tryin to make a livin in a rhinestone world

I've been thinking about dance a lot lately. Now that I'm almost out of my current job and into the great abyss that is joblessness, I'm thinking about my future. About the kind of life I want to have. About how to achieve that life and, whats more, how to actually be *good* in that life.

I want to dance.

I want to dance and create dances and I want to actually be good at it.

I have some projects coming up (as in I have two projects within the next week) that I'm nervous aren't going to go over too well. But I think thats okay. I think I'm going to just go with it, let it happen, and then use any failure as a barometer of where I'm at and where I need to go. That's healthy, right? Instead of getting obsessed about my failure and the possibility of failure that I freeze up and am unable to do anything? Well, we'll see.

This is also helping: http://abundance-blog.marelisa-online.com/2008/11/17/outliers-10000-hours-for-success/

Basically if I do it enough, actually get into the studio and take class and just *do it* no matter how poorly I am dancing now, I *have* to get better. If I can get my 10,000 hours in, I'll be set!

Just a tiny thought that I've been tossing around in my head about TW and forgive me if its not all together there. But.

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I finally have a favorite opera!!!!

I know i know- you're thinking- but chimosa. really. what does that even matter? but this is huge huge huge news!! Theres this girl in my life- a classic voice major and who has aspired, for a long time now, to be a professional opera singer- who is basically my little sis, pretty much we were raised together. now i completely support her 100 percent but the problem has been, i just *cant* get into opera. Ive tried so hard, going to the Met, seeing all sorts of performances and always, without fail, I wind up falling asleep. usually somewhere in the second/third act. i even fell asleep during Faust which, I have been told, is impossible as its the most action packed opera around. I fell asleep in Aida which it turns out there were elephants in. Elephants!! (if people were pulling my leg with that one I'll never know).

And the sad thing is, I turned her on to ballet. she loves dance after we sat down and watched some of my collection- swan lake and sleeping beauty and gay swan lake... swans and princesses and matthew bourne- oh my!! but for the life of me I couldn't get through an opera. Until tonight I watched PBS's "great performances" with renee flemming in "Thais" and wow. holy shit, wow. it was amazing. stunning. i loved it so much!

and im so relieved! maybe this means theres hope for me yet!

Holy shit yall

I just finished Moby Dick!!! All of it. Like all of Moby freakin Dick!!!




Holy shit, that was a long fuckin book.

I can't have Torchwood.... but I have a kitten. He has big bug eyes so he kinda looks like an alien *squints eyes* yep, he looks like an alien

Saw the Star Trek movie yesterday after I pretty much swore I wouldn't and It. Was. Awesome!!

I loved the plot and the characters and all that but even more? I loved the random people popping up all over the place. (Harold flies the ship?? But I thought he was going to White Castle! Eva Rodriguez, what are you doing in space? You were accepted into ABC the best dance company in America! And Dr. Cameron, with a man *not* Chase? For shame...)

Also, on Sunday I was in Bushwick and saw a bus with a Torchwood 3 ad on it- I was in complete shock! And then my roomie came home and said she saw the same thing in Manhattan. I guess TW is really getting around...

For those who are interested, I *did* hand in notice to my job \o/ My last day is July 17 and after that who knows what my life will bring because I also got laid off from my part time job. Basically? I went from 2 jobs to none. But I? I will survive. I'm really looking forward to my life as a free lady. I've been working on a new dance project with some friends that I'm hoping will come into fruition about Nov/Decish. So that's something to look forward to...

In other news- I am deeply upset about the loss of Pina Bausch. I can't believe she died!! I saw her in December and she was in great shape! I'm sort of angry that the NYTimes chose **ALASTAIR MACAULAY** to write her obit when he didn't even *like* her work. I think he was fair in the end, but it turned into one last grumbling complaint about her work rather then anything about Pina herself and her remarkable body of powerful work. It just seemed of poor taste to me...

ETA: It turns out there's another obit in the Times and Macaulay's is an "appraisal" but it still seems odd to me that he would write this for the same day as the death announcement. Oh, Alastair, how you confound me once again...


In honor of Pina:


Look! It's a whale!

Pina's powerful Rite of Spring

I've never seen this one before but I *love this*! The clip says it's "Masurca Fogo (Extrait)"

QAF QUESTION!!

I'm trying to figure out what kind of elevator Brian has to his loft

Any ideas?

I've never been in one like it before...

I signed up for the cliche bingo thing, so here's my card:

http://pics.livejournal.com/rheanna27/pic/000356hg

hopefully itll kick my ass into gear to write stuff

Here are the latest batch of kittens my roomie and I fostered. They were more of a challenge, because not only have we never fostered multiple kittens simultaneously, we also had to foster their mother (a feral cat we were advised to Never Touch and Never Let Out of The Cage) with them. When they got to us their eyes were barely open and they didn’t walk so much as drag themselves around on their bellies. Now look at them!!!!

