So, my boss had stepped out...

... and I noticed that this meant I probably had at least a half hour before he'd be back. So I said to his Administrative Assistant, "Meg and I are going stalking; I'll be back soon."

I actually got a good four steps out the door before she said, "You're going where?"

See, here's the thing about living in Los Angeles. They're always filming stuff. In fact, as I work in a part of L.A. that is full of old buildings which are kinda grimy and run-down, they use it for filming quite often, as the environs can double quite easily in for L.A. in the 1940's. Or present day New York.

Here's the other thing about living in Los Angeles. They're never filming anything you care about. (It's some Murphy's Law corollary, I'm sure.) Which means that the default attitude one goes to when one finds out about a filming on one's street is an mild sort of annoyance. We tolerate it; we know it brings income to the City; but it screws up traffic, parking, and sometimes lunch. (I'm still annoyed at the weasel who thought we were trying to intrude on his set when we were just trying to go to Quizno's for a sub. Give some low-ranking employee a megaphone and all of a sudden he's Master of Fourth Street, ordering pedestrians away despite the "open for business during filming" signs. Jerk.)

So, this morning, one lane of our street was coned off. (Although nobody was using that lane in our block, the cones technically blocked the way into our parking garage. Someone had already registered a protest by running over one of the cones, which made it somewhat easier for the rest of us to park.) See? Annoyance.

And then we learned that, for what had to be the first time in about 15 years, they were actually filming something cool on our street. Castle. (A couple co-workers discovered that this morning. The lunch hour was spent passing around one of their cell phones and admiring their photos of Nathan Fillion. Apparently, it doesn't take much to turn 10 otherwise professional women into giggling fangirls.)

So, after lunch, Meg went out there on a short recon mission, to see if they were still shooting. She reported back that they were apparently lighting a scene with the stand-ins; the actors weren't anywhere to be seen. I figured we weren't really going to take a whole lot of time out of work, so we waited what appeared to be a reasonable amount of time, then decided that it was such a lovely sunny day out, we might as well go out and take a little post-lunch stroll.

Truth be told, I am a crappy stalker. I'm as fangirl giggly as the rest of 'em, but I don't actually want to interfere with people doing their jobs. And it isn't like they have a "fan viewing" area conveniently set up outside the range of the shot. Still, nobody made any attempt to stop us as we walked down the sidewalk and the people on the sidewalk became more and more ... dressed for New York. (Those poor extras! Heavy wool coats in 84 degree weather.) The actors, of course, were off in their trailers. But our timing was good and it wasn't more than a minute after we casually stopped and leaned against a building that the stand-ins were pulled out and the actors came in. So, Meg and I watched Nathan Fillion joke around; Stana Katic look pretty; and the guest actor (who we're pretty sure was Carlo Rota) have to get stood on a box because, apparently, Nathan Fillion is even taller than you might think.

Right before they were actually going to shoot the scene, a very nice young lady waved over to me and Meg and walked us through the set so we could continue on our merry way. (Amusing that she thought we were just waiting for them to finish so we could cross, when we were really trying to watch what was going on; while that Quizno's cop guy had assumed we were trying to watch what was going on, when we were really just trying to cross.)

This left us with a small dilemma. Because she'd politely escorted us right through the set -- when we actually worked in the opposite direction. Now, we wouldn't want to actually admit that we were there because we were trying to get a glimpse of their stars. But we'd also like to get back to work. So we walked down another block (until we were safely out of view of the nice set lady), decided that, "gosh, we're kind of tired now, perhaps we should head back" -- crossed the street and headed back to work on the other side of the street, careful not to gawk.

By the time I left work at 7:00, they were still out there (with those really big bright lights). Was tempted to drive by for another peek, but didn't. Because, y'know, filmings annoy me.