Acrobatic Boobies

NYC. A city of "experience". Millions flock here to experience something. Theatre, food, culture, drugs, alcohol, excess, poverty and beauty. Constantly changing and moving. Even writing about NYC at all in a way seems cliche. Every writer and their mother talks about New York. All the theatre kids flock here to "make it". Everyone who grew up in a small town feeling like they didn't belong finds their niche in New York or dreams of finding it there at some point. So much to do and see and a constantly changing and growing landscape with an unceasing pace make this the perfect city to experience all sorts of things. (Hence the delay in writing about it, there was a whole lot of stuff crammed into three days and I wanted to include some pictures for this one. Maybe I can learn how to budget some time in the morning or something to get this done in the future. Damn you complete lack of self-discipline. Damn you.)

I'm quite honestly a bit intimidated of New York. Could I live here? Sure. I'm adaptable and pretty savvy about most things so I think I could totally "handle" living there. Every time previous to this trip I've come to NYC thinking "It's such a cool city but I don't think I'd want to live there." This trip I may have changed my mind. This time I thought it could be great to live there just for a year or two to really get the feel of the city and understand it...at least to some degree. Still, I wonder if I could keep up with the pace. Where would I find my "break" time? Where would I get the quiet moments? I know they exist here but they're pretty tough to find when you're just on a quick visit. Maybe one day in the future though a post will be titled "The Big Move". Until then, long weekends will have to do.

I arrived in New York as the sun was heading down and met up with Cathy's friend Cole (who's apartment we graciously crashed at) and we all went out to grab dinner at a vegetarian/vegan Thai place called Red Bamboo which was pretty tasty. We took a brief stop at a gay bar called "Boots and Spurs" (maybe?) where Cathy and Keri touched a footlong in a mesh hammock (I do have pictures but I don't think I'm allowed to post those) then we jetted off to meet Danielle (Cathy's bestie) and her boy Joe (both of whom have amazingly thick Bostonian accents which I for one find adorable...not the word most Bostonians would probably want attributed to their accent but trust I mean it with best intentions...it's a sexy accent and it makes me like you more so talk bean town to me). Our destination was "The Floating Kabarette" at a spot called the Galapagos Art Space.

The space is beautiful. My lame iPhone photos can't do anything justice but I'll include a couple.

I want a space like this.

There are two levels, the main level has 6 islands shooting off of a main aisle where patrons and performers can walk to get to their seats and the stage. The main stage is a proscenium and has a very minimalist charm to it. The stereotypical red curtain and velvet ropes separate the stage from the audience and our enigmatic host Bastard Keith paraded and entertained. Keith was a great blend of camp and talent and was a great MC for the show. The show opened with the performers from "Suspended Cirque" who had a great routine from hanging silks. The aerialists were just mindblowing, in particular the male members of the company. The movements being combos of sexuality, power and grace. It was truly inspiring (and makes you feel like the weakest piece of shit that ever walked the earth when you see them roll themselves up to the ceiling in the silks with their arms).

Here we have the ladies opening act. There was a third member who was performing on stage but these guys had our focus clearly. Core strength + 1000

Here are the menfolk: one singing a version of "Mad World" the other blowing my mind.

HOW DO YOU DO THIS?

The other "main act" so to speak was Jenny Rocha and her Painted Ladies who combined hardcore tap dancing (which I wouldn't have really believed existed until seeing them perform), Burlesque and a playful theatricality into what ended up being some amazing performances which I would categorize as the most turned on by women I've ever been .

This may be the first time I've had to "think about baseball"

with ladies.

If you made Stomp sexy and took off all their clothes and added pasties, you would have the above photo.

Interspersed between these acts were some great burlesque performers (who ranged from a pretty hot take on Alice in Wonderland to a pretty terrifying take on BDSM with lots of violent pelvic outbursts and flailing).

The group's agreed upon favorite.

There was a singer who had a decent voice who “remade” songs into a bit dirtier versions and it was fine and decent filler but nothing terribly exciting. We also were treated to the intensely weird but equally intriguing comedic stylings of Manchego the rail thin, poofy haired yet balding comedian who adeptly dealt with a Jersey Shore Douche Bag (JSDB) and ended up in a gas mask and tighty whities snapping a whip at a confused but well mannered chubby gay jewish guy tied to a chair.

