Today's FBI... It's for You - Monday 1/26/2009

I don't know why, but I find this motto a leeeettle creepy.

It reminds me a little of the faux motto Hydra's street theater troupe used to use for the CIA : "Don't call us. We're already listening."

[Hydra warns me that this joke may have been stolen from some place, since he knows for sure that their rendition of the song "War" to the tune of "More" was lifted from Mad Magazine. Twas the Revolution. Parody to the People was the rule of the day.]

OneL called the FBI the other day to check some facts, and the guy practically recruited her. We've been calling them every few weeks or months for years, but this public relations guy is new and he sent her some FBI gear. Pretty cool.

She gave me a pen and a lanyard. It's probably not a good idea to even joke about possible uses of any of this stuff. So I won't.

But I have to admit, I went to the website and looked at the jobs and the pay scale is pretty nice...

All Winter in a Day (or Two) - Friday 12/19/2008

A touch of cabin fever may have helped to inspire me to drive down to Toluca Lake to work today. The road in front of my house was still a bit icy as I started off.

The holiday party was postponed because I wasn't there. Nice of them. I wanted to see my coworkers before the break.


Stopped at the post office to (at last!) get my packages in the mail. I was already behind before the snow storm.

I love the Acton Post Office. There were only a few people in line, but we were all swapping snow stories. The P.O. was closed yesterday!



Amazing. There's still snow all around my neighborhood, but just 10 miles away, on the 14 near Agua Dulce the only sign of snow is on the roof of that SUV up there.


Nice day at work. Finished up what I had on my plate and helped a couple of my coworkers with theirs. Was behind this person with multiple Trader Joe's bags on his arm. Um. I'm not sure you're getting home with those full, buddy.


Ahh! This is about 5 miles from home sweet home. I am still digging the snow. (But thank goodness, not literally anymore. Yesterday's bout with the 10-inch-deep driveway after the hike left me fairly sore.)

Now We're Cookin' - Wednesday 11/26/2008

I worked from home today to avoid the pre-holiday drive time traffic. I love getting up, making a pot of tea, and going to work on the other end of the house.

Clients were typically demanding as the people they work with put pressure upon them to tie things up before the long holiday. But I was mentally prepared for it, and I didn't have a commute behind me or ahead of me.

On my lunch break I made hot artichoke dip and tried a new recipe for cranberry sauce. It sounds unbelievable, but here it is:

Brandied Cranberry Sauce

16 oz. cranberries
2 cups sugar (I might do a half cup less next time, I adjusted for 12 oz. of berries)
1/3 cup brandy (I forgot to reduce the amount)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Rinse cranberries. Place them in a cooking vessel. Add the sugar. Cover, and put in the oven for an hour. (No additional liquid, just the water from rinsing.)

When you take the cranberries out of the oven, pour the brandy over the top. Stir or don't...I saw recipes that advised both methods. I poured them from Pyrex to this serving dish and then added the brandy, which mostly evaporated.

Miss Smarty Returns - Wednesday 11/19/2008

As much as I adore traveling, I'm actually kind of happy to be back at my desk. Probably because I work very independently and I'm well suited to my job. I like setting my priorities for the day after I check my e-mail, even though I know new things will arrive during the day that will knock them askew.

When I'm at work I do, indeed, feel like Miss Smarty. (Thanks to OneL for the gift of the mug, some years ago.)

Hyrda's Big Project

We started breaking up the branches and twigs in the back yard Friday night (from the downed tree) and filled a big trash container and six or seven big bags.

I sawed up some of the medium branches that evening. Today Hydra bought a chain saw and got to work on the bigger branches.


Wow, what a lot of work! That's a 4 pound hammer. I tried splitting one log and it was about all I could do to get through it.

Gonna get the IcyHot ready!

Kitty and I were shopping in Palmdale all afternoon. We were tired too.

Worklife - Wednesday 9/3/2008

What I didn't know yet when I took this photo was that my worklife was going to change for the better in just a few hours.

One of my clients decided to take its business elsewhere. One of my very difficult, demanding, nerve-wracking clients who never once complained about prices or turnaround times, but cited these things as issues.

This is hard on the business, except that really demanding clients diminish the already narrow profit margin. For me, it's honestly a relief.

No blame came my way. I have a good rep here. And when a small company like ours pays rent on office space, and secures the necessary resources, and offers its employees benefits like health care and a 401k, it's hard to compete with a home office.

Except that we offer a superior product.

It's just so frustrating to me that so many businesses are about the bottom line. Yeah, yeah, you've heard it from me before, but what ever happened to a goal of society building? If you sak me, well cared for workers are the infrastructure of any healthy economy.

After work, I'm going for a spinning class, and it just won't matter.

Bird Work - Tuesday 9/2/2008

I'm on my way to work.

These birds have already started their daily tasks. Preen, watch traffic, fly, eat, poop. Repeat.

Sometimes that seems like an apt description of my work day.

Except with a lot more reading.

Alma 'Mater - Thursday 8/14/2008

I stayed home with the tomatoes today.

Worked from home. Work has been way way too much this week. I've been telecommuting one day a week anyway, but I really needed the extra couple of hours of sleep I had today.

