What a waste of two hours. I drove to the middle of nowhere for an audition tonight, allowing extra time so I could focus. Well, I needed that to find the place. I was on AZ-87 in complete darkness for 12 miles. I could see city lights behind me, but only the dark shadows of the mountains against the night sky in front. Please let there be a city. Please let there be a city. Then there were lights. So I drove in more darkness, but at least I was almost there. Or so I thought. I drove by the theatre twice before I saw it. It was sort of set off the road and not lit very well. I arrived 2 minutes after my scheduled audition time. Not a good impression. I had to rush to fill out forms, then go in for my monologues. I did my first one then started my second, but they clapped. So I stopped. And let out a nervous laugh. "Should I stop?" "No, no. Keep going." "Oh. I'm not used to the clapping. I'm from Ohio." Could I be any more lame. When I get nervous, I become an ass. So my next monologue was a little fast, and not so great. Then I was overly polite as I left. But the guy in the lobby who had greeted me and given me the forms chatted with me a bit after my audition. Buh. An actor knows when she blows it. You just get a feeling. I drove the 40 minutes home pretty disappointed with myself. I still haven't heard from the show I was called back for last week. Nor have I heard from my head shots lady, who was suoposed to call me last week. And the temp places don't have any work for me. So I'm just going to focus on the film call-backs. I already have a good thing going with the director/writer and producer. And Tosha needs to hurry her ass up and finish Harry Potter so we can talk about it.

Got out of bed at 8. Had promised Tosha I wouldn't read any more because I had too much to do today. Played on the internet, printed up directions for my errands. Made some phone calls. Did not work out. Did not shower. Did not go to police station to have finger prints taken for my substitute teacher's license. Did not drop resume off at Accountemps. Turned down an invitation from a girl I met last weekend to hang out by the pool. Did not go grocery shopping. Have not practice monologue for auditions tonight. Still in pjs.

But....

I finished the book.

I started three days ago. I was only going to read a chapter a day. That lasted for the first chapter. Then I was only going to read 100 pages a day. Well, I'm on page 397, and will probably finish this week. It's like when I read "Dreamcatcher". I bought it for my trip to San Diego/Phoenix in March b/c I would be on a plane and in airports forever. It's a 4 hr flight from Dayton to Phoenix, and I wanted to have something on the way home. But I finished that in three or four days. I'm just not good at stretching things out when I'm excited.

Interesting evening. Watched Donnie Darko, which was messed up in it's own way, but it sparked an interesting conversation. If you could travel into the future to see yourself for 10 minutes, would you do it? I would not. Too confusing. For example, let us say that I am a bum on the street. And I come back to the present time. So I decide to take a job as a loan processor and give up the movie role (which I have only been called back for--have not been cast. Remember, this is all hypothetical) because it's non-paying. But then a few months down the line it turns out that the people in the loan office are doing all sorts of illegal things, and because I process their stuff, I'm involved, too. Which turns into some jail time, and lots of fines. Meanwhile, the movie was picked up by Paramount, the role I would have played ends up getting tons of royalties, and that actress has a solid career. And I'm now a bum on the street. So, you see, you can't change the future. The choice that seemed the best at the time, ended up being the downfall. Lots of other stuff was discussed, but that was the main topic. Your thoughts?

I can type 65 wpm. I took a typing test at a temp agency today. It would have been faster, but I corrected all of my mistakes. And the new Harry Potter book comes out tomorrow. Just thought you should know.