There are lots of moments in my life, this being one of them, where I think to myself "I grew up in Harlan, Kentucky and now here I am watching a skinny caricature of a man wearing a gas mask snapping a whip at a tied up gay Jew while sipping on bourbon and coke...how did I get here?" I'm always pretty happy to be in those places.

After the show ended we all went out to some bars in NYC and ended up at a pretty cool spot called 2A. It was a low key and chill spot until the inevitable bar fight broke out and a dude punched a window and spidered it out. After some police drama and lots of drunken yelling the guy was arrested and taken off. We had a pretty great time overall though and we stayed out until around 4:30am then made our way back to Washington Heights to crash.

Night 1 officially closes as the sun starts to rise on the city.

New York, New York 10185

I will always remember that zip code from some commercial (which I can't remember what it was about) from my childhood. They would always say "Mail it in to something something something New York, New York one oh one eight five.

The purpose of this post is twofold.

1) Acknowledge that I made it 2 count em 2 whole days without a break in posting from my original start date and to comment on the fact that it's lame there's not post date feature on here so I can hide my shortcomings.

and

2) Acknowledge that I have 3 days to write up about from my trip to NYC. I have some photos to post and so these next few posts may take a while to backlog.

Hopefully by Thursday...and then I'll keep writing for what would be today's post and then Wednesdays and Thursdays as I'll still be behind. Don't count on anything terribly lengthy for Tue/Wed/Thur you vultures.

Wolftrap!

Having lived in DC for nearly two years something that has always been on my to do list has been to go see something at Wolftrap. Sadly most of the time it's so far off my radar that I don't see that something I would enjoy is there until it has already cleared out and then a lot of the other things they have there aren't super exciting.

This week a Facebook friend posted a coupon code to see The NSO Perform songs from Disney while movie clips and artwork played on the big screen. I thought this was the perfect chance to see something on the cheapish side while still actually being into it. (I less than 3 Disney, most notably the little mermaid and that's what they opened the show with so I had to go.) I bought two tickets for me and Chris and surprised him with a picnic (which I've been told is the best way to enjoy anything at Wolftrap.)

The venue is beautiful and I really want to go back maybe just to walk around and explore a bit more. It was a perfect summer's eve (but seriously folks) with amazing weather and just a great atmosphere of little kids dressed in Disney gear and adults reliving some childhood moments with a classy edge of symphony. The NSO was amazing as always, the vocalists were on point, the artwork and movie clips were fun to watch and the picnic was delicious. Wolftrap gets a gold star for fun and low key date night.

Overall it was a fantastic night with great music and a really fun mood. There is only one little thing I have to be pissy about.

I love kids. I often give kids more of a benefit of the doubt than most. Having been a teacher for a huge age range of kids and some with developmental issues I recognize that in public you almost never know the full story of what's going on and why a kid is acting up. I give parents a really long leash when it comes to keeping kids quiet and respectful. That being said, I also can spot when it's absolutely the parent 's fault that the kids are being brats and for that I have zero tolerance. Kids will be kids but adults should be adults. If your kid is wrapping himslf in blanket and fighting with your other kids on top of the people in front of you it is YOUR resposibility to do the following things.

1) Stop the kids
2) Chastise the kids
3) Apologize to the people they disturbed

This is your job. You are an adult. We are adults. If your kids interrupt other adults we don't expect the kids to stand up and say:

"Oh, I'm ever so sorry sir, I was excitedly playing with my friend here and we got so wrapped up in our tomfoolery that we lost track of our personal space and ended up on your blanket. We won't let it happen again."

What we DO expect though is for you to say "Ian! Stop fighting with Michael and scoot back up here. You're disturbing those people." Then you need to turn to those people and say "I'm really sorry."

At this point I'd be totally fine. In fact I'd probably still think "awww kids are cute and rambunixouus." But when you are a German au pair and you keep screaming

"IAN!!! MICHAEL!!! Schtop fighting and get back up here! Zer are ozha peeple he-yah! You are sho laud!"

