11 May 1998

The First Day

Of the rest of my life, that is.

Good Lord--an entry for every day in the month of May. Such pressure!

I guess I can remove the "USC" category from my browser bookmarks file now.

Today I woke up at 7am and thought, I could go running. Instead, I puttered around the house, rescuing soda and beer out of the backyard and putting dishes in the sink and finally returning to bed to read my book.

At around 9 I found Rob in front of one of our computers watching the Internet feed of the keynote speech of the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, starring Steve Jobs. Rob had really wanted to return to Northern California for this speech--he had made the plane reservations to come down thinking the WWDC was next week, and when he discovered his error attempted to get an earlier flight back, but Southwest Airlines did not cooperate. So he did it the new-fashioned way. We briefly discussed running, but thought better of the idea.

The four of us went out to breakfast at Paty's in Toluca Lake, where we had French toast and chicken hash. Then we returned to get coffee at Pane Dolce, because Laura had been jonesing for a taste of their hot chocolate since the last time she was here. I tried a cafe mocha, my first such coffee drink in 5 months--it was tasty but too much. I'm now used to just regular ol' American coffee, albeit in Pane Dolce's butt-kicking instantation of such.

Then Rob and Laura took off to the airport and I was left with the question, What do I do now?

I know what I've got to do, at least this week: the deadline for screenplay submissions to the Austin Heart of Film Festival is this Friday, and I want to do another round on my Rewrite Script. (I've already sent in the Thesis Script.)

The Rewrite Prof called last night and left some comments on the answering machine for me. I called him today and got more detail, plus talked about some of the problems I've been having with Act III. We talked about some directions I can take Act III and hopefully put something together satisfying.

Nevertheless, I played Escape Velocity Override all this afternoon. I really needed to. I stayed off the phone and didn't even send any e-mail.

Career Notes

I began compiling a list of agents to call in the coming weeks, typing names and phone numbers into my FileMaker database. Before I call, I have to write up a script of what I'm going to say, so that I have the pitches for my scripts available right in front of me. Always be prepared.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Nothing today. It briefly crossed my mind at 7:30am, but I decided to give myself the day off, dammit.