Another day, another blog.......

And another round of filming. Spending four hours trapped in a lecture theatre whilst they filmed outside the auditorium, being unable to leave and wishing they would just wrap us, only to have them come back in, film 15 minutes of scene and then tell us we could go. Why they couldn't do this four hours earlier, and then let us go, we don't know.

Anyway, I have come back home to our Halloween party, which started off as quite a small affair and now at midnight is degenerating into involving the hardcore partiers and shows no sign of abating so I can get some much-needed sleep. There are people upstairs dressed as rednecks, robots, Barbie, witches, joggers, truckers, vampires and pirates, to name but a few. One of my housemates has disappeared into the depths of their room with someone that they should really not be in there with, despite my warnings and my stern glances. I wash my hands of the whole thing.......

And I am fairly drunk, but sadly not drunk enough to not really know what I am doing. There are about three girls in the bathroom next door (why can't they go in individually) and I am obviously getting old, because I just wish everyone would bugger off so I can go to bed! Maybe the lack of any male eye candy is the problem. Correction - any unattached or un-emotionally-attached eye candy. Plenty of 'taken' eye candy.

Oh, and the new phone that I bought yesterday hasn't activated or something today, so it doesn't work. I couldn't call anyone today and it sucked. I have to go back to the Bell store tomorrow and shout at them, which is another thing on the to-do list that wasn't really needed. I should stop moaning and try and get some sleep, or at least get in the bathroom before six million people start queuing in there and someone pukes. And lock my door, so that no-one can puke on me......Did I mention that I am getting old?!

Home, home on the range

Yesterday my dad booked me a ticket back to England for Christmas - so I shan't be repeating the 'Sitting around at home without anyone to celebrate with' spectacle of last year, thank goodness. I couldn't book the ticket myself because the Air Canada website studiously refused to let me do so, and after being on the phone with an annoying woman who was obviously in a call centre over the other side of the world and didn't know anything, I gave up. My dad couldn't do it either, and had to book elsewhere in the end - so Air Canada, sort your website out.

Anyway, I will be in England from the 16th December to the 9th January, so I hope to tootle around the country and see a few people. And get used to driving on the other side of the road again. Hoorah! I plan to come back with chocolate, roll-on deodorant (strangely hard to get here), risotto rice and other random things. If anyone wants anything from Canada, let me know!! :o)

It could have been worse

So the film guy wrote a very nice e-mail back to me, telling me how flattered he was and how he wants to go out and get to know me as a friend, but that for reasons which I am unable to write here for other people to read, going out with me is a no-go. Which is ok, because at least he wrote back and was nice to me.

*Sigh* back to the drawing board.

In other news, today was my first day of volunteering with the Canadian Music Awards. I met the band BOY (who I am about to dash out and see live) and a Canadian Idol guy. Randy Bachman was somewhere around and there were many producers lurking, so it was quite an interesting day. Viva tomorrow.

There may be hope yet

After some determined googling, and a good bit of improvisation, I finally found my film guy. I think. It seems too random that there would be another guy with his name, who works in Vancouver on the same projects and does the same jobs, so I am crossing my fingers. I'm also hoping that the e-mail address on his resume still works, that my e-mail gets through the spam filters, and that he's nice about shooting me down in flames. Please, please, please, please, please be nice, please be nice, please, please, please.......

The fates conspire against me

After the excitement of spending five days filming with one of the most well-known actors in film, I come down to earth with a bump as I realise that I may have missed my chance to ask my favourite film crew guy out on a date. The first two days of filming were disappointing as he wasn't on set, but this was immediately forgotten as I signed in on Monday morning to find him at the table. He got up and shook my hand with a smile, remembering my name thank god, and we spent the next two days chatting in between takes. I was so damn scared to ask him out (fearing that he is not single, and I would therefore embarrass the two of us by asking) that I resolved on Tuesday evening to give him a note at the end of Wednesday's filming, with my phone number and e-mail address, leaving it up to him as to whether to contact me or not. Only to come in this morning and find that he wasn't on set. Gutted is an understatement......

So now I have his full name and the rough location where he lives in Vancouver, and I also checked for a wedding ring. But other than that I am not much further forward, since I don't have his e-mail address, phone number or home address. I am kicking myself for not doing something on Monday or Tuesday, but when there are 449 other people around you you don't get much chance to be private. It wouldn't matter if he was an extra, but an extra asking a film crew guy out is kind of like going above your station in life, and it might be frowned upon if done publically. Not to mention that I'd embarrass the crap out of the guy if he was married or had a girlfriend and had to explain this to me. Or indeed if he didn't like me enough to go on a date with me.

