Lost days.

Life just doesn't happen if there's no one there to photograph it. Well when I'm not there to capture it, or I'm there but have no camera to shoot it. I'd say it again if I could come up with another simile for "to take a photograph".

Saturday was the summer solstice, here in the northern hemisphere. The day, where absolutely everything happens, particularly when it falls on a Saturday, which it did. Festivals and parties all over the place. One of them was the annual veggie parade, which I took part in. And yes, it did really happen, and I was really there, I have photos to prove it. We wandered through the streets of Prague, shouting slogans, some, especially the English ones, quite silly, among people with banners, in costumes, with dogs, with kids. We stopped, we froze, we kept chanting. Then had ice cream and snacks, well waited for ages for 2 guys in the vegan ice cream line, while having other non ice cream food, and beer. Like I said, that happened.

Oh yeah the world cup is on too. You may have heard about it. A bunch of people from a bunch of countries get together somewhere, this time Brazil, to play football. Some countries pretty much always go and pretty much always get through to the second round to battle it out for the big games but some of those didn't get that far this year. We watched a game, first half near the final point of the walk and half of it nearer to our next destination. Argentina won that game.

The last thing didn't happen. Well it sorta happened. I went there, and I'd had a few beers and stuff and we went to go on and the guy at the door searched my bag and said "you can't bring in a camera" it sounded like he said "you can bring in a camera" because of his accent, so I said yeah I have a camera, not that he wouldn't have known I have one because it's quite bulky, so we had to go and store it at the office. Yeah there's an office, not relevant.

So we went back, without the camera, except that bit didn't happen. Ok so it did, but fuzzily, with low resolution. The people with iphones got to experience it properly, in video and everything.. of course, those don't count as a camera, so you can take those in.. must remember to acquire one of those. I didn't see any of that of course.

Oh and the next few days didn't happen at all. That's why I didn't write then.

Small Place

People like to say it's a small world, sometimes when noticing similarities between people in or from different places, usually when running into someone who knows a person place or thing that is very far away from where you both are, but close to where you once were, or something. Of course, small is relative and we only have this world to compare ours to, if we were talking planets, it certainly is a relatively small one, compared to the Jupiters and Saturns and the like, but one doesn't usually call those planets worlds.

I was mildly amused the other day, on the second day of shooting when I met someone in the beergarden who I know pretty well, who actually wasn't there for the shoot. Prague isn't a hugely populous city, and this beergarden is a pretty popular place with the expat crowd, particularly the arty/filmy subset of that crowd, so just amused, mildly at this point. Later on when one of the extras went over to jam with him and his friend, someone I've met before but don't really know, he came back saying that he (the other guy, one I don't know so well) was composing the score for a movie about a homeless 12 year old boy who goes on an adventure on the streets of Prague I told him.. I worked on that movie.. she (the girl playing my daughter in this film) was in that movie! World getting smaller.

Still only amusing though, what was really weird was when on the first day of the shoot we asked some girls if they minded us filming them at their table as general beergarden patrons, then asked where they were from etc etc.. they were from LA like one or a few of the students. Well apart from the fact that this was a FAMU film (a prestigious Prague film school) and they were on a program from NYU, though they all seem to be from California, it wasn't a big deal because.. LA, large city, and this is an area where a lot of foreigners, not only expats hang out. When it turned out that one of them new this guy's cousin, then the world became small. Well LA anyway. I thought it was on the big side for a city. I dunno, maybe there are a lot of poor people, so the pool of folk who go traveling and stuff is small. I mean, apart from all those super rich Hollywood people of course, and all the other super rich people. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. Like I may have said, small world.

Parenting experience.

Obviously I have none. Not being a parent, or a guardian of any sort or even a godparent whatever that is, or anything like that. I have very little experience looking after or really being around children, know nothing about them, and if they're not old enough to form something resembling a coherent sentence that a conversation can be made from, ie at least 3, so I can talk to them on their level, I just don't get them.

Well perhaps that's not true, I've played a mother a few times now and to be perfectly humble, I fucking rocked it. I mean I was pretending, that's what you do, and I'm good at it, but you know, following a script and being caring and shit to some kid you don't know and beaming at them.. got that down, what more is there to it? I mean, you fix some beans and wipe noses every now and again, I can do that too.

