Pretty well actually! Since I mentioned my Aerogarden in yesterday’s post, I figured that I would show it today—even though the picture itself isn’t great. I am stunned at how big my basil is getting. I love having it fresh, and I can barely keep up with using it, since the leaves will burn if it grows too high. I have been pinching off fresh leaves to have with mozzarella, tomatoes and balsamic vinegar. I have to finger out some other recipes to use it with.

My herb garden

So a lot has changed since that last post. Dan still isn’t wild about veggies, but he is a bit more open after some health issues. The biggest change though is the move to LA for Dan’s new job. This is the second time that we have uprooted for a new opportunity. 14 years ago we came to California from NYC. This time it’s been less traumatic for me, since I was already freelance, and with the advent of social media—twitter, facebook, and hell, blogs—I don’t feel as far away from my friends.

Since the move at the end of December, I have been working on getting the house to feel like it’s a home. And I have been nesting like crazy! There are still some areas of the house/garage that need refining—The kitchen isn’t as organized as I would like, and there are a ton of built ins that might be better utilized. But everything has a place right now, and the house is clean!

The garage has come along way, recently. Eventually, I will have my photo studio set up in there, so I am ready to shoot at any time. When we first moved in, I wasn’t quite sure that would happen. It’s quite a bit smaller than our last garage—but it’s the only place we saw that had one—so plus. We still had a bunch of boxes, a clothes rack and our old kitchen chairs on “my side” of the garage. I did a bit of purging, and installed a wall mounted coat rack for the closet spillovers, and now I can see the strobe light—so to speak. There is still a stack of boxes containing guitar magazines that need to be scanned, but that is a slow process. Dan agreed to release his guitar magazine collection, after I scan all of the music tab and the special articles. I am thrilled cause this will be so much less stuff we need to cart around. I have gotten a lot more sensitive to clutter, and I am really trying to let stuff go—and not bring stuff in to start with.

With this fresh start in a new city, I want to really focus on getting stronger—both in my physical body and in my work/art skills. I want to start taking photos everyday, and really feeling confident and comfortable. I haven’t spend enough time taking photos that “don’t matter”, so that when I was taking can’t miss images, I would be nervous and end up not getting the shot. I realizing that the only way to become the photographer that I want is to take lots and lots of photos. So I am challenging myself to post a new image everyday. So here is the first one, which goes along with a post about moving into a new home and nesting. This was taken after a rare, so they tell me, rain storm in LA. I loved the light and the look of the sky.

Our New House

(This is a real IM exchange with my husband)

Kat: so tonight for dinner, chicken and rice and grilled zucchini

Dan: two out of three ain’t bad. gonna grill on the panini?

Kat: you just have to try it, yep

Dan: has zucchini changed in some major way since the last time I tried it? Because I have never, ever liked zucchini.

Kat: when did you last try it?

Dan: cucumbers, sometimes I have talked myself into them. Zucchini smells bad to me and tastes bad to me. I still don’t even consider zucchini an option

Kat: try a small piece, if you don’t like it I won’t bug you again

Dan: you said that last time

Kat: then I won’t bug you til I forget and bug you

Dan: in Encyclopedia Amrich, zucchini is notable for being what Derek Smalls stuffed down his trousers and little else. “In a culinary context, zucchini is treated as a vegetable, which means it is usually cooked and presented as a savory dish or accompaniment. Botanically, however, the zucchini is an immature fruit, being the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower.” OMG

Kat: it makes great bread

Dan: I am not interested in eating swollen ovaries

Kat: you are such a baby!

Dan: just because I choose to research vegetables to understand them and perhaps make them MORE appealing does not mean I am a baby

Kat: you eat the flesh of animals, but are squemish about veggies

Dan: I recall my parents having fried zucchini and/or italian dishes with zucchini. Because the animals are tasty.  I will try it. Again.

Kat: that’s all I ask

Dan: and perhaps this time we will mark the date so it can be remembered as “the last time you tried this”

Kat: how come you have no memory of what I tell you, but food you remember?

Dan: Because your voice is melodious, and I get wooed by your siren’s call, but zucchini is traumatic and I weep

Kat: If I don’t think it is very tasty I won’t have you try it

Dan: wow, that’s as close to a guarantee. What is it supposed to taste like, besides hot, which is not a flavor but a sensation

Kat: squash

Dan: see, I hate squash smells too. I was actually thinking “well at least it’s not squash” — not kidding

Kat: It’s like a dense buttery cucumber

Dan: but cucumbers are interesting because, like carrots, they are crisp and light, and if you recall you actually got me eating raw carrots.

Kat: true

Dan: I don’t love them but I can eat them now and sometimes even CHOOSE to so we have raw carrots and lettuce….that’s inching its way toward a salad. If I can just get over the tomato issue.
dress it up with garbanzo beans (another Kat victory) and a few sprouts (which you don’t like) and maybe a little feta as a reward for eating a salad in the first place.

Kat: lol

Dan: so why fuck that up by grilling squashesque vegetables? but doesn’t it just make them hot and mushy?

Kat: Cause I like them and everything isn’t about you

Dan: lol—very little is about me but I’m just pointing out that you were on a path to progress, and this is a weird detour. sadly I find no recipes online that contian both the words “zucchini” and “tequila”

Kat: I can dip it in tequila for you

Dan: that’s a waste of good tequila

I have been trying to work with meditation, visualization and setting intention lately. Visualization I came to early in life, both through a wildly fruitful and well encouraged imagination, and through a couple of dance teachers who used visualization to manifest proper posture and movement. It really is amazing how much our mental images, or lack there of can effect you anatomy. Some of the images are so strong, I use them to this day: need to relax or getting a massage—images that you are made of soft, warm dough; want to walk like a ballet dancer—imagine two huge meat hooks hoisting you up under your ribcage, lifting you, but you shoulders are free and loose (avoid the should to ear look, which is never a good idea). I hurt my hip several weeks ago, and it will hurt to walk when I over do it, but if I image myself lifted from my center, not “sitting” in my hips, almost all the pain is gone.