Only have one episode left. Will try to save that until at least tonight. I'm contemplating writing an essay about why you all should watch "Buffy". As the season goes on, the shows get better and better. Anyway. Even though the only time I've moved today was to go to the gym, things are looking up. Tomorrow has a purpose. I was getting to the point where depression might start to set in. But tomorrow I have an official job interview. And Saturday Paul and I are playing volleyball at our complex. A tournament of sorts. Then going to a party that night. Sunday I have an audition. And Monday I have callbacks for something I did last Monday. The callbacks make sense. See, they had me read for the lead young-girl type roll with five other 17-yr-olds. I'm 25. And I DO NOT look 17. Tosha does. Sarah does. I do not. When wearing the right clothes with the right make-up and hair, I look 30. At the end of the audition the director asked if everyone got to read for what they wanted. So I spoke up. And now am called back for three of the minor, quirky character roles. Which is what they should have had me read for in the first place. But I'm excited. I actually have things to do for the next four days.

Got out of bed around 8:45. Looked at mess in kitchen. Decided to have a piece of banana nut bread to make up for it. Tasted good. Watched an episode of Buffy (purchased Season 4 DVD last week). Worked out--that felt good. And it took up almost an hour an a half. Made lunch-tuna w/ onions and cheese and two pieces of toast. Watched another episode of Buffy. Looked in kitchen again. Will clean later. Thought about memorizing monologue or shopping for pants (have headshot shoot next week). Got in shower instead. Thought of a post debating whether or not you can actually die of boredom. Wished there wasn't a three hour time difference. Want to call Tosha. Thought the phone was ringing, but I always think that when showering. Dried off. Thought about calling parents to see how to do a follow up call when checking on a job without sounding too desperate. Checked phone-just in case. WHOOHOO!!! A MESSAGE!!! Listened to message. It was potential job offer!! The excitement is pathetic. Now do not have to figure out what to say. Called number. No answer. Left another message. Back to the debate of dying of boredom. Need to brush teeth. Tuna+onion=bad.

OK, a few hours ago I wrote this long post, but Blogger has been sucking lately, and it erased it. So, I'm going to try again--but this time save my work. If anyone has any suggestions of another host, please let me know.

Cooking. I have this great new kitchen and I love to cook. And seeing as this is DAY 17, NO EMPLOYMENT, I have a ton of free time. Been cooking things I've never made before. Which is turning out to be quite an adventure. Ask my vacuum. Tonight was my mom's banana nut bread. It started out pretty good. I checked the recipe every five seconds to make sure I was doing everything by the book. And everything was fine until the nuts. I bought a new nut chopper today, and used it. It comes with a handy cover so you can chop the nuts, then put the chopper over your bowl and take off the cover, and dump the nuts into the mixture. Oh, and by the way, "chopped nuts" does not mean "dust". My chopper works very well, in case you're wondering. Except for the little fact that I sort of filled it too full, and the nuts got stuck in the blades. I'm holding the chopper over my head looking up into it, and am gently (read: violently) tapping the side to get the pecans out, when the lid comes off. Now, most of the pecans landed on the counter. And since I'm not cooking for anyone important (no offense, baby) I just brushed the remains into the batter. It's at this point that I realize I don't have enough time to bake it. We're going to see a movie. So I put plastic wrap over the bowl to keep the batter fresh until we get back and I can put it in the oven and be up until one in the morning waiting for it to finish. But I digress. The plastic wrap. It actually, doesn't stick to anything but itself. Which is where tin foil comes in. My refrigerator housed a bowl of banana dust batter with two pieces of plastic wrap secured by foil for three hours. And now it's almost 1, and I've checked the bread twice to see if it's ready. It looks ready, but goop still comes off when I Toothpick Test. Oh, and is a teaspoon of cinnamon too much? The recipe just says, add it for flavor if you want. I added nutmeg, too. I guess we'll see tomorrow morning. Which is when I will clean up the rest of the mess.

Wednesday's dinner: Meat loaf. Hopefully that won't be as much of a disaster. Hopefully I will remember to thaw the meat.

Horrible night's sleep last night. Woke up at 4 in the morning, and never really went back to sleep. Nightmares. So gory I won't write about it. And in the nightmare the character that I sometimes was, and sometimes was viewing third person, had vertigo really bad. She was sitting on a floor and rolled backwards until she hit a wall. I woke up at that point, with vertigo. Could barely stand up to make it to the bathroom. Then I worried that I was getting an ear infection for about an hour. I was so dizzy. It was a very odd feeling--like someone was pushing on my chest trying to flip me over. Hopefully today won't suck, but I'm very tired.

