Weekend Recap

Just to keep this from being an all dance all the time blog, here's a quick run down of my weekend.

I was feeling itchy and claustrophobic in my apartment on Friday so at the advice of the Scotsman I headed over to his place, making a pit stop at Trader Joe's and the liquor store along the way. Since I got to his house kind of late, we spent Friday night noshing on chips and queso and watching cheesy action flicks.

Saturday we spent the day checking out various tattoo places in The Scotsman's area. The Scotsman has a hankering for two new tattoos (he currently has one of a dragon on his left calf); one of the Celtic Tree of Life [similar to this image, only without the outside border], the other of another dragon, with more detail. The Celtic Tree of Life he'd like to get on his right shoulder and the dragon on his inner left forearm. So we went to about three different places, checking out the portfolios of different artists and getting price quotes. In the end, he decided to go back to the place he got his first tattoo, and so today at 4:00, he's getting the Tree of Life done on his shoulder. I am bummed that I can't be with him, but he's wanted this Celtic Tree of Life tattoo for close to 15 years, so he's antsy for it.

After our tattoo excursions, we headed to Temple of Gaia (the Scotsman's coven) for a full moon ritual. The ritual was supposed to be closed and I was content to just stay at the Scotsman's house and wait for him to come back, but I think he felt bad about leaving me for 4+ hours. So he asked his High Priestess if she minded me coming, and since they were only doing the ritual and no lessons and only expecting one other coven member to attend, she said it was fine.

Sunday we headed to New Hope and spent the entire glorious day in the sunshine shopping. Remarkably, I had never been to New Hope before. We had a great time, and I spent my money a little too easily, but managed to buy things I really needed. I finally found a chalice for my altar and got a second emergency back-up chalice (for travel mostly, since my main chalice is ceramic and easily breakable). The chalice was the main thing I've been missing and despite all my searching had been unable to find one that "felt" right to me.

After coming back from New Hope, we spent Sunday evening in the Scotsman's back yard, just hanging out and talking. He lit a fire in his fire pit, lit all his tiki torches and we sat in the garden with drinks and a few clove cigarettes. It was a lovely night, not too hot, with lots of stars in the sky.

Monday morning The Scotsman's Tae Kwon Do club was marching in a local parade, so I went along and walked the parade with them, handing out fliers. It was hot out there, and every time the parade stopped, the students would do their forms and demonstrate self-defense moves. The Scotsman was leading them (he is quite handsome doing Tae Kwon Do, I must say) and sweat was just pouring off of them all. The parade went for over 2 hours and we were beat by the time it was done. We spent afternoon in the air conditioning, napping on the couch and watching episodes of True Blood. We had a cook out that evening with yummy summer foods.

Hope you all had a lovely Memorial Day!

Softly Softly catchy monkey

Oh hell.

It's nearly April, and I already feel so much slipping away from me. Back in January, I vowed to take a photography class and have photo essays/submissions ready for May and...I have done none of that.

I've been stuck in a photography rut for a long, long time. Not just the "I don't want to touch my camera" burnout, but also a technique rut. In which I do the same things over and over again. My camera is perpetually in automatic mode, I use my 55mm lens constantly, and I never use my flash. It's not a "style," it's a habit, and a bad one. I recently went through the photos I took for The Scotsman during his black belt test and the photos I took for my brother of Gagarin Way and was totally disappointed with how they all came out.





Above: Two examples of my incompetence and amateur habits coming back to haunt me.

*Sigh*

I had plans to take a spring photography class with Chester County night school, which cost roughly $140, but that plan disintegrated when my finances took a nose dive.

I am feeling so frustrated with my life lately. Since we're on lockdown, I can openly bitch that a large portion of this is my job. I can't tell you how miserable I am right now. I don't mean to sound churlish, because ultimately this place has taught me a lot and I'm grateful to have a job at all in this economy, but seriously: I have had enough. I'm tired of the yo-yo-ing between having nothing to do to OHMYGODDOITALLRIGHTNOW, seriously sick of the crappy treatment my department gets, I am not getting paid nearly enough, and I am completely over the lack of competent communication here.

