auuuuugh!

Last night I killed a small spider on my desk before going to sleep. This morning, I found and killed another small spider on my desk. And another.

Hmmm.

I search my room, high and low, looking for more, dreading the inevitable. Small spider on the chair. On the cardboard box where i keep my whiteboard. On the doorframe.

Crap.

I go outside into the living room area, and what do I see coming out of the air-conditioning vent? Dozens more. (I called Angie this morning saying there were like hundreds, but later on I realized most of them were in my mind. There were merely dozens.) DOZENS!!!

Contrary to what occurs during my worst nightmare versions of this very scenario, I did not run out of the apartment screaming. I stood paralyzed for a few seconds, and then looked frantically around to see how far these little monsters had gotten during the night. So far, the kitchen looks safe, and so does my roommate’s room (damnit, i *knew* i picked the wrong one!). There are a few by the television. They are not just crawling, they are also paragliding, or whatever you call it, down the walls, up the walls.

Luckily, my bathroom is safe too, so far.

It was too early to call building services when I first found them, but I didn’t want to stay in my apt, so I ran over to CVS, which does *not* carry bug spray. I went to Ralphs and called my mom, who told me the ant spray woudl be fine for my purposes. But then, coming back to my building I ran into the apartment coordinator, who told me to dial the maintenance people anyway. I dialed the wrong number the first time (sorry, “Glen”!), and then I was told to fill out a pest-control form (“pests”!) at the rental office.

So somebody will come, hopefully, today, to spray the crap out of these little buggers, and in the meantime I’ve been ducking out of the way of spiders, trying to empty cupboards and drawers, and right now I am hanging out in the study lounge next to the laundry room of my building with two days’ worth of clothing and other valuables. I am seriously contemplating never coming back, and just commuting for the rest of the year. It’s got to be better than SPIDERS!

update: So I just went back to my apt and there’s a little hanger saying I can’t go in until 3PM, so I guess they’ve already come and gone. I’ve been fairly impressed with the response time of my building people, but I’m wondering how they knew where to spray, because I’m pretty sure I was too freaked out and vague to tell them clearly. And I didn’t do the best job of emptying cabinets and stuff. Oh well! The important thing is that the spiders be GONE when I go back!

Filed under: best thing

finally!

Our final orientation, the one with the info studies school, ended at last, and now i can relax and stop going to these damn introductory sessions. It’s not that they’re not useful, and most of the time they were even interesting. But 7 days of this stuff and it’s like, “ça suffit allemagne!” as we’d say in my old frenchie days. Basically, it means, “Basta!”

We felt much more welcome at today’s orientation than at yesterday’s. For one thing, we got our very own packets and pre-printed name tags. People also mentioned our program more frequently. The classes seem much more interesting in this dept. than in the film school, but that’s probably the novelty talking. I’ve taken my fair share of critical studies courses, and film courses, but never information-studies courses. The other thing I’m interested in is the hands-on stuff. Thinking is great and all, but there’s got to be more to life than that.

I also got to meet with a potential faculty advisor, who was pretty helpful. There are some big names (in the nerd world) in this department too, so that will be interesting.

There was a grad student reception/cocktail party this evening, but i had to miss it because my test prep co. suddenly needed a sub. So today I taught my first GRE class at the Westwood location, and it was a bit nervous-making because it was bigger than any class I’ve taught so far. But i think it went well; only one guy walked out in the middle of it. I’ve developed this bad tic where I turn bright red when I realize, internally, that I’ve made a mistake, which does me no good, especially during the end-of-class poker game.

Speaking of kidding, I thought of a good joke today. For various reasons, I’ve had to “disappear” from my cohort for up to half an hour at a time during almost every orientation day – whether it’s to go to an appointment, or run an errand, etc. So far, no one’s asked me about it, but if anyone does bring it up, I’m going to tell them I’ve just been reporting to my parole officer.

Filed under: school

ouais!

yesterday was the official MIAS orientation (for my program), and that was cool, but tiring. After 4 days of being thrown together, most of us were reluctant to attend the Theatre/Film/TV school orientation today, but we did come, and were promptly rebuffed by the Film/TV coordinator. But we stayed anyway, just out of spite, really, and in the end I’m glad we got to go.

Because today all the undergrads and new grad students from the TFT school were there, and the TFT people were……let’s just call them lively. The morning was filled by a couple of performances from a musical called “Urinetown,” if I heard correctly, and a few speeches and a Q&A with an actual, slightly famous actor and UCLA alumn.

After lunch, we got together with just the Film & TV people (not Theatre), and that was cool. Then we broke up and met with just the new critical studies grads, and that was cool. And then there was a reception with all the critical studies grads, old and new I think, with pizza and free beer (whoo!).

