the good, the bad, and the gaff-taped glasses

today is wednesday, i flew into lax monday morning. my first three days here have been both awesome and terrifically frustrating at the same time. traveling is a lesson in patience, flexiblity and plain ol hard work.

before leaving on this trip i did major research on everyone i wanted to contact and spent multiple days making cold calls and sending cold emails. i didn't get nearly as many bites as in NYC in april (15 meetings in 5 days!), but my meetings here have been rockin' so far.

monday:

my laptop died in the middle of the night 3hrs before i was supposed to leave for the airport after just having it majorly overhauled at the apple store last week. i tried to fix it, wasn't able to, slept for 2hrs before leaving for the airport and thus relinquished myself to spending my monday evening at the apple store in century city instead of at a dinner with a friend. (apple was only able to tell me that the part they replaced last week needs to be replaced again. ugh.)

when i landed i grabbed the rental car, napped for 25min and then headed to my first appointment at m&c saatchi - i arrived without hitting any traffic on the 405 or the 10 (shocking!) and my meeting went really well! there are some pretty genius people over there and they couldn't be nicer!

meeting number 2 was at fit pregnancy in woodland hills. i was lucky to get out of the m&c meeting early enough to avoid traffic from santa monica to woodland hills. again, arrived early and was able to have a calm and productive meeting. the photo editor is a delightful woman who is quite the talent herself. i got good feedback on my book and hopefully we'll be able to work on a story sometime soon.

once i left fit pregnancy, i got to the apple store 2hrs earlier than my appointment. unfortunatly they couldn't see me early so i wandered around killing time until the apt. once that was over (another ungodly 90min at the apple store, 4th time in 10 days) i met my friend for a late dinner at an awesome vegan place called m cafe. other than the apple fiasco and only 2hrs of sleep, a good day ending in a wonderful catching-up-with-an-old-friend dinner. i went to sleep happy.

tuesday:

i hit the gym in the morning, shot a few 600 polaroids for the new project and then headed off to my meetings. meeting numero uno was at 72 and sunny. they do awesome work over there and they have a beautiful new office. the meeting was quick and good, no complaints.

from there i went over to tbwa\chiat\day which was nearby enough that i had time to do some great polaroid 600 shooting before the meeting started. my meeting couldn't have gone better. the whole staff saw my book and if i'm not mistaken, some of them really liked my work. on top of that i got a tour of the building which is totally unreal: it was apparently modeled after a city - there is an actual park with trees, tables, benches and real crickets and also in the building a full-size basketball court... ridiculously cool. the only crazy part of this meeting was my glasses actually snapping in half right in the middle of someone looking over my book and having them fall off my face. driving for the rest of the week will be difficult, helloooo superglue and gaff tape...

meeting numero tres was with the owner of photocrew.com at susina bakery. we had a good long talk about all things photo and i feel good about future collaborations together. now i just need to get my butt on finalizing my photocrew profile.

today (wednesday):

again, gym in the morning and then one really great meeting at C magazine. the photo editor was just wonderful and i thought we really understood each other. i'm hoping that she hires me on something soon since C is a great book with a elegant clean look.

the rest of my afternoon was prepping my shoot for tomorrow. other than being annoyed that i got totally scammed on paying for parking at the grove, i'm very excited about the shoot. stay tuned for how it turns out.

lastly chloe and i had dinner with a friend from chiat. great food at father's office and super yummy sweet potato fries. fun conversation and a few more polaroids taken over dinner. i can't get enough of this 600 film! i'm looking forward to staying in touch with my new friend and *fingerscrossed* getting in at chiat sometime before i'm 40.

now it's 1am and i'm hitting the hay. can't wait for the shoot tomorrow!