Who are you, really?

Last night my husband & I watched the movie Catfish.
It's about a young man who forms an internet relationship with a beautiful young woman, her family, and her friends. But they may not be quite who they represent themselves to be. (Oops, was that a spoiler?) The movie is thought-provoking and we were really intrigued.

Have you ever wondered about your blogger friends? Who are they, really? Is that profile picture really you? Is the personality you portray the 'real you'?
These photos are the real me, recently. Since I'll be meeting some of you in NYC in March, there's no hiding behind photos of models. I'm just 5' tall, have silver hair that is getting longer and whiter every day, and I weigh about 15 pounds more than I'd like to. After 23 years, the excuse "maternity weight" doesn't work any more.

I have stupid feet so I can't wear high heels which means I'll either be wearing sneakers or comfy clogs. I wish I could sing good, or dance good, but I'm good at neither, though that doesn't necessarily stop me from trying. Actually I'm a bit of a klutz and tend to trip over my own stupid feet. I'm outspoken sometimes, shy other times; I'm opinionated but also have trouble making decisions. I procrastinate a lot, but in the end I always get stuff done on time, which is good because I'm a worrywart. I'm a nut about proofreading and get really annoyed when I see typos so hopefully you won't find them too often in this blog.

Incidentally, I was born in the year of the dragon (YEAH!) but in western astrology I'm a Libra. I suppose that's enough for now. If I meet you in NYC, will I be what you expect? Will YOU be what I expect? Or will we all be surprised? I'm looking forward to finding out.

What am I doing blogging on SuperBowl Sunday? My husband and I are not sports-watchers, but still the TV has been on all night. We instead ate an easy dinner and watched a combo of Cupcake Wars and Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl VIII - this was pretty funny, really.

There were piglet cheerleaders, a kitty half-time show, a bird tweeting from the sidelines, hamsters doing commentary from a blimp, puppy tailgaters, and then of course the puppies on the field running, tackling, and scoring touchdowns. All very adorable. And we watched a little something we had from Netflix - Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog - more silliness, with the adorable Nate Filion and Neil-Patrick Harris.

We recently watched the entire series Firefly, starring Filion, and totally loved it, so it was fun seeing him in this piece of lighthearted fluff.

Next time, I will post about teaching, or art, or some combo of the two. I promise!

Playing with Beads

I made these last night!
So, I went to the mall for something yesterday, and through the window of a little gift store I saw the most spectacularly gorgeous earrings I'd ever seen. I went in for a closer look with hopes of finding them with a post-Christmas sale price. They were $26, not on sale. The tag said 'handmade'. Still, the price seemed quite high since they were just made with simple base-metal wire and glass beads, no real silver or expensive gemstones. Since I make jewelry, I could not justify spending that amount of money on buying a pair of earrings (especially right after Christmas and Chanukah). So I tried to memorize them. I started counting the beads and the loops of wire, and the salesclerk at the counter started giving me suspicious looks. So I left, and when I got outside the store I stood out there in the mall trying to doodle them from memory on a little pad in my purse. I felt like a crime scene artist.

Last night I set out to re-create the earrings, but boy were they a challenge. In the end, my pair is a very simplified version of what I saw in the store, and I think the first earring took me about 3 hours to figure out. The second one was done in about 1/3 of the time. But even though they are not the gorgeous paisley of the store earrings, I'm pretty pleased with them!
Here's another view of my creations.

And now for something completely different:

Meanwhile, we had the TV on, and needed to find something fun to watch while I worked with my beads and wire. Have you seen the movie Zombieland? I'm not usually the sort to watch zombie movies, and my husband is even less likely to, but this was a spoof, and had us laughing hysterically throughout the movie. Once you get past the initial zombie gore, it is really funny, with a great cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin (no, they are not zombies), and a fun celebrity cameo. Hey, if you can make it through the brutality of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Zombieland will be a walk in the park! I highly recommend it.

Magnifique!!

Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas! Hemingway! Picasso! Dali! F. Scott Fitzgerald & Zelda! Toulouse Lautrec! Cole Porter! And the list goes on... I took my hubby to the local "dinner and a movie" to celebrate his birthday this evening, and I just HAD to tell you all about this wonderful movie, since it was like peeking inside your art history textbook's chapter on the 1920's, and a bit of the 1890's as well, all with a fun Woody Allen spirit.. The movie is Midnight in Paris, and you absolutely MUST see it! (Maybe you already read a similar comment about the movie by Artful Artsy Amy at here.)

I smiled through the whole thing, and got excited every time I started to ID another artist. (I didn't do as well with the writers. I'm an avid reader, but these aren't the writers that have my heart.) I was sorry the credits rolled by so fast, because I was curious as to what artists I might have missed along the way. Meanwhile, it is an absolute Woody Allen film. In the spirit of his NY movies, that were all such a "love story" to a great city, he has moved his heart to Paris. I've never been to Paris, and never even had a great desire to go there, but I left the movie saying how much I'd like to go there. The movie will do that. Also, as with all of his movies, the movie has a constant backdrop of absolutely FABULOUS music.

Go see this movie! Call it educational/professional development if you need an excuse! And if possible, see it in a fun venue like we did, rather than in a typical popcorn smelling sticky floor theater.