"New Nurse"

I play a nurse in a movie called "The Good Doctor". Not sure when it's coming out, but I think I had a total of 7 lines. This is me in my trailer. I liked all the cool nurse toys they gave me. I was trying to look serious, not sad.

From my friend (and roommate!) Andy about having (and not ignoring) my internet presence

... besides everyone is doing it:

-It's fun, cathartic, and creative.
-If no one ever wrote down their thoughts and ideas in a forum where others could read them then there would be no thoughts and ideas for anyone to read.
-If you don't share your thoughts then they simply go to your grave with you. And graves are no places for thoughts.

Maine

I'm on Little Cranberry Island in Maine. My cellphone isn't getting reception up here. I guess I could check to see if I have messages on the landline, but I'd much rather spend my time picking blackberries, riding in the back of pickup trucks, and wanting to forsake my worldly possessions and live here forever.

I got up to 4 things.

1. Picking blackberries and eating blackberries
2. Riding in the back of pick up trucks
3. Eating lobster
4. Memorizing the presidents. I know them all! Let's see if I retain any it in a week.

Presidential names that are funny: Grover Cleveland, Zachary Taylor, and William Howard Taft. Grover Cleveland is an improv name, and Zachary Taylor and William Howard Taft sound like child stars from Home Improvement.

My picture is in New York Magazine this week. It makes me feel both nervous and grateful, and that's a new combination for me. It's kinda how I felt the first time I tried bubble tea. On Thursday, I get on a plane for Los Angeles with no return flight. I'm a mixed bag of emoticons on that, too.

Maine, you smell nice.

"Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids" - Carl Sagan

The night I found out that Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune didn't have solid surfaces, my head exploded. I had heard the term "gas giants" before, but I guess I needed Carl Sagan to spell it out for me. Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune are made of gas, not paper-mâché as scientists previously believed, and if these planets do have solid surfaces underneath all that gas, we. don't. know. about it. (Nose bleed.)

"Cosmos" quickly became all-consuming, brain paralyzing obsession. In other words, I read the book.. and watched all 13 episodes of "Cosmos" all the way through TWICE, which is huge for me since I'm one of those assholes who's never seen The Godfather or Spaceballs.

On the subject of me being an asshole, this past winter I unironically referred to Earth as "a small, rocky planet" when talking to my boyfriends father's girlfriend. She gave me a look that said 'your new space obsession isn't fooling anyone". I like her a lot. Also, on my road trip from New York to LA with Sarah and Anna, at one point we were talking about how bright and annoying the sun was as we were driving into the sunset, and I said something to the effect of, "Well it could be worse, our sun is pretty average as far as stars go and at least we don't live in a binary star system." Sarah and Anna did not like me after that.

Cosmos is Carl Sagan's personal voyage through space. It's epic, beautiful, accessible, and easy to love. Growing up, I pretended to feel indifferent about science as a way to justify my bad grades, particularly when it came to chemistry, so I made this, a Periodic Table of Elephants, as a peace offering. I also wrote a 22-page nonfiction comedy pilot about one of Jupiter's moons, but I put it away when I decided it was shitty and unfixable.

"As the ancient myth makers knew we're children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure on this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage, propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders, all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we've also acquired compassion for others, love for our children, a desire to learn from history and experience and a great soaring passionate intelligence, the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. " - Elton John

Finish this sketch for me, will you?

Mom: Kids, I have something to tell you. I was lying when I said your father died in 9-11. The truth is he's alive and has been living in the attic.

Son: The attic? But the invisible ghost who coughs like dad is up there.

A random assortment of thoughts from right now

-I got rejected from SNL this week. I trust that the universe has my best intentions in mind.

- I've been seeing a lot of amazing shows at UCB and I'm finding it really inspiring.

- I have a cold. The best part of having a cold is that it makes my voice sound like I'm a grown up.

- I blindly moved into a sublet in Burbank this past winter. The walls in the room were gross, so I covered them in tissue paper that resembled wallpaper. On January 28th, 3 weeks after arriving in LA, I found out I had been cast in both a pilot and a movie. I was struck with the most profound sense of gratitude and spontaneously wrote the words "Thank you" all over the tissue paper. It looked great.

-It feels like there are 20 cats in my apartment right now for some furry, adorable reason.

Here's a list of ways in which Sue is better than me.

- Being Vegetarian. When we were around 12 and 13, we decided to be vegetarians. Or more like, Sue decided and I went along with it. She's kept with it, but I got lazy and started eating meat again when I was 15 or so. The last time Sue ate meat, she was living abroad in Edinburgh, at a restaurant, and dying of starvation. In Scotland, often times restaurants will say they offer vegetarian options but what they really mean is they have chicken or fish, so Sue settled on scallops, because "They don't have central nervous systems." I think about this literally every time I eat scallops.

- Remembering birthdays. Sue and I share this ability, but she's better at it. Sue can tell you the birthdays of kids from summer camp, distant relatives, dead pets, dead presidents, living presidents. If you have a birthday, and you've told me, there's a 75% chance I'll remember it in 5 years. But if you tell Sue, there's a 99.9% chance that she'll remember it forever.

- Reading. Sue learned to read when she was like 3 days old or something ridiculous like that. I, on the other hand, didn't start reading until I was embarrassingly old. And then it took even longer for me to actually comprehend what I was reading. I'm dyslexic, and I had the hardest time wrapping my mind around written language. It's pretty complicated when you think about it - letters compose words, words contain meaning, and if you string enough words together (in a left to right pattern), you can express a complete thought. But the written letters in the word "cat" or "airplane" look nothing like ACTUAL cats or airplanes, so why do we all agree on the meaning? And what's the deal with lower case b's and d's? They're the exact same shape, just facing different directions. And why does this matter when there are tree forts to defend?

-Arguing. I have never, in my entire life, won an argument with my sister. I've never even come close. No one has ever won an argument with my sister. One time Sue made Judge Judy run to her bedroom, sobbing.

- History. I like history, but Sue is passionate about it. She talks about history the way most people talk about "Top Chef". It's awesome actually. I like it when people can talk passionately about things.

This is a picture of her on her wedding day. One day Sue will find this list and send me an email pointing out my grammatical errors.