Oh I'm not suggesting I procure some of these critters, I just can't be fucked with that and it's probably too late anyway, but I think it makes me expert enough to tell people how to bring up their kids, how they're doing everything wrong, and that they need to stop doing most of what they're doing, particularly when it involves something that may at some time be a minor inconvenience to me. Considering I'm all clever and shit in the first place, now with all this experience, it's a no brainer.

Well today I was playing what would generally be considered a bad mother, who smokes and flirts with men and everything, and actually I've played a prostitute more times and I obviously don't reflect that in anyway, probably a nurse too, and I can barely bandage a finger so, maybe parenting advice isn't my thing. I do like the idea of setting people right about the way they live their lives, what they think and the way they do things though.. maybe I'll just get a blog.

On a role

This coming week will be this year's week. If I expand the time a bit, this late part of one month and first half of another month will be my late part of one month and first half of the next month.

Got work finally! Well, days of work, but it's acting work and pretty good roles too. Yes, it's two of them, and one of them is even for a film that I missed my casting for because I was such an idiot that I looked for the wrong place on the map and well.. went to the wrong place, tried to find the right place but as I didn't know where it was an didn't happen to stumble across it luckily, didn't find it. So that's cool. You think I'd have a more positive post, saying that things are happening for me and this bodes well for the future and I've arrived and I'm like, a real (ish) actress doing lots of stuff if it's not exactly the most high calibre stuff it's stuff but I've said stuff like that before and I don't believe in jinxing but I don't want to jinx it.

So after these three (the one I did last month and the ones I'm doing this week) roles, there will be probably bugger all in the way of acting except some helping out with flyers (I did that today actually, dressed in like, a medieval page boy costume, I think) or as an extra or a 42 second video we shoot that I take ages to edit and then don't want to show because I don't like the way my nose looks, and not much else of note regarding employment or opportunities of any sort.

Oh and who knows if these, especially the second one, will really happen. Probably will but until they're done they're not done. The first one almost certain, got a call sheet and everything. The other one. I'll see. And after that, well I'll have a lot of time to write :).

Whoops I forgot!

To post. Yesterday. Besmirched my perfect record. O well nevermind, I shall get through it.

Expanding Horizons.

So I go to the film school to meet this guy about a movie, thinking it's going to be a possibly dry but maybe well done and deep story about a woman (that would be me) who takes care of her mentally ill sister. So, yanno, kind of a slightly better chick role than "the girlfriend" "the prostitute" which I used to play pretty much whenever I played anything, or "the wife" or "the mother" which are my roles now, almost exclusively.

Still.. it would be cool to do something fun for once, real fun. Ok so the last film I was in was fun, it was "the mother" a particularly old scraggy mother which made it alright of course, but that one was fun, I got to dress up in animal print and everything, you may have seen photos.

Anyway, I got there and first he takes us to a restaurant, big points, and then says oh yeah I'm doing a different movie you're playing aliens.

And I thought like.. cool! And it is pretty cool. We talked about it and came up with stuff to add and started thinking about what kind of aliens we are and what earth things we're going to focus on, as you do and well anyway, I'm playing an alien! First time ever. I think it's my very first non human, at that.

'bout time!

*checks off list*

I've been making lists, daily ones, of stuff I should do. I divide them up into three, stuff that must be done, stuff I should do but not essential, and stuff that it would be totally cool if I got around to if I have time. I tried doing the lists a few days ahead but I had to adjust them all the time depending on what I did the day before.

So, generally I get one or 2 of the essential list done. I usually have more than 2 things on that list. Today I made pitas, which was on my list, and I'd thought for a second about making before but I looked at the recipe and it sounded a bit complicated so I forgot about it, and I thought that this probably would be one thing I wouldn't get done today, and if I did, it wouldn't work out. Well, I did and it did. Turns out it's pretty easy, even if you don't follow the instructions perfectly perfect but pretty close. So I'll do those again.

The other stuff o the list was really just there because it was on the general list, like exercise. I intend to do that every day, but then it got real hot and I thought.. eh.

There was something else but I forgot what it was and don't know if I did it. I think it was clean the computer, which I tried to do, kind of but, there's only so much you can do when you're not adept with a screwdriver, don't have a vacuum thingy or that air spray stuff, so I sorta fiddled with it a bit.

I really am just writing for the sake of writing now, but I don't think it matters, because you're just reading for the sake of reading, aren't you? You? Hello?

The ongoing adventures.

