A Night at the Symphony

Ordinarily, a night at the symphony would probably not interest me too much. Not that I don't enjoy classical music, I just have a fairly short attention span for those types of things. Last night, however, was a night at the symphony that I doubt I will ever forget.

Last night Donovan and I went to see a performance of the San Diego symphony's Summer Pops series. These events are held outside on the Embarcadero, on the grass down by the water. The show we saw last night was the music from the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, played by the symphony while the movie was shown on a big screen.

The view from our seats

A few months ago, Donovan and I did a Pirates marathon and watched all four movies. I completely fell in love with the music from the movies. It's so powerful and exciting, and it gets totally stuck in my head. So when I found out that the symphony was going to be playing the music live, I simply *had* to go.

I knew that it was going to be a cool show...how could it not be? I don't think I was prepared for quite how amazing it was, though. First of all, we're outside at night, by the water, and the weather was nice. The moon was just a sliver, about a quarter of the way up from the water. The symphony was playing the soundtrack for the movie as we watched, and the movie itself is just so much fun! I hadn't really thought about it, but there are many parts in the soundtrack where there are men's voices singing Ahhs in accompaniment to the music. Lo and behold...on stage with the symphony was a men's choir to sing those parts! SO cool!!!

I found it was easy to get wrapped up in watching the movie and forget that the orchestra was playing. Every few minutes I leaned over to Donovan and said "They're playing that music right now!" I was like a little kid who couldn't contain my excitement. And as amazing as the whole show was, it really hit me during the credits when I wasn't distracted by the screen and could really give my whole attention to the orchestra. They played the song that I most love, which is the most exciting and powerful out of the movie, and it was simply *spectacular*!!

I am so very happy that we went to see that show! If you have a chance to see this, I highly recommend the experience! :)

The Abstractness of Pregnancy

I had lunch with my friend Emily today, and we got to talking about getting pregnant. We're both planning to make a baby in the next few months, so it was fairly inevitable (especially given how I've got baby on the brain right now) that the topic would come up.

I've been experiencing an interesting phenomenon around the topic of pregnancy lately: it seems completely abstract to me...not real.

I've been fascinated by pregnancy for most of my adult life. The fact that the body does what it does to create life is beyond my comprehension. When I'm with a pregnant woman, I can't really wrap my brain around the fact that there's a living being inside of her. And experiencing being pregnant is something I've been craving for years and years. Not so much the pain, discomfort and potential (likely?) nausea, but the opportunity to feel life growing inside me and the idea of bonding with the little creature from the beginning.

And yet for me, pregnancy has always been a "someday" thing.  Back in 2006, I (delusionally?) thought that Brian and I were getting close to the point of having a baby. Then we broke up. During my three years of being single after that, I would tell myself that if I didn't meet someone, I could always go the artificial insemination route and have a baby on my own. Then I spent some time around people with kids and decided that I really didn't want to do it on my own. When I met Donovan, he didn't want to have kids, and I wasn't sure anymore. Then came clarity, and the realization that I did indeed want kids. Lo and behold, Donovan was amenable. Someday. We got engaged, we planned our wedding, and a year ago we got married. And it became a "we should wait at least a year until we get pregnant" thing.

So here we are, a year (next Tuesday) after getting married, and four weeks from today I will take my last birth control pill and we will make a baby. And it's STILL...NOT...REAL! I've spent so long having pregnancy be a "someday" thing that I'm not sure what will actually make it real for me. Clearly not the knowledge that I'm going off the pill in four weeks. Will it be the plus sign on the pregnancy test? Will it be the first ultrasound when I see (hear?) the little heart beating? Will it be the first time I feel a kick? Guess we'll have to wait and see!

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My New Tattoo (or...Figuring Out What's Important)

A couple of days ago I went to San Francisco to get a new tattoo.  For just about a year since we got married, I've been wanting to get a tattoo to commemorate our wedding day and our marriage.  I knew that I wanted Jacek Minkowski, the artist who did my koi tattoo on my left calf, to do this tattoo, and he now works in San Francisco.  A few weeks ago I got in touch with him and set up an appointment to meet with him to get my new tattoo done while I was up in the Bay Area visiting my family.  I had a vague idea of what I wanted the tattoo to include: a flower (either a hibiscus or a lotus), two wedding rings, the date of our wedding, and the Kanji symbol for "forever".  Jacek said it would be better if we designed the tattoo together in person, rather than trying to do it over e-mail.

