Tuesday, April 17, 2012

BEDA 4: The Art of Moving.

Wow. So much for doing "Blog Every Day in April". I'm not even ashamed; the time went by so quickly. Just... wow.

So, I had the beginning of a post all typed up from awhile ago, and it started like this:

The time between signing a lease on a new house and actually moving into it is the stupidest time I've ever experienced. I can't think of a better word to describe it than "stupid".

I spent this morning looking at furniture on Ikea's website, and then I started going through my things to try and get rid of stuff, but doing that just makes me want to start packing. And I'm not moving for 3 weeks... so beginning packing now means I'd just be sitting here with all my stuff in boxes for no reason for the next 20 days.

SO I HAVE TO JUST WAIT. I hate waiting.

Now it is April 17 and I am just over a week out from moving. I would say I have about 30% of my stuff sitting in boxes, and the rest is just waiting to be packed up so I can transfer it over to the new house. Saturday we (meaning the girls; Justin tends to get left out of this particular aspect of moving) took a group trip to Ikea to buy room and kitchen items, while getting ideas for how we want to decorate the living room. It was super fun in an incredibly over-excited way - we kept running from section to section saying "Guys! OMG! Look!" and "Do we need this?" and "I really think we need this!"

Our front door is lime green so it kind of went without saying that our kitchen will match accordingly. I've never even realized how many lime-green accessories there are out there until we really started looking for them. We bought green hot pads and utensils and a rug and mixing bowls. We also pondered over a giant lime-green pantry, but that's something we're still making our mind up on.

My room is going to be a combination of blacks and cranberry, with teal blue accents. I bought a new lamp, and a ornate black mirror and a throw pillow and a trashcan. The most exciting part of this whole moving process is also getting to decorate a bathroom, so I headed over to Bed Bath and Beyond last night and decided on a silvery shower curtain with a sequined design on it. The towels, trashcan and rug are all aquamarine blue.

I can't wait until I can move all my stuff over and start taking pictures to show you guys the new place and all my decorating ideas and whatnot, but alas. One more week. ONE MORE WEEK.

Impatience levels are high here at Mammoth Caves.

Tomorrow we're posting Episode 2 of Job Hunters, which will be a fun and exciting distraction from my own inability to wait for things. We're also filming this weekend, which I am so stoked about. It's been a few weeks since any of us have been on set (Emerald City Comic Con, Easter and Greek Easter really threw a wrench in our production schedule) so everyone is itching to get back into character, to see everyone again, and to crank out some more of the remaining episodes.

Let's see, in other Kristina News from April I also started watching Game of Thrones and the Walking Dead - both of which are awesome. We're only about 5 episodes into GoT, but with the Walking Dead I managed to marathon into early Season 2 last weekend with a bunch of friends. It got to the point where I was having nonstop post-apocalyptic zombie dreams, but given the nature of TWD, the dreams never actually included zombies. Only the high-intensity off-time with the other survivors, scavenging for food and trying to figure out "what's next".

So, yeah. I am completely failing at BEDA this year, which is a total first for me. But I haven't moved houses in over three years and I forgot how much time it takes up and how much you have on your mind constantly -- things like writing blog posts get pushed to the very back.

I'll be around again sometime soon. I always am.

If anyone has any good packing/moving tips they'd like to share, please do so in the comments!

Thursday, April 5, 2012

BEDA 3: Job Hunters release day!

Haha, whoops. Missed a day. The funny thing is, I totally opened up blogger yesterday and STARTED writing something up, but then clicked away -- and in the excitement and bustle of the day, I never went back to it. So here's what I started typing yesterday, Wednesday:

"Well, today is exciting.

I am sitting in my living room with other Job Hunters producers on either side of me, Chipotle in my tummy, and 200+ comments on the first episode of the web series.

So far people seem to really like it! I mean, there are the few standard "this iz jus a Hnuger Games ripoff" and the "u guyz can't act" comments, but honestly, for the first episode of a brand new show, we seem to be doing REALLY WELL.

The best part for me personally is to see how excited and proud the rest of our team is. Everyone's posting facebook comments and twitter statuses all over the place full of exclamation points and smiley faces, and it's making me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, because it wasn't that long ago that this project only mentally belonged to four people. Now there are so many people who take ownership over it, and it's the best feeling."

Now it's Thursday morning, and I'm super tired because Eia and I stayed up until 5AM talking like a couple of dummies (this of course being after we were over at our friend's house until after 3 hanging out and watching Adventure Time). I don't have a lot more to say, except that yesterday was awesome, I'm glad people seem to like our web series so far, and it's actually incredible how behind I feel in life right now.

I am completely out of the swing of making regular videos so it just feels a lot harder making them each week, I haven't even started on my Answerly video for tomorrow, and knowing that I'm going to have to start packing to MOVE soon (and that the whole process is right around the corner) is vaguely terrifying.

It's just a busy time right now. I know everything will sort itself out. I'm just feeling very fortunate that it's all positive stuff going on right now. That's a style of busy I can get behind.

Oh, and also, I tried the Cheesy Dorito Gordita Crunch from Taco Bell last night. So, like I said, good things all around. More tomorrow, when I'll hopefully feel like my brain is on straight again.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

BEDA 2: Thoughts on leaving Mammoth Caves.

Alright I can't promise this is going to last all month, but here I am already, back for BEDA post #2. It's funny - I'm so incredibly busy right now (Job Hunters comes out TOMORROW guys) that the idea of writing a blog post amidst all the crazy actually sounds kind of... calming. It sounds nice. So BEDA has come at a good time of year for me, as a way to clear my head and document all the awesome stuff happening.

