posted by La Nina @ 10:39 AM   3 Comments

Rant over. Moving on.

I have endured challenges aplenty this summer, not least of which the four final projects due on the same day with just a little over a week to do them. Those last two days of the summer program are now a hazy period during which I subsisted on Red Bull and fear-induced adrenaline and absolutely no sleep at all.


I hear this movie is truly awful (check out the reviews on RottenTomatoes.com), yet it still seems like more fun than the allnighters I endured.

It seems a bit strange right now that my biggest challenge of the fall thus far seems to be how I'm going to juggle classes and the gym. I've just joined a martial arts studio where I'm learning a combination of kickboxing and kung fu (Awesome!) I kick ass. Sort of. If "kicking ass" involves "losing one's balance on a regular basis." Sometimes I can see the look in the instructor's eyes when I try to kick or punch or stand up straight without wobbling. It's like he knows he has Inspector Clouseau on his hands but since I'm paying to be there he must continue to placate me. Then he goes to the storage room and tries to strangle himself with a nine section chain whip. Okay I made that last part up. And I digress.


I expect to be doing this within two weeks. Three tops.

So anyway, it's not a matter of scheduling -- the schedule I can manage. My problem is that there's no showers in this place. My last kickboxing gym was like that too. Except that one was close to home, whereas this one is close to school. And lately I'm finding that I sweat. A lot. It's really gross. No seriously. Stay away from me if you want to live.

Today I handled it by bringing a ton of deodorant, baby powder, and disposable wipe things. That worked for everything except my hair. I also realized that I should bring a change of clothes. I hear that usually helps. But once I do that on a regular basis I'm still gonna have icky hair. Unless I find a solution soon, I'm gonna look awful enough to scare small children.

At least I'll have the skills to be able to fight off the lynch mob when they come for me. I hope.

    posted by La Nina @ 8:07 PM   13 Comments

There were two types of big hair at the time: the If-Farrah-Fawcett-jammed-a-fork-into-an-electric-socket look or the Deanna Troi (aka "gather up the front of your hair, push forward, and seal with a barette"). Though I'm pretty sure that it's not just Jersey that's getting this shout out. Check out memory lane:


No amusing caption needed here.

I tended to vacillate between the two, though the former tended to be unsuccessful since my hair is woefully fine. My solution for that was replacing the word "hair" with "bangs" in the charming expression "The higher the hair, the closer to God." Pretty picture there.

I'd say that someday I'll put up my senior yearbook photo up here to illustrate my point, but you'd so know that I was lying, so I won't.

So what does my venture into early 90's Jersey hair have to do with anything? Well, apparently this sh*t seals charcoal onto paper. That makes me feel so much better about the grunge/goth semi-tree-hugging, pseudo-hippie persona I took on somewhere around the time that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came out. Oh, well. Too late now.

So my drawing teacher was trying to tell us in her lovely South African lilt the methods in which we could preserve our drawings (not that mine are anywhere near worth saving yet), and was trying to come up with the name of the least expensive method. "It's for your hair -- really strong," she said, gesticulating wildly. "Oh, Aquanet," I replied, as though anybody that hadn't heard of it was ridiculously behind the times. Seven women from Boston looked at me like I was speaking Swahili, but I was right. So yeah. Jersey Girl triumphs again.

(The obvious bad joke at this moment would mention something about my roots showing. I'm adult enought to admit that I'm in need of a hair appointment, but that's neither here nor there.)

After that, I headed straight to CVS to get me some of that Aquanet lovliness. But don't think that I'll be putting that stuff in my hair again. I'm a sophisticated woman now. But oh, the volume I get when I spray it on with my head tipped upside down...

Um, excuse me for a bit. I need to struggle with my inner adolescent right now.

    posted by La Nina @ 8:08 PM   4 Comments

RETURN - The piece of an L-shaped desk that is perpendicular to the main desk unit, which provides extra working or computer space. (from the FurnitureQuest.com Glossary)

So I've been absent for a while. Sorry. (I'm just as much apologizing to myself for slacking as I am to you, perhaps moreso.)

