Kristin’s Playground

Hi all!

I’m off today to go on tour with the Glee Club! We’re headed around Lake Michigan. It should be a lot of fun, and I’ll try to post along the way if I get a chance. If not - I hope you all have a good week!

–K

So, I’m a bit late in my writeup for this one, and I haven’t gotten any new strangers recently. Forgive me.

25 March 2008

I met Sara during the GEO work stoppage. Sara, a grad student in social work and sociology, was out on the picket line, and I was drawn to her hat and her smile. I started out by taking pictures of the whole picket line scene, then as they were moving towards the Diag, I asked if I could take some pictures of just her. She seemed a bit surprised, but agreed. I asked her why she was picketing that day, and she started to answer with the standard GEO reasons - mainly that the cost of living estimate put out by the University’s financial aid department was more than the typical GEO salary. When I asked for reasons beyond that, she said that she thought it was important, as a social work student, to stand up for the people who have lower-fraction appointments (a typical GSI is “half-time”). Under the previous contract, they didn’t get many of the benefits that half-time GSIs received, such as a full tuition waiver and health insurance. I didn’t get too many pictures of Sara, since we were mainly in motion on our way to the Diag, but I really liked this one.

Sara is stranger #8 for my 100 Strangers project. For more information, check out www.100strangers.com or the 100 Strangers Flickr group.

So, Saturday night Logan and I went to go see Brian Vander Ark at The Ark. We’d been looking forward to this show for awhile - his new, self-titled CD came out not too long ago, and we’d been listening to it quite a lot already. His wife, Lux Land opened the show. Her music is nicely relaxing, though it tends to be a little too country for my tastes, with the heavy use of the slide guitar in her songs. We actually got her CD for free the last time we saw Brian at the Ark.

Anyway, Brian’s show was thoroughly awesome. It was the first time I’ve seen him with a full band and it rocked. (Randy Sly was on piano, Dan Matheny on the electric guitar, Joel Ferguson on bass, and I sadly missed the name of the drummer.) He played mostly songs from his new album, but thankfully he played the song that introduced me to him, “Survival.” That song just makes me grin and sing along, and he didn’t sing it at his last show at the Ark. When he and the band played “Fit to be Tied” I was dancing in my seat and wanting to sing along - it had such great energy. He also played “Detroit Rock City” which I’d coincidentally never heard (or at least enough to recognize) until the night before when I had to sing it while playing “Rock Band.” And of course, the acoustic version of “The Freshman,” which brought his band The Verve Pipe to fame in 1997. He played two songs that I didn’t recognize - I assume that one, when he commented about it being “historical” is another Verve Pipe song, but I’m not sure what the other was (the second in the encore if anyone out there knows).

They didn’t allow flashes this time, but I think I figured out how to get decent exposures, and I’m pleased with my first real attempt at concert photography. You can see the rest of my pictures from the show in this flickr set.

I’ve been trying to bike a lot lately, which is good for me. Unfortunately, you could say I’m not quite in top biking shape, and any incline or hill is just painful. I went for one of my first “long” bike rides to hunt for historical markers this weekend, and this hill was right near the beginning of my ride. It may not look like much, but it was quite taxing to me. The thing that makes this worse is that stop sign for the railroad tracks, right at the bottom of the hill.

This is my entry for the fifth Free-For-All Creativity meme. The theme this week is “taxing.” Feel free to join in if you have something to say about it!

And while you’re here, check out the entries for the last one, “flight:”
Puss Reboots
Mine!

It’s Friday! Hooray! It should be a good day, too. The weather is beautiful - I didn’t even bring a jacket in to work today, and I biked in, too. That’s a whole week of increasingly nice weather and a whole week of biking in. Tonight we’re going to see Natalia Zuckerman at The Ark, and heading over to a friend’s to celebrate her birthday afterwards. Yep, should be a good day.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you my cooking adventures from last night. Now, in general, I don’t cook, so any time I have anything resembling cooking, I get all proud of myself if it ends up edible. Logan’s been grilling a lot this week, so when we went to the grocery store he encouraged me to get something to grill, too. Shrimp! So, last night, I made a marinade, skewered up some shrimp, and grilled!

The honey mustard marinade, and the food as it went on the grill.

