On the other hand, I can’t wait to see Thor, which it turns out is directed by Kenneth Branagh, thus making it eminently more higher on the bad-assery meter, since from him came also the best version of Hamlet in the history of ever — seriously, Kenneth Branagh is gonna pass through the pearly gates, & Bill Shakespeare will just walk up & go, “Yes! Dude, yes so totally what I was thinking the whole time.”

Plus, the fact that they have shirtless shots of Chris Hemsworth means that even if the plot is somehow complete ass, the visuals should be lurverly.

Thank you, Marvel Comics. Thank you.

C’mon baby, momma wants a new place to live!
I’m supposed to go & see two apartments Friday afternoon — one that’s the right size, & within radius of Beach!Boathouse, but further away from Zoey’s boyfriend than I’d like, and another that’s w/in walking distance of Zoey’s boyfriend, but sounds a bit smaller than the other & costs $50/mo more.

I know that since there’s been a 10 year period where I haven’t had to apartment hunt, I shouldn’t complain, but I’d really like to just have a new place & be able to just go. At this point, I think my apartment & I are just tired of one another, & we both need the change.

Plus honestly there’s just too much… stuff here in LA, & I’m happier training down at Beach!Boathouse. As odd as it might sound, it just feel like the air is lighter down there, and my body is honestly happier. I did a 3x4k under HR threshold on the erg on Monday night after spending the weekend down in LB monster-corralling at Mia’s Menagerie, & I literally had a 7-second drop in my 500m split between two weeks ago when I’d done it after being in LA all weekend, vs what I was like on Monday after having spent the weekend in LB. I realize that most of you aren’t rowers, so just trust me when I say that a seven second drop in split on a heart rate piece in two weeks really isn’t something you get just from training — that’s a pretty good stress indicator as well. I’m just sayin’.

Wednesday night I went down & erg’d my pieces, and dare I say it was kinda great? I’ve been working within my heart rate ranges for the last… ever, and we’ve found those to be a bit spotty for me due to my unique ticker. CoachIan raising the rates has actually helped a lot, but I’m still not really pulling, which I think I part of why when I row, I’m not really pulling. So I took yesterday’s workout & just did it at a rate that was comfortable for me, which ended up being about a 2:05 at a 22 without me going crazy-like — just settling into something that that I could comfortably pull for a long period of time. It was kinda rockin’ — I’d made the change in technique so I feel my butt again, but last night was the first time in a LONG time that hey! I have inner thighs too! Lookit that!

The only bad thing was that for my last 4k, all I could smell was… bread. Fresh. Baked. Bread. I’ve been trying to avoid bread for a while now, so at first I chalked it up to me just wanting to be done with the last piece, but I still smelled it after stretching, & I literally did a Toucan Sam & followed my nose to discover they were having a meeting for the juniors’ team in the bays & I was smelling the food the coaches had brought for dinner, at which point I high-tailed it to the locker room since I’d accidentally walked in on a meeting of the board for the high school rowers. oopsie.

On the one hand, this is good, because it means I’m not blatantly hallucinating food.

On the other, it’s a reminder that I really need to work on bringing more food with me for after my workouts, because omfg so ravenous afterwards & TheWonderfulBreadSmell didn’t help at ALL.

Oh, bread. You’re like a bad booty call — such a good idea in the moment, so totally regretted the next morning.

Today’s sing-along song for a Friday:
Frou Frou’s It’s Good to Be In Love

This weekend? San Diego to test drive some boats. Originally, I’d planned to only be down until Saturday night, then I realized I’d scheduled to try two boats, & only left time for one workout, so I’ll be staying at least through part of Sunday morning, ’cause hey – art degree, tryin’ to do Teh Mathz. oopsie².

Music: It’s good to be in love – Frou Frou (Details)

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I know, right? How can you resist that face?  Dao is so totally the devil.

As anyone that’s met my Weimermonster can attest, I am not normally a little dog person — I’m not against them, there’s just a part of me afraid that I’ll step on them by accident, ya know?  I mean for gods’ sake, I lose my friends that are lightweight rowers in the store because they’re too short — what if I roll over on it in my sleep? Zoey’s a good 55 lbs, man – much like a toddler, she can fend for herself & just kick me back. Little dogs can’t do that, what with the little & all.

