Well, I guess I spoke too soon about feeling better – The Sick has returned. I’m blowing my nose and staying in the house these days, and eating so many oranges that I’m starting to feel like Arturo Bandini (but I’m eating them for the Vitamin C, not because they are all I can afford… although that’s not too far off).
I feel like I have been getting sick a lot here. I wonder if it is specific to me, or if it happens to a lot of people and that is why there is such an emphasis on healthy habits out here. There are a lot of juice bars, immunity boosters, organic restaurants, etc. and it seems like everybody exercises and eats small amounts. I am seriously considering buying a juicer and drinking a small garden every day in an attempt to not get sick anymore.
I’m not doing anything differently from before, as far as I know. What is making me so sick all the time? Is it the air, my suggestion from the previous post? Is it beer – a possible wheat and/or yeast allergy? Could it be mold living in a secret hideout somewhere in my 1960s apartment? Could it simply be the damp weather? Mom, I swear, I have been staying away from cheese and milk products! I eat lots of vegetables! Am I just allergic to Los Angeles!?
For now, I am playing doctor and prescribing oranges, spearmint tea (Dad’s hated yerba buena) and lots of movies and NPR. Last night I saw Julie and Julia, and yes, I liked it. I really want Julia Childs’ cookbook now.
I was going to write an interesting post, but then I wrote this one. Sorry guys. I’m going to rest up and let my friends Jad and Robert tell me a story.
Today I went into work for another day of training and the girl I was working with, Elle, was sick. There has been something going around these days and she had it so bad on Monday that she had to stay home AND went home again today. This is especially bad for her, since 1) she needs the hours, and 2) this sickness seems to affect the throat more than anything, and she is a singer. She needs to be in tip-top shape for this weekend because she is laying down tracks for a musical project she has been working on. Let’s hope the Disease takes mercy on her.
However, as bad as it sounds, hearing that she was sick made me feel better. Last week I was also sick, and judging from her symptoms I had the same thing – sore throat, fever, stuffiness – but it wasn’t so bad that it kept me from doing anything (although it did make me crabby and unpleasant to be around)*. It was such a confusing kind of sick to me that I started to think I might be developing seasonal allergies – a horrible affliction that I luckily have never been afflicted with (yet). This was not my idea; rather my friend Ruth suggested it, and the more I thought about it, the more feasible it seemed. Just the thought depressed me. Everyone I know who has allergies is miserable if they don’t take something – itchy watery eyes, runny nose, stuffy head, etc. It sounds like you are just sick for 2 or 3 months, no matter what. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, let alone my own person.
(Although I imagine you probably know how allergies work, I am going to geek out here: if you have allergies it just means you have a very vigilant immune system. It recognizes tons of foreign bodies that enter your powerhouse system, but some they don’t, and those are either the things you are allergic to or things that really don’t belong in there, like harmful bacteria and viruses and stuff. So, your immune system is kind of like Homeland Security – sometimes it is really overactive and does more harm than good. Oops! I have a theory that it is probably NOT a good idea to take immune system boosters when you have allergies, because it’s like telling it “Good job, guys! Keep up the good work!” when that really isn’t what you mean. Close parentheses.)
Anyway, this week the symptoms are gone and I am relieved. This does not mean, however, that I am not coughing occasionally or feeling weirdness in my lungs at times. Apparently, that just has to do with the quality of the air in LA. I recently learned that 1 out of 5 kids has asthma here. Little wonder! What do you expect when everyone in a party of 20 people has to bring their own car to meet up somewhere? Carpooling is difficult because people are so spread out; traffic is legendary but the subways are considered unsafe, and if you take a cab you can’t get two blocks away without shelling out 20 bucks! It’s one of those problems that is so instilled in the lifestyles of the population that it is just tolerated, even though it is maddening. What can you do?
That’s all for now. It’s bedtime. Celebrity Sightings:
Camille: None today.
Dave: Dmitri Martin
*How’s THAT for an impressive run-on sentence!? Writing that, I realized that I write the same way I talk… and I talk almost exclusively in run-on sentences.
Well folks, yesterday was my first day on the job – and what a day it was!
When I first got to work, I was issued my Oaks t-shirt and apron, and since I didn’t have a lock for the lockers where everyone keeps their stuff, my jacket, bag and other personal items were shoved into a large glass cookie jar and placed on a shelf that nearly touched the ceiling. “To keep people from stealing it,” they said. As I changed into my new shirt, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had just walked into a job where I would be working with convicts.
