Okay so I know it's not cool to boast, but I mean seriously.

Check this out.

Standing There producer Rita Walsh, whose photograph in the Leongatha Star earlier this year was aptly emblazoned with the headline, "You Ripper Rita", is swanning about in America picking up Grand Prizes. Grand ones! Not just normal ones! GRAND PRIZES.

Next, she's taking the short film, Hugo (made with her "other" family, Nick and Rachel), to Palm Springs because they're screening it there as well. After that, she's meeting us at Bundanon for our residency, which by the way starts on Sunday. Huzzah! By the time Rita gets to Bundanon she may well just sleep for nine years, because I tell you what, if there was a Grand Prize for Most Parties Squeezed Into An Overseas Trip, I reckon she's sitting on very good odds.

Sometimes, after an awful meeting or an impossibly complex conversation about some tiny element of some project that might never happen, Rita and Stew and I look morose and wonder what the hell we're doing with our time. But Rita always straightens up at about that point and says "Good meeting, guys. We'll get there". She drives off in her little car, already thinking about something else, and I always believe her.

It's hard to know sometimes if things are going well. The best way to know is to have someone tell you. The absolute best way is for someone to tell you you won a Grand Prize.

Congratulations wonderful Rita and of course to everyone involved in Hugo. Awesome effort, justly rewarded. And about frigging time, too.