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Sunshine over Cloudy Days
2024 is off to an amazing start, but not without an annoying hitch. I got in a few days of hitting all my goals (writing, social media posts, translating, etc.) before we set off for Florida to (belatedly) celebrate my dad’s 60th birthday with a few of his friends who are spending the winter there, and some family. The latter being me, my parents, my brother, his wife, and my nephew. It was absolutely amazing. The weather was temperamental, so we only went swimming a couple of times, and spent a lot of time indoors, but I was there for the company more than anything. My brother joked he was…
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Hikes, Trains and Prophecy
Monday morning my mom and I went for a very early morning hike, then I went home and wrote for a bit before we tried a new Body Pump class with my aunt. I did not like the class, at all, but I must have gotten a good workout because my thighs hated me (and stairs) for days afterwards. I spent the afternoon cooking and doing a bit of writing before going to hang out with my grandparents. After supper I hung out with one of my new favorite people for an hour or so, definitely overstaying my welcome, but it made my day/week/year/life. When I got home I watched…
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Sets and Rents
Being on set every day last week was only part of what made it awesome. I played a high school student, a cop, a bookstore patron then wrote my book in holding without ever being brought to set on the fourth day. Not a single one of them lasted the full 8 hours, so I made it to Jiu-Jitsu on Tuesday and Wednesday, got a whole bunch of writing done and had supper with my parents. Their visit was the other thing that made this week so much fun. My parents drove to Toronto on Friday to hang out with me, so we had supper before I asked my dad…
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Babysitting, Holters and Catching Up
On Monday I had a meeting with the cardiologist, to try and figure out why I fainted. I did a stress test first, where I had to walk on the treadmill at increasing speeds and inclinations while they measured my heart rate. Then I got hooked up to a holter heart monitor that I got to keep with me for the next 72 hours. The holter monitor wasn’t so bad, it just kind of felt like I was wearing a purse 24/7. I kept reaching to take it off and remembering it wasn’t a satchel, it was my heart monitor. The worst part was definitely the stickers. The stress test…
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July 2019
I took the month of July off from Jiu-JItsu because of the whole vasovagal syncope thing. I still got to practice a bit with the 4Points Summer Camps. We did Jiu-Jitsu and Obstacle Courses in the morning, then spent the afternoons acting. Every week of camp, the kids got together to come up with a story idea, write a script, then put it all on camera. Dave is editing the videos and I can’t wait to see how it all turned out. I spent a few days in Montreal for my cousin Steve’s birthday party and a Baby Shower for my two nephews. Chelsea and Rikki will either be…
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WRAMPS
The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of work opportunities, family and writing. There were ups and downs, but overall I am so excited for what I hope is to come. I have a list of priorities, that I tried to find an acronym for. I eventually ended up with WRAMPS, so that is how I am going to break down this Blog Post. Writing As you may have read in my last post, I’m in the thick of the 4th draft of a book I started in 2003. I realized it was partially written by a 13-year-old and I was trying too hard to stay true to that…
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An Exciting Month
We’re secure! By that, I mean that there is a little lock icon beside the website url because I fixed the security issue and people should be able to find the blog again. Amanda 1, Technology 0, right? This past month has been pretty consistent as far as working for the gym and doing Jiu-Jitsu classes, doing background as a high school student and living a multitude of lives as a standardized patient. There’s also some new/exciting things happening. For starters, I turned 29 and celebrated and had a wonderful time. Then I realized I only have one year left to accomplish my 30 by 30, and slightly panicked. But…
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Family, Sets and Cold Reads
This week was pretty awesome on all fronts. On Monday I worked from home and got to see the rough cuts for a few scenes from Get-Together, which looks amazing from a completely unbiased perspective. Then I spent the afternoon/evening on set doing background. On Tuesday I spent the whole day on set and got so much side work done. I am playing a student so I get to walk around with pens and notebooks and spend scenes (or in between takes) writing, which is the absolute best for me. I plan my months, I come up with story ideas, I plot my Nano camps…let’s just say it leads to…
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Books, BJJ and a Bday
My first week of February has been pretty busy on getting out there and doing things, but I have been very lazy when it comes to administrative tasks. Lazy probably isn’t the best explanation as to why I’m not getting things done, but nearly coughing out a lung wouldn’t really prevent me from being more productive, it just makes it a lot more tempting to cuddle up with a tea and read a book. Or sleep. I blame dry air, cold temperatures and being the guinea pig for people to learn their BJJ chokes. I skipped out on a few BJJ classes so I wouldn’t contaminate my training pool, but…
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Gemeaux in Montreal
So it turns out that the event we went to during TIFF was not so much a TIFF event, as TIFF adjacent. It was honoring Rosamund Pike and her new film, A Private War, but it had more to do with female empowerment than the international film festival. It was an honor to be invited and is the exact kind of thing I hope to get involved in someday. I am putting this TIFF down as the one I paid attention to, so next year I will know what to expect and what I want to be a part of. The following weekend I headed back to Montreal, where it…
