Documentaries: NerdFest 2009.

It's been a rough week. Work's tough as it's my first week taking over duties from the girl who got laid off, so I'm generally exhausted. Seriously, it's 9:40 right now and I'm in bed on a Friday night. I also went out to celebrate my friend Martha's birthday this week, and had the most amazing meatloaf EVER at my friend Emily's new restaurant. She's a very talented chef - if you are in Charlotte and want a new restaurant, I highly recommend it, it's called Commonhouse, and it's at the corner of Hawthorne and Central. Cheap prices (nothing over $15), everything on the menu is a solid fantastic choice, and hey, I have VIP coupons for anyone who wants them.

I got home from work tonight relatively on time, and after tearing into some sweatpants and letting the dog out, I decided to indulge in my not-so-guilty pleasure: PBS documentaries. I can watch them for free on Netflix.com, and I've gotten into them lately - yes, it's possible, more so than usual. I watched a fantastic one on Thomas Jefferson last week that I highly reccommend - it examined the entire man, fames and faults, and I was sad for it to even end. There was so much that I never knew about him - things like the fact that he was plagued by grief his entire life, beginning with the death of his father at 14, and losing all but two of his children and his wife. He was brilliant beyond words in his vision for our country, but he found matters of the heart to be so difficult, he couldn't relate to almost anyone. Due to his years living in Paris as the US Ambassador to France, Jefferson brought us things like raisins, olives, and apricots, and left the French with that little experiment we call democracy. Finally, I learned that despite Jefferson's attempts to abolish slavery in the early Constitution, Jefferson never saw fit to free his own slaves in his lifetime. His words on the subject described what would eventually lead to the Civil War - that slavery was "akin to holding a wolf by the ears - it's terrifying to keep holding on to it, but you don't dare let it go, either." My mother's family comes out of Jefferson's descendents (my middle name, Epes, is my great-grandmother's maiden name. Jefferson's longest surviving daughter, Polly, married Thomas Eppes - a P was dropped somewhere later - who was actually Jefferson's nephew. Altogether now...EW!), and even though the guy existed hundreds of years before I came around, I definitely see little parts of him in my family. How much of that is Mr Jefferson's blood, I don't know, but it feels cool to be part of that kinda family.

Tonight I got home from work and randomly selected a documentary about the Shakers. I wasn't expecting to like it, but wow...the Shakers were definitely a part of American history that has been drastically overlooked. For those of you who don't know who they are, the Shakers started out in the late 1700's when a woman named Ann Lee came from England and told her testimony of how God had spoken to her. She created a society with her followers that lived in communal areas, and their religion centered on simple living and hard work. All of the followers were celibate (um, yikes!), so they relied on conversions and adoptions of orphans, and they were, at their core, both feminist and modernist. All members were considered equal, and unlike the Amish (who many associate them with), the Shakers thrived on innovation and invention to make work more enjoyable, as they felt their work brought them closer to God. Shakers invented the common clothespin, water-repellent fabric, over half of the innovations to the modern washing machine, the circular saw (a woman invented that one!), the flat broom, the packaged vegetable seed, and created some of the most stunning, original and useful architecture and furniture in the United States. They were the first religious group to be granted consciencious objector status, and oh yeah...they made some nice chairs and wrote the song "Simple Gifts", which is best known as Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring". It's kind of sad that they've been reduced to the touristy dead-religion status, where people think of them as these crazy people who lived a hundred years ago, but in reality, they still exist. There's literally four left in the world, and they live on a commune together in the south part of Maine. I hate to think that this peaceful, benevolent people may die out in my lifetime, 300 years after Ann Lee started the movement. Maybe that's what this world needs, a few more Shakers.

Anyway, both of these documentaries are fantastic, and I'd recommend either of them. You can watch them for free online if you are a Netflix subscriber, or you can probably watch them on PBS.org as well.

I'm going to bed now.

Look what I got!

So I got some money last week and I bit the bullet - I bought an SLR camera. It's a Nikon D80 (just like Melissa's!) and I can already tell a HUGE difference. Above is a shot of one of my paintings that I did really quickly - with no lighting. I can already see SO many more brush strokes than I could in my old pictures of this.

I'm a survivor

I put this on facebook, but yes, I survived a layoff. Sort of.

I've survived a few, and I've been canned by two in my working career. Yesterday, I came into work and was told that we were losing a member of our team. Since I'm a temp, I assumed I would not be far behind, but it turned quite differently. I am now taking over a lot of the displaced employee's duties and trying to keep up with the projects I've started over the course of my employment.

This is both good and bad.

