Damn My Non-Confrontationalist Ways

I will post about my Scotland trip soon, I promise.  I need my body to get used to being back in the pacific time zone though, as it seems to want to shut down around 5pm still, and before then I'm at work, so that doesn't really facilitate writing about the trip.  But I need to do it soon before I start losing details!

Meanwhile, as I was power-napping after work today, I awoke to a very loud humming vibration coming from somewhere outside my immediate apartment.  I've deduced that it is coming from the upstairs neighbor, and I'm assuming that they've obtained a portable air conditioner, and have no idea how headache-inducing such a machine can be on poor individuals under it.  Tomorrow I'll call the management company and have them look into it.  I've never met my neighbors and have no interest in greeting them with a complaint.  That's what the building manager is for, right?  All I can hope is that this vibration-causing machine doesn't continue on into sleep-time, or else I will be quite irritated.

But in good news, I'm getting my MacBook Pro replaced by Apple due to having the logic board replaced twice already and it needing a third replacement.  Brand spanking new MacBook Pro should be on its way to me tomorrow and in theory I should have it on Thursday, but we'll see!  If so, it'd be just in time for my weekend in Vegas!

A Place For Me

There is a place for me
Far, far away
On a distant moon,
Or on a silver screen.
With the perfect life,
Where you never die.
You just press rewind.
Jump Little Children - B-13

--

Through various circumstances, I decided a few weeks ago to come up to Vancouver for a short trip.  For years I'd had a desire to visit the city, even though I had no idea what to expect.  I'd never even really been to the Pacific Northwest, with Crescent City, CA being the closest thing to it I'd traversed.

In the last few days, I've seen basically all of Vancouver.  Wednesday and Thursday included a lot of walking around the city and seeing pretty much all of it.  Friday my friend took the day off of work, so we took the SkyTrain out to Burnaby to see the studios where Stargate Universe is filmed, and the train went right over Vancouver Film Studios, home to Smallville, Eureka, Caprica, etc.  So that was exciting to see.  Somewhere on a camera that I didn't bring the cable for are pictures, though most of the photos are of Chad the Gnome, a small gift from an LA friend that's my travel buddy.  Today we hit up Vancouver Island, taking a shuttle from the mainland over, then a bus down to Victoria, then a lot of walking around Old Town Victoria, and seeing underwater sea creatures at an underwater aquarium, and then headed back.  Tomorrow brings a wine brunch event, and then soon after will head out to the airport and head back home.

I love this city.  I really do.  I could live here.  I don't know if living here would make me happier with life, but I'd welcome the experience.  I even found a job opening for a Mac tech, as well as a new Apple store opening up and hiring.  But will I move here?  Maybe some day, but not yet.

It's not that I don't want to live here, because I do, but there's a lot of complications to deal with.  Aside from being an American citizen trying to live and work in Canada, the cost of living here seems to be on par or higher than Los Angeles.  Additionally, the majority of my friends are down in LA or the greater SoCal area, and my family is still in the southeast.  Not exactly closer to them, which is an eventual goal.  Plus most cell phone long distance plans don't include Canada, so I'd either to have to call them more often, or it'd cost them more, and I can forget about my favorite communication method: texting.

No, Vancouver for now shall be a great vacation destination for me.  Maybe I'll try and come up at least once a year.  I say this, knowing that I don't even make it home once a year, so we'll see how that goes.  I just need to land that job that pays me the crazy big bucks and maybe has a travel budget.

Speaking of jobs, no news on the job front.  Things continue to dwindle, and this coming Friday is going to be a downer day at the office.  Not sure what the next two weeks bring, let alone what comes after Scotland.  When I put in for the time off, I was really concerned about how things would go at work while I Scotland.  I expected us to be in the middle of production on a show or two, but unless something amazing happens, nothing will be going on.  It makes me wonder what will be going on during those two weeks, and what I'll be looking forward to when I get back.  Funemployment here I come?

The Good News Is...

So, the good news is, umm, well the good news is one of my projects is making some headway.  I actually have someone with connections interested in a television show idea, and he has some ideas for it of his own, which is fantastic to me.  If someone says to me "I like what you've got, here's how we make it better," I'm all for that, because I know I'm in no way going to nail it on my own (at least not at this time).  So yeah, hooray for that!

A new friend has hooked me up with SGU season 1 DVDs, which is awesome.  I haven't watched them yet, but have a couple of weeks before season 1.5 starts up, so I'll be doing that in my downtime I believe.

I'm working on a webcomic that involves squirrels, because we all know how much I love squirrels (and if you don't know, I love them a lot).  I apparently don't love them enough to draw cartoon versions of them though, at least not yet.  It's a work in progress.

I should know my work fate by Wednesday.  That's when the network will either order more episodes of the show we did a pilot for, or pass on it, and leave us show-less.  Crossing fingers for a pickup, as I've decided I'm going to talk to the show-runner and ask about trying my hand at producing a segment or pitching stories or something along the producing realm.  It's a clip show, and not really want I want to do, but it's also producing, and well, I'm going to have to re-verify at Comic-Con next year, so I need a more recent producing credit to my IMDb profile.  Plus, I need a new credit to change my IMDb profile to "J. Chris Tucker" instead of "Jonathan Tucker (II)".

Oh hey! Tomorrow is free pasty day at Starbucks, and free cone day at Ben & Jerry's.  I'll definitely get a free pastry, but we'll have to see about the cone...

--

And then... he slept.