About two weeks ago one of my editors pulled me into a meeting because I was "on the [blog name] team." To which, I said, "Um." Because, literally, for the first ten minutes of this meeting I had no earthly idea what he was talking about. Seems my company decided to launch a new blog and I was supposed to work on the photos and images for it except no one decided to tell me. Or my manager, for that matter. The editor kept saying [blog name] over and over again and I kept giving him confused looks because to me he was just stringing three random nouns together. This would have been bad enough, but added onto that, they needed photos right away and after my initial scramble to find images I realized that I (1) had not been given the proper URL for the
site, and (2) I didn't have a login or password for the site to upload photos anyway.

Can you imagine how embarrassing all of that was for me? Can you imagine how frustrated my manager felt when I explained what was going on? When she complained about it, she was told that the reason we weren't notified about the new site or my duties, was because "so much changes with these sites and they don't want to bother [us] until things are settled." Which I called out to be the lamest fucking excuse ever. That blog has a team of, like, 6 people, all of whom were consistently kept in the loop while the site was developed. How fucking hard is it to add me or my manager to the email list? Or if not through the whole development of the site, than shooting an initial email of "Hey heads up we're launching a new blog. Site name and launch date TBD." It took me less than a minute to type that all out, and yet, they can't be buggered.

While I realize that communication problems occur at every office, shit like this has been happening nonstop for over 2 years now. It's gone from annoying to obnoxious to frustrating and now it feels blatantly disrespectful. The communication issue has been really getting my goat, because we voice our concerns and complain about it, we're assured that things will get better...and we continue to get the shaft. This is especially galling as my company publishes a couple publications dedicated to better communication with employees. Hello, irony! Nice to see you again.

Worst of all, I have the creepy feeling that I am on a sinking ship. I think we jumped on the internet bandwagon way too late (well, duh), and I am confident we are marketing a lot of our products incorrectly. The fact that we are still, in this day and age, selling our publications via telemarketing and there is no way to purchase subscriptions online, is beyond retarded.

So needless to say, I've been looking for a new job. I had thought with my master's degree I would sail into a new position, however, given the state of the economy, I might as well have gotten a master's degree in etching stone tablets. The publishing jobs are few and far between, and so many of them are beyond what I feel is my experience, either in terms of design or web requirements. If you know of a job working for either a book or magazine publisher* (university, textbook, medical, whatever) doing production, proofreading, design, layout and light web work, PLEASE, let me know about it. I am desperate. Also, anyone want to hold a résumé party? Mine needs work.

Despite all of these frustrations, I am trying to be patient. Both with myself and the universe at large. "Different frogs, different times," as Gareth Keenan would say.

I finally gave up and renegotiated my student loans, which has been the main source of my financial troubles. I had been dragging my feet about doing it because I was worried that doing so would add more interest/take me longer to pay them off, but finally I had no choice. I'm glad I did it, and it's already working out much better for me. Plus, although my payments will go up in 2 years, it will still take me the same amount of time and interest to pay them off. Woo!

Because I now have a tighter reign on finances, I can look into taking a photography class this summer perhaps. I can also start making serious moves towards Irish dancing again. Back in February at the Irish/Scottish festival, I located a school in Bridgeport that's willing to teach adults and my initial reaction was, "I'm there!" But, while the lessons are reasonably priced (for Irish dancing) I discovered that I need new soft shoes which can be anywhere from $40-$65 and need to be shipped from Ireland. So... dancing took a back seat too. Which is a shame because I've been faltering on gym attendance (exercise is so fucking boring, I hate it), and my fat is creeping back to dangerous levels. But now! I think I may be back in business!

As far as photography goes, I'm trying to give myself a break. Like, Rome wasn't built in a day. And occasionally, when I'm not paying attention and relaxing with my camera, I can accidentally take a really nice photo:



Above: Sarah Rose, giggling at our 12th Annual Chinese New Year Lunch

I've just scheduled two new photo jobs with the N Crowd in April, one of which is for their Anniversary show. $ for photos = A very good thing.

This weekend is a special Silver Stars field trip to see Silver RavenWolf at Celtic Myth and Moonlight, with stops at Bey's Rock Shop and possibly Zern's Farmer's market. I've never been to any of these places, and as I was considering the trip this morning I had the urge that I should bring my camera, for fun. FUN and my CAMERA. In the same thought process! I call this progress.