My homegrown tomatoes are so sweet. They're almost too sweet to use in pasta, but great for eating like a peach.

Superhero Waitstaff - Tuesday 8/12/2008

P poses with the lascivious looking plastic chef. That's her artwork and lettering. She loves changing the special boards and she's good at it.

I haven't been getting to Andrew's in the mornings very much lately because I've been going in to work early. Working 9 to 11 hour days. It's just all hitting at once...aaah.

This means no writing in the mornings, and then I'm too beat at night. It'll come back. But it's frustrating right now.

I went in this morning with new scripts from three different shows that I had to read and do reports on by this afternoon. This is a huge amount of work. I vowed I'd power through the reading and breaking down part while I was at the diner because I am so sick of my desk at work.

"We're gonna get you through this," P said as she poured my fourth cup of coffee.

Whew! I made it.

Escape - Wednesday 5/28/2008

My shadow is even more eager to leave work than I am.

Anyone want to hire a writer?

Inside the X-Bar - Saturday 4/26/2008

So... Saturday night we went to the wrap party for CSI : Miami, which is one of the shows I do legal research for. We got there unfashionably on-time-ish, around 8:30 and happened to meet up with One-L in the parking lot. She backs me up on Miami when I'm out and I back her up on CSI : New York when she's out.

We took a walk around The X-Bar at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza and decided to claim one of the cool booths with a view of the bar. You can see photos of the interior on the website.

And, yes. The lamp above our booth is made of little Styrofoam peanuts!


Hydra's hand on his virgin margarita. He always volunteers to be the designated driver, leaving me free in this case to have Miami-esque mojitos. As the color of the light above our table changed, so did the atmosphere around us.



Looking into the bamboo growing between and behind the booths.

I found out that the clearance person I work with on the show used to work across the street in the late eighties. Me too. She was a lawyer; I was a waitress.

In fact, I was the lunchtime waitress in the bar at the Sports Deli from summer of 1987 to spring of 1989. She used to eat there, so it's very probable that I waited on her!

Oddly, earlier in the week I received an email from some one who worked at the Sports Deli about six months before I did, because of something he read on my blog. Synchronicity!




Fabulous garlic French fries with freshly grated Parmesan cheese! Really, dolling these up with such a fancy container is not necessary. Yum. Lots of good appetizers.

I didn't get any photos outside. The new building that sits where the ABC complex used to be completely blocks the Century Towers. Gone are the Sports Deli, the Schubert Theater, Harry's Bar and a lot of other places that used to be part of my daily life.

It was interesting working at the deli back then. The Century Plaza was President Ronald Reagan's favorite place to stay. When he came and went, everything shut down for the motorcades. Some of the Secret Service guys came over to the bar at the deli on their time off, which wasn't really time off. They were amazingly upright guys. No arrogance at all. They simply were the best and didn't have to prove it to anyone. Some of the other servers partied with them at the Century Plaza.

My big moment at the Century Plaza came one day when I was cutting through it to get to street parking. I was wearing a cute little pink cotton jumpsuit my Mom bought me in Germany (discreet, but cute), and this big voice said, "Nice outfit!"

I looked up. And up. It was Chuck Connors!

"Thanks!" I said, and we both kept walking. But you know, it stuck with me.

Last night as we were leaving Hulk Hogan and a woman were coming in.

Apparently he didn't like my outfit.

Post No Bills - Wednesday 4/2/2008

Apparently, this telephone pole at the corner of Sepulveda and 79th is a prime place to hang an advertisement!

Took Hondista to LAX, due to a death in her family. Experienced the amazing instant karma of reasonable traffic all the way home.

Ha, also helped by the fact that I completely forgot about a report that was due by the end of the day. Luckily, this was Show Most Likely to Not Freak Out, and they didn't. I got into the office early on Thursday and e-mailed them the report before any of them had probably had their morning coffee. Whew!

Pacific Airmotive Corp. - Monday 3/17/2008

When I see these old industrial sites, I always think about all the lives lived inside. So far I haven't found a whole lot on the web about Pacific Airmotive. What a great business name though, huh?

They were apparently a vibrant part of Burbank's now-dwindling aerospace industry.

Pre-Apology Bagels - Thursday 3/13/2008

In an effort to pre-reward the generosity of my coworkers who are about to cover my researcher-eating shows for a day, I brought in gigantic fresh bagels and cream cheese.



From inside "my" classroom at Taking the Reins.

Believe me, if you had told me when I was twelve years old that I would one day teach creative writing in a converted stall, it would have made complete sense to me. More sense than my living in California.

I made sure I had enough material to get through the whole two hours. One girl didn't come back, but there were two new girls in her place. I think I worked them a little hard, and they might have felt a bit like this gecko.

Work Week - Monday 3/10/2008

It's going to be a big work week. Lots of scripts coming in at once. And I'm going to take off Friday, so it's all compressed into four days.

Still, it's nice to be back and I do like my work. Friday ended with telephone calls and e-mails about some kind of complex clearance issues and I really felt that I was using my writing, thinking and communications skills for my job. That's a good thing.




