serenity now...

i am generally a pretty happy person. ok, ok, sometimes i can be overly sarcastic and people take that the wrong way (NIKI), and i may have a teeeeeny tiny attitude problem left over from my childhood, but otherwise i am pretty much a ray of sunshine on any given day. EXCEPT TODAY. and i will tell you why (because i am totally inclined to tell anyone who will listen when someone has PISSED ME OFF). i want to go see a show. it is sold out. i can't find a ticket for less than TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS. really? and this isn't even a ticket "dealer" this is a ticket for sale by the owner of said ticket who paid about $50 at maximum for this ticket and is now trying to turn around and sell it to me at 3 times it's face value (is my math right? it's probably not. whatever. the guy is a JERK!). the online ticket dealers want 3 times THAT much. remember when you used to be able to go see a band you really wanted to see and the ticket was about $20 and you didn't end up paying $50 for it after all the service fees and the show didn't sell out in 45 seconds (thank you, interwebs)? yeah. ME NEITHER. i remember once when i was a kid and we wanted to get tickets to see garth brooks (go ahead and laugh, I DARE YOU!). don't you know we had to get in the car and DRIVE down to the local ticketmaster outlet at the dillard's about 20 miles away from our house and wait in A LINE and hope and pray that they didn't sell out before we got up to the counter (they did). now thanks to the wonders of the world wide webs, every show i want to see sells out in about 5 minutes, and ticketmaster kicks you off the site if you don't buy the tickets that you DO manage to hold fast enough, leaving you at the mercy of some soul-less a-hole who thinks it's perfectly within reason to charge you $200 for a $50 ticket. way to suck the fun out it for everyone. last time this happened, i had to hop on a bus to philly and catch the show i wanted to see there, but this time around, it's the philly show i can't even get into. perhaps this is god's way of telling me i need to spend my concert-going funds on seeing bands i've never heard of before. honestly. i would probably be in better company anyway, seeing a local band in a local venue, seeing as how none of the people in THAT crowd are dumb enough to shell out $200 bucks so some buffoon can buy 4 new games for his xbox. all i'm saying is that if i had an extra ticket or two to a show that i knew people were clamoring to go to, i would sell them for exactly what i paid for them. one because i know how frustrating it is to really want to see a show and not be able to afford to go (hello, lady gaga, i am talking to YOU), and two because that money would go to ME and not the ARTIST, and i kind of think it's BS to make money that way. but that's just me.

ok. deep breath. i'm done.

making it happen...FOR REAL

apparently it has just occured to me that i am in my 30s and single. instead of doing the whole "woe is me" thing, i literally woke up one morning earlier this year and thought to myself: "self! do you KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS??!?! i can do WHATEVER I WANT TO DO. WHENEVER I WANT TO DO IT." this has resulted in a lot of traveling (cross country road trip, a few days in los angeles, a weekend in new york), a lot of concert/show tickets (including tickets purchased to a cirque du soleil show that is not taking place until 2012), some really ridiculous shoes that are incredibly painful to wear but delightful to look at, and finally, FINALLY, the ten week flying trapeze workshop i've been wanting to take for over a year now. ten weeks, two hours at a time, culminating in a student performance in late june, and I CAN NOT WAIT. i took one class last year on my birthday and as a gift to myself this year (and geez, there have been a LOT of those lately), i figured i would splurge and learn how to do this FOR REALS. so my class started last week, and i can already do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpA8NBI3Vxs

which i managed to nail twice in a row. obviously, that video is not me, but you get the point. what i'm saying is I CAN DO THAT. it's the easiest trick in the book (literally. i've seen the book. it only gets harder from there), but you have to start somewhere i suppose. so my class is on monday nights and by tuesday i was feeling a little sore but fine, but oh my god, wednesday rolled around and my body was like WTF, A-HOLE?!?!?! i think my earlobes were sore. this is probably also because they have us climbing up silk ropes in between flying (god i love saying that), and the instructors make it look like it couldn't possibly be any easier to wrap your feet in silk fabric and then pull yourself up this rope in a graceful and beautiful way...but in reality my arm and leg muscles were in full on revolt against me - which made me realize that it is going to be a long time before i am running away with any circuses. i did manage to make it about halfway up the rope on my 4th or 5th try, but i'm pretty sure it was because of the repeated attempts at doing this that my body decided to punish me for later in the week.

my second class is tonight and i need to figure out what trick i want to learn for the showcase in june. next up for me is learning a set split which is basically asking for me to hurt myself. let's see how THAT goes.