(no subject)
A few days ago, a colleague called me a rock star, which feels especially good right now both because I've been enjoying Anna Zabo's Twisted Wishes romance trilogy (pansexuality, aromaticism, bondage, trans hero, mouthy performers, snarky PR manager, art, music, pie, very good coffee, and more [*]) and because there are miles of learning curve to scale at the job. Very appealing vistas; trying to pace myself accordingly -- hence romance novels instead of Big Data slides on this day of rest, with some champagne from an event I emceed last month, and artichoke-anchovy carciuga left over from an impromptu dinner I hosted a week ago.
[* The author has some free short stories on their site. I just giggled my way through the one about the rival neurobiologists.]
The friends who came over had suggested going out, but I didn't have a good feeling about that, both because of Delta and because Saturday nights in Nashville tend to bring too many hipsters, bachelorettes, and other species of extroverts into not enough square feet for my preferred level of cope. Turned out to be a brilliant call on my part -- traffic around my neighborhood was hosed for hours, what with 70,000 people attempting to see Garth Brooks at Nissan Stadium and the thunderstorms that forced the organizers to eventually call the night off. More important, I had everything I needed at home to improvise a nice pescatarian meal -- marcona almonds and Indonesian spiced cashews, fish ball soup, tomato salad, mushroom-carrot bao, and eggplant stir-fried with tofu. I didn't have time to make the ginger marshmallow fluff I'd hoped to offer with cinnamon graham crackers and chocolate (aka fancy s'mores), but that was for the best, since our lovely guests brought with them two kinds of ice cream mochi, along with seaweed salad, cocktail fixings, a sheaf of homegrown lavender, and three heads of garlic, also from their garden. I seriously like being an adult.
Of course, being an adult also means calculating which platters to keep spinning and which to let crash amid competing demands and recurring waves of disappointment, rage, and frustration. I think I'm getting a mite better at recognizing (lack of) capacity -- it hasn't stopped me from going, Oooh! The dragon dance team is recruiting! Ooooh! Little Debbie sculpture contest! Oooh! Toaster oven in a freebie pile! but sleep is winning out over FOMO more often these days. As some of you know, I signed a contract in January 2020 to perform in a professional immersive theater production that would have taken place in June 2020. Things got as far as a photo shoot, but when the venue published its 2021-22 schedule earlier this summer, the show was no longer listed, and while that isn't in any way a surprise, nor would I want or expect the artistic or logistical teams to have decided otherwise, it had been a thrill to be chosen, and something with a lot of potential, both creatively and socially, so yeah, I've been in a bit of mourning over that.
And, although I do better on my own more than many, I've lost ground over the past sixteen months from not singing regularly with others and not hitting the Y every day and it's going to take time to rebuild my voice and get back into form. My current Ailey class pass is about to run out, and it's just as well, because I do not have the focus right now for Zoom Zumba or any other online sweat session. Paddleboarding's on hold until later this month, because I pulled a back muscle last week and because traffic will be impossible this weekend and next. (Ironically, I received invites from two newer friends to go paddling within the past two weeks.) It's fine, but I'm massively annoyed about having let things fall out of shape, but also cutting myself slack, because look, we're dealing with coups and viruses and literal crowds of white supremacist fascist knucklehead grifters, and even Energizer-bunny rockstar me is going to have patches of "fuck off, I need ten naps and a pint of stracciatella before I can deal with any more of y'all."
I have been cracking half-baked Oz jokes for the past month, in part because that's the name of the venue I would have been performing at, and also because my zip code is in the Emerald City "LifeMode Group" of a recent study. The description isn't wrong. (h/t NashToday)
Anyhow, it's time to figure out where I put the library books that are due in six days, sort through yesterday's tomatoes, and get going on today's Spanish homework + freelance pages. Many of my friends were at English Country Dance Week up in Pinewoods (Massachusetts) the past seven days, and as with so many other things right now, I'm a muddle of envy and nostalgia and thank-god-I'm-not-there when I think about them allemande-ing and waltzing without me. (Pinewoods changed my life, for the better -- I'll write more about that some other time -- but I wouldn't be there even in a normal year, because I am unapologetically a housecat and there are dance/music vacations that don't involve outhouses and ticks and camper chores. Just sayin.') And I'd like to be better at playing tunes from Barnes by the time I fully rejoin the ECD universe. Speaking of more things to work on. After today's nap.) This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/177646.html.
