cliff notes on this week

Finally I have some free time ... I'm locking myself upstairs in my office to be a hermit for a night, it's actually what I do best.

So it all started Thursday at 4:45 am when I woke up to drive to New Haven. Call time was at 6am and the day lasted until 7. I mostly spent the hours being herded en masse from place to place, doing a lot of nothing. The highlight of the experience was making it into a small scene with Harrison Ford. We were filming with him for awhile, and Steven Spielberg was in and out of the room actively giving direction. Neat to see legends up close, and a lot of fun to work with Spielberg .. this brush with fame kind of made up for the misery of sitting in WLH in 90 degree heat on a muggy afternoon, with artificial lights bearing down on us and no AC. (consider that I was wearing six layers, one of which was thick wool. Makeup people were running around all day making futile attempts to remove the sweat from our faces. ew..) So, for the minimal contribution to filming that I made, I ended up being considerably exhausted by the end. When I finished, I managed to stay awake enough to bonfire with Dan and Tim for a little while, then passed out immediately when I got home.

Friday I ran around from lab to hospice, came home to set my hair in curlers, then woke up at 4:45 on Saturday morning to do it all again. Filming on Saturday was, in short, miserable. The weather was nice, but I was outside for around 15 hours straight, just standing around. Standing in these absurdly uncomfortable black flats, staring at the campus of my usually beloved college, for hours and hours and hours on end. I don't even want to look at High Street again until I go back in the fall, this is how sick I became of standing there. It wouldn't have been so bad had I been actively engaged in doing something, but they were filming maybe 5-10% of the time I was held captive on set. Additionally, I'm almost sure I was not even in the shot. Extreme boredom does become a bonding experience -- I made friends with a cute Marine and his friend -- but that was one of the few highlights of my day. Oh, and at the end I got to stand around with Harrison Ford and Shia LaBeouf for a bit, but at that point the novelty had worn off. I'm complaining too much, but I just felt like the whole day was a waste of time. I can only take so many hours of waiting around and doing absolutely nothing before I get restless and irritated. I would say fifteen is well beyond this threshold.

But! no worries, the story has a happy ending. After filming ended at 9pm, I transitioned from 50s schoolgirl to pink Powerpuff girl for Jocelyn's costume birthday party. Not surprisingly, everyone was happily wasted by the end of the night and I at least was able to numb my swollen feet and enjoy the company of friends.

Sunday I slept it off and worked on a lab presentation. And today life is back to normal.

So that's the summary of me and Indiana Jones 4. The casting people called me and asked if I could come back to film today and tomorrow, but my answer was an emphatic "no". I'm already behind in lab stuff and I don't have the energy or desire to do it again. I do have a bunch of more amusing stories about the experience, but you'll have to get them from me in person. :)