Damn my reticence!!! I am resorting to seeing if he is working with us on Sunday, and if he isn't then I am entrusting the aforementioned note (in envelope, away from prying eyes) to the main wrangler who has been working with us. I don't know her well, but she's a very nice woman with kids, happy and jolly, and the sort of person who would be happy to pass a note on without getting all curious. Indeed she might have the film guy's phone number or e-mail, which would be even better.

It was good to see him for two days, but I'm pissed off that I didn't take my chance to find out once and for all if he is attached. Is it not to be? :o( And can I really be this desperate to ask the guy out after meeting him three times? Answers on a postcard please, addressed to 'Gutted of Vancouver'.

PS. Even though I know his first and last names now, and his rough location in Vancouver, the guy remains stubbornly un-googlable and un-people finderable. Chance and fate suck.

The next week.....

....looks pretty hideous! Having done two days of filming already, here is my week:
Monday - filming all day
Tuesday - filming all day
Wednesday - filming all day
Thursday - Volunteer for Western Canadian Music Awards 9-4, dance class, England work, awards bands
Friday - Volunteer for Western Canadian Music Awards 9-4, England work, awards bands
Saturday - Volunteer for Western Canadian Music Awards 9-4, England work, awards bands
Sunday - filming all day

I think I may be dead.

Filming doesn't get much better than this!

Today we filmed the same scene in the same lecture room for 12 hours straight, with only a 45 minute break in the middle for lunch. I and 39 other extras were students, sitting alongside this girl and this guy, who many of you will recognise.

But what made the day was that for 12 hours we watched this guy act, up close and personal. And boy, can he act!!

Just a quick note

To confirm that I am still alive. I have a load of work to do, so I must be quick. I kind of shot myself in the foot today by asking my extras agency for some work, because they rang my housemate to book her in (and I told her to join them, so I was pissed that they didn't phone me). So then of course they sent my details to the film company, who only took two people from my agency, one of which was me. Eight days of work!!! But of course this means that the day I spent pissing about today instead of doing my England work has now bitten me on the arse and I have to work til god knows when to get this computer stuff done, as we start filming tomorrow.....

I also have to miss a day of work invigilating for my friend at SFU, so she'll kill me. But then she had too many people anyway. I also miss one dance class, one ESS meeting, and a volunteer orientation for the Music Awards, unless we finish filming early. Luckily, filming is at UBC and is 5 mins up the road, and the volunteer people haven't replied to my e-mails, so they can shove it. I can't turn down 8 days of film work.

So, news. Yesterday I had an interview and testing with a temping agency, which took ages. I went to a book sale with my friend Tony and bought 8 books for $7.50. I saw a coyote wandering down a main road and into someone's garden whilst on the bus. Earlier in the week I made Thanksgiving dinner for 15 people and ate it. I got over the flu and I went to the Killers/British Sea Power. The Killers rocked and BSP pretty much were average. Don't see them live, but listen to their music. Anything else? I don't think so.

So the next five days straight I am filming, so I won't be in much or update much. Normal stuff then!!

I'm dreaming of...... my exes?

Strange as it seems, they keep coming into my dreams and doing random things. None of which I can now remember, because I forget about them not long after I dream about them, but they just keep turning up there and not getting out of my head. Is this my brain telling me that I have had enough of being single? I think I was in a restaurant with one of them, and then there was something about a train, and jumping off it with a newspaper under my arm, but who knows what my brain was doing. I have the flu and a raging fever at the moment, so it might be something to do with that.

Anyway, these strange dreams prompted me to think about my exes, and wonder what they are up to now. I keep in touch with nearly all of them (that sounds like there are tens of them dotted around - there really aren't that many) but there is one who I haven't spoken to for 8 years, not since he dumped me by letter after 2 1/2 years together, 2 days before our holiday to Paris. Actually I wouldn't really care if he'd got run over by a bus soon afterwards, but there are two others who I don't contact for the sake of my sanity, and one who I do contact but who only e-mails me back when he remembers that I exist (which isn't often). I know what he's up to, but not in as much detail as I'd like. The other two I have no idea about; I know they must be alive, otherwise I'd have heard from friends that they were no longer around. But I don't know where they are now or what they're doing, although I can make a few educated guesses. I could just e-mail them and ask, but my pride doesn't let me, and anyway I'd then be really pissed off if they didn't e-mail me back........

