Monday, November 28, 2005
And they're off
I bought my first Christmas present today. Of course, it was accompanied by several things for myself, but still. I have officially (with less than 4 weeks to go) begun my Christmas shopping.I've got ideas out the wazoo for some people; I just have to actually buy them, so at least I'm somewhat ahead on this whole thing.
But, yes, I bought my first Christmas present today.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Put sugar on your toes
Yesterday, I took Lourenzo to the Brooklyn Museum so that he could draw. We walked around with a pad of paper, and whenever he saw something that was interesting enough, we'd stop, and he'd draw it.At one point, he walked into a large gallery wth a massive skylight, the perimeter lined with landscapes, portraits, and narrative paintings. Notebook and pencil in hand, he looked around the empty room and whispered, "I don't even want to talk."
Granted, that didn't last longer than about 15 minutes, but it hit me that this is likely the closest thing to church that he's ever experienced, and yet to have such an awe of art at such a young age is phenomenal. I have no doubt that if his gifts are nurtured well, he'll be an artist. It's incredible to be able to see the seeds of such a gift and talent, and it makes me wonder what kinds of paths he'll take to get there.
I look back on my own artistic journet, which started at about the same age. I was younger than he is now when I started telling and acting out stories, and by the time I was five, I was in church pageants and recruiting Esther and Jessica (and in dire circumstances, Uncle Kinne) to be my cast.
My journey in the two decades since I started exploring art has been, in some ways, a straightforward one; in other ways, it has taken me to places I never expected to go. New York, for instance. In either case, I've been blessed to be in an environment where art has been encouraged, and I haven't really faced the pressure to take a "real" major or find a "real" job. I've known since high school, basically, that theatre would be a part of whatever career I chose. The most significant variations and growth in that plan were, and still are, in the discovery of what that would look like for me.
Yesterday, Lourenzo and I spent several hours in the museum--he with his sketchpad, me with mt notebook, and we explored exhibits, stopping when he wanted to draw, like a miniature art student, stopping every now and then to do a detailed sketch of some work. It wouldn't be my typical image of an outing with a 5-year-old, but he enjoys it. He alternates between being a silly, sometimes bratty, sometimes distracted kid, and then goes to being focused beyond his years.
It's amazing to me how art brings out different aspects in people's personalities. It draws out a fuller, richer potential--particularly in those people in whom artistic potential lies dormant--than many other stimuli have the power to do.
While we were walking around the museum, I saw several other moms with children much younger than Lourenzo--18-month- and 2-year-olds--exploring the museum with their babies, instilling a sense of artistic apreciation, even from such a young age.
It's cool. I want to take my kids to museums, theatre, concerts, dance performances, galleries... the works. I think that a solid art education in any other arena of life--school, extracurriculur, whatever--is so much more effective when the value of art is reinforced at home. Education in general is always more effective when it's supported at home, but especially the areas that tend to be somewhat neglected in schools.
I can remember a few outings when I was a kid, although I don't think that I was going to museums on a regular basis at 18 months (granted, Calgary doesn't have nearly the number of museums and artistic venues that New York has). Still, much of my artistic education wasn't in professional theatre productions or museums featuring works of the masters. Much of mine was watching the process of a show or a concert coming together, seeing a community work to make the art happen.
I wonder how it might have affected me differently if my exposure had been more to the finished product than to the process, and if I'd dabbled in a wider variety of mediums from a younger age. As it is, I have an incredible love and appreciation for visual arts, dance, architecture, the written word, language, music, and of course, theatre. In some of these cases, my love was formed despite my lack of exposure and education--it was love for art in general that allowed me to be passionate (on some level) about forms that I had no training in. It was as I became more and more well-versed in my own art forms that I began to seek out and learn more about the others.
It would be interesting, though, to see how I would respond differently if I'd been to more theatre from the audience, and not as many dress rehearsals in the front row with a coloring book. If I'd seen more museums. Gone to more professional dance shows. Or maybe, I would have just taken a different path to the same end.
