOTHER DOCTOR'S OFFICE."

The woman sat down.  Muttering.  "Tell me I'm not respectful.  I'm just asking.  I've got to go to work.  Not respecting me."

The receptionist: "ARE YOU DONE."

The woman, shooting back, apparently missing the gist of the previous conversation: "Are you done?"

The receptionist stood, ready to loose lightning bolts.  The woman hastily adds: "I'm sitting, I'm waiting.  Just have to go to work."

Now, my appointment was at 10:40am, but I scheduled a full day off work.  Because I'm an adult.  I've been to the doctor before.  I knew there was a very good chance I would not be finished in time to make it to work at 1:00pm.  (As it turned out, I left the doctor's office right at noon, and considering it would take me half an hour to get home, I would have had exactly ten minutes to change clothes, eat lunch, and grab my stuff, so it was the right call.)

It was such great drama.  Enormously entertaining.  I went up to the receptionist afterward and told her she handled it very well, and she seemed to get a kick out of that.  I said so because the few times I've had honest-to-God confrontations with patrons at work, and I've had someone come up afterward and say nice things, has really meant the world to me.  Poor thing; I bet she deals with that a lot.

Thrift Store Finds

Went to the thrift store this morning with my grandpa.  Thrift stores are always an either/or proposition for me.  Either I find a bunch of cool stuff, or I find nothing at all.  This morning I found a bunch.  The original VHS release of the first Star Wars trilogy - and they don't look like they're ever been watched.  A framed New Kids on the Block poster.  Some itty-bitty frames for my itty-bitty cross-stitches.  All for less than ten bucks.

Then we drove down to a Mexican bakery and restaurant one of my co-workers had told me about, and got far too many Mexican sweet breads and a big ol' thing of tamales.  I shall dine well tonight!

(I should get to do at least one thing well at work today - they're moving our cubicles to a different part of the building, so I'm without my computer and it's pretty much a nachtmare.  I don't really even have anywhere to sit down!)

As you may have guessed from the lack of update, the seller accepted a different offer - Laura and I did not get the house.  Now we're kind of back at square one.  It's tough, because houses generally fall into two categories.  There are houses we can afford, but they're in bad shape.  And there are nice houses, but we can't afford them.  This house we made an offer on was nice AND affordable, which is why we were so excited.  We offered $8000 more than the asking price but apparently that wasn't enough.  :(

So, a little bummed.  It's tough to go from already planning on having your own place to being back to living at home, no end in sight.  Ah well.

I've spent pretty much every weekend the past month writing, and it did actually pay off - I finished the second draft of my vampire screenplay in 30 days, which is pretty awesome.  I wasn't sure I was going to be able to juggle writing with a full-time job.  I did, though I couldn't really juggle, like, free time or watching TV or anything like that in the bargain, too.  But I should be in good shape for submissions here coming up, and then I can take a breather for a bit.  That'll be nice.

Haven't posted much here lately.  I'd kind of divided up my posting into fandom=LJ, real life=blogspot.  Except I feel like there isn't much going on in my real life nowadays.  Laura and I are looking at houses, because it would be cheaper - not to mention a better return on our investment - to buy a house than to rent.  Besides, the rental properties in our part of KC are dismal.  We've found a great one that we'd really like to be able to make an offer on, but I'm not holding my breath; nothing else has worked out for us.

Just don't have enough hours in the day.  I still enjoy work, but I wish I had more time to write, let alone read/watch TV/movies/work on Latin/get outside and be active.  If only I had an hour lunch instead of just a half-hour, I would get so much more done.

New March Media
New Books
8. Cambridge Latin Course Unit 1. 3-7.
9. The Sallie House Haunting, Debra Pickman. 3-8.
10. Legionary: The Roman Soldier’s Unofficial Manual, Philip Matyszak. 3-20.

