Full Circle

In 1997, I moved out of my parents house to the big city for school. I was on my own for the first time. Well, not quite on my own. Like almost all first year students in residence, I had a roommate. Her name was Erin. She was nice, fun, kind of kooky (in the best way), and even though we weren't best friends or anything, we were somehow more. Living with someone is hard. Sharing a bedroom with someone is harder. Not everybody can pull it off. Though we ran in different social circles and didn't spend a lot of time together, we were still friends at the end of the year.

There was only one other pair of roommates on our floor who could boast the same.

Over the years, we didn't really stay in contact, except for some fleeting encounters in the ether. But now, six years later, things have come full circle. Tonight we interviewed and pretty much locked in a new tenant for the empty bedroom in September.

Yup. My old roommate, Erin. Who is still as nice, fun, and kooky as she ever was.

It was kind of a strange evening. Nathaniel was just down the street, and came over. Megan, who was due to meet with Erin at 8, showed up an hour late (due to strange events of her own). But everyone seemed to get along quite well.

After everyone went home, I ended up writing 1,000 words on Elysium 2, and then watching a DVD -- L'Odyssee d'Alice Tremblay. Which was surreal. It's kind of like a low-budget, Telefilm Canada, Quebequois version of The 10th Kingdom. With kink. And really cute bunny slippers. Not great -- I'm not aching to buy the DVD and add it to my shelf next to T10K -- but for Canadian cinema, it wasn't half bad. I called the ending about 20 minutes into the movie, and some of the humour was just BAD, but the movie did have certain charms.

And now I'm off to bed.
posted by Sarah E. at 2:00 AM

Dammit!

My dream job is in the States. And you have to be getting credit for it. And it's unpaid. But DAMMIT!

Jim Henson Company Internships
Film/TV Development Intern Positions Available
Accepting resumes for Fall, Spring and Summer Interns
in our Los Angeles office


Internship Description:

Supporting the Jim Henson Company creative team in the development of fantasy genre films and television.

Duties include; reading lots of scripts & books, writing coverage, creative research, writer/director/design research, compiling artwork and pitch materials, general office support, assisting executives, coordinating materials with the Archive department, running occasional errands, etc.

We are looking for students with a great positive attitude, desire to learn, and willingness to be flexible. This is a fun, relaxed place to work with a lot of creative energy and a good mix of hard work.
posted by Sarah E. at 1:42 AM

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On Writing

Something I talked about with Dan the other day brought up my views on this big nebulous thing called "writing".

To me, writing (and publishing) is a huge mountain, full of sheer drops, peaks, pitfalls, plateaus, and dead ends. You can fall into these if you're not careful. Sometimes there's no way to see them coming. Climbing the mountain is extremely difficult, and it takes a long time, but the view from the top is pretty spectacular.

There are people on all levels of this mountain. Sometimes people on a smaller peak like to delude themselves into thinking theirs is better than anyone else's. Sometimes the people who've reached the top like to lord over the people below them, and fight like hell to keep their spots at the top to themselves. And sometimes the people who've reached it like to reach out and give a hand up to the people who are still climbing.

I'm not very far up this mountain yet. I'm fortunate enough to have a few people who reach back to help me up every so often. But I sometimes forget how far up I've come until I get a call from someone who's still just starting up the mountain. And then, even though I'm not far up, even though I'm still climbing, even though I still get help from the people farther up than me, I reach down to give a hand to the people coming after me. Because I may not have gotten very far, but I can still show them the path I've taken to get as far as I have.

And climbing the mountain is a lot more fun when you've got company.
posted by Sarah E. at 9:58 AM

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FARSCAPE ALERT!!!

Breaking news from Julie's Newsgroup:

Please watch Hypaspace, on SPACE THE IMAGINATION STATION today.

It's a media news feature that runs just before the hour. I believe it will
be on at 5:57 pm, but will likely run several times over during the day.
This particular one features interviews with 5 Farscape cast members.

