Wednesday, July 31 - PREP DAY 3 - TGIF

For whatever reason 7am did not seem so cruel today; we actually got along just fine, it was like we had been friends for years.  Not great friends, but like the kind of weird-neighbor-you-run-into-at-the-grocery-store-every-so-often-and-politely-exchange-smalltalk-with friends, for years.  We were civil.  Quick shower and leftover sandwich for breakfast, then off to the excitement of another day!!!  

There was a meeting scheduled today with art department, so I sent a text to Michael around 8:15 asking if I should pick up some donuts and orange juice.  He quickly responded no, we didn’t have the budget.  I sat in the car, reading and re-reading the text.  Max cost of orange juice and donuts… maybe $17.  This was a 6-million dollar budget.  $17 is not going to make or break it, but whatever.  I told myself today that when things got moronic, pay attention because I wanted to write down every event with as much vivid detail as I could recall.

I arrived at the office around 8:40.  Michael was already there, already looking pained about his life.  He made me think of someone who was voted in high school as “most likely to have an ulcer”.  It hit me at some point that he spoke like an overbearing Jewish mother who was tearing her hair out trying to plan a bar mitzvah for an unruly tween, and it was such an accurate metaphor for me… every tiny detail that he was fussing about didn’t really matter, it was all fluff.  Nothing was all that urgent or worth the slightest amount of worry, but for Michael’s blood pressure, running out of blue cardstock seemed to demand the same panic attack as a life-or-death scenario.  All I could do was try to be a voice of reason, kind of like raising teenagers; and hope that even though they claimed not to listen to me out of principle, it would sink in at some point and seed an “original” idea that might even be laced with some common sense.  Of course, this approach rarely works with teenagers, and these were full grown adults.

Robert strutted into the office around 9:30 to teach us a lesson.  “So, I just want to mention, even though nobody will probably care, the way I like my staples.”  It was hard not to giggle a little but I stifled it.  This part, I actually do understand - wrongly placed staples times thousands of pages can get cumbersome to work around, so he was just letting us know we could make a small effortless adjustment to make his life easier.  I totally get that… what I didn’t get was the way he presented this point - a mixture of defiance, mansplaining, a little anger thrown in, capped off with anticipated disgust that nobody cared anyway.  “First of all, I hate paperclips.  For two reasons.  They tend to catch on papers and come apart in a stack, and also, my computer has a magnet in it, next to the power supply, you know, where the computer power cord plugs in, there’s a magnet, and paperclips stick to the magnet.”  I silently pictured his laptop sitting peacefully on his desk, then suddenly being mauled by a stack of paperclips, ferociously attacking the power supply magnet.  Okay, Robert, aaaah, I don’t know what to say here… I’m trying really hard not to laugh out loud, and just paying attention, need to write this shit down later…

“Oh, you don’t like paperclips, because you don’t scan anything.”  I just said it, flatly, not making any accusations, also not cutting any breaks.  

“No, I don’t scan anything,”  he paused.  “Also, when I staple something I like it to be vertical, in the upper left hand corner, as close to the edge as it can get, like this.”  He held up visual aids, two pieces of paper stapled together, with a vertical staple, in the upper left-hand corner.  Good thing you brought that.  “Now, when it’s landscape, the way I like it is different and maybe unexpected—“  (yes, that happened) “—the staple should be in the upper right hand corner, like this.”  He held up the second visual aid, two papers with a landscaped report, and the staple exactly the same place and direction as the first portrait-aligned visual aid.  “See? So that way when I’m flipping through them I can do this…” 

I had to tune out as he demonstrated how to flip from one page to the next, conveniently aided by the very well-placed example staples.  I was surprised he didn’t wheel in a projector and give us a powerpoint presentation, to make sure we were understanding the material, and follow it up with a timed exam, which would consist of two sets of papers in portrait and landscape orientation, and a stapler.  Except I knew why, because Michael would fail on purpose.

I watched him with a combination of amusement and studiously memorizing each detail, and managed not to laugh.  “Well that’s easy enough, we can do that.”  I smiled at him and he left, immediately followed by Michael rolling his eyes and resuming whatever earth-shattering emergency Michael was dealing with.

