In my other "friends n' family" blog, I started this thing a few months ago called "Roses and Thorns". At the end of every week (or at least I aim to do it by the end of the week), I'll list out five things that were wonderful and five thorns in my side. Usually I can't come up with enough thorns to fill my so-called quota, which I take as a good thing.

Anyhow, I've decided to start transferring those Roses n' Thorns posts over here, beginning with this one from last week which describes our trip to Vancouver.

Just a warning that it's kinda long-winded... but what else is new, right?

'Kay, now here we go...

Rose
The night before our trip, our producers sent us two very comprehensive essays written by professional script readers. Both were paid to thoroughly critique our screenplay scene by scene. While there was definitely a lot of very helpful constructive criticism, overall they both gave DE glowing reviews and felt that not much needed to be changed, except a handful of tweaks to ratchet up the tension, etc.

When we arrived in the city, our producers asked us how we felt about the essays. We both felt pretty good. That's when they shared that both of these readers were the toughest they could find. One of them actually has the nickname,"She who hates everything" - and her review was definitely the most glowy of the two. From that moment on, we went from feeling pretty good to pretty wonderful.

Our producers were thrilled the readers gave us such terrific feedback. T, a writer/director himself, spoke from personal experience saying that usually when one of these two read your script, they rip your material apart so ferociously that you're often left licking your wounds for a few days. We were all really excited that this time that just wasn't the case. :)

Thorn
About three times on our way to the city, our car would do this crazy major jolt whenever it would kick into a new gear. J called the dealership who told us that if the "check engine" light wasn't coming on, we'd be fine. The jolt was probably just an indication that something needed a little more tightening after all the work they recently did on it. (FYI, we just got our car back after the dealership had it for three weeks.... I'll have to share that story with you MyBloggers folks sometime. Basically, we broke down in the mountains last month on our way back from our anniversary in Harrison Hot Springs. Oh yeah, good times. Thank goodness our warrantee covered the cost!)

Anyhow, once we arrived at our hotel, even though our valet parking was paid for, we chose to self-park, and I'm so thankful we did. One morning when we tried to start the car to drive to our meeting, it wouldn't turn over. It would've been much more embarrassing if a valet had to deal with all that nonsense. Although everyone at the hotel was super nice and sympathetic, for some reason they're not allowed to have the valet give you a jump start for liability reasons. Seems that something must've happened in the past.... They did however offer to call us a tow truck to give us a jump, but we declined for the time-being. We just grabbed a cab to get to our meeting, and decided to deal with it later.

Fortunately, we had been given a modest $150 travel budget to cover gas/cabs for the week anyway... Easy come. Easy go.

Rose
Our producers set us up in an executive king suite at a swanky hotel, where they get a film and entertainment discount. It was definitely a step up from where we usually stay when J n' I have to foot the bill. It was really something! We were perched on the 21st floor, just below the penthouse, so we had a really nice view of English Bay, where we got to watch the sunset over the water. Lovely.

It was like a small apartment, with two wide screen TVs, a phone in the bathroom (which I thought was kinda funny that people would do their business while doing their business... but that's just me), and a honour bar unlike anything I had ever seen. They even had a poker set, edible Kama Sutra products, and everything else you could possibly imagine (all at sky high prices which we avoided, of course). Our room was always immaculately cleaned and well-stocked by the friendly housekeeping staff, who even left us a nice little note wishing us a great day.

The hotel restaurant was really nice as well. Every night hotel guests were allowed two free glasses of wine (each!) between 5:30 and 6:30. Gourmet appies were only $2 or $5 between 5 - 7, and all regular priced items billed to your room received 25% off. It was a pretty awesome deal any way you looked at it. Needless to say, we ended up eating there a handful of times. And again, the restaurant staff was terrific

I really can't express that enough - everyone who worked at this hotel was absolutely great. Not your usual phony "how can I help you" friendly... but genuinely friendly and conversational. It was very nice.

Thorn
What's that loud noise? Is it a train? A plane? Traffic below? Shit. It's the friggin' elevators!

Yes, our bedroom was located right next to the elevator shafts, and being near the top of the building, we got to hear the loud moving of gears as the two elevators moved up and down, up and down all. night. long. I'm normally a very sound sleeper, but even I experienced broken sleep through most of the trip. It wasn't until after an extremely popular elevator rush hour on Wednesday morning between 3 - 4 a.m, on our last night we finally smartened up and bought some earplugs. Much bettah!!

Rose
Our 16 hours of meetings throughout the week were very, very productive. We worked on tightening the structure in order to chop off a good 10 - 15 more pages, as well as increase the conflict in some scenes and create a good flow of beats. It was quite a lot of fun, as four brains are always better than two.

And while I didn't think much about it at the time, I have to say, in retrospect, it is truly awesome to have others actively involved in bringing something you created to life. Our little evening 'hobby' of writing a screenplay is now an actual source of income, not only for us, but for our producers as well.

