Three Down, One To Go

Three down, one to go.

Because we are so well-fed on set, and haven't spent any money on groceries in almost a month, I rationalized that we could spoil ourselves with an evening downtown this weekend. I found a great hotel deal on Travelzoo, and so off we went.

While Jim browsed the comic book store, enjoyed a solo pub lunch and took advantage of a king-sized nap back at our hotel, I spent the afternoon at Vancouver Convention Center, wandering around the Circle Craft Christmas Fair with our script supervisor, Laura.

Just a side note observation, it took me years to find my groove in Kelowna, and slowly discover a handful girlfriends who I felt I clicked with. But in less than three weeks on set, I immediately clicked with about four different gals, and have received various invites to hang out. I find it bizarre and cool all at the same time.

Anyhoo, both Laura and her sister are great girls, and I really enjoyed my time with them. They kinda remind me of the Gilmer girls back home - only Australian. As for the art fair, it was huge and there was tons of neat stuff. It took much of my willpower not to buy every sparkly bauble (or wrought iron crow, as the case may be) that caught my fancy. Actually, while I did pick up a couple small Christmas gifts, the only thing I bought for myself were some random cards made on a 100+ year old printing press... which I suppose isn't really for myself after all, since I'll be giving them away. Oh yeah, and I also bought a jar of spicy pickled asparagus, which really are just for me. Jim was so grossed out by the sight of them, that he asked me to put them away while we ate dinner in our hotel room later on.

Yup... a whole city at our feet, and we ate in our hotel.

And it was nice.

Neither of us felt like going out. We really just wanted to chill this weekend. Besides, it's kinda fun to just go out and stay in all at the same time, if that makes sense. I mean, most times people pay for a hotel, and then only go back there to crash at the end of the night. Why not make being at the hotel the night out?

Anyway, Jim went out and grabbed a bottle of vino, while I rearranged the furniture in our suite, so our dining table had a window view. We ordered in a bunch of Greek food and two types of cheesecake for dessert.  

Also, while in Fort Langely a couple weeks ago, I purchased a set of those "table topic" cards - honeymoon edition. They were 50% off, and given how often we talk about DE (umm... it's all we EV-ER talk about!), I think it was $8 well spent! So I pulled them out during dessert, and we answered questions such as the three places we want to travel to together before we're 75, which of our partner's characteristics we hope our children inherit, and at what moment we realized we were in love. Yeah, so mushy crap like that. Still, it was nice to have a break from DE, which has just been so all consuming. (Then again, it has been all-consuming for years.) Our day-to-day work, finances, successes, and setbacks... just about everything ties back to DE in some shape or form. On one hand it's nice that we have something so huge that we can share together. On the other, it's exhausting. Sometimes it's preferable to just sit in silence, simply enjoying one another's company, rather than discuss anything to do with the movie.

Actually, right now I wish I was sitting in silence with Jim. Instead he was called in for a meeting at our production office in Burnaby until 9 tonight. (Twenty bucks says it'll go late... as always.) After that, he still has about a 40 minute drive ahead of him 'til he's home again. And then he'll have dinner, finish his shot list, wash up, and be back on set for 7:30 tomorrow. It's definitely an endurance test, but in some ways I think cramming a seven week shoot into four is a blessing in disguise. While the days are long and the stress is high, baptism by fire is probably the best way to go in this industry. If he can make it through this, he'll make it through anything.

Whew...

Like I was saying, three down, one to go.