Lean Mean Machine

A week and a half ago I finally got fed up with my computer. I don’t know what I did to it, or what kind of virus I got, but it was really making me frustrated. I won’t bore you with the details, but it was a real pain in the ass. So after consulting with some of my computer friends, I decided to take it to Best Buy and have their “Geek Squad” take a look at it. It cost a lot more than I would have wanted but they returned it to me in tiptop shape. I had my hard drive erased and re-formatted. I was lucky enough to have my friend Gill set up my computer for me before I left Chicago. He went above and beyond the call of duty setting it up. He installed Windows 2000, Final Draft 6, iTunes with a ton of songs on it, and Office 2000. He did all of this in the wee hours of the night right before I left. He was also kind enough to back everything up on disc so when I got it back I could install everything myself and save me some money. So hats off to you Gill! I owe you big time!

I am lucky to have a lot of good friends in my life and they have saved me time and money over the years. I hope that I have been a good friend to them when they needed it.

Since I haven’t written in a while I will re-cap the last week and a half to bring everyone up to date.

Last week was a tough week of catering. I received a call from my company on Monday afternoon that they had some shifts for me. I was really desperate for work so I took them. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were all working in Palm Desert, which is about 2 hours East of where I live in Los Angeles. They were paying $50 for travel time so that was the good part. The bad part was that Tuesday and Wednesday started at 4:30 in the morning, which meant that I had to leave my apartment at 2 am just to be safe.

Since I didn’t get the call until Monday afternoon and I had class Monday night, I knew I was not going to get any sleep. When I got back from taking my computer to get fixed, I took about a two-hour nap. I got up, went to class and then came home and relaxed for a couple of hours. I didn’t go to sleep because I knew that I wouldn’t wake up on time, and I didn’t want to mess this job up. My friend Rockstar put a good word in with the company, he works for them too, and it would reflect badly on him if I didn’t show up. I left my apartment at 2am and after getting a cup of coffee at a doughnut shop, I hit the open road.

I love driving at night. No one is around and you can just drive and think. I listened to the Garden State soundtrack, which is fantastic. My advice for anyone that is driving at night for a long distance, listen to this soundtrack, it really made the trip a good one. I got to the hotel with about 20 minutes to spare. However, the parking directions that my company gave me were completely wrong, so I drove around looking for this employee parking lot that does not exist. I finally had to go to the front desk and ask them where to park. They told me just to park in the garage attached to the hotel. I did and made it to work just in time. The job was really easy. There was a convention of lawyers that were there going to conferences and talking to businesses that support different companies, basically really boring stuff to me. My job was to prepare a breakfast and lunch buffet and then clean up dishes when people were done eating. The breakfast buffet was easy because not many people showed up, but lunchtime was crazy. They asked me to stay a couple of extra hours and I agreed to it. I drove home exhausted. I became delirious on the road the last 30 minutes and I kept myself awake by singing really loudly to Guns n’ Roses and slapping my face. I probably looked really stupid to the other drivers. I got home at 5pm and went directly to bed.

I woke up around midnight, talked with Rockstar for a little while, made some food, got ready and left again at 2 am. The next day went a lot smoother because I knew what I was doing. There was also this extremely cute girl working at one of the booths at the convention. I really wish I was one of those guys who had no problem walking up to girls and talking to them, but I am not. So I just admired her from afar. I got home from work at 3 and took a 2-hour nap. I went to improv class, came home and fell into a deep sleep. Thursday I didn’t have to work until 4pm, and I was lucky because some other people were driving from L.A. and wanted to car pool. So I met them and slept all of the way to the hotel. They were all really nice people and I was glad that I had some friends to work with.

Thursday we were serving appetizers at a function by the pool for Met Life Insurance Company. Let me tell you, if you think lawyers were a bunch of boring people, you should have seen these insurance folk. Real pieces of work. We served people by the pool for an hour and then we went inside to get ready for dinner. I was in charge of cleaning up two tables in a section. Not that much work. For the most part people were very nice to me and didn’t give me any attitude about walking around and clearing dishes. But there was this one guy who had the last two bites of a piece of pie sitting on his plate for a long time. I waited and waited until I was sure that he was not going to eat any more. He was listening to another man at the table talk when I approached him.

“Excuse me, are you finished with that?” I inquired.

No response for him.

“Can I take that from you, sir?”

He didn’t say anything to me again. So I reached over to take his plate. He immediately karate chopped my arm and looked nervously around as if someone was trying to rob him, but he never looked at me. Then he continued to listen to the man speak from across the table. So I backed off. It took this guy another half an hour to finish the last two bites of pie. But I still made sure I waited until he got up and left before I took his plate.

We finished close to midnight and drove home. I took Friday off because I need to get my body back on track after having all of those crazy work hours.

This weekend I played Halo with the boys on Friday night and had two improv shows Saturday night and one Sunday night. I will have another entry about improv later as well as some other goodies.