Despite the unpleasantness of the aforementioned youtube comment about my dancing, I think I am going to start up again. Ballet, I mean. UBallet's winter show is a student choreographed Peter Pan and a condensed Swan Lake. I have been pretty vocal about my thinking it's a flat out stupid idea to do a condensed Swan Lake, but I won't get into that now. The fact is the decision is made, and it wasn't mine to make so whatever. If it is a total disaster, as it very well may be, well so what? UB is, as I have been reminded, about having fun, and it's not about much else. So, in the spirit of having fun, I think I'm going to join the show.

It will be a weird experience, I think, because at this point there's no way I can audition on pointe, which means no good roles, really. Maybe there are some for flat shoes, I don't know. I don't really know how they're doing things. Just hope they don't try a flat swan corps. Yikes.

So I need to get semi back in shape before auditions, which could be a serious problem, since I believe Ida Noyes is shutting down for the interim period very shortly. Possibly this week, even. I wonder if anyone on the current EC knows about that....hmm.

Or maybe I will pull the kind of audition I pulled back in fall 2006, which involved jumping into an audition (pointe shoes included) three years to the day after quitting ballet. I've only been completely out of a leotard and tights for about six months this time around ("only" hahaha) so we'll see where that gets me.

FUN!

Labels: ballet, uballet

Wait a minute, guys. I totally like posting my drawings on my blog. And I'm not really risking UBallet's reputation by doing so, so screw it. Want to see my skeleton? Sure you do!

Labels: art, drawing

So I had my art class tonight. My teacher brought in a skeleton (like one of those life-size plastic guys you'd find in an anatomy class) and we gave it our best shot. Just straight up drawing this time, no collage business. It was incredibly challenging, and I'm sure mine has basic anatomical errors like too many ribs or something, but I was happy with the my end product. It was a lot better than I expected it would be going in to the whole thing. By this point I hope it's clear that I do not consider myself a great artist, but I don't see why I shouldn't feel proud of myself for trying something difficult and doing better than I would usually give myself credit for. I think that's totally reasonable.

But anyway.

The whole (five minute) bus ride home I was thinking about how cool I was, and when I got home I found a note from Nick's friend on the table saying some very kind things about two paintings (the hummingbirds) I had been working on earlier and left out to dry. Well then I was just seriously feeling like hot stuff.

Then I checked my email.

All I found was a notification of a comment posted to a UBallet youtube video from more than two years ago. Remember how I was an Odalisque in Le Corsaire? Yeah, probably not. I remember though. It was my first soloist role and I was sure I didn't deserve it. But everyone told me I did I good job, because, you know, that's what people say. I knew I was never very good at it, but I did my best so it was kind of a whatever situation.

But comments like "yeah have they seen themselves in the mirror before?? that was awful i must say" (which I investigated and found to be in response to "hahahha omg thats the funniest thing ive ever seen..... terrible!" or maybe "I am sorry, but shouldn't call this a university...") kind of burst by bubble a bit.

So now, of course, my entire concept of feeling proud of myself has been thrown off. If everything I do is in reality mediocre (or just outright poor quality), should I really be proud of it just because it's the best I can do or because it was slightly better than expected?

Also, in a less feeling sorry for myself way and more in a dealing with practical business way, what do I do about this youtube issue? I could ignore it and be all you-can-say-whatever-you-want-since-it's-the-internet-and-I-don't-care despite the obvious lack of truth in that second half of that, or I could take the video down and both be relieved of future embarrassment and at the same time stop crippling UB's reputation. Not that millions of people are watching this clip, but it comes up when you Google "University Ballet," and I guess that's bad.

Oh, and while this post is far too long at this point I do want to mention something important. Odalisques was a dance for three girls, and I am the only craptastic one in the bunch. So aside from being hurt by mean things said (just get over it already, damn), I'm pretty pissed, because Robyn and Megan don't deserve the harsh critiques at all. They were lovely.

Ok that's all.

Labels: art, drawing, uballet, whiny

Is 7:30 too early for bedtime?

Labels: sleep

Ok guys, I'm posting another "drawing". I've been working on this one for two weeks of class, and I really like how it turned out. It's not really a drawing. It's actually what my teacher called a "drawing collage." We covered entire 18"x24" sheets of drawing paper with charcoal to get five sheets of all different tones of gray, then very literally cut and pasted to make a still life. There was some seriously weird perspective on the guitars, and a teapot with a deliberate hole in it, and it was just very difficult overall, but like I said, I'm a fan of the end result, and I think it merits a post.

Labels: art

I've been researching things a Mac can do that a PC can't (to make myself feel a little more confident in the big investment) and have stumbled across some seriously weird, but kind of cool, things that Macs are capable of. This is a list of my favorite quirky features.