So, maybe, it's overload for a 5-year-old to experience everything. Maybe it's too much to expect them to pinpoint one form out of the many at that age. But then again, maybe it's not. Maybe, a well-rounded art education is just as important as a well-rounded traditional education. Goodness knows, the schools don't provide that. You're lucky to get a unit on each type, let alone a full experience. I guess, when I have my own kids, I'll figure out the balance. I'll figure out how much is enough. I just know that anyone who grows up in my house will grow up in an environment that respects any art form, and tries to display and celebrate as much as possible.
Friday, November 25, 2005
We gather together...
Happy Thanksgiving! This might be a doozy of an entry, but I'll do my best. :o)
I never did end up finding Ryan and Jeana for the parade--I was about two blocks up from where they were, but by the time I got that close, the parade was starting, and I couldn't get across enough streets to find them. So, I watched the parade by myself. Still fun, though. I started about 4 people back from the curb, and kind of got pushed to the second-ish row, so my view wasn't too bad (plus, it's pretty easy to see those balloons from anywhere!).
Let's see. Comparisons to the Stampede parade? No lawn chairs--that's not the way parades in NYC are done. I did, however, see lots of kids sitting on mailboxes and newspaper boxes, a few people brought ladders to stand on, and there were even a few people who climbed up on top of a bus stop. That's one way to get a view! No Froot Loops. No sunburn. I was about half and half for the marching bands...
Half of them weren't playing while they were in front of me...
... and half of them were. My dad figures that every parade is jinxed so that the bands always stop a half-block away from wherever we're sitting.
The funniest thing (to me) was that the parade would come to a complete stop every 10 minutes or so, for about 3 or 4 minutes. Just... stop. Commercial breaks, apparently. It's never been quite that obvious to me during the Stampede Parade, if they stop it for commercials, but I guess this is a much more "must-see TV" event.
(Aaron, that one was just for you)
The parade progresses from Thanksgiving to Christmas, in terms of the float themes--the first one is the big turkey, and the last one is Santa Claus--but unfortunately, my camera battery died three-quarters of the way through the parade, so I didn't get any pictures of the Christmas segment.
Still. Where else can you see Big Bird, Charlie Brown, Dora the Explorer, the NYPD marching band, Brian McKnight (the woman beside me was ecstatic when she saw him on one of the floats--apparently her wedding song was one of his), Olympic medalists, Spongebob Squarepants, and Barney (with a blown-out foot) all in the same place?
After the parade, I had most of the afternoon to kill before heading to Queens for dinner, so I decided to see a movie (which actually caused much debate at dinner when it was discovered that I seem to lack that innate human fear to appear alone in a movie theatre). I saw RENT, and believe me, that warrants its own entry. It was absolutely fantastic, and I'll post a review elsewhere later, and those of who have seen it can compare notes with me. :o) Seriously, such a fantastic movie.
Then, it was out to Astoria to Matt's house (one of the guys in my small group) for Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of people from church. Matt, Tim, Sarita, and Nick and Amy all live out there, and Amy cooked a fantastic dinner... we played Mafia (which I haven't played since about first year drama troupe! Ah, the memories), ate way too much dessert, and I found a kindred spirit in my Friends fanaticism in Nick. They have seasons 8, 9, and 10 (the only ones I'm still missing), so I have a standing invitation now to go watch Friends anytime I want. Good night. Good friends, and it was a good time with people that I'm still just getting to know.
It was very late when I came home, but I didn't have to set an alarm--I had the Lourenzo-mobile in my room to wake me up. He didn't come barging in until 8:30, though, so that's better than sometimes!
And, that was my day. Parades, RENT, Mafia. Just about sums it up. More on today's thoughts and events later.
Can I end with something cheesy (and picture-appropriate) like "Happy Thanksgiving from The Big Apple"?
