An Anniversary, of Sorts.

2012/02/14

So I’ve never been much for Valentine’s Day, although I’ve never had a horrible one. I just don’t really need another reason to spend money on people, and they probably don’t need to spend any money on me. Given my ambivalence, it’s a little ironic that my self-selected anniversary with Katsumi fell on 2/14/02. Four years later, we got engaged. Remember that? I do. Vividly.

It seems an ocean of time ago.

And I’m sitting here thinking about it, and it’s kind of blowing my mind. We didn’t have Jake, things hadn’t yet fallen apart, and everything looked pretty damn rosy. Who knew then the way our lives would take us? It’s kind of cruel, when you think about it, that innocence. And it’s all here – it’s documented. Most of it, anyway.

But whatever. Onward and upward. Tonight B! made me broccoli rabe, which he hates and I love, and I’m sipping some Malbec and promising myself I’ll go to bed early tonight. It’s certainly not where I thought I’d be on that night ten years ago when Katsu and I first knocked chopsticks at Betty’s, and definitely not where I thought I’d be the night we got engaged. But it’s not all a downer. I mean, after all, tonight I *did* get the broccoli rabe.

Posted in life story, matrimony, tiniest violin | 1 Comment »

Unsent Tweets (geekery, etc)

2012/02/13

@FCPX: You are bizarre. I see certain arguments for you, I suppose, but if I can’t open a 6.0.6 XML I’m totally calling BS.

@Pinterest: Why don’t you let me message other users? And how many people are actually following me, anyway? Profile says 78, Boards say 125.

@AVIDMC5: I know you’re supposed to be better than this. Show me your power.

Posted in anecdotal, i hate technology, progress? | Leave a Comment »

Free Advice: Pinterest edition

2012/02/08

I have this picture of how I used to look. I’m wearing cutoff jeans, a sports bra, and a bike helmet, and I’m fist-pounding the sky on a bridge over Storrow Drive. You can see each and every one of my ribs. It’s online somewhere I’m sure, but I’m too lazy to go find. Anyway, this look is probably not healthy. It’s probably what the tabloids like to call “scary skinny”. But I didn’t WORK for that body – I just purged myself into it. It actually got awkward – people would see me eating whatever I was eating and ask me how I did it, how did I stay so thin? “Bulimia” was always on the tip of my tongue as an answer (I’m nothing if not direct) but a polite smile and a nod would usually suffice.

These days, nobody’s asking me how I did it.

And so I’m going to the gym.

I was kind of all whatever about having to actually EXERCISE my way into a body that didn’t make me want to self-immolate, until I saw this image on Pinterest. “YOU EARN YOUR BODY”, it says, in boldface white-on-black, and underneath are a series of resolutions ending with the vow: “I will earn my body”. And this? This totally threw me.

I realized, suddenly, that this body has always been a “thing” to me, something Other, and whatever it looked like was not good enough. Whatever it FELT like was not good enough. In fact, whatever it felt like was usually pretty bad. But now, now that I’ve kind of made this commitment to work myself back, I wonder if maybe, finally, I’ll feel at home in this body. I wonder if one day I’ll have a body I’m proud to earn.

Posted in eatin', free advice, i hate technology, progress? | 1 Comment »

Carpe Diem?

2012/02/07

From this article, which trumpets the value of morning time.

Savor Something.Whether you like a big breakfast omelet or prefer toast and tea, eating food you enjoy can’t help but affect your mood for the better. Stock up on the ingredients you need to create your favorite breakfast, so they’re always in your cupboard first thing to lift your mood. But more important, take a few minutes to really experience and savor breakfast, even if it’s just a glass of juice. Allowing yourself to be absorbed in something you enjoy is a wonderful way to begin the day.

And I just had to think: would drinking wine count? I enjoy that QUITE a bit.

Posted in aberrant behavior, anecdotal, boozin', how i am awesome, progress? | Leave a Comment »

To Market To Market

2012/01/31

So I’ve been thinking a lot about marketing lately. As most of you likely know, I’ve got this little video production company on the side, but what most of you might NOT know is that I also take pictures! Great pictures! Lots of them! While you ponder that, let me ask you this:

If you were in the market for boudoir photography, how would you go about finding it?

It’s a market I want to get into, and I have some really amazing work samples, but I can’t see it being anything but shady just tossing this stuff up online. Like, I just went to upload some so I could link off that last sentence, but I got worried and chickened out at the last minute. I know there’s people out there that read, and I know that at least SOME of you are ladies, so! Ladies! Riddle me this! How would YOU want to be presented with boudoir photography?

Posted in art?, weddin', work | 3 Comments »

I don’t think I’m totally comfortable with Ketamine.

2012/01/30

I’m on Twitter a lot for work, and, though it’s work and not play, I often find links to interesting content that’s not entirely suitable for an RT. As an example (and per the above):

Ketamine for depression? I don’t remember who I found this from, but it’s kind of blowing my mind. My time on the jam band scene let me witness firsthand what Ketamine can do, and I don’t think it was lifting anyone’s depression. The people I’ve seen on K look more like drunken zombies than free spirits, but hey. Maybe it’s all in the dose.

The next one is from @prajjwalpanday, who lives in not-too-faraway Worcester, and today sent out this link about Devil’s Lake, ND. Devil’s Lake is a tiny town in the middle of NOWHERE, and I spent a lot of time there shooting for the last film I worked on. Like, HOW TOTALLY RANDOM IS THAT. I’ve never heard Devil’s Lake talked about, even in (relatively) nearby Fargo, much less in Scientific American! It was a very Woah moment in my head, let me tell you.

