A Thousand Degrees in the Shade!!

Los Angeles is Burning.

If you've tuned into national news recently, you've no doubt heard of the "Station Fire" burning just outside of LA. It's amazing . . . This mushroom cloud has been looming over the city for about a week, and it sounds like it's going to keep burning for a couple more weeks! We're not in any danger, other than breathing, which apparently is dangerous. The further east you travel, the more you can taste the smoke, and this morning, my car was sprinkled with white ash. I'd like to reiterate that we're not in any danger, it's the size of the fire, not the proximity that's so amazing.

Complicating the fire is the extreme heat we've been dealing with. It's been in the hundreds for a few days now, which is difficult to deal with. We've got several fans going pretty much 24/7 at strategic spots throughout our apartment. Pretty much, from midnight to about noon, it's cool in here, but as the afternoon and evening progress, our place becomes a sauna. Though it's not pleasant, we've determined to put up with it for now (should break soon), and take more drastic precautionary measures-swamp cooler/whatever!-next summer!

Enough whining!

We had a nice weekend with the Lane Ladies in town. We spent a day at the beach, a sunset at the Griffith Park Observatory (not the Mt. Wilson Observatory, currently in jeopardy of burning down), and a lot of time shopping. I was able to escape a couple of times for auditions-couple of student film/independent shorts-which was a nice break from the . . . shopping. Ug. What with the heat and all, we generally had a siesta-a-day program . . . sleeping through the hottest part of the afternoon.

This is my final week of bootcamp, and I'm planning on using it to roll into a self-motivational workout plan starting next week. I've also started my second week of my second session at the Groundlings, which has been great so far. This week's assignment was to find a magazine that I wouldn't normally buy and base a character off of it. I found a sweet Karate Magazine with Bruce Lee on the cover. Tomorrow it's bootcamp morning, Groundlings class, Alka-Seltzer commercial audition, indy film audition, and who knows what the evening will bring!

Here's a couple of "home projects" we've done recently . . . the chairs we found on the street. We've thoroughly cleaned them, and T is covering them in a spiffy black material. The floating shelves I made out of a hollow-core door (just the top and bottom shelf-the middle one is from Ikea). You can't really tell from the picture, but they're cut on an angle, so they taper towards the wall. They still need to be stained or painted, but they seem to be working! Now, will they be earthquake-proof?

Hope everyone is doing well! Love to all!