“Okay, so Paul and Hagai are coming in around 11.  And they are going to take that office, because we set it all up for them.  And the office supply order is coming in today, and then we need to put up those marker boards, and I need you to go to Flams to get some keys made.  Also, we need to put up the parking signs because when people in this building have a production they will take all of our parking spots, and those are our spots.”  The parking lot was kind of a joke, there was enough empty spaces to park an additional 500 cars, but Michael wanted to make sure our 20 spaces were marked and nobody else would take them.  I get it, I can handle that.  “We need to print the signs, and some of them will have names, I’ll send you the list of names.  The others can just say ‘TGIF Reserved Parking’, for the rest of the spots, so that people know those spots are reserved for, you know, TGIF.   And they need to be laminated.  And we need to find those kind of posts that the other company was using … do you know which company was using them?  The other marked spots?  I wonder if it’s the company that is moving out Friday.”  He raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘Can we steal their lawn darts?’  “Maybe you can go out to the lot and check, which company, and see what they did to mount their signs.  And I need you to go to the post office to pick up a roll of stamps, and then, you know, lunch.  And I’m thinking, the copy room needs like, some shelves, so maybe you can find something from the building, and I’m thinking I can just put all the office supplies in there, so everyone can use them if they need to, and of course I’ll keep a separate stash for when things run out, because people always say they’re out and then after they leave we clean out their desks and oh, look, they have a bunch of office supplies, because people hoard them.”

I listened to him act annoyed by the idea of other people doing what he did routinely, dismissed the thought and nodded at him.  “I think they used a, garden stake thing, for the parking.  But I’ll check.”

“Okay great, so you’ll do that, ok, and I need to work on this schedule.”  He resumed fervently studying his monitor.  The schedule was basically a printout of a google calendar, with one or two events filled in for the week, that would probably take him, all day.

“I’m on it.”

First I decided to put shelves in the copy room.  I went in there to find that nobody had bothered to even sweep it.  A year’s worth of dust had gathered amidst strewn trash and remnants of past tenants… it needed a good cleaning.  So I knocked that out, picked a spot against the back wall for the shelving, and moved a credenza nearer to the copier so that there would be a spot for stapling, making piles of copies, maybe putting a paper-cutter, sorting through collated whatevers and anything else people making copies might need table space for.  I found a couple of shelving cabinets in a back room nobody was using, loaded them onto a furniture dolly, wheeled them into the copy room and wiped them down.  There was plenty of room for a year’s worth of office supplies and paper on the shelving.  I felt pretty proud of myself, but I also noticed that while I was working A) nobody offered to help me, even with the shelving units I was hefting around by myself, and B) nobody was bothering me, probably so they wouldn’t feel obligated to offer any help.  I was fine with that.

Next I checked out the space where the marker boards were slated to go.   Next to Michael and Rebekah’s desks was a small open space, a blank wall and separate closed office surrounded with randomly placed empty file cabinets and pieces of disassembled cubicle desks.  Michael and Rebekah decided this area would belong to Paul and Hagai.  Having had a little exposure to Paul and Hagai, my impression of these two was that they would pick whatever space they liked, and settle there, regardless of Michael and Rebekah’s plans for them; which, I gathered after my limited exposure to those two, rarely seemed to make any sense.  

I pointed out to Michael that there was already a marker board in the hallway next to the kitchen, it was the same size as the one they were working on in the other office, and it was near some other empty desks, as well as next to another empty closed office.  

“But Paul and Hagai will be down there,” he gestured to the other end of the room, “because we set up that office for them.  We put them in that office, and it’s all set up, so they can use the wall down there next to it, so let’s put the marker boards there.”  I decided not to mention that Paul and Hagai will just settle wherever they feel like settling, and that he just blew $400 on marker boards that nobody really needed, even though both of these points seemed blatantly obvious.  

“Oh, okay.”  Thank you for mansplaining that to me.  At the very least we could consider pulling down the existing marker board and moving it.  Maybe I’ll bring that up tomorrow.  But for now, I assigned myself the task of cleaning up the shitpile that was immediately outside Paul and Hagai’s office, and spent the next hour arranging the filing cabinets, relocating up the cubicle pieces, and cleaning up the trash and random component debris around them.  Just as I wrapped up, dripping with sweat, Paul arrived, moved a table next to Rebekah’s desk, plugged in his laptop and planted himself there.  Rebekah was subtly but visibly bothered by this, I found this moderately hilarious and she was uncharacteristically quiet for the rest of the day.

Just as I was clearing up the last few remnants, Michael beckoned to me.  “Oh, so Loa, it’s like, almost 11.”

