Saturday Evening Post

Terrible, terrible. My record for this week is terrible. Two posts? Oh, Adia.

Nevertheless, I'm still alive. Not much has happened. School shows were difficult to get through, and there seemed to be a lot of them, even though it was no more or less than normal. I fell during one of the shows while running the first race, which doesn't go anywhere, it just uses a strobe light and I run in place, which makes it even funnier that I fell, but accidents will happen, says Elivs Costello. I just ad libbed a little and kept going.

I had an audition this week, only one, and I didn't get it. It was an industrial for Best Buy, and I couldn't talk without tripping over my words. That's what I get for drinking coffee beforehand. I was drinking coffee, however, to get rid of the headache. I had to feed the beast or I wouldn't have been able to concentrate. I don't really mind, though. Industrials are industrials.

I scanned my comp card today, just for all you lucky folks out there in Internetland.

Ta da!

The Good, the Bad, and the Bored

So! It's been a while. I haven't finished the Hawaii post. And I'm not going to right now. Heh.

I finally picked up my finished comp cards today. It's an odd experience seeing your face repeated over and over again one hundred times. The little flaws that jump out at you in your morning mirror inspections are the first things that you look for, and after you find them you CANNOT FOCUS ON ANYTHING ELSE. You just know that everyone else can see them and oh my gosh why did they choose that photo I mean look at how weird my arm looks there and is that really how my eyes look to everyone else and what is that weird thing sticking out of my hair? In order to resist the obssessive compulsive desire to catalogue everything that's wrong or weird about my body and face, I usually put such photos away and choose not to look at them ever again if I can help it.

Two nice things happened while at my agent's office. Nice part the first, there was a group of young men sitting in the lounge area out front and my my my were they fine. One of them I recognized from browsing the agency portfolio and he is just as lovely in person. Lemme see if I can find him... Well, I can't, but believe me: he was lovely. Nice part the second, my timing was perfect to show one of the agency owners that I could, in fact, pass for someone who can walk on the runway. He asked if I'd ever done runway and I, honestly, answered, "no." He asked if I knew how and I said, "I can learn," with as much cojones as I could muster. :D (One thing this business has given me is not the ability to lie creatively as one might expect, but rather the ability to exude so much confidence that people believe me when I tell them if I can't do something I can learn it in a heartbeat.) I passed a short test in the hallway (thank you America's Next Top Model!) and my name was put onto a list of possibilities for a runway show coming up soon. On my way out I tried not to stare at the hotties again.

One crappy thing happened yesterday, and that was that I accidentally killed my Palm. I sometimes forget to screw the cap on tightly on my Nalgene water bottle and it spills in the bottom of my bag. I didn't notice it had happened for quite some time yesterday, and by that time everything in the bottom of my bag had gotten a nice bath. I pulled all the valuable things out to dry while I did my show, and thought that everything was ok. That was until several hours later when my Palm wouldn't turn on. Oops. I reset it and the screen came back on, but then the stylus wouldn't work on the screen. Today the stylus works, but I can't HotSync it (transferring information from the PDA to my computer and vice versa, for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about), which makes it worthless, essentially. I'm not really bothered by it, because it's an excuse for me to get a new one with a color screen. Yay new toys!

I cleaned house when I got home and turned on 89.3 The Current, MPR's new music station geared toward the younger generation of public radio listeners. I cannot tell you how much I love this station already. On the NPR ad I heard TV on the Radio, and then they played a Travis song I've never heard on the radio. If you live in Minnesota and you like independent and local music, this is the station for you. Hooray for MPR being brave!

And now I'm going to attempt to do something about my boredom - work, dance, sleep, repeat - by cooking dinner and practicing guitar.

Don't Feed the Trolls

The weather is ridiculous. It took me an hour and 45 minutes to get from downtown Minneapolis to my house, which is in Minneapolis. It normally takes about fifteen minutes. On my way into town from the northern suburbs there were cars in the ditches on both sides of the road. I had to hop out of my car at a red light to hack the ice off of my wiper blades. When I arrived home and tried to turn left onto another street my car got stuck in the middle. I managed to shift it slightly to the corner, where it decided it didn't want to move anymore. The rear bumper is sticking out into the cross street and the car isn't perfectly straight, but I don't really care. It's a Snow Emergency so I'm going to have to dig it out in the wee hours of the morning to move it anyway. *sigh* I'm inside now, so I don't care.