I had a casting this evening. Something that is the same thing or at least very similar to something I've been to before and written about here often. Summer courses, group casting, act out a basic and rather oddly dialogued script, the same they've used for years now, with another person, and if people like you and need someone like you in their film, you get a call.

That went ok. I think I was good, I know how to do this acting stuff so I was as good as anyone, and better than many if I may say so myself, and I may so I will. And I just did. Someone asked me a brief question after so perhaps, I don't know, I'll see if someone deems me worthy of being the wife or mother or other female sidekick of the main character of their film.

It wasn't the only casting I had today however, I mean, not the only one I was scheduled for. I had another set, with another film school, of course.. what you think I'm being sent for real stuff with professionals? I think I can safely say that that is never, well not terribly likely, well probably well it would be ice but I'm not sure that will ever happen. Anyway this one I am less familiar with. Didn't even know where it was, so I looked it up, on google maps. Checked it carefully, looked at it in satellite view and zoomed in and everything.

Still, I made sure I got a bit early for my appointment, didn't have enough credits for so much as a text so I had to make sure I was there when I was supposed to be, and when I got off the tram, I was making good time. Then I went to where the school was supposed to be. IT WASN'T THERE!

Bloody map was wrong, or more likely I was demonstrating my utter inability to follow the simplest of directions, either way, I could not find it. I looked everywhere, up and down every street looking for this one street the school is supposed to be on, which I know but I just don't know where it is exactly, and kept thinking it had to be this one but of course it wasn't. And it was hot. I kept looking until I gave up. It was too late and I couldn't even text to say I was late and had no idea where it was because.. no credits. 

So I had a beer and waited for the next one. Well I did some shopping too. Still no idea where that school is, or the street. I'd look on the map but I'd rather not, as it will almost certainly confirm that I am completely at fault and the address and the map and everything is't even the slightest bit confusing, and I'm just an idiot, so I'd rather hang onto the slightest thread of possibility that it was just somehow outrageously wrong. It could be.

Spooked!

Every now and again, when  I feel I should write but have nothing to write about, which happens well.. every day when I set myself one of these "write every day for a month" things.. not the thing I'm going to mention but the having nothing to write about thing, well the thing, not the having nothing to write about itself, but the other thing is to look through the archives and see what I wrote about on this day.. whatever year.

First I get depressed. Or not depressed exactly, a less severe version of it, morose maybe, or is that worse? I dunno.. a bit crummy then. I see a whole bunch of "something cool is happening and I hope it works out", "something cool might happen and I hope it happens", and much more "I should be doing something but I'm not doing it, or I'm not doing it properly, or there's nothing going on I hope stuff happens at some point" etc etc etc. And of course, that cool thing didn't work out, those cool things didn't happen, and I'm still not doing whatever I was supposed to be doing or the stuff that I hoped I would be doing later. And a whole lot of nothing on this date for a few years, until I find one..

2011 

Back when I was still tour guiding, the first one. The ghosty tours. Now, there was one tour we did, where we went into the creepy, spooky underground of Prague Town Hall. It is pretty spooky and creepy. It's apparently haunted and a bunch of guides, pretty much all of them said they'd had encounters down there, or at least some sort of incident which the people on the tour were really into and it made it awesome. That never happened to me, maybe it was because of my skepticism, I do't believe in ghosts or anything magical, because, um, it's completely fucking stupid how anyone can believe in any of that shit I don't know, but still.. there's something about it all that seems to at least make a tour really cool if nothing else.

and then one night.. exactly 3 years ago, well, plus 12 hours or so, it happened! I mean I didn't see anything, there were some strange noises that seemed unexplained at the time and everyone was freaked out, and that made me freaked out which made them freaked out even more.. and after that every little noise, even someone moving across the dusty floor made us all jump and at the end one girl started crying cos she was so scared and had to be taken out. Everyone else loved it though, even her dad and sister so.. there you go.

Good times :).

Oh my.. *fans self*

What does it take to have a nice, warm, sunny with maybe a few lovely fluffy clouds, no rain, but not too hot day? Huh? I mean yeah yesterday was pretty nice and we've had quite a few pretty decent days that even fell on the weekend so far this year, but just what does it take?

It seems that no sooner do you get used to the fact that it's spring/summer and hoping it will stop raining for a while and get just warm enough to hang outside for a bit, that it hits 30 bloody degrees already!

