It's been tough to get out of bed this week. Unless I HAVE to get up, I usually need the light of day to wake up. It's terrible during wintertime as the days get shorter. The alarm still goes off at 5:15 am (because of the morning bike ride I do during the summer) which I ignore, and it's around 6:30-7:00 am before I get out from under the covers because that's when it gets LIGHT outside! When I was in Australia the last couple of weeks.....it's summer there now....the sky started getting light by 4:30 am and by 5 I was wide awake! I was up, walking around, checking email, eating breakfast, whatever. By eight it felt like half the morning was over! Then I come back home to the States and I'm zombied out until around seven.
It looks like I'm going to be in the movies....or at least have the opportunity to be on a cutting room floor! There's a film being shot here in Shreveport called "Blonde Ambition", starring Jessica Simpson and Luke Wilson, and a couple of days ago a call went out looking for extras to be in the film on Thursday and Friday. I sent in a photo and an email, telling whoever that I could make time to be an extra if they needed one. I didn't hear back on that call-out but this afternoon I got a call from a guy named Chris who said they were looking for extras to be background pedestrians in New York (that is, downtown Shreveport) for this Monday. I thought he was kidding but realized quick enough that the guy was for real. I have to call Sunday night for details but essentially I have to bring 4 changes of clothing, one a business suit and the others....that aren't business suits. Apparently I may be four different characters in different locations as they film the scene...a way to create a crowd out of a small number of people. Do multiple takes of the same scene from different angles, edit them together and the viewer thinks they're looking at a location with people all over the place! Except that it's the same people! I'll tell how it goes after it's done Monday. The best part is it's a paying gig! I've heard the pay for an extra can be anywhere from $50 to $150 a day. Either way, I can always use the money.
Saturday I do my first outdoor bike ride in five weeks. I took November off from the bike as a break and to concentrate on the half-marathon in the middle of the month. In Oz I ran only once and did two pilates classes....otherwise, not much else. Since my return I've started back on the weights and have done two wind trainer rides in the living room. It'll be very cold tomorrow but I have to start buiding up my mileage base again for the '07 racing season. I could do my first race as early as mid-February or the first weekend of March, so I need to get LOTS of miles and saddle time in me before then. The race in March is the famed Rouge-Roubaix down in St. Francisville, a 100-mile effort with about 26 miles or so of that distance "off the pavement"....on dirt roads, gravel roads, extremely steep hills, all sorts of abominations we have to ride over. It's only fun when it's over and I've done it three times so far. I've had bad luck with flats at the most unfortunate times and once you lose the pack on those dirt roads, it's over....it becomes a training ride then. Anyway, I hope to get two rides in this weekend and be able to walk normal on the movie set on Monday!
A young man who graduated from my high school in Minden died in Iraq on Wednesday. He was one of five guys in a Humvee that was blasted apart by a roadside bomb. It was especially sad in that he had just returned to Iraq last Sunday after spending two weeks of leave seeing his new son, his wife and the rest of his family. As I write this, it was only seven days ago his family saw him off at Shreveport Regional Airport on his way back to his troops (he was on his second tour). The last thing he told his Dad was that the last two weeks was the best leave he had ever had. He was a 2003 graduate of Minden High...I graduated in 1973...and I believe he is the first Minden graduate to lose his life in war since a classmate of mine's older brother was killed in Viet Nam (bad luck...he was already wounded and was being evacuated when the vehicle he was in struck a mine...his name's on the Viet Nam Memorial wall in Washington now). Here's a couple of links to the story (copy and paste the links into your browser):
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061208/NEWS01/612080313
http://www.nwlanews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1470&Itemid=26
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