even lazarus had to stay in the ground a couple of days

did it really take this long? have i been mulling and idling and whiling and whistling and wary and worried for over three months without a post?

looks like i have.

but the assumption here is that the teeming masses (ha, i bet you don't even know what teeming means, otherwise you'd be criticizing my obviously incorrrect usage of the term) have any interest whatsoever in my quote-unquote life. and you know me, i pander to the masses. especially if they're teeming.

seriously, look it up already. you're embarrassing the both of us.

besides, i've been catching some flak from my regular readers (read: 1-2 people) about not posting in awhile. which is an especially mixed mention from a certain someone who receives my panderings via snail mail these days, wink wink nudge nudge hug hug kiss kiss. you know who you are.

so let's try to displace all the rumors and heresay and non-commital moans that might be circulating about my last few months:

- firstly, this is not a list. i don't like lists, if only because so many other people like to put lists in their blogs. so this is not a list.

- we finished production of the film on May 14th. it was a stressful last weekend for everyone involved; there was an outdoor scene in the rain at 3am, a domestic violence scene taking up an entire day, and lots of moving and shaking.

- for that last day of shooting, i got a haircut. yes, a haircut. i had been growing my hair out for almost 9 months or so and it was incredibly volumnious. but we hit the flashback scene that weekend, and in order to push back the years and make me seem the doe-eyed young beat cop, i cut my hair, shaved, and took off the glasses. all were impressed with the change. so, alls left is editing, color correction, soundtracking, and i'll have a finished film. throw in some trailers so i can attract further gigs, whatever i can muster for a premiere, and i've got myself a lifelong goal squared away into a neat little package (approximately the size of a dvd. approximately)

- consulting now takes me to philadelphia, PA four days a week. i'm working long hours, missing my home, missing holly terribly, and basically at a loss for what to do with myself when i leave the office. i don't leave the office at an hour appropriate for roaming most of the city, and yet early enough that i have a couple hours to kill before having to go to bed. i try to work out, but even that can't always happen if i'm dead tired when i get back.

- i've been slowing working on my next feature script; it's coming together, to be sure, but it's slow going with working long hours and constantly being too tired to feel enthusiastic. but it's coming along, and i get that giddy little thrill once a week or so when i add another page of dialog to my notebook (mind you it's a very small page, but i'm still giddy nonetheless)

- i'm paying off my movie debts slowly. surely, slowly, but surely. but so very slowly. but so ever surely.

so that's the nutshell. what kind of nut? who knows. but those are the overarching themes. also of note are my attempts to come home the past two thursdays:

on july 20th, my flight was delayed 3 hours. at first. my 5:00 flight turned into an 8:15 flight. fine, i think. i'll just wait it out by watching something on my laptop or writing a letter or staring at my latest equations in consternation. but then, at 6:00, i get a text from holly telling me that my flight was cancelled.

um, i'm sorry? cancelled? because you see, poor, poor, naive reader, i had never been informed of any cancellations.

so what to do? the line to the counter was inCREDIBLY long, since about four flights were coming through these gates and everyone had a bone to pick. so the gate counter? not an option. the next best thing, then, is to head downstairs, to the ticket counter...

the art of waiting has never been perfected so well as by those attempting to get to the ticket counter lady. never. ever. so, needless to say, i spent an hour in line for the ticket counter lady while simultaneously on the phone with the airline, trying to get another flight. the first flight out, it was rumored, came on saturday morning. this is was not good, given that i had a wedding to attend friday afternoon. so what to do? i stayed on the phone, through the woman on the other line attempting to get me a new flight. at first, the plan was to: take the train to DC and fly out of Dulles by 8am friday morning, then get into White Plains, wait 3 hours, and fly out to O'hare, getting into chicago around 2pm. just barely enough time to get to the wedding. this plan was accepted.

but then the woman on the phone put some more work into it because she liked the sound of my voice so much (i was nice, she says). so after some work, she landed me a flight at 8am straight out of philly, getting me into o'hare around 10am friday morning. even better. better still was immediately afterwards going straight to another airline and catching a flight an hour later. yes, much better still.

so i made it home that first thursday, around 10pm.

***

on july 27th, the story was slightly different. my 3:00pm flight was delayed by 15 minutes, so nothing horrible. but the problem lay in wait at o'hare; my friend from france was coming to visit my city, arriving at noon. but she said she would be fine waiting until i arrived at 4:30pm. so, a slight delay but nothing horrible.

not horrible, that is, until we actually got into the air. delays upon delays upon delays; chicago was hit with a deluge of biblical proportions, water water everywhere. this delayed us in the air, forcing the pilot to circle around and take alternate routes, keeping us airborne until we were allowed to land.

not to spoil things prematurely, but we weren't allowed to land. instead, after having been delayed in the air by about an hour, we land in, bum ba da bum...

milwaukee.

why in milwaukee? because fuel costs money, and we were burning by flying around the city whilst it rained. so we landed to refuel and await approval from chicago and the milwaukee landing strip we were on to leave. these approvals took about 4 hours. we couldn't get off the plane because there was nothing to get onto; we were on a landing strip, not a gate in site. so we sat and sat, waiting and waiting. waiting and waiting and waiting.

remember when i said the art of waiting could never be perfected so well as by those waiting for the ticket counter lady? yeah, well, i was wrong. it's equally well perfected by those waiting for two traffic control towers to approve your right to leave the state of wisconsin.

so, after about 8 hours of sitting in the same airplane chair, i get to o'hare. at about 10pm, after adding in checked luggage retrieval time and the line to get a taxi (which was so long as to shock the least shockable person on this or any other planet).

what will this next week bring? when trying to meet holly at the airport before her trip? when trying to get home in time to enjoy anything at all? only the future knows, my friends.