Anyway, since he’d been in there for almost a month & his number would have been up on Friday, I agreed to go & spring Nesta from the clink, and we’d get someone to keep an eye on him over the weekend while I was in San Diego this weekend until the adoption event that DeMoriel is volunteering at on Sunday.

Now, there are certain places I just am not allowed to go — and animal shelters are on that list. Why? Because I just can’t handle it. I stand there and first, I get pissed off at every single person who hasn’t taken care of their animals so that the poor things ended up there. I really just don’t do well with the idea of neglected animals — I fully realize this is a leftover personal issue from Independent Middle Child Syndrome, but ya know what? Still there.

So there I am, all angry, and then they let me walk back into the kennels, which then I just want to cry, because every dog in the place comes running up to the door of their cage like, “pick me! pick me!” and I want to take them all home so they don’t have to stay there any more.

The poor little guy that I went in to get didn’t even bother with that — he’d been there so long that he just stayed curled in a little ball in the back of the pen while his two cellmates came running up. I pointed to the back and said to the guy, “I want that one.” The guy was like, “Do you want to play with any of the others?”  And I was already about this><close to bursting into tears, ’cause there was a big red lab, and the boxer, and no! no no! Just the one! I need to leave now!

He started to take us out to the Getting to Know You Play Area thing, & I had to clarify that no, I’m just gonna take him, we’re good thanks.  Dao asked me on the phone that night if they wanted references or anything for me to take him home, and was shocked to learn that they just processed the paperwork no questions asked.  (Aw, Vermont kids are so cute!)  I finally just said to her, “Look, I know this sounds bad, but the truth is that I’m a nice-looking white girl with English as a first language that just voluntarily walked into a shelter in South LA, took the scrawny little dog that was gonna get gassed in two days, and my debit card payment processed first try.  As far as they’re concerned, I could have the dog. Hell, I could take five, they’d be cool with that.”

Poor little guy – he was so scared. They took him off for his state-mandated neutering, & I’ll leave to pick him up in about an hour or so then take him home so that he can chill out at my place & recover from captivity.

It seems that Nesta has couple of different meanings. However, as the girl who found out her senior year of high school that in French my last name is slang for “Huh?”, I’m partial to the fact that in Portuguese Nesta means “thing”. So at this moment, I am technically the legal owner of a very little thing.

After months (okay years for some of you) of being told that I needed to take a few days off, I was actually going to finally do that this weekend and take a whole four days out of LA down in San Diego with no work or rowing events scheduled. Because of that, my next door neighbor H, who has a small dog about Nesta’s size had said that he could stay with them while I was gone, & she’d make arrangements with DeMoriel to get him to the adoption event Sunday.

I saw H this morning & mentioned that hey, I’m picking him up from being neutered today, etc & so forth, and suddenly she got all… squiggy about the whole thing. This morning it was fine. Then it was, “Oh, I might not be home Saturday night, can DeMoriel pick him up early?” and each time she would hit “Reply” to me instead of “Reply All” to include DeMoriel, which is LA Language for, “I’m trying to get out of this but I don’t want other people to know that.”

Then it finally went to “Well, I don’t know, what if something happens, or he doesn’t get along with my dog…”
(note: Neither dog is over 10lbs, and I told her she could use the baby gate that I have in my house. If it can keep my dog in the apartment, I’m betting it can handle separating the two of them if Nesta rustles enough out of his post-op oogies to attempt to rumble. So basically I look at that excuse & think, “Really? Really seriously that’s your excuse?”)

Plus she was using chatspeak. When I got the sentence, I bet u havnt even thought about that…. the Old School Bronzer in me was d-u-n done. Don’t chatspeak me via email. Especially to question if I know about the proper precautions to take care of an animal. That’s it. Thank you for your time, however the position has been filled. You can go now.

I started to make arrangements to board him, & then just decided, ya know, it’s fine. I’m going to just take him with me to SD for Fri & Sat, since those are the only two days I have anything set up to do that I can’t shift off — I’m coaching the high school novvies for Hoff so she can go to NY this weekend, so I’ll leave the lil’ un with her roomies for the time that I’m at the boathouse. Normally I’d take him with me, but I don’t think it’s good for his stitches to be around all that sand right now.

