Prosaic Paradise

My hair stylist Bree has been telling me for months about Giovanni Tea Tree Triple Treat Shampoo & Conditioner and I was like “sha, whatever” for just about as long. But since the product I really want to use, DevaCurl, is like $298,475.23 a bottle and this stuff is only $7 I decided to give it a try. The shampoo has no sulfates and the conditioner has no silicones, so if you are trying to avoid those, these products qualify. But what really won me over is the OMG WAKE UP tingle and scent of mint and chamomile! It’s very… stimulating. And doesn’t give me tummyaches like coffee.

Weekend before last I made a snap decision to go to Maryland Renfaire. I’ve been going for nigh on 16 years now and I think I saw more shows this time than in the whole previous 15 years combined. I only consumed one type of meat on a stake, but my partner in meat consumption wasn’t present. I wandered to every jewelry shop one by one, guided by my compatriots who actually pay attention to where things are, declaring all the bracelets in the joint too girly. Until finally we made it to The Crafty Celts where I purchased in 30 seconds flat this perfect torc-style bracelet. I love it and I want to wear it every day forever.

It’s been a banner week for people recognizing that particular tattoo, too, from the merch guy at the Porcupine Tree concert who was all steeped in amazement at my Genesis fandom to a total stranger at the Renfaire walking up and saying “Is that from Wind & Wuthering?” and it is a universal truth that anyone who does recognize it a) underestimates my age and b) comments openly about a young person even knowing that album. I don’t mind any of this, because I am always delighted to meet other Genesis fans, and am also fine with my age being underestimated.

This weekend after class I went to the mall. Jack and I had just reviewed our budgets and noted a need to slash same budgets in the areas of food and bullshit. So I exercised my willpower by going to the mall and not buying anything. Well, I replaced my empty bottle of MV3. (Side note: MAC does recycling of containers!) (Also: They currently have a black lipstick in their lineup that I would have died for a decade ago. But my black lipstick wearing days are over.) But there were four other dumb-shit non-necessities things I did not buy! Baby steps.

Tags: hair, jewelry, perfume, stuff, Tattoo

I didn’t have to do any back to school shopping to get these items as I seem to take back to school shopping to be a year round career. But this is what my “shopping” in my stash landed me for school tools for the Nutrition class I’m taking this fall.

Which, by the way, is “Fast Track”, so if I don’t hurry up and post this my semester will already be over… 10 hours of class each weekend for 4 weeks and done. Not so bad but makes my weekends more of a bummer than usual for a while. And in case you don’t read my twitter, my teacher comes off like the Kristen Wiig impression of Suze Orman. All exams are taken at the testing center and I can’t tell you how much this relieves my test anxiety.

Since it’s a short class I didn’t want to commit to a bound notebook, so I decided to take all my notes on a pad and stick ’em in a folder. This is kind of freeing, although I wished I’d had a pad with annotation ruling. (Like this Levenger or this Mead pad)

• One orange and one green Sharpie Pen
• Pilot Spotliter VW (two-ended!)
• Doane Paper
• Sasquatch 2-pocket Folder
• Carrying it all in a tote by Simbiosis by Julia

These tools combined give me everything I need to draw my eye to more important facts as I take notes. I know Doane paper was designed for engineering tasks, but I love graph paper for all kinds of purposes.

As of Monday I’m already halfway through the class anyways. Then I have a long break from academics for a while and I’ll have to actually write to penpals or something if I want to hand-write anything!

Tags: Stationery

This post is for Genie’s 9th Living Out Loud project: See the guidelines here.

I’ve always been wary or perhaps even phobic of the concept of bio-mechanics. You know, implants, anything foreign going under the skin. When all my friends were getting all into William Gibson and playing Shadowrun and talking about getting “ports” tattooed on the back of their necks, I was quietly making gag motions in the corner and unknowingly preparing myself to be the only person in America who hated the Matrix.