Backwards and Forwards

What a difference a week can make.  A week ago I was working on a spec script (well, coming up with an idea for one at least) so that I could pursue a writing/producing career.  It wasn't going well, and it took a conversation with a friend to finally convince me that writing is not what I want to do, even though I've known this forever.  Ideal job is producing a late-night talk show.  So that is what I will work for, although I don't know how long it will take.  I'm impatient, so I'd love for it to be sooner rather than later, but things can't be rushed I guess.

Which means, come May and Scotland, I'm not changing my life around like I'd been planning.  I'm not quitting my job and I'm not moving out of my apartment.  Simply, I'm staying put until such a time that there is better timing to leave (like having another job lined up).

That isn't to say it couldn't change by May.  At work, we delivered the cut of a pilot we're working on, and will be waiting until the middle of next week to find out if the network wants to pick it up or not.  If they do, great, there's a few more months of work.  If not, well, all we have are projects in development, and maybe I'll still get laid off by/before May.  If that happens, then I'll come back from Scotland, offload everything I own, and move to Vancouver.  Fingers crossed?

Indecision, BE GONE!

Indecision surrounds me.

In the next two months, I have to decide what's going to happen next for me.  Am I going to give my job, my apartment, my financial security, simply because I find myself at a crossroads?  Or will I instead keep both my job and my apartment, and just put off the inevitable change?

At the moment, I'm leaning towards the latter.  However, a lot is going to rest on what happens at work in the next couple of weeks.  There's a lot in the air that should be settled by then, and will affect the stability of my current job.  So my indecision on that front shall continue, and that's okay!

I'm going to write a TV spec script or two, in an effort to change my future path more towards what I actually want to do professionally.  Currently I'm planning on a sitcom, but there's a lot of indecision there as well.  Not sure which sitcom to spec, and which story idea to go with.  Also stuck between writing a sitcom or a drama, or maybe a dramedy.  In all honesty, I'm not really enthusiastic about writing a spec at all, but it seems to be necessary if I want to produce anything scripted.


Does deciding to quit being indecisive work?

Knot of this World

I have a knot in my upper back that will not go away.  The last two Mondays I've had a kink in my neck because of it, and the other night I woke up from a particularly strange dream with the knot throbbing.  It was a strange dream, involving being in a cave behind Facebook (as if Facebook were a waterfall or mountain face, and hidden behind it was this cave), and a not-so-nice dragon living in the cave.  I found the dragon, and I think it ate me, because it's mouth came towards me, and I woke up.  I remember thinking in the dream that the dragon was going to devour the world.  Hrm, is Facebook really the devil?  The night before that I dreamed about playing war games, only it was with water guns, and somehow I was the last man standing on my team, but in the end I was 'killed'.  Lotta instances of me dying in my dreams lately.  Wonder what that means.  I'm going to interpret it as meaning my current life is going to end and a new life will begin, which coincides with my future plans.

Speaking of my future plans, I got my taxes done the other day.  Wow.  It pays to have someone do your taxes.  I'm no longer stressed out about going to Scotland and making some major changes in my life when I get back.  I'd been flip-flopping back and forth on my decisions for the future, mostly for financial reasons, but I'm much more at ease about my desires now, and about 90% sure of what I'm going to do.

Hopefully going to be talking to a potential partner this weekend about one of my ideas.  A friend who I've discussed the idea with suggested I talk to this person, and there will hopefully be occasion to have a discussion about it.  That'd be a nice thing to have pan out.

I don't often really talk about celebrity sightings, but I did see Tahmoh Penikett today (of Battlestar Galactica and Dollhouse).  This is important for two reasons–the first being that a friend of mine is deeply infatuated with him and I enjoyed greatly telling her that I saw him, especially since he's usually in Vancouver, and that's where she lives, and the second being because he was filling up his car up at the shady gas station next to our office place.  Since this place has a suspected history of identity theft (numerous people in our office were victims of fraudulent credit charges after making purchases there), I shot Tahmoh a message on Facebook informing him that our employees have had issues there, and to keep an eye on his bank account.  He shot back a quick "Thanks for that!" and it made me smile, as some celebrities I've encountered don't even say "thank you" when you hold a door open for them.  It's nice to know there are still some good people out there.  So that was fun.

Know what else is fun? Sleep!

Unemployment

Unemployment.  We all fear it, we all will deal with it, we all will use it.  It's there, and it's meant to be used, but used responsibly.

Responsible uses of unemployment:

1) Your job has ended.  You weren't fired, you were laid off.  You're looking for work, but while out of work, you use unemployment to pay your bills because, well, you need to.

2) You're in-between jobs, or on hiatus from a job (common in the entertainment industry) and look for short-term jobs that fit your time off, but don't take a job that would interfere with returning to your normal job.  Fair enough, as you're being respectful to both your current and your potential jobs.

There are more responsible uses, I'm sure, but these are the two I see most often.  Now, what about a non-responsible method of using unemployment?

1) You get fired.  You claim you were laid off, and the company you worked for doesn't want to get into a fight and so agrees you were 'laid off', even though they simply replaced you with someone who could do the job.  You don't look for work, and would rather do what you did at the job you were fired from... nothing.

2) Your job ends, you're laid off, etc, and you're offered a job, but it doesn't pay much more than unemployment would, so why take it when you could get paid the same to do nothing?  COME ON.  Take the job.  You don't have to stick with it forever if you find something else, but don't use unemployment funds that other people need just because you don't want to work for the same cost as not-working.

Maybe it's the work-aholic in me, but in both situations, I'd much rather have a job that gave me something productive to do with my time, and allowed me to meet new people and experience new things, than to sit at home and do nothing, or putter around all day.  I guess I just don't understand that mentality of getting paid to do nothing.  Sounds boring to me!