Bonhomie

Holiday season is upon us in all its festive glory. The streets are twinkling with fairy lights and adorned with baubles; billboards urge us to spend; and grocery stores seduce us with food and liquor sales. The faint waft of cinnamon is in the air. It struck me, all of a sudden, why people decorate with lights at this time of year; because it’s winter and it gets dark early. This is no doubt perfectly obvious to most people, but this little Aussie is used to Christmas at summertime, when the days are long and (usually) warm. Not that LA becomes a snowy wonderland. Last weekend it was even verging on hot.


UCLA closes for two weeks over the Christmas/New Year period, which happens to coincide with my roommates disappearing; one on vacation and the other to a new apartment. I’ll have the place to myself for a week before the new roommate moves in and I’m looking forward to getting all domestic and doing some cleaning, tidying and, best of all, baking! I’m going to throw a little party just to have an excuse to bake (and a means of preventing myself from eating EVERYTHING I bake). When I was in Melbourne I picked up a Donna Hay cookbook filled with delicious recipes, plus I’ve been soliciting recipes from friends and family in the wake of losing my precious recipe book somehow in the last apartment. Still a bit sad and annoyed about that. But it’s gone, I don’t know where, exactly when or quite how it happened, so I must simply start over. Bridgette, your ginger and spiced caramel slice is top of my list to try out!

On the weekend, I helped Alex shoot a scene for her showreel. It’s a little dramatic, slice of life moment in a car, which I wrote. With James behind his fancy, very neat, camera, and another friend behind the wheel of the car, we drove around for a few hours finding the best light and doing several takes. A fun afternoon hanging out with friends and creating something; what better way to spend your time! Looking forward to seeing the footage. I’m setting my webseries in a car, too. Why this preoccupation with cars? Must be an LA thing! With work being very quiet this last week or so, I’ve written three episodes and fleshed out a fourth in my head. I plan to write the remaining four eps over the next two weeks.

Sport of Acting finished up for the year on Tuesday night. We had a great class, during which Vinny encouraged me to deliver the whole St Monica monologue I’ve been working on in three parts. Last week I performed “Part 3” for the first time, so it is the section I’ve worked on the least (which I felt) but it was delicious fun to do the whole thing; like stretching out in a big bed, or hitting the freeway after traveling in stop-start traffic (there I go with the car thing again). Then the whole class hung out in the theatre and shared wine, cheese, chocolate and passionate opinions, not to mention wonderful bonhomie.