When I think of all the endless meetings I've sat through with the ol' day job, discussing my minor role in helping to market someone else's vision, it is a very exciting turn of events to now have other people working with us to help breath life into our product.

Thorn
Speaking of working on other people's products, while the following is completely unrelated to our trip, it definitely put a big damper on my mood - and it still does whenever I think about it... which is probably more often than I should, considering how much it pisses me off.

One of our good friends lost his job this week, and I feel absolutely horrible for him. As everyone would agree, he is easily one of the most passionate people when it comes to putting his heart and soul into his work. He stays later than most and is one of the few who actually truly cares about what the company apparently stands for.

Why was he let go? No one knows. (Although there is a very healthy amount of speculation, which has b.s. written all over it.) And those who do know the truth, aren't saying. He wasn't even given a straight answer himself to that million dollar question. Needless to say, he feels gut-wrenchingly betrayed and I don't blame him one bit! Because of someone's stupid fucking decision, (and no, I'm not going to censor myself here, because this is one of those angry, frustrating situations where 'fuck' deserves to be spelled out in full), there will now forever be a blemish on his employment record, which will obviously make it more challenging for him to find a new job. Everyone knows that the poor guy was the last person in the world to deserve a dismissal, and I'd love to challenge anyone who feels otherwise.

Man, I'm so pissed off... it just makes me sick to my stomach to see something awful like that happen.

I'm also feeling incredibly conflicted because I'm still doing some contract work for said company, and N was my main contact there. Now I have to deal with the person directly responsible for his undeserved firing. Blegh.

Rose
Although we didn't get to enjoy as much of the city as we wanted to, great shopping opportunities were abound within footsteps of our hotel. We both had a small list of items we wanted to find, and I managed to check at least one thing off my list which was a funky new purse. Meanwhile, J managed to locate a season of Cheers that we cannot find anywhere here in town.

Another thing I love about Van is Charlie's Second Hand CD shop on Granville. There are no used CD shops around here, which makes me sad. Yes, I know that I'm stuck in the stone age and that everyone downloads their music these days... but ask me if I care. I still love musical treasure hunting! On this trip I managed to pick up one guilty pleasure from my teens (which, now after a partial listen, I must admit doesn't quite stand the test of time like I had hoped), and I also replaced another CD that I somehow lost a few years ago.

We also got to take in a show at the IMAX called Adrenaline which was about sky diving and base jumping, and we enjoyed a very nice walk along the waterfront.

Oh, a funny side note about the waterfront walk... J n' I were discussing our meetings and script stuff, when I noticed that this lady began walking just a little too closely right beside us, which I thought was kinda odd, given how wide the sidewalk was. It was like she was trying to listen in on us or something. Then she took a few steps ahead so she was walking directly in front of us, and that's when I started hearing this electronic clicking/buzzing sound. I looked down and noticed that she had her camera behind her back casually angled up at us. She seemed to take about 5 or 6 pictures of the two of us, so I motioned to J to stop walking so I could point it out to him without her hearing me. She kept on walking and soon put her camera away. Boy, is she going to be disappointed when she realizes that we aren't anyone famous. Unless she was only sneaking our pictures because she thought we were such a nice lookin' couple. Ha ha.

Anyhow, even though we didn't get to take the haunted Halloween train around Stanley Park, nor did we get to browse the groovy artsy shops on Granville Island... all n' all, we still managed to pack in a few fun things.

Thorn
J's cell phone fell out of his jacket pocket in a cab, and we didn't notice until about thirty seconds after the cabbie had pulled away. Even though it only took a few minutes to track it down, it was a very stressful few minutes... especially considering that we had been having car problems and were concerned that if he indeed lost his phone for good, it could pose serious problems if we ended up breaking down in the mountains again.

Rose
Our producer offered to go out of his way to come to our hotel and give our car a jump so we wouldn't have to call a tow truck. He then suggested that he would follow us to the gas station to ensure that we didn't need another jump as we left town. So that was pretty thoughtful of him. It's the little things, y'know...

Thorn
Well, the ride home was very slow. First, traffic was barely moving for a while even though it wasn't rush hour and there wasn't any road construction ahead. Then we finally made our way out of the city, and that's when the rain started. It just kept getting heavier and heavier, causing our little car to slightly hydroplane a couple times. Fun!

We eventually made it up that long mountain hill that killed our car the last time we were on the Coq. On the bright side, we weren't getting those huge jolts we experienced three times on our ride to Vancouver. Whatever was causing them must've worked itself out. (Although we still may get the dealership to look at the car again, just to be sure.)

Finally the rain stopped, the skies cleared, and all was good with the world... for almost an hour anyway. That's when the fog set in. By now it was also starting to get dark, so we slowly rolled through the dense dark fog. Oh yeah, good times indeed.

To put it into perspective, it took us 4 hours to drive there and it took us about 5.5 to get home. Awesome. Oh well, it could've been much worse, and at least we made it home without any car troubles, which is something to be hugely thankful for.

It's sure great to be back.