virginia is for winos

once again i found myself out in the hills of virginia this weekend, indulging myself in two of my favorite activities: drinking wine and spending time with my best good friends. i l-o-v-e being within an hour of so many fantastic wineries, and apparently, so do my friends, because this has become a montly activity with us, especially now that the weather is warmer. we've tried a handful of vineyards but this time decided to go back to one we've already tried (that i discovered, thank you very much), called notavita, a winery that specializes in pairing wine with music (it's run by a husband/wife team that both have music backgrounds and clearly a love of all things vino). the first time i went a few months ago, we were blown away by the view (the tasting room overlooks a small lake with some rolling hills in the background), the sweet love story that started the vineyard to begin with, and the fact that we could bring all the food we wanted, and sit at a gorgeous table in front of a floor to ceiling picture window and drink wine all day long. in case you were wondering, THIS IS WHAT LIFE IS ABOUT. couple this with the fact that the wines are actually really good, and you have a sunday (or monday in this case) afternoon made in heaven.

despite the hour one must spend in the car to get there (and really, what's an hour to three girls who haven't seen each other since the day before??), it is well worth the trip, and i have been promised that next time we will go to hillsborough, which we had to pass on the way to notavita and i think my mouth may have fallen open at how lovely and quaint it was. there are literally DOZENS of wineries we passed on the way out there and back and i think i have set myself a new goal for the summer to get to as many of them as i can. and i like setting goals i can knock out pretty easily. especially goals that involve good wine and good friends.

random encounters with strange men (with cellos)

one of my favorite things to do is peruse the local venue calendars, pick a totally random act, and go check out a show. sometimes it's a hit, sometimes it's a miss, but this week i felt like i won the lottery when i decided to get a ticket to see cellist ben sollee at u st music hall. since the cello is one of my favorite instruments, and since he was playing u st music hall (this is not the type of venue to book a classical cello act), i figured i was in for something that would definitely make me glad i left the house on a rainy wednesday night.

aside from the fantastic show he put on, the guy rode over 300 miles on his bike to get to dc from new york. like a bike that you pedal. with your feet. in between songs he talked about the reason why he had chosen to get to so many of his shows this way, and he surprisingly said it had nothing to do with being "green" or sustainability. he actually said he did it as a way to make himself slow down and (literally) enjoy the ride he was on. in a world where artists do a show in LA one day and new york the next, it was pretty interesting to hear that kind of perspective (because certainly, you are booking fewer shows when it takes you three days to get there). also, the things this guy can do with a cello left me at a loss for words - he played a totally solo set (except for one song where he brought up a girl who somehow could imitate the sound of a trumpet which sounds bizarre but was the damn coolest thing i've seen in a long time), and since i'm the mayor of munchkinland and can't ever see over the people in front of me, there were times where i could have sworn there were 2 or 3 other instruments up there with him. so not only does mr. sollee have a new fan, but this new fan has a new appreciation for the range of sound the cello can produce.

so. check him out. thank me later. and my fingers are crossed that my next random musical encounter is just as sweet.

new day, new art

i have officially decided that with every trip home, i will not come back without a new work of art. this is a tradition i look forward to continuing! (even though i had to stand next to the creepy gold mime guy for at least ten minutes while i decided which one i wanted from the artist)

just like starting over

ok, i have clearly forgotten that i even HAVE a blog. i guess this is what happens when no one reads it, and/or you don't take the time to actually write in it. so i am going to pretend that this whole thing is new to me, that anyone is interested in what i have to say, and try and dedicate a little more time and find some inspiration to pour into writing.


so it's been almost a year since my last entry. amazing how quickly it has gone by - although i have sworn to more than one person that 2011 went by faster than any other year in my life. i don't know how that happened. but here i am, another year older, only slightly wiser, and in reflecting on the last year, i should probably spend some time figuring out what i took away from it and what i learned. it was extremely challenging at times but also incredibly rewarding, and i can only hope that as i am getting older that i'm actually learning from my mistakes and not just repeating the same ones over and over again. or at the very least, i hope to make better mistakes in the future than i've made in the past. and i could probably also stand to not be as hard on myself for some of the mistakes that i have made...luckily i have some amazing friends who are not afraid to tell me when i have lost my mind and need to check myself, and who will also show up to trapeze shows in full support of what most people would probably tell me i am entirely too old to be doing. they will also sometimes let me drag them to random concerts they don't want to go to (since i lost my partner in crime to the city of new orleans), indulge me in taking care of my dog so i can take random trips whenever i feel like it (which is not as often as my wanderlust would like), are completely tolerant of my reaction to seeing kermit the frog on tv, and are overall just about the most supportive, completely wonderful group of people a girl could ask to surround herself with.


so. here's to more creative writing in the coming weeks and months, more time spent exploring the things i'm passionate about (drinking wine on my patio with my girlfriends totally counts as something i'm passionate about, right?), and to enjoying the journey life is taking me on. i haven't figured out what the destination is yet, and i don't always appreciate the ride as much as i probably should, but, like the words i saw spray painted on the wall of a cathedral last time i was in italy said...give more than you get and you will be blessed. and i think remembering how blessed i am is a pretty decent goal to start my new blog off with.

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.