Good:

I still have a job. For now. In this economy, I can't really turn down an honest paycheck. Since leaving Philadelphia, I've been shocked as to the level of drop-off in the art market. As art is, by definition, something that no one really needs and few people want, I knew certain things would grind to a halt - galleries lose funding, discretionary spending amongst corporations stops, and parents opt for keeping a roof over their children's heads rather than getting portraits commissioned. That was expected. However, I wasn't expecting certain things: my old art broker opted for early retirement rather than sinking another year into his office space lease. A few of my clients called and said that while they understood that their deposits were lost, they could not afford to pay the remaining balance on their already-completed works. The price of paint, shipping and framing has skyrocketed. Stuff like that. I've talked to a few of them and went ahead and just gave some of my clients their portraits - I needed the space in my house - and most of those have promised to send the money whenever they can but can't even afford to frame it and hang it. C'est la vie. So a corporate gig, while not particularly my first, second or thirtieth choice of profession, had to be done.

I don't mind the work. I like that I'm busy every day, and I like that I'm allowed to "run with" ideas. This company tends to err on the side of efficiency rather than excess paperwork and procedure, and the people are all very nice. I have worked in HORRIBLE jobs, and this isn't even in the top 50% of them. If I lacked the talent to draw or paint, I suppose I would stay in this type of work for my entire career and be somewhat thankful. I can also work from home when I need to, which is a God-send.

It's convenient. I am less than 5 minutes away from my job, and I can see my building from my house. I can walk to work if I need to. And parking is only $6 a day. Before you scoff at that, remember - I paid $6 a day to ride THE TRAIN to work in Philly. Parking was $14 a day. My parking here is across the street and right behind the police station - I don't have to worry about my car getting broken into.

But there's also the bad:

I have no time for my "real" career. I've been trying to fit it in where I could, but I've been working such long hours that I can't even think about doing anything other than sleeping when I get home. I miss it. Every so often I think of something I'd like to paint, and I get this sinking "Jeez, when am I EVER going to get the time for that?" feeling.

I have no time for a LOT of stuff. My friends here invited me to come and have beers with them two days this week at a new restaurant that is owned and run by a girl that I grew up with. It's literally around the corner from me, but I didn't even get the message til after they had left - both nights - because I was working til late on a project.

The time factor is only going to get worse. I got a LOT of duties from the girl who was laid off. My head already hurts thinking about it. I know that it's hard to absorb the work of another person, but my team is already stretched thin. The stuff that has fallen through the cracks of late may be due to things that need to be fixed, but a lot of it is falling through the cracks, in my opinion, because there's just not enough time in the day. I was hired as a temp to ease that backlog - I'm scared of what happens when it just starts piling up again.

It's just not fair. And I say this as the person who benefitted from this unfairness. The girl that was laid off took it all in stride, but I know I'd have been throwing fits if they kept a temp and let me go. Granted, with a temp, they don't have to pay for benefits, etc, but I feel bad for her. It's also just painful for morale in any company when people are getting laid off. Morale in this economy went out the window a long time ago, however.

I'm still a temp. My insurance expires for good on March 31, 2009. I have no plan for what happens then, other than the reliable "don't get sick." I have a mole on my arm that's beginning to freak me out, a prescription that needs refilling every month, and none of that is going to get fixed if I'm an hourly employee. Even on an individual plan, I'm not allowed to file any claims for that stuff for six months. I have no retirement plan, no FSA, and no promise that I will have work next week if they decide to cut me. Even with a layoff as a permanent employee, I'd get severance and COBRA. I can't get any of that.

So there I am. I survived, but it's not exactly a joyous occasion. I was driving to work yesterday and heard a really great quote from an economist on NPR...

This recession will end. All recessions, by definition, have to come to an end. Things will get better. But when you're in the thick of one, it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

My loony bun is fine Benny Lava

WHAT?
I know. I found this on the internet and seriously could not stop laughing. Especially because there's one specific line that seems to reference Drena's life right now. Or at least one specific post.
See if you can find what I'm talkin' bout, Willis.
A word of explanation - it's obviously a Indian music video, and some kid came along and typed out what the song is in English. Yes, I realize that India speaks English, but they have other languages as well, one of which is this song's language.

I may vomit from cuteness

Whoever this little girl's parents are should be thankful that I never saw this til now. Because it's so stinkin' cute, I want to kidnap her and Kermit and have them sing this in my living room. Forever and ever. Even though she's all grown up now and undoubtedly in some Cirque Lodge rehab room, suffering from child star syndrome, I still want her to come sing this in my living room with Kermit the Frog.

Long weekend...

