Bored

I am home for Labour Day weekend. I am so bored right now. With my wacky work schedule and proniess to napping, I am not going to fall asleep anytime soon. Thank God for the internet. How did I live here for 18 years? I don't think I could ever live here again.

sigh.

Confessions of a Shop-a-holic

If there's one thing you need to know about me, it's that I love shopping. In fact, there's nothing I like more then going to a mall. Oh wait, no I don't. I hate going to malls. Why do I bring this up? I have no idea, but I think that Dunkin Donuts coffee I had 2 hours ago has finally started to kick in.

I'm really bad at getting Christmas presents. I don't know why. Maybe it's all the pressure and obligation to have to buy people crap. I would much rather put some thought into getting a person a meaningful gift and surprising them with it. I think that makes it better. I have decided this year, I'm just going to sit down around December 10th and go on to Amazon or something and do all my Christmas shopping there and have it delivered. Screw going to a mall, or even places in general.

Sooo much has changed since I last talked to you, Blogspot. I now have a nice, shinny MacBook Pro! Who would have ever thought I'd have a Macbook? Remember when I used to really hate Macs? But there is so much I can do on this. I wish I had time and/or wasn't lazy so I could really start playing with it. I don't even know where FreeCell is. Actually, it probably doesn't have FreeCell, because those snobby, intellectual types who have Macbooks are too busy reading the Huffington Post and the New Yorker to have time to be playing FreeCell. El Oh El.

Jordan and I recently did America. Which reminds me, I need to finish posting those pictures on facebook, and maybe one day write a series of Blogs about the trip. Blog! Jordan returned home this week because he forgot his tooth brush, so it was almost like he never left.

Earlier this month, my roommate and I moved to Astoria, like I foretold. It is pretty nice there. Muuuuch better then Sunset Park.

I can't believe the summer is winding down already. It feels like it just finally got started. I think September will be pretty warm though. I didn't go to the beach at all. I did go to the Coney Island boardwalk once though. I'm fine with that.

A lot of my friends have birthday's in August. There are like 4 within a span of about a week. That's crazy. I'm really good at remember people's birthday months and usually when in the month their birthday is, like the beginning, middle, or end. Actually, I'm pretty good at remembering things in general. I recently realized I can name more current US senators then I can current professional football players. I can probably name between 50-60 senators, but I could only get about 3 footballers. Michael Vick. Brett Farve, and.... Ben Rothlesburger? Is he a person? That's it.

The Astoria Solution

Michael Jackson died today. That's weird.

Anyway, it looks like me and my roommate are going to move to Astoria, and I'm pretty pleased with that. I'm not a huge fan... well, fan, of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Aside from Williamsburg, I don't really care about Brooklyn, which seems surprising. I thought I would be all about it. It's too long of a commute to Manhattan. My apartment is okay, but I definitely need more space and it would be nice to not live in a building with shady guys smoking... probably joints on the stairs. And our apartment's layout is kinda dumb. The fridge door always hits the oven, and the shower head is in the middle of the tub, as opposed to the end of the tub like every other single shower in the entire world, so the bathroom floor usually gets wet.

I heard that someone who used to work at BBC used to walk home every day to Astoria over the bridge, which got me thinking, maybe I could do that. or, better yet, maybe.... I...could... ride...my...bike!!!!! It would be so great to not have to ride the subway anymore, as I am sooo over it. It'd probably be pretty hard to actually ride around Mid-town, so I'd probably have to walk the bike, but that's okay. A monthly subway pass is going to go up to 89 dollars a month. I could forgo that and only pay as I go. Even if I spent 60 dollars a month, I could use that other 29 towards a nicer apartment. I would definitely spend a little more on rent if I could down on the subway costs. And I think I can find a farely decent but cheap place in Astoria.

I've only been to Astoria once, but it seemed like an okay place, as long as you live near the subway, and where we're looking, there are a lot of subway lines.

100 Days.

First, to answer your burning question, did I write 100 pages of script in the month of April? No, as you could expect. I think I wrote 2 pages. Bummer.

Last week, President Obama and I celebrated 100 days at our new jobs. I remember fondly on January 20th as I hurried around Philadelphia's Chinatown to find a television screen and at about 11:55 am, ran into the Greyhound station to see Aretha Franklin's hat and the end of Biden being sworn in. I cheered with everyone else in the station as Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the countries first good president in 40 years. I listened to his Inaugural address for a few minutes and then bolted to the Chinatown bus to arrive in New York for my first day at BBC...

