I'm on a plane to Chicago now.

The plane is pretty empty and very quiet. They seem to be spending more time going over the security instructions and precautions. Or maybe I'm just paying more attention to them.

I'm very glad that I have time to go to Chicago. We're in preproduction now on the thing that I'm shooting but it's early enough in the schedule that I have time to visit Chicago. I haven't been in Chicago for about 10 months.

Last night we went to a USC Peter Stark Producing Program screening. I went with Josh, John, and Carrie.

Carrie is friends with a mutual friend in Chicago, she just moved to Los Angeles. She's very cool.

I was very nervous about inviting her to the screening because as a whole student films suck. It's not always good to invite unsuspecting people to see sucky movies.

Before the screening I came up with a game which ended up being pretty fun. By the titles of the movies we wrote small taglines or descriptions about what the movie would be about. At the end of each short we would compare and see who was most correct. It was a good way to distract ourselves while all the directors were thanking everyone they know for helping out on the movie (Mom, Dad, God, et al.)

After the screening they had free cookies, beer, and wine. We loaded up our pockets with cookies (some of them were damn good cookies) and beer.

Then we went out to the California Pizza Kitchen and next the bar where the after screening party was.

The bar was very loud and it was one of those parties where most of the people knew each other. I knew 3 people besides who I came with, and they all knew one person. So, it wasn't very fun. I got stuck talking to an actress for a while. We had nothing to say to each other but for some reason she insisted on talking to me. I couldn't hear what she said most of the time. Instead of asking her to repeat herself I just stopped caring and nodded a lot. She didn't seem to notice or mind, neither did I.

Eventually we all agreed to leave the party and we headed out to Malibu to try to find the caves that we went to after the Shakedown party. We ended up not being able to find them but we did find a cool spot were we can all lie down and look at the stars. We bought a 12 pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon (my choice) and sat around drinking Pabts Blue Ribbon watching all the shooting stars. It actually was very fun.

Then I realized what time it was and started freaking out because I was supposed to be at the airport 20 minutes ago. We rushed back to my place, grabbed my luggage, said our goodbyes and Josh and John drove me to the airport. I got there 45 minutes before my flight, not the 4 hours they recommend, but I still had plenty of time to spare.