I would appreciate this announcement being shared with those on Save
Farscape boards and related sites. While I'm not personally advocating the
recording and posting of television broadcasts, I do feel they'll want to
know about this.

Julie is IN with the guys at Space... this sounds like it has the potential to be big.
posted by Sarah E. at 10:48 AM

Oh, Get OVER It!

I thought today's Head-Up-The-Ass Award would go to A.S. Byatt for her "Harry Potter and the Childish Adult" article -- don't bother paying for it, it's not worth it, but she basically says it's the refuge of people who watch reality TV. But instead, the award goes to Caleb Carr for his response to it:

Let children who love Harry read on. But let adults know that their obsessive devotion is feeding something far more frightening than the dark arts: a retreat from the complexities of adulthood in a dangerous world.

My God. His head's so far up, I'm amazed he hasn't turned himself inside out yet.

On the up side, my shift at the museum yesterday was a blast. We had Bob visiting yesterday, the other guy in my life. He's squishy. He's cuddly. He's a ball python, but he's absolutely adorable. And when Bob left, we discovered that the male hornyhead chub in our freshwater aquarium had built himself a nest out of pebbles by moving them, one at a time, with his mouth (we're talking hundreds of pebbles here) and watched as he courted the female, fertilized the eggs, and proceeded to care for and defend them.

Nature is extremely cool. And at least the cool natural phenomena doesn't get all arrogant and full of itself.
posted by Sarah E. at 10:47 AM

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I Think I Need Longer Hair...

I just opened my office door to go to the bathroom and found it blocked by three very heavy, shoulder-high panels of drywall, stacked in such a way that I couldn't budge them. I had to call two of the A/C installation guys over to let me out. First I'm under siege, and now they're sealing me in. I feel like Rapunzel. :oP

I finally managed to make the TorCon panel selection thingamajig work today, and got all my panel selections in, squeaking in just under the wire. There was one though that made me laugh:

857 Labcoats vs Shirts - Scientists vs Writers
The audience comes up with a doomsday scenerio which the panellists must find a solution to. Can the scientists best the writers with a creative solution to the doomsday scenerio?
Panelist Qualifications: scientists and writers Scientists: Jean-Louis Trudel, David De Graff, Dr. Isaac Szpindel, Peter Watts, Writers: Julie Czerneda, Sarah Jane Elliott, David Shtogryn, Michael Lennick, Robert Sawyer

Major double-take time. "Huh," thought I, "I think I'm pretty qualified to be me. Check!"

I have no idea how my name made it on that list, and I feel WAY out of my league, but look at that list! It's going to be so much fun!

Pyewacket remains well, and enjoys helping me work on the computer. Thanks to the high back of my desk chair, his favourite perch now involves resting his hindquarters on the back of the chair and his paws on my shoulders. My sibling thinks the kitten-on-the-shoulder thing makes me look like a really wimpy pirate.



Life has been crazy-go-nuts lately. Nathaniel, Amanda, Peter, Nancy, the sib and I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean, which was so much fun. Johnny Depp has the BEST ENTRANCE EVER. I really loved that movie. Karina and I went to X2 last night, too, which was just as good the second time around.

Megan and I attacked the hideous orange bedroom yesterday, and it is now the bedroom-formerly-known-as-orange. It's a lovely pale greyish-blue, and the hideous lime-green ceiling is now cream (we couldn't find any cans of white in the basement). Yes, the former tenants were most likely on acid. But it's absolutely gorgeous now, and well worth the pain of my back and shoulders.

And I continue to dash hither and yon. One day, I'll get my life back. Someday.
posted by Sarah E. at 9:58 PM

More Save Farscape Stuff

Okay, this project is just cool. The wonderful people at Save Farscape are organizing a big photomosaic picture composed of individual pictures of the Scapers. "I am Farscape... And I'm Still Here".

You can email this guy, or mail your photos to:

Farscape Poster
c/o B&Company
PO Box 1506
Allen, TX 75013

So frelling cool!
posted by Sarah E. at 9:57 PM

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