My bio page
I'm having a helluva time.
Here's what I've written so far:
"Jay has spent years accumulating a wide range of life experiences and exploring different creative fields from fine art to shoe sales, and now has found the perfect place to tie it all together. Shoe portraits."
Doom.
One more thing... (warning: bit of a rant)
I know I mentioned this ages ago, but it continues to be an issue.
I get at least 10 e-mails a week from men saying "What's up?" "How are you?" "Hello." "How was your weekend?" When I go dancing men always ask (in this order) "Where are you from?" "What do you do?" "How long have you been dancing?" or the variant "How was your weekend?", then "Where are you from?" etc. I understand that there is a typical path to take when you want to become acquainted with a person, and that these are the normal questions that people ask when they are interested in you.
I'M #@!!* SICK OF THEM!! I REFUSE TO TELL ONE MORE PERSON WHERE I'M FROM AND WHAT I DO FOR A LIVING! I WILL NO LONGER SAY MY WEEKEND WAS FINE ONLY TO HEAR THAT THEIRS WAS TOO SHORT AND THEY DID LAUNDRY! I CAN NOT SMILE AND PRETEND TO BE INTERESTED THAT THEY ARE DOING COMPUTER PROGRAMMING BUT WANT TO GET INTO GRAPHIC DESIGN SOMEDAY!!
I believe this is called dating oversaturation.
It's gotten to the point that if I ever get a message that contains none of the above shorthand and instead contains full sentences of interesting information (I've given up on funny. Nobody's funny anymore), even if I look and find that we're COMPLETELY incompatible I'll write them a response just to encourage such original behaviors. I don't know if it's working or not. Unique e-mails are still far in the minority.
I think it all comes back to a pet peeve I developed in Texas. They have a very polite society but it is completely devoid of meaning much of the time. I noticed that everyone said "Hi! How are you doing!" (note the exclamation point instead of the question mark). The other person rarely told the original questioner how they were doing, nor were they required to. If they ever did, it was an awkward "fine", then a rush on to the rest of the conversation. I saw people ask people how they were doing and then walk directly past them without even giving the pretense of waiting for a reply. They don't really care, in fact I think it would ruin Texan conversation to ever find out just how the other person is truly doing. It's the facade of compassion. The thin veneer of a fake relationship. It drove me nuts. Still does. But then I remember that one Texan guy who stopped with his arms full of heavy boxes to hold open a door with a motion sensor for me. That was worth the whole four years of southern "charm". He stood in the opening and sort of wiggled around every now and then so the door wouldn't close on him. I was quite a ways away and kept slowing down my pace, hoping that he'd give up on his crazy chivalric quest but he didn't and I had to hold that giggle until I was far down the hall (it was a loud one).
So - men. I am not going to humor you any more. If you are boring I am not going to be polite and tell you I'm not interested because you live far away or that I'm really too busy to have a relationship right now. I'm going to ignore you and delete your message and hope that next time you try harder with the next girl. If you are interesting and we are not compatible yet you still want to date (for reference, here are issues that I need to agree with you on, or there is no point: 1. Dogs 2. Religion 3. Kids 4. Hunting 5. Old people 6. Trees 7. Kevin Costner) , I will probably not reply to you too much because it is misleading and I don't want to get your hopes up. If you are interesting and want to be friends, I will keep you at arm's length until I know you'll behave and then we can probably hang out. If you are interesting and we are compatible and interested also in me, watch out. You are rare. I might do something rash. But until that happens, I'm stopping smiling when people say unfunny things. I'm stopping the small talk that I'm only putting a teensy portion of my brain into (while the rest is doing crossword puzzles and snoozing). If you try to hold a conversation with me and only stay with the safe questions, be prepared for me to ask you if you've ever been mugged or if that guy over there were to dye his hair, what you think the best color would be (warning: I always think red, but am often wrong). And if you get confused, I'll go away. No more dating charity that encourages mediocrity and leaves me wanting to stab my eye out with the fork just so we'd have something new to talk about.
This is your official notice.
Whoopee!
For the first time in, like, EVER, I have a full-time job! Yes, I have managed to go over thirty years now without holding down a position that was not freelance, contract, or seasonal. As my sister put it, "of course - you had to choose a career in the ARTS". Now it seems like I've somehow conquered the nomadic artist lifestyle and I am perfectly happy with that!