Click here and then search cats, Manhattan They are the last four that come up- Micah, Mohinder, Sylar, and Hiro! (Sorry it wont let me link directly to their profiles but I promise the absolutely adorable kitten pics are worth the extra effort)

Our little Heroes!

They are apparently going to be on TV, continuing a tradition started by another foster baby of ours, Bandit. What can I say? We raise future TV stars.

One thing that does have me anxious, though, is apparently their FIV (HIV for cats) test came up “slightly positive.” Though they will have to get retested in 6 months to be sure, I’m really praying they are all right. Aside from obvious concern to their well being, FIV cats can be incredibly hard to place in a home and I want my babies to have a good life with a good family. They are so well mannered and beautiful; they deserve it! (Side note: since the kittens might have FIV now we have to take out cats in to make sure it didn’t get passed to them, though I feel like the likelihood of that is slim- apparently it gets passed, aside from mother to babies, through really vicious biting. Like the kind of biting when they really hardcore fight and not social play-biting like our cats did with the kittens. But, obviously I’m praying our cats are okay, as well)

So. I'm finally ready to quit my job. I don't know how much you remember about what I've been getting up to but a few weeks before I graduated college my boss from when I was an intern randomly called me up and offered me a position with the company (we publish a plethora of dance magazines, and a few for cheerleaders). It was an amazing opportunity, especially right out of college, and I made it a year which was my goal. But, I *can't* work in an office setting anymore. Its just not working for me.

A couple weeks ago I got a part time job as a cocktail waitress at this bar. Its a great job, for not too great of tips, and I don;t know how long I'll be able to live off the money I make there, but, I'm so much happier there then my full time job because I'm on my feet and I'm constantly meeting and talking to people and it feels good to serve people and see their appreciation. And with this job I'll have the time to get back into shape and hopefully dance and choreograph, because I've been feeling my creative spirit shriveling up lately and its ready to come back to life, ya know?

Anyway, its time, I can't take much more of my job, enough of the pieces have fallen into place and now? I have to give notice. Problem is, this is the first job I've ever had to quit. All the other places I've worked have closed (I've closed two separate businesses down. I'm strangely proud of my record) and I never *had* to do this before, let alone in a formal workplace

So tell me, wise flist, what do I do? How do I go about giving notice?

Especially when I know it will *devastate* my current boss and I know she has no idea that this is coming. What exactly is the procedure with this stuff? What have your experiences been?

Please, I need help, and I really respect your ideas and opinions

And now for something completely different…

If you were disturbed by yesterday’s ficletish thing, today’s drabble, answering the challenge over at tw100 is completely disturbia-free!

Title: Charmless Man
Author: chimosa
Characters: Jack, Gwen, Ianto
Challenge: Blur Song Titles
Rating: PG
Summary: Something is missing and needs to be found

“Someone,” Jack intoned, striking a pose of intense gravity. “Has stolen my charm.”
“Your what?”
“My charm, my sparkle, the pizzazz that puts the twinkle in my eye and the irresistible in my--”
“Okay,” Gwen interrupted, intercepting his gesticulating hand as it moved to somewhere south of his waist. “Well, when was the last time you saw your… charm?”
“I know I had it last week with that murder witness… Ianto! How was I on our date Friday night?”
Ianto smirked. “Very charming.”
“I thought so. Okay, forget your current cases, people; this takes precedence. Find my charm. Now.”

A Torchwood drabblish/ficletish thing that is proof positive I need to stop watching so much Law and Order: SVU…

Title: Fractured
Author: chimosa
Characters: Ianto, Gwen, Jack
Rating: Dark
Spoilers: None

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I’ve been reading fic for ten years now and, considering that’s encapsulating my entire high school and college years, I’d say I’ve been reading fic for a significant portion of my life. What I’ve noticed is that I tend to have a very specific fandom MO. I enter into a fandom usually with absolutely no knowledge of the show/movie/characters/plot, read enough fic that I can get a general gist of it (or beg someone to tell me what its all about), go into a sort of fandom honeymoon phase where I read voraciously anything I can get my little cyber hands on. Then, I start to become more discerning as I grow comfortable that I have a sense of what these characters would and would not do (and cringe away from anything I Now Know is COMPLETELY WRONG OMG with all my hard-earned fandom know-how.) Eventually, I’ll find that one fic that just speaks to me on some level, usually the characters just feel right and I’ll read it over. And over and over and over again. Then, I’ll pretty much be done with that fandom and ready to move on because a part of me knows I’m never going to be as satisfied with the fandom as I am with that one fic.

I guess it’s my One True Fic, my OTF.