1. It talks. Open Terminal (Terminal is awesome now that I've gotten used to it at work) and just type "say whatever." No special programs to run, just Terminal. Pretty cool. Apparently this trick was used by the guy who trained me at work when he hacked into a coworker's computer and made it start talking to her through her headphones. 
2. Negative image. Press ctrl+alt+cmd+8. Inverted colors. Crazy! Also used by Max when he hacked into Lauren's computer.
3. Slow motion minimizing. If you hold shift while you clicking the yellow button (or when you open Stacks from the dock) it goes in slow motion.
4. Play games in Terminal. Again with Terminal being awesome. You can play Tetris, Snake, and probably more by typing "emacs" then hitting return, hitting escape, typing "x"and finally typing "tetris" or "snake." Graphics are what you would expect from a game running in that kind of program, of course, but it's still cool.
5. Do math in Spotlight. Type 345+234 in Spotlight and it tells you that it = 579.
6. Have a slideshow desktop. In desktop/screen saver settings, click "change picture" however often and the desktop image will rotate. I wonder if it's possible to mess with this and essentially make it like a .gif file. Hmm.
7. Spaces. Dude, Spaces. That's all there really is to say.

Labels: amusing, computers, Macs

I finally finally finally did it. I went downtown and I bought myself a shiny new 13" MacBook Pro. My trusty (or not so trusty) HP tx2000 Tablet PC gave out on Friday afternoon. The screen had been flickering dim for months now, and when I came home on Friday, it had quit completely. The screen I mean, the actual processor was still doing its thing. I've gotten it to turn on twice since then (briefly, and with much effort) so I retrieved most of my files. Still need to get it to stay on long enough to get all my nattily files off of there so I don't have to actually download them from my site, I mean that would just be weird.

So after a weekend of worrying about whether to get it fixed. Nope, $300-$500 just for the new screen, not including labor or the shipping, and it was having serious overheating issues so it would probably give out in a few months without another couple hundred thrown in.

Then it became a Mac vs. PC issue. Mac. I've wanted one since I was old enough to potentially have my own computer as a super luxury item (think sixth or seventh grade, when I got it in my head that it would be cool to know how to do html) and I've always had to pass on them when it comes down to decision time because they were too expensive or they didn't have tablet functionality. Well I can't remember the last time I actually wrote on my screen (or drew or whatever) so as cool as that was, it's not worth it. Macs, more expensive, maybe just appealing cosmetically or because of their trendiness, but whatever. I wanted one.

Then it came down to MacBook or MacBook Pro. I actually prefer the smaller screen (though I wanted something a bit bigger than my 11" tablet). I did want to upgrade the MacBook to 4 gigs, and as it turns out, that's essentially the cost of a Pro. So, um...backlit keyboard? Yes!

I admit right now I'm mostly just enjoying all the ridiculous Mac specific features (yes I know PCs make backlit keyboards, but shh, this one is clicky) like Spaces and...ok mostly Spaces. But I'm pretty sure I'm not going to regret my decision.

And, happy news, I've been turning my HP on and off for the last hour (don't ask why I'm up this early) trying to get it on to recover those files, and -- hope this doesn't jinx it -- it looks like it's up and running.

Anyone know any badass things I can do or programs I can run on a Mac that I've never been able to do with a PC? I'd love to be able to justify this to myself further.

Labels: computers, decisions, happy, Macs

So I found out today that a friend from work has the coolest mom ever. Like ever. I mean, if you were ever a little girl you would totally agree.

That's right, I actually know the daughter of Valerie Tripp, the author of all the important American Girl books (Felicity and Molly) along with many other American Girl books I wasn't quite as obsessed with, including Kit, Josephina, and Samantha. Damn! How cool is that? I absolutely must meet this woman and inform her of her dramatic impact on my childhood.

Now I feel bad because I've just been torturing this poor girl with questions about her mother, and I think she's ready to strangle me, but it makes me so happy. I was all cool like "my mom's a writer too" but sorry Mom, you didn't write any American Girl books. You just can't live up to her.

Labels: awesome, books

But I've been getting a hell of a lot of comment spam on some of my older (and actually even newer) posts and I'm sick of it. Now you  have to do a little captcha thing when you comment. I know it's annoying, but people don't comment very often anyway, so whatever. No more robots or whatever I guess.

Labels: blogger

Today at work, for the first time, I am being productive. I mean, I have my productive days from time to time, but it's always been training up until now. Today I am actually contributing to the Language Development Project.

How? By adding these words to our lexicon: anus, aortic, gizzard, sac, secrete, and sperm.

Ahhh. Doesn't that feel good?

Ok really what I'm doing is coding some syntax for a transcript of a four year old and his mother talking about earthworms. The thing is, that this is the first transcript that I'm doing on my own, so the first one that someone didn't already do before me. That means that when a new word pops up, I actually have to add it myself. And I guess when you talk about earthworms, those are the kind of words that come up.

Still, in all honestly, it's pretty exciting to be taking off the training wheels. Finally I don't have to feel like they're wasting money by keeping me around. Well, except for that time they double paid me. Still trying to work that out.

Labels: ldp