For some reason, I was terribly interested in the street life on my drive over to Braveheart's for our writing group. This traffic cop was working the intersection of Highland and Sunset. It's an amazing thing that she's doing. Made me feel very civilized to stop on a green at her command. I'm such a pack animal sometimes.



Just some people crossing the street. I don't think it would be an interesting image without the guy on the far crosswalk. Maybe it's still not...?


Followed this urban cowboy all the way down to La Brea, where he headed off into the sunset.



It was a great day to drive along with the window down.



Meanwhile, how is it I never knew about Resistance fighter Pearl Cornioley, who recently passed away at 93. Here's her obituary in the L.A. Times.

Good News Arrives with the Soap - Tuesday 2/12/2008

Good news! The strike is over and we're ready for a clean start.

Sort of ready. It's unclear how things will unfold at work. Will we be inundated with scripts? Will they trickle in? Which shows will continue and which will fold either for the rest of the season or forever?

We are pretty certain that the CSIs will be back. I work on CSI: Miami. But rumor has it that Bionic Woman is down for the count. And shows whose episodes are not so self-contained, that have a 22 to 24-episode plot arc (like, say, Desperate Housewives) will have to decide whether they can do the same in an abbreviated number of episodes or if they will wait until fall to continue.

I think most of us at work have mixed feelings. We're glad it's over and glad that the business remained viable. But also a little sad to see the end of our days of personal freedom and low stress.

Now the goal will be to not become completely stressed out.

In honor of the passing of Roy Scheider (1932-2008), please enjoy a 30-second reenactment of Jaws performed by bunnies. [Thanks for the tip, Toronto!]

The clown lives above Braveheart's kitchen sink. I stayed over after last night's much-needed writing group meeting. We wrote together. There's little that satisfies more than delighting people you respect, and we all did that for each other with last night's timed writing.

Workday - Monday 2/4/2008

I guess it's true that light carries color. This shot was taken right before dawn, in Burbank. Not much color got through the lens.

Christmas/Birthday Tea - Thursday 12/20/2007

Yeah, it would have been nice if I'd thought to take a photograph of this before I and my coworkers descended upon it like hyenas on voles.

Wow, was the food at The T Room in Montrose great! Most of us ordered the traditional tea and you could substitute other sandwiches from the menu. Mmm. The Lingonberry Chicken was surprisingly good. Watercress & cucumber may have been my favorite, with the Olivade coming in a close second.

Big pots of tea--we ordered the Noel blend and the Russian blend--on the table. Happiness. We celebrated Christmas and Momalisa's birthday. Food was wonderful, service was slow for our party of eight. It took about 20 minutes before they even brought us the tea, which came when the sandwiches and scones were ready.

My only food complaint was the fruitcake style candied fruit in the scones. I mean, yuck.

Everyone rose above the ominous fact that this is our last meal together for the foreseeable future. We will be working on kind of an on-call basis in January, a day or two a week maybe. I don't want to write about it.



The top of the Christmas tree, which everyone encouraged me to get a shot of... Scarily over-decorated for my taste.


Weens exhibits the classic tea room decorum one would expect of a lady. We're so proud!

[Hey, she reads this blog. She knew the risk she was taking!]




Looking up Honolulu Avenue from outside the T Room. Didn't get any good pix of the outside of the T Room. It's not terribly photogenic.


Weens pointed out this angel down the street, in front of an art gallery.

We went back to the office and opened our Secret Santa gifts from each other, and our gifts from the owners. Lovely cashmere scarves, all different colors. So soft and lovely.

I'm sleeping in mine.

My Reason for Living - Thursday 12/6/2007

In an effort to maintain my status as a viable contributing member of society, I am transcribing my entire card file of fictional business and product names into a searchable WordPerfect file.

The television series that I work with all shut down weeks ago. The movie I'm working on isn't producing a lot of requests (no rewrites, for one thing.) I've been helping out co-workers most of the week.

And working on adding all my precious information to the document OneL created over the course of several months, from her card file. It'll be helpful for all of us.

Today when I started I was up to "cemeteries." Hmm.

Meanwhile, the little bits of information leaking out about the WGA strike negotiations are not terribly encouraging. Those pesky writers actually want to talk about all kinds of issues, not just a few. Based on what happened in 1988, they'd better do just this; get it all on the table because the AMPTP has proven that it takes drastic action to get issues like reality television writing, etc., discussed.

Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily is a pretty good source for level-headed reporting on the strike. I forgive her for jumping the gun last week with optimism and practically reporting that the strike was over.

Remember "Dewey Defeats Truman!" my darling.

Small Office, Big Hearts - Thursday 10/25/2007

OneL learned this week that she has breast cancer. Damn.

It's Stage One ductal. If you are familiar with these sorts of diagnoses, you know that this was caught early and that this is the very most survivable form.

But treatment still involves surgery, radiation and medication. (No chemo predicted at this point.) It's all scary.

Another coworker put these flowers on her chair for OneL to find in the morning. She even had it downlit a lot like this (recreated with software here.)

Sometimes working in a small company has its downsides, like a bit of career insecurity and having to pick up the slack and work long hours some times. But we do care about the business and our work and each other.