wed 15 oct 2008 07:44:29 — homewood
indoors since saturday
it's now 01.44 wednesday morning.
as far as i can remember, i haven't actually left the hotel since arriving back saturday afternoon. friday night i got a lift to beacon hill from olga, who lives nearby. she's very nice. we had a good talk along the way about her ideas for internal communication at MBC.
i went to my beloved's apartment. tried on four pairs of pants she had got me. decided to keep two of them that fit best. it's good to have some new pants. then we took the red line train to davis square in cambridge. leaving the station we walked to a bar called p j ryan's in teele square, somerville. this is near where pk lives. it took about half an hour before a table opened up that we could sit and eat at. i just ordered some fried onion rings, cuz i'd had a late lunch (of nuked american-chinese leftovers from burlington jade). pk hung out with us and i also got to meet his roommate. some important baseball was happening on all the TVs so we couldn't talk too easily at the bar. we left the bar early enough that it was still possible to take the red line back to the hill.
on saturday, i went to an old barber up the hill (pinkney street?) and got my hair cut. this is the first time in quite a while that i got my hair cut not by marinka. but it was necessary, the hair was getting a bit stupid-looking, neither long nor short enough. this guy was named john, i think his name is john pacheco, something like that. he's been in that location for over thirty years. he even remembers when jeff van gelder had his record shop next door (that's back when i briefly lived on the hill myself, on the third floor at 37 garden street). while he buzz-cut me he made conversation about the economic disaster and the upcoming election. john asked if i wanted him to trim my eyebrows. i aarzelde for a moment but then i was like hell yeah, go for it. "you know what long eyebrows mean?" he asked me. -- "that i'm getting old?" -- "no, that you *look* old." total cost of haircut and eyebrow trim, 35 dollars US. sound steep? well it was on beacon hill, right.
departing cleancut, i found aj approaching the barbershop from the other side of the street. we contemplated where to go for brunch. on a lark, decided to drive all the way to danvers, to go to denny's. i was up for it cuz no trip to america would be complete without a meal at denny's. kind of a big diner chain where you can get breakfast any time of day. i ordered a "lumberjack slam" with extra biscuits, that was kinda stupid cuz it was way too much food. ham, sausage, bacon, eggs, potatoes, pancakes, biscuits and gravy. i did my best, and was a bigger man for trying.
from there we drove down 128 to a particular place about a mile from the burlington mall, where i could do my food shopping for the week while aj did some returns at the adjacent marshall's dept store.
i couldn't get over how kind of her it was, to cart me around all over creation like that. i think she's kind of used to driving around between shopping centers, because it is part of her job. i didn't have anything much interesting to contribute to the conversation. but it was just really kinda nice hanging around together.
we came back to the hotel. i returned to her her heart-shaped pendant which one of our talent had accidentally walked off with a week before, which got returned to me by the client the previous monday. she took a nap on the sofa. i downloaded and watched the first draft of pvn's fllm for MBC, which i had written and advised on. then aj woke up and went home. all totally uneventful, nothing interesting or traumatic or anything, i just really enjoyed being beside her.
i slept a bit myself, then set to work trying to finish a draft of pfdm. that was a lot of work. i would sleep for 3 or 4 hours, then work for 6 or 7, then sleep some more and then work some more. i finally finished a draft of it by monday morning, exported and uploaded. then i worked on redrafting text of a speech my client wants to make before an audience of 700 people next sunday. she liked what i did with it. then sometime monday evening i set about making a new, simplified edit of the "possibilities" film. finished that in the early morning, exported and uploaded. both clients loved it.
a small qt is (temporarily) at
http://www.postwar.nl/media/possibilities_04_640x360_h264.mov
so then suddenly i was, like, *done* with all the stuff i'd been rushing to complete before deadline. hmm. what to do now? sleep? i did some sleeping, but i kept being awakened by phone calls and weird dreams. one phone call from somebody wanting to know which codec to recommend to a young filmmaker who's trying to upload some work for MBC. i wish people wouldn't call me about things like that.
tuesday evening i got an email from the expert lady from pfdm, saying she liked what i had done with the instructional film. their problem is they promised a 2-hour program to their client, but our expert only had 40 minutes of stuff to say. i'd never believed the show would be two hours long anyway, and it never needed to be, in order to get the messages across. so i'm not sure what happens next with that.
meanwhile back in amsterdam, more kraakpanden have been cleared of their illegal dwellers by police. kh had some dental work done so his toothache would stop. he's taking more pictures again now that he's in less pain.
and in australia, vinz and nicole have returned safely from their lots-of-driving holiday to melbourne and back. lots of scenic photos on her blog too.