My day was ridiculous. I was a half hour later at my first school than I wanted to arrive because I got lost in the wilds of Anoka. The shows went fine, but my wireless microphone was picking up a radio station, so using it was out of the question. I couldn't find my second school right away, either. Once again, the shows went fine, but this time my slide projector remote decided not to work. I had an audition downtown at 4:10, got there at 4:35. Was supposed to have another at 4:20, but I never made it over there. I think Iost a glove somewhere.

I'm going to bed.

Hawai'i

Choosing to write instead of reading other people's writing. It's a simple thing, really, to change your ways. You decide to do it and you do. Or you don't. But we make it difficult by thinking of everything that we could possibly be doing instead and we push the thing that we need to be doing to the back of our minds, hoping that it will go away if we just don't think about it, and it does, because that's the way the brain works.

So I'm writing now, instead of eating more sea salt and vinegar chips and watching television. I won't be up long, so this won't be a long entry. But I need to be up long enough to hear that my downstairs neighbor has stopped watching loud television and the burned pizza smell (his) has faded from my apartment. Come to think of it, it might be a while. (I can't wait to move out of this apartment.)

Hawaii. What can I say? It's Hawaii. It's beautiful, warm, comfortable, relaxed, lovely, isolated, green, wild, delicious. After an hour layover in Seattle, we landed on Maui at 9pm or so on December 16th. The first shock, the first clue that you've arrived is the gush of humid air that hits you as you step out of the canned air of the airplane into the (sort of) fresh air of the plane-to-terminal tunnel. The need to peel off your layers of Minnesota clothes arises and you're suddenly wishing you'd packed sandals in your carry-on. But those are welcome discomforts. Humid and warm trumps -3º any day.

We rented a convertible. A Sebring, in fact. We had a lot of luggage, even though we'd planned not to. Sebrings, now, they don't have much trunk space. So our laps were pressed into service. Oh, and we had the top down. It was chilly in the backseat.

Our hotel was gorgeous, even though geckos and roaches attempted to reclaim the space after we moved in. The geckos were cute. The roaches were not. We didn't do much that night except try to find some food. We ended up eating at Jack in the Box. Heh.

The next morning we found the place that would be our near daily breakfast location. It was called the "Kihei Cafe", Kehei (KEE-hay) being the town that it was in. The food was excellent and reasonably priced. I got pork fried rice for breakfast every time we ate there. In retrospect I should have tried some of the other items on the menu, but the fried rice was enough of a lure to keep me eating it every time. If I could have shoveled some of it in my backpack and brought it back for everyone to taste I would have. That stuff was GOOD.

We drove east along the southern end of the island as far as we could go. We stopped at a small church in Makena (I think it only has one "n") and took a few pictures. Someone was rehearsing their wedding. There were poinsettias growing wild in the churyard and my sister and I made our parents pose for pictures. Some of the other tourists apparently couldn't read, as they sat and stood on some of the gravestones when there was a sign that we CLEARLY marked, "Please don't sit or stand on the graves." I would continue to be annoyed and appalled by tourist behavior throughout the rest of trip.

Further down the road, past Makena, we ran into a single lane road. On either side were fields of relatively newly cooled lava. My sister explained that there was a flow there in 1790 (recent!) and the stuff that looked like crumbly red cereal was called a'a. My father cracked a joke, "Is that because people fall down a hole and they go, 'Aaaaaaaaa!'?" My sister replied, "Yeah, haven't heard that one." My mother has an excellent picture of my sister and I in her rearview mirror taking pictures of the flow. I wish I had it.

I wish I could remember what we did the next day, but my pictures prompt me to move on to Lahaina (la-HIGH-nuh). Lahaina is an old shipping and whaling town, and looks very much like the seaports we visited in the Caribbean. On one end of the town, a banyan tree takes up an entire city block. It was only eight feet tall when it was planted (over 100 years ago). Banyan's grow by spreading out their branches horizontally and dropped down fine roots from those extended branches. Over the years, those roots thicken to the size of tree trunks themselves. People have climbed and carved on all parts of the tree until the limbs were worn and smooth. I reached up to touch a branch, felt the smoothness, and immediately thought of all the other germy hands that had been on it in the last 100 years. I whipped out my hand sanitizer.

Lahaina was one of my parent's favorite spots when they went to Maui three years ago. It's changed now, they said, and they think it's because of the cruise ships that stop there now. It used to be quiet, with a few shops lining the street and few tourists ambling around. Now there's a Bubba Gump's®, art galleries on every corner, hanging signs beckoning tourists in for cheap tchotckes, and music blaring out of other tourist trap restaurant. We did have one of our best meals at the Lahaina Fish House, but overall Lahaina was not my favorite place.