Elaise was my trainer, and I couldn’t have been luckier. She is a lovely woman who moved out to LA from Minnesota, so she was very patient and fun and Midwestern enough to make me feel comfortable. She insisted I try different things from the pastry counter (if you only knew, you would be drooling all over yourself – chocolate covered red velvet hohos, giant blueberry muffins, carrot cake cupcakes, turtle chocolates… and that was just yesterday) and she introduced me to everyone that was working – Rachel (stocking), Dash (register), Bobby (scheduling) and Franco (chef). Franco is – yes! – Italian, so I will get to practice and maybe I won’t forget my Italian this year! We spoke a little bit and traded some food for some coffee. We made him a triple espresso cappuccino and he made us some pretty awesome pasta.
I forgot how much I really like barista work. As my training moved along, I started to remember doing the same things when I worked at the Runcible Spoon (my picture is still on the website!) and Espresso Royale in Bloomington. I was especially excited about the coffee roasting machine, because it was so shiny and new and state of the art! When I roasted beans at the Spoon, we did it in a metal bucket thing with a hot air blower in the bottom, and if we turned it up too high the hot coffee beans would come flying out of the can and pelt everybody behind the counter. We also had to sift them for rocks. At this place, I just measure out a pound, pour them into the roaster, set it for a certain temperature, and then turn it off when the light comes on. Ta-daaaa!
The last thing that I think is going to make this job interesting is the fact that famous people are crawling all over our block. On my first day, I saw Sandra Oh sitting at our inside table talking very intensely to somebody, and then Kirsten Dunst came in with a friend and had dinner. No joke. I served them their tea! I tried to be normal, but I couldn’t look her in the face! She even cleaned off our honey container for us.
I wonder if I am going to get used to seeing notable people around… I should start keeping track of them. A few days ago I saw Thom Yorke in a coffee shop as I was writing a blog, and it was the first time I felt really star-struck. I sent text messages to friends, went on facebook and posted that I had just seen him, and was pretty much a total teenager about it.
Ok, starting today I am going to keep track of the famous people Dave and I see.
Recent Celebrity Sightings:
Camille: Thom Yorke, Kirsten Dunst, Sandra Oh, Justin Long
Dave: Justin Long, Drew Barrymore, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Sarah Silverman, Juliet Lewis
Hey everybody! As you may know, I have been looking for work since we first got out here to LA. For a while, the search was not going very well. I found employment for about 4 or 5 days with an older woman in Santa Monica, helping her move stuff and wrap presents before Christmas, stuff like that. I tried to help her clean, but she used to own a cleaning service and she was not very convinced by my technique. For those of you who know me, you know that I am not a terribly clean person. I like to be neat, yes, but clean? Meh. I have never been very good at disinfecting or scrubbing, partially because it grosses me out and partially because I am afraid of chemicals – both for myself and for the water drainage system. This cleanliness handicap has led me to embrace the adage “God made dirt and dirt don’t hurt.” This woman, however, did not agree with my easygoing attitude and crabbed at me for several hours, finally doing it all herself (correction: I did the cleaning and straightening, and she did it over again – NO MATTER WHAT). At the end of the day I was ready to cry, and she even apologized for being so type A about the whole thing. She apologized for several days, in fact. That was my first and last attempt at housekeeping for other people. It is simply not a job for me.
The next employment opportunity that came up was with Greenpeace. I had been looking on craigslist and time and time again, the largest volume of available jobs were in sales and fundraising. After looking at the ads and saying ‘No’ time and time again, I finally conceded to try it out with Greenpeace. If I was going to have to try to sell people something, at least I would be helping an organization I believe in. Greenpeace wants to save the world and leave some trees for our kids – who can argue with that?
Well, as much as I wanted it to work, one day on the job was enough to show me that I wasn’t made for sales. After a day of training and getting my argument in order, I went out with four other people and canvassed in front of both Borders and Amoeba Music. It only took a few hours before I started sobbing my eyes out. I am not a person who likes to attract much attention, so to be jumping in people’s paths, trying to get them to care about what I was saying in a 15 second time span before they waked past, and THEN trying to convince them to give me their credit card information for a monthly donation to Greenpeace – well, it was torture. This experience made me question whether I could even do this for a dying relative, or to raise money to save my own life… but all signs point to no, friends. So, that was over pretty fast.