I looked at him, like, ‘really?’  “Lunch, right.”  I hadn’t forgotten.  Especially since lunch is specifically the only consistent job that I have, everything else is one-offs at this point.  ‘Almost-11’ was not cause to panic, but Michael apparently felt obliged as he peered at me over his glasses, eyes wide and brow furrowed, to remind me of this task, whilst I stood soaked in sweat from busting my ass all morning to be sure the producers didn’t arrive to an office that looked like a fucking pigsty.  “I’m on it.”

I sent everyone a menu and asked for their order when Michael came to explain to me how to list receipts in a spreadsheet, something I have done professionally for twenty years or so.  I asked him if we should total receipts by expense, and he said no.  “That is production accounting’s job, we provide a list, with totals, and that’s it.  The rest is up to them, they are just lazy and we are not here to do their jobs for them.”

“You don’t total by the expense account?”

“Nope, that is something production accounting is supposed to do.”

“Well, if I’m making a spreadsheet anyway, it’s a pretty easy step to just note the account, right?”

“No, because if we start doing that then suddenly they will want more.  If you give them an inch, they want a yard.”  I decided not to correct him on this old adage.

“Wow.  I have never, NOT done that.”  At this point I noticed Paul glance at Michael strangely.  He had apparently been listening to the conversation though he didn’t seem to be paying attention.  It struck me that this might be the first taste he was getting of Michael’s attitude.

“Well that’s the difference between Features and Commercials.”  Okay.  Features are less work, apparently.  I felt like this could be old-school IATSE disgruntlement talking, and I was mildly fascinated albeit disgusted.  Michael continued, “It’s just like the AD’s, sometimes they want us to send out the call sheet, but my thought is, they are the ones on the set, they have already handed everybody a copy of the call sheet, and we are waiting at the office, and they send us a call sheet and they want us to distribute it to the whole crew, and I’m like, ‘no, that’s not my job.’  We don’t do that, the AD’s can send their own call sheets, they’re just being lazy and want us to do everything, and it’s not our job.  It’s just like, we don’t need to know about what’s going on with the different departments, they need to handle their own thing.”  I wondered if Michael had ever been to a set before?  The idea that it was somehow an inconvenience for him to sit in an office and send one email when someone on set could do it sounded lazy to me, as people on set are often, you know, actually working.  

“I always kind of felt like production should be in touch with all departments, and know what's going on, no?”

“Nope.  That way if they screw up, it’s on them.”

“But production ends up getting in trouble for it anyway, right?”

“Nope.  We don’t get in trouble because they are supposed to handle their own stuff.”

“Okay.”  I responded with the feigned fascination of someone who was learning the ropes for the first time, grateful to Michael for showing me how to operate.  There was a knot in the pit of my stomach though, and I was questioning whether I could take 14 weeks of this mindset, to deliberately limit communication, deny knowledge of anything outside of your own office-supply and calendar world, in an effort not to assist anyone with the work they could likely use your assistance for, which could ultimately benefit the whole production for you to at least know about.

Maybe there was an element of self-preservation here but it sounded like bullshit to me.  Making a film should be a team effort, right?  You work closely with your department heads and if you’re lucky, for this short engagement you’re both part of, they become your family, right?  What the fuck was this cold-shoulder-fuck-everybody thing?  Was it a necessary answer to decades of abuse?  Maybe.  Was Michael the exception or the rule in the film industry?  If I were producing, would I hire Michael were he the last fucking coordinator on earth?  If I was producing, would I want to know as much as I could about the whole operation?  At least bullet points?  I’m convinced that I would, and I also want to work with people like-minded, who want to keep the lines of communication open, if for no other reason than to know where all the money I was spending was actually going.  You want to talk about budget?  Fastest way to fuck up a budget is tell everybody to spend whatever they want and don’t tell you on what, because it’s not your job to know, and then buy marker boards you don’t need.

After working in this office for a minute and being incessantly aggravated by the poor fluorescent lighting, I mentioned, “You know what would be cool in here, is just some floor lamps in the corners, maybe desk lamps, and to turn these overheads off.”

“It’s not in the budget.”  I was told, and left it at that.

Later on I was installing the copier driver on my laptop when I noticed that A) it was black-and-white, not color (why….?), and B) the toner was low.  I asked about this.  

“Right, so, we always get whatever toner was left in it, from the last rental, that’s why we buy a toner cartridge, but we can still get, like, a few hundred pages, out of it.  Sometimes if you just shake it back and forth…” He began to blather about how to stretch a toner cartridge for a few more precious printed pages, but this was not my question.

“I mean, it was just delivered, is it standard to deliver with only a little bit of toner left?”  In my book, this was the equivalent of renting a car with an empty gas tank.

