Last day of sleep depravation and worse one yet. I only slept one hour. Strangely enough, my body seems to be in such a state of shock that I am not sleepy anylonger. I am BEYOND sleep. having no time to sleep makes it convenient. but when I finally laid down for an hour, hoping to catch a little Z, I found that my nervous system was giving out a strange vibration... A slight tremor coming from deep within me... Oh boy...

Impossible to sleep. I had to give up and got up and roamed around my house, ate some breakfast at 11PM. I look at the progress bar on my computer screen and it is screaming at me:

YOU ARE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT FAITH...

Stressed. Tired and a bit anxious.

It is at moments like these that I love hearing JOHNNY CALLAWAY'S voice inside of me and he is yelling:

"I'll be just fine"

A little prayer helps too. I am praying to God everything goes well, that I will not face any technical problem during the final rendering and burning process. I am at the mercy of all these chips, wires, resistors inside the belly of the BEAST... My PC...

I dial Jerry's number:

"Hey Jerry, remember how I said you could come by to pick up the DVD at midnight tonight? Well, I lied. It's not going to be ready until tomorrow morning. What time is your flight?"

I am relieved to find out his flight is at 8AM, so I have another 6 hours to pull this major coup de force off. But still not certain I will make it by that time. Jerry, ever so supportive, my Guardian Angel as I recently starting calling him, a well deserved title, is willing to do "whatever it takes Faith" to make this happen.

In this case "whatever it takes" = driving out from LAX area at 3:30Am tomorrow (actually - TODAY) to be at my house at 5AM and pick up (hopefully) the DVD and zip back down to LAX just in time to fly out to Daytona Beach.

Any day now, Jerry is going to put a contract on my head .

2AM - TIMELINE #2 is still rendering....

3AM - Still rendering...

4AM - I am able to lightly snooze for an hour. I wake up on my own, because my mind is still thinking about my deadline. I get up, walk up to the screen (now asleep), wake it up and...

RENDER COMPLETED SUCCESSFULLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I immediately fire up DVD architect and start putting together the dual layer DVD project. Run into a brain fart there, having only done it once before. It is 7AM on the East Coast and Perrone's cell phone rings and wakes him up.

ME: "Perrone... I am in deep shit. I can't remember where to progran my dual layer break point... and have less than an hour to complete this final DVD burning process".

He is a good sport, and walks me through it again. Ahhh the GOOOD man!

4:30AM - Jerry will be here any moment now... Oh wait.. He's HERE. I hear the door bell and open the front door to see Jerry, a concerned look on his face:

"Are you OK Faith? How are you doing? Are you getting enough sleep, fluids, food?"

"Never!"

We walk to the backroom.

I hit the ENTER button and the DVD starts to render...

"Jerry, if this attempt fails we don't have a film..."

We both sit by the computer and talk, trying not to think about the fact that, a mere two feet away from us, the BEAST is crunching like crazy and our fate is in it's (lack of) hands... I catch Jerry glancing up at the monitor to look at the progress bar.

DON'T LOOK AT IT! YOU'LL JINX IT ...

We both agree to pretend nothing is going on and we talk about the trip, show, and screening...

Progress bar is now about 25% done when...

ERROR MESSAGE!!!

Now my stress level is UP THE ROOF. I speak French (eloquently) and it goes something like this:

 *&^%$%^###^ !!

God don't abandon me now!

I throw away the dud DVD and put a new dual layer DVD in the burner... This is IT. If this last attempt fails we will miss our deadline. The PLAN B is to send Jerry with last week version of the film, the non yet improved version we screened last Saturday.

Progress bar goes from 10% to 20% and then 35% then 50%....

60%.... 70%...... 80%....

90%.... And....

BURNING SUCCESFUL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I even have a chance to burn a safety copy - just in case - and send Jerry off, FILM IN HAND to Florida...

SHEEEEEESSSHHHHHHHH that was close.

I have two hours to sleep before going back to work.

It is going to be a long day.