My Life as a Volunteer

I got another book to review, and to my pleasant surprise, it's really good so far. This one's called Peter and Beth and is By Doug Lalli. I don't get paid for these, but I do get to keep the books. :-)

The last one, as you may remember, was not so good. In fact, as you may or may not recall, the writing sucked. Grammatical errors, redundancy, contradictions and over-dramatisations abounded. Here's a small excerpt:

We both looked up at the house in silence for several moments. I realized my perception on it already shifted. Maybe it was the fact that sun had lowered a little and the light was no longer gleaming on the glass, but it seemed a little darker now, colder. I wasn't nearly as impressed as I was when I first saw it. . .

Yes, at least 3 grammatical errors in just that little passage. Sigh. Oh, yes, when the protagonist first saw the house, she "heard the familiar 'click' of the door as it unlocked." Stuff like that. On every page. It's a shame, really. And no, I'm not disclosing the title here, because I think that would be mean.

Anyway, I'm very excited to be reading and enjoying Peter and Beth. :-)

In other highly rewarding volunteer work, you all know by now that I got to be an extra in my friend Frank's (4th musical down the list) mockumentary. (Dude, when are you going to cough up your site so I can link you?) This film is going to be a scream, and I can't wait to see it. I'm not going to say much about it until Frank tells me what all I can mention. Or maybe Frank will finally login and tell you himself. OK, probably not. He's a very busy guy. (No pressure, Frank. I'm messing with you. Except for that site link thing.)

Being involved had a few great benes (bennies?) Number One: we got to see the always charming Frank. He's a very fun and energetic guy. Reminds me a lot of my dad, actually. Also easy on the eyes. Shh. Don't tell him I said that. Number Two: we got a look at behind-the-scenes filmmaking and hopefully took away some stuff that will help us in our own endeavours. Number Three: it was really fun and we got to meet some fascinating people, and Number Four: Dude, it might go to Sundance. How cool would it be to be lurking in the background in a film that went to Sundance? I guess I could also count getting to see the inside of GuTTer MuNKi's (and Kevin J. Anderson's - a school chum of MuNKi's) and Frank's and SIL's alma mater, but as this took place in the somewhat recently scabbed-on atrocity (the inside is nice, but the outside is ugly as sin) I don't think that counts.

So what was it like? First off, I'm Miss Unprepared. Or maybe Mrs. Unprepared would better indicate the magnitute of my lack of preparedness. Had I been a Boy Scout, for instance, I would have emailed or called Frank before we left and asked if he would be shooting while we were there. (I already knew he was filming in July and August.) Then I would have brought appropriate clothing along. But no. Well, actually, I guess it was kind of a sudden decision that we made about going on the trip. And come to think of it, I don't have anything like "business dress" anyway. *shrug* So I hit the resale shop out by MIL and FIL's and found an ensemble that I actually really, really like (and a sexy red dress, too, as it turns out) and everything was 40% off the already very decent prices, so all in all, this was a good thing. :-) Hooray! Obviously my wardrobe could benefit from my taking up extra work as a full-time hobby. Have I ever mentioned that I am not a clothes-horse? I have a shelf in the closet and a few hanging things. The rest belongs to GuTTer MuNKi. Oh, and a bit of it is Prawn's.

Anyway. I didn't find shoes and had only brought sandals on the trip (I'm a barefoot girl for the most part) but as it turns out, my surprisingly shorter-than-me SIL has the same size feet that I do. And an incredible wardobe. Heh Heh. She loaned me a pair of black heels (Oh yes, I was the Tower of Babel in those shoes) that had some designer chick's name inside and that were purported to be very pricey shoes (given to her, fortunately, by a friend, so I wasn't too freaked out about borrowing them.) I'm not sure what that says about either of our feet, BTW. Hers don't seem too large on her, and mine don't look too small on me. Maybe there's a very boring scientific explanation for that. At any rate, I was immediately complimented on her shoes when I got there, LOL! Somehow I managed to stand, and yea (the Biblical "yea," not "yeah") even walk in the shoes. I was impressed. I don't think anyone else really was. Most people take this sort of thing (the ability of women to perambulate in high heels) for granted, but tall girls like me do not like to emphasize our towerosity, so we don't tend to wear skyscraper heels a whole lot. Needless to say, my practice at walking in such things is very nearly nil. My toes went to sleep almost immediately.

All this chatter, and I've only gotten as far as the dressing-up fun. Number Five: I got to play dress-up. Did I mention that I've never quite finished growing up? Well, this is long enough that some people **coughEgancough** are going to get bored without any pics to ogle, so I guess I'll do more blathering about life as an extra-special person tomorrow.