Rough couple of days

Staying down by Long Beach, while necessary, is proving to be a big irritant. For the first time ever, I've had to deal with commuting into town via the 405 during rush hour...and I can't handle it. Leaving at 7am, it took me over 2 hours to make the trip to Beverly hills, where the job location was.

How do people do that, day after day? It's insane...and I would be if I had to do it. I once had to take the 101 from Woodland Hills into West Hollywood during the morning rush, which was sluggish...but this makes that look like a NASCAR race.

Didn't help that I royally screwed up on this job. I had photographs of the books I'm packing, and for some reason I thought they were octavos -- regular-sized hardcover books. They were quartos, which are 35% larger and heavier, and a number of folios were closer to elephant-sized...so I wound up packing more than twice as many boxes as I'd anticipated and used up every bit of packing material I'd brought, when I thought I'd have a fair bit left over.

On top of it, the representative of the company I did this for was checking off the books on the packing list, and it got changed. Some things stayed, others were added. So I had to re-do that as well as all the paperwork for the transportation booking, otherwise we wouldn't make our timeframe commitment. Meaning Monday I worked from 7 to 7, yesterday I worked from 7am till nearly midnight, and then till after 2pm, today. I might have well have been on a film shoot; at least I'd have been helping to create something.

Good thing is, I had dinner Monday night with an actress I know and her daughter, up by Topanga Canyon. She's "guested" in several TV shows. Sunday I had lunch with two other actors I know -- both from Germany. Tomorrow, I'm meeting with a producer about "Kazn" and "Find Ray T" while Friday I'm meeting with another producer about "The Alice '65".

It all sounds great and busy-ish...but I learned a long time ago nothing counts till your project's up on the screen. Period. And Hollywood has a lot of talkers. LOTS of them. And I think that's all I met while I was living out here. But if you don't do the meetings, you don't get any chances at all, do you?

That said, it'd be nice if any of my meetings ever did lead to something.