Year 2 - An Ex-pose-ay Part 2 - Random Fun Facts About Year Two

Apartments Lived in - 1

Months without use of car - 1

Times I've seen Sam Anderson (Bernard from Lost, Mr. Gorply from Perfect Strangers) in my neighborhood) - 3

Times spoken with Sam Anderson - 0

Most Unlikely Place to Be a Regular - BevMo, Burbank's Liquor Store (wine tastings)

Most Likely Place to Be A Regular - Starbucks

Times Visited Sonny Maclean's, the Boston sports bar - 1

Laptop Running Total - 3

Celebs I've Had the Guts to Just Chat With - Neil Flynn (Janitor on Scrubs)

Not so much - Eric Stonestreet (Cam from Modern Family)

Office Cast Member Sightings - 0

Times I've Seen The Room - 2

Times I've Performed Stand Up - 5 (once in Boston, 6 after July 14th)

That's what I have so far - I may post a Part 3

Year Two - An Ex-pose-ay! (Part 1, the "But Seriously, Folks" portion)

A friend of mine asked me what I think has changed about me in the two years I've been in LA. These sort of questions, the kind that make me shine a light directly into my own life and see what's shiny and what's still dirty...ultimately make me nervous. I feel like whatever I have changed maybe isn't as great as I thought, and what is discovered is the ways I have to go to get to where I am headed.

So let's think about how I have changed in these two years...

I think I have ultimately grown a lot more patient, and now feel, even amidst various struggles in life, a quiet calm among the chaos. It's very new, and thank God for it.

I am learning how to confidently enter new situations. This might be easier from temping so often, I'm always thrown with a new boss, and have to learn to communicate with them. Plus, in new situations and friendships, I just want to get to a deeper level and build authentic trust, and that comes with time and comes with more confidence.

I am becoming more confident in my role as a Christian, that is, in living my faith, seeking His voice, and being obedient to what He wants me to be doing. That being said, I will be co-leading and assisting a new group at my church for new believers, people coming back to the faith, or just people who want to brush up on the basics. I spoke aloud about it being a necessity and found out such a thing was about to emerge and I was able to volunteer to help with it. I am very excited.

I can more clearly see myself for who I am and what I have to offer and share.

I am eager and hungry to perform comedy, which I thought would give me terrible stage-fright.

There is still, and will always be, opportunity to grow, and learn and experience new things, and I am still a work in progress, but its amazing to see how I have really changed in these two years.

I wonder what year 3 will bring?

I left my heart in Saugus, MA...

I write to you from Warner Bros studios where I am currently serving in a long term temp assignment as assistant to a new VP in the television group. I enjoy working here and right now I am actually trying to find a time that is good to jump in and tell my boss that I want to be hired full time. Because it would be nice to be able to finally say, yes, I know where my income comes from and now I can get cracking on the rest of the things I need to be worried about:

Writing spec scripts.
Writing stand-up comedy.
Finding the right person to read or watch one of these things, and say, she needs to EP/showrun her own show. Kabloom, I have an Emmy. Do you all see how much easier things would be if I had a full time job? Also I could pay my bills and avoid prison.

But I miss Boston dearly, more each day. Especially now that things are getting colder and the holidays are approaching and my home is there and my family and the friends I've grown up with and known for years and years and it's so comfortable and safe.

Right now in LA I am feeling a bit out of sorts. Yes, I know, my nickname should be, "Old News", but I don't know. I feel like I left my heart somewhere else because sometimes I feel so mechanical, like I am just trying to get by, trying to do the things that are expected of me, and to stay within a certain expectation so that I don't rock the boat or shake anything up.

I could continue but I'm going to stop. Miss you Boston. A place that is decidedly real.

Episodes of Shows that I Wish I Had Written

Hey y'all. I just wanted to be openly admiring of a random smattering of episodes of TV shows I have found fascinating, many from Childhood..

To kick off,

Even Stevens, "Influenza" - Ok, who has seen this and doesn't see the beauty? Perfectionist Ren suffering from the flu and dreaming that her life is a musical and that she doesn't have her science project completed. The whole thing culminates to one of the best songs, "We Went to the Moon", which is the science project in question. Any time I turned on Disney, this was on, and it was clever and fun and awesome. And who can forget little Shia?

Doug, Any Episode - I used to, and still, love Doug. My mom even said that one day I'd marry someone who had the characteristics of Doug, shy, introspective (I guess) Or maybe a guy with real skinny legs. I don't know. But either way I just really found Doug to be a likeable show, and he was definitely a relatable character. He had a crush, he had a big imagination, he wrote a journal. He loved The Beets. He had a band! Do I need to say more?

