October the eighteenth

Today is my birthday. It's been a lovely day, which followed a lovely weekend. I have windowsills lined with cards and a little corner of my living room piled with gifts. I have a gorgeous handmade quilt on my bed that my mother, father and sister lovingly created for me out of memories of my life (specifically, t-shirts). I got to eat at a fun restaurant today and have a wonderful homemade dinner. I even made sure to take care of myself by going to urgent care and getting some medicine for my cold. It has been a just a lovely lovely day.

When I woke up this morning I thought about all the birthdays I've had in my life and all the ways the people around me have celebrated me and I thought about how completely blessed I am. I remember my mom and dad making my favorite meals. There were always wonderful cakes -- sometimes in the shapes of my favorite things (The General Lee!) or from my favorite things (strawberries!). I remember big gatherings of family and friends. Gifts and love and laughter. There's the birthstone ring I still wear every day that I got on my sixteenth birthday from my parents and my grandmother. There's the day I wore the crazy western style earrings from my grandma and grandpa for my drivers' license picture. I had birthday parties - surprise and planned. One year everyone at the Wesley Foundation in Kalamazoo created a dance club for me complete with rented lights. Just for me.

There were meals at Bill Knapp's with roommates, there were mornings I'd wake up wishing for snow (in Michigan in October it is not out of the realm of possibility). I remember one particular year it snowed on our way to Ponderosa for dinner! There were hayrides. There were nights out at the bar. There were new friends and old friends and in Arizona, there were students who brought cards and gifts. I remember my thirtieth at the Bellagio in Vegas. I remember my twenty-first at church, leading the senior high youth group and them surprising me with a cake.

Amidst all the memories there is, more than anything else, the love I feel, today and always. I am completely astonished, time and time again, by the people in my life -- both new and not so new friends and of course, family -- who continue to make me feel so special. And I am blown away by it.

Today was a good day. Today there were phone calls, video chats, there were presents and cards in the mail, texts and so many Facebook messages. There was so much love. And I will never forget that. Never.

Just another week

Sometimes I feel the need to blog and I don't have much to say. This week has been just another week really. Except for two things. One, I started to feel sickly Sunday night. And Monday morning I woke up with a full-on head cold. Lovely. Now, if you know me (and sadly, Angela experiences this way more than she should have to) you know I hate being sick. No, not like normal people hate it. I HATE IT. I think this is the end. I think my life is over because I'm sick. I start thinking about all the things I should do and can't raise my head enough to do and how I'll doom my career, my job, my life, if I don't and then I start to really freak out. Yeah. It isn't pretty. But there wasn't time for that Monday morning.

Because Monday morning I had a job interview. Yep. An honest to goodness, get the Spanx out of the back of the drawer, make sure the resume's crispy printed, job interview. With professionals I don't know and who don't realize that I normally don't sweat so much or breathe like I'm ninety-seven and smoke twelve packs a day. So yep. Off I went.

The interview went well I must say. I'm always good in interviews. I rarely get the job, I don't know why that is (and please, no need to tell me), but I'm always really good in the room. I think this bodes well for my life as a screenwriter where selling pitches is sometimes the whole shebang. So anyway, I interviewed. It went well. I came straight home and collapsed.

There was some back and forth this week and I sent some references, they sent some emails and then this morning I got the call. I am officially (pending fingerprint and TB clearance) an Educational Consultant for an elementary school in Culver City! Yep. I got the job.

So I guess this week has been pretty exciting. In that, yay, now I'll lay back on the couch and cough my brains out way. But today I made up some of Mom's (and Grandpa's) cough syrup (whiskey, lemon, honey -- don't judge me when I have to go make another batch very soon) and I'm finally starting to feel better. And get really excited about this new experience I'm about to embark on.

I've been feeling that I need to do something, go somewhere, get out into the world for sometime now. No, I'm not quitting my other job. No, I'm not quitting UCLA or writing. This is just 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. But I'll be doing something. Making a difference. And I'm over the moon. I'll be working with first and third graders, helping them with reading and math. (Yes, I'm pretty confident about my third grade math abilities.) This is something I did a while back in Kalamazoo and loved. I've been missing being in a real brick and mortar classroom. I've been missing people, being in the world.