“Right, that’s why we buy another cartridge, because we get whatever was left from the last rental….” This was clearly pointless.  These cartridges ran over $200 but there was no logic here that Michael would recognize, about a copier installer deliberately delivering a unit with no toner left which would force the renter to buy another cartridge immediately.  I gave up on this argument, but Michael continued to school me.  “You know the deal, right?  When we change the cartridge, we order another one.”

“Oh, so you don’t find out you’re out when you’re halfway through printing tomorrow’s sides?”  I laughed a little because ...

“It happens.  Oh, my god it happens aaaaaalll the time.  You have no idea.”  He rolled his eyes in remembrance of past incompetents.  “So anyway, as soon as we change it, we order another one.”

“Oh, I believe it.”  I chuckled a little.  “What bothers me, is when someone changes the toner, then hides the old one behind the copier, and I don’t know it’s changed, until we run out, and I look for a fresh one, and all I find is the old one in a new box.”

“Oh my god, right?  Why do people do that?  Or, they cause a paper-jam, and just leave, and you don’t find out about it, because they don’t fix it, and they’re like, ‘that’s not my job.’  I hate that!  It’s everybody’s job!”

Again I listened incredulously to Michael act annoyed at behavior he practiced himself professionally.  ‘It’s not my job?’  Really?  That bothers you?  

On a side note, the word “incredulous” is becoming much more frequent in my everyday speech.

Meanwhile, Rebekah was pitching Paul on a caterer.  “I have this great caterer, I know she will be awesome, and she will always work with me on the budget, so can I go ahead and book her for this?”

Paul responded as any seasoned line producer would.  “Get a couple of quotes, and we’ll send them through, and go from there.”

“I really don’t want to do that.”  Although I wasn’t part of this conversation, her response pierced through the office to the center of my head.  Paul was making a reasonable request that any production manager should honor, and that was to bargain shop a little bit, or at least pretend to for higher-ups, and Rebekah was immediately dismissing it, because she wanted to hire her friend.  She was so transparent it was sickening, and I could feel Paul bristling a little bit.  “It’s just that she works all the time, and right now she’s available, and I’m afraid that she’s going to get booked up if we don’t jump on it, and I know she will work with me on the budget.”  Okay, so the shoot is still almost five weeks away, and she’s using the ‘this-deal’s-only-available-for-a-limited-time’ excuse to avoid getting a catering quote from somewhere else?  Plus, she used the budget line twice, which probably means it’s not true.  No decent producer is that stupid, and Paul knew better.  I wonder if Rebekah even knows any other caterers… but either way, it’s not hard to get a quote, there are production caterers all over LA.

After lunch I was tasked with creating and posting the parking signs.  Since they needed to be laminated, I looked up lamination sheets at Staples for $57/100 and forwarded to Michael.  Rebekah immediately responded.

“That’s too much.  We need to take them to Staples Copy/Print center, and they will do them for cheaper.”

I doubted this statement.  “I found another box, with only 50 sheets, that should be enough, for about $30, would that work?”

“No, it’s too much.  Call Staples and find out how much they charge to laminate them.”

I spent the next half-hour researching this.  We were creating 20 parking signs.  Staples charged $1.89 - 2.59 per letter-sized page, plus tax.  This would come to a minimum of $41.58.

“Do you want them to be heavier duty?”

“Yeah, they should be sturdy, they need to hold up.”

The heavy duty version of Staples would come to $56.98.

“You can take them to FedEx, that will be cheaper.  They have a self-serve machine.”

FedEx Office charges $2.49 per page, plus tax, this would come to $54.78.  And just for good measure, Office Depot charges the same as FedEx.  

“I just want it to be the best solution.”

“Do you want to have FedEx or Staples do it even if it’s more expensive?”  

“No, I just want it to be the best option.”  Rebekah went on to mumble something illegible as Michael approached my desk.  

“Did you find the stakes?”

“I think so, I think Home Depot has them, I just can’t find them on their site.”

“Well, okay.  So I need you to go to Flams and get the keys first, then go to the post office and get the stamps.  Then, just go to Home Depot and if they have them they have them, but if they don’t have them maybe they will have something else, like, just tell them what you want and they might be like, ‘oh, I think there’s something in plumbing that will work,’ and maybe you can just find something that is similar or that will get the job done and just, go there and ask, you know, and see what happens.  Maybe they will be like, ‘oh, here’s something in garden’ or whatever, but usually somebody somewhere will be able to help you or find something else that will be something we can use.  Or you know, that will work for this.”  

