new year, in the middle of the year

wow, it has been a long time since i've written on this thing. usually i would write something that would no doubt be laced with smart mouth comments and sarcasm, but my mom read my blog the other day and told me i need to clean up my language. and as usual, she is probably right. luckily for my mother, i seem to have woken up on the emotional side of the bed today (and seriously, you should have SEEN the way my dog was sleeping - diagonally and stretched out from one side of the bed to the other - so i had no choice in the matter of what side of the bed to wake up on) and for once in my life i don't really have anything very sassy to say. except now i am admitting to the entire interwebs (and all 2 people who read this) that i have a soul, and i'm not entirely comfortable with other people knowing that.

so we have entered the 8th month of the year (how this happened so quickly is beyond me), and it recently occurred to me that while i have kept up with most of my new year's resolutions, it might be time to start a new tradition and make myself a mid year resolution. i don't see why january gets to be the only time of the year that we resolve to be better people. maybe we should make a new resolution every month, who knows, maybe we would all be slightly less grumpy and wary of one another. people might even smile more. we could start a revolution. a non violent one, of course, since that would probably defeat the purpose.

i just got back from a wonderful, week long trip down to barbados, and since i had so much time to lay around on sandy beaches and think about the way my life is going now and the direction that i want my life to go in for the future, i think i may have settled on resolving to be more mindful. i have been told by many, many people that i can tend to be a little overly sarcastic sometimes (and that is me putting it nicely), and in my realm of experience, if more than two or three people tell you something about yourself, chances are high that there is some truth in what they are telling you (even if you don't want to hear it). and i suppose that while i think i am being funny and harmless, not everyone may agree with me, and i have lost track of the amount of times i've apologized for something i said, only to turn around and say something equally as sarcastic five minutes later. and i have too many amazing relationships in my life to treat them as anything other than gifts. so, there you go, internet. not only do i have a soul, but i want to work on improving it. next thing you know, i'm going to be telling my sister i miss her or something.

and there you go, mom. an entire blog post where i did not call one single person an a-hole. even i didn't think i could do it.

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.

let the music play...

one of my new year's resolutions this year was to see more live music - i am lucky enough to live in a city that has a lot of music venues and have felt like i never fully took advantage of that. so, this past weekend, i caught a wye oak show friday night at the black cat, and then saw grace potter and the nocturnals at the 9:30 club the following night. wye oak was sort of an "on a whim" thing, i picked up a free download card at starbucks (which is also how i found out about the civil wars, who i am now obsessed with) and liked the song enough to download a couple more on itunes. so i had heard a little of their music, but not much, and they kicked ass live, so i was really glad i'd seen on facebook that they were playing in dc and scored tickets before they sold out. i've been listening to grace potter for a while now, and i'd seen them once before and knew it would be a good show...and my god, they did not dissapoint me. grace's voice and her presence on stage are both pretty overwhelming and i don't know about you, but for me there is just something about that feeling i get when the lights go down and the band comes out...everything else in the world ceases to be important. when you can feel the music hit you in that space between your heart and your throat...that is the good stuff and i clearly need to have that in my life more often. they played a song she'd written about her grandmother before she died, and having just gone through that last year, i will admit i got a little choked up. it does amaze me how much of the human experience is universal - we all experience different forms of love and loss - but how people can get up on a stage and open up their lives to a room full of complete strangers is just beyond me. i am certainly thankful for it, though. in a way it kind of makes you feel less alone in whatever you're dealing with...because no doubt, someone else has experienced something similar and had the wherewithall to write it down and put some music behind it. and i can't even begin to imagine what it feels like to have that room full of strangers singing the words to your heartache or your happiness, because they know exactly what you mean.

anyway, the point of all of this is that i got to see some awesome shows this weekend and i'm already looking forward to the next one. if only all of my new year's resolutions were this easy (or this enjoyable)...