Spring is here, so I'm feeling optimistic about possibilities. I'm working on an über seekrit project with Stephanie and Melissa, which shall be grand fun. Inis Nua has a reading on Monday night, which I'm looking forward to. And then their spring show, Bedbound, opens next month and I suspect it shall be awesome. I'm getting a pedicure tonight to make my toes purty. I get to try on and purchase my bridesmaid dress for Renee's wedding so very soon. We're ditching crap-ass Verizon and getting Comcast and thus, cable again. Gary is back to doing art work so I plan to be inspired by him. Spring is a time of new beginnings, yes? Then let's get started.

*I am also open to suggestions for where to look for a job. I'm currently combing Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder, BookJobs.com, HigherEdJobs.com (for University Presses and alumni/PR publications), and GraduateJobs.com Any other suggestions on where I can look?

Freedom, Malaise, and Freedom from Malaise

First of all, fuck this fuckery of being on lockdown because I am sick of it and frankly it's boring and I'm not doing much writing anyway, so really what's the point. Furthermore, things have essentially calmed down (knock on wood), and putting this thing on private was just me being ridiculously cautious.

So, yes. Hello.

And now I begin the most random, semi-whiny entry in existence to catch you all up.

It's mid-January so thus I begin my regular bout with depression. Everything is technically fine, but I find myself feeling so down. Everything feels like it requires such a huge effort to accomplish. Just getting out of bed can feel like a trial, and I have to have a serious Come-to-Jesus with myself to get up some mornings. And again, let me assure that things are really and truly OK, it's just the way I get this time of year. Everything is so dark and cold, I should really just hibernate the fuck away.

A large part of this depression is frankly due to something I can't really talk about in a public forum. But it's a BIG part of my everyday life and I can't seem to escape it. I've been trying to escape it for the better part of a year, but I am not having any luck and it is hitting me now how much I need to fucking move on already, because it's truly making me miserable. (Is this vague enough for you? I think it's quite obvious what I'm talking about without saying directly.)

Money is troubling me because I seem to have none (uh, see above) although photo jobs are starting to swing my way again and help out with some temporary cash re-flow, but my car payments (sigh) and student loans (sweet Jesus) are taking their toll on me. I'm debating getting a second job, but fuck me, I do not want to have to do that. Plus, my sense of entitlement is telling me that I shouldn't have to do that. I'm eventually just going to have to get off of my high horse, because it's a recession bitches.

Speaking of photography, after Wedding Palooza '09 I hit a wall. I was sick to death of my camera and didn't want to even touch it for two months. So I didn't. Now that I'm being forced over the hump, due to jobs and such, I need to reconsider some things. Such as, while I think I take nice portraits and such, I'm not particularly challenging myself. My photography, ironically, is missing a point of view. I don't think my pictures say anything other than I hang about with some gorgeous people and have a knack for capturing them. I'm trying to decide what to do about this. A friend from Rosemont tipped me that Narrative Magazine is always looking for submissions, giving me a serious wink and a nudge. But a quick tour through my archives quickly pointed out that I am lacking in the artistic quality needed for such a submission. Additionally, Pictory Magazine has left me both breathless and intimated. When I say I want to be a good photographer, these are the types photos I am talking about. It is also why I think I am not a good photographer – I don't have photos like this, not even close. Rather than be bummed about it, I'm going to fix it. Resolutions, for all to see:

1. I will take a serious photography class of some sort this year.
   
2. I am going to buy my own external flash and learn how to use it properly and get over my aversion to flash.
   
3. By May I will have completed on photo essay suitable for submission and publication.

Along the same lines, I signed up for a FlavorsMe site, with the hopes of self-promotion and am thinking of getting a RedBubble profile so I can sell some of this bullshit in the form of prints and canvases.

Don't ask me about writing, because I've done fuck all in that area.

I've hit an all-time low as far as artistic slumps go. See vague paragraph 5, which has hindered my design aesthetic in a way I hadn't thought possible. Reason #4724 why I need to move on already.

My computer buggered out on me. I have no money to replace it, not that it was a particularly good computer in the first place. I desperately need to replace it, too. Anyone want to lend me $2400 for a new MacBook Pro? Because as I try to save money, it inevitably keeps getting funneled to bills.

