Ten Days Later, Not Much Movement

 

 Ten days since my last post and I've written barely two more pages of T3. I know where it's going, but the specifics of some things are really starting to bog me down. Like, I have person A fighting person B while person C fights person D. 

This is in the woods. So how do you make those fights interesting? People picking up sticks? Done that, pretty tired of it. They're unarmed, though one of them could technically have a gun with no ammo in it.'

I'm gonna give it a couple of days and then just put THEY FIGHT UNTIL PERSON A wins, and move on, figure it out later.

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The job is getting worse. They keep taking good people out of my division and sticking shit ones with us. 

I can't remember if I mentioned, but they moved the guy who trained me into my division. We're the two best testers in the company, I think, and both of us are here.

And the funny part is that I'm now training him. He doesn't like being here at all, I can tell. He's discovered just how challenging our project is compared to what he's been on. I told him, it's why I'm the only tester still here--everybody else either quit or got fired.

But they gave us other shit now, so we're being bombarded by tests. This won't mean anything to you unless you know agile, but I did 25 points of test tickets in this short 8 day sprint--it was 82 total points, so you know there was some complicated shit in there.

So now I'm exhausted day in and day out. Starting to really get fried on this.

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Finished From. GOOD show, really enjoyed it and brings back some of those Lost feels.

Three episodes into Moon Knight and still the same problem, not much of him in costume. 

Started watching some more old shit on Tubi. How The West Was Won. I remember begging our parents to let us stay up late to watch these when they were on. My dad loved them. They're still pretty entertaining.

Watching Bret Maverick--the 2nd(I believe) Maverick series. It's a lot of fun. James Garner was the man in everything he was in.Sooner or later I'll go back and check out Rockford Files again.

 

It's Cool, Always Being Busy. (I Tell Myself)

 

Trying desperately to finish the T3 script. Once it's finished, I'm going to call Laura and see if she's willing to come back, and for how much.

Meanwhile, this past weekend I had to shoot a video for an auction coming up in two weeks. Doesn't give me much time, and I only got about 2/3rds of the way through the edit by last night, which leaves me having to try to finish it over the next couple of days, after I finish working my 8 hours on my actual job each day.

They're also ramping up for some more Wednesday night auctions. Those don't bother me, but the weekend auctions are really starting to tire me.

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Almost finished the first season of From. Good show. Has started to give some answers on some of the mysteries, which is nice, yet holding enough cards to its chest that you're still eager for answers.

Started Halo. First episode was so so, but I'll keep going. 

First episode of Moon Knight was likewise mediocre. Moon Knight is actually in about 30 seconds of the episode. It's like watching a show called Batman where Bruce Wayne runs around for 99% of the show.

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Spent a lot of last week burning all that shit I'd collected from behind my house. Took like three days of burning, it was that much shit.

Now I need the rain to stop for like 2 weeks so I can lay down a bed of salt back there so NOTHING ever grows there again. I've had bags of salt for months now, but haven't had the right weather to use it yet.

 

 

Flirty and Commitment-Scared

 

So uh, I didn't mention cuz it slipped my mind, but one girl I met at Authorcon was someone I'd known online for a while. She was listening to the podcast where I read from my novella, and she immediately hit me up on FB to ask where she could get a signed copy. 

I sent her one, and she tweeted about it and stuff. Seemed cool. She recently put out a book.

Anyway, at the con I finally met her. She gave me a warm hug, and then the next day when I saw her again I got another hug. Hey, she's friendly. Later though she stopped me and we chatted briefly, and she says, "You have the cutest dimples." 

Flirty, I like it. 

Saw her off and on the rest of the con, and got her to sign her book for me.

Today she messaged me on FB. It goes thusly:

I wish we had spent a bit more time together. You and your t-shirts make me smile. Hope you're having a good week! And that you're caught up on your sleep, because I most assuredly am NOT.  Anyway, I think I actually...miss you.

 Uhhhhhh...well. It's interesting. 

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As for the commitment scared, nothing to do with the above. I'm gunning to finish this draft of T3 within the next two weeks. I basically know what's going to happen, so why's it taking me so long? (other than I have a job now)

Could it be, that as much as I want to finish the story, that I'm SCARED to finish the story, because then it will be done? I don't think that's ever been a thing with me, but then again this isn't my usual gig. Hell, this is the third movie in a trilogy, which is a first(and I'm sure, last) for me.

I'm starting to wonder. Tonight I made some big moves to really work on it, so I think I'll be able to knock it out in that time frame. I'll do another tweak, then shoot it to some people for thoughts.

And after that, maybe I start reaching out to see who's willing to come back for one last ride...

 

 

Con Weekend

 

 So. Let's see how long it takes to detail this.