And then go back to texting on your blackberry without acknowledging that the brood of the Aryan nation that you're babysitting for has rolled over the bag of food I brought and spilled water all over the place...that's when I get pissed.

Apparently ice dagger stares don't translate the language barrier because even when glaring full force at each child and said Frauline no one ever offered up an acknowledgemlent let alone and apology.

Oh well. Kids will be kids and German ladies will be bitches. Wolf trap still kicks ass.

(PS: if you're still wondering, when I say I less than 3 something: <3)

I promise that's just massage oil...

As a massage therapist there are a couple of things that we deal with now and then that are unique to our field. People fart on us. When you relax during a massage, everything relaxes. We have to deal with skeezeballs who still think massage is code for hand job. We listen to relaxing Enya music all damn day which trust me is not relaxing after the 40th hour of handbells and oriental wind instruments. Some massage clients have skin tags. Lots and lots of skin tags. You never know how close a back pimple is to popping if you don't know it's there in the first place. We stand on our feet all day bending and leaning and wearing on our bodies and we can't take sick days when we're just a little under the weather because we lose our income source. No clients. No money.

So unless a therapist is contagious we usually try and power through a cough or cold like a champ to keep the income flow. These are not fun days. When you go to work kinda sick or kinda hungover think of how awful it feels sitting at your desk blowing your nose and coughing. Now imagine being up and moving all the time changing the center of gravity of your congested head constantly while trying to create a relaxing and tranquil space for clients as snot and mucus build up in every oraface of your face and your esophagus slowly turns to sand paper. This is a cold for a therapist.

My cold started with a stuffy nose, until I started working on clients and leaning my head forward...then suddenly without warning it turned to a gushing runny nose. Turns out my shirt sleeve is as absorbent as a sham-wow. A runny nose in the treatment room is pretty easy to deal with though. You get a towel, keep it on your shoulder and bam, problem solved. The worst thing is having to cough during a massage. A cough is the most abrupt noise your body can make and certainly not conducive to relaxing or falling asleep especially with how abrupt it is. So now, I'm stuck in a treatment room with a naked man, Enya, a snotty wet sleeve and towel and an unyielding need to cough.

If you've ever tried to suppress a cough you'll know what this feels like. (I don't know why you'd EVER suppress a cough in the first place but I digress.). Every pore on your body starts to sweat. Your lips purse together and your throat clamps up. That tickle in the back of your throat becomes unbearable. As you try and breathe through your nose both of them stop up entirely forcing you to take in air through your already parched esophagus. Each breath a pull of the trigger in the Russian roulette of cough. You struggle to take in the minimum amount of air necessary to maintain basic functions and keep the flow of the massage going without letting on to the fact that you're in the most uncomfortable position you've ever been in internally. Doing your best to keep the client unaware of the awfulness brewing inside you.

You start to think, maybe I can just get some sort of baby cough out and that would help...yeah I can totally do a "controlled cough" and it won't be too loud. I'll just turn into my arm and it won't even register. You realize that would never happen as your body makes a gagging motion and you feel like liquid might burst from every opening in your face. Even as you think the need to cough has passed you realize that it hasn't and it won't until you do it. You look at the clock to see if you can make it the remainder of the time.

You've still got 30 minutes left.

What felt like 45 minutes was actually 5 and you're almost no closer to finishing. A couple of throat convulsions eek out of you which sound somewhere between a hiccup/cough/sneeze but they're quiet enough you can convince yourself the client didn't hear and thought the vibration was just part of the massage. Finally after finishing up one area of the body you decide you can't take it and excuse yourself to "take care of this tickle in my throat without disturbing you" and you leave the treatment room to cough once and blow your nose. All of that and it takes one cough.

I encourage you to try and stifle a cough for as long as you can just to see what this feels like because you can't imagine the horror without experiencing it yourself. Then imagine trying to hide the fact that you're supressing a cough while performing both a powerful and graceful motor skill.

Massage therapists have some interesting work hazards. Did I mention we get farted on. A lot.

Dear Hiring Manager,

Apparently that's what they teach the kids to put in their cover letters these days.

