super snazzypants website!

okay - so i need a little help here. deborah is building me a website. she is rad. she is amazing. she has sent me her first versions/concepts and it's like, holy crap, she totally understood the pictures in my brain and turned them into reality! go deborah! :)

so if you have some free time, please go to this link: arwen's site

From there, take a look at "11/17/07 Front Page Mocks" and you will see all the ideas that deborah created for a front page for my website. Whatever template/background is chosen for the front page will also be the background for the rest of the site, so it's kinda important. I've already heard some strong opinions from dave and i have a few of my own, but i'd be curious to see what y'all think of some of the choices. if you don't want to post a comment (this is most of you. :) either that, or i just talk to myself here in blogspace...), just send me an e-mail. :)

also check out her mock-ups of what happens when you mouseover (this is for when you pick 'acting' or 'music' or 'aerial' to move on to those specific pages) - they look so cool!

and then finally, if you still have time, look at the top link under '11/19/07 Acting Page Mocks" and you can see the concept of what sort of info, pics and what not this little fancy site will be showcasing.

yay deborah!

perspective.

so - we've been doing a lot of cleaning of the house over this very nice and oh-so-needed long holiday weekend. one of my projects during this time has been to attack the shelving unit that is housing all of our photo albums and framed photos and loose photos and boxed photos and, etc, etc photos. it was a dusty, nasty, unorganized mess. I haven't really been dealing with them since college (although i do make nice, fancy photo journals whenever we take a vacation), but otherwise, they've been going in this huge poo pile. did i mention the dust? no, really. it's disgusting.

well. wow. as of yesterday, dave and i have been together for 10 1/2 years. and let me tell you, it shows. ;) our little sparkling 22 and 23 year old faces are so earnest and excited and confused and overwhelmed and the rest of us is generally wrapped in black leather jackets and black nail polish. dave is without facial hair. my hair is longer and blonder. and yet after spending hours organizing pictures from countless gigs and halloweens and birthdays and camping trips and family events and hiking trips and holidays of all kinds and friends that have faded away and friends who have grown dearer and weddings and texas and just tons of random shit, i started to notice that at the core, we mostly have the same ridiculous tarty smiles and goofy grins and absolute relish of life throughout it all. and dammit, that is good. that is mighty good.

:)

so, i feel deeply thankful for all that.

i feel thankful for our friends and family.
i feel thankful for country music that makes me weep when i'm pre-menstrual. and even sometimes when i'm not. ;)
i feel thankful for full moons.
i feel thankful for three part harmony vocal melodies.
i feel thankful for one, two, three, four birdies.
i feel thankful for the piano that i don't play enough. but i feel thankful for the thought of it.
i feel thankful for happy japanese things with big googly eyes.
i feel thankful for all the people donating their time to help save the wildlife and help clean up in the aftermath of this oil spill.
i feel thankful for games.
i feel thankful for patty griffin.
i feel thankful for 'dancing with the stars'
i feel thankful for sewing machines.
i feel thankful for bicycles.
i feel so thankful for the sheer number of talented, smart, creative, inspiring, incredible people we have in our lives.
i feel thankful for long hikes, redwood trees, dogs, sleep, books, good food....
um, this could go on forever and now that i've typed sleep, i suddenly want some....so to close,
i feel thankful that i can choose to go to sleep now in my comfy bed, in my happy apartment, in the challenging, yet so worth it city of san francisco with my challenging, yet so worth it tart of 10 1/2 years.

our yearly ritual...

so our weekend camping excursion with Mia and Dave in Big Basin was just lovely. we've been doing a camping trip with them in the fall for either 5 or 6 years running... this was our first group trip to Big Basin. i highly recommend it. what wonderful redwoods... (although honestly, i've never met a redwood i didn't like....) our campsite was actually situated in a little ring of them... which could not have been more perfect. i won't even talk about how dave forgot the tent and how cold it was and how....oh. oops! silly me.

ANYway - Big Basin = good stuff. you should check it out. :)

we ate lots of good camping food, went on two excellent hikes - one long, one short, were out of the city from fri - sun, played cards, had good chats, ate more food, played riddle games, had more chats, ate even MORE food, had lots of hot cocoa, had lots of homemade cookies, enjoyed the peace and quiet of the great outdoors, listened to mia tell us how she can't tell jokes and then proceeded to tell lots of great jokes, made fires, and ate more food and had more chats. all under the canopy of the majestic redwoods. not a bad weekend!

now why does it have to be monday tomorrow????

tired tired tired tired all the time.

I'm really, really tired. And not just today. It seems like every day for the past week or two (or three) I wake up tired. The amount of sleep does not matter - it could be 9 straight hours of zonked out bliss, and yet I still wake up tired. and it's mentally tired and physically tired. An all-over body tired. And it's getting annoying. And it's getting really old. And it's hard for me to believe that it's because of one stupid hour from turning back the clock.