Despite the all the payments, I am head over heels in love with my new car. In case you weren't following on Facebook, I opted for a 2010 Toyota Corolla in electric blue. I've named it the TARDIS, because it's a Toyota and Relative Dimension in Space, see. I love the TARDIS and how zippy and shiny it is and how corners like it's on rails. Also, after years of second-hand cars, I can't tell you how nice it is to drive something that I chose and that is mine mine mine and exactly what I wanted. It's not a boat! It's a fun color! It feels like my car. And it's under warranty and actually, like, reliable and whatnot. I can drive long distances and not worry about it. The steering wheel doesn't shake when I go above 65mph. Amazing.

Things with The Scotsman are great, more than great actually, and now that I'm sacked down in my January dumps I am quite thankful to have him, because he is one thing that is making me quite happy. The one struggle is the distance between us and our schedules – we don't see each other nearly as much as we would like. We're averaging every other weekend and trying to take turns in each other's state. We've crossed major hurdles – he met my family and a good portion of the 141 crew, I've (briefly) met his daughter – so I feel like things are on a good track. I know a lot of you are still anxious to meet him and scope him out, but be patient. I have a lot of friends and I'm trying not to overwhelm him too much. In the meantime, enjoy this picture of the two of us taken at the Witch Parade. Ignore that it's not the best picture of us ever. We seem to have glassy eyes (thank you, flash, and multiple beers we had imbibed) and ignore that I have flowers in my hair like the pagan dork I am:



I like him. I'm so glad that he likes me too.

I got my hair cut short. I loved it for 2 days and now I'm dying for it to grow out.

I gained so much weight over the holidays, I feel like a porker. I know things will be better once I get back in the habit of going to the gym, but file that under "things that are seemingly impossible for me to do right now."

Spiritually, I'm looking forward to a good year. Silver Stars have taken me under their wing and I'm working on ritual writing and taking a more active role in the IP. Additionally, my dreams have been out of control these past weeks.

Just writing out a lot of my complaints and unleashing a bit about my depression is helping me feel better. Additionally, it is sunny and 48° out today, unlike the disgusting cold rainy mess it was yesterday when I began this entry. I promise you I'm OK. Some fun entries are coming up (including Luke and Leslie's wedding post!), so stay tuned!

Favorite Shots, 2009

Oh, 2009. I sort of don't know how to feel about you. You were a weird year for me, what with graduating, getting my heart bruised, starting a new and more promising relationship, gaining new roomies, acting in a play in the Fringe, traveling to Chicago, and doing a metric fuckton of photography. Let's look back, shall we?

(and if you thought the last photo post was huge...hang onto your butts)



Publicity photo for Skin Deep, which ended up being published in the Philadelphia Inquirer!











Murder! with original Woodrow, Shawn.



Short hair! I'll let you guys in on a secret: I'm thinking about getting this done again today.

















Made in China photos, which are some of the best I've taken for my brother.



MASSSSTER!

































Murder!, the final fight call. I had such a great time with these people doing this silly show.



...Although it took a lot out of me.



And oh my god, these adorable people, WHO JUST GOT ENGAGED. (I can finally talk about this, as it's been an über seekrit until they informed all the family members. SO EXCITED! SO HAPPY!)













Leslie wins the award for "Funniest Moment in a Bathroom" of 2009. I know that sounds gross and weird, but trust me, it was hilarious.



Mark Doherty!









(Since I just posted photos from Mike and Haven's wedding yesterday, I'm going to refrain from re-posting them all again and just post this one. Suffice to say I have a lot of favorite shots in that set.)



My life, my love, my frog.



I will, however, give you a sneak peak at some of Luke and Leslie's wedding (which, sweet Jesus, I'm still editing these photos –- Leslie, thank you for being SO PATIENT with me). I have to say, this wedding was the one I was worried the most about shooting, but was one of the best to actually do, simply because it was so private, special, and so totally them.





(more of Luke and Leslie's photos will come in a separate post)



















Photos from Inis Nua's "Craic Down," a musical fundraiser. This was such a fun night, and some of my best musical performance photography yet.



Holga experiments...clearly I need more work here.





And finally, some photos from Amaryllis Theatre Company's production of Waiting for Godot.

Phew. It been quite the photogenic year. Next year I want to take a class in photography, learn how to use a fucking flash properly, and experiment more with light drawing. 2010, say cheese.