If you've ever interviewed for a job before I'm sure you've thought (like myself) "Man I wish I was on the other side of the table. It must be so much easier."

Well it's not. It sucks. Hiring has turned out to be one of my least favorite activities as a manager ever. You have to wade through hundreds of resumes to find qualified candidates. Most of these resumes look like this:

Person's name
Person's address
Contact info (maybe)

Objective: To find a job that blah blah blah utilizing my skills to the blah blah challenging work environment blah blah opportunity for growth.
(Resume tip #1: Don't just copy and paste the objective statement from the template you're "learning from". It's boring and the "hiring manager" you're talking to has read the same damn thing about 3000 times this afternoon and doesn't give a shit if you want a chance to utilize your skills.)

Work History

Totally unrelated job #1
I did things that don't qualify me for anything other than performing the job listed above but I'm going to draw out every tiny detail of said position to make it look like I did more than I actually did and make each task so general and vague that it could be applied to any job ever but not really.

Completely unusable experience #2
I really learned a lot about myself in this position because I didn't do anything other than click around on Facebook and write personal emails on company time

Volunteer experience
I saved the manatees in Oklahoma which clearly qualifies me for this receptionist job you're posting for. I'm amazing and selfless. (Resume tip #2 if you don't have a lot of work experience just tacking on times when you did something for free doesn't necessarily impress us unless of course it has something to do with the job we're hiring for. I'm glad the kids of McDonald house learned to finger paint with you but that's not going to instill in me the confidence that you can handle yourself on the phone.)

Related skills
Nothing I can actually use in your position. WPM >30 (Resume tip #3: If you aren't a good typist don't highlight it in your "skills" section. It's not a skill to have to look at the keyboard to type.)

References available. (Read: my mom and best friend who both think I'd be great for this.)

(Overall hiring tips #4-9 your cover letter needs to be more than "see attached" or "Please consider me for this position". Don't email 15 craigslist email addresses at the same time. Don't spell words wrong. You have a spellcheck on your computer. The word will turn red if it is wrong. I don't know what else it could do to help you. Don't forget how to use an apostrophe. Know the difference between there/their/they're, your/you're/yore (doubt you'd use the last version but maybe if you're applying for a Ren fest gig) and to/too/two. Lastly, if you don't REALLY want the job then DON'T APPLY FOR IT. You are wasting both of our time and when I ask you "Why do you want to work here?" and you stumble through a response like "well it's umm a cool place and umm I think could use my experience to benefit the spa and learn valuable tools to pursue my...OH MY GOD SHUT UP. I can't take it. If your answer is "I really just need a job and while I don't think this is my carer I think I could do this and I can commit to it for at least a couple of months while I continue to look for what I actually want to do with my life" I'd probably hire you on the spot. Well, as long as your resume was a bit more put together than the bulk of the ones that come through the inbox.)

So while looking for work sucks, looking for someone to work for you sucks too. I would love to never have to do either of these things again but I'm pretty sure both are in my future. Hopefully it gets easier each time.

Don't correct me if you know otherwise.

It's Always in the Last Place You Look

Thanks for the advice asshole.

Of course it's in the last place you look. I'm not going to find something I lost and then say "Welp, found em...but I just wanna go check that other spot just to be sure."

Today's experience is losing your keys.

There are few worse feelings than that sudden realization that you don't have something important. Some of the worst things include: wallet, keys, phone, and ID. (I have at one point or another lost all of these things.)

Today it was my keys. After what had been one of the longest days at work to date I had the joy of discovering that my keys were no where to be found. First you check the normal places. Messenger bag: no. The drawer where I almost always end up leaving my keys in the spa: nope. The drawers in all the other rooms just in case I wandered in there randomly: nothing. The admin office on the 2nd floor where I often borrow other people's desks to do work since I don't have a desk of my own: Nothing. My locker and workout clothes from the morning: Empty. Frantic rechecks of all of the things because I've convinced myself that clearly I wasn't thorough enough in my initial search because I just wasn't desperate enough yet: Still no keys.

Now on my keychain I have the following:

My bike key (To the bike locked up outside in an area that I wouldn't want to leave a bike overnight.)