The same day I quit my job at Greenpeace I went out for Happy Hour at Birds. I was talking to Dave and our friend Rich and happened to say something about Indiana, and I heard a voice behind me say, “Indiana isn’t so bad. I’ve been there lots of times.” I turned around and started talking to my defender. It turns out, his name was James and he worked at the gourmet grocery store at the end of the street. It turns out they were hiring, and it turns out that I was exactly the kind of person they were looking to hire. The next day I went in, left my resume, and got a job. Boom. So, starting tomorrow at 5 I become a paid employee of The Oaks Gourmet Market and barista to the stars. Hooray!
I have also somehow landed some very interesting unpaid gigs as well. One has led to the other. First, through my friend Ruth I started volunteering at an art gallery, and so far it has been an educational and pleasant experience. Because it is giving me a lot of exposure to the art world in Los Angeles, I talked to my friends Travis and Bella, and lo and behold! I am now the Hollywood correspondent of [^] LAND magazine, an online art mag with a DIY bent. It is a great magazine and I am really excited to be a part of it.
So, hooray! Everything is coming up roses, guys! Let’s hope the momentum keeps up!
Greets to all from Hollywood, California! It’s time to start blogging again, because every day I walk out my front door I see or hear something worth writing about. This city sort of feels like a madhouse where everyone has cars and cellphones!
So, how did we get here?
Good question. As many of you know, last year Dave and I were in Italy, where I was working on a Masters in Art Restoration and Conservation. That endeavor reached its close in November, and we celebrated by going on an incredible 2 week, 6 country cruise in the Mediterranean with Dave’s parents. After the cruise we went to Washington DC to catch up with Dave’s friends and family. Originally I had planned to go back to Indiana to visit right afterward, but money started to run short and Dave was itching to get started on his dream, so I opted to wait until after Christmas to possibly get a cheaper ticket and see my mom, who happened to be coming on a coinciding visit in March (she lives in New Zealand). Thus, we moved to sunny Los Angeles together on December 8th, 2009.
We spent the first week hopping from house to house – first with Adam, Dave’s cousin, then Brian and Molly, Dave’s friends in San Diego. Eventually we found a sublet in Santa Monica with an actor named Graham Hamilton, who we affectionately called Grahamilton in his absence (and finally to his face once we struck up a more comfortable fledgling friendship). We stayed in his lovely apartment with his colorful neighbors for three weeks, and in that time we were able to get bikes, find a new apartment, borrow a car and find some people to work on the Movie.
Movie, you say? Yes! Movie! THAT is why we are here!
While I was studying in Italy, Dave was hard at work writing a brand new screenplay and getting his feet wet in movie production. During the month of August, he heard about a group that needed help shooting a film so he signed up with them. They were so disorganized and inefficient that Dave looked at them and realized he could do this, and do it better. He learned everything he could about production while he was there, made note of the mistakes to avoid, and set to work writing up a budget and scene schedule for his screenplay. I remember coming home one day to a very excited boyfriend, who was telling me that he was confident that his film could be shot in 12 days for less than 10,000 dollars. This day was the turning point for our future plans, and within a month we were hashing out how to get to LA and how long we should stay there.
The first day we arrived, we already had a meeting. We got off the plane, picked up our rental car, and drove to El Segundo to meet Mark Mathis, a man with tons of production energy who had big plans for Dave’s screenplay. He was so infectious that we accepted him on board immediately. The others we talked to were not so lucky, except one guy, Rich Samuels, who Dave had been talking to for some time about being our Director of Photography. Once these two key players met each other, it felt like things were really getting off the ground, and we would be making a successful film in no time!
Well, after that things slowed down a little. We ran into scheduling issues (most having to do with the holidays and the upcoming Sundance Film Festival). We also hit some funding issues, so it seems that the film is on hold for the moment. Even so, Dave is using the lull time incredibly well – he is writing a NEW screenplay, one that promises to be exceptionally gripping. Someone get that man an agent!
So, that’s all for now. I will save my personal adventures for future blogs, and dip into some back story about the last month and a half as well as the upcoming month. Good things are happening. We are keeping busy and getting some really cool opportunities. Living in Hollywood feels like being in a movie all the time!