New Television Episodes66. Raising Hope - 1x13 - “A Germ of a Story.”  3-1.
67. Modern Family - 2x15 - “Princess Party.”  3-2.
68. Community - 1x04 - “Social Psychology.”  3-4.
69. Community - 1x05 - “Advanced Criminal Law.”  3-4.
70. Community - 1x06 - “Football, Feminism and You.”  3-5.
71. Community - 1x07 - “Introduction to Statistics.”  3-5.
72. Community - 1x08 - “Home Economics.”  3-5.
73. Modern Family - 2x16 - “Regrets Only.”  3-6.
74. Community - 1x09 - “Debate 109.”  3-6.
75. Community - 1x10 - “Environmental Science.”  3-7.
76. Modern Family - 2x17 - “Two Monkeys and a Panda.”  3-9.
77. Community - 1x11 - “The Politics of Human Sexuality.”  3-10.
78. Community - 1x12 - “Comparative Religion.”  3-10.
79. Community - 1x13 - “Investigative Journalism.”  3-11.
80. Fringe - 3x16 - “Os.”  3-11.
81. Community - 1x14 - “Interpretive Dance.”  3-12.
82. Community - 1x15 - “Romanic Expressionism.”  3-12.
83. Community - 1x16 - “Communication Studies.”  3-14.
84. Community - 1x17 - “Physical Education.”  3-14.
85. Community - 1x18 - “Basic Genealogy.”  3-15.
86. Community - 1x19 - “Beginner Pottery.”  3-16.
87. Community - 1x20 - “The Science of Illusion.”  3-17.
88. Fringe - 3x17 - “Stowaway.”  3-18.
89. Community - 1x21 - “Contemporary American Poultry.”  3-19.
90. Community - 1x22 - “The Art of Discourse.”  3-20.
91. Community - 1x23 - “Modern Warfare.”  3-21.
92. Community - 1x24 - “English as a Second Language.”  3-22.
93. Community - 1x25 - “Pascal’s Triangle Revisited.”  3-22.
94. Raising Hope - 1x14 - “What Up, Cuz?”  3-23.
95. Community - 2x19 - “Critical Film Studies.”  3-24.
96. The Office - 7x19 - “Garage Sale.”  3-24.
97. 30 Rock - 5x18 - “Plan B.”  3-24.
98. Fringe - 3x18 - “Bloodlines.”  3-25.
99. Community - 2x01 - “Anthropology 101.”  3-27.
100. Community - 2x02 - “Accounting for Lawyers.”  3-29.

I always sleep better when my bedroom is cold, but it's starting to get ridiculous.  My room has always been badly insulated, and the window worse still, but I've never been unable to fall asleep because I've been cold before.  My usual sleeping attire is made up of my enormous winter fluffy socks, long pj pants, a t-shirt under a hoodie; then I sleep under a sheet, comforter, quilt and afghan.  Last night I finally caved and put a second comforter on my bed.

I woke up and I was tired - not because I hadn't slept, but because all my covers were so heavy.  It must have been like exercise while I slept to roll over and such.

I've been thinking about getting a heated mattress pad or an electric blanket, but they can be kind of pricey.  There are cheap ones, sure, but then I see an imaginary set of scales, with money going down on one side while my likelihood of dying in a house fire goes up on the other.

I am just about ready to switch banks.  I always go in instead of just using the drive-thru, and the last three times I've gone in, I have had the teller try to get me to sign up for a credit card.  And they just won't take no for an answer.  The last time, I was finally like, look.  I have one card, I only use it for online purchases, and I pay it off every month.  I do not want another credit card.  I have no need for another credit card.  And I could see the teller wanted to ask me one more time anyway, and if she had, I was going to ask to speak to the manager.

Now they're calling me at home.  I've been called twice this week, and once last week, and once the week before that.  It's starting to get ridiculous!  Like, how many frakking times do I have to tell you no?  It's driving me crazy.

I didn't have to work today.  I was supposed to be able to sleep in.  Instead my day began at 5:15 am.  And I had all these plans, but instead I cleaned house and haven't been able to go anywhere.  (The reasons, I'm sure you'll understand, are many and not particularly something I want to get into right now; not here, at any rate.)

Seriously.  What is this fuckery.  I can't even.

Bad night of sleep last night.  I had pop with lunch and dinner yesterday - mistaaaaake! - and also had a bee in my bonnet about trying to finish writing this really major action scene - which I didn't finish - and ended up going to bed like almost two hours later than I usually do.  And just laid there, and laid there, and laid there.  I don't remember falling asleep (which means I probably didn't get to REM sleep), but I woke up at 1:30.  Laid there, and laid there, and laid there.  Again, don't remember falling asleep, but woke up at 5:30.  Dozed, checked the clock, it was 6:30.  Decided to lie there for a half hour and get up at 7, my usual time.