My house key (Who needs that?)

My car key (Which costs around $100 to duplicate...know how I know that? I've lost it before)

A bottle opener (The least of my worries)

Needles to say by this point I'm a bit more than nervous. That feeling in the pit of your stomach and that voice in the back of your brain that starts to gnaw at you saying:

"You're not going to find them. They're actually gone this time. You're going to have to go through the giant pain in the ass to replace all of these keys and in the meantime figure out how to live your life with most of the things you use daily locked away. Suck on that. Oh and PS you're hungry but you're too pissed off now to eat. How's that for the cap off to the day loser?"

Maybe that's just what my voices say but I'd guess you hear similar things.

After scouring room after room at work and being unable to find them for around an hour I called the other gym location I had been at that morning for a corporate meeting to see if anyone had brought them to lost and found. The front desk girl told me there was nothing there. I hung up. I went to recheck all the spots I'd already looked using my bike light to illuminate the dark corners in which said keys could have hidden shrouded from the ambient light of my two initial searches to no avail. I called her again and told her I didn't want to be "that guy" but could she go check the room I had been in to see if she could find them. The room is in construction mode so there wouldn't be much reason for anyone to go in there to do anything that day so who could have found my keys to bring them to lost and found? Sweetly she did just that but still nothing. Unable to trust the kind-hearted young lady on the other end of the phone I decided I had to walk up the street (about 8 blocks) to the other gym. As I drug myself up the 3 flights of stairs scanning through the areas I had walked in earlier in case they were somewhere between the entrance and the room, I held on to that tiny little piece of hope that in a trembling and high pitched voice said:

"They're up there. They really are. Your night will not end like this. The girl just didn't know where to look. You know where you were sitting. You can find these. They will be there. I promise."

I got to the room. Pulled open the door and started pushing my way through piles of unassembled Pilates Reformer machines until finally landing eyes on my precious precious keys.

It's like the feeling when you stand up too fast and all the blood rushes away from your head but without making you want to pass out. That voice which had progressively gotten louder all evening telling me I was screwed and to suck it had finally been shut up and the weak little prepubescent voice of hope finally got to be heard.

After celebrating with the front desk staff a bit I made my way back to the spa to gather my things to head out. As I strapped on my helmet, hooked my reflector on my messenger back, tucked away my wallet and phone carefully in predetermined pockets to avoid the chance I might not know where they were and readying myself for the door I realized that the bike light that I had been carrying through the streets (to see if my keys had fallen out of my pocket en route to my morning meeting) was no where to be found.

I had left it in the Pilates room.

That sweet front desk girl now knows what an idiot I actually am and I'm sure doubts my abilities not only as a manager but as a functioning human being. Sometimes I don't blame her.

The (re)Beginning!

Well that sucked.

I, as predicted, did not keep up with blogging about my life. I've never been able to keep a journal and I can barely keep my laundry pile manageable. ("Manageable" translates to "not all over my floor".) I am clearly quite a success at this "being an adult" thing.

But after a bit of a blogging kick in the pants from other friends who all have topical things to discuss (cooking, crafting, non-monogomy, etc.) I realized why I could never keep up with a journalslashblog. Writing about my life with no "point" has no "goal". It has no "completion" and there's the lack of motivation when you have nothing terribly interesting to update with. ("I went to work and it sucked and I had a client and they were nice and I had some coffee before coming home to play Tiny Tower" just doesn't hold a reader's interest.)

So I wracked my brain for something topical I could motivate myself to write on. I love cooking but that market is cornered and I'm certainly not good enough to get much material past my failed abortions of the culinary variety. I just started biking the city but I'm not fanatical enough to write a blog about it. I'm gay so what about GLBT focused blog? Meh. I manage a spa, how about a massage therapy or spa based blog about upcoming trends in the spa world. (It makes me bored just reading the sentence.)

So what do I write about?

Being a travel writer was the closest label I could find that I really connected with but sadly due to time constraints and (more clearly) financial constraints, travel is not an activity I do as much as I'd like (and certainly not enough to fuel a blog). I've just got so much stuff going on. So many things to experience.

...Ding.

