You Can’t Do This Sitting in Traffic on the 405

Part 1
Regular readers will have noticed my recent entries have a slight Canadian accent to them. Turns out I’m living in Vancouver these days! I've temporarily left the traffic and beige-ness of LA for the pine trees and high rise condos of the Pacific Northwest.

Tiffany has been working on an animated film up here for a few months while I was on my own show in LA. We swore we'd never do the long distance thing again, but the money was nice and it seemed like a good idea at the time. So, we found ourselves once again living in separate cities, though at least this time around we were in the same time zone, and a flight is only a few hours.

But about a month ago, Tiff's show offered me a job. I was really liking the film I was on in LA. It was really a lot of fun, low budget, but with that we're-all-in-this-together kind of camaraderie. The offices, though, were across town and the commute plus the meager pay was killing me. So, after much guilt about leaving a project half-way through, I agreed to take the Vancouver job. I loaded up the car on a Saturday morning, and 20 hours (and many cups of coffee) later, I was here in beautiful B.C.

I've been up here for a couple weeks now, and sure enough, this new movie is a chaotic nightmare. You can read Tiff's blog for some not-so-veiled complaints about the office and those "in charge." I've worked on some stinkers, but this one might take the cake. But then, it’s a short-term gig, and I'm not here for the show anyway. It's life outside the office that just about makes up for the incompetence of it all.


We've got an apartment on the 12th floor of a high-rise condo in downtown. There's some pretty great restaurants within walking distance and more coffee shops than you can shake a stick at. We've found some unique book stores, and taken the water taxi over to Granville Island to the farmers' market. I've got my bike with me so in the mornings I can ride amongst redwoods in Stanley Park. And a 20 minute drive north of town there's amazing snow-covered mountains that I can't wait to explore, as well as sheltered sea kayaking. (I've started taking kayaking lessons so I know how to get back in the boat when I fall out. One of my goals for my time here is to learn how to do an Eskimo Roll.) I also brought all our camping gear with me so we can go a little further afield and explore the local mountains on weekends.

So, in order to survive this crazy show, and to assuage any lingering guilt about leaving LA, my mantra has become “you can’t do this sitting in traffic on the 405.”