A lot's happened since that piece about the boxes in May. ("Duh!" The masses cry.) I'm now a Jersey Girl in Boston taking four art studio classes a week in preparation to start my interior design masters degree in the Fall. My man and I have found an apartment in a two family house in the Boston suburbs and are preparing for an August 1st move-in. (You can read all about the painting process we've gone through here.)

I currently live in a dorm and I hate everything about it, from the noise to the crowds to the 18 year-olds with no manners. I am old. I still get carded frequently but I am most definitely old. I knew it for certain when I called security on those little brats for waking me up at one in the morning.


In the dormitory, the lava lamp becomes objet d'art.

Re: the four art studio classes, I take back everything I've ever said prior to now about being busy and stressed. I had NO FLIPPING IDEA what either of those terms even meant before now. The last six weeks have proved to be one of the hardest challenges I've ever lived through. The homework is tremendous. Most nights I get about 4 hours of sleep, particularly when I first started. I am constantly covered in either paint, clay, charcoal, or sawdust and my weekly manicures are a thing of the past. Okay, so they are now bimonthly manicures. Wanna make something of it?


I now work with clay lots, but I still don't work with Patrick Swayze. Big bummer there.

I feel though, that this "hardest challenge" is of the type that reaps the biggest reward. I've met seven really nice, very talented and extremely hardworking women with whom I share my classes. I've got three great teachers from whom I've learned a lot. I've experienced improvement in my artwork like you wouldn't believe. And I've actually got a full portfolio! No wait, two portfolios! Certainly couldn't say that two months ago.

So now I'm back. I'm not going to write every day like I used to. My style may change. That's all groovy though. Change is good. I'm just glad I get to live through changes like this.

    posted by La Nina @ 9:57 AM   6 Comments

In addition to the 20+ boxes currently blocking my view of the loveseats -- don't cry for me, Argentina, those things are not very pretty and far from comfortable -- I've thrown out at least a dozen large garbage bags' worth of stuff. It's amazing the smorgasbord of completely useless bits and pieces one can accumulate in 5 years of living in one spot. Receipts for tarot reading sessions, MC Hammer pants, the dashboard to a Daewoo Nubira, a lock of Andy Warhol's hair, silly things like that. Thank goodness for storage closets, or else I would have been buried in my apartment ages ago.


Time for a fun and exciting game of "Where's Nina?" (or ¿Dónde está La Niña? in my name's native language)

One thing that this sense of displacement has given me is an even larger desire to finally see this move through to completion. (Odd how excitement can make time speed up and slow down at the same time without resulting in inertia. But I digress.) All I know is that I won't be able to rest until this is over, and I haven't even packed the bed yet.

    posted by La Nina @ 3:52 PM   8 Comments

Regarding her first audition for a Broadway musical:

"Finally my turn came. I gave my name -- no experience except American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I gave my sheet music to the accompanist, a faceless young man -- I was so terrified I didn't see a thing. Mr. Abbot called to me to move out to center stage. First he asked me to do the time step again -- which I could do, God knows, but my knees were shaking so badly I even had trouble with that. Then the dreaded song. I wanted to hang on to the piano, but that was out. I sang it, or talked and sang it, or did something with it. I got through it terribly without confidence or voice -- at the end I was told to leave my name with the stage manager, thanked for my trouble, and the next name was called. I knew I'd never hear from them. What an experience! It was like going to the chair."

...Bacall back then.

That's what I love about a good biography: getting a look behind the persona and really seeing the person. I hardly expected to read something like that from the woman who at the age of nineteen uttered the immortal line, "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow." Now that's acting.

    posted by La Nina @ 4:20 PM   3 Comments

I am now slowly crawling out of the hole. I'm ruining my manicure in the process, but so what?

    posted by La Nina @ 3:59 PM   1 Comments