One two three gray!

I don't like change. Just so that's out there. And so when I do face it with hands on my hips I have to size up the situation differently. I have to add another filter to my perceptions. Do I not like this for warranted reasons or do I not like it because it's different?

My bike tire exploded (and I do mean exploded) over a week ago. Zach tried to fix it but to no avail. We borrowed Mom's and today was my first 9-mile spin. And I feel like I should have a red nose and giant shoes. And perhaps a monkey on my shoulder. What I shouldn't have is a 9-mile trip home and highway wind to confront. Zach kept asking me how the bike was and I didn't want to complain unnecessarily. But it's hard to pedal. It's handle bars are really high. All the work your legs do make you feel like you're trying to launch a helicopter vertically as opposed to traversing a lateral plain. I had a hard time knowing if I should even say these things as an answer to his question. I wasn't sure whether these issues were real issues and good enough for me not to ride it anymore...or I'm just fighting change.

It's hard to know. And it's almost always hard to know.

 

Goal Review (2.5 month)

It's that time again. And actually was a few weeks ago but dropped the ball. Or I was traveling. I don't really know. But its a Saturday and I'm avoiding working on #16 so this will be good inspiration to get me motivated.

1. Pay $1500 in school loans-
Thus far fail. Fail fail.

2. Create at least $500 cushion in bank account
I am working on this. I've paid off NYC. I'm up to date on all my bills. Those credits cards have a positive balance (seriously how do I get that back?) I''m putting money away into my IRA every month. This other type of savings involves a major shift in my thinking so it's a gradual process.

3. Attain 2 octave singing scale
I need to get motivated about singing again. I have been very lax here even though I know I'm close to a break through. The problem is I feel self conscious singing at home. I'm worried I'm annoying the neighbors. This creates a major (major) block.

4. (I'm cutting this b/c it's been completed.)

5. Finish writing 1 song with accompaniment. (Guitar and/or piano)-
Haven't even given it a second though

6. Send 5 birthday cards- ON TIME
I did this...if I count a little wiggle room. So I'm changing it to 10. (May 9 change of goal.)

7. Send cards for one holiday-
Eh. This will be Halloween or something summery.

8. Pursue art/design/craft/collage: figure out specifics and how to gauge-
Still not sure what this means. Need to create a plan. I've sure been doing crafty stuff of late I've just been terrible about posting about it.

9. Get through 5 drafts of 3 shorts total (includes at least 3 people writing comments on each draft.)-
(These names won't make sense to you probably but are for my records:)
Zach's Taco Shack- Draft 1 complete (3 people have viewed and commented)
Phone Calls- Still rough drafting
Car Faith- Lost my rough draft. No idea which notebook it's in.
Happy Birthday- rough Draft 1.
Cranes- Story board draft 1 complete.

10. Learn Flash
Got the book again. Need to add this back into my plans.

11. Design and do photoshoot.-
Gathering ideas for this.

12. Direct music video.-
No progress. That's fine. Actually what I'm going to do I think is do a Flash music video for a commercial artist. Ideally I'd do it for someone who would actually, you know, give me the rights to use their music but this will do for now. I'm OK with it. Plus it's a good tie in with learn Flash.

13. Shoot a short.
Need to write those drafts first.


14. Write, create, shoot, edit super short stop motion- Barney is half built and waiting on my shelf. Have a ton to do to prep for this but it's where it needs to be on the back burner until #16 is the hell out of the way.

15. write, shoot, edit 1 CCP review for YouTube. - I've got a quarter of this entire process finished. I watched the video and did artwork. This is on back burner until #16 is over.

16. Edit CCP vid under craftcat brand. I'm working on it. This could be finished this coming week. Oh dear Christ that would be nice. I'm sooooooo close!

17. Learn to cook 5 vegan entrees.
Cooked two recipes last week. One was excellent. One was not excellent. I need to cook again but probably won't happen until next week.

18. No bed piles.
The bed piles are back. Need to do this tonight. I'm having some issues with my closet but that's not for a public entry.