I mean not exactly, but it did that today. In June.. early June! I don't know what this means for the rest of the summer, probably nothing at all, but here we are. And despite, actually maybe because of the fact I come form a place that gets much warmer and for much more of the year, I do whine on and on about it. I'm already carrying on like it's the end of the world while most people are exclaiming on how wonderful it is and isn't this the awesomest weather ever! No, it isn't. It's to hot. I may have mentioned it already.

It's a while since I went on about the weather. On this blog I mean, not in general. Guess it was about time I posted about that again. Happy summer! (those that are experiencing summer that is)

Summer appears to have arrived.

It's June, so it should be. I know there's an official beginning of some sort but to me it's June it's summer dammit. Well, in this case it seems to work. Nothing else to say except this is what today, June 7 looks like.



Well not today June 7 but June 7 years past. 3 years ago to be precise.

And it's a good night from me.

It's not all the pies.

I've never been that much of a pie person. Never really lived in a big pie culture really. Never ate all the pies, never made pie. Is it all that easy? I don't know. I'm sure it's easy to eat a pie, provided you like the pie and you're not too full already, ie out in a restaurant where you generally get a huge meal and then get desert which I hardly ever do and it's like pie, which to be honest I don't usually see even if I pay attention to the dessert menu, but if I did I'd probably be like, I can't eat this pie I'm full.

Where am I going with this? Nowhere, exactly nowhere. Not much of a pie person, more of a beer person. I was just at a beer festival, lots of lesser known small town darker and more fruity and higher alcohol content than usual beers. I had 2. Feel like I had.. more than 2.

Lovely evening it is.

If kisses were tuna.

Do you ever, just as you're going about your day, randomly make up a song in your head, like about the cat, for instance, you toy with ideas for verses and even a bit of a bridge but so far you've really only composed the main line of the chorus, that's your song, and then get it stuck in your head and sing it over and over all day, both in your head and out loud?

Well that happened to me, actually living through it at the moment..

*mumbles something about being a happy kitty*

I'm glad you noticed.

Yes, I am setting myself a goal of writing a post every day this month. Seems to be the only way to make me bother. We'll see how long it takes before I forget about it, and further we'll see if I ever write anything that isn't filler, ie not this.

Right among it.

There's nothing like this time of year when it gets warm enough to keep the windows open, (or too warm to not, or you get distracted cooking and burn stuff so you need to open all the windows wide to let all the smoke out which is actually the case in this instance) and warm enough for people to be hanging out more at night, and travelling around and staying in the hostel across the street, and walking instead of taking the tram, and well actually since last summer they've moved the tram stop up so it's right in front of our door which is cool but it's also right under the window.

People sure do chatter a lot. And yell. And they sometimes sing, often in Spanish. You notice when you live right in the middle of it all. People coming and going, doing things, engaging with other people, having lives.. right there, under my feet. It makes me feel like I'm a part of the world, from my little station here where I write stuff, sometimes, and in general spend time doing, I don't know what, but here I do it. I'm not really though, part of the world, that is. Not usually. Occasionally I do a thing but, well, I did something last month and I reckon that's probably it for a while, although it is summer and that is when so much tends to happen that even I find myself out in it. I guess I'll see.

Let's try this again.

A brand new shiny month just started. Well sorta just, it was yesterday, and I do these resolutions, at the beginning of the month, or week, or after a birthday, or after I get back from some.. thing, or at the beginning of any arbitrary time period that I've decided on.

The resolutions are to do the stuff I should be doing, or should have well done, plus a bunch of things I'd ideally like to be doing, because of course, I haven't already done them. Well, you can tell from the need for these resolutions at this hear beginning of this month of June '14, that there is a lot that remains undone. Stuff I should have done, stuff I wanted to do, stuff I had aspirations for bla bla bla, I've gone over this numerous times, even on this very page so I won't repeat myself again. No that wasn't incorrect or redundant I was referring to the fact that I already repeated myself. Anyway, those are the things.

I will tell you know that I won't do them. None of it. I mean yeah, I'll do a few situps sometimes, and might write a bit more of that outline, and maybe I'll even look up monologues or clean the fridge or read a bit of web design tutorial but in general, I won't do any of it. Also at some point I will come here onto this blog and write about how I'm not doing it, either in general or maybe even get into specifics. That's one thing I almost certainly will do, assuming I don't completely forget about the blog again and not write at all. That is also a possibility.

*wonders if there's a single person that actually reads anymore*

What I've been getting up to.