Back at work and it's already a busy Monday (I'd say it's a "manic Monday," but then I'd be disgusted with myself). Because of the whole "not funny" element of my current show, we didn't get to finish it on time, and it's now overlapping with dailies on my next show. So basically, every spare moment I have not spent in the bay with producers trying to finish this show will be spent trying to edit another show. This is a drag, because it's always difficult for me to get a rhythm going when I keep getting interrupted.

I went on a short mountain bike ride with my neighbor yesterday. It was my first time biking with my shoes clipped in, and I knew I would eventually fall with my feet still attached to my pedals, I just didn't know when it would happen. Sure enough, on the way back down, right after a water crossing, I fell over into a pile of rocks and gravel. I scraped up one of my shins pretty badly, but it looks worse than it is. I guess you're not a true mountain biker if you don't have some scars to prove it.

I made arrangements for my inner Australia plane tickets this weekend. I was able to pay with them with miles I had accumulated with Alaska Airlines to get a ticket from Sydney-Melbourne and then from Darwin-Sydney on Quantas. I also got my visa for Australia (I don't need one for New Zealand) though the airline. It was quite convenient. I gave them a credit card to cover the $30 processing fee, then gave them my passport number. It's completely electronic, so when I go through customs in Australia and they scan my passport, the visa will automatically come up. This is quite different than obtaining a visa for travel to China. You are required to go to the Chinese Consul, and there are only 5 of them in the U.S. While there IS one in Los Angeles, you are not allowed to make appointments, so you have to just show up and wait 6 hours or 8 hours or however long it takes. I didn't have time for that, and my mother (who went with me) lives in Portland where the nearest consul is San Francisco. On the advice of a friend, I found that there are many companies online who will handle obtaining your visa for you. The trick is, you have to Fed-Ex them your passport and THEY take it to the Consul on your behalf to get the visa. Sounds shady, right? I swear to god, until the time I actually got through customs in China, I expected them to look at my visa and say, "Let me guess...internet, right? This is totally bogus." At any rate, travel to Oceana - much easier.

The song for the day is "Stay The Night" by Chicago off their 1984 release Chicago 17. You're probably thinking to yourself that there are so many other, better Chicago songs I could have picked, and you're certainly right. But this was the first song I heard by Chicago that I really knew, from seeing it on MTV and such. I wasn't really familiar with the band's earlier works until later on. Some friends and I went to see them in concert when they toured for this album, and as you might expect, since I was only 13 at the time, I didn't know most of the songs they were playing unless they were off the new album. One of the people with us was older and knew a lot of their stuff. At one point when they were playing something unfamiliar, I asked her what song it was. When she said, "Does anyone really know what time it is?" I looked at my watch and said, "9:15."