Yesterday I talked about Emerald City Comic Con... today let's talk about moving. And how I am doing it.

For those of you following along at home, my current house is called "Mammoth Caves" and I've lived here for almost four years. I moved here in 2008 when I was a junior in college, because it's walking distance to my college. Eia lived with me here for 2 years before moving out and leaving me her super huge bedroom. This is where I met Justin (who in turn kind of introduced me to almost everyone I hang out with now), and where we've cycled through so many amazing (and not so amazing) other roommates.

The time has come though, to leave it behind and try something new. I can get weirdly emotional and attached to inanimate things, and the houses I've lived in definitely fall into that category. It took me a long time to really feel like it was time to move on, but once I started feeling those inclinations rising up in me, it sort of became an obsession. I started checking housing rental sites every single day, I went to about 6-7 viewings of potential houses, but nothing felt right.

Until a few weeks ago. I just happened to find this house, in almost the perfect location, but that's not even the best part. The best part is that it's one of those super modern cube houses.

Now, whatever you're picturing when I say "super modern cube house"; take that image and make it even cube-ier. Seriously. And that's my new house.

We're moving at the end of this month (which will be another awesome thing to document and yet another reason I'm glad BEDA is happening right now) so the next few weeks are not only fraught with Job Hunters excitement, but will also include insane amounts of packing and the transition to the next stage of my life. Moving into "House 2: Hypercube". :D

Anyway, being that it's the morning before the official launch of my web series and we're about three weeks out from moving to a completely new house, I'm filled with all this nervous/excited energy and it's nice to have a place to focus it. As soon as I finish this entry I have to go get work done that I know I wont touch at all tomorrow in the hustle and bustle of releasing the show, so it makes me a little sad to end this post. But I have to, so, I'll see you tomorrow!

Monday, April 2, 2012

BEDA 1: Emerald City Comic Con wrap up.

Well. It only occurred to me today, on April 2nd, that I have already missed the first day of BEDA (Blog Every Day in April) should I so choose to participate this year.

BEDA, you're one of those things I know I really don't have time for, but despite that, I find it so hard to quit you. So I guess I'm gonna try it. Or whatever. We'll see.

This weekend was absolutely incredible. I'll probably just sort of glaze over everything because I am way too exhausted (and a little hungover) to really delve into extreme detail. Essentially, this weekend was Emerald City Comic Con. It was my second ECCC, but definitely far surpassed last year's in every imaginable way.

Friday was the most laid-back day; we went to a panel on web series and then spent the remainder of the day poking around the vendor room, buying enough art to almost completely decorate our new house. Then Liz, Ariana, David and I went out to dinner before heading over to the Hard Rock Café for Kracklefest. Adam Warrock (a nerd hip hop rapper) was great as usual, I had the pleasure of finally seeing Marian Call perform live, and Kirby Krackle rocked the place down. I got to jump up onstage to sing "Comic Shop" with them, making it the first official time we've performed it together. I know I really shouldn't be singing right now, but it was the first time I have performed live since VidCon last summer, and it was just one song. So it felt good.

The only downside of the whole day was that at the concert, there was this couple that wedged their way completely in front of David and I and then wouldn't stop making out with each other. At one point the girl was even licking the guy's face. We tried to combat the awkward by inappropriately moshing with only them during not entirely mosh-worthy songs. It didn't help.

Saturday started early. We went to Wil Wheaton's 90 Minute Awesome Hour (contradictory, I know. He's just that awesome). We wandered around a bit after, looked at costumes, got our photos taken at the Night Zero booth, then went to another web series panel. A bunch of us bought dice sets (a few of our friends were picking out their very first ones!) and as it grew later, we decided to call it an early night. My voice was already kind of going, and we wanted to be rested and fresh for our Job Hunters panel the next day. So we went out to dinner at Azteca and headed home - before I think would traditionally be considered "cool" for the Saturday night of a con. Which is fine, because Eia, Ariana and I just snuggled and watched Buffy at home. :)

Sunday was seriously one of the best days I've had in a long time. We started the morning with the Summer Glau panel (she's adorable and so genuinely sweet!), which fed directly into the Adam Baldwin panel. He's so hilarious. One of the highlights of the panel, also, was when my dad went up to ask him a question in the Jayne hat I got him for Christmas. I had a pretty proud nerd daughter moment then. Anyway! Next was the Phelps twins (Fred and George Weasley) panel, which I was only able to catch about 15 minute of, because we had to race over to room 2AB to prepare for the Job Hunters panel. I only started getting nervous about 5 minutes before we went on, which is pretty standard for me, haha.

It went so well, though! Myself and the other three producers spoke a bit about the show, but then we jumped right into showing episode 1 to the crowd. People seemed really receptive to it! They laughed in the right places, and I got a lot of incredibly sweet @replies on twitter about it over the course of the rest of the day. The Q&A went really well after, as well. It was such a rush, suddenly being in front of a crowd talking about it after keeping it under wraps for so many months. It makes me super stoked for Wednesday, on the official release date!

After our panel we hung out at the con a bit longer, getting more pictures taken at the Night Zero booth and taking in the last of the con. It ended at 5pm, so everyone headed over to my house for the post con party we decided to throw. It was no hotel party, but it came pretty close. I spent a lot of this weekend sort of overwhelmed by how much I have grown to love all these people I've spent the last few months working on Job Hunters with. Even though we were being silly and drinking and dancing, I couldn't help but stop and sort of revel in how much hard work we've done together and how awesome it feels to celebrate that with each other.

I have so many other things to talk about, but I will save them for tomorrow!