The night before I was going to get my tattoo, we had dinner with my brother and his family.  When my sister-in-law found out that I was going to get another tattoo, she spent the next two hours trying to convince me not to.  She was cute about it, and funny, but she was serious, and very very persistent.  She didn't change my mind, but I think she did get into my head.

Wednesday morning I woke up and I was definitely nervous about going to get my tattoo.  Would we come up with a good design?  Would I be able to stand the pain?  Would I be happy with the tattoo?  I say nervous, some would say excited.  Two sides of the same coin, yeah?  All in how you look at it.

I arrived at the tattoo shop a few minutes late, and Jacek was ready to get started on the design.  Right away he let me know that he thought that including our wedding date in the tattoo was unnecessary and could take away from the design.  Okay, I wasn't stuck on that detail, and could see letting it go.  He spent quite a bit of time coming up with a box to house the Kanji symbol, a box that would include the wedding rings in its design.  He came up with this cool box outlined in rope, with an infinity knot at the bottom and our wedding rings at the top.  It was really cool watching him work, seeing the drawing come to life under his skilled artist's fingers.

Once he had that done, we started trying to figure out how to lay out the tattoo so that we could have the lotus flower and the box with the Kanji in it.  And this is where it started to feel like banging my head against a wall.  In order to keep the artistic integrity of the tattoo, there was a certain balance that needed to be maintained.  And we could not find a balance that didn't include three lotus flowers and pretty much an entire half-sleeve on my upper arm, which was way more than I wanted to do.  After much back and forth, Jacek suggested that maybe I give up the rings and the Kanji symbol and just get a flower tattoo, saying that I could assign any meaning I wanted to it.  This was two+ hours into the design process, and I was super frustrated.  At that moment, I really just wanted to leave the shop and not get a tattoo.

I went outside and called Donovan, pulling him out of an all-day training that he was in.  I filled him in and shared my frustrations.  I was really upset that Jacek wanted to take out all the elements of my tattoo idea that were wedding/marriage related, and at the same time I got where he was coming from with the layout issues.  And I didn't want another tattoo that was just pieced together, I wanted a cohesive work of art.  Talking to Donovan had me feeling better (as usual), and I went back inside with the intention of thanking Jacek for his time and leaving.  I didn't want to burn any bridges, and was fully intending to pay him for the time he spent on my design.

I told Jacek that I really appreciated all the time he'd spent so far, and that it really felt like we were banging our heads against a wall.  I told him I didn't want to burn any bridges, and I didn't know if we should continue working on the design.  He said that I really needed to figure out what elements of the design were important to me.  I teared up as I realized that what really mattered to me out of all the elements I'd originally suggested were the rings and the Kanji symbol.  The flower was just decoration, but we'd spent over two hours trying to figure out how to make it the centerpiece of the tattoo.  Now that we understood my priorities, Jacek got to work on designing a tattoo that had the Kanji symbol and the rings as its centerpiece.  He had already spent all that time designing the really cool box for the Kanji, and now it was just a matter of incorporating some pretty things around it to soften it up.  We went with cherry blossoms, which I already have on my koi tattoo that Jacek did for me.  This time, though, instead of going with the more traditional cherry blossoms, we went with a more organic design that he had. 

As he put the design on my arm with the transfer sheet that they use, it started to really come to life.  Finally, after almost three and a half hours, we were ready to start tattooing!  He started with the outline, as usual, and it was so cool to see the tattoo shaping up on my arm.  The upper parts of the tattoo were definitely the most painful, especially the flowers on my shoulder.  Once the outline was done (about 50 minutes?) he started on the color, and this is really what Jacek does SO well.  His shading and choice of colors is absolutely amazing.  I really had no idea what it was going to look like, but I knew there would be pinks and purple in it.  We took a small break after about an hour and forty-five minutes, and then got back to work.  After a total of two and a half hours, my tattoo was finished!  Looking down at it, I was in awe.  And when I got up and looked at it in the mirror, I had no words.  This is exactly what I wanted, and I had absolutely no idea!

The finished product!

Though we went through some super frustrating (for both of us) moments in the design process, it's clearly exactly what we needed to go through for me to figure out what was really important to me in my wedding/marriage celebration tattoo.  Jacek was so great through the whole thing.  He's a no bullshit kind of guy, and he told me when something wasn't going to work.  But he stuck with it, and was determined to create a tattoo that I would love.  Which he SO did!!  I'm so in love with my new tattoo!!!  :)

Life Is Good!