Too late. I did it anyways (insert your own pink-overalled inflection to that comment here).
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
I see your face on the marble arch
Still computer-less. Of a sort. Still "my own computer"-less. I'm not suffering too badly (well, except for the lack of novel-writing. Waaaahhhhh..... I thought that '05 was going to be my year! Booo...), and at least I have a support number to call tomorrow. Then, we'll see what kind of apocalyptic news they give me (and how many apocalyptic dollars it'll cost to fix), and how long I'll have to be without. *sigh*I have Thanksgiving plans, though. I'm taking Lourenzo to his friend Anna's house in the morning, and he'll go to the parade with them, and then they're coming out here for dinner. I'm not. I'm going to the parade with Ryan and Jeana, and then I'm going to Matt's house with a bunch of other people for dinner. Should be fun. I'm actually really looking forward to it. And I'll take pictures. Especially of the parade.
Oy. I'm so tired.
I totally want to find some choral society or chamber choir doing Handel's "Messiah" this Christmas. So far, though, the only one I've found is on a Tuesday night--the last Tuesday that I'll be at my small group before I leave for Christmas. I'll already have to miss our last one, which sucks, and I don't want to miss the one before that, too.
Okay. Bedtime. This is the part of my life right now that I like least. When 11:30 is a late night, something is seriously wrong in the life of Alida. Besides the fact that this is completely against my normal lifestyle schedule, it's also incredibly inconvenient when everyone lives a 2-hour time difference away. That means that when I'm getting ready to head to bed by 11, it's only 9:00 in Calgary, and everyone there is just gearing up for the "free" part of the evening. Dinner's over, work's done, dishes are done... it's time to veg out in front of the TV or hang out and talk to Alida. But no.... Alida's going to bed. Sucks. There's a reason I'm a night owl.
And on that very happy and cheerful note, I'm going to go to sleep. Man, 6:00 comes way too early.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Love is not a victory march
*insert scream of dismay here*Yeah. My computer died last night. Just shut off. And that does not bode well for the finishing of my novel or for the paper that I need to write and the research that I need to do for my class.
John, one of the guys in my small group, is a nerd, though, so he's going to look at it for me on Tuesday, and hopefully I won't be out of commission for too long. It'll be hard enough to bump up my wordcount... I may start writing by hand, and then go from there once I'm hooked up again.
Is it a bad thing that I immediately felt claustrophobic when it died?
I justify myself by stating that a) I'm working on an incredibly huge project right now that's very computer-dependent, b) I have all sorts of research to do for my class, and I really wanted to get going on it, and c) it's my main communication link. Without it... well, put it this way. I watched two episodes of Gilmore Girls and went to bed early.
Other than that, though, it's been a really good week.
The class was terrific. I really... I just came away with so many resources, and there's so much to think about and integrate into my own planning and dreaming. If every class is this relevant, this certificate could be the best investment I've ever made. Now, of course, comes the extremely dauntig, and yet rather exciting, challenge of distilling it all into useful information that will be relevant to my experience and my needs.
It makes me feel really alive, you know? Like what I'm spending my time, effort, energy, and money on isn't something that's just going to be a dream, a flash in the pan. It's going to be real, and this makes it feel that much more real.
Many, many months of hard work in the future, but real nonetheless.
But if you don't hear from me for a few days, that's why. There are other computers in the house--I'm not completely cut off--but it's still a little too much! Oy vey.
At least I can't feel guilty for not writing... but it'll mean some SERIOUS catch-up time later on!
Friday, November 18, 2005
Stella!!
I can't believe that I hadn't been in a classroom for almost a year and a half before today. But it was good. Today and tomorrow are my "Arts and Education" class, and it's pretty good. Deals a lot with working with public schools, but the principles are good for any sort of curriculum development. So, yeah. Good times.I had a thought today. These principles probably would have been good to have an outline of when we were working on Hobbit.