Then, of course, I fell asleep HARD.  My emergency back-up alarm woke me up at 7:30 - my alarm never gets to the point of actually going off.  I did my usual morning routine of stumbling down and staring bleary-eyed at my computer before finally managing to get my contacts in, and before I knew it, I had eight minutes to get ready for work.  Did I have my clothes out?  My lunch made?  Any of my assorted shit gathered?  Of course not.

Somehow I managed to make it to work on time (two minutes to spare!), but I am like...foggy today.  I'm not tired per se, but I feel like I did in school, when I'd stay up late working on something - like I'm kind of out of sync with the world.  It doesn't help that for some unknown reason, the building's heat is on, so it's all warm and toasty in here.  I am like five minutes away from pulling a George Costanza and taking a nap under my desk, and I still have seven hours to work.

I don't really know why I felt like I needed to get out of the house today - now that I'm working like a boss, I leave the house every day M-F - but it was a mistake.  It was cold and windy, and now I have a headache and feel pre-sick.  (You know that feeling?  Like, you're not sick yet, but you just feel like you will be soon.) 

Ugh.  It's 8pm and I'm already thinking about just grabbing my Star Trek book and climbing into bed.  Here I am instead worrying about some landcomm challenge like it matters.  (If I don't complete this screencap scavenger hunt, I will have let my team down!!!1)

OMG you guys, so.  I got to witness our first PERMANENTLY BANNED PATRON today.  It was hilar.  I guess she comes into the computer lab every day.  To get on a computer, you MUST have your card.  And she is constantly "losing" and replacing her card, and then trying to use her kid's card or one of her old declared-lost cards, and getting snippy with the lab workers (of which one is Laura).

So today she tried to use her kid's card, and the lab worker at the time (not Laura) wouldn't let her get on, and she was rude to him and he was a little rude right back.  She comes around to get a new card - and she had her ID and paid the dollar replacement charge, so we did it - and wants to complain to a supervisor about the lab worker.  We let the supervisor know, and the patron explains the situation as though he was rude to her for no reason.  The supervisor goes back to talk to him and he tells her the full story.  The supervisor calls down the branch manager to talk to the patron.  The patron is told that she needs to be respectful to the staff, and that if they tell her she cannot use someone else's card, then that is the rule, and she has to abide by it.

And she GOES OFF.

Otherwise the library is pretty quiet.  All of a sudden we hear, "GO TO HELL!"  The branch manager, the circulation supervisor, and the patron come around the corner, and she is just absolutely freaking out.  "I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU, YOU BITCH.  AND YOU, YOU'RE A BITCH, TOO.  YOU CAN'T BAN ME.  I WILL BE COMING BACK.  I BOUGHT A NEW CARD."  And so on and so forth. 

If she comes back, we get to call the police.  Fun!

So I finally, officially start work on the 16th.  Today I turned in my time sheet and formally resigned as a substitute (in that I went, "Um, I won't be subbing anymore, JSYK.") - and that felt really good, let me tell you.  I'm going to try in lots of writing in the next week, because soon I will be working the good ol' 9-5 and won't be able to just chill at Starbucks every afternoon.

The weather has been positively scrumptious round these parts; today it got up to 77!  On November 9th!  So I went over to Gamps today, and mulched some leaves, and then we just sat outside in the sun, and it was v. nice.

New website: Damn you, autocorrect!

Back home.  Too tired to type it all up again.  The past four days!

Although just between me and you guys - I sometimes worry I'm too lazy to actually make it as a screenwriter.  Some of the advice they were giving...I was just like, you know, I think I'd rather hang out and have my day job and write when I can and hope I catch a lucky break.  I don't want to send 100 faxes to PAs and hope that one of them reads my script, and that she ends up liking it enough to send to her boss who is just someone else's assistant, and it goes up the line, etc.  I don't want to move to LA and starve while I hope that I meet the right person at random parties I go to.  And so on.  I find myself, like, disliking the way the business is set up and just not wanting to play that game even though there's no other way to play it.  I don't know.  It just irritates me in principle, I guess.  Which is dumb, but there you go.

(I was also irritated by the number of times I heard "woman writers" or "woman directors" this weekend.  Really?  We're still gonna do that?)

HR has to do a background check and formally approve, but apparently that's mostly just a technicality (since I haven't killed anyone or anything) - starting November first I will have an actual, grown-up, salaried with benefits, real job at the library! 