It's no coincidence that I love the Life is Good brand.  Theirs is such a simple statement, and it's so powerful!  It's been my unofficial motto for years now, and at random moments in my day, you can hear me say, "Life is good!"

The last three days have been awesome!  On Thursday we drove up to Laguna Beach and saw Pageant of the Masters.  We stayed overnight in Santa Ana at a very nice DoubleTree, and on Friday late morning we headed into Newport Beach for Donovan's jetpack experience (see the video of Donovan's flight here).  He had a blast (pun intended), and afterward we walked along the beach, had burgers at a highly recommended local joint, walked out on the pier, and generally had a great time.  We drove around Balboa Island, went shopping at Fashion Island, which is a really nice mall, and then had an excellent dinner at a restaurant my friend Sheri recommended.

Then last night, Donovan took me out for a surprise evening that has been on the calendar for weeks.  I didn't even try to figure out what the surprise was ahead of time...I let myself be with the unknown!  :)  He took me to this little restaurant in Little Italy, Bencotto, that we'd been to once before together.  We had a super yummy dinner, and then we walked over to where the real surprise part was.  There's a place in San Diego called Anthology; it's a three-level small indoor venue that serves nice food and has events.  I'd never been there before, so when we walked up to it, I was excited to get to finally see what it was all about, even though I still didn't know what we were there to see.

As we walked up, there were a few different corrals to line up in, and at the front of the corral was a little sign that said "Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, line up here" (or something like that).  As soon as I saw that I started jumping up and down and screaming "Are you f-ing kidding me???"  I *LOVE* Big Bad Voodoo Daddy!  I can't actually tell you how many times I've seen them in concert, but it's a lot.  Brian and I used to go see them every time they came to San Diego.  If you're not familiar with them, they play big-band music and are just super fun performers with great on-stage personalities.  There are five guys on horns, a drummer, a bassist, a pianist, and the lead singer, who also plays guitar.  Their music is so much fun!!

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy onstage

I was SO excited!!  I haven't seen them in several years, and Donovan found them for me!  We had a great time at the concert, and really enjoyed the venue.  I would definitely go back to Anthology!

On the way home last night we replayed all the amazing things we'd experienced together since Thursday afternoon, and summed it all up with a resounding "Life is good!"  :)

Pageant of the Masters

Today we came up north to Laguna Beach to go see Pageant of the Masters. For those of you who don't know, Pageant of the Masters is a show with live human reenactments of various paintings and sculptures set to symphony music.  Van Gogh, Rodin, Seurat, Rockwell, and many more.

I've heard about this show for years, but have never seen it before today. Let me just say...it's mind blowing!! It's unreal how you see the people getting into position and then they light up the painting on the stage, and you can't even tell that there are real people in the painting!!  Definitely something worth seeing. They are running the show through August 31, if anyone wants to go see it!


Laguna Beach is a really cute town! I don't recall ever having been there before. I found us this great little Mexican food shack on Yelp for dinner, and we walked around some little shops for a while before the show. All in all, very worthwhile! :)

Fifty Shades of Porn

Okay, I know I'm a little late to get on the bandwagon here, but I've been busy reading the first two Game of Thrones books for the past couple of months, and only got around to starting Fifty Shades of Grey last night.  I then spent most of today sucked into the book and did almost nothing productive.  According to my Kindle, I'm 72% through the book.  Probably not going to finish it tonight, but I made a good go of trying to get through it in one day!

Am I enjoying the book?  Yes.  Is it very readable and hard to put down?  Yes.  Is it complete and total *pornography*???  YES!!!

Now, I'm not talking soft porn here.  This is serious stuff, and a lot of it!  S&M and everything!  Mind you, I'm not offended by this or anything, I just find it really interesting that this book has gone SO mainstream and that they're making a movie out of it.  How on earth are they going to make a mainstream movie out of this book that's not a porno?

I had an appointment for a pedicure today, and I took my Kindle with me so that I wouldn't have to put the book down for too long.  So I'm sitting there having my legs massaged, basically reading porn.  Have to say, it felt a little dirty!  I was really hoping that my nail lady wasn't going to ask me what I was reading...

I'm not even going to start discussing the actual subject matter of the book, which is a controversy in and of itself.  Suffice it to say that if you're looking for a stimulating (pun intended) read, and you're not afraid of some very very explicit sex scenes, give it a try!  I already know that I'll be getting the second and third books after I'm done with this one!  :)

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