Managed to wake myself up too early again. Worked on my computer till everyone else got up. Ted had his friend Clifford around for the day, and they were pretty much out of our face most of the day. Hattie wants to have her friends Chloe and Laura round for a sleep over, which is fine because Mia is out for the evening in Bath with her group of Finnish girl friends for one of them, Tonya's, birthday.

Mia went out at about 5pm and the girls came over for the pyjama party around 6pm. Me and Ted went to ASDA to get them some snacks and pretzels etc. We put a few things for us to nurble on, but had to put some of them back (even the really tasty fresh made in the store Cherry Pie, DAMMIT) so we could get the essential supplies. We did have a couple of their filled toffee ring doughnuts, so we didn't lose out entirely.

I'm getting sick of this just squeaking by on the money I have. It'll all be sorted out next week when my money comes through. Then I'm making a special trip to buy the damn pie. Grr.

Me and Ted settled down to watch "War of the Worlds" which was pretty good actually. Nice chilly mood all the way through, like the characters are all scared out of their wits the whole time. Would have preferred a little more fireworks and heroics and a little less character development, but hey it's a new Spielberg movie and so it's kind of in my contract to watch it and like so... Then we debated what to watch next. All three "Back to the Future" movies? No, because Ted doesn't like the first one and I don't like the last one. Oh so easy, we watched the middle one. I fell asleep about a third of the way through, and Ted woke me when it was finished. He gave me a nice little cuddle and went off, and I spun the movie again to watch what I missed. And promptly fell asleep again and missed the whole thing, waking up when the credits music kicked in. Okay, it's not meant to be, let it go.

Really tired because the movies kept me from being totally asleep. Went downstairs to have a smoke and a cup tea. Then realised it was 1.30am and Mia wasn't home yet. Also realised I was getting hungry, so I made a couple of sandwiches,more tea, and after smoked another cigarette. I'm definitely awake now. Retired to watch something I know really well and fall asleep properly to it. Chose "An Evening with Kevin Smith", and promptly stayed totally awake till Mia got home at 2am. Then we watched a couple of CSIs, which usually send me right off to sleep, but instead Mia started snoring almost immediately and I watched three CSIs back to back, finally realising I'd had enough at about 4am. Went downstairs for a last ciggie by the back door, then a big drink of cream soda (yum) and then off to bed to read my book. Which I left downstairs, so instead I lay in the dark and tried to get to sleep, which I did eventually.

Friday feeling.

One last session of having Larry tell the students about everything important about video. Having heard this thing a number of times I'm starting to feel like I don't want to hear it again. I like Larry's style but after four times hearing the whole thing in a row I was starting to do a double act with him, like anticipating things he was going to say and doing a question and answer thing with him, which I think was getting on the students nerves. Anyway it's out of the way and I've got the information into their heads.

Next week we have some all day sessions with the kit where we will set it up in the VRS and record some things so they get a bit of practice working with it before they get into their own movies. I'm going to get some acting students in to do some interviews, killing two birds with one stone so we can make the overseas student DVD which we're going to be sending out. Plus we have some AV assets to shoot for the upcoming short drama project which has some pre-recorded elements. We'll have plenty to do.

In the meantime I'm totally shagged and I need a nice relaxing weekend. Hope there's nothing much to do. Oh there is that thing with transferring Mia's stuff to my computer so she can use that instead of her old one which is getting so slow it's not funny anymore. Shouldn't take very long to do all that. Famous last words.

Okay so I do this stuff all week long so it's not going to be much fun for me, but I feel for Mia having to use that crappy slow machine when I have a fast PC and Mac which I can use all the time. Hope this sorts out her computer problem for a longish while, after all that's the point.

Third teching session of the week. More Larry. Blah blah. This is getting really old right about now.

Got some coloured card off my work buddy Carol and printed off some nice copies of the script with covers. I've got actors coming to my office on and off all weekwanting to read the script and so far it's getting a really good response. I suppose I should let one of the theatre directors at work take a look at it and see if they think it's good or not.

Either way I'm really jazzed about so never mind if anyone else thinks it's good. I like it so it doesn't really matter. Just downloaded a lot of Bauhaus albums for inspiration. Real 80s goth music. Apparently there's a possibility of getting 80s goth band The Mission to do a few tracks for the movie. Would be nice but I have a few other things in mind.

I want an orchestral score, plus some selected tunes from Nu Punk bands like Bloc party, plus some nice late 70s early 80s goth. So Bauhaus is right there in the ballpark.

Damn those dudes must be old by now. I wonder whatever happened to them. Pete Murphy had a really good gaunt look. And they sounded like a kind of accessible version of The Cramps. Damn I love that style.