But there’s one bio implant thingy that would make me consider getting over my phobia. If I could have the equivalent of an ipod & headphones implanted in my body and not be dependent on any external device to listen to my music anytime I want… now that would be what I call having a personal soundtrack.

Since I don’t want to bore you to tears talking about stuff like the incredibly depressing fact that for a month in 1994 the song “(Everything I do) I do it for you” by Bryan Adams was my personal soundtrack in particular reference to a dude who did not treat me at all well, and all of the patheticness that represents, I am going to go ahead and bore you to tears with the music that is currently making my imaginary FMRI light up like a Christmas tree.

1. Morrissey – I Have Forgiven Jesus
2. Badly Drawn Boy – This Is That New Song
3. Cream – I Feel Free
4. Bonnie Prince Billy – Nomadic Revery (All Around)
5. Crowded House – Italian Plastic
6. The Beatles – While My Guitar Gently Weeps
7. Split Enz – Under the Wheel
8. Grateful Dead – Black Muddy River
9. Traveling Wilburys – End of the Line
10. Beardfish – At Home Watching Movies (amazon sample)
11. The Strokes – Trying Your Luck
12. Sea Wolf – Song for the Dead
13. Michael Nesmith & The First National Band – The Crippled Lion (amazon sample)
14. Randy Travis – On The Other Hand
15. Riverside – Conceiveing You
16. Black Bonzo – Sound of the Apocalypse (& part 2)

I think there is some kind of very, very loose theme of change going on here. Though I can’t explain the Morrissey song, I just like it. And several songs above – I don’t know what they are about. And the Randy Travis song just leaps into my head whenever I utter the phrase “on the other hand”. I have to listen to it in self-defense.

I think it’s the coming of autumn; songs about death are like flipping up the death card in your tarot reading. Upheaval and change are surrounding me in my friends’ lives even though my changes are still in the offing. So “when the last rose of summer pricks my finger” (#8) I end up finding songs like these compelling.

Tags: mix, Music

When I signed up for a photography workshop, I thought, who am I kidding? Then I thought, it doesn’t matter who I am kidding, because I am going to have fun and even if everyone else in this thing is some kind of professional with a $5000 camera, it will be fine because sometimes a steep learning curve motivates me better than easing in.

As it turned out, it seemed like we had everyone from me (total photography n00bness) to people with thriving businesses. The nice part about this was that our leaders were able to make all the information interesting and palatable to all of us, regardless of level or background. Not to mention feeling like I was learning from all the other participants.

This workshop was exactly what I needed, in terms of both a boost of confidence, a pathway to technical knowledge, and the ability to see how a professional photographer interacts with models. Although, I’d argue that Me Ra & Brian are pretty unique professionals.

I can’t pin myself down to just kinetic, aural, or visual learning styles. I can’t rely on just one but if I were going to rely on one more than others, I believe it would be kinetic. During Anatomy classes I would have to do little arm gestures and movements in order to remember many of the terms, not to mention having to touch my head to remember the name of some of the parts of the brain.

So what this workshop was able to do for me was to wrap up all three of those things, most importantly kinetic and aural, allowing me to get a much better feel for my camera and for all of the details that are happening when you’re moving beyond just snapping photos. Imagine me reading a website about photography with the camera in my hand – it seems like information doesn’t stick or make sense. By the next day, the whole concept is gone. But surrounded by other humans, listening, writing down notes, and manipulating the camera – suddenly using the metering tools in my camera is a piece of cake when before it was an inscrutable menace.

That’s just the nuts and bolts. There is a whole other thing going on at Me Ra’s workshop which helped me over the course of the weekend, and that’s Me Ra and Brian’s excellent attitude. It’s been said before but I’ll say it again: What a wonderful, novel thing to be taught by people who are open and empathic and take a humanist tack towards teaching. Who are forthcoming with their own troubles and open about how they conquered them. I’ve been to lots of technical training sessions over the years for my work to the tune of way more than this workshop and if those guys could just borrow a fraction of the inclusive, helpful technique that happened to me a week and a half ago, they might find it much easier to reach new generations of engineers. And maybe there wouldn’t have to be so much punditry about why the lack of female engineers still persists.