For most of the day, we MIAS students had mainly been huddled together, sort of excluding everyone else because we were too shy to talk to outsiders (and because of that traumatic rejection earlier that day, and later on after the main presentation), but the critical studies people are more like us, and we finally got ot talking with some of them when suddenly, I heard some people speaking in French behind me.

This other woman in the group I was with must’ve heard them too, because we exchanged a look, and both physically spun around, and started speaking in French to the people behind us. They were international students, one of them French, and the other one Danish, but whose mother was French. The rest of the time I talked with them, code-switching when the need or desire arose. We weren’t loud or anything and spoke English most of the time anyway, but thinking about it now, I hope we weren’t too annoying.

Still, that was pretty much the highlight of my day.

Filed under: school

last day of camp

I was kind of too tired to write anything yesterday, but I did have two more days of “bootcamp” after the last entry. Yesterday we did a lot of hands-on work, handling film. We spliced and diced safety *and* nitrate film, using tape splicing and cement splicing. That was pretty neat.

We also learned how to thread film through various viewers, and how to wind/rewind film, tell the difference between base and emulsion side, etc. The machines definitely looked pretty scary, but weren’t so bad to work with (as long as someone was there to walk us through and check our work for flaws).

Today there were more demonstrations than hands-on activities. More threading film through machines which were infinitely scarier (cleaning machines and optical and contact printers, both wet and dry). These were scary mainly because the machines are so old they would be very difficult to repair/replace if something happened to one of them, and also because perc is involved (a liquid cleaning agent that’s pretty toxic, smelly, and carcinogenic). We also learned how timing and tinting and film prep work, which were more complicated than anyone of us new people cared to think about.

And we had a short screening of clips from restored films, including the pre-release version of “The Big Sleep” that containing scenes between Bogey and Lauren Bacall that had decisively less….snap to them. Like, they definitely sexed her up some after seeing how successful “To Have and Have Not” was, and the differences between the two version are fairly amusing to see.

But I thought the highlight of my day was the endless salad lunch at the Sizzler, because I got to eat both onion rings *and* ice cream. Also, we were really hungry by lunch because someone forgot to order the bagels for us this morning.

Still, the whole “bootcamp” was a big success in my view, because we got a really great introduction to a lot of aspects of our field that I had never really thought about before. For example, restoration is distince from conservation and preservation. And we haven’t even gotten to like, research, inventory, and access yet. The profession as a whole seems to have a certain charm to it. The techniques used at the Archive are (or at least, they try to be) similar to what people must’ve done with film more than 50 years ago (except for the whole burning nitrate film indiscriminately part). And all the people we’ve met over the past 3 days have been so nice and helpful. And in spite of the diversity in backgrounds among the students in my year, we all seem to be pretty much on a similar wavelength, and that’s reassuring.

Then again, classes haven’t even started yet, and we still have 3 separate orientations to go to, not including the school-wide grad student orientation tomorrow, so I really shouldn’t lay final judgment on anything yet.

Filed under: school

first day of camp

“Bootcamp” for my program started today. I *finally* got to meet the other students in my program, all….ten of them. There are 11 people in my class this year. We also met the people who work at the Hollywood part of the UCLA archive, who are all really nice. The work looks more complicated (but also more fun) than I realized. Funnily enough, I think if more people knew about the stuff that happened in the field, they’d also be pretty interested. They have some neat stuff in those archives.

Today we took a tour of the two centers in Hollywood (yes, I bought a daypass for the bus for the first time. Going from Wilshire and Westwood to Wilshire at Santa Monica Bllvd took about 25 minutes. Wilshire sucks! After that, I had to switch to another bus that went up on Santa Monica anyway, and that one was so much faster.). Anyway. There was a lot of technical mumbo jumbo, lots of complicated looking machines, and lots of looking at old, claustrophobia-inducing vaults full of rotting film. It was very sad to see the decay, and very stinky (because regular film in bad condition starts to smell like vinegar, and nitrate film in bad shape starts to smell like rotten eggs).

We also learned about the dangers of nitrate film, which is highly inflammable and thus slightly dangerous to work with (also, once a piece of nitrate ignites, there’s not way to snuff out the fire, becuase the chemical reaction in the combustion process produces oxygen, which sustains the burning. They burned a piece of nitrate just to demonstrate this.

Sadly, that was about as exciting as the day went. The rest was interesting too, just not as dramatic. Mostly it was nice to just finally meet people for once, and also to talk with some of them as we all ate ramen in some Japanese noodle place for lunch. Tomorrow I think we get to actually touch film (ooh).