Ok - confession time - I am so addicted to 'Dancing with the Stars'. How could this happen? I never watch TV. I don't like TV. TV is soooo evil. And this show is on TWICE a week. It's like a REAL commitment. Jesus. Will wonders ever cease?

I fell off my step in step aerobics class today and landed smack on my left butt cheek. It hurt my pride a whole lot more than my ass. I was so tired and the instructor started doing her one routine that I find annoying and I just tuned out for a second to be annoyed and think to myself about being annoyed and blam! Next moment I was on my ass. I don't know what the lesson is here, because I'm too tired to think about it, so instead, I'll opt for denial and pretend it never happened.

Bananas are really wonderful. Sometimes they are lifesavers.

A few weeks ago I took my work laptop home. I started to do some work, but my letter 'k' kept fighting me. It would not go down all the way. So I plucked it off the keyboard to investigate, didn't find anything, and resumed typing. But then, my letter 'm' started acting up. so I peeled that one up as well and again, I didn't see anything. I decide to press some of the letters around the problem area and now the letter 'l' is the culprit. So I pull up the letters 'o', 'k', 'l' and 'm' and find a very large piece of discarded fingernail. And it wasn't mine. This is troubling. What are people doing at my desk when i am not there?

Scrabulous on facebook is making me very angry right now. It seems to be having errors whilst loading quite a lot lately. Either that or it's giving me the hint that I should be doing work. At my job. HA!

I have an audition tonight and actually have to do a monologue. I think it may be a good 4-5 years since I've needed to do a monologue. (This is because I get called in by specific theatres for specific parts in specific plays and so I just prepare 'sides' or sections for that part. I am doing that for these people as well, but since they are a smaller company they still do 'monologue' auditions. Monologues are something I was more than happy to be done with due to their suckiness and limitations as a vehicle to show your acting 'chops', but that's a WHOLE 'nother post.) This may prove interesting. It's been a really long time. oh - and did I mention how TIRED I was!?!??!?!

To quote my character Mina, from when I did 'Dracula' my senior year in high school, "Oh! I'm so weak and languid!" (said whilst tossing hand back dramatically against forehead and falling into someone's arms.) What a vapid role.

monsterous montage!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

a moment in time

ok. can someone please tell me why there is oil spilling everywhere right now!?!?!??!?! argh! it's making it hard to maintain my youthful optimism. :( i feel the massive weight of the death of so, so, so, so many birds right now. it's utterly horrible and sad and lame and god can't we get it together!?!? grrrrrr.

um. anyway. it's been brought to my attention, that somehow back during the time that i was jazzed out of my mind to be doing my first aerial silk performance, that I totally flaked on putting it up here. duh. silly arwen. my focus gets spread a wee bit thin sometimes (um, all the time).

so - here's debbie's recording of my first performance of the weekend (I can't believe this was just this past May, it feels like eons ago already. ah time. such a wonder....)
you should also pay close attention to the fact that it's dave singing and playing the piano live. he sounds awesome. :)

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

jim also did a recording of the final performance. I have that one up on my facebook page. ah facebook. however did we live without you? my old boyfriend from high school (who i re-found on facebook) calls it 'crackbook', which i think explains it all perfectly. anywho - you can find the other recording there (you know, if you're just dying to see it from a different angle and a different split combination) ;) click HERE

oh - and i don't have to make a G-rated trip across america montage anymore, cause it seems as if everyone can deal with the F word. phew! i'm so glad. (thanks mom! i'm so proud of you) ;) and the halloween one is almost done!!!! yay!

Mia and Dave's Happy Halloween of Horror

ok. since I still haven't found the time to cobble together a rad ass montage, here are a few terrifying pics from Dave and Mia's Halloween shindig last saturday. it was a potluck and we were only allowed to bring food that was orange and/or black. not so easy, eh? that mia has the craziest ideas! ;) I made carrot fritter latke type yummy things (and finally used my food processor! yayayayayyay!) as well as stuffed squash pumpkins with black rice that had things like orange heirloom tomatoes and orange peppers and golden raisins and pecans and stuff in them. shockingly it all came out pretty tastypantsy! oh - and i got to carve a pumpkin. this was happy making. that's him above. that's right - it's voldemort, complete with his snake buddy nagini. i rule. well, either i rule, or i'm a complete and utter nerd. well, maybe both. ANYway....

dave dressed up as...um...uh... well, i don't think we will ever know...



Mia and the AMD have a special moment:



Dave, the AMD and I investigate cheese grater options...



the most excellent new addition to my ear collection:



whew! what a night! all that eating and drinking and murdering and merry-making and cheese-grating and pumpkin carving and mayhem really takes it out of you! i mean, god, it's what? 9:20pm already!? must be about time to call it a night.... (when the hell did we get so old!??!?!?!?!):