But I digress. I am still going through my 20 pages of notes I took over the course of two days trying to make sure that everything I learned sort of gels. But I also know that to make it work, I need to get out and shoot. So, anyone need an, um, book jacket portrait? Christmas card family shot? Based on the business discussions had in the workshop, I’ll only be cheap for so long*!

Check out what some of the other participants had to say about the workshop: Aileen Reilly & MammaLoves. The best of the 500+ shots I took over the weekend are in this flickr set.

* Actually I have zero interest in monetizing this hobby, unless my idea for a coffee table book about bedrooms comes to fruition.

Tags: photography

Look at all the personality in that face. So much expression! And all of it focused in his prime attitude, “screw off, jerks”. Nicolas is a sweetheart, really…

I was going to spend time this week writing all about my amazing weekend in the Me Ra Koh photography workshop, or even telling you about the fantastic time I had dangling my feet in the healing waters in Berkeley Springs the previous weekend, but Tuesday night I spend all night staring at the kitty.

See, Nicolas does this Taz thing when we take him to the vet, which means that to even tell if he’s a feline they have to gas him. So it was time for his checkup and shots and Tuesday he had all that done.

Apparently though, he “fought sedation” (implying I guess that they had to sedate him heavily) and while I thought he was perky after he got home, late at night he got really, really weird. Me being me, I catasrophized* this and turned it into a 4am trip to the emergency vet, where Nicolas promptly restored our faith in him by recreating his whole Taz impression. Imagine Jack standing there saying, “I’ll hold him while they examine him.” and me looking at him like he’s grown a second head as I back away from the carrier slowly.

It took another 24 hours but he seems to be mostly back to normal now, no more sitting in front of the wall, staring with eyes totally dilated and growling. Hopefully he won’t begrudge me a few hours in front of my computer tonight playing with Lightroom so I can get the photos I took this weekend online!

* Oh good. Catastrophizing linked with early death. HA!

Tags: cat

Why do I continue to get myself involved in more things, when all the time I fantasize about having nothing to do? This contradiction in myself is pulling me in two directions pretty much all the time.

Product placement: I heretofore endorse the the Timbuk2 Cargo Tote as really nice even if not necessarily the most sleek, mod, hip looking bag to ever come down the pike. (My latest favorite thing is that you can see all the custom bag designs people make on tumblr.)

It stands up on its own so when you set it down on the floor or a table, it doesn’t lay down and let all your things fall out. It has a nice wide opening and light-colored lining (if you choose that) so that when it’s open, you can see EVERYTHING you have in there and fish out what you need. The handles/straps place the bag in that comfortable sub-brachial spot that makes me feel like I have a secure grip on it without being all up in my armpit. And it zips, so if you are paranoid like me and worry that someone will reach into your bag without you knowing, you at least have that. Oh, and the exterior pockets allow for easy access to crucial stuff.

But it does give off a kind of practical, homely vibe. Oh well. I am practical and homely. It suits.

Through various machinations and plans with medical professionals, a while back I was prescribed with a tentative and temporary Xanax dose. I have to say, this stuff does exactly what I need – when I have acute problems, it slows the anxious feelings down to a handleable level. In the past 2 months I’ve used exactly four of them, so I think I’m not in any danger of dependence. But I think it does this amazing thing where it teaches you what it feels like to be in a situation that would normally trigger irrational stress levels but allows you to totally handle it. It’s a gentle reminder of being normal, and you can do the rest of the work yourself. So basically thank goodness for science.

My guitar teacher says that my Jay Turser guitar has a really high action. Uhm? He made me try his guitar, and it didn’t seem that different to me. We’re talking fractions of a mm here! I do think Jack’s PRS feels nicer but we’re not buying another one of those! So he says he knows a guy who could lower it a little for me. I dunno. I just pine for one of these.