I'll stop here for tonight. Too much vacation recap causes brain mush. G'night.

Winter sucks, but Minneapolis is kind of cool. I said "kind of."

I did some vehicular exploring today. I had time to kill between the post office and dance class. The post office is one of my favorite buildings in Minneapolis. It's all polished brass and clean lines inside. I can never correctly identify the time period, but Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Iron Giant and the war murals in Toy Story are similar. Do you know what I mean?

After the post office I drove along the river. (It really should be The River, as the Mississippi is probably the most important river in the United States because of how many state economies it affects.) I was surprised to see that it was still flowing: it was 1º today. Above 0º. Fahrenheit. Apparently there are barges whose job it is to break up the ice and keep the water moving, and, subsequently, commerce. I didn't see any barges. I didn't see any bald eagles, either. I imagine that they're hiding somewhere, trying to stay warm. Going further into this tangent, the Mississippi River is one of the best places in the metro area to view bald eagles. You have to go into the boonies north of the cities if you want to attempt to see this endangered species.

After driving down the West River Parkway and ogling town homes I won't ever be able to afford while I live in Minnesota, I turned right and discovered a park I'd heard of but never seen: Boom Island. It seems to be a nice park, and there are elaborate picnic shelters with cooking pits that are open on two sides. I decided that as soon as the weather was nice I would have a picnic there; maybe for my half-birthday in June.

One of the best kept secrets in Minneapolis is further down south on the river: Nicollet Island. The island itself isn't a secret, but the fact that there about 20 homes tucked away on the northern end. They are the clapboard-gingerbread type homes that I see in my mind when I think "Main Street U.S.A." (We actually shot part of my comp card there. If you've been to my site recently you've seen the picture of me in the yellow dress looking back over my shoulder. That was taken on that particular street on Nicollet Island.) If you ever come to visit me, come in the summer and remind me to take you there.

I continued on past the mills on St. Anthony Main (after which the falls I referred to before are named) and turned back into downtown to head to dance class. I made myself several mental Post-It® notes to revisit those places in the spring when everything is green and growing, and also reminded myself that there are interesting places in this snow- and ice-blasted state.

-10 degrees this morning.

I don't know if anyone else in the country is paying attention, but it's cold here. Very, very cold. My shows on Friday were cancelled because when I woke up at 6:30 it was -14 degrees. Schools all over the state were cancelled, and I, for one, am mighty glad they were. I didn't relish the idea of venturing out and trying to start my car in somewhere around a 30 below windchill.

So I've been alternately busy and lazy, which I why I haven't written in here. I've been to a couple auditions, took care of some errands, checked out laser hair removal at a local spa-type place (it's surprisingly affordable!), and ate a lot of random food. I haven't been grocery shopping in three weeks, so my cupboards are a little bare. I have tuna, angel hair pasta, a package of black beans and rice, some spoiled milk, wilted spinach, bacon, eggs, and two cups of yogurt. Oh, and condiments. Oh, and frozen chicken. So there are some meals in there, but they get kind of monotonous, so I try to mix things up a little. For instance, today I ate popcorn and bacon for lunch. Mmmm.

I did work-study this morning at Zenon, and the first few weeks are always difficult because people are enrolling for the session. Oftentimes these people don't show up until five or ten minutes before class. Well, for one popular teacher, that is not a good strategy: there were already 17 people enrolled in her Saturday class, and the rest of the slots filled up in a matter of minutes, so those who weren't planning on enrolling and just wanted to drop in didn't get to take class. Oh well, I say. If you can't plan ahead, or you can't afford it, find another way to take class.

I'm now off to a wedding. I don't really want to go out in the cold again, but I don't really have much choice.

I Hope the Chicken Didn't Spoil

My power shorted out today. Well, I blew a fuse. Not such a big deal, really. IF you know how to fix them. I had a vague idea about fuses and shorts and such like, but I had no idea what had really happened when all of a sudden my apartment went quiet and the microwave stopped working. I walked out into the living room and my computer had shut down and all the clocks were dark. It was eerie. I thought the power had gone out in the whole building, as sometimes happens here during storms, but I peeked out my peephole and the lights in the hallway were still on. So it was just my place.

Of course, this all would have been simple and uncomplicated if I had a phone and could call my landlord. But of course my mobile phone has been acting weird and refusing to hold a charge, so I didn't have my phone. It was plugged in. To attempt to make it charge.