Hmm. I want orange juice.
I'm so totally procrastinating. I'm about a day behind on my wordcount, and I'm hitting a wall. I need to turn off the TV and get away from an internet connection, and do a 10-minute word rush. Just type, no thinking, no backspacing, for 10 minutes, and see how many words come up.
One of these days, I'll break 30,000. The twenties are the hardest 10,000 words. And they're almost over, but it's breaking that last 2,000 words that's killing me tonight.
That's okay. My weekends have been my big writing days, and they've pulled me back up to quota every week thus far. I've still got through Monday to pull a fast one on myself.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Trip over a hedge on your way out
Wow, I haven't written much this week. No, that's not entirely true. I have written, just not here. However, I stand by my "I haven't written [as] much [as I should have] this week." This weekend, though... I have no Lourenzo all weekend! I'm taking my first class this weekend, tomorrow and Saturday, and even though the classes are just during the day, Alexandra gave me the whole day off. So I'll be busy, but basically, I get an extra night off out of the deal. Good stuff! :o)Um... it's been an interesting week. Lots of thoughts and decisions... most of which will be shared later. Once they're more final.
Tomorrow's Naomi's last day at Barnes and Noble, which is a very sad thing for me... I'll really miss working with her. She was, for all intents and purposes, my first friend in NYC, and I know we'll hang out outside of work (we get together every other weekend or so), but it'll still be weird to not see her every day. Or, at least, every day that I'm at work.
Anyways... I'm really excited about this class, but I need to get to bed. Check laundry first, and then get to bed. 'Night.
Monday, November 14, 2005
24,515
HALFWAY DONE!!! And I'm even a day ahead of quota.Wordcount: 25,485 down; 24,515 to go.
I'm going to bed.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Makes no difference where you are
So I've discovered that I can get a gym membership with NYC Parks and Rec gym for $75 a year. I can do that, and even if I only get in once a week, I won't feel like it was a waste of money. I've missed having a gym membership, even with all the walking I do in this city. So, I think I'll look into that tomorrow. That, plus find another coffee shop. It is Monday, after all. Which means much more procrastinating and as much more writing as I can tweak out of my procrastination.Tuesday is the 15th, which means that it's halfway through the month, which means that I need to hit 25,000 words. I'll get it, actually. Somewhat surprisingly.
Anyways. Bedtime.
Wordcount: 19,868 down; 30,132 to go
Friday, November 11, 2005
And I almost believed that they're real
The thing that always amazes me about this city is how localized the tourists are. I mean, you walk down a well-known street, and they're out in droves, but a block away... nothing. The area near Lourenzo's school, for instance, is very tourist-free. A few, every now and then, but nothing like 3 blocks over. It's just weird. It's like everyone knows so many New York locations, but they only go to the popular ones.In the heavy areas, you can't find a seat in Starbucks to save your life. In the not-so-heavy areas? Well, this afternoon I sat in a bakery/cafe called Beyond Bread on 89th and 3rd for three hours at one of only 4 tables, and only one other one was occupied. Now, I realize that 2 p.m. isn't exactly business prime-time for a coffee shop, but still--if this was on a different street, that probably wouldn't have been the case.
It just always makes me laugh, that's all.
I'm realizing, too, how pointless it is to eat at Wendy's and grab a Starbucks coffee and buy shoes at Payless and go to KMart and Old Navy for my clothes. Why live in New York if I'm just going to shop at the same stores I can go to at home? I gravitate towards them naturally--what can I say? I'm a child of The City Of A Thousand Suburbs (I've heard it said that Calgary is all suburb and no... urb? Debate as you will--I half-agree with it), and it's easy to fall back into the mall mentality.
As often as I do that, though, I'm trying to find new places. Independent, non-corporate places that are what make every place unique. They're everywhere, but they're a lot easier to find in a place like New York, just because everything is so packed together. You don't need to go as far to find as big a variety.