19. Learn congressional committee chairs and cabinet members.
OK, so instead I'm changing this to read the Cheat Sheet from Daily Beast every day. It's not much, but it's something. Have I mentioned I hate politics?

20. Take on an entrepreneurial project.
Hahahaha. I failed her. Such a fail.

21. Call/write my Grandmother once a month.
This is sort of verging on fail as well. *sigh*

22. Thank You cards for birthday presents. - GAH!

23. 200 lines of calligraphy a day (this isn't much considering a lowercase "a" has 3.) (*added March 5)
(I'm officially taking this off the list :)

24. (May 9th add) Write rough draft 1 of a feature screenplay.
I've got one in mind and have started outlining in my mind but nothing more than a story plot is committed yet to paper.

OK! This is actually totally inspiring! I'm ready to finish my art instruction video project. Today I'm doing DVD menu art and switching some stuff in the main time line. The main barrier at this point is writing the stupid copy for the voice over and back of the box. It's sooo hard!

NYC (now with pictures!)

So the problem with posting pictures about NYC is that I took a lot like this:


See great b/c I want to learn to draw people. Baaad b/c well, family and friends keep asking about the NYC trip and all I have is a bunch of crooked pictures.

OK so the basics: Zach and I went for 9 days. We stayed with our friend Lin and his boyfriend Marc. Marc has great design sense and I should have dropped everything and taken pictures of their apt the moment I walked in. Because it was cute and designy and had fresh flowers and nicely placed posters. It was sort of everything a Brooklyn apt should be. By the end of our stay, all the pictures would have had my socks, books and the aero bed in them and wouldn't have done it justice.

BUT to show off Lin and Marc's tastes, here are some shots from a bar they brought us to our second night in town.

Beautiful. And excellent drinks. This is the main thing I learned in NYC, people may not know how to make a good latte (I'm looking at you lady in deli across from the MOMA) but man the bartenders, at least the ones we experienced, know their craft. It's not just a job like I think it might be for a lot of people in Portland. It's sort of an art.

So my favorite part of New York was the people watching and the art. We went to a ton of art. So much art that I think my body started shutting down somewhere in the middle of hipster capital PS.1. PS1 is something that I found totally boring when we went. I didn't connect at ALL to the exhibits but they had really nice walls....



And looking at their website I know I'd be there all the freaking time if I lived in NYC. But the current show was a lot of video installations and soundscapes and Zach found it very cool but I found it boring. Also a security guard with a Queens accent and attitude yelled at me unnecessarily and I kind of wanted to cry.


We of course went to the MOMA, which lets you take non-flash photos inside. Sweet! But super crowded and a bit overwhelming. I like galleries. Small galleries you discover, explore and then leave. (Which was by the way our entire art experience in Miami, South Beach, and the Keys.) But the new exhibit at MOMA (where you couldn't take photos unfortunately) was awesome. The other museums visited were Neue (think Klimt and late 1800 to early 1900s Austrian artists) and the Cooper-Hewitt (AWESOME). The latter had an exhibit on felt but you weren't suppose to touch the pieces. Very very strange sensation. But along with PS1, Cooper-Hewitt is a place I'd be all the time. Plus all your Christmas gifts would forever be cool stuff from their gift shop. Seriously worth checking out even if you don't spend the $15 to go into the museum.

My favorite art however had to be the American Watercolor Society Show. It's the big deal for the watercolor artists we know from work. We knew a bunch of people who had work in the show and it was just such a cool experience to walk around the room and know a half dozen of the personalities that went behind the names.

Theater was another cool experience. With the help of my Grandma, Zach and I got to see South Pacific. Well done production. Apparently it's about racism. Who knew. The woman next to me was conducting at times along with the music. She even sang a little. She glared the hell out of me when I coughed...once. OK, so I coughed a fair amount more but it was all during the clapping in between songs. (Thank god for clapping in between songs.) And for heaven's sake I wasn't CONDUCTING. Whatever.

