Yesterday we had a meeting with a showroom owner in Woodland Hills in the morning. Then we met Dave’s brother for lunch in Santa Monica.

We spent the afternoon driving around with Jason. He had an errand to run at Paramount Studios so we tagged along and got an informal tour of the backlot. The above photo is water tank B where they filmed the oceanic battle scenes in the Winds of War mini-series.

We also drove by a location Jason scouted recently for a new Disney Channel series called “Lincoln Heights.” It was an ordinary-looking house in a slightly down-at-the-heels neighborhood, but it was what passes a crack house in the minds of studio executives. Here’s a photo:

They added the chainlink fence and quite a few other features to match the house used in the series pilot. I guess the original house was too far away to use for filming the regular series.

On the way back to Santa Monica, we drove through the Hanover Park area, filled with beautiful homes valued in the millions. All I can say is that people in California are either in hock up to their eyeballs or are all just fabulously wealthy.

After relaxing a little bit at the hotel, we had dinner at Wabi-Sabi in Venice. Today we’re heading up the coast for a meeting in Buellton.

We drove through the grey chill of Boston, 5:00 AM from our friend Caroline’s apartment in Cambridge to the airport. Hours later we walked out of the Bakersfield airport into a brilliantly sunny day, temperature in the 80s and heading up.

After our meeting in Bakersfied, we drove to Van Nuys, listening to Joni Mitchell’s albumn “Blue”. This album is nearer to perfection than any I can think of. It was the soundtrack of my first year living in Geneva when I was 23. The first song, “All I Want,” inspired our wedding vows with the line “All I really really want our love to do is to bring out the best in me and in you.” Fortunately Dave likes it too. I once stopped dating a boy because he didn’t.

When we got to the hotel I crashed completely and Dave put in a few hours of work. I don’t know what came over me, but it was nothing 12 hours of sleep couldn’t cure.

We are leaving in less than 12 hours and I haven’t packed. So what to do? Blog entry, of course.

I woke up at 5:15 AM wondering if the coffee machine had done it’s magic yet. And then “To Do” list items started scrolling across my mind so I got up and started writing them down. Dave woke up and started chiming in with his items. Cammy heard the activity and came in for a good back-scratching session. Nearly two hours later and I’ve gotten a lot done. No where near making a dent in that list, ‘though.

List making is my salvation and my downfall. It’s a fine line. If I overlist, I freak myself out and accomplish nothing. If I don’t list, I forget stuff or get distracted by non-essentials (like reading that blog of other people’s lists).

So to keep things under control, I find myself breaking things out into separate lists. Right now I have before me the packing list, the personal stuff to do list, and the business stuff to do list. Sometimes I start a list with something I’ve already done just so I can immediately cross something off the list. A good one to start with today would be “Wake up and start a list”.