I just got back from a weekend in DC and Baltimore, whereupon I did not get one single glimpse of our new President. Sorry. I did not make it to the concert on the mall. In my 29 years of wisdom, I have figured out a few things, and among them is the realization that I have no earthly desire to see Jennifer Nettles and James Taylor feign like they're old pals via a jumbotron that isn't even visible from my vantagepoint, which is wedged between the Justice Department Building and the Immodium-AD sponsored port-a-johns, whilst freezing through 11-degree weather. Call me an old fart, but it's not my idea of fun, nor is it my boyfriend's.

We had a TON of fun at the wedding. We were noting that the true test of a "fun wedding" is how cool the bride is. She was awesome, of course, and it was one of the most fun weddings I've been to in quite a long time. The band was great, every single person was dancing like it was their job - even the people whose jobs WERE the wedding. There's about a thousand pictures of the bartenders just dancing up a storm by themselves, with guests, with the bride and groom, with everyone. Everyone had a blast.

I came back yesterday and woke up this morning to...a freshly-fallen blanket of SNOW on my lawn. Apparently Barack Obama got done with walking on water and turning water into wine before breakfast and decided to go fix global warming as his swearing-in present. I went to go to work and discovered that a fine sheet of ICE had formed on my driveway, and I ended up having to work from home today. It was a little nice, I could watch the inauguration while I worked, so I was glad for the "inclement" weather. It's truly amazing - I lived for SIX YEARS in snow that piled up in excess of FOUR FEET at a time. I was NEVER snowed in. One inch in Charlotte? I couldn't even get out of my driveway. I wish I could have taken pictures, but nah. I couldn't find my camera. After my long stretch of working from home, however, it's going to be both good and bad to get "back" to work in the office. I'm a little antsy, but I'm not exactly thrilled to be sitting in a cubicle all day.

Picture today? It's my friend's bouquet. Yes, I caught it. Really, you'd think that given how frequently these things fly into my hands, I'd have gotten hitched a long time ago. Seriously, I didn't even go up there to do it this time - I was purely walking over to tell someone good-bye as we were leaving, and the spotlights went up and they called for the single ladies. And then when I acquiesced and stood with all us spinsters and she threw it, I didn't even hold my hands up, it literally hit me in the face. Melissa P - I hereby give you the title of bouquet-catcher. I'm not anywhere near engaged, so I'm seriously beginning to think I'm becoming a bad omen for the bouquet-tossing tradition. Gorgeous bouquet though - cream-colored roses!

Can I just say...

That I really really really really really really miss my art job?

I have been taking 3-4 hours of work home with me every night this week and am working at home through Monday for a deadline on the 21st. I haven't even opened my studio door. I was packing to go to Baltimore this weekend for a wedding and I found some paint stuff and almost cried.

And I still don't know if I'll be offered a job.

Picture today is of my friend and I in 2005. She's getting married this weekend to a really really sweet guy. Funny story...we went to a bar in Dewey Beach, Delaware that summer just about every night, and she and her sister were staying at their parents' beach house in nearby Bethany. Her sister stayed sober to drive them home (about 12 miles away or so), but my friend did NOT stay so sober. Bud Light was handing out this random stuff, and one thing they gave her was a blue light-up necklace. She's had a few beers when her sister is driving them home, and she takes off the necklace and starts swinging it around. A cop drives by, sees this flashing blue light, and thinks that someone's trying to impersonate the police. Her sister gets pulled over, and while she is completely okay because she's sober, she had to explain why, exactly, there was a blue light twirling in her car. Because she has a drunk sister.

That girl's a party, and that's why we love her.

PS - can someone punch me if I ever get that obnoxiously tan and/or wear my hair like that again? Ugh.

My last birthday bar-crawl of my 20's...and a little karma to spread.

It was quite the crime scene this weekend, I celebrated my 29th birthday in a bit of a showdown. I went out with my friends Courtney and Martha on Saturday night, got way too tipsy for my own good, then laid on the couch all day and finally collected myself enough to go celebrate with Matt and Meghan and my favorite people in Charlotte who are shorter than me, Caroline and Owen. Good dinner of lasagna, I could have eaten a thousand of the chocolate chip cookies.

I had a long day at work and will be back to it tomorrow all over again (with a work-from-home project tonight in between) so I'll keep this short. Since I just got done with my bills and came out in the black (barely), I also felt like putting out some good karma into the world via the MS walk in Lynchburg. A girl who I went to high school with was diagnosed with MS in the past few years, and she's taken to doing a fine job of getting the word out there. She's just our age, and though I didn't know her all that well in high school, she always seemed to be a cheerful, optimistic person, and seems to continue that way now while living with this painful disease. I know if I were in her situation, I certainly would have thought at least once "dude, this is totally not fair. This is just BS." Go to her website here to read about her, and if you can spare a few bucks (even I can, and I'm broke), help her reach her goal for her team in the MS Walk. It'll make you feel better about your day.