My last two months have been spent working as a contractor with a museum exhibit design firm in Seattle, and loving it. They discussed in the beginning switching me over to full time at some point, but given that the last time I heard that (at the job in Mukilteo) they put me off for 6 months and then laid me off right at the worst possible time, I wasn't counting on anything. What tipped the scales in my direction was an intervention from my friend Gloria, who happens to cut the hair of a higher-up at a big architecture firm downtown. The combination of her motherly boasting about me and her death grip on sharp scissors right over his head made him get me an interview with the design team. I'd interviewed with them last year, and even though I did a great presentation they decided that they needed someone with more experience. This time I went in expecting nothing, and my presentation was completely random and probably far too honest (I said "I don't know what I was thinking there" in an INTERVIEW) (I also said one of my earlier choices was design on crack), but I made them laugh and two weeks later they gave me a job offer. When my current firm saw that I'd gone on an interview and it had gone well, they flipped. They had a job offer to me within the week - I went from nothing to TWO great offers!
This last week I agonized over both of them, trying to not miss anything or pass up anything that I would later regret. It was a battle between formal corporate design with tons of resources and training opportunities and creative design with environmental leanings and the opportunity to go crazy with design in a more relaxed atmosphere. Not easy. Then I got to thinking about the corporate ladder environments I'd worked in before, and how it was a challenge most mornings to put on any more than sweats and a t-shirt (guess what I'm wearing right now?) and how most hotel and office interiors were less than exciting (hello, beige. hello, taupe. goodbye, interest). And the place I was currently working was lots of fun, with big projects and big dreams and the ability to humor my preference for bright colors and my innate aversion to mustard (I'm trying to learn to love certain shades of olive but it's a long, painful journey).
When I told the museum design firm that I would be joining their staff, the principal architect did a little happy dance, and I joined her. I think that's the universal sign that you've made the right career decision!
Now I get to design a page for myself on their website, and claim a place for my crap in the office. It's nice. I can finally exhale about the job thing and enjoy my work instead of trying to figure out what I'd be doing next. Hooray for full time!
Wrestle-a-rama
Kind of like taking your grandma to a strip club
I went salsa dancing on Saturday in Redmond. It was just plain wrong wrong wrong.
Redmond, for those not quite near here, is known for being:
1. The Home of Microsoft
2. The Home of Ungodly Levels of Geeky Social Maladjustment
3. Having a really nice park
4. ummm
5. wait...
6. no,
7. well.
8. I think they have a mall.
I went because a good friend of mine, Gene the Salsa Dancing Machine, has been asking me for three years now to cross Lake Washington and dance with him. Also, this time he brought over one of my favorite bands, Cambalache. Faced with an evening of nothing but p.j.s and a movie or an evening of face-blasting salsa, I chose the latter. It started off great, I danced with Gene a couple of times and with a couple of other guys I recognized from my normal salsa haunt. Then I ran out of partners, and really had a chance to look around at the crowd. Bad move - there were men with peg-legged slacks, women with floral dresses (who wears floral dresses to SALSA? Keep them for church and christenings. There is something really disturbing about women moving their hips underneath tents with country patterns), and this one guy who seemed to think he was still at a lesson. Every now and then he'd shimmy down the entire side of the dance floor in a concentrated, head-down shuffle pattern with his arms up in the universal "I'm-holding-a-dance-partner-made-of-air" position. I had a
lot of time to look around, since there were roughly three women to every man (normally when I dance it's the opposite, and there are nights when they won't let me off the dance floor). I danced with a couple of locals who remained stiffly in the ballroom arm position and chatted to me about work and how nice it was the the room was air conditioned. I think that's flirting in Redmond, I'm not sure. One guy said he had been dancing for over a year, and to prove it he let me go (BIG no-no in my salsa world - if I wanted to dance alone, I'd go do a non-partner dance form) and embarked on a series of flailings that told me that:
1. He'd watched salsa dance videos from the men who wear old-time hats and wide legged pants (lots of hopping)
2. His shoes weren't dance shoes (lots of almost falling over when he tried to slide).
3. He hadn't had a girlfriend in years. YEARS.
I tried not to look directly at him and keep my face composed. Eventually he took my hand again but I couldn't look him in the eye after the peacock strut he'd just performed.
I finally got asked by a little hispanic guy who was obviously a transplant like me, and I was actually relieved when he looked at nothing but my chest (to be fair, that was eye level for him). He smiled and didn't try to make small talk, and instead flung me up and down the dance floor like the spinning my hips was somehow providing the power for the whole place and if I stopped, so would the fun.
