Giddy

I just want to remind those of you who might have forgotten that Serenity opens this weekend in a theater near you!

The Curious Incident Of Luna In The Mornings

I think when I was a kid "making the bed" had something to do with getting my allowance, so I think for the most part I tried to keep it together most days. Then college happened, and who has time to make the bed between classes, studying, lithography studio time, theater rehearsals, and the occasional party? And then I moved in with a guy who in most respects is pretty neat... in some respects is pretty neat, so it sort of got deprioritized.

Enter Luna The Kitty. Luna never liked to curl up on the bed at the apartment. I thought she'd maybe been unconsciously booted off by one of us in our sleep or something. But when we moved into the Condo, I started making the bed, possibly to keep that "new place" feeling going for a while. All of a sudden, Luna is napping on the bed all the time. But only if it's MADE. She refuses to lower herself to sleep on a tangle of sheets. She must have a crisply tucked bed or she will damn well find another place to while away the sleepy afternoon hours.

And because of this - I kid you not - I make the bed every morning now. Not for myself or JB. Not to have a put-together room. For the cat. I make my bed for the cat. So she'll have a place to nap. If you come over to the condo and the bed is made - I didn't do that for you. It's not me trying to "straighten up" for company. I made that bed for the cat.

About my "neat" husband... he generally leaves one or two pieces of clothing at the foot of the bed. Because I can't tell if these are clean or dirty piles of clothes (and because I get snapped at if I consistently take them all and dump them in the clothes hamper) I just fold them up and leave them at the foot of the bed. Then Luna, prepping for the long day of napping ahead of her, will jump up onto the bed, and tease JB's shorts or shirt or pants out a little in order to lay down on them. She will not nap on an unmade bed, but she likes to have a rumpled piece of JB's clothing to park on.

That's our mornings. I get up, have some coffee, do my morning journal, and then make the bed for the cat. That's why it's oh-so-gratifying to see her go for that memento of JB every single day. Like she's saying "Yeah, thanks for making the bed lady, but I wish JB were here. Huh. What's this? This smells just like JB. I'll just close my eyes and pretend those sounds you make tooling around the apartment are JB. 'Cause I can smell him, since I've got my nose smashed up in the crotch of his running shorts. Ah, the sweet and savory aroma of JB. If only he were here."

Quote From The Camping Trip

"I want to be more intellectual. You read history and symbolic logic. All I do is sit around and eat smores."

Project At Long Last

I can't believe it's been 9 months since we moved into our place.

And 9 months without a major house project (I won't count any of the work we put into the place before moving in.) But the kitchen sink has gotten to me at long last and I think we're going to start our kitchen project very soon. It will be relatively simple, as far as kitchen projects go. We're just painting the cabinets and having the countertop and sink replaced.

But when you go into Home Depot, it's never that simple. Because then you think, "well, if we're going to all this trouble to replace the counter tops, we don't want the cabinets to look awful... should we replace them too?" and the Home Depot team is very helpful in suggesting all sorts of possibilities up to and including a personal in home designer who will come for a mere $100 to look at you place and suggest the perfect configuration of cabinets to best suit your personal needs.

Except that all we want is a new counter top and a new sink. And now I have 8 brochures from 4 different cabinet places. How did that happen?

I'm excited to get started on the pulling down of cabinet doors and the cleaning / priming of shelves.

So We Can All Live Vicariously Through My Sister

If you haven't been visiting, you should check out my sister's blog - she's documenting her travels through China.

Highlights:
Hagen Daaz Ice Cream Mooncakes
Hamburger complete with Ham. And eggs.
Beautiful Lotus Flowers

Seriously, you should check it out.

Who's With Me?

Technically I guess I'm supposed to be at a film festival that day, but come on. JB? SPF? Little Q, you are in China so I suspect not... Louie? T$?

On Saturday, September 24th, Universal Studios Hollywood will be hosting a Serenity "Fan Fest" where attendees will be able to meet Joss and members of the cast. In addition, Loni Peristere from Zoic will give a visual effects presentation and you'll get a sneak peak at Serenity and have the chance to view props and set pieces from the film (including the MULE hovercraft!). The event takes place inside the theme park and will feature a Q&A from 2:00 - 3:00 p.m., followed by an autograph session from 3:30 - 4:30 p.m. Universal Studios is offering a special $15 off coupon good for this day only. More information can be found here.