Queen City Night, part 2.

My contribution to Melissa's Natural Light 325 Project today. I swear, at this point, I'm willing to beg, barter or steal for a decent SLR camera. It won't let you adjust the focus or the shutter speed without making it STILL a little bit automatic. I like the project, really, I do, but it's really convincing me that I need an SLR. If I can't focus in something like this - I was attempting to focus on the skyline, to no avail - I don't even want to contemplate how it's affecting accurately capturing my artwork. I do like that it's making me learn the stuff that I've been trying to learn by making me take a bajillion pictures to get one right. Next week I might cheat and put one up of a night scene I did in 2003 when I HAD an SLR. Man, I loved that camera.

Corporate America Blues...

I'm home from work on this lovely Friday afternoon...with work in hand. I've got a pretty tight deadline to meet with the corporate job by the 21st, and I have to basically take it upon myself to learn how to even do it. Kind of hard to explain, but I basically have to summarize four 100-plus page documents into a Cliff's Notes of sorts. Anyone who's ever read a legal contract (or hell, Cliff's Notes) knows that the devil is in the proverbial details, and I'm struggling to figure out what is essential without having to spend too much at-work time on it. My office time often gets interrupted with small requests and tasks, taking no more than five minutes each, but five minutes here and there adds up and pretty soon that HUGE project can't get done. So I bring that home and work on it there when I can't get interrupted. Yes, children, this is how the 80-plus hour work week happens. It starts when you bring home one thing, then you get a thousand. Luckily I don't have to bill time (attributing every 6 minutes to some client and task - tasks that are budgeted to take 6 minutes and end up taking you 36) like I did at a previous job, but I'm still slowly feeling the weight. I'm one of those people that can't sit with nothing to do at work, though, so it does make the time go faster, and I'm super-happy that they're paying me to work from home when I go to Baltimore next weekend, so I really can't complain. They do seem to be a company that at least attempts to take real, tangible steps toward a good life-work balance.

I also sort of realized today that I really can't afford to NOT take the job if they offer it to me at the end of my temp assignment. My insurance is about to expire, and I will need coverage. I used to go without it after college, but I just really can't anymore. A few years ago I got pneumonia - twice. I had to go to the emergency room and even ended up taking unpaid leave for it, and had I not had insurance, I would have probably let it lapse into some crazy MRSA Molly-killing infection. I'm way healthier after getting the surgery on my sinuses - I've had 90% fewer sinus issues, and their duration has lessened by 90% as well - but I don't want to go without coverage, period. So my options would be to
a) find some well-insured immigrant, marry him and get his benefits in exchange for a green card,
b) wait for Obama's plan to insure all Americans,
c) take a huge deductible in exchange for a cheap individual plan - one that won't cover my current prescriptions, or
d) find a job with benefits.

Yeah, the alternatives are tempting, but I'll take A. Kidding, I've gotta go with D, obviously. Don't get me wrong - I like the job I've been temporarily doing, and I really like the people and the fact that people actually seek out my opinion because they know I'm intelligent. I like the money, it's rather nice to not have that heart attack of how I'm making rent next month. I feel like I can do the job and that I'm good at it, as opposed to constantly feeling like a failure at my old jobs despite working my patootie off. But it's not what makes me happy, and I have already felt the time crunch and energy crunch on the art side of things. I'm wiped out when I try to do both at equal levels, and I've already had to decline a client because I simply couldn't make her time frame fit what I could do. It sucks to have to turn down that work, it really does. I have to do it though, because I know I need to prove my worth at the corporate job. I can't really say No when someone asks me to stay later, and I don't want anyone to think at the corporate job that I'm not dependable in a crunch. I'd rather them sing my praises than wonder where I am when things come to a boiling point. So I had to turn down the art client instead. Vincent VanGogh may not have sold a painting in his lifetime, but he never had to worry about rent when the loony bin was already putting a roof over his head. It's no wonder artists go bonkers.

I'm going to go watch the office now and work. Coincidence? Or Irony? You decide.

Antique Sunburst

That's the name of the color of my new guitar, as well as the title of my first pic for Melissa's natural light 325 project. Sorry Melissa, but I may have cheated a bit here. I actually took this with the internal iSight camera on my Mac, then I played around with it in iPhoto to make it look decent. To be fair, you DID say that the rules were just that you couldn't use a flash. I didn't use a flash, and I didn't touch the lights that were on in the room. I DID, however, crop, add saturation, warm the light temperature, reduce noise, add a bit of tint, up the exposure and increase the contrast.