The night Malf called me about shooting a movie, the girl he "sort of knows" that was going to be the actress in it posted about getting kicked off of a plane so she wasn't coming. I told Malf, but still wasn't sure what was going to go on, so I ordered a gimbal for my phone.

This way I wouldn't take all my camera equipment and lenses but could still get good footage. I'd take the audio stuff and some lights, but that was it. Oh, and some props.

Worked Thursday and then went to snag Malf. He threw some books in the car in case there was an opportunity to sell some, and we bolted. Traffic was light so the drive wasn't bad.We got to the hotel, checked in, and then went to get some drinks and get the lay of the land.

I ordered four drinks at the bar and it came to $32 and some change. One of the cool things about this con is that the hotel usually charges fair prices on food and drinks, but apparently that didn't apply to THIS con.

We took it easy, drank some, said hi to people and hung out, but went to bed fairly early.

Oh, and somehow that crazy girl who got thrown off the plane got on another plane and was headed to the con.

FRIDAY

Went out to a diner that Zig and I had gone to when we were here. Food was good, as usual, then snagged a slurpee on the way back to the con.

We wandered around, chatted with people we knew, and waited for the show to open at 5.I messed around with the gimbal a bit. It's crazy nice, not only in how well it works, but it comes with an app that lets me affect all the settings on the phone's camera like ISO, F-stop, etc. Stuff that's not in the regular phone menu.

I'm impressed. However, we had a chat on the way down to the con and we're still not positive of the angle we'd take. So, no script? I'm hoping we just scrap it, honestly.

That night we drank a bunch and hung out, chatted with a lot of people and met a ton of new ones.

The crazy girl turned out to be even crazier than I thought. She's perpetually drunk. She slurs her words and doesn't make much sense. I gave her several fake names every time she asked. I want no part of that.

I was tired and went back to the room around 3am. Malf was gonna go smoke some cigars with friends.

Well, it was like 4:30 when I fell asleep, no sign of Malf. He apparently rolled in at like 6am, having smoked an entire pack of cigars. Ouch.

 SATURDAY

Malf got asked to do a reading, so he ended up being stuck at a table for a little while with his books. He sold all but four which was pretty good. He sold out of Come With Me almost immediately, so clearly he needs to take more of those.

 I wandered around, bought a bunch of books, talked with people and went to a couple of readings. I videotaped Malfi's reading but will have to fix the audio, as I wasn't that close to them and didn't have my separate audio recorders on me. (they never left the car)

Clearly, we weren't gonna try to do a movie. (thank goodness)

A buddy of Zig's that I've gotten to know pretty well showed up. They call him Lees.

He and Mal'man and Hendrix were going out to dinner, and did Malfi and I wanna go? Malfi was chatting up authors with boobs, so it took Mal'man asking to get him to go. (Mal'man is short for the guy who wrote the book the hit NFlix movie is based on starring Sandra Bull where she wears a blindfold.)

And Hendrix is the guy who does Pbacks from Hell and some other books. Was probably the most popular guy there.

They were going here:

And no, they don't serve whale. False advertising, man.

We had a dinner that was very good. I kick myself for not getting a picture of our dinner group. It was the two authors I mentioned, Lees, me, Malf, and Mal'man's hot girlfriend.

Conversation was all over the place, but Mal'man and his girl like to just get friends together and shoot movies. His girl acts and does some FX(and from what I saw, they're good). I'm jealous that he has that many friends who will get together to shoot goofy movies for fun.

He told us about one and where to see it, so that'll be a Friday fun in the future.

Mal'man even picked up the whole dinner tab--dude's a super nice guy. I was gonna pick up Lees' dinner for coming all that way, so guess that got scrapped. Lees also drives a super sweet car, which was a bit surprising.

Back to the con where we watched some scaryoke, wandered and talked, watched drama all over the place. (drunk girl, as well as there's an author who came even though she's not allowed into the con--long story)

It was also Stewie's bday the next day so I got him a cake. THIS IS THE TRUTH. Don't believe anybody else who tells you that someone else got him the cake. It was totally me.

Took more pics, though some of these are from the next day.

Eventually we went back to the room after another buddy, Matt, sang three karaoke songs. He's not a great singer, so it was pretty entertaining.

I had put Clue on, so we watched that. Man, some movies I can just watch over and over, and that's one of them. I remember originally seeing it at the Jumper's theater. I think I saw it two or three times in the theater because there were random endings put on and I wanted to see them all, but I think I only saw two total.

SUNDAY

Not much going on. Went in to say some goodbyes, got a couple last-minute books, and then we took off. Traffic wasn't great--not as bad as the July show--but still took us a good amount of time to get back.

All in all, a great time and I'd do it again.