And Beyond Bread had the most fantastic apple turnover. Too bad it's a little ways off my usual beaten path.
I know I'm in the middle of NaNo, because every five words, my fingers automatically hit ctrl-s. Can't lose that work in the middle of it! I was never this anal about saving my work, even when I was writing major papers. There's just something about knowing that 50,000 words in 30 days is an awful lot, and you can't stand to lose even one of them. It's too much of a habit, though, that it throws me off when I'm in anything other than Word.
Wordcount: 16,577 down; 33,423 to go.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
I don't like people all up in my grill!
Oy. There's a reason I don't like working at 7 a.m. Leaving the house at 6 is far too early for any sane person. But... the workday is over at 3:30, so I guess that's not bad. These days, I'm working 8 hours on Tuesdays and Wednesday, 6 on Thursday, and 5 on Fridays. Not bad--the days get shorter as the week goes on. If I can make it through the two long ones, the rest is a breeze. Or something.It's amazing how many pockets of writing time I can find tucked away, especially without having to juggle classes and stuff. I'm actually almost on quota--about 1,000 words behind, but that's not bad. If I could write 8,000 words last weekend, well, a thousand won't kill me.
New challenge for myself. Every chapter, I introduce a few new characters, or at least put different characters into a specific context. The challenge is: every time one of these comes up, I make them all relate somehow. Like, the other day, I wrote in all the characters with Gilmore Girls-inspired names. Some combinations of first, middle, and last names from the show. No one named directly from there, but the combinations from character names. The next... I dunno. Maybe a specific movie, or a certain context of people in my life, or something. It just makes it more interesting, though, especially for naming my minor characters.
Surprisingly, this year, I'm staying out of the forums. Maybe that's why I'm actually being productive--I'm spending my time actually writing, instead of talking about writing. You know? I kind of miss them, but in some ways... not as much. There are enough distractions without adding to it.
Other than that... not much new. I'm sleepy, and I need to go to bed soon, but that's not surprising, since I was up at a rather ungodly and unearthly hour this morning. Yes, I'm going to milk that for all it's worth. I don't do mornings, okay? Out of the house by 7:30 is bad enough, let alone anything earlier! Heh. I'm sorry. I'll be more interesting on December 1. You'll hear about something other than wordcounts for a change.
Wordcount: 13,932 down; 36,068 to go.
Monday, November 07, 2005
The pope was already booked
New Monday goal. Mondays are my day off--day off Starbucks, that is, which leaves me with the day to work on other things, do errands, etc. During November, it means catching up on my writing from the week before, and getting back up to quota.Anyways, the plan now is to find a new cafe/diner/coffee shop every Monday, where I can write and get connected to free wifi. Someplace non-corporate, with great ambience, great coffee, and great food. Any other day, when I just have an hour or two, I can hit a Starbucks, or go to Java Girl (which I love, but it doesn't have wifi or power outlets, so I can only write for about 2 hours), but on Mondays, when I've got all day, I want someplace where I can sit for seven hours.
Today, I spent 7 hours in Sunburst, a funky little cafe/diner near Union Square. Seven hours, and I got about 4,000 words written. Not quite enough to put me up to the 15,000 I was hoping for, but at least enough to get me over quota for today.
Of course, curse that wifi, I wasn't quite as productive as I could have been, but still... it wasn't bad at all. Fun times.
Wordcount: 12,229 down, 37,771 to go.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Oy with the poodles already!
Wow. I didn't intend to go this long without updating. My only defense is that this week has gone by incredibly fast. Doing not much, but it still flew by. Let's see. Interesting things since I last wrote?Um... Thursday and Friday were pretty uneventful--Lourenzo, work, etc, etc, etc. Nothing too earth-shattering there. Saturday... I blew off a NaNo write-in for a girls' night out with some girls from church, on the condition that I skip lunch out today and write instead. More on that in a minute.