Spent a little time planning the big computer swap over the weekend, Mia's having my old PC and I'm going pure Mac. We have to figure out how we transfer all the stuff, and Mia has worked out a 12 step plan involving a 120Gb drive I've ordered specially for the task. We'll see how we get on.

Another teaching session. Initially this week I didn't think I was going to be doing any teaching. But it turns out I'm teaching pretty much every week four sessions a week.

Another class today and more Larry Jordan. I love Larry, he's so amiable and he puts this dry technical stuff over so quickly and easily.

Today went by so quickly I hardly remember what I did. Definitely something in the air. I feel energised and I have so many ideas. Plus I've been laughing more in the last few days more than I have for months. I guess I must be happy in my life. I reckon there's a lot to be said for planning to do something you love. Every since the movie has started planning I've been walking on air.

Writing is coming very easily. I've planned it so carefully that writing it is just an assembly job, and the relationships between the characters is all springing up through dialogue. I understand them all so well that it's just a case of putting them into a scene and letting them talk to each other. They say things that surprise me. The subconscious mind is a wonderful thing.

I have to push through the next bit because actually this part I'm writing at the moment is a bit sketchy in my plan. I'll have to write it to the end then go back and expand certain areas to mak it the right length. This is literally the most fun you can have standing up with your clothes on.

Sure enough today was better than yesterday. Let's face it it would be hard to top the sheer dumb bad luck of Monday's sequence of events. Got into work early at around 7.58am, walked the dog, sat and drunk some tea for a bit then got set up for the lesson.

I'm teaching some heavy technical detail at the moment. I have to get the 1st year students up to speed very quick in the run up to the video project, so I've taken the easy way out, I'm showing them tutorial videos. I use a service called Lynda.com, which is excellent by the way, so I showed them a few videos from Larry Jordan's guide to Basic Video. It's a lot of technical detail and they are customaily filling about 7-8 sheets of paper with notes. But at the finish of it they are coming away with a lot of knowledge albeit crammed into one morning of their short but happy lives.

Spent the rest of the day setting up stuff for people who are teaching other subjects like acting and TV technique.

Had a really good day. And apart from anything else I let my leading man for my movie read the script I have up till now, which is about 40 pages, and he was blown away. That was nice because it's the first time I've ever shown the script to anyone outside my immediate circle of friends and it was a bit nerve racking. But he loved it and asked some really intelligent questions. I'm so loving this whole process. It just feels right.

Next Simon my Director of Photography came by because he was in Bristol and spent a bit of time going over the script and asking some questions about how I'd like it shot. He said that HD would be a problem, and had I thought of shooting it on 16:9 DVCAM instead because we have access to the kit and it would be less of a problem to process and edit. He has a point. I'd love to shoot it on HD or HDV, but I don;t have the resources to do that. Maybe I'll shoot the first bit in DVCAM and then migrate to HDV... I dunno it's early days, but I'm aware that HD would be better. Maybe shooting on SD is sensible at this point, as HD would require additional crew and besides neither Simon or I have any experience of HD so maybe we should stick to what we know and have handy. Food for thought.

Had the mother all Mondays today. You know that song? Well I formerly liked Mondays but after today I'm not a fan. Not so much the Happy Mondays but the Crappy Mondays.

First off I overslept. Then tearing into work I realised I had an early meeting. I called the office to tell them I would be a little late. Discovered my cell phone has been cut off for non payment of my bill, something I forgot to do last week. Searched for a pay phone. Couldn't find one for ages. Pulled over in a shopping centre and called in. Jumped back in the car and driving off looked down at the fuel gauge. Running on empty. Went to a gas station. Tried to use my card at the pump. The pump timed out onme all the time, so rather than freeze my ass off anymore, I went to another one. This time it worked but rejected my card so I had to use all my cash to gas up the car. Got to work in record time only to discover the lesson I was going to assist with had been cancelled as the other person didn't show up. Aaaaaaaaaaaaggghghhhhghhggh!

Yeah so great day, but now I'm all dead inside. :)

Rest of the day was filled with tricky questions I couldn't answer or mundane jobs which robbed me of the will to live. Got home late (cos I started work late and so left late) and rocked my computera bit before going to bed.

You ever get the feeling you want to start a day over because you are SURE you could do it better the next time around? Yeah, that was how I felt all day. Tomorrow HAS to be better than that.

Quiet Sunday turned into the room cleaning project from Hell. We tidied the kids rooms, not in the tidy up a bit sense but in the tear the whole thing down, clean and put everything back in a new order sense, and it took us all frickin day.

The kids rooms do look great though. Only hope they can keep them that way. Sh'yeah, and monkey might fly out of my butt!

Went to bed really tired.