Jack and I have an ongoing debate about guitar practice. I’m curious about how you guys feel. He says that he doesn’t mind practicing without plugging in, and that he can hear just fine what he’s doing this way. I say I can’t tell how well I’m getting my fingers on the strings and how much buzz I’m causing or what I’m accidentally muting without being plugged in. What say you folks? Practice with amp or without?

I suspect we will compromise and I’ll get an 1/8″ to 1/4″ adapter for my headphones and listen to my own practice that way. I’m pretty much playing the first couple measures of Limelight over and over and over… and over. So I can see why he doesn’t want to hear that.

I am slow on the uptake, so I just found out yesterday that there is a new “supergroup” in the world, composed of Josh Homme, Dave Grohl, and John Paul Jones. And they will be at the 9:30. So I’m trying to get some tickets off craigslist. Because I am crazy.

Tags: bags, guitar, Music, stuff

After four years attending, the complete ecstasy of sitting in a big ol’ field on a farm while the most amazing, hardworking musicians play for me has not dulled, not a bit. I think, now that I know some folks and get to hang out, it as even grown. (Last year’s review.)

This year I didn’t really have time to think about things up until I was packing to leave basically the day of. I had no idea how many people I’d get to see again from NEARfest! The social aspect of the experience was a whole different animal as a result. I also volunteered to help work the gate and sell beer again, which exposed me to even more friendly people. (Oh hai, handsome gents.) This I like. Prog fans are great because they really want to talk about music. And they are well-educated about it. I learn so much from these folks.

But you probably are wondering how, you know, the bands were. Right. As usual, not every group was to my tastes. The standout bands for me were:

La Maschera di Cera, an italian prog band in a very classic sense. The thing that grabbed me about their set was not just the vintage sound, but the singer! He was so great, he really took the performance and wrung everything out of it that he could. I failed to have the cash available to buy their CD which I really regret – I will find it online, but later I found out that their flautist did some drawings for the album insert. It seems like these musicians I meet are never creative in just one direction.

On Sunday, we were treated to Deluge Grander in the morning. At first I wasn’t really awake or something because I wasn’t into it, but soon they busted out some grooves that made everyone in the audience start to tap their feet. I swear I saw half the people in the field perk up by about the third song. Halfway through their set, they had a singer join them; things calmed down a little at that point and I lost some momentum from them. I think this may be my own bias; I have a whole post brewing on my own issues with female singers and the way feminine voices are sometimes used. (This ultimately applies to why I am not going on about Brave from Saturday morning, and why last night I was texting instead of keenly listening all during Origin Theory’s set at Jaxx.)

I was selling beer, and thus drinking heavily, all during Edensong’s set. Which is a pity, because I would have really enjoyed taking that one in without distraction. Lots of people said it was a flute-heavy weekend and these guys certainly contributed, but in a good way. This time I had cash and nabbed one of their CDs, meanwhile 17 people ambushed me at their booth to talk about my tattoo. Finally! I had waited all weekend, sheesh!

3RDegree were really on, but what got me out of my seat from where I was resting and listening peacefully was a faithful and beautiful cover of Genesis’ “Me and Sarah Jane”. They know how to get to me!

Sunday when I bid adieu to the site as the Ozric Tentacles set rolled on (and they were way fun! I just had a dinner date), I was just about in tears. I know next year I may not be in a logistical or financial position to attend ProgDay and despite the fact that it sucks up a whole holiday weekend every year, it’s really one thing I can count on to bring me pure unadulterated joy.

I did get parting shots poolside after dinner as I chatted with Paul & Deb Sears, Andrea the Italian flautist, Mike of Orion Studios, and many others about life and music. It helped the sting a little bit, and already I’ve exchanged some emails with those folks and chatted on ProgressiveEars with new & old friends.

