I am guessing that anyone reading this knows me, and if you know me you know that I am by no means petite, even though I am a dancer. I have taking Reformer Pilates for a while now, trying to get strong, and hopefully slimmer. It has made a lot of changes in my body, even if it hasn’t been really been moving the scale all that much. One of the moves that has been kicking my butt is bridge. I have done this move on the ground, and it’s hard but doable. On the reformer it is even tougher, since your feet are on a bar that is two feet above your ass. After getting up there at all, which took several weeks for me, you push the moving platform out and then bring it back in. This is killer. After two months, I finally was able to do it. I still don’t have it mastered,but I can do it.

Today, Sarah, my teacher had a special surprise—bridges on the chair. The chair has this big movable pedal, and to do the bridge you lie in front of it and place your feet on this moving pedal. Then you bridge up, without letting the petal move. After you get in bridge pose, you can move the pedal up and down slightly “for fun,” Sarah explains. I look at her and laugh, yeah sure that is never going to happen. But I tried, knowing I was going to fail. I got in position, sucking my navel in like there was no tomorrow, pulling down those shoulders and keeping my neck long. Then something amazing happened. I did it! My ass was in the air, the pedal was stable, it was text book. Hell, I even moved the pedal up and down “for fun.” I did it four more times before my legs were shaking too much to move. I am so in awe that I did that. Of course I may not be able to stand tomorrow, who knows.

I tried to find a picture of the move, and couldn’t find one on the chair, so here is the pose:

and here is the Chair:

Yesterday, I sent a check out that cleared out the last of our credit card debts. This has been a long struggle for 10 years when our move to CA and bounced paychecks of Dan’s first employer of this coast caused us to live off credit cards for a while. Now we are starting the process of looking for a house. And I am both thrilled and terrified.

One of the main things that we will be looking for is a room that I can use as dance/photo studio. Currently our garage serves so many purposes it might as well be named Sybil. It houses our extra junk, includes Dan’s Museum of Video Game History, stored in boxes. The 4 Arcade machines, our full-size padded and felted poker table, my treadmill. With a couple minutes of conversion it can become a game room, a dance studio—with a line of mirrors that block off the arcade machines, or a photo studio—with full paper backdrop and studio lighting. Oh yeah, and most days, it also houses our PT Cruiser.

While the garage is useful in this way, with bigger shoots the garage just isn’t big enough. So we had to move to the living room. My dream is to have a room that can be set up all the time. And then Dan can have the garage.

So the past two weeks we have been concerned with Devon’s health. He has been vomiting and other less pleasant things. He got a trip to the vet on May 22th, which resulted in him needing to eat Barium and have Xrays taken while it worked his way through his system. He ended up with two medicines and special food. After 7 days, he seemed to be back together. And then yesterday, he started vomiting again. This morning I made a appointment with the vet. Right before I got him in the carrier, he vomited up a strip of plastic wrap. Problem solved? Not sure, he went to the vet and had blood taken, got more meds and more special food.

So in honor of Devon being under the weather, here is a picture that I took of him around Halloween. He is the only cat I have ever dressed up that didn’t struggle to get it off. He just laid their limply pretending his limbs didn’t work until I took it off. Isn’t he the cutest rooster?

I am going to cheat a little, because I wanted to post again today, but I am going tonight is Buffy Night (a few friends getting together and spread the genius of Joss Whedon is some newbies) and I am going to be down in Santa Cruz all day. So here is a picture I shot last weekend of Dan’s beloved Taylor T5. It is a beautiful guitar, in person, but it has been very hard to get pictures of. The dark blue grain tends to look dull and flat in photos. It took a lot of playing with lighting and settings to get this. Keep in mind that I learning on the fly here, so I think it’s good.

I have resisted blogging for a while, thinking that I didn’t have that much to say, and what I did have to say didn’t need to be plastered on the internet. My husband, Dan, however has been a blogging machine for quite some time now. But after poking around on some friends blogs, most notably family friend and incredible photographer, Ken Spencer, I realized that I could use a blog to help me with my own growth as an artist. Mainly

My parents are both extremely talented individuals in varied art forms, especially in the visual arts. Growing up they were extremely encouraging both my brother and myself, but it’s easy to get intimidated. Especially after a 5th grade art teacher gave me a C- on a drawing that I worked very hard on—which was much more detailed than the stick figures my friends got As and Bs on (bitter much?)—because he “expected more of me.” Later that year, that teacher was interviewed on the local news while buying the Vanessa Williams Playboy looking like a total perv, but I digress. After that I sort of kept to the performing arts, following my love for dance and theater.

After 9 years immersed in Rochester School of the Arts’ dance and drama programs (I started in 8th grade) and Ithaca Colleges’ TV Radio production classes, I entered the job market and failed epically. What do you mean there is no opening for radio drama writer/producer who can act and is a might fine dancer to boot. I did the resume spam thing, and kept looking for several months, while working a couple different jobs to bring in some cash.

When it came apparent that my chosen career might not exist right now, my dad started teaching me how to use Quark, Photoshop, and Freehand. Looking back, I am not exactly sure if I asked, or if he offered. And I don’t know if he had any idea that 15 years later I would be making my living using those skills he taught me a in couple of weeks. Now, I am a freelance graphic designer working on several magazine, but while I excel in print layout (hey my blog, I am allowed to brag), I have always regretted that I never developed my hand illustration skills. I try on occasion, seeing the image in my head with such clarity, but I never seemed to be able to translate to the page.

I also have developed a real love of photography, and have started learning it on my own. I have a very good camera, and a very patient cat, Devon, who is starring on the header right now.

So I am challenging myself to start blogging often (I would say daily, but let’s be realistic), and include an image of something that I have created in each post. That may be a drawing, a photo or if I am really busy, a sample of something I am working on. So my for my first image, I am placing a photo of Sarah Chelsey, my incredibly awesome pilates teacher. I took this photo and several others for the website I built for her.