Estelle Harris thinks I'm adorable!

No, seriously, last night I waited on Estelle Harris and she said that I was "just adorable." My response?

The exact scene that popped into my head.

"Ma'am. I think YOU'RE adorable."

She asked if I knew who she was, and I said the minute I heard her voice I was transported to watching Toy Story 2 & 3. We talked about it being nominated and how I thought it was the best movie I'd seen all year. She noticed my ring and asked if I was married and said that my fiance was a lucky guy.

It made my freaking night. To top this all off, an extremely well-known commercial casting director gave me his office number so that he could help give me references to commercial agents. And tipped me twenty bucks on a sixty dollar bill.

Wow. I feel pretty lucky. Now I have the next two days off to get some serious work done.

January has been a pretty busy month for me... obviously, given my lack of updates. I've been..

1. Working a lot. Of course. But I feel 10x better about January 2011 than January 2010 where I thought I was going to be fired every other day. It seems like business is up and my managers like me. Can't ask for more than that as a server. Busy. Flexible schedule. Awesome.
2. Helping out with an "Acting for the Camera" class that's now over... My mentor is amazing and I learn a ton from him every time we work together. Plus, that's extra cash in my pocket and the life partner's (he helps film the final scenes and edits them for the students)
3. Planning a wedding. The success story on this front is that we now have a date set in stone and we think we've decided on a location. We haven't booked it yet, but I'll give you a hint... It's home to our favorite pachyderm.
4. Editing my dad's novel. He's retired and has a lot of time on his hands. I don't, but I'm helping him anyway.

It's been a good month.

I also turned 25 this month and am now old enough to audition for alcohol commercials! Woohoo! We went snowboarding and ate at Susan Feniger's STREET... Which was slightly disappointing, to be honest. I liked it well enough, but wasn't thrilled enough to go back for the price. Maybe if cost didn't bother me, it would be a different story. The snowboarding, however, was excellent. Conditions were pretty awesome for such warm weather and every time I get better and better. We spent the majority of the day on the intermediate slopes and I was pretty pleased with myself!

I decided to get over my vanity. This is a terrible photo, but it's the only one!

The day after my birthday, I had an interview with a print agent, and while nothing has come of it, I do know feel more confident all future interviews of that sort. The agent was incredibly nice and now I feel like I know what to expect a little bit better.

Overall, January was great, here's to fabulous February!

Birthday Bust

No, it wasn't my birthday. That's not for another month. It was LP's birthday this weekend, and we had such big plans for it... but California weather had something else in mind. For the past couple of years, we've both gone snowboarding for our birthdays. Leading up to this weekend, there hadn't been much precipitation in the mountains, so if snow was sparse, we thought we'd go to Disneyland or our favorite, the L.A. Zoo. The just opened up the Elephants of Asia exhibit, and we've really been looking forward to going. 

It was shaping up to be a great weekend. Best of all, my manager was generous enough to give me the entire weekend off. I think this was an exchange for New Year's Eve (we'll see). Anyway, like I said, the weather had different plans. 

 I had been hoping for rain. My fingers were crossed. Rain in Los Angeles usually means snow on the mountains this time of year. But it's just too warm. The slopes were even shut down today. Everything is too slushy and mucky and gross. Bare patches everywhere. So... no snowboarding. And our boards continue to sulk in the corner, looking all dejected and unloved. I'm so sorry, babies!!

But all of this rain ruined our back-up plans, too! We never actually considered that rain would be an issue. We thought rain would mean good snow conditions. We thought bad snow conditions would mean a bright and sunny day. We've gone to the zoo in a light drizzle before. Especially if it starts and stops throughout the day. But California is getting a shock to its system by getting non-stop rain. We were flummoxed. What to do?

 

We considered going to a museum, but even most of the museums out here (like the Getty) aren't as nice on rainy days. So... we just sort of hung out. Saturday night, we met up with a bunch of LP's friends for beer. And Friday night we went to another friend's holiday party. So, we still had some nice social time out and about. Buuuut, things just didn't go as planned. Still, we've both been working so much lately that it was really nice to just bum around together.

I wish I could say I was the world's most awesome partner and surprised him with something amazing... but, the best I could do was give my time and nimble fingers to his dreadlocks. We spent several hours last night watching holiday movies while I performed some much needed maintenance on his hair (click the link if you aren't familiar with the finer points of white boy dreads). For someone who hates people buying him gifts, this was the best present I could offer.

Happy Birthday, my handsome dreadlocked boy!