So, after 100 days, how am I doing? I miss Philly a lot. Probably not as much now as when I first moved here. But I do miss my friends and a lot of things in Philly. If I were to win the lottery, I'd move back to Philly in a heartbeat and be content with visiting NYC once a month or so. Other then job oppertunities and shows at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, I really don't see anything that New York offers that Philly doesn't, except in Philly it's more convienient and cheaper. But, I'm here to stay as long as I want to keep following this dream of making a stupid TV show one day.

I'm almost ready to say that I would be pretty happy if I never had to ride the New York City subway system ever again in my life. I wouldn't mind doing it maybe twice a week, but every day can be annoying and it takes sooo long from to get to Manhattan from lower Brooklyn. I probably spend a good hour and a half every day on the subway. Plus, they want to raise the month pass from $81 to $104. Ridiculous. And then their ad campaign for this is "For $104 a month, you'd think they'd have a pool and a sauna down there." No. Shut the hell the up. For an extra 23 bucks a month there should be a pool down there. I also heard they are planning on cutting some services because they can't afford them. Ughhh. I wish I could bike to work.

On the other hand, there have been a lot of good and cool things about moving here. I see Jordan at least once a week, which is awesome. We've only gone to the UCB theatre once, but I'm sure we'll be going more often before he leaves. There definitely tons of job oppertunities here for me. I've been pretty swamped lately with work, but if anything ever happened, there are lots of other production companies I could try to work at, where in Philly there wasn't much, and when someone would have a show, there's lots of competition for it.

There are a few people from Bloomsburg here. I've been trying to meet up with them. I haven't seen them in years. But it's hard with my schedule and stuff, I kinda gave up. I should try again. There are so many things to see and do here and I've barely started.

In the Garage Where I Belong

no one hears me sing this song.

This is about all of you.
This is about none of you.

I'm sorry I'm not what you are looking for.
But I didn't expect you to disappear like that picture from Back to the Future.

Dear Jesus,

I keep trying to come back to You. But when stunts are pulled like what just happened, it gets harder for me to do so. It gets harder for me to do a lot of things. Maybe we should have a one-on-one soon. How about in my dreams? Hopefully, You can tell me what You want. I think You already know what I want.

Love,
Dustin

P.S. Who is this Beth girl?

There's No Place Like Home

I've been meaning to update for a while, so I'll talk about going home for Easter. After sleeping for about 3 hours, I woke up on Friday, gathered up all my stuff and managed to catch the 12pm train from Penn Station to Harrisburg, PA. Since the train took me down to Philly and then up to Harrisburg, next time I'll just take my beloved Chinatown bus to Philly. It'll be a lot cheaper.

On my train ride down, I took a seat next to a large bag and a coat. I wondered who they belong to? After a few stops on the train, no one came to claim them, so I wondered what happened to their own. While at the Trenton stop, this young girl got on the train and was very frantic, having just barely made the train with her enormous suitcase. I helped her lift it on to a cart. After a couple minutes, she came back, not being able to find a seat, and asked if anyone was sitting next to me. Well, those of you who know me will probably not be surprised as i quickly grabbed the belongings in the seat next to me, threw them up top, and said "no, this seat is open". ha. she was pretty young. A freshman in college.

(the woman who owed the stuff came back towards the end of the trip and picked it up. Where had she been and why did she leave her stuff there?)

I got off the train and soon my Dad picked me and we headed home. Later that night, me and Mom got new LG VU phones, which is kinda exactly like an iphone except it costs a lot less. While we were at the Frackville Mall, I saw several security guards. This was pretty weird, because I have never seen a security guard there before. And more importantly, how is this mall even still open? a lot of the stores are vacated. Which makes the security guards even more weird.

Saturday night, Phil and I went to Maggie's house where we played Lego Indiana Jones. Chris and Sydney joined us and we all had a good time.

Sunday was Easter, and my sister managed to find 2 hours to stop in for dinner and then leave immediately to go back to school. Later in the day, I went with my parents to Williams Valley to the cemetery. We saw Maggie's parents there. My dad went to high school with Maggie's dad and they have the exact same birthday. I saw where (I think) 3 of my great-great grandparents are buried. I also learned my maternal grandmother was named after her maternal grandmother, so I learned a lot about my great-great grandparents this weekend.

So for those of you playing at home, the linage goes: Dustin Kaster-Edward Kaster-Edward Kaster-John Kaster-Jacob Kaster (I saw his tombstone). Is he the one who came over from Germany?

100 Pages

This website, http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/ is hosting a challenge to everyone who signs up to write 100 pages of script during the month of April. I can do that, right? Any ideas?