The Simpsons, "The Springfield Connection" - One of my all time favorite Simpson episodes, this is the one where Homer thinks he is seeing an extra terrestrial but it's Mr. Burns (Kill it!) As the Simpsons went from good to great to sucky to ok to good, this episode remains one of the best. Pimple faced teenager concluding the episode with "I'm Leonard Nimoy", Marge wearing a "Homer is a Dope" shirt, and of course the "Good Morning Starshine" singalong make this episode hilarious. Remember when there were no "misses", only "hits" when it came to the Simpsons?

The Wonder Years, "She, My Friend, and I" - This is my favorite episode of one of my favorite shows of all time. Paul dates Winnie, and finds out she likes Kevin. Kevin finds out he still likes Winnie when she starts dating Paul. He goes to her door, she answers ALL SMILES, and he blows it, and gets the door slammed in his face. Kevin and I are siblings from another mother.


I'm sure I have more, but I've been writing this for like, a day now, going back and adding more once in a while, so I'm just going to publish it.

The Ugly...

Heyo,

I just want to elaborate on "the bad" a bit more, since the fallout of the bad made it hard to sleep the night before I wrote the post, and therefore, made it hard to read the post. But ya, I can't keep an air bed for the life of me. A friend of mine is insisting that I must claw my bed in my sleep, or that perhaps I go to bed in a suit of armor. But last night I had a restful sleep. It was awesome.

Now, onto the ugly - and this is not about the pimples which sprout on my face on occasion. This is about my venture into the field of stand up comedy. Yes, I am writing stand up which I also have to perform, and I need to do this by Halloween, because that's the deadline I've given myself.

I love to make people laugh, I love to say things that people think are funny, but I realize how hard it is to write a real true joke. It's really hard. I can put lines into the mouth of Dwight Schrute like it's nobodies business, but when it comes to me myself getting on a stage and dazzling all with my wit, I barely know how to begin. So I am writing and I'll do it, and hopefully after I do it, I keep doing it, and hopefully the practice will make me good at it. But for me, this is a pretty ugly thing I'm getting into.

There will be a post entitled "The Rest" soon...but I hope you are enjoying my blogness.

The Bad...

I can tell you exactly what the "bad" is at the moment.

My beloved aerobed, whom I've shared some restful times with, is the victim of two holes. Count them, you can. Well, the first one was tiny and I patched that, and then a dime sized hole sprouted. And right now I am dead tired and achey after having slept..or "slept" on it last night. I woke up on the ground. Now I don't know if you've ever tried to balance on a ball of air and get sleep..but it does not work. Not effective in the least.

Anyway - so tired, so very tired. And I am going to a friend's birthday tonight so I need to be awake enough to be enjoyable for all.

I need a bed.

What could be ugly if that's just bad? Well, wait and see...

The good. The bad. The ugly. And the rest.

The good -

Right this second I am sitting at a reception desk at the Warner Bros Studio's Motion Picture Imaging Building, where I am working this week. It was pretty cool to get that call yesterday and it shows that things can change in an instant, where I thought I was returning to a vast wasteland of joblessness, I can save the drama. ;-) Everyone here has been really nice, and even though I do things tentatively the first time I do them, I pick up on details pretty quickly. I wanted to roam around Stars Hollow for a bit before I went back to work but there was a crew setting something up for something - pretty interesting.

Also, reception means I can jot down notes for my new writing project - see "The ugly" below. I bet you're already dying to know what it is.

Also, I decided to adopt a "life is good" policy. Or for some of you, I've decided to become another person altogether. I'm in a position where I can really love my life, and I'm going to do it. Ha!

The movie "Paper Heart" looks really good, I really want to see it. I love Michael Cera, and quirky comedies, and mockumentaries. Plus I'm totally one of those posers that wants to be like, "I saw Paper Heart, it was in Sundance. The film festival. It's so deep!" I eat peanut butter and fluff sandwiches. But I do eat them on whole wheat, so what's in a name, ya know?

I just returned from a trip to Boston, which was really good. Good to see family, and good to see friends. It's nice to be home when I can, and I do miss everyone. I saw my friend Andrea get married to Mark, the man we nicknamed "Husband" since day 1. It was a beautiful wedding and a great reception. They named each table after a place significant in their relationship, my friends and I sat at "Hugh O'Neils", which was the location of part of their first date, and also where we all nicknamed him Husband, later. EXCITED FOR THEM BOTH!!!

I'm tired of blogging. I'll continue with the bad and the ugly tomorrow...