But yah – it’s all I can do not to go back to this girl & say, “You know people like you are the reason this poor animal is in this situation, right?” Dude, it’s a dog. They’re living creatures. What the fuck, man? You backed out just because it might be a little bit hard? Because it won’t automatically be a cute addition to your overall visual for the weekend? Fuckin’ really?

One of the women at Beach!Boathouse, was talking about how people do this when they have kids — Helen called it Pet Monkey Syndrome, and it’s so true. “You want something that looks cute & won’t talk back? Get a pet monkey. Don’t have a kid.”

Unfortunately in LA, the pet monkeys tend to be dogs & cats, and that just annoys the living fuck out of me.

My dog is a little person. She has a very big soul, and her first owners eff’d her up quite a bit, as anyone who knew her when I first brought her home can tell you. When I first got her, she had separation issues for the first couple months, she was afraid of everything, and to this day Zoey runs like hell from a broom or hose and tends to be afraid of certain guys, which says a lot about the family I got her from.  Basically, a dog is at best like a mute three year old kid – and you don’t f*ck with little kids.

So Zoey will go have a canine-cation with her boyfriend Argo as planned, and Nesta will come hang out with me this weekend until we take him to see if we can find a nice family to spoil him properly. As for me, well, I should have remembered a tenet of living in Los Angeles: Don’t rely on the tiny blond wanna-be actress. Especially when the conversation involves her confessing that she was kinda dating your landlord when he “helped her out” by giving her a lower rent, but now she doesn’t know if she actually wants to date him for real. Because yes, you’re That G$rl. But hey, we can do another post regarding my dim view of women who expect that men will solve all of their fiscal problems for them another day, ’cause this is one issue where I agree with Beyoncé – Independent Woman. Get a job, girl. Take care of yourself and you can be in a relationship because you want to be in that relationship, not just because you need a man to pay for you.

:blink:blink:

Oh, I’m sorry – where were we, and how did I get all the way up here on this soapbox? Hold on, give me half a second to climb back down…

Ah, right. Yes. Little dog to be picked up in about… an hour, shortened trip to San Diego & I’ll try for the original plan possibly at the end of Feb. Meanwhile this weekend? Well this weekend I may actually follow through on finishing up my tax prep, and fixing the office & art corner. If I’m going to be home, I might as well get things done so that I can try again at the end of the month with not even a smidge of guilt, dangit!

In the meantime, I shall repress the urge to smack others for being stupid. What? I can totally do it — shut it, I can!

Also, we’re gonna stop at Target or PetSmart on the way home — for the first time in my life, I have an animal that can be carried into the store, and hey – he needs a collar & a leash, doncha know. Something cute, but still dignified. No pink, no rhinestones, none of that. Poor little man just lost his literal balls, no need to take the metaphorical ones as well.

Wanna help the animals?
The Gentle Barn needs you to like them on Facebook. If they can get 100k likes by March 1st, they have a donor willing to give them $1 for every like — that’s $100,000, which would help a lot of animals for quite some time. And it costs you nothing.

So I’d like to gently suggest you should
CLICK HERE & LIKE SOME ANIMALS, DAMMIT.
But hey – it’s just a suggestion. No pressure.

Want a baby of your very own?
Urgent Shelter Animals of Los Angeles — shelter animals at risk of being put down within a week of posting.

Strange Angels Animal Rescue — if you can’t take one in, sponsor so someone else can foster!

Music: Silver Lining – Rilo Kiley

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I had a long chat with Sylvie last week, & amongst other things, I talked to her about Not!Grad School. Based on my conversations & the feedback I’ve gotten from them, I’m pretty sure that sometime around August 1st, I’ll get notification that I can start on October 9th with this year’s class.

The question then being – do I really want to?

Here’s the thing – it’s all day, from 9am – 4pm (3:30 if I make arrangements with the professors to make up the studio time so I can get to the boathouse if I end up coaching juniors this fall) Now, being able to sit & spend three years doing the course of art that I wanted to do sounds dandy, but I have some very harsh realities to deal with:

1. I have to pay the tuition myself because the school isn’t accredited yet, so there’s no federal funding
2. I have to fund the rest of my life at the same time that I’m in school for the same amount of time as a full time job.
3. Eventually, I really do need to get SOME sleep. (No, I actually do mean that)

I was explaining this to Sylvie, and she suddenly stopped said, “God, why are you Americans are so dumb?!”
(Note: Sylvie is French. Occasionally, she’s not just French, she’s very French.)