And finally, @mashable taught me how to see who un-friends me on Facebook. So be on the lookout, dudes, because I’ve got my eyes open.

***Edited to add:

Want to follow *me* on the big TW? @erinire, of course, and also @ecaproductions.

Posted in north dakota, twitter, work | Leave a Comment »

And then I saw it:

2012/01/29

ECA_9089

ECA_9092

 

ECA_9103

 

ECA_9109

ECA_9111

 

Rural Pennsylvania, 8am on Sunday, and I’m shooting an actual nuclear power plant. Nuts! See more on Tumblr.

Posted in art?, best week ever | Leave a Comment »

it’s kind of miraculous that I’m even alive.

2012/01/24

I’m not really an app junkie, not that you’d know it from looking at my iPhone. I have apps for everything: sending a FedEx, making a Skype call, simulating the sound of an audience laughing, and buying expensive video equipment. But, I mean, the only apps that I actually USE are Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga Poker. I keep the rest around “for fun” – aka “for when I’m bored”.

Predictably, the other day, I was bored. I was also bored of my apps. So I decided to install a NEW app, one to help me on my way back to skinny jeans. It’s called “Lose It!” (exclamation mark intended) and it’s essentially a digital version of the little calorie notebook I kept in high school except ten times more awesome. It knows the nutrient stats for eating three and a half swedish fish, for example, and how many calories are in one ounce of Triscuits. This is beneficial in two ways: 1) fuels my odd penchant for metrics /and/ 2) accommodates my strange eating habits.

However, I’m beginning to see the dark side of “Lose It!” as well. It’s one thing to be like, oh yeah, OK, today I ate a hamburger, some nachos, a stick of celery and three glasses of red wine, but it’s quite another to see it all there totaled up for you – HAMBURGER (FAST FOOD) NACHOS (FAST FOOD) RED WINE 18oz – and be like, that’s what fueled my body today. Well, sweet.

If America runs on Dunkin’, I must run on saturated fat. Or alcohol fumes. One or the other.

 

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Posted in eatin', i hate technology | 1 Comment »

Lost Weekend

2012/01/21

Most people think of a lost weekend as a drinking binge. Something hedonistic, something wild. But a lost weekend can happen with depression, too, and it’s a lot less fun than you think. I know, how fun could it be, right? It’s depression! But trust me, it’s less fun than that.

I’m tempted to start at the very beginning – the trigger, in shrinkspeak – but I won’t. Let’s just say that a confluence of unfortunate circumstance caused me to retire at 9:30 Thursday evening and not emerge until 8 on Friday night. That’s how I deal, sometimes. Sleeping. I managed to stay up for a few hours, long enough to watch a movie, before trudging back to bed to read Mashable on my iPhone. I didn’t want to sit up, even, all my limbs were heavy and my chest felt like a lead brick. So I lay there, pinned, until I fell asleep.

I guess it’s Saturday now, and I’m up. We can thank the quasi-anorexic in me for that – I only got out of bed so I could go to the gym. But then I ran some errands and installed a new hard drive in B!’s MacBook. I did these things because they are What I’m Supposed To Do, they are supposed to Make Me Feel Better. And I guess they have, kind of. But when things are as they are, all we can do is keep trying… and wait for the storm to lift.

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Posted in Depression, i hate technology | Leave a Comment »

Is a black girl in a white, white world.

2012/01/16

It’s cold in Massachusetts right now. Not North Dakota cold, but pretty cold, nevertheless. And, as I’ve mentioned, my old winter coat is no longer a viable option. Not only am I too big for it, it’s also ripped at the zipper and been sent back to North Face for repair. A normal person might just tell me to buy a new coat and soldier on, but that normal person might not know how broke I am / how much I love my North Face. It might not be surprising, then, that I’ve managed the winter thus far with just a fleece jacket, the one with the cigarette burn in the left arm that vents like an ice luge right up my sleeve. I’m nothing if not determined.

It was ten degrees when I pulled up to my parents’ house this past Sunday, clad in an equally inappropriate winter garment and with wet hair to boot. My mom, being a mom, kind of freaked out. Midway through our visit, she disappeared into the basement and returned, some fifteen minutes later, the proud bearer of a lightly-used (by her), puffy, white coat.

White. WHITE!

w h i t e

There are seven hundred and fifteen pictures of me on Facebook, and the only ones where I’m wearing white were taken on my wedding day. Other than that, in twenty-something years of dressing myself, I’ve never voluntarily worn white. I’m really more of a black girl: black tank tops, black socks, and, yes, black underwear. I bought a tan sweatshirt a couple months ago. That was branching out. So the idea of wearing white ANYTHING, much less a GIGANTIC WHITE COAT, is just about as appealing as sporting my skin inside-out.

That said, it’s really been pretty cold here. So I took it.

Seriously, I feel like a cross between the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and Pippi Longstocking. It’s like having some other person’s body, or trying to cook in somebody else’s kitchen. I mean, God, I love my mom, but this coat is like the worst thing I’ve ever worn in my life. North Face! Hurry back with my jacket! I promise to be slim enough to wear it when it comes!!

Posted in fashion, I enjoy being a girl, personal hell | 1 Comment »

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