This morning, I got up and picked up my press pass at the Headquarters Marriott with a friend of mine, a fellow member of the press; after, we had a sit-down breakfast. And we talked -- about movies, sure, but about apartments and life and buffet etiquette and mutual friends and mutual enemies and their life in New York and my life in California. I laughed; I had a good time, a real conversation with someone I don't get to see often enough. And when it was done, I thought, Well, that was the last time you get to do that for the next ten days.

Because after that I had to double-check my interviews and double-check my screening times and cross-reference the schedule I'd made back in L.A. with the one here in Park City and call PR firms and then go back to the Marriot to pick up the hard ticket I needed for a public screening -- the public screening's on Sunday, but since I knew I had the time to go over there and I knew the PR person was there, better safe than sorry -- and do some writing before getting over to the Eccles for the opening night film Mary and Max and then heading over to the opening night party to shoot TV stand-ups with The Travel Channel and then head back here to write a wrap-up of the first day of Sundance.

And as ever, if this sounds like complaining, I assure you it isn't; every time I want to complain about my job, I imagine a coal miner -- Joe the Coal Miner, if you will - punching me in the chest for about an hour. But this day was busy, and they're just going to get more so, and as much as I'm looking forward to the movies I'm excited about seeing, I'm also looking forward to seeing those movies I know nothing about right now, the surprises, the sneak peeks, the once-in-a-lifetime occurrences. (I have a hard ticket to Chameleon Street, for example -- it won the grand jury prize here in 1990, and the chance to see it on a big screen? Come on. ...) Tomorrow, the pace kicks up, and it'll make today look like a long nap and Sunday afternoon with the New York Times. And I wouldn't want it any other way, which is good, because there aren't a lot of other ways it's going to be.