Preparations for Austin are proceeding apace. All the big ticket items - plane tickets, rental car, hotel - are taken care of. I have my clothes, and yesterday I got a hair cut. I just need to get some make-up and buy new shoes. Ugh, you guys, I have spent so much money. SO MUCH MONEY.

Yesterday I decided to make it a point to work on my posture, so I wouldn't find myself at these roundtables and seminars all hunched over like Quasimodo. Today my back hurts. Sigh.

I found the greatest tumblr ever: Fashion It So.  It is exactly what you might think.  It is a tumblr devoted to the fashion of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  IT IS AMAZING.

Yesterday was biz-zay.  It was Laura's birthday.  We had a traditional Easter ham dinner at home, and carrot cake for dessert.  I also had to finish polishing the pilot to submit it.  The deadline was today, but I don't like leaving online submissions till the last minute ever since the time it took me three solid hours to finally connect with the Nicholl website when it was overloaded with people trying to submit, and I freaked out, as one does.  I was distressed at finally just uploading it, because every time I read it I found one more typo, or place with two spaces between sentences instead of one, or a double dash that should have been a single dash, etc.  But I finally just did it - I can't imagine that there are many cleaner screenplays that get submitted, honestly.  I'm a bit of a stickler for format, and most people aren't.

Today's my last day subbing for this long-term maternity deal.  It's been nice having a steady job for six weeks, instead of never knowing if I'm going to be called in or not.  Also, it's been VERY nice getting paid nearly full-time for doing a part-time job.  But I am looking forward to having a few days off.  I want to buy clothes and make-up and such, and I hate shopping on the weekends.

You know those Toaster Strudels that are filled with egg and meat and cheese?  I know I should find those disgusting and gross and against all laws of what is acceptable breakfast food...but I like them.  I know!  I have such a degraded, awful palate.  But they're tasty and easy and the fat content is a little high but if I come home and have oatmeal for lunch it balances out.

Busy day today.  It's my last week doing this long-term subbing gig - the regular teacher comes back next Monday - so I have to start getting the room back in order and remember where I've put all the things and notes and such that I should have been organizing all along.  I'm not happy about this ending -  I really like knowing when and where I'm going to work each day, instead of waiting for a phone call I may or may not get at 5:30 in the morning, so I always have to be ready just in case.  Bah.

Came home and had to change my returning flight from Austin, which was fairly painless; my new flight leaves at 6:30 in the morning, which will not be painless.  But it was two hundred extra dollars to fly out the night before, which was not going to happen.  I still need to make my rental car reservation - the website was down last night, of course - and then my travel plans will be finished.

I started volunteering with my library's ESL class this summer; tonight was my second time teaching on my own.  Beginner's ESL just has one student right now.  She's from Ethiopia, and has a very, very limited vocabulary.  It can be quite a challenge to communicate with her, and we spent almost an hour today just going over what she did today.  But then you have great moments like when she remembered that after English class, she's planning to go home and eat ice cream, and she got really excited about the ice cream, and then we just talked for a little bit about ice cream.  I just have a tremendous amount of respect for anyone that moves to a country and is not able to speak the language - I would not be able to do it.  I would be too scared.

Halfway through making travel arrangements.  I have purchased my festival badge ($150) and bought my airplane tickets ($550).  We've pretty much narrowed down what hotel we're going to stay at, so I just need to make the reservations.  And then I need to reserve the rental car, but that is pretty straight forward.

Then I have to buy new clothes, new shoes, new make-up (ugh I hate make-up), and get a hair cut.  I'm trying to decide if I want to dye my grays or not.  I kind of do not care at all, but I have quite a few grays anymore and you know how judgey people can get, especially for ladies.  I might do one of those rinses or something.  It was a serious pain in the ass growing out my hair dye last time.