I wondered if Michael had ever been to Home Depot before, and attempted to ask an apathetic stoned 20-year-old on minimum wage for assistance.  Or maybe he had, and it had damaged him for life.  Maybe his mind was still trapped there, and his body wandered around like a shell of a man trying desperately to find plumbing!  Ooooh kaaaay reel it in Loa… 

Michael abruptly leaned in and whispered to me, almost inaudibly, “And if you find the right laminate at Staples, just get it.”  I nodded in acceptance of this clandestine mission and left.

When I got back the task at hand was to laminate the parking signs.  I had printed them all on my portable printer on yellow cardstock, because it was a color printer and looked better than black-and-white.  Now, to get an idea of the weirdness that happened next, it’s important to know that we are working in an open-floor-plan space.  There are short cubicle dividers around Michael and Rebekah's desks, that land below the shoulder; the rest of the room doesn't even have those so we are all clearly visible to eachother.  I spent the next 20 minutes or so laminating the signs, first one side, then the other.  I lined them up, pressed out the wrinkles, and was stacking them all neatly next to me.  I hadn’t taken a break, since, well, never.  On sign 18 or so, Michael sidled up to me, apparently impatient with my progress.  “Are you pretty close to going outside?”

I looked up, didn’t say anything, but smiled at him, with a look that said, ‘you can see me working here, right?’

He leaned in and spoke in a hushed voice.  “I’m just trying to get out of here before 7, you know?”

It was about 4:30.  “I’m almost done, then I can run down there and do it.  I will need to borrow a hammer from Mark.”

His voice returned to it’s normal volume.  “Oh, no rush, ok, no problem, just want to make sure these get done tonight, they look beautiful.  Oh my god they are so beautiful I could cry.”  He diva-walked away towards the kitchen.

Really.  They are letter-sized pages on yellow paper that read ‘RESERVED PARKING TGIF” in red arial caps, wrapped in cheap laminate.  I personally didn’t feel too emotional about them, but, I was doing a fabulous job, so there was that.

I finished the laminates, scooped up the pile, grabbed the stakes, some packing tape and a razor knife, and headed downstairs to Mark’s cave.  He loaned me a hammer and some work gloves, and then I exited the building to the burning sun of a midsummer 5pm. 

When I accepted the position of “Office PA” I hadn’t really planned on this kind of work, but whatever.  I spent the the next 45 minutes moving the rocks in the parking lot median, pounding the wire brackets into the dirt underneath, then replacing the rocks to add stabilization, before I saw Michael approaching me in the parking lot.  

“Are you okay?”

I looked up at him from my crouched position, hammer in hand.  “Yeah?”  I was drenched in sweat for the second time today, practicing manual labor in the unrelenting California sun.

“Oh, okay, I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.  I texted you but I thought maybe you left your phone in the office.”

I pulled my phone out of my back pocket, he had texted three minutes ago.  “I’ve got it, sorry didn’t see it.”

“Oh no worries, just making sure you’re okay, cuz I was up in the office thinking, ‘I wonder if she’s okay,’ so I just wanted to check.”  I get it.

The office was located directly in front of the parking lot, and he could have looked out a window at any time to see me working, but I let that go.  “I’ve got all the stakes in, I had to move the rocks to get to the dirt, then I’m replacing the rocks so they’re more stable, and now I just have to tape all the signs on.”

He rolled his eyes, knowing that this was no picnic.  “Oh, I’m so sorry, but they look great, and, yeah, they really look great, was just checking in on you!”

“I should be done in, another, 20 minutes or so.”  

“No rush!  They look great!  Okay.”  Michael left and I wondered what that was about.  Although, each time I crouched down to pound in a stake, I’d stand up and go black a little bit, but I honestly didn’t think it was visible from the windows above me.  This happened commonly before my period when I’d forgotten to take iron, it had been happening for years and was pretty good at covering it to look like I was just stepping back and wiping the sweat away.  

I wrapped it up a little after six and returned the hammer and gloves to Mark before heading back up to the office, my wet shirt and jeans clinging to my undoubtedly smelly frame, hands black from handling dirt and rocks of the parking lot.

As I walked in Michael couldn't resist an opportunity.  “Okay, so we should think about gathering up all the trash.”  Really?

A short chuckle may have emerged despite my efforts to choke it.  “I’m a little grimy.”  I stopped in the kitchen to wash my hands and grab a water from the shimmering, spacious, spotless, stainless steel Samsung fridge.  I kind of wanted to crawl inside of it for a moment but resisted the urge.  Instead, I picked up a couple of trash bags and started to make the rounds.  