Another nice thing about finally starting school is not havign to explain to everyone what MIAS is. We can just say MIAS and
people will kind of know what we’re talking about.

Filed under: school

that was easy!

Starting tonight I’m going to be living in my nice, new apartment at Weyburn. I haven’t quite finished moving in, though. I still have a Billy Bookcase from Ikea hanging around at my house, waiting to be assembled. We coudln’t bring it over today because we had to bring my desk, which was considerably bigger and heavier (and also more necessary).

About that desk….it’s from Staples; I found it online yesterday and decided it looked pretty decent, so we drove over to the store about ten minutes later and asked for it. The guy brought it down, and the price tag on it said $34.99, which was considerably lower than the $99 sticker price on the website. So that was cool. Until we went to the cashier. My dad had already handed over the credit card when we realized that it rang up as…$15.70, including tax. That’s not a typo, and it wasn’t a scan error. Fifteen and 70/100.

Wow, we thought. We checked it at home to make sure it wasn’t all broken up particle board inside. It was fine, so we brought it to my apartment this afternoon and it took about 3 hours to assemble it all, and I have to say, I would never have accepted it for $99, but at $15.70, the price is just right.

[I wish I could link to the relevant pic from Flickr right now, but I'm using Firefox. Dah! Just look at the sidebar.]

Yep.

I will probably write more about this moving in experience tomorrow. I am tired and I have a bunch of DVDs awaiting my perusal.

Filed under: personal

Mmm, butterfat!

I just started telling Angie this, but I dont’ want to have to share it with everyone i know individually, so parts of this are just pasted straight on.

(20:14:09) Esther: my sister had the good sense to apply for a job at this cupcake store in newport beach.

It’s in that plaza with Peet’s and Bristol Farms and a pet clothing store. You know the place.

(20:14:15) Esther: one cupcake = $3.25

That’s one regular, standard sized cupcake. Small mound of frosting.

(20:14:31) Esther: she gets one free one every night, and tonight she brought home 4 from the ‘broken’ pile

Broken, but we’re not complaining….exactly….

(20:14:55) Esther: they’re good, but not $3.25 each good, but already it’s starting to pall a little – talk about privilege! =DDD

Yup. We’re sooooooo unlucky that we’re already getting sick of high quality cupcakes made with (the sister says) Madagascar vanilla or whatever. I don’t know if I’d have the same standard if I’d shelled out $3.25 for one, but I am in no way complaining about delicious cupcakes I get to eat without even having worked for them.

Filed under: food

getting closer…

Whew! The heat wave has finally ended (or gone on hiatus). I can think clearly again! Sometimes I think I’m coldblooded – I’m incapacitated during the summer by intense heat, and I practically hibernate during the winter when it’s, well, not even that cold, considering I live in SoCal. I guess I have a very low threshold for temperature fluctuations.

My parents are still undecided about whether we are going to Japan. They can’t be indecisive for long, though, because our putative departure date is tomorrow. So we’ll know in less than 24 hours whether we’re going to Japan. However, I am betting that we are not. Maybe Vegas? Honestly though, at this point, I would settle for Disneyland. Because I haven’t been there in about a thousand years! Believe it or not, I’ve never even set foot in California Adventure.

Shopping for new-apartment stuff has been fun, especially the, er, looking part. The bad part is not being able to buy anything, really, not only because my student loans haven’t kicked in yet, but also because I’m not really sure what exactly I’ll be needing at the new apt. I know I need to buy a bed, but how big a bed? How high? What color? What about the desk? And bookshelves?

So mostly, I’ve been buying kitchen stuff – pots, pans, silverware, ziploc containers. Can’t wait til I can buy the real big stuff though! Or, you know, scrounge around for it on Craigslist.

Filed under: personal

Accroché means hooked!

My sister got my mom hooked on the Spider Solitaire game that comes with Windows XP. She plays it whenever she gets the chance, which is whenever my sister leaves her laptop running in the TV room.

Over the weekend, the laptop languished downstairs, but my mom was bored upstairs, so I taught her how to play the regular solitaire game (Klondike) on the Win98 computer, but my mom thought it was too hard(!). Then I tried to teach her how to play Minesweeper, but that was even worse. Not that I can blame her; *I* can barely play Minesweeper.

I also attempted to teach her how to play Freecell, but I had to play it first to remember how the rules worked, and my mom got intimidated just watching.

So I rebooted the computer (Win98 doesn’t have Spider), and opened up the card game that comes with Ubuntu, and she’s using that now to play Spider Solitaire. If it makes her a fan of Ubuntu, so much the better. She probably doesn’t care about that at all, though.

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Filed under: fun