A quick one

Well. Today was my first day off from editing in two weeks, which means just about every day I am up at dawn, off to school and don't come home until around midnight. I really, really love what I do, and the intensive/immersive nature of the program at AFI is an incredible learning experience, but it does mean that I go literally weeks without seeing my wife (awake at least) or really, anyone outside of school for most of the time. Not time for phone calls, emails, anything excpet brief communications. Numerous things have been going on in the extended family front to which I have not been able to pay the appropriate attention, one sister getting deathly ill and recovering and the other getting engaged! I have these little 5 minute windows of opportunity to contact people during the day and with the time zone we're in etc. it is very difficult to raise anyone. It's like being on the moon, where you have these little windows of time to blurt a message back to Earth.

So today, I had to miss class to catch up on stuff that had been piling up at home for two weeks: unreturned emails, phone calls, a massively messed up server at home for our music files, to do items that I hadn't even got on my list yet, etc. A big partof my learning experience is how to balance the work/life issues in a pressure cooker, and so far I seem to be really good at one or the other, but only if the one I am not being good in suffers as a result. Big eye-opening learning experience from this round. I also made a game effort to eat more healthy food and take better care of myself physically during this last session. I did a little better than I had heretofor, but I have some ideas of how to improve the whole thing. (Like, forcing myself to take a walk in Griffith park for half an hour every day, getting to bed earlier and rising earlier to do some catch-up at home.) I will have the Happy Editor's Guide to High Pressure Living complete by the end of this term.

I grossly miscalculated my schedule, I noticed last week. I thought I would have a week off from cutting before my next project, but due to a strangeness in the schedule I am, in fact, editing pretty much straight through (except for spring break, bless it) until about 10 days before the baby is due. (Please don't be early, li'l baby!). That means I will pretty much be off the radar screen until mid-March, right after St. Patty's. My last project doesn't start until May 7, so I will have plenty of "baby time" in between regular classes but oh, man, it is total insanity! I have never worked so hard for such a sustained period in my life. I used to think those 20 hour days for two weeks at WAMC were bad during fund drives but they are nothing compared to this. And I was 15 years younger then!

Not a lot to report besides the odd movie G and I get to sneak off to when I have an evening free, which is hardly ever. There was othing good out a few weeks ago so we went to see Diamonds Are Forever, probably the worst of the Connery Bonds, at the Egyptian. Fun to see even if it is the cheesiest and most dated of the series. We haven't really been able to do much else of note. I did go to a Grammy party for a big record label on Grammy night. My friend Joey O runs a restaurant that was hosting the event. It was incredibly extravagant. You could almost smell the money in the place. I guess the guys from Green Day were there; I think I saw one of them, although I definitely saw Jimmy Page and Kid Rock hanging out. Mostly I saw incredibly rich people hobnobbing. There was a crisis at one point in the party -- right after the Grammy show ended the crowd swarmed in and due to the layout the party designers had made, it was really hard to keep the flow of booze and glassware to the bars. It was the Delmar Boys to the resuce as Joe left me in charge of organizing the barbacking and making sure the bars were stocked for an hour or two. Between a few hard-working Mexican cats and myself we got everyone sorted out and the guests did not go thirsty even for a second. Anyway, it was a lavish Hollywood affair that I was too tired to attend but I am glad I went. I got to help out a friend, have some laughs, and revel in the fact that here I was with an old high school friend of 25 years or so, in Hollywood making pictures and he's running diamond-studded events for some of the biggest big shots in the music biz. We had a few beers late night and revelled in it. My observatiopn was, did you ever think, 15 years ago when we were sipping beers at dawn on Prince Edward Island, that we'd both be doing the same thing at a Grammy party in Hollywood 15 years later? Joe said, "I like to think about that too, but even more I like to think about what we'll be doing 15 years from now." Good point, Joe.

OK, time to cross one more thing off the to-do list before I hit the sack. Screening my project tomorrow for class -- have to be up mighty early. Hope to update again before Saturday when the whole dang thing starts up again.