from sea to shining sea

just in case you are wondering how long it takes to drive from washington, dc, to portland, oregon, let me go ahead and tell you - it takes 4 days. and that's driving 12 to 13 hours a day. and stopping for things like cell phone chargers and spray butter and to see the random memorial to abraham lincoln on the highway in the middle of wyoming. and also to buy a cute new cardigan at a target in some random small town in nebraska. oh, and also sheltering in place at a gas station in kingdom city, missouri, so as not to be swept up by a tornado (the sirens were going off and everything!). we even gave ourselves enough time to catch some kickass live music (and a moonpie) in nashville, and go for an amazing run in downtown salt lake city (ok, it was amazing scenery, not an amazing run, since i forgot to factor in the whole "altitude" thing). you would think that spending 12 to 13 hours a day in a uhaul would be anything but fun, but in fact, we had a great trip and i would do it again in a heartbeat.

aside from tornados, getting hit on by drunk old men at a honky tonk, and kate nearly getting bitten by a dog (note to self: never pet a dog hanging out in the back of a truck in the parking lot of a target in nebraska), there were a lot of things that made the trip memorable for me. i have traveled a fair amount within the US, but i haven't spent a lot of time in the midwest or the northwest, and since i grew up below sea level, even the slightest incline in the landscape makes me giddy. literally, i kept clapping and exclaiming "that's a mountain! that's a mountain!!" and kate, who is from portland and knows what a real mountain looks like, would smile and shake her head and say, "just wait." but what does she know. if i say it's a mountain, it's a MOUNTAIN.

even though lincoln, nebraska was the most boring place i've ever been in my life, i have to say, the sight of the sun coming up over the farmlands on our way out of that godforsaken town was amazing. it turned the whole sky a pinkish blue and reflected off the silos in a way that almost made them look like they were made out of water. the mountains in utah and wyoming made me momentarily forget that i am a grown ass woman, and i sat there in the uhaul with my mouth hanging open in awe, watching as they got bigger and bigger in front of us until i finally felt so small i wondered if maybe we hadn't actually dissappeared. the sky in idaho went on for about 6 years in every direction, and it was so blue and clear it almost hurt to look at it, and for a minute it felt like i got to look god right in the eye...and that's not something i get to experience every day. there were times in nebraska that the fields stretched out as far as we could see and it was just earth and nothing else - no buildings, no parking lots or strip malls or neon signs - making it pretty easy to forget that we weren't the only people alive. and pretty much nothing on this planet can compare to driving through the rolling countryside of tennessee and kentucky with johnny cash and hank williams on the radio. i'm convinced that may be the closest to heaven that i'll ever get.

spending 3,000 miles (well, technically 6,000, since i had to fly all the way back) with america made me realize how lucky i am to live in such a beautiful country...not to mention how lucky i am to be able to just take off on a random 4 day road trip. i also got to spend a whole entire day in portland (not enough, i know, but at least i wasn't just driving by it in a uhaul), which i fell completely and utterly head over heels in love with. i'd been there before a couple of times, but it's been a while, so it was like seeing it for the very first time. because of the clouds that day, i never did get to see mount hood or mount st. helens (although kate swears they are there), but i guess i can make do with the mountains i saw on our way to portland. so. the moral of the story is: if anyone ever asks you to drive across the country for any reason, pack your bags and GO. even if you don't get to see the world's biggest ball of twine (which we did not, sad face).

life is a highway...i'm taking it from here to portland!

i don't know about you, but i have ALWAYS wanted to drive across the country. the idea of spending 5 days in a car, going from sea to shining sea pretty much makes me giddy with excitement - and there aren't a whole lot of things that can do that to me. so a friend of mine is moving across country and over dinner last week, she and i were talking about how fun it would be if we could do the drive together and see some places we've both never been to before. at first it was just a joke, but when she said, no, you really should come with me, it occurred to me that there was really nothing standing in my way. i mean, i have a dog, but outside of paying my relatively low rent and a few standard bills every month, i haven't had the kind of freedom that i have now since i was in college. i've never seen most of the states out west and my boss was perfectly fine with me taking a few days off, so i really couldn't think of a reason why i shouldn't go. we are leaving on thursday. i am going to need a LOT of music and a LOT of snacks (because as much as i love driving and road trips and being in the car in general, i HATE eating crap fast food for days on end). i am also going to need a LOT of valium to get on an airplane to fly 3,000 BACK across the country. that part i am not looking forward to. but it's a new year and i have a new lease on life and i'm not going to let my fears stop me from doing things that i want to do. so. look out, corn palace...i'll be seeing you soon. first stop is nashville...kate and i are convinced we'll be "discovered" before we have a chance to get out of town. well...maybe kate is convinced of that.