He was right. I left before midnight after a couple non-dancing songs spent watching the nerdy peacocks and their church ladies, then spent the rest of the evening watching Blazing Saddles and telling Rooster that he had more game upside down and drooling than these guys did with their luxury cars and condos on the lake.
stingers and tentacles and pinchy pinchy claws
Okay, so not to be too "octopus-octopus-octopus" about things...
I really just wanted to be able to say that once in my life.
I spent all day Saturday underwater (well, it felt like it) up in Mukilteo and then another dive down on Alki Beach because I missed the first dive in Mukilteo because I forgot my fins. The truly sad thing about that situation is that I didn't realize that I'd forgotten my fins until AFTER suiting up with the thin suit, two layers of wetsuit, and boots. Luckily I hadn't put the hood on yet or my day would have been ruined (the neoprene hood is the destroyer of hair and earrings, and I have yet to wear it without getting large amounts of hair painfully caught in the velcro. Scuba will make me bald someday). I ran over to the Edmonds dive shop to rent some stylish foot-gear (they were turquoise!), and met up with the group for dive #2 but that meant that I had an extra tank of air and I cannot in good conscience return that to the shop full. Another diver who I'd just met that day was up for an adventure, and had been telling me about Cove 2 in Alki and how beautiful it was so I cajoled him into coming with me for an added dive.
The group I dive with is very eclectic (notice how I've almost completely given up on easing topic changes and haven't even come close to explaining my first sentence? Also, I'm relying more and more on parenthetical observations to try and fit thoughts into sentences so I don't have to compose full ones that make sense. My writing is going to crap. Soon all you'll be getting is "blalaaaalrrrggghh" every few weeks and even that will be in parentheses.). There is me and my usual dive buddy, who is fairly normal except that he lives alone on a boat and quotes "Dumb and Dumber" more than is healthy. This time there was a woman who had a son in college, who had 95 dives under her belt but still slammed into the sea floor and kicked up more sediment than the other 4 of us combined (she also got bit by a crab and kept trying to grab anenomes). There was a guy who hadn't dove in anything other than middle-eastern waters, and another guy who was attending UW and in a frat, and seemed determined to load up on the dives and get advanced certification as quickly as possible. This is the guy who came to Alki with me.
We didn't get into the water until after 4 in the afternoon, and it was cold and raining and our wetsuits were already damp and disgusting from the Mukilteo dive. Once we were in the water, though... it was gorgeous! The clearest I've ever seen locally, and there was all sorts of interesting wreckage down there. The light was somehow brighter underwater than up on the cloudy surface, and we startled clouds of shrimp and saw more crabs than I'd ever seen. We swam out to the wreck of the HoneyBear (I don't know what kind of boat it was, but there were very tall masts and lots of crates and such thrown around) and peeked under the hull to say hello to the resident GIANT OCTOPUS (He didn't tell me about this part beforehand. He made a kind of octopus-y hand gesture underwater but I though he was talking about jellyfish). We rested on our knees on the sandy bottom and he shined my dive light into a small crevice. I peeked in, expecting maybe a fish or a nice urchin (who doesn't love a nice urchin?), and came face-to-tentacle with an octopus with suckers over 3" in diameter. I am not sure what part I was inches away from, but after a couple seconds of frozen-ness on my part, it opened like a giant mouth and exposed a foot-long swath of bright white inner-octopus waviness (I'm guessing it was its gill or something). I jumped a mile and scampered backwards, kicking up sediment and breathing more bubbles than I had the entire dive previously. He tried to give me the light and let me view closer, but I graciously let him stick his face near the suckers and instead hovered a few feet away, looking at the hole side-eye in case the thing decided to attack and strangle all of us with its mile long tentacles of death.
After that I needed some release, and we had plenty of air left (it ended up being an almost hour-long dive!) so we played around, swooping over and under the masts, which were covered by a thick skin of white sea anenomes that hid tiny crabs and mini schools of fish. My new buddy crossed his arms over each other with his elbows pointing out, which is very close to the "I'm freezing and have to go to the surface" signal, which made me start to swim his direction (he was pretty far away). But then he turned and swam fast after a bunch of larger fish who had just passed us by and suddenly I saw that he was in fact playing a modified version of "shark" and trying to eat them with his elbows. Of course I realized this immediately after I was hanging upside down trying to high-five crabs (they rest with their claws down and a couple back legs hanging up in the water, so this isn't as hard as one might think) so it all worked out all right.
And just to be fair...
This is the most subtle play request ever from the Monkey (she is sitting behind me, staring at the back of my head and hoping that I will put down the camera and throw the thing).
Warning: Crotch Pic
And this is why I love him. Sound asleep with his head on a toy.