From henceforward, my humble corner of the blogosphere will be deemed an "Experience Blog". I plan on updating each day with some sort of "experience" from the day. I do some cool shit. I also do some excruciatingly boring shit too but so does everybody. Now, with renewed fervor and an extremely vague objective statement, I return to Ain't No Hummus in Harlan: The Experience Blog.

Posts will range in length and content from a word to a thesis. (It's clear I ramble...and use parenthesis more than someone with a strong grasp of grammar, language and sentence structure should.)

My hope is use my blog to showcase that even though I'm currently geographically sedentary that I still have all sorts of things going on, I just have to be conscious and aware of them. Riding a bike down a city street for the first time and really having the time to look around and see the beauty of a city you thought you knew. Getting hit by a car on your bike while riding down a city street for the first time and seeing that even rich and skinny white girls who drive Minis can be bitches...maybe especially rich and skinny white girls who drive Minis can be bitches. Seeing an ex at a party. Eating a disgusting meal at a fancy restaurant. Trying something new. Going somewhere new. Meeting someone new. Trying something again. Going somewhere again. Seeing someone again. "Experience blog" is perfect for me because it's a "direction" but it's the absolute vaguest direction you can imagine but one everyone can relate to. We all do shit. I'm gonna write about it.

God I hope something interesting happens tomorrow.

The Cover Letter I Want to Write

Strother Gaines
2345 Underemployed Road
Washington, DC 20009
(968)-273-5263

Dear Current Job Market,

You suck and I hate you.

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,
--Strother Gaines--

*taps on the glass* Hello?

Well.

Been a while.

There's nothing like having something you don't want to think about, let alone write about, happen to you to keep you from updating a blog. I guess I should have come back earlier but after I finally got to the point where I could talk about things my life got pretty busy and I hardly had the energy to ever sit down and really focus on this. Today is the first day since Bandit's death really that I've had the time, energy and focus to sit down and write here.

I assume most people who read this blog are my friends and already know about Bandit's (my English Bulldog) death. I found out on April 20th. He had been dead for 6 days before I found out. My parents told me via letter. He was hit by a train while my father was walking him off of his leash. I could do a huge post about how all of this made me feel and what a horrible time it had been after which I am only now truly starting to move past in the past month or so but I don't think that's productive for me or for anyone else. I will merely say that I will always miss Bandit, he was the best dog I could have ever asked for (even in the short period of time I got to be with him) and I will never forget the happiness he brought me and so many others.

With that dealt with, let's move on to happier things. I couldn't very well update this without touching on what had stopped me dead in my tracks but as I said, dwelling shan't do anything productive.

What has this summer been like for me? A learning experience certainly. I'm sure if I sat here and really wrote out what's been going on this would be an obnoxiously long post (as most of my posts are) so I'll try and bullet point. (If you'd rather get all this summarized in photos, go check out my facebook page, they're all over the place there.)