Almost done!

Looks tasty - doesn’t it?

It was.

In retrospect, I should’ve started preparing it all sooner. It was getting a little late when we decided to grill, so we didn’t have a whole lot of time to marinate the shrimp before they hit the grill. Still, all in all, it was pretty good, and pretty easy, too. I think I’m going to try a few different marinades. I got the recipe for this one from the back of the bag of shrimp, and they have a teriyaki one too.

So this is my official “Squee!!!” post. I just handed in a large, framed version of “The Cellist” to be hung up in Sweetwaters’ Festifools show. A funky, cute little shop called Red Shoes is acting as a drop off point for the photos since Sweetwaters doesn’t have much storage space, so thank you to them! The show will be going up tomorrow I think, and will be up until the end of May. If you’re in the area, you should go see it! I’m quite excited to have my first photo in a show!

I’m also offering it for sale, which took a lot of debating on my part. On the one hand, it’d be neat to sell my photography at a show (I sound professional now, don’t I?), but on the other hand, I’d now have to get into the business of figuring out sales tax and all that. Anyone know any people well-versed in Michigan tax law? Plus, it’d be kinda neat to keep it - it is the largest I’ve ever printed one of my photos before. At any rate, I decided to put a price on it. I’m not really expecting it to sell, so we’ll figure out the tax implications if and when that happens, but it’d be a nice surprise. Anyway. Squee!!

All day Friday we were flirting with a storm system. One cloud would pour down rain and then we’d see a bright sunny day after it passed. As I left work, the main part of the storm was approaching, there was a tornado watch, and it made for some amazing clouds - some white and puffy with a brilliant blue sky, others dark and threatening. With the sun setting, it added in some amazing golds (with the white puffy clouds) and some sickly yellows (in the threatening clouds). I thought I’d share some of what I saw.

You can see more (and you can go see the large version of the panorama if you want) in Flickr set.

After getting home from work on Monday, I went for a nice long bike ride while the light was still good. I biked along the river to Gallup Park, where I saw a man with an old-fashioned camera. You know, the kind where you have to slide a plate in the back, and with the accordion-folded body. It made me do a double take, but I didn’t stop and go get his picture like I should’ve for my 100 Strangers project. Maybe I’ll find him and his camera again sometime.

Anyway, on the way back from the park, I went by north campus and ran into a bunch of deer:

Deer #1 warily looks up at me and my camera,

but decides I’m not worth paying attention to, and goes back to her grazing.

Meanwhile, I look up the hill and see another 5 deer, all completely ignoring me.

As I get closer, though, I get their attention.

One decides she’s had enough,

and the other two glare at me for driving away their friend.

Back by my bike, deer #1 ponders what she should do,

and decides that it’s time to leave, so I do too.

It’s been pretty busy around here lately. Last Saturday was a beautiful, relaxing day, so after the dog woke me up for her morning walk - she doesn’t understand the difference between a weekday and a weekend - I biked down to the farmer’s market. I bought a few goodies there, including a mini sweet potato pie - yum! Logan and I bought some spring clothes, and then spent some time raking up the leftover leaves. We had forgotten to get big yard bags while we were out, so I biked over to the store to get some. (More biking, yay!) We also went on a nice walk in the evening. Good day.

Sunday was busy. I had a “sound check” (really, another rehearsal) for the Michigan Pops Orchestra in the early afternoon. (They had a few songs which required singers, so a couple of weeks ago the Glee Clubbers got an e-mail asking us to fill in.) It took longer than I would’ve liked, and kept from seeing the beginning of Festifools but that’s alright. I still got to see enough of the parade to take some pictures, and I grabbed a few at the rehearsal, too. After Festifools, I had to quickly eat some dinner and go back to the concert. It went alright - the theme was “Victors & Villians,” so we sang songs from Wicked, Hercules, and Star Wars. There was a really energetic violin soloist too; I’m sure the audience was entertained.

Monday it was back to work. While walking towards the bus stop though, I noticed some flower buds. They were nearly the first I’d seen this season, so I had to stop and take a few photos.

Then, on my way home in the afternoon, this is what I saw:

It pleased me greatly. There’s more to tell, but I really need to go to sleep, so you’ll have to wait until next time.