As we enter a very busy month of March, a little catch-up on February before it slips away: it’s awards season, which has meant lots of screenings and some late nights of overtime. We also welcomed Caroline to L.A. from Austin, and enjoyed hanging out with her and Keith for dinner at Street as well as at some screenings. I’m working one of those late nights right now; I’m on hour thirteen as I type, eating as many snacks as I can, watching hour upon hour of Great British Railway Journeys, A History of Scotland, and Wallander. It’s also just three weeks to the marathon, with my two 20-mile runs in the rear view mirror and a few weeks of tapering before the big day. I’m excited about the route; we ran miles 3.5 to 11.5 from downtown to Hollywood a few weeks ago, which was a great taste of what the race will be like.
My parents visited this weekend, giving them a chance to see the house, which we closed on a year ago tomorrow, and gave me a couple of days of my dad’s expertise in installing track lighting in the office. We also watched a lot of Olympics, and enjoyed a pair of fun outings. On Saturday, we enjoyed a concert by the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, playing period compositions from the silent film era, both on their own and as accompaniment for shorts by Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd.
On Friday, we visited the Nethercutt Museum in Sylmar, an amazing collection of automobiles (plus a train engine and Pullman car) that, like many of our outings, began as something we saw Huell Howser mention, and finally got to check out ourselves.
More Nethercutt photos here.
Most of our time was spent installing track lights in the office, which was a lot more time-consuming than I would have expected, but with much better results than if I had attempted it myself. We only had one explosion of sparks, visited only three different Home Depots for the materials, and managed to finish just as the light was dying and the closing ceremonies were coming on last night.
Speaking of the Olympics, I feel like we’ve watched more Olympics this time around than in any other year. Thanks to TiVo and to lots of great coverage of the cross-country, biathlon, and nordic combined events, I feel like I got a better feel for these games than for any others I can remember. It will be nice, though, to go back to being able to pay attention to the news, now that the fear of Olympic spoilers is gone. By this time next month, the show and the marathon will be over and I’ll be back in New Zealand doing film inspection for a week. It’ll be a whirlwind, I’m sure.