* Quit working at the Spy Museum after a good run and many a good friend made.
* Started working at "Segs in the City" a Segway tour company in DC. It's as nerdy and as fun as you might think. It was for a while about 20hr/wk but I now only give 3 tours in the evenings on M,T,W.
* Taught over 175 kids in 2 week sessions with Harmonia School in Oakton, VA. A pain in the ass commute but worth it for the paycheck. I will continue on with him as a PT contract teacher. If I can cobble together 20 hours worth of classes at their going hourly rate, I will be making an adequate amount of money to survive fairly comfortably here in DC. I currently have 10 scheduled and am hoping to pull in more with private lessons and extra classes. I directed "The Jungle Book" "The Little Mermaid" "The Wizard of Oz" "The Big Bad Musical" and an Improv troupe. Overall a pretty successful summer with a lot of very happy students and parents. Hopefully that happiness will translate into private lessons.
* Explored many national parks with Nick and Jeremy, expanding my cultural consciousness and helping Nick nerd out with his National Park Passport collection. Spent a great weekend camping in the Shenandoah Mountains with them as well. A great camping experience with two of my favorite people.
* Watched my best friend get married to a beautiful woman in Louisville. It was an honor to be in the wedding party and I'm nothing but ecstatic for the both of them. My two whitest white bread friends together in holy matrimony...What's not to love? They can tell me of their weekends spent studying and doing sudoku on the couch just to throw my life into sharp contrast. It's pretty amazing.
* Saw a FANTASTIC Decemberists Concert with Cathy.
* Had NUMEROUS car problems and cannot wait until I can afford payments on a new car of ANY sort.
* Had a fantastic 4th of July party. 320 degrees of fireworks (it'd be 360 but there is one spot where you couldn't really see the big ones) on the top of the roof. Around 35 of my good friends in DC and tons and tons of food. It was an AMAZING time. (For most of these exploits you can find some photos on facebook...for this one there are none as of now because most of them are totally inappropriate to share online...yeesh.)
* Went to my first gay pride celebration. It was ok. I need to try some other ones, apparently DC's pride is sorta "meh" in the scheme of things. I'd be inclined to concur.
* Spent many hours and many evenings with many wonderful people. I have never felt so socially connected in any geographic area since I graduated from Centre. I have so many amazing friends in so many different social circles. I am so thankful for all of them and for the many amazing moments I've had with them all over the past summer. I couldn't detail all of them here and do them any justice. With Harmonia combined with Segway tours I often worked 12.5 hour days during the week but what free time I have been lucky enough to have has often been filled with great people, conversations and experiences. These seemingly uneventful times have made this a truly great summer. While my life may seem like it's a little at a stand still right now, I am taking all of the things I'm experiencing, all the people I'm meeting and all of the time I've spent and learning a ton about myself and other people. I can't think of a better way to spend my time right now. (Maybe working at a high paying job that I love, but that's still a ways away I believe.)

There's a nice little ramble. You can thank Julie & Julia (one of the many great movies I've seen this summer) for re-inspiring me to blog again. Meryl Streep officially is one of my favorite actresses now. What a phenom. Now that things are back in some form of normalcy, as much as I can ever hope for at least, I'd like to resume more frequent updates. As per the norm though, no promises.

I miss you friend.

Trite and Emotional

I always hate when a blog becomes some sort of sounding post for "Oh God things are so hard" or "My life, oh my life" and those sort of things. I feel like it's grasping for sympathy and feels forced.

On the other hand, writing things out seems to be a nice purge for me. With that in mind, please stop reading unless you're ready for some self-pity.

I'm having a difficult time reigning in my emotions. I've always known that I'm a "feeler" that I lead with my heart and that I put myself out there all the time, often without regard for what "could" happen. I know that I prefer to live like this because it is the only way I truly feel like I'll experience life. (How cliche.) I often scoff at those people who are totally emotionally unaware and I don't understand what kind of joy or happiness they can find when they close themselves off to fully experiencing things.

However.

The downside to putting your heart out there so freely is that it can get hurt a lot easier than if you kept it even a little guarded. My heart beats outside of my chest and I keep maybe a layer of saran wrap around it as protection. Obviously this doesn't defend from much. I invest deeply and I invest quickly in everything. I attribute part of this to my artsy-fartsy background. As an actor/musician/artist/whatever you're trained to feel as much as you can. To take pride in the fact that your emotions are your canvas and your ability to relate/feel/experience/see/love puts you in a different position than many people. I know I still believe this is a good thing. I love being who I am. I love being open. I love being intense. I love going for things even when I know it very well could fail. I love loving. There is nothing more that I want than to find someone that I can love and who will love me back deeply, passionately and without reservation. It just gets a little harder each time when you put yourself out there and it doesn't work like you might hope. I thought that this all might get a bit easier as I got used to the process but it still hurts. My processing time has gotten a bit better and I think I've been better equipped to logically think things through but logic has never been one of my strong points and even when it makes a very valid point, my heart overrules it. I can't say that I truly believe that the people who close themselves off and guard their heart so deeply are better off than I, because I certainly don't, but I can say that it might not be the worst thing in the world to try and protect yourself from feeling this kind of hurt unnecessarily.

Two new ice cream flavors you should try "Imagine Whirled Peace" and "Mission to Marzipan"
New Wine you should try "Red Guitar: Navarra Grape" and "Louis Jadot: Beaujolais-Villages"