So, since I recently found my most recent OTF (and have been reading it every night, over and over, going on my third week now) I wanted to look back, and make a list compiling all my OTFs in all the fandoms I can remember that I’ve sifted through over the years (in chronological order, no less!)

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I hope you’ll get some good reads out of this list, and I hope you all haven’t already read everything on here.

Dear fandoms,
I love you all greatly.
Thanks for the memories.
Hugs and kisses,
chimosa

I need advice and I was hoping someone on my flist (hint hint miriel could help me out:

I’m thinking I want to start to swim for exercise, but I’ve never swum in a public pool with lanes and stuff. It really really intimidates me because there seem to be all kinds of rules I don’t know. What do I need to know before I go so that I don’t mess up/ piss people off/ make enemies.

If you swim, what kinds of things piss you off so I’ll know to avoid them? What are the swimming faux pas?

Second meme of the day, this time the five things are from mofic

1. Breasts 2. Florida 3. College (I associate you so much with college
that I missed that you graduated!) 4. Choreography 5. Friends (you seem
to have so many and they seem to have such adventures)

1. Breasts

HA!!!!!!! Ohhhhhhh man. Me and my breasts. Well, it’s been a decade-long love affair, me and my breasts, ever since I started to develop in fifth grade. They helped me be the first girl to have a boyfriend when middle school started and I knew no one, and they let me reel in a senior when I was a freshman in high school. I guess they help me transition… they’ve served as great conversation starters… they were even my facebook pic for a long time. It’s not that they are huge or anything, I just take pride in knowing how to work them to make them look like it if I need them to. But, yeah, I love my boobs very very much and have for a while. When I lost weight they left me for a little while, but now they’re back and I’m falling in love all over again and realizing how crazy I was to think it was okay for them to go away in the first place.

2. Florida

Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m a snob. When people ask where I’m from, I always say Miami and never Florida because in my mind Miami and Florida are very different places. People have gotten mad at me (I’ve even lost friends cuz of it), but I will dispute it to my last, Miami is not a part of Florida. Miami is North Havana. Culturally, Miami is different, politically we are closer to a South American country, even the driving laws are different in Miami (making a right hand turn from the left lane is always acceptable, it’s never too late to make a U-turn, and never signal because the element of surprise is crucial when changing lanes) Growing up I wanted nothing more than to get out of Miami because without a car, Miami is a terrible place to live. But now that I’m out I get ridiculously nostalgic about my hometown.

3. College

College was a blast; I’m so fortunate to have gone where I did. It completely changed the course of my life, helped me find my love of dance, exposed me to people and subjects and worlds I never even realized was out there. But most of all, at college I learned *how* to learn so that even now I crave and seek and learn stuff that I never would have thought I’d care to learn about before (Science?? Me?? Never!! Except, apparently, sometimes...) Ah, man, I could talk about my college experience for ever.

4. Choreographing

Or “One of those things I never would have found without college”

There’s something about dance making that thrills me in a way that I haven’t found in other mediums. I stress out over it and go back and forth over the validity of what I want to make and express and wonder if it actually needs to be made. I’ll back away from it for months at a time. But there always comes that time when I start to see bodies moving in my mind’s eye and get the itch to see if what I’m thinking is even humanly possible and most times it’s not! But the pursuit leads to such fun and interesting avenues that it’s worth it to try. And now that I’m out of school, I’m finding I have to navigate the hard truth that what I’ve spent time and money creating with friends may never see stagelights and it hurts, but I’m getting to accept it. Right now, I’ve decided, I’m trying to find my choreographic interests and voice, and that’s okay. This is the time to do it. I mean, Mark Morris spent something like five years in New York before he actually choreographed something here…

5. Friends

It probably stems from being an only child, but it’s been like a mission all my life to make and keep friends. Which is pretty funny because I’m so quiet and withdrawn on LJ… but, yeah, in RL I’m very particular about people who are my friends. I like people who make me laugh, which may seem like something off a Hallmark card, but its true. I like people who are funny and if I find someone funny I tend to hook on to them and keep them in some sphere of mine, or other. I like to know enough people that if suddenly, whether I’m here or back home, I’m swept with the urge to spend time around people, I can whip out my phone and arrange time with *someone*. I’ve maintained friendships with people from pre-school, elementary school, middle school, high school… people I’ve met at parties and people that have dated people I’ve known and decided to keep in touch with. I dunno, I just like to know people.

Leave a comment and I'll tell you five things I associate with you. And then you post about those five things, and invite others to have you tell them what you associate with them!

From fleegull:

1 – Cats
Oh wow, I’m a cat lady at 22!! What am I doing with my life??

