spring cleaning

Holly and I have been spring cleaning the new house and we happened upon boxes of old scripts and all sorts of doo-dads from my 25 year career. You can find the scripts on claudiachristian.net in the next day or so, my girls ( Caroline and Holly the IT wizards-girl Friday, Saturday and Sunday) have created a new page for them. It's quite satisfying throwing stuff away. I chucked old correspondence, cards and letters as well as gifts I never liked and doubles of virtually anything I own or collect. Clothes, jewelry and cosmetics went to various homeless shelters and of course Safe Passage and Penny lane. Safe Passage is in dire need of computers for the ladies if any of you want a nice tax write off please contact them in Santa Monica, CA. website is below. The other feeling I get is that besides making your environment cleaner I believe that throwing things away de-clutters you in a spiritual way as well....you feel more open to new things by letting go of the old. I have had a tendency in the past to collect things....books, antiques, cooking equipment etc etc but now I feel like "jeez, I have enough stuff!". I only want to buy things I can really use right now and right here.
The Leaper con was small and mellow as I expected but it was lovely to run into Von Armstrong and Richard Herd, two men I greatly enjoy and respect. We spent a couple of hours with the fans then left and enjoyed the beautiful Saturday weather.
Have a good one...I'm back to work!
xx claudia

Great start!

Well the first segment of the shoot for David's DVD went very well I'm happy to report! Deborah invited her actress-model friend Sandra Taylor along to model for us; Sandra just finished shooting a comedy in Flint Michigan with Ann-Margret and she was happy to be home with her kids and the nice weather. She was a total pro and the photos came out beautifully. David and Deborah had great chemistry and the wonderful Kerry Hoyt (Jim Carrey's stand in for the last decade plus and David's best friend) was an outstanding camera man and all around help. Next weekend is the "Vanity Fair" type mogul shoot with Kerry playing Donald Trump circa 1984 and Yvette Nelson (my sister in law's sister) playing the trophy bride...now that's going to be a hoot!

I'm off to go meet Quantum Leap fans now... or "Leapers" as they like to be called. I haven't done a Q and A in quite some time and I don't have many stories from the show considering I only did one episode but I should be able to pull something out of my sleeve for the hour talk!

For those of you who feel you can give...right now is an excellent time to donate business clothes to the Red Cross, GoodWill, local shelters and women's shelters or your local VA. A lot of people are job hunting and do not have the right clothes to look their best and make them feel confident. First impressions are so important during a job interview, we all know that.
So, go through your closet, admit that you'll never be able to fit into those size 28 waist slacks or that you don't need suits or dresses for your current lifestyle...and give them to a good cause...spread a little hope through your community.

Safe Passage is always looking for smart interview clothes for women (it's in Santa Monica, CA) and there are hundreds of men's and women's organizations on line, some who will even pick the clothes up! Another great thing to give away is grooming products and makeup so all of those lipsticks you got free or perfume samples...put them into a bag and give those as well.

Peace to all of you

Love, Claudia
xx

The horrors of moving and IT nightmares

Oh Lordy it's been a long time! I moved house again. I was doing the math in my head last night and I thought "hmmm...I have lived in :
Bath, England
Winterbourne Down, England
Ladbroke Grove, London
Westminster, London
Notting Hill, London
West Hollywood, California
Beverly Hills, California
Bel Air, California
Sherman Oaks, California
nine moves...all in the span of 4 years!! Exhausting just thinking about it! I have moved so often and so suddenly that I have lost my lifetime ability to memorize phone numbers and post codes instantly..my brain is rebelling I think. I have also changed phones, computers, lost my address book and photos, spent hours trying to call the main Mac headquarters and basically gone a bit mad in the process. Ahhh but now I am happily ensconced in a nice house in the Valley and my flat in London is rented out to a lovely couple and I can relax for a year, hopefully more. I decided to do a couple of appearances in Los Angeles, the Quantum Leap folks have been asking me to do their event for a few years now but I was never able to. It's small and it's fan run so it should be very mellow. It's this Saturday at the Beverly Garland Hotel:http://www.leapback2009.com/venue.htm I will go onstage at 1:00 and then sign from 2-3:30pm. I am also going to appear at the new Hollywood Show April 25th and 26th http://hollywoodshow.com/ and I'll be sitting with the darling Vanessa Angel, a terrific and very beautiful actress friend of mine.
I have also started the journey back into "hey, I'm 43 and I have to be possibly near naked in a TV show"- shape... so I have rebooted my workout regime, luckily with the beautiful Los Angeles weather and bountiful hiking places and a couple of pals to hike with, it should be enjoyable this time around. Jogging in London was not my favorite pastime...
In other news I am producing David Honl's new DVD for professional and amateur photographers to teach lighting techniques and other tricks of the trade. Our first stop on the journey is filming Deborah Wald, a terrific photographer (and one of my oldest and best friends) while David teaches her how to achieve a natural light look using some of his lighting products and other elements. After that we intend to shoot a high fashion photo, a cooking segment, an animal, cars, models, head shots and so many other fun stuff that this will be the most chock-o-block educational-entertaining DVD on photography ever! I have faith that anyone will enjoy it...he even has a Planet of the Apes special effects makeup shoot and a Babylon 5 reunion of sorts on the DVD! What a wonderful mix....
Well that's all for now. I hope that whomever is looking for work finds it soon, those of you with health issues I wish you relief and calm and those of you who are lucky enough to have work, love and health in your lives..I pray that you are grateful and tell those you love that you feel blessed.
Love, CC