The other show is now up for a bunch of Tonys and is called God of Carnage. It was a one act (no intermission) about two sets of parents discussing an incident that happened between their sons. It was fantastic! Hope Davis, James Gandolfini, Marcia Gay Harden and Jeff Daniels. All fantastic. Such a treat to see people you know from the movies and TV act right in front of you.



Before the trip Zach and I got recommendations from 4 main sources: Lin (our friend who lives in NYC), Andy, Judah and a stranger named Erin. Zach did a ton of research before we went. He really did a fantastic job finding random cool stuff. My one major contribution however ended up being a gold mine. I randomly came across a blog and emailed the woman for NYC recommendations. She is a freelancer graphic designer who lives in Brooklyn and her blog made it clear we shared some tastes. Absolute win. I still have to email her a HUGE thanks b/c we kind of knew everything on her list was going to be fantastic.

Cooper-Hewitt Museum?
Fantastic.
Hot chocolate and salt croissant at city bakery?
Fantastic.
Greenwich Letterpress store.
HOLY CRAP FANTASTIC.

She pointed us to a bunch of paper stores and some galleries and just a bunch of random cool stuff.

Actually it was really neat to compare how our various sources (friends and strangers) had overlapping tastes. We knew if two people recommended it it would almost perfectly fit our tastes. The people we asked for suggestions all really went out of their way to create fabulous lists for us. Really generous.



One of the places Zach found prior to departure was something he'd heard about on one of the 10 million public radio shows he listens to. He had saved this particular show for three years just in case he ever visited NYC. It was a perfume gallery called CB I Hate Perfume. AWESOME. Ironically we visited the day my head cold was at its sloppiest and I only had one nostril in working order but basically this is a gallery... but of smells. The designer creates smells based on personal experiences so he'll have one called something like "Summer at the Beach 1967." On one side of the small gallery were boxy bookshelves filled with his perfumes. On the other side are all the scents he created to combine to make the perfumes. So on one side of the room would be "Summer at the Beach 1967" and on the other side would be scents like, freshly cut grass, peony, lemon wedge, rubbing alcohol. He had the individual scents divided up into categories: fruits, foods, body (shaving cream, suntan lotion), earth (mud), etc. Really truly cool. Zach bought a perfume scent in a house spray called Russian Caravan Tea and it literally smells exactly like my second host family in Slovakia's kitchen during breakfast when they brought out the tea. INCREDIBLE.

So that is the trip in a nut shell. Really kind of fantastic. Very very different than our Florida trip but equally great.

How I Learned To Drive

I went to an informal play reading this afternoon with some random people from the local theater. This wasn't an audition for a future play. Simply an informal group and a script. We read "How I Learned to Drive." It's the history, more or less, of the protagonist's abuse by her Uncle by marriage. And theoretically it's a controversial play. It definitely was in our theater a few years back when the play reading committee OK'd it but then was over-powered by the Board, which should have no say in these matters. In the end, a very excellent director did not get the chance to direct a very excellent script.

This makes me both sad and angry now that I've actually had a chance to read it especially when I think people are confused at why they think it's controversial. Apparently a few people in the meetings stood up and said that people in the audience would find the story too familiar and would be negatively affected by it. To that I say bullshit. What I believe people find controversial is that in this story there is no black and white. The abuser isn't Satan incarnate. The protagonist at times seems unsure if she likes or dislikes the attention. There isn't a rape scene where the woman is crying and obviously scarred. I think if those were the case it would be far less controversial because it wouldn't mean we had to do any thinking of our own. We would all be in familiar territory. We can do Diary of Ann Frank a million times because it's a black and white atrocity. Jews good. Nazis bad. There's a narrative for the viewer that's safe even if the story itself is harrowing; to the viewer the story is safe.

And that's what our local theater does, safe plays. And it doesn't mean nothing good gets through. There are many really excellent shows filled with talented and hardworking people across the spectrum. But on some level they are all safe. Not boring but within these rules our theater has silently decreed.

Annoying.

"How I Learned to Drive" is a good read. It's possible that they will (or did) perform it in Portland. Also, if you do pick it up or have seen it, I'd love to discuss :)