We went to see "Prime," which was actually pretty funny, and not what I expected. I was expecting a much more raunchy comedy, but it was actually a lot classier than I thought it would be. Funny, for sure, but not quite the overly sexual movie that I'd thought it would be. Or rather, not the explicitly sexual movie that I was perhaps anticipating. Anyways, then we went out to eat, and a good time was had by all, although the restaurant/bar was incredibly noisy, and I woke up with no voice. Again. I should be much more diligent with my vocal warmups on days like this, but they're a little awkward to do in a house full of people that aren't related or in the same major.
Church this morning, and then I went to a write-in on the Staten Island ferry. Yup--we just sat on the ferry and wrote. Took out our laptops and wrote for one round-trip's worth. They made us get off, though, so we decided that maybe that was too much hassle, so we took our work outside. I seriously can't believe that it's November 6, and I spent my afternoon sitting in a park. Incredible.
In any case, I'm losing steam now. I've written about 3500 words today, and I'm still a bit behind, but I'm definitely further than I was. Tomorrow is my day off (off of Starbucks, that is), so once I drop Lourenzo off, I'm going to find somewhere to hole up with my laptop, and try to get a good 5000 words ahead. I know I've got time to write during the week, but I want to take full advantage of my days off to get ahead, so that I'm not scrambling.
It's amazing how aware I am of the roughness of this draft. I know how much work will need to go into character and plot development once the draft is finished, but I'm excited to know the characters well enough to do that.
I've only finished one novel--in 2002--and I actually went back and edited it the next summer. It was a pretty cool experience. It added about 10,000 words, and the amount that it added to the story was incredible. It really is impossible to write a palatable novel in 30 days, but that's not the point. The point is to just get the words out there in 30 days, and then there's actually something to edit, which is better than having nothing to edit, right?
And, even better, since I've written so much today, I don't have to feel guilty for going home tonight and curling up in front of a couple of episodes of Gilmore Girls. My season 1 dvd's came, and I'm trying to ration myself while I'm working on NaNo, because the novel has to come first (in terms of my spare-time entertainment) during November. Ah well--if nothing else, I'll have something to watch during the winter hiatus, when there are no new episodes.
But tonight, I don't have to feel like I need to write. Of course, I do need to feel like I need to clean my room and all that kind of fun stuff, but those are easy jobs compared to cranking out my daily quota.
Wordcount: 8,071 down, 41,929 to go.
Enough for one day. I'm going home, and I'm not going to think about writing again until tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Dare you to pick yourself up off the floor
Excitement today? I registered for "The Arts and Education: Designing Effective Programs" today. I'm now officially registered as an NYU student, although just in SCPS (School of Continuing and Professional Studies), and even then, it's not an accredited program or anything. Still. Cool. I could buy an NYU sweatshirt and look impressive to everyone I run into in Calgary, and actually say that I went to school there.Ummm. What else? I got a good kick-start on the NaNovel today. I think that this year's novel has a better chance of seeing the light of day than the past two years' novels have. And, if I've never ranted to you about what NaNoWriMo is all about... well, go check it out, because you're likely to hear a lot about it in the next 28 days.
Wordcount: 2,762 down; 47,238 to go.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Trying to keep left, just trying to keep left
Just goes to show how out of it I was today.I was getting ready to leave my small group tonight, and I was doing that awkward little, "I'm getting my jacket on and collecting my things while I continue to make small talk and wait for a lull in the conversation to say goodnight to the room at large" dance, and I got my purse and jacket, and then pulled my keys out of my purse and started fiddling with them as I said goodnight and headed out the door.
I didn't realize until I was halfway down the hallway to the elevator that I don't need my keys until I actually get home, because I don't drive here.
No, I'm definitely not a New Yorker yet.
Janna, your answers (as well as my updated wordcount--so it doesn't seem quite as pathetic as it seems tonight--will come tomorrow). Now, I'm going to sleep.