And yes, I know that I’ll get to see more prog music soon – Porcupine Tree on the 25th, and Karmakanic at Orion on Oct 15th. (Join me?) But it won’t be in that magical place – not until next year. Or possibly the year after.

Tags: Music, ProgDay, shows

This was a comment to my friend David, but I thought I’d share it with anyone who reads this. (As always, thank you for reading.)

Over the past week and a half, I had to watch the slow dissolution of a cicada that apparently didn’t make it off the sidewalk. Sorry to tell you this sad story, but it was interesting because in order to get at all the meaty good parts of the cicada, the ants built up little piles of debris to climb up on to its upturned belly. This feast went on for days. Then someone (the trash men I think) kicked the cicada away.

While I’m talking about bugs, I promised Megan I’d explain why a flea infestation ended up with me getting bit by a squirrel. Many of you have probably heard this story, but if you haven’t, enjoy.

When I was in high school I had a friend whose parents kept quite a menagerie of pets. They made trips out of town a bunch, and I’d come over and feed everything, up to and including the squirrel they’d saved from certain death (having been rejected by its squirrel mother) and bottle fed and kept in a massive cage in the living room.

Well, one of these times while they were gone a substantial number of flea eggs all seemed to hatch at the same time. They had a flea infestation the likes of which I have never seen before or since. Being an ignorant and irresponsible teenager, I just wanted to feed the animals and get out of there. My white socks had turned gray from the fleas smelling fresh game and I was getting bit something fierce. So I was, at the least, a bit agitated when I got around to shoving the squirrel food into the cage. I may have been doing this job in a more hurried manner than I should have. I felt a pressure on my finger… no pain… not until I looked and saw the blood. Damn squirrel bit me.

I ran into the kitchen, where they conveniently had an industrial size fridge & freezer for me to shake my hand at and cause a splatter movie scene. I stood at the phone (leaving a convenient blood spatter pattern) and called my dad and things sort of scrolled out as you’d expect – trip to the ER, iodine and pills, the whole nine yards. I believe my dad had the pleasant job of going back and cleaning up the mess I’d made.

I got to my job as a camp counselor late that day. But I’ll never forget one of my friends describing the scene as they imagined it when they heard “Kim’s late ’cause she got bit by a squirrel.” It was like something out of a Disney flick with me wandering out in the back yard and whistling to the woodland creatures a happy morning greeting. Hmm, nope. It was the fleas.

Tags: dad, History, nostalgia

This post is for Genie’s Living Out Loud Challenge #8. Assignment: Write about something, some object, that you treasure.

There have been many objects that have captured my adoration and been the focus of my superstition. I’ve had lucky exam shirts and special poker chips and favorite keychains. I’ve had pet rocks and post-it notes with special messages and plastic toys that serve as desktop wardens from job to job to job.

When I was little, you’d often find me with my favorite transformer – Ravage – in my pocket or my jacket or my bookbag. Ravage was the cassette that turned into a cat, and while nowadays he has been irrevocably changed by the passing of old forms of media, for the time he was perfect – for one thing, he turned into an animal and not some dumb car or humanoid, and for another, he presaged my strong relationship with music at a time when I was barely getting past the Cabbage Patch Kids songs. He went with me everywhere and was what passed for a familiar, though I didn’t know the word at age 8.

Later in middle school I had gone through many more and varied personal talismans. Recently I found amongst my things a pig. He is about 4 inches long and has a plastic ball inside him so that he squeaks. I think this should give a pretty good indication of how much I tried to adopt “adorable goofball” as part of my persona as a way to cope with junior high. (Not that I ever really stopped doing that.) I brought him with me to all tests and I am sure through some strange osmosis his potential squeaks from within my bookbag helped me get an A or two over the years.

Nowadays I try not to be so attached to objects. Accumulating two more decades of treasured objects when you find yourself treasuring objects like it’s your job gets a little cumbersome. But in my bag I have two things (three if you count the ink in the fountain pen) that accompany me virtually everywhere.