Started drafting on our new slimmed-down, one-hour TV pilot for Scriptapalooza.  UT Laura is doing the teaser and acts one and two, and I'm doing acts three and four.  Beginning to draft, for me, is always the hardest part.  Researching, writing the treatment, working out the structure, doing the beat outline, editing, revising, polishing - those are the writing parts I like.  Drafting?  HARD.  (I'm sure this is no different for anyone else.)  Like, what are my ins and outs for each scene?  Do I have the right setting?  Am I finding the most expedient way to move the plot forward, advance character, convey any necessary exposition without making it seem like exposition - all at the same time?  Is my dialogue in character?  How's the pacing?  Are these scenes in the right order?  Ugh.  Sometimes I just feel like I have the movie/episode all up in my head already, and if I could just download it... Now, I know that the actual process of writing means I discover things that I never would have thought of otherwise, and once I get into it it feels great and I like it.  Like, drafting after page ten usually goes well.  But those first few days, those are the ones that are rough, that I tend to put off.  Which is why it's great we have a deadline, because I can't procrastinate at all.

Still, this is one of the reasons why I draft longhand and leave my house to do so.  No frakking around on the computer, no spider solitaire, no organizing my files.  No "I'll just watch this episode of TV...as research."  Just get out of the house and write.

So, last night I'm at the library, and back at the A/V counter they have a trivia question up each day.  If you know the answer, you get, like, a Starburst or something.  It's fun.  I was waiting in line, and while the employee was unlocking the DVD cases, the woman in front of me turned and asked if I knew the answer to the question - "Who founded the Sundance Film Festival in 1978?"  I told her the answer - Robert Redford.  She asked, "Why is Sundance important?"  So I started to answer - "It was one of the first ways for independent filmmakers to have an opportunity to present their work and potentially find a larger audience--"

And then the A/V employee, a young man probably around my age, turned around and talked right over me.  "Sundance was one of the first festivals that exhibited independent films.  Studios could buy them and distribute them, and that wouldn't have been possible before."  And the woman in front of me nodded, smiled at him, took her movies, and left.

I mutely gave the man my DVDs and card, waited for him to unlock them and check them out, and walked away.  I didn't make any small talk like I usually do, and I certainly didn't answer the question.  And as much as I would have liked to say something, I knew there was no point.  Sure, you could probably say he didn't even realize he had done it, and that calling someone on that is the only way they'll learn, but I did not have the patience for it right then.  But if I had decided to say something?  Here's what I would have said:

"Buddy, I studied film at USC.  My professors included Leonard Maltin, Tom Holman, Todd Boyd, and Drew Casper.  I actually worked on a documentary short that played independent festivals.  DO NOT MANSPLAIN SUNDANCE TO ME." 

Jeez, things may not have gone as planned after USC, and none of that up there actually matters, but at least I know about movies.

(I kind of feel like Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest, when Tim Allen yells at her to stop repeating everything the computer says.  "I have one job on this ship, and it's stupid, but I'm gonna do it!")

I've seen this "you know you're from [blank] when..." meme a couple places, so I decided to do it myself. There were ones for Kansas proper and just Kansas City, so I picked my favorites from both. Ones that are true are in bold; I cut a lot of the ones that didn't apply because there were a lot, since the Kansas meme was skewed towards people from western Kansas (one of them was, "You know someone's from Kansas City when they consider everything west of Topeka to be western Kansas," and I was like, ooo, burn), and a lot of the Kansas City meme was skewed toward KCMO, which, KCMO sucks, whatever.

Went to the Farmer's Market this weekend. It was approximately a bazillion degrees and all the humidities, and every single person who lives in Kansas City was also there, and maybe some tourists too, I'm not sure. We actually don't buy much produce there, since we grow most of what we want at Grandpa's - tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, cucumbers, bell peppers, cubanelles, jalapenos, pumpkins, and watermelons; garlic, thyme, tarragon, mint, basil, sage. So we just picked up some limes and avocados, and then made our way to the spice and herb store, which is amazing. We buy a lot of their seasoning blends and such, stuff like Garlic Herb and Creole and Orange Pepper, but our favorite item is their Mexican Dip Mix.

It's great, because you can use it for just about anything. Grilling some chicken? Mexican Dip Mix! Making rice? Mexican Dip Mix! Spicy cheese for nachos? Mexican Dip Mix! Compound butter for roasted corn? Mexican Dip Mix! Mexican dip? Mexican Dip Mix!

Also, my dad finally managed to get us to watch the first episode of Castle with him, which Laura had been resisting, but it actually wasn't that bad. I mean, 90% of the charm is Fillion, but Rob Bowman directed the pilot so the visual style is nice, and there were a few laughs.

Wrote another short story; this one took me about two weeks. Some of the details, though not the main plot, are based on stories Gamps has told us over the years, so it was a little more personal than I usually write.