Happy Valentine's Day!

Hi, Family and Friends!

Since the last blog Brandon and I have decided to sell our stuff, give up our apartment, and move out of Auckland. We’ve been talking about doing this for several months now, but the past two weeks have really shown us that the time has come to uproot once again and move on to the next adventure.

A couple Fridays ago (January 30th) I had a meeting with the guys who wanted to put a band together based around my original songs, and that was very cool. The possibility of being part of a band again was one of the few things that could be placed in the “con” side of a “Pros and Cons of Leaving Auckland” list. Every time I see them they’re very excited and talk about rehearsing twice a week and gigging in clubs by March, but the reality is that I first met them several months ago and it wasn’t until the end of January that we actually got together again, and the drummer didn’t even show up, and then our schedules were such that we weren’t going to get together for another three weeks. In the end, the con was not a strong enough reason to continue to anchor ourselves in the city.

Then there was the script meeting with that director two Sundays ago. Brandon and I had spent some amount of time getting to page 54 of the script, but we really didn’t feel that invested in it and were prepared for the director to have a bunch of ideas and want to take the script off our hands from that point on, especially since the writing credit is being spread between the three of us and only Brandon and I had written any part of those 54 pages thus far. However, at the meeting the director mostly just had some questions like, “What’s going on?” and “How’s it going to end?” like a kid at the end of a two-part episode of their favorite show. He said he had some suggestions, but he didn’t want to tell us what they were because he didn’t want to “disrupt our creative flow,” and asked us if we could finish the script by the next weekend. We said “sure, why not,” and that was the script meeting. The director is a very nice guy, but at one point he actually said, “You know, this is good because you have a good idea, but no resources, and I don’t have a good idea, but I do have some resources.”

Anyway, one of the things keeping us in Auckland was the opportunity to be involved in that project, but it’s looking more and more like filming won’t even really begin until next summer, at which point B and I will be headed home, so that “con” was suddenly moot.

The final straw came the next day when our overlording boss (Fiona) at our evening job started off our Monday of telemarketing with a “pep talk” that consisted of childishly demeaning the entire room, telling us that the number of surveys we’d all gotten were “unacceptable,” and so on and so forth. Of course, it didn’t matter that last week was a short week. Nor did our underlording boss (Karen) mention that she’d spent the first 45 minutes of two of those days playing games with us because she just didn’t feel like working yet.

Let’s rewind a bit to the end of last week when B got a full-time, commission-only job selling waterless car wash/wax in parking lots. As soon as we realized the true nature of the job I told B that it wasn’t worth it, but he wanted to give it a try just to see if we could possibly start saving money instead of just breaking even. So, even though it was commission-only, he was expected to get to the office by 7am for daily training briefings before they headed out to “the field” at 9am. Then most folks stayed out there until 6pm or so, but Brandon, of course, had to leave early so we could make it to telemarketing on time. Needless to say, that was a pretty crummy schedule. On top of all that, Brandon forgot to wear sunblock on that first day, and he came home so burnt that he looked almost purple.

That was the day we went to telemarketing and Fiona felt the need to berate us for our sub-par telemarketing skills. So, yes, that was the final straw. I was giving her such evil looks during her speech that by the end she was starting to back-pedal, but the damage was done. Though, really, I think that in the end she did us a favor by providing a catalyst to get us out of Auckland, exploring the country. Regardless, I’d like to eventually get a tarantula, name it Fiona, and then taxidermy it.

Brandon stuck with the carwax salesman job for the week, but as his sunburn faded, so did his willingness to sacrifice his dignity while assaulting unsuspecting mall-patrons with “free carwax demos.” By the time the week was over and the sunburn was peeling off, Brandon realized that for 45 hours of very hard work he’d made a TOTAL of $140, averaging out to something like $3 per hour. So that was the end of that.

While B was laboring under the hot summer sun, I spent the days in the library pumping out the last 50 pages of that screenplay. I tried to find time in the afternoons to still work on my own writing projects, but the screenplay for that director really took up all my time that week.

It’s no wonder, then, that during the course of that week B and I were overcome with an irresistible urge to flee the city and the crazy people we’ve met here. B and I signed up for WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) and I immediately started emailing people. The deal with WWOOF is that you can go live on people’s farms and they feed you in return for 4-6 hours of work per day that you stay there. Some places ask for less work, but they also feed you fewer meals, and since Brandon and I are aiming to spend about $10 per week for the next seven months, more work sounds just fine to us.