I had enough sense not to open the refrigerator or freezer and let the cold out. However, my only option at that moment was to head to my parents' house to try using one of their chargers and then call my landlord. I left my plate of pad thai in the microwave because I was afraid to open the fridge and took a shower. I grabbed my Sufjan Stevens CD and got in my car.

I spent the last four and a half hours at my mom and dad's trying to get my phone to charge, eating their food, and watching their television. I thought, "I should have brought my laundry." My landlord called and told me that all I had to do was go in the basement and flip the breaker. Sheesh. I finally got my phone's battery to hold a charge by putting it in my mother's phone, then I left. I came back, turned the power on, and went back upstairs. I checked the contents of the fridge after a few minutes, and the bacon looks a little peaked, but everything else seems to have held up. Might have to cook that bacon tomorrow, though. Oh darn. ;)

Don't you wish you were here?

*wince* "ow."

Still sore. Rikki worked us hard in the hip hop workshop today. I was still sore from Friday and then he made us do the routine over and over again. I was pouring sweat and my back was killing me but it was still super fun. The routine was more challenging than anything I'd done in a while; it moved really fast.

Speaking of back aches, I do believe it's time for me to get a massage. I'm not sure where I'm going to go or who I'm going to get to do it, but I need a serious one-hour massage. I'm going to be working hard this winter and spring and I'm sure my body would appreciate a little TLC.

I got my pictures back from Target! Hooray! Or should I say, Boo! Because this means I no longer have any reason to put off writing about my Hawaiian vacation. I'll tackle it tomorrow. I promise. Really. Stop looking behind my back; no, my fingers are not crossed, thankyouverymuch. You can trust me. Soon. I'll have it soon. Don't break my kneecaps! Please! I'll have your recap tomorrow! Tomorrow, man. I promise!

Sorry. I get carried away sometimes.

Anyway. Here's a tantalizing tidbit from my first night on Maui after flying in at Kahului. Aloha!

Attempting to Write Every Day

I didn't write yesterday. I didn't notice.

Yesterday was a busy day. I had a show in the morning which went well acting-wise and horribly tech-wise. I came home and took a shower, then spent the next four hours or so trying to figure out how my checking account records could be $25 more than my actual bank statement. I went all the way back to October and can't find a discrepancy. I have no idea how $25 could just vanish, but I have a feeling it wasn't always $25. Maybe it was $5 here, then another $5 there, and soon it added up to $25. Which sucks, but at least it's not $2500. Then I'd have a problem.

At 4:45 or so my friend Kimberly called and we chatted for a while, catching up and whatnot. When I hung up the phone I realized that it was 5:15 and that I was most definitely going to be late for my hip hop workshop. Oops. And I *was* late. 15 minutes late. Gah. I hate being late to dance because you miss warming up, and that's highly important; especially for old folks like me. ;)

After dance I walked down to the Jeune Lune Theatre to catch their production of The Miser with my friend Cori. Another friend, Eric, was in the cast, so I'm glad I got the opportunity to support him (at 2-for-1 ticket prices, too!). The design concepts were relevant to the piece, which I appreciated. The color palette was all whites, grays and pastels. Duct and masking tape held clothing together, Harpagon's family and servants were ragged but coping, and the most ingenious bit of all involved clear tarp, a tin bathtub, stilts, and water. I'll leave it at that.

After the show Cori and I ended up at the Uptown Diner for a bite and lots of conversation. I thank God for her every day because she is one of (if not the) best friends I have, and she proves it time and again. We talked until 1:30, and then I made her listen to some of Liam Lynch's songs in my warm car (hers doesn't have heat). She finally said "I have to go" and we parted ways at almost 2:00am. Hooray for good company and conversation.

Today, I slept until I couldn't sleep anymore or risk being late, then rushed around to get ready to go to the shoot for TPT's Suze Orman special. The show was called "Young, Fabulous & Broke" and was targeted at people like me who are having trouble saving and can't really use the financial advice that worked for our parents. The paid talent were assigned to hang out on the side platforms and be young, fabulous and broke people enraptured by her message. There was no need to act because she was very engaging and I learned quite a few things about finances that I didn't know before. Some it was common sense, but it's always good to hear it reiterated. I wanted to ask her about being an independent contractor and how that affects one's ability to save and such, but I didn't get chosen to ask a question and they ran out of time. Nevertheless it was fun to get paid and learn at the same time.

And now it's 6:30 and I'm ready for bed. But I don't dare because I'll wake up at midnight and not be able to go back to sleep.