To which I ventured, “um…I don’t know?”

We then proceeded to have a conversation where she explained to my horribly pedestrian Yankee way of thinking that not everything is in the United States, and perhaps instead of spending three years running myself into the ground for a degree from a school no one’s ever heard of where I won’t enjoy a bit of of because I’ll always be chasing to fill the economic hole of my tuition & life, perhaps it might be better to look at a more concentrated program in Europe for next summer so that I can actually, you know – pay attention to what I’m doing while learning, as well as actually get some time away from my life for a while – kind of a reset button.

:insert heavens opening & beam of light shining down as chorus of angels hit perfect note:

The funny thing about this is that just the week before, my sister & I had been having a conversation about the fact that, other than her honeymoon, we pretty much have never been on vacation. We just didn’t do it as kids – other than family committments, or parent-mandated “educational trips” when we were kids (which were all within driving distance & ruled more by my mother’s neurosis than anything else, so yeah, those were wicked fun) — we just… didn’t. When we were kids, we couldn’t afford it, & when we were old enough, we were sent off to get jobs, after which we all had to pay for our own school, and I guess since we never were in the habit of doing it from when we were kids, neither of us have ever incorporated it into our lives as adults.

So the idea of taking the next year and setting things up so that I can save up, put my affairs in order, and head off for a month or three to kind of explore the world & do something just for me & for the sake of having the experience of it instead of just continuing to try to pay the rent – I can’t tell you how lovely that is to me. It’s going to mean a LOT of prep, and a real push on my part to work & get things in order financially – thankfully, my car will be paid off in June of ’11 (if I can’t manage to get ahead & take care of it a little before) so my expenses will actually go down right before I leave. Since this is LA, there’s almost always someone looking for a short-term sublets and due to the fact that I presently have the best neighbors ever, I know I’ll have people to look in on the place & make sure that nothing gets blown up. (Yay 1049 Improv Troupe!)

In the meantime, I’ll wait to see whether or not I get into Not!Grad School, & then work with them to take at least two classes over the course of the year – probably basic anatomy & also Quick post studios since those would be the basis of any figure drawing study that I would take. I’d also have to finally get my arse in gear & start going to Dr. Sketchy’s when my work schedule allows for it so that I can get lots of practice for pretty cheap.

In order to actually make the cash to be able to do all this, I’m going to have to suck it up & put at least one day aside just for tutorials to bring myself up to date on more backend programming and SEO. More & more clients seem to be asking for things that involve Drupal development, WordPress dev, & SEO work, so it’s time that I hammered down on the things that will actually bring in cash, most likely with a side of HTML5, CSS3, & javascript refresher course. Lynda.com, we’ll be spending a lot of time together.

Of course, I can’t do this alone, so there’s only one thing to do:

Gathering the troops to invade Europe – it’s what Americans do!
Art aside, there’s another awesome aspect to going to Italy or France for the summer – the rowing.

That in mind, I sent Kate a text that just said, “Wanna row in Europe next summer?”

Yeah.. she’s pretty much down. So once we get things in line & I know where I’m going, we’ll take a look at where there is to row around there and have at it, baby — the Euros have way more options than we do in SoCal, and even if I’m just in Europe on a schedule where I can GO to Henley… well honey, it’s Henley the year before the Olympics are in London. That situation’s going to be awesome. Plus since I know a Bronzer or two in merry ol’ Land o’ Eng, we may be able to swing free accomodations for that portion of the adventure, which would be right up there like the guys say during soccer games on Univision – Scoooooooore!

I’ve also tapped Sachiel & Closet B to see if they want to come play, even if only for a week or two – after all, if you’re going to have to get a place to crash for two people in Italy or France, you might as well use it as a halfway house for all your friends, right? Right. Totally.

In the meantime, the upshot of this is that my sorry arse needs to make with the hustle. As Sachiel pointed out to me, “Billable hours equals Europe!”

Music: Dawn – Pride & Prejudice

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