Tosha called last night. It was 10 my time, 1 hers. She called tell me that while drinking at a bar, she saw me in a Click commercial I shot right before I left. Which I haven't seen. It made me smile to think of her drinking beer in a crowded bar on the other side of the country and still be able to see me. I miss her.

It's the little things that are different. Like the news. And I quote, "Well, the week looks good...we get a break in the heat. I'm really looking forward to Wednesday with a cool temperature of 98."

It's all relative.

I'm posting on blogger and everything is different. So, what's been going on? Well, let me tell ya. The U-haul thing got straightened out, and we were able to leave on Thursday morning around 10. Now, fyi, it is not fun to drive a honda towing 8.2 tons of your stuff across the country, and especially up hills. My original intention was to photo-document the whole thing. But it's not so easy to drive a stick shift going 70 mph whilst holding a digital camera and trying to stay on the road. Paul and I had walkie-talkies, and every once in a while I'd swerve and he'd call, and I'd tell him I was just taking pictures and he said stop. So I did. Everything was so beautiful, but looked the same, so I didn't feel the need to photograph the whole ordeal.

OK. The first day was fine, no major events. We stopped at Wendy's for our first meal and called our folks. It was very windy at Wendy's. We had mapped out where we wanted to stop, and made it to Missouri right on schedule. We stayed at an expensive Best Western, and decided to have a price cap the next time. There were five other hotels where we could have stayed that night, but we were too tired and lazy to pay less.

The second night. This is the best part of the whole trip. We were going strong in Texas and were close to NM, so we thought, let's keep going until the next town. Little did we know that in this part of the country, it is two hours til the next town. The first motel sign we saw, we pulled over. Into the town of San Jon (pronounced San Hon). Population 304. It's the place you go if you want to commit a murder and get away with it. And this is the motel you stay at. It was $24--inclucing tax. The next town was 30 minutes away, and we had driven much longer than expected that day. So we stayed. We called our folks from the payphone outside--there was no phone in the room. Also, if you sat on the toilet, you could put your chin on the sink quite comfortably. There were plastic sheets on the bed, and a shower so small that if you put your hands on your waist, your elbows would touch the sides. Needless to say, we didn't sleep very well that night. We had to drive that 30 minutes the next morning to get food. I don't know where these 304 people eat, but it was definitely not near this hotel.

We decided to go to Flagstaff to stay the third night, then on to Glendale to pick up my aunt and uncle who were going to help us move in. But by the time we got out of the traffic jam in Flagstaff, Paul radioed me and said, let's just keep going. Plus, that night would be free and there would be no scorpions or plastic sheets. And the shower is very clean. So that's what we did. We moved in Sunday, and I've been unpacking and assembling things ever since. We bought funiture yesterday, which should be arriving in the next four hours. Everything is so great. Paul starts his job on Monday. I have yet to begin looking. Our anniversary was Tuesday, and I cooked my first meal here and we watched a movie. I've been incredibly busy putting things away and setting stuff up. We used our dishwasher for the first time last night! It was pathetically exciting for me. But when you've been doing dishes for the past 2.5 years, something as insignificant as a dishwasher is a major luxury. We've been adjusting well, I think. Plus it's nice to have family out here.

So that's what's been going on with me. I started the job hunt a little yesterday, but after the furniture is here and I can officially put everything in its place, I'll start looking more seriously. Right now I'm hungry, so I think I'll have some cereal.

Koala bears do not have ribcages. So if you were to pick them up like you would a child, you would crush their lungs and heart.

I also updated my links side.

I just put up pictures from the move. I will have a full story in the next couple of days. Too tired from unpacking...