[* The author has some free short stories on their site. I just giggled my way through the one about the rival neurobiologists.]
The friends who came over had suggested going out, but I didn't have a good feeling about that, both because of Delta and because Saturday nights in Nashville tend to bring too many hipsters, bachelorettes, and other species of extroverts into not enough square feet for my preferred level of cope. Turned out to be a brilliant call on my part -- traffic around my neighborhood was hosed for hours, what with 70,000 people attempting to see Garth Brooks at Nissan Stadium and the thunderstorms that forced the organizers to eventually call the night off. More important, I had everything I needed at home to improvise a nice pescatarian meal -- marcona almonds and Indonesian spiced cashews, fish ball soup, tomato salad, mushroom-carrot bao, and eggplant stir-fried with tofu. I didn't have time to make the ginger marshmallow fluff I'd hoped to offer with cinnamon graham crackers and chocolate (aka fancy s'mores), but that was for the best, since our lovely guests brought with them two kinds of ice cream mochi, along with seaweed salad, cocktail fixings, a sheaf of homegrown lavender, and three heads of garlic, also from their garden. I seriously like being an adult.
Of course, being an adult also means calculating which platters to keep spinning and which to let crash amid competing demands and recurring waves of disappointment, rage, and frustration. I think I'm getting a mite better at recognizing (lack of) capacity -- it hasn't stopped me from going, Oooh! The dragon dance team is recruiting! Ooooh! Little Debbie sculpture contest! Oooh! Toaster oven in a freebie pile! but sleep is winning out over FOMO more often these days. As some of you know, I signed a contract in January 2020 to perform in a professional immersive theater production that would have taken place in June 2020. Things got as far as a photo shoot, but when the venue published its 2021-22 schedule earlier this summer, the show was no longer listed, and while that isn't in any way a surprise, nor would I want or expect the artistic or logistical teams to have decided otherwise, it had been a thrill to be chosen, and something with a lot of potential, both creatively and socially, so yeah, I've been in a bit of mourning over that.
And, although I do better on my own more than many, I've lost ground over the past sixteen months from not singing regularly with others and not hitting the Y every day and it's going to take time to rebuild my voice and get back into form. My current Ailey class pass is about to run out, and it's just as well, because I do not have the focus right now for Zoom Zumba or any other online sweat session. Paddleboarding's on hold until later this month, because I pulled a back muscle last week and because traffic will be impossible this weekend and next. (Ironically, I received invites from two newer friends to go paddling within the past two weeks.) It's fine, but I'm massively annoyed about having let things fall out of shape, but also cutting myself slack, because look, we're dealing with coups and viruses and literal crowds of white supremacist fascist knucklehead grifters, and even Energizer-bunny rockstar me is going to have patches of "fuck off, I need ten naps and a pint of stracciatella before I can deal with any more of y'all."
I have been cracking half-baked Oz jokes for the past month, in part because that's the name of the venue I would have been performing at, and also because my zip code is in the Emerald City "LifeMode Group" of a recent study. The description isn't wrong. (h/t NashToday)
Anyhow, it's time to figure out where I put the library books that are due in six days, sort through yesterday's tomatoes, and get going on today's Spanish homework + freelance pages. Many of my friends were at English Country Dance Week up in Pinewoods (Massachusetts) the past seven days, and as with so many other things right now, I'm a muddle of envy and nostalgia and thank-god-I'm-not-there when I think about them allemande-ing and waltzing without me. (Pinewoods changed my life, for the better -- I'll write more about that some other time -- but I wouldn't be there even in a normal year, because I am unapologetically a housecat and there are dance/music vacations that don't involve outhouses and ticks and camper chores. Just sayin.') And I'd like to be better at playing tunes from Barnes by the time I fully rejoin the ECD universe. Speaking of more things to work on. After today's nap.) This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/177646.html.