A Day In The Life – August 2003

MORNING
Thursday, August 7, 2003

Today, I woke up at 6:45am to a warm and sunny Malibu morning (what else is there???) and went to the gym to lift some weights. I just started lifting again, because I need to keep my bones strong as I get older, and because my legs aren’t as toned as they used to be when I was running more. Cellulite, aaargh! My knee has been hurting since May, when I was training for a marathon, so I never did the marathon and I haven’t run or ridden the bike for months. Just swimming. I even had to stop yoga! I lift very light free weights, and I do two sets of each exercise, with 12-15 reps each set. I prefer to lift with Ian, but this morning he has left for a very early, long bike ride, so I am on my own. I lift and do my knee exercises and then drive to the nearby university pool for my swim. I put on a lot of sunscreen, so that my face is clown-white. Carline gave me some Shiseido sunscreen that she and Trish use when they surf, and she was right when she said it doesn’t come off! It keeps the sun off, and when I am done I have to rub my face very hard with a towel to get it off. My swim is great – boy do I love to swim!

AFTERNOON
Wednesday, August 13, 2003

I have class today with Margie Haber from 11:30am-3pm. It is an audition class, as I seem to have backslid on my auditions these days – I get so nervous before each one! You’d think, after 21 years of auditioning, I would be smooth and cool about it all but nooooo. Margie is very warm and the class feels very safe for me to be terrible, which is important to me in a class. If you cant just suck, you cant be brilliant either. I generally suck in this class, so the brilliant will appear later, I guess! I am learning a lot, and I know my auditioning will improve. Last week I auditioned for a movie and they called my manager for my availability. I was sooo happy I did that well in an audition, because I really have been too nervous to do a good job in them recently. This week in class, we are reading scenes completely cold, meaning that we haven’t seen the copy before we get up in front of the class to do it. I am doing the scene with Doug, a very nice man. It is a breakup scene. Doug is very tall, very muscular, with a deep voice, so when he starts to cry in the scene it just breaks my heart, and I cry too. Now if only I can be as free with my emotions in front of a casting director, a director, 3 producers, a writer and a video camera!

LATE AFTERNOON
Wednesday, August 20, 2003

I am on the set of She Spies, a television series. I am doing a guest spot, playing the role of a Delta Force captain. Today, I am working with Natasha Henstridge, lead spy, and her handler, played by Cameron Dado. I like them both a lot. There are also quite a few of the crew that I have worked with: several makeup people who were on Melrose Place, a script supervisor from Brainiacs, the director/producer and the director of photography from Baywatch, and a lighting man from Christine, 20 years ago! I guess I have been around a long time, working alot…. We are shooting inside on a set, thank goodness, as it is over 100 degrees outside and I am wearing all black! But it is fun, and even though it is a 13 hour day, it doesn’t seem long enough.

EVENING
Friday, August 29, 2003

It is Friday evening and Ian, Vietly and I join our weekly group in front of the federal building, to continue our vigil against the Bush administration policies. Ian and I have been coming here every Friday for a year, ever since we heard Scott Ritter speak about the impending war in Iraq. Scott was one of the UN weapons inspectors there throughout the 1990’s,after the first Gulf War, and he spoke very convincingly that Iraq did not have the “weapons of mass destruction” ( I really don’t like that term – it is too vague) that our President insisted it did. Even if they did have leftover weapons from when Iraq was not under strict international sanctions, the biological and chemical agents wouldn’t have lasted this long, he said. Anyway, I could go on and on about that…

Vietly has been coming to the vigil even more consistently than Ian and me since she arrived in Los Angeles in the spring, and tonight there are a dozen of our protesting friends, all whom we have gotten to know as we stand on the corner with our signs for 2 hours each Friday. It is a very chatty, social time, even though we are holding signs that say “ 142 Americans dead in Iraq”, and “Healthcare not Warfare”. Chuck, with whom I register voters, drops by to say hello, and I register Vietly and Alice to vote, since of course Chuck has forms on him. Ethan, an actor (and a very good one – Vietly and I saw him in a play this summer)

discusses with Vietly what photos he should put on his commercial card; Harry and I talk about the books he is reading; I speak with Lucy about crosswords, as Ian and I struggled over a hard one last night, and she was an MIT professor. Alice and Harriet have new grandchildren, and Steve the Hugger (he gives great hugs, and it differentiates him from Steve the English Teacher) is helping with the Kucinich campaign and he tells us how that is going. Ian and Chuck discuss what they think is attractive in a woman. Etc. etc! We discuss all sorts of things on the corner! I hold a “Do You Feel Safer?” sign and “Honk for No More War””. I take some more photos with the new camera my dad gave me for my birthday. If you want to see pictures from the past year of protesting, go to the photo gallery section of this site. Alice hands out “War is not the Answer” bumper stickers, like she has been for the past year – you see a lot of them on cars around West LA because of her.

It is a good 2 hours. A bit of social consciousness, a bit of laughter and chat. A good way to end the week.