The the beginning of this year, I decided that I was going to move from being a photo dabbler to photographer. I was going to be able to be someone who really knew how to use their camera, used the manual mode most —if not all the time, and got the shot on purpose, not by accident. During the month of February, I took two in person classes, two online classes, and set up 3 shooting days. I even got a set of two “proper” strobe lights off craig’s list. I feel 100% more confident, and know I have a ways to go.

I have also set an intention to fill out the Dangerous Curves rooster, and now have two new wonderful woman working with us—one of the a great trained dancer, which opens great creative doors for me!

Now it’s all about keeping the ball rolling as I enter into another heavier work period, so I don’t let all this progress be lost.

19 years ago today Dan and I transformed from good friends to a couple. It means that we have been together longer that we haven’t. We actually planned our wedding to be on the other side of the year on 9/9. But 3 is a magic number, for us in particular.

One of the things that you may not know about me is that my first Art Director credit was on a car magazine. When I was a fresh thing out of college, working at Harris Publications in NYC, I was responsible for the Consumer Digest car magazines. It was just me and an editor (striking similar to the work I do now) and we would put out 10 special guides a year. It was black and white mando with a glossy color cover—and was nothing but stats, stats, stats. I learned my way around a style sheet on those books, and actually I think much of my current speed was developed working on those titles. I was drowning in car info and photos, and aside from a few special proto-types, I could never tell one from another. I just don’t have the DNA that can look at a car and tell the make and model—Dan does, but we think it’s mainly a guys thing. I am thankful for the job for the experience and the editor helped us find our very trustworthy 1996 Geo Prizm (which is still running great over 10 years later). But I never developed a love for cars.

So why do I love the BBC’s Top Gear? It’s just brilliant—the hosts, the camera work, the challenges—all just brilliant. We just watched an episode tonight where one of the hosts raced a car across Japan, while the other two took a bullet train. So wonderful silly.

They are launching a US version of Top Gear soon, and it makes me want to cry.  Sure the American version of The Office didn’t suck the way I feared, but with Adam Carolla, Tanner Foust and Eric Stromer I don’t think there is any hope for it.

So I recommend checking out Top Gear on BBC America, or at least Youtube, and avoiding all other versions. It turns out that cars might actually be cool.

The last week of last year, I lost 1.5 TB of storage and backup when two drives kicked the bucket in a perment way.  Everything on the 500gb MyBook was backed up, since the drive had never been all that stable.  I kept work files from a handful of clients that are always asking for old files, since I hate having to dig through my DVD backups.  The 1TB Maxtor drive had all my video work files, all my photos and my entire iTunes library.  To say that Ihaven’t been all that diligent in backing up this data would be putting it mildly.  All of it is gone, gone, gone.  Dan tried, far longer than he should have, to revive the drives. But short of very expensive data recovery, it wasn’t worth it.

I am rebuilding my iTunes by copying files from my ipods, and redownloading from iTunes, which they should offer at anytime, but are making it seem like it’s a big favor.  I think more than half of the pictures that I lost are backed up.  The photos that I took for Dan’s christmas gift, a calendar of all his guitars, are gone.  But we still have the guitars, so they can be taken again. I lost countless pictures of Devon, and his adorable-ness will have to re-cataloged for historical import. But client photographs are back-up.  The video work files are gone, with no backup.  This includes a lot of Fast Times footage that was shot for a video that never came to be. All the DC videos are up loaded to Youtube, but the quality is shit. I am counting it as a lesson and moving on.

So now I start 2009 with new drives, and a healthly respect for the massive backup DVD collection that I have, and will continue to grow.  It seems right that I am getting this fresh start at the beginning of the year. I wish you all better back-up karma!

Last night was a milestone, of a sorts.  It was the last performance of the original three members of Dangerous Curves. Dangerous Curves was my brainchild, and I was able to draft two good friends, Rachelle and Kimzey into going along with my crazy idea.  The two of them helped me craft and refine the group, I pushed them both way out of there comfort zones: Kimzey is not a dancer, when she started and Shell is not a singer. And neither of them were really comfortable with the burlesque part. The group has an identity now and it is really due to the wonderful energy that they have both brought to the group.  Now Kimzey is going back to the corporate world, and something had to give in her busy schedule. We are sad to lose you, but you will always be a DC OG!

Bye, Roxie!

Several years ago, back in college, I was working at a small radio station in Rochester during my summer break.  While I was working, the station started playing a new canadian band called BareNaked Ladies.  I fell in love, hard.  I, in turn, infected my then boyfriend, now husband, with a love for this band.  He has finally returned the favor in a big way.

A while ago—back when I was remembering to post—I posted a link to Skullcrusher Mountain by Jonathan Coulton.  Since that time we have bought his whole catalog, and I have spent hours working to it.  His songs just click for me in a way that hasn’t happened in a while.  He is geeky, quirky, funny, and profoundly musical. The guitar work and harmonies are truly delightful. Please go to site and listen to some of his stuff: my current favorites are When You Go, Mr. Fancy Pants, I Crush Everything, and DNA. Hopefully you will be as hooked as I am.

We are going to see him at the Great American Music Hall in January, I can’t wait.

This morning I am getting ready to head out to Black Oak Casino for a Fast Times gig. I am happy cause I won’t be taking photos or video, I will just be able to enjoy myself– this is especially good since I am just starting to see the other side of cold/flu thing that has knocked me out.