My Weekend

Well, ladies and gentlemen, you may have noticed a certain dearth of posts around here this weekend, which is usually when I have the most time to post. This weekend, however, was so insane, so full of unplanned events, so out of control that I've had virtually no time to do anything except react to events and/or vegetate for as long as possible after and in between said events. Here's a day-by-day recap (just to note, I was randomly off of work on Thursday and don't work on Fridays, so it was a four day weekend):

Thursday

The plans for today included picking up presents for my mother's birthday and getting to sleep early for a film shoot I had agreed to do at six thirty in the morning the next day as a favor to an old friend from college. A nice easy day, right? Here's what actually happened.

The presents I had planned to get my mother (DVDs of Rachel Getting Married and Happy Go Lucky, two of her favorite films from last year) were only available at a Borders bookstore in a shopping mall near our place. So I went there, and then realized that Watchmen was playing in an hour and made the terrible decision to go see it (you can read my review of the film in the post before this). So instead of just dropping in to pick up her presents, I ended up staying at the mall for close to five hours.

When I got home, I was tired and needed to get to sleep as soon as possible. So I got my wardrobe for the film shoot together, and dried some of the clothes that needed to be unwrinkled along with a load of bath towels I had washed earlier. About ten minutes later, I stepped out to my car to clean it out in preparation for the shoot (we were filming inside of it) and noticed that there was a burning smell in the air and that there was smoke coming from the service porch where the dryer is. I opened the door of the dryer, and to my complete shock, flames leaped out! We don't have a fire extinguisher in the house, and my mom, who was also home, immediately called 911. While waiting for the firefighters to arrive, we decided to take matters into our own hands, and use a garden hose to fight the flames, which at this point had started to spread. Without thinking about my safety, I ran right into the service porch and doused the flames with water. I actually got them noticeably down, but then the fire department arrived, and I ran away to let them take over. They extinguished it pretty quickly, but it took them a while to clean out the destroyed things, which included of course the dryer and all the clothes in it, as well as a bunch of t-shirts my father had stored in the service porch. All in all, we were extremely lucky that the fire didn't spread much, since the room right next to the service porch has a lot of electrical outlets in it. Oh yeah, this event spread into....

Friday

So my mom and I were exhausted from the fire incident, and it was around 1 in the morning by the time the firefighters left. I had taken in a lot of smoke from battling the flames and was coughing like crazy. The house also smelled terribly of smoke, so we left to get some food and just take a breather. After we did that, we finally got home around 1:45, and we were both still running on adrenaline, but also exhausted. And I still had to get up at 5:30 for my early morning shoot.

I went to sleep at 2, and got almost no sleep thanks to my coughing and just being wound up. But I woke up on time, and was all packed and ready to go by 6, except for one thing... my car keys. They were nowhere to be found, and after tearing the house apart for hours looking for them, I realized they were totally lost, and since I didn't have a copy of them, I was completely stuck. I ended up having to postpone the film shoot for a day not directly because of the fire, but because I had somehow lost my car keys in the chaos of the fire. It was at this point, when I called my friend, that he informed me that the actress I'd be in the scene with was a professional actress, and that she was extremely pissed, understandably. Needless to say I was not looking forward to the shoot the next day.

Anyways, I ended up getting AAA to create new keys for me. To my amazement, they can create keys for cars without the original copy if you give them the registration number, the model number and the year of the car. It's expensive (100 bucks), but talk about being worth it in an emergency like this. So I got the new keys, and then realized that I had to pick up the cake for my mom's birthday party...in half an hour. So I pealed out, and made it to the cake store in time to pick up the cake. I got back, and was at this point so exhausted I didn't know what to do except fall asleep. So after grabbing a quick dinner, I got into bed, and slept for close to eleven hours, all the way into...

Saturday

I woke up feeling amazing (I desperately needed the sleep). However, I had to get going right away for the film shoot. I then realized that I hadn't gone grocery shopping for my mom's birthday (my dad and I had planned to make potatoes au gratin for the first time). So I sprinted out to the market, got most of what we needed (I'll explain later) and got back as quickly as I could to drop off the groceries. Then it was off to USC to meet my friend and the actress, Chelsea. As it turned out, she was extremely cool, quirky, funny, and nice, my favorite combination of traits in a person. She was very understanding of the fire; my friend had blown her anger way out of proportion.

Then we drove deep into Malibu (my friend, who doesn't drive, claimed that the location was right after we got into Malibu; we were driving for over an hour and a half from USC to the shoot) and got to a "secluded" beach for the shoot. The only problem was that it was on Saturday at lunchtime, and was understandably crowded. And we had to shoot two very difficult scenes to do in a crowded situation: a scene where she ran into the ocean topless, and.... a sex scene in the back seat of my car. With me and her. That I found out about that morning.

So yes, ladies and gentlemen, I shot a fake sex scene this weekend. It involved lots of sweaty kissing, grabbing in inappropriate places, rubbing (there was no actual nudity, but we were both in our underwear), and for me, fondling of a breast. Yes, I got to get extremely intimate with someone I had just met about an hour before. I felt both used and, at the same time, kind of awesome. We actually ended up being as comfortable with each other as possible, and laughed about the whole thing afterwards. Also, Chelsea is a lesbian, so it was a rather odd experience for her, but again, we were comfortable together, so it wasn't a big deal. We chatted for a long time afterwards, ended up exchanging phone numbers, and Chelsea thanked me for being so easy and fun to work with and completely uncreepy, and said I was quite a catch. All I can say is that she is as well. :)

I ended up sticking around after my scene for a couple of hours to help shoot the other scene in the ocean, mainly because Chelsea said she felt more comfortable with me around, which was very nice of her. The scene went well, and at around 5, I left to get home, which of course took forever because of how deep we were in Malibu. I got home around 6:15, went out to dinner and then, for a blessed couple of hours, I got to relax and not do anything. I did have a chat room discussion I had planned to attend/help moderate at midnight, but that was so far away. Then, at 11:30, I discovered I had forgotten a couple of things for the potatoes au gratin. So I again sprinted out to the market, got the missing items, and got back just in time to get to the chat room. I was in the chat room for an hour, signed off and helped my father make the potatoes au gratin. Oh, at this point it's...

Sunday

By the time we finished making the potatoes (which turned out very delicious, by the way), it was around 2 in the morning, and I was exhausted from a long day of driving and having fake sex. So I collapsed into bed, slept for seven hours, woke up at 9, and got ready to go to my mom's birthday party. Finally! My dad was very tired, so I ended up driving out to my cousin's place which included me driving for the first time through the extremely curvy and long Topanga Canyon. The party was very fun and relaxing compared to the rest of the weekend, but my body just gave out half way through; it finally had a chance to absorb all of the events of the weekend. After the party, I drove us home, and now sit here writing this post.

As you can see, this was an unbelievable weekend. It was a weekend of many firsts for me, of terrible lows and wonderful highs. It's certainly a weekend I'll never forget, but I do know one thing for certain: it is finally OVER.