That's what I've been doing tonight. I went and bought a guitar pick, a book and a tuner at Target - I was too scared to go in the Guitar Center or Musician's Warehouse or whatever because I always feel like I'm stupid in places like that where the employees LIVE that sort of stuff but I know nothing about it. It's the whole reason that I always try to help people the best way I can when I'm in the art supply store - there's a whole bunch of professional, expensive stuff, and it's overwhelming - the last thing I need is an employee making me feel like an idiot because I don't know something. Anyway, I came home and looked up a couple of websites and figured a few things out...like the fact that I remember NOTHING from when I played in my Creative Development class. I did finally get what I didn't seem to get when I did it last time - how exactly the fret board changes the pitch of whatever note/string you're playing. Sounds dumb, but when I actually figured out the physics of the fact that when you press down, the string gets shortened and produces a higher pitch than a bare string, I actually started to see what I was doing.

Anyway, I learned about that, then I attempted a few things until I got tired of it. I figured two chords out, and I practiced the damn things over and over and over and over. Baby steps. I can play them, but transitioning between them is next to impossible right now. I also am trying to figure out how to make my hand bigger - my hands are seemingly too small to play these things.

That's my music lesson for the day...hope y'all have a good night ;)

Resolutions...

My facebook status said that I am "not making any resolutions, I'm already perfect" until yesterday or so, and yes, that was a joke. I'm not THAT self-centered. Close, but not quite.

Anyway.

I've been debating whether or not to make any resolutions this year. I've been succesful at some in the past, and others, not so much. But in the same way that 2008 was a tumultuous year (to put it lightly), 2008 was certainly a really great year for me internally.

In 2008, I:
-Kept the weight off. I've always gone up and down in weight, and I kept it off this year.
-Didn't accrue any additional debt.
-Cut out toxic relationships from my life. Bigger than you think.
-Listened to myself about 400% more than I had in any year past.
-Listened to what others' opinions were of me about 400% LESS than I had in any year past.
-Stood up for myself when it counted.
-Stood up for others when it counted.
-Moved to a new city because I was ready for a change. Not for a boy, not for a job, but for my own happiness.
-Allowed myself to be imperfect and allowed others to see the imperfect self.
-Realized that no matter how perfect I was, there were certain people that would never and will never change.
-Painted miles and miles of canvas and paper.
-Sold three times the art that I did in 2007.
-Completed and launched my website.
-Broke up with someone not because of a fight or an incident, but for the simple reason that he wasn't allowed to treat me the way he did.
-Met someone who treats me better than anyone else ever has.
-Moved in with my cousin and bestest friend.
-Finished about three times the number of books that I did in 2007.

Sounds like a great list, but hey, I've still got work to do...2008 was also the year I:
-Made less money than I ever have in my life.
-Literally quit talking to several people in my life that most people wouldn't consider.
-Faced the manifestation of physical anxiety that had built up over the course of 28 years.
-Stopped being friends with one of my best friends.
-Nearly had to hock my jewelry to pay a medical bill.
-Got my portfolio torn apart by not one, not two, but three reviewers.
-Broke my elbow. Again.
-Spent a better part of two months feeling like no city wanted me.
-Had to face reality and take a corporate job. As a temp.

The last one was the worst, I'll admit. There is absolutely nothing like feeling like you're a failure at something that you actually consider yourself better at than any other activity. It's embarrassing, it's humiliating, it's not fun, and it STILL makes me want to cry when I read it. But welcome to our new freaking economy.

Though all that stuff happened, though, I still think that I learned to like myself WAY more than any other year. Seriously. Don't know how to explain it, but I was way happier in 2008 than I ever was in 2007 or even 2006, when I thought myself blissfully happy. 2007 still ranks as the worst year of my life - I'd literally rather go through my parents' divorce all over again than to go through 2007 again. 2008, however, I'd take. But I'm most happy with 2009, and I'm excited to get on with it.

So, what am I resolving, then? Well, not much, actually. As a matter of fact, I am purposefully making every single part of my resolutions something that I actually have FUN doing. I don't have fun working out or eating healthy or saving money for that matter, so I'm shoving those back into the goals part of my life.

My resolutions:
-Learn to play the guitar. I'm horrible at it so far, but I'm learning.
-Paint more.
-Read more books.
-Get outside more.
-Travel more.
-Spend more time with those that I love.

And that's it. There's no defined goals, no accountability, and no way of telling if I ever get them all done. Don't like it? Kiss it. It's all you're getting.