2002-04-18 - 3:19 p.m.

I think I have spring fever. The weather is warming up, finally (in Texas, we start dreading summer round about February), and I daydream of reading, and lounging, and swimming, and drinking gin and tonics. I’ve been quite busy for a while now – first with the marathon, and then my film class. When you add in South by Southwest, Jeremy & Stephanie’s wedding, and that general expectation that I’ll show up to work most days, I feel like I’ve been on a rollercoaster. Somehow, I still had to find time to work on my final project for the film class, something I was dreading, as it actually required me to "think" and "challenge" myself. For the record, I hate challenging myself. But my film partner Bryan and I managed to finish the script, and scout locations, and find props, and round up actors. And we shot the entire thing in one weekend. I mean, it threatened rain all weekend long, and we didn’t get final confirmation from our main actor until the night before we started shooting, and it’s awfully hard to find white face paint unless it’s near Halloween (although Noxema will work in a pinch, provided you have an amenable actor – thanks, Rob), and Bryan’s car broke down the week before, and….well, let’s just say that deep down, on some level, I’m sure I had a good time. Despite the tension, and the worry, and the stress, and the overriding feeling that I really didn’t know what the fuck I was doing…um, why do people make movies again?

Actually, it worked out better than Bryan and I ever could have hoped. It didn’t rain, and enough people showed up at kickball to make it look like an actual game was going on (what’s a film without a kickball scene?), and we finished ahead of schedule, and the actors really had a lot of fun with it all, considering we made them get up early two days in a row.

Now all we have to do is edit. And pray that we got all the shots we needed. Because there is no way I’m going to try and spend another weekend shooting pickup shots. Frankly, I don’t need the stress.

This might be more fun if someone else were in charge, and I just had to do what I was told.

So, yeah. I’m really looking forward to summer. Kickball on Thursday nights. Sunday afternoons at Barton Springs, reading the New York Times. Matinees every Saturday afternoon. Road trips in air-conditioned rental cars. Napping after work every day, because it’s just too hot to do anything else.

This feeling of expectation is nice. Enjoy it while it lasts. I’m sure I’ll start complaining about the heat soon enough.

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