I feel like there are a few unresolved issues I need to sort out with some of my exes - and indeed tackle the problem of why a couple of them don't really qualify as exes at all, since in their eyes we never had a proper relationship. I contemplated what it would be like to settle down with a couple of them (well, three of them actually) and came to the conclusion that one of them was never going to be husband material, for the simply reason that I couldn't see how our life would work out together. We weren't too bad as a 'couple', but anything more than that just would have been too much work for the guy. He didn't really do hard work when it came to girls.

The other two I could see myself with in the long term, and sometimes I think I still can. Which is kind of a bummer, since I'm now 4,000 odd miles away from them (I assume) and persuading people to come over to Canada and visit me is hard. It's much easier to see someone in Europe on a whim, since the flights are cheap and if things go horribly wrong you can be home within a couple of hours. But when the flights are a few hundred pounds and 9 hours out of your life, people aren't so willing to take the chance. It would be fantastic if one day in the near future I got an e-mail, saying, "Hey, I'm coming over to Vancouver to see you - get an airbed ready for me and prepare to amuse me for a week" but sadly I don't think that's going to happen. I can but hope.......

I have to stop being bored

Because I keep booking myself damn concert tickets!! Someone stop me from feeding this addiction :o( I have four possibilities written down, but so far have only succumbed (spelling?) to Jason Mraz. The others are Stars (a distinct possibility), Broken Social Scene (fifty/fifty) and OAR (probably not). Foreigner I have ruled out as being too expensive and like watching my parents being on stage, and Echo and the Bunnymen on the basis of me not liking their early stuff (although I haven't downloaded their more recent stuff, so I can't really judge them). If I search a bit more I'll probably find other things that I want to go to, so I need to get a job so I can't trawl through Ticketmaster!!! If I write that on my resume, do you think someone will employ me? :o)

One year on

On this day in 2004 I flew into Vancouver, with two huge bags and a stuffed moose to keep me company. One year on and I am in a rented house with 7 other people to keep me company, but still have no job and no significant other. Come to think of it, there haven't really been any insignificant others either, except for one, who I haven't heard from for a while but who I invited to our Halloween party in a few weeks, because he's good eye candy ;o)

So today I went out and bought the biggest chocolate cake I could find to share with my housemates, and we just sat down to devour some of it. It was pretty much heaven. For $9 it didn't really match Gilles' $80 bottle of champagne that we drank last week to celebrate his first month here, but then I'm a cheapskate and I love chocolate, so what can I say. It went down just as well. I woke up this morning to find a cute note on my door wishing me "To find a job you like and a man you love" for the next year, and when someone rang me this evening I thought perhaps the former was coming true, but it was just someone about a volunteer position at the Canadian Music Awards. Which was good, since I get to work with some cool people and hear some good music, but paying me would have been even better! I went to a Latin Funk class and came back with grand plans to get drunk and be silly, but I can't actually be arsed to get drunk now as it's already 9pm. So I'll try and be silly without drink. I'll be interested to see where that goes.....

Apparently, we rock.....

Vancouver

Athlete

Last night was the Athlete concert - two gigs in four days is good going by my standards - and it was extremely good. I sat there thinking how much they looked like a band made up of someone's little brother and his friends, who used to practice in the garage on Sundays. Geekiness prevails in that band. But they play damn well, and I was quite glad to realise that actually most of the Athlete songs I have on my computer are the least-good ones, which means that the most-good ones are still to get. Christie and I thoroughly enjoyed the show, and although it looked for a minute as though the lead singer had given away his guitar to someone in the audience at the end of the last song, actually the roadie took it back when the lights came up. Which was kind of rude really, but there you go. I bought myself an Athlete T-shirt and didn't look at it too closely, because it was dark, and when I got it home I found that a drunken blind person had printed the logo on, because it's sloping down the shirt rather than being straight across. But then I guess it adds character to it. Or something.

Anyway, now I've only got one more gig ticket up on my pinboard, the Killers and British Sea Power on the 13th October, so I'd better start booking myself some more gigs or I'll start to get withdrawal symptoms. I'm keeping a look out for things that are coming up, but so far nothing has caught my fancy.

A note of caution: I've just got back from seeing Into The Blue at the cinema. Don't bother - unless you feel satisfied when you come out of movies in which all the bad guys die, all the good guys live, everyone who does die should have been dead 10 minutes before they actually perished but magically have superhuman strength, and where the treasure is found and everyone lives happily ever after. But it was a choice between that and Made In Heaven (or whatever the hell it's called) so it wasn't really much choice at all.

Now I've just eaten a chicken/chilli/basil concoction with rice that my lovely housemate made and left for me in the fridge, because he's nice like that, and apparently there is an ice cream cookie waiting for me as well. So, dear readers, I'm off to scoff my little heart out. Ciao!!