My roomie and I got our first cat last year and kept him illegally in our dorm room and ever since we’ve been devoted parents. Man, all the times the fire alarms went off cuz of all the pot heads in our house and we’d have to run and hide Misha underneath the bed as security went from door to door checking for a fire… or all the times we had to redo the construction paper on the windows because we could see little kitten eyes peeking out as we walked by… good times. And now that we foster kittens and antisocial cats for the animal shelter, our home lives have become daily analysis of how they’re doing, how they’re developing, who’s playing with whom and all that kind of thing. It’s consuming, but right out of school at a mediocre job and not much money? It’s a welcome distraction.

2 - roommates (I've never had them).

Ah, the joys and mysteries of roommates. Like marriage, you get to adopt all their neurosis, but with none of the sex. Or at least that’s the rule with my roomies because that time when Adam and Tom hooked up and then Tom tried to forget about it and Adam got upset and began the great Kitchen Cold War of ’07? Yeah, not fun. There’s always some drama going on when you have roommates and when you’re roommates are dancers there’s always some eating disorder drama, to boot. But, since I grew up an only child, it’s like I’m finally getting to negotiate the sibling world so really I love it.

3 – auditions

Ha.

Hahaha.
Ha.

Auditions. Those evil things. I feel like I have spent my entire life preparing for auditions and going on auditions and going to this audition to prepare for more auditions and none of it actually mattered. Now that I’m out of school, in New York, at the place I’ve dreamed of my entire life I can’t make myself do any more. Which is kind of depressing when it has been something that’s been all consuming since I was ten and had my first one, but now I see them for the soul-sapping things they are. I dunno, maybe I’m just going through a phase and hopefully will snap out of it and get back to that audition happy place but for now no. Just no.

4 – Cooking

…my newest pursuit. Coming out of dorm life and into a world where I can peruse menus, plan a grocery list, spend a chill evening measuring and simmering and chopping with House in the background… anyway, yeah, I’m really enjoying this cooking thing. Especially now that I’m reading “The China Study” and have decided to try a more vegetarian-esque diet cooking has become a new frontier. Its like writing a research paper, I love having this challenge with diet restrictions and equipment restrictions (I don’t have fancy stuff like slow cookers and food processors), doing the hours of research finding potentially useful bits and pieces, purchasing and preparing for the final, last-minute execution. It’s like I’m a student again only instead of hour of sleep deprivation pounding out a thirty page paper, I get to eat something yummy and possibly have left-overs!

5 - how the Che shirt went over with the baby!

Well, I waited too long to give my brother (who’s two years old) his Che shirt I bought him at some street vendor and he, as babies do, had the audacity to grow too big for it! Which was really upsetting, so I decided to put it on a teddy bear and give it to him for Christmas. So I got a tan teddy bear and at Build-a-Bear bought Che Bear some camouflage pants and a beret with a star on it that matches the beret Che is wearing on the shirt and I got it all finished and ready to give to him… but then I decided he was too young to appreciate it so I bought him a book instead, and kept Che Bear to myself. He currently lives on my desk at work and watches over everything that happens at the copy desk and makes sure there’s no oppression of the working people…

Title: Paper Cranes
Characters/Pairing: Ianto/Jack, Tosh
Rating: Mild
Spoilers: Exit Wounds, Lost Souls
AN: I apologize- fandom didn’t need another moody Exit Wounds fic but I wrote it anyways


After Toshiko died, Ianto took over her workstation. It wasn't something he was comfortable with, but it needed to be done and Ianto liked to think, silk waistcoats aside, he was a practical man.

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Although the U.S. House of Representatives passed their version of the Economic Recovery Package on January 28 by a vote of 244 to 188 which successfully included $50 million in supplemental grants funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) (I'm not sure when this was written up, but last I heard the bill won't even include that much for NEA), now the Senate, during their consideration of the economic recovery bill, approved an egregious amendment offered by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK). The Coburn amendment stated that "None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, art center, and highway beautification project."

Unfortunately, the amendment passed by a wide vote margin of 73-24, and surprisingly included support from many high profile Senators including Senator Chuck Schumer.

If the Coburn amendment language is included in the final conference version of this legislation, many arts groups will be prevented from receiving economic recovery funds from any portion of this specific stimulus bill. It is clear that there is still much work to be done in the Senate and in the media about the role that nonprofit arts organizations and artists play in the nation's economy and workforce.

Here's a super super super easy way to let your state Senators know this is something you care about

http://capwiz.com/artsusa/issues/alert/?alertid=12612041

It'll take at most two minutes of your time but could possible make a world of difference.

Theatres and arts centers are in danger in America as it is- by denying them much needed stimulus money and lumping them in with casinos and zoos, we run the risk of loosing an important aspect of this country's cultural heritage! Many arts centers are non-profit and run the risk of closing if they don't get some much needed goverment assisstance!

For those that might be interested, the New York TImes is taking questions from readers for Joss Whedon

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/02/08/arts/television/08shat.html#postComment