As I was emptying the office trash bins, Michael was on hold with Apple tech support, trying to figure out why his calendar wasn’t syncing properly.  Apparently he was still working on the schedule.  “When she goes, you go!”  He whispered to me, and I looked at him and nodded in acknowledgment.  

“I’m only going to stay long enough to figure out this calendar thing, but when she leaves, you can leave!”  He was gesturing towards Rebekah’s empty desk to let me know I didn’t have to stay until he left.  Since he was on the phone, I didn’t say anything but looked at him again and nodded again to say, ‘I understand.’

Apple returned to the line.  “Thank you for calling Apple Care, how may I assist you today?”

Michael looked positively panicked.  “Can you hold for a second?”

“Sure.”

He muted the phone and loudly whispered this time, still gesturing wildly to Rebekah’s desk, “When she goes, you can go!”

“Okay.”  I nodded a third time and this time he seemed to think I finally got the point, and returned to his call.  Apparently he really wanted me to leave.

I finished with the trash and stacked it by the door before returning to my desk to pack up my laptop.  Rebekah had already packed up and was chatting with Robert by the front of the office when I waved to Michael that I was leaving.  

He muted the phone again.  “Did you get Rebekah’s salad?”

I looked at him, confused,  “What?”

“Her salad, it’s right there.”

Hidden behind a short divider on an unused desk was the remains of Rebekah’s lunch.  “Wow.” I didn’t really know how to process this.  “There are, plenty of trash cans around here.”

Michael rolled his eyes.  “I know.  Did you already take the trash down?”

“No, I’ll do it on the way out.”

“See you tomorrow.”

It just so happened that Rebekah wrapped up her conversation with Robert just as I was passing through the front door, so she followed me to the elevator.  “I’m going to a pizza party tonight,”  She ventured, clearly not expecting a response.  “A bunch of friends from my bowling team -- I didn’t bowl this summer but I’m on a bowling tea m and I usually do -- one of them owns a pizza a beer place in Santa Monica, it’s actually a really cool pizza and beer place, so every so often we get a bunch of people together and go out …” she kept on going at warp speed, as I studied her voice, her body language, the content of this fluffy conversation without saying anything.  At some point my amusement produced a slight involuntary smile creeping around my face, standing in the elevator clutching two bags of trash.  She glanced at me briefly and was visibly confused by the look on my face, then immediately began scrolling through her phone and then talking loudly to herself as the elevator doors opened.  “Oh, he’s coming?  Why is he coming?  I can’t believe… “ she had stepped out of the elevator and her voice trailed off as she looked back…. Clearly she expected me to follow but I was standing there headed for the basement, where the trash goes.  “Oh you’re not—? Oh, okay, see you tomorrow!”  I wonder about Rebekah, I think she needs to be the center of attention for some reason, maybe she doesn’t feel like part of the ‘in’ crowd otherwise or something?  Or maybe her incessant blabbing is just a combination of nerves and ADD.  Hard to say. 

So after three days, I have established a couple of ideas about Rebekah and Michael.  Rebekah will always challenge a good idea if it’s not her own, because she needs to feel smart; even though her ideas are inefficient, expensive and lack any common sense.  Michael needs to tell me to do something immediately before I’m going to do it anyway, because I’m his only underling at the moment, and he needs to feel important; even though he has fashioned a career out of deliberately staying as unimportant as possible.   It’s a miracle the film industry has survived this long.  

I skipped the gym tonight because my landlord stopped by and I found out she had a stroke last year, and still had fuzzy vision in her left eye.  I began to ask her about her treatment and therapy because I thought it might be beneficial information for Holly if there was much crossover in her symptoms.  It turns out, there was, and she talked about one of the things that the Kaiser Neurology team refused to address, possible pressure on the optic nerve.  Holly’s headache’s always radiated from her right eye and from Berenice’s account, pressure to the optic nerve could be fatal if not treated.  Later on I talked to Holly for about an hour to recap the day, and still later chatted with Jon, who had asked me to go away this weekend with him and his kids.  I didn’t think it was a good move because I expected to be catching up on sleep all weekend, so I opted to pass this time around.  Still later, an old bandmate asked me to play bass with him for a show Saturday night, which might actually be fun.  I’m missing the Organ Donors gigs and could use a little rock and roll outlet at the moment.

It’s 2:15 am, and I’m going to bed.

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