The idea was to move out on March 24th or so, and head down to the South Island, WWOOF there through the autumn, and then WWOOF on the North Island through winter until it came time to head to Australia and then home again. However, as that week of car wax, horror scripting, and telemarketing continued Brandon and I realized that the earliest possible date for us to leave was March 8th, so that’s our current plan.

On February 8th we had a larger script reading for that director at a behemoth McDonalds. Brandon and I were the last ones to arrive because I had to rush over after teaching yoga, and when we walked in all heads turned to us and the director asked us to provide a synopsis of the script and sort of explain what this meeting was going to be all about. That’s when Brandon said he had to go to the bathroom, so I was left there, in my yoga spandex, explaining this ridiculous script that I have invested so many hours into, but still don’t really care about, and wondering how I got there in the first place. I don’t even LIKE horror movies.

We read through the first forty pages or so, and everyone seemed enthusiastic about the project, which was nice. Somehow it was agreed that Brandon and I would write a second draft and then the director would take a pass at the third draft. However, there’s one guy involved in the project who has a massive ego, is totally spastic, and basically wants this movie to be the next Evil Dead. His specialty is in monster prosthetics. He emailed everybody this monstrous monologue on how when he was done reading the script he thought there were, like, too many characters and not enough gore. Then, to add insult to idiocy, he attached an outline from a Screenwriting 101 class. Now, I studied screenwriting with Mardik Martin (writer of things like Raging Bull and Mean Streets) in a room with eight other students. I took script analysis with Jack Epps of Top Gun fame. I definitely have a LOT to learn about screenwriting, but I know that a script has three acts. If Fiona’s rant was the final straw, this was the straw that the bitter, back-braced camel lit on fire and used to burn down the city. Of course, it’s just the opinion of one person, and chances are that Brandon and I will still write a second draft for the director, who recently quit his day-job so he can focus on this movie even though he has a wife and a five-year-old daughter to support. But it made both of us feel that it won’t be a terrible loss to our professional development if we don’t get to see this project through to the end.

Did we tell you in our last blog that we’re part of a play for the Auckland Fringe Festival now? I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly I’m emceeing the whole damn thing and was apparently supposed to be writing my own lines this week. The show is called Burlesque As You Like It, and it’s supposed to be a discussion of stripping and prostitution and what really constitutes female empowerment. Usually I’d be happy to be involved in a project like this, but I really just want a chance to get my portfolio together for graduate school applications, and all of these peripheral projects are really tying up Brandon’s and my time. How is it possible that in six short months we’ve managed to so thoroughly over-commit ourselves? I’m also playing piano for two of the numbers, which is going to be difficult since I don’t have a piano to practice on, but I’m really not worried. The play runs March 5, 6, and 7, so we’ll be busy right up to the end there, but that’s fine. We’re planning on packing our car/having a garage sale during the day on March 7th so we’re just ready to go on the 8th. I’ll get dressed for yoga, teach my class, and then we’ll just drive out of town from there.

So here’s our schedule:

March 8th: leave Auckland, camp in Hobbiton (Matamata)
March 9th: Lake Taupo
March 10-18: a fruit farm in Taranaki
March 18-24: drive south, stopping in Wellington and Milford Sound
March 24-May 3: a café on Stewart Island
May 3 – May 7: drive north, spending time in Dunedin and Christchurch
May 7- June 12: a day spa (YES!) in Marlborough
June 14 – July 18: a chocolate and macadamia nut processing place/farm in Taranaki
July 18 – 26: a family farm in Coromandel
July 26 – August 29: Northland [I don’t have this arranged yet]
August 29 – Sept 7: Auckland [I don’t have this arranged yet, either]

So with all this in mind Brandon and I bought our plane tickets this past weekend. We’re heading to Australia on September 7th and then that’s our last step before flying home!

It seems like as soon as we made the decision to leave the city everything has been falling into place very rapidly. I think there’s a quote about that somewhere, that when you finally take that leap of faith the universe conspires to help you out. That seems to be how B and I get by – with giant leaps of faith and the help of a benevolent universe.

So it’s been a crazy couple of weeks, as usual, but what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger. So today we're staying in because of the rainy weather and sharing a very snuggly, relaxed Valentine's Day together. And, really, we couldn't be happier. We're two of the luckiest little vagabonds in the world.

We miss you and love you and hope all’s well wherever you are!

Hugs and kisses from your Kiwi Valentines,
Brandon and Jenny