Physics and... Chemistry

There was a time when I thought I was going to be a physicist. This was a firm belief I held up until my first semester in college when I realized that in order to major (and, let's be honest, SUCCEED) in Physics, I would be forced to deal with Chemistry. Which I believed I hated. I believed this - I suspect - in part because of Mr. P, my high school chemistry teacher who hated teenagers, had a predictably short fuse, and liked to bean students with erasers, chalk, white board markers, and other small objects that were near to hand when the occasion warranted. I had never had a teacher who threw things at students before, but we must have had him at the height of his I'll-throw-things-at-my-students-when-I-damn-well-please phase because my semester with him was his last semester at our school. Ah, Mr. P.

Anyhow, I've decided as of this moment forward, I will give Chemistry another shot. I'll pretend Chemistry and I were set up by a mutual friend long ago and it was the blind date from hell. Chemistry and I totally got off on the wrong foot, but we're ready to try it again, because people keep telling us we'd really be good together. There was too much pressure last time. This time we're just going to take it easy, maybe get together a few times in a coffee shop, see if we hit it off.

New Skirt And A Heater

I got a new skirt this past weekend. This is news because basically I only buy clothes for myself when I get gift cards as... gifts. Anyhow, wearing it at work, in our glassy freezer of a building, is only possible due to the small, portable heater tucked under my desk. But it's kind of nice to wear a skirty-skirt every once in a while and feel like a girly-girl.

SHA-ZAMS!

I just remembered this from oh, let's say roughly 2 decades ago back in ABQ:

My sister and I used beg to go to this one store every time we got our allowance. We called it SHA-ZAMS! The sign clearly read "Chesam's" CHE-SAMS, but to us, that spelled SHA-ZAMS! They had all the coolest stickers and stuffed animals. I remember saving up 3 or 4 allowances once to buy this stuffed UNICORN. It had this shimmery material for it's horn and long soft white "hair" for it's mane and tail. Anyhow, for years we were wild for SHA-ZAMS! and one day I ask my friend if she'd ever been (I believe we were trading our wildest sticker-hunting stories). She had never heard of SHA-ZAMS! but when I described how you get there she politely asked "Oh, is it anywhere near Chesam's?" At that point, the universe shifted just a tiny bit into alignment and I saw, with horror, that OF COURSE "Chesam's" would be pronounced "Chesam's" and not "SHA-ZAMS!" and with embarrassment (and very likely beet red cheeks) I stammered something about how it was a joke in our family to call it SHA-ZAMS, of course I KNOW it's really pronounced Chesam's...

I am sure there's a story there. Maybe it involved a little girl just learning to read who sounded out a fantastical name from an average shop sign - and maybe her mom and/or dad thought it was cute and never corrected her or her sister, who grew up seeing a sign that read Chesam's, but knowing in their hearts it was SHA-ZAMS! The funny thing: after I realized SHA-ZAMS! was really Chesam's, it lost some of its luster for me. Maybe I was growing out of the sticker/stuffed unicorn phase (and this would have been not a nanosecond too soon), but there was something magical about an average little shop, sitting on an average little street, with a larger than life, no-holds-barred, "this is a place for YOU, little girls who still believe that the place you go car-camping at every summer is the fairy forest because you've seen the evidence of fairy rings left in the morning dew" name.

It's The Little Things

So I "finished" (I am starting to laugh whenever I even think about that word) the vampire script this morning. It was only a 2 1/2 hour rewrite, focusing on one small section, adding a line or two in two or three places, and tweaking the very last scene. I could be being optimistic, but the end seems to resonate a little more for me now.

After the rewriting, I went to the grocery store, bought some fresh potato bread buns, an avocado, and some half and half and came to work, where JB and I had the turkey burgers he grilled last night with swiss, tomatoes, and avocado slices AND coffee with real cream. Ah, me.

PLUS, tomorrow is Friday.

Seriously. It's a good day.

Changes

I love the seasonal change from summer to fall. It feels like a new beginning. Yes, I know, I don't get summer vacations anymore, but I always reach the fall feeling ready to get started on something NEW. In that light, I'm getting ready to start a new project. It's not a creative writing project. It is something I've been thinking about trying for a long time now. I've got to polish up 2 scripts, hopefully both will be finished by this weekend, and then I am rededicating myself to doing something new for a while. Planning to let the "writer" rest for a moment, hopefully while my attention is turned elsewhere, more ideas will bubble around in the back of my head.

Over The Weekend

We were in New Mexico this weekend for a friend's wedding, and their hotel was across from the convention center. While we were there, the convention center was being prepared for some victims of the hurricane. I think they said as many as 5,000 may be temporarily housed in New Mexico. When JB and I donate money to help in times like these, it feels like the smallest possible thing we can do, and yet I don't know how else to help. I am still just stunned and horrified by the destruction, and my heart goes out to everyone touched by this tragedy.