Here's my desktop wallpaper. Enjoy.

I Need to Stop Spending Money

Had a shoot for Twin Cities Public Television today - a special featuring Suze Orman. I think it airs the 22nd of Januaray here in Minnesota; sometime in March for the rest of the country. There was drama around this job. I can't elaborate, but none of it was my fault.

It was shot in a mall I spent a lot of time in as a kid: Maplewood Mall. I don't know how some kids spend hours and hours just walking around the mall and hanging out. I was going stir crazy after just two hours of that place. I did want to shop at Vickie's Semi-Annual Sale, though. During some down time on the shoot, I went in there and pawed through the bins. I had pulled some things out and put them in my bag. I asked the "associate" if she could hold them for me, but they can't do that during sales. So I sneakily dropped the bag and kicked it under a table after she had left me and was back at the counter. I had inteded to go back when we were done and pick those things up, but we left to shoot somewhere else and I didn't have the chance. Whoops. Hope they find that stuff before the sale's over. :D

Last but certainly not least, I got my check for the Target HD-tv in-store: :))))) (I also, inadvertently, got to see a rough-cut of it. It's fun.)

I"m full of pizza (free pizza!) now and need to go to bed. I have a show in the morning. Oh, crap. I just remembered that I haven't fixed my microphone yet. *sigh*

Good night, folks.

"One Take" Morris?

I recorded my voice demo today. I'm very excited that I finally got around to doing it and that it's not going to cost me an arm and a leg. I almost didn't get to record today, though.

At my show this morning my microphone decided not to work, so I had to project my voice to the farthest corner of the gym, and my voice was not having it. By the end of the show I was hoarse and tired. I wanted to throw my mike on the ground and stomp on it for giving out on me, but it was my fault that I hadn't looked at it and tried to find a solution before today's show. In the end, after a few hours of vocal rest and some hot tea, my voice was back and ready to roll.

I arrived at the studio (located in the basement of the engineer's house, but it really wasn't creepy at all) at 1:40 or so after calling my coach after realizing I had the wrong address. His dog was hiding under the table becasue I was "new people" and I was in her house, but I saw her on the way out. It was the first studio I'd been in that was actually cold instead of blazing hot.

I don't know how many spots I recorded (there were several), but I think I was only at the mike for an hour. It was painless and fun, and I hope the demo yields a crapload of work so I don't ever have to get a "real" job again.

Preview

I got a new printer on New Year's Eve. It has a scanner and copier built in. I like it a lot. I took the scanner for a test drive. I scanned this bumper sticker. Pretty neat, huh?

See, malasadas are the most delicious bits of puffy, fluffy dough covered in granulated sugar that one can imagine. I only get to eat them when I visit my sister in Hawaii. They're worth the trip, though. ;)

Malasadas in Honolulu come from a bakery called Leonard's, which is as sparse as bakeries normally are. No one seems to care, though, because they come for the food, not for the ambiance. I don't have a picture of Leonard's. I think my camera had finally given up at this point and stopped functioning.

Anyway. Hopefully I'll get to Honolulu again soon to eat some more malasadas. And visit my sister, of course.

New Year's Ramble

My sister always chides me when I haven't updated my blog in a few days. I have nothing job-related to say, nevertheless, here I am. I can't disappoint the fans, man.

I used to marvel at the change every time a new year rolled around. I would have to stop myself, laugh, shake my head and erase every time I wrote the wrong year when dating my homework. I would sit back, those first few fresh new days and think, "Wow, this year never seemed like it would really come. 2000! Aren't we supposed to be driving flying cars and living on Mars by now?"

This year, for some reason, 2005 doesn't seem as awe-inspiring as the new years used to feel. I don't feel like something wonderful washed over me at the stroke of midnight on January 1st. 2005 simply slipped in quietly and sat down, making itself comfortable.

However, even though it came in quietly, I still feel that this is going to be a good year for everyone I know. I feel the weight of the great things that could happen sitting comfortably on my shoulders. I think about everything that we could accomplish and I smile. I haven't made any resolutions to be broken in one week's time. I have however, let myself live one day at a time. I have prayed for my friends and families desires to manifest this year. I have accepted that I've been graced with another year, and that I should make it better than the last. 2004 wasn't half bad, but 2005 will be even better. I can feel it.

This was supposed to be an elegant essay on the new year, but it doesn't feel so elegant now that I've typed it out. But I suppose it's better than not writing anything at all. Happy New Year to you, and I hope your 2005 is grand.