Sunday, March 3, 2013

The Adventure that was February: music, curling, heartache, love, family, friends, stilt pants, stress and awesome

   That month....February, oh February you took me for quite the ride! The title doesn't even tell it all (but mostly I guess it kinda does).

   First off (I'm about to make myself sound like an idiot) when I changed the calendar at work from January to February, I was totally convinced that February was misspelled...where the hell did that "R" after the "B" come from? Does UPS know they misspelled it on their calendar? (this really happened by the way...I'm not so wet-brained anymore but sometimes I still think like one).

So here is my month summarized mostly in order.

Slight (ongoing) rawness in my heart:
   A relationship of sorts ending and the emotional stuff from that. New levels of awareness about myself and my patterns with men have been jogging around my head. Its good stuff and I appreciate the fact that I can be aware of these behaviors but it does add another layer of emo weirdness to my daily life while these new understandings emerge.

First project for my Action Heart Fashion business:
   My friend has hired me to make him stilting pants! When they're done, they'll kick all kinds of stilting ass!

 Here is one part of the stilt pant legs, mid-project



Hosting a musical Valentine's event:
   I put on an open mic style tribute to heartbreak on Valentine's day at a local venue here called the Honeymoon. It was titled "It's Not Me, It's You". Several people signed up and performed all kinds of songs about heartache. It was great and according to the feedback, a fun time was had by all!

Me and my lovely friend Kerrie at "It's not me, it's you"



Kicking music practice up several notches:
   A friend of mine wanted me to perform a duet with him at the V-Day event so I had to learn a new song. Also my band Skitnik was preparing for two gigs within less than a week of each other while adding three new songs to our set list. This meant added rehearsals and upping my personal practice by several hours per week.

A new tattoo:
   Recent developments in my life caused me to up the ante on my self-love stuff and I decided to make that commitment to myself permanent and pretty!

Not bad for stick and poke



New software learned at work...and I don't even have a desk job:
   I had to shift my hours a bit and come in super early while juggling extra tasks in my regular life. I also have little interest in learning the software so my motivation for it was pretty minimal, which makes it all that much harder to care about....the rest of my life is so much cooler than e-commerce.

Curling (yes, curling!) in Seattle:
   For several years my brother Sterling has hosted an event for his birthday entitled "Curling With Sterling". We bundle up and head out to the Granite Curling Club and curl our brains out for four hours with family and friends. This year we met up before hand at my cousin's house for food and family mingling, so much fun! I love my family and pretty much every opportunity we have to get together, we do. Even if that means driving several hours there and back in one day, we do it! It's what we do for each other and to spend time together.

Ready to sweep!



A day with my Hetero life-mate:
   My dear, amazing friend who I haven't seen in five and a half years was going to be visiting the area for derby business. She wasn't able to come up to Bellingham on her one free day here so I drove to SeaTac, picked her up and we spent the day doing almost nothing. It was awesome! It felt like there hadn't been hardly any space of time since we had last seen each other. One of the many reasons why I love this woman so much...with her, I can just be. Its natural, easy, loving, silly and relaxing. We had nothing really on the agenda and the lovely Pacific Northwest weather was doing just that..raining. So we just were. One thing we did need to do was find a photo booth, it's one of the things we do when we get together. In search of one we found something better...The Medal Master! This bad boy etches your picture onto a little charm! We made three of them, one for each of us and one for my mom.

Love this woman!



Skitnik's biggest show yet:
   We got to open for March Fourth Marching Band at the Wild Buffalo! (technically this happened on March 1st but it wrapped up this month just perfectly so I'm adding it in).  If you haven't seen or heard of M4, check them out, they're awesome!! The whole band was super excited and honored to get to open for such an amazing act! They're a high energy, fabulously costumed dance band with stilt-walking and dancing performers. They tour constantly and have been going strong for ten years! Oh and did I mention they eye candy?! There's a little something for everyone to gaze at in that band! And we got to open for them in front of a sold out crowd! How awesome is that? I got to cross something off of my "bucket list" that I didn't know was on there...it's amazing how wonderful life can be! The greatest part about it for me was the fact that I get be a part of such awesomeness and magic with six other amazing people collectively doing something that we love, working hard together to keep it going strong and to keep it something that we all enjoy, love and care about. Have I mentioned how much I love Skitnik?

Having fun and making people dance!



Took some down time:
   I don't do this often. In fact I'm pretty horrible at it. I quite often only get downtime after I have run myself so hard for so long that my body no longer gives me the choice. But this month, especially in the last week, I allowed myself to not do shit. And by that I mean sitting and watching a movie in the evening. Which I did on more than one occasion this month. That alone is almost completely unheard of for me. Tonight, I plan on doing it again (can you say Harry Potter marathon?). Today, my intention was to get an espresso to go at the Black Drop Coffeehouse but I ended up taking a seat in the sun and just sitting. I did take a couple pictures (I can't help myself), otherwise I just sat and stared and watched other people enjoy the sun, just sitting. Crazy!

Sitting. Just. Sitting.



Life is good. There is a lot going on and it's all pretty much an awesome adventure in experience and learning how to do all the stuff I love without losing my mind or making myself sick.

Stay tuned for my next adventure...what will it be?


Adventure tip:

In the magical land of Seattle there is a place called Miner's Landing. Whilst my Hetero Life-Mate and I were searching high and low for a photo booth to cram ourselves into that was open before 4pm we were directed to the arcade where, you guessed it, they have a photo booth. Two of them actually. However...they have something even better than a photo booth that we believe we were divinely lead to and that was the Medal Master!  If you're ever near Pike Place Market wander on down to Pier 57 and get your face etched onto a little charm!