I'm not sure when I'll start but soon. And I'm sure I'll have stories, and more head colds to look forward to (Ang reminded me of the petri dish that is childhood) but I have lots of Airborne. And I'm ready. So ready. So yep, just another week in L.A. Oh, and today starts me birthday weekend! WOO HOO!

Last night...

Last night I headed off to UCLA in the middle of a rain storm (I use the storm loosely, on the east coast we'd call it sprinkles. Here it's the same amount of rain causes major traffic issues, meeting cancellations, etc. But I digress.) As I parked and wound my way to the film school building I met up with some new classmates and we found the lecture hall where our class would be held.

Let me just preface what I'm about to say by saying I went to college. In fact, UCLA is the fourth college/university I've attended and the third I've gotten a degree from. I'm very proud of my educational background and the road I've taken. However, I didn't go to Harvard.

When I watch movies about the typical (or in most cases, the atypical) college experience, I rarely relate. I didn't attend a Big Ten school or pledge a sorority. I didn't sit in lecture halls with hundreds of peers and get quizzed on facts and opinions. I attended small classes, even in grad school. And my experience at UCLA has been only vaguely different. Yes, I attended a lecture class through the professional program but that was my first exposure to UCLA and it was almost always lecture, very little interaction between students and instructor (I'm pretty sure if I approached my lecture instructor today, a year later, there would be no recognition on his part).

However, last night I sat in on my first "Creating for Television" class at UCLA. And I loved it. The experience was like those I've seen in the movies and on television. This is college.

There were maybe fifty (I don't really know, I was in the third row) or more students in the hall, a T.A. and the instructor. There were no 'get to know you' activities or going around the table meeting everyone like we usually have in these classes. Instead, from moment one, we were off and running. We were expected to answer questions, share opinions, get things wrong, try again, speak louder, say our name again, try for a different verb, and know things. Or at least make educated observations. And it was great.

We watched the pilots of two very successful television comedies (Roseanne and Malcolm in the Middle) and then dissected them as a group. Our instructor rarely took a breath. And Again, I loved it.

Last night I felt like what it must feel like to sit in a lecture hall at Harvard or Yale or one of those other highly-touted universities that they make movies about. But the best thing? I'm doing it for real. I'm studying something that fascinates me. And my homework for the week? To watch as much quality television as possible.

Improving...

Saturday night Angela and I went to a sneak preview of the movie "Life As We Know It". Very cute, lots of laughs, great supporting characters. However, I was most excited to see it because it was the movie in development when I interned at Gold Circle Films. I smiled when I saw their name on screen and the name of one of the executive producers who I worked for. Very cool.

When I was at Gold Circle it was the second script they had me read just so I'd know what everyone was talking about (the first was their movie "The Haunting in Connecticut" that had just come out that weekend). There was a lot of buzz around the office because they had just confirmed that Katherine Heigl was going to sign to star in the film. No one else had signed yet but because of Heigl the movie had quickly leap-frogged from just another movie to a big deal. The budget had suddenly skyrocketed, the studios involved had tripled, and the headaches had suddenly multiplied.

I wasn't at Gold Circle through the whole development of the movie but it was still very exciting to see it up there on the screen. To think that just two years ago the words being spoken by these actors were simply words on a piece of paper, parts of a hundred page script written by someone just like me, sitting at a computer at a desk. That will never cease to amaze me.

I've started a new writing project, again. I'm rewriting a script for the third time, a complete rewrite, new scenes, new ideas, etc. And while I had heard rumors of such rewrites from instructors, I was sure that no one would re-conceive a project this many times. I was wrong. I'm proof. But it's also exciting. As I write this story I love again and again I'm realizing that I'm becoming so much better at my craft. No, I'm not an expert or accomplished or anything like that but I am improving. I'm learning and applying that learning to my words. Words that someday might be up there on that huge screen people watch while eating popcorn and Twizzlers.