One: The Miquelrius 300 page notebook I bought sometime in 2005 and have been desperately trying to fill ever since. At the rate I am going, I will be able to retire it to a fire safe sometime in 2015. Its contents include but are not limited to to- do lists, weird scribbles, research on schools & jobs, guest lists, packing lists, doodles of yetis, journal entries, and wine tasting notes. On the way to BlogHer it got soaked with sweat from a bottle of water, but somehow retained its flatness. It is adorned with stickers of a unicorn and my aborted “Choose Barbarism in Prince Georges County” joke. Its binding stalwartly holds on to all 300 of those pages even after being toted around all these years. I am serious when I say this binding is the shit.

Two: My A.G. Spalding M nib fountain pen in maple wood (black). Filled with J. Herbin Gris Nuage fountain pen ink. This is not an expensive pen. I bought it because of the look. The combination of that, the gray ink, some quirks of the nib that allow the ink to shade in a special way, makes this my favorite writing instrument at all times right now.  (Note: I also purchased the aluminum-body version of this pen and it sucked, the threads that screw the feed & section to the body come loose too easily and the cap doesn’t post solidly on the back.)

This pen and notebook combination makes me want to write. And writing is healthy. Particularly the kind of writing that is unedited and methodical, that allows your mind to wander but forces your brain to slow down to the the rhythm of your hand.

A few times in this summer I was caught without these things, thinking that my pen wrap and my monster notebook were weighing me down or causing potential back problems someday, and each time I was called on to write the perfect thought or doodle the perfect doodle, and had nothing to do it on. Well I am not making that mistake again, despite having to up the size of my current bag.

Tags: Living Out Loud, Stationery

I was cast back to two very vivid childhood memories very suddenly today while thinking, sadly, about TV. But, there it is, a part of my own history and my family history, a significant amount of TV watching. On MamaPop we have the question: What’s appointment TV for you? What do you watch in real time? And then… what did you once watch in real time, back when that was the only option?

I remembered how looking forward to X-Files every week in college got me through some rough times – I knew I had a place to go on X Files night. (I knew I had a place to go most of the time, but I owe pretty great karmic debts all over the place from all that, so…) I am pretty sure my vampire-loving LARPing friends and I caught every new episode of Kindred: the Embraced or what we now affectionately call “The Eddie Fiore Show”. No shame. No Regrets!

But I remembered suddenly and vividly seeing two things as a very young child that had a massive impact on me. I remembered watching Dukes of Hazzard and CHiPs. faithfully. Wasn’t that past my bedtime? Good lord, some of these episode summaries… apparently my parents felt I could handle Uncle Jesse stopping Boss Hogg from building a strip club at age 4. Well I don’t remember that, but what I do remember is there was one episode with the classic “there’s a bomb tied to an innocent person” plot and I guess I had a vivid imagination because the concept of that person blowing up was simply too much to take. I remember being riveted to make sure that person didn’t blow up. But later I remember crying and going back to my room and wondering if I could ever watch my beloved Dukes again if they were going to be blowing people up on that show. I was a sensitive child.

Amusingly, this reminded me of a connected memory of watching Little Rascals (obv in reruns) when one of the kids accidentally drinks a glass of some kind of explosive liquid and somehow might blow up if jostled too much. How the hell I remember this shit I don’t know. But I remember being DESTROYED by this. I think I was afraid to drink things for weeks.

Anyways. Those suddenly came back to me. Lots of things freaked me out when I was a kid, up to and including Teen Wolf (I was terrified by transformation scenes!), so laugh it up.

This coming fall I think I won’t have too much in the way of “Appointment TV”. We love NCIS but we can watch it whenever. Supernatural is going to be a killer – it’s the last season, and I’m kind of obsessed, so we’ll be watching that in near-real time. Watching parties anyone?

What’s your appointment TV? Anyone else remember some great appointment TV of yore?

Tags: TV