Happy Christmas!

Well, the husband and I had a very nice, mellow holiday this year. We did the traditional British Christmas, with crackers and ghost stories. I really didn't realize that ghost stories are a British tradition on Christmas, but they are. Consider "A Christmas Carol" by Dickens - totally a ghost story. And just this morning I realized there's a carol that has the line "there'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmas' long long ago". So that had to come from somewhere, right? I'd never thought about it before. Anyway, it was nice.

It did rain, so we couldn't take Sofie to the park but she seemed ok curled up on the couch with her pack. I did manage to take her over there today but it's windy and cold and we didn't stay as long as she would have liked. But then we never do.

I'll have to post pics of our gifts, since we only did a small exchange. I got a jewelry box, the husband got an Alex Ross print of Captain Marvel, and the family got a Halloween Cat and a new Dept 56 building.

Anyway, I've got off until Monday and I'm hoping to get the rest of the living room painted. I packed up all the dvd's and video tapes and moved the shelving away from the wall. I have to defrost the paint brushes and we're all set.

Star Sighting

I went to set today to hand out paychecks and got to chat with Kelsey Grammer. One of the hair stylists was reading a book and hula-hooping and we decided it was a bit showy and made the rest of us look bad. KG seems like a very nice guy - nicer then a lot of the stars I've met.

Other than that the show is going well. The crew is well-behaved and the shooting is still on time. We go on a 2 week hiatus starting next week and even though I still have to work a few days to pay for this week, I should get some extra time off and I'm looking forward to it.

Sofie's still coming to work a couple of days a week and people ask after her when she not there. They want me to bring her to set but we've been at a school for 2 weeks and I don't think they'd appreciate it. I'm going to get her a Santa suit for the Christmas party tomorrow - I'm sure she'll be a hit.

Shoot Day 1

We started shooting today and the DP is trying to renegotiate his contract. What a bastard. He waits until the 1st day of shooting, when he has us over a barrel, to comment that he wants overtime and meal penalties on top of his $8k per week.

Frankly, he's one of the lowest paid DP's I've ever worked with so I'd already asked the question about meal penalties - just figured he'd want them to supplement his income. The answer was an unequivocal "no way!" I guess someone should have asked him first... We've wasted a lot of time trying to deal with the whole thing and the worst part is he's so small-time, he doesn't even know what he IS entitled to get under the union contract.

Another lovely bit of news - we may be shooting over Christmas instead of taking a 2 week hiatus. They'd probably give off the 25th and 26th, and Jan 1st, but work the rest of the time. I hope people haven't booked plane tickets yet. Not that it really matters to me. I was going to have to work anyway. The burden of payroll...

Sad

My Uncle Mark died after a car accident on Monday night. My cousin was driving him and my Aunt Pat to a basketball game when they got t-boned on an icy road. A passenger in the other car was ejected and died at the scene. My cousin is fine, my aunt has 2 broken legs and minor whiplash.

The whole thing just totally sucks but my aunt won't be able to make it to my uncle's funeral and that makes me saddest.