movement of c

Eliot gave a fantastic rendition of our day at Franklin Park Zoo last week.

But I have a nice Photo Gallery for you to see!

See the ANIMALS of FPZ!

The nicest day of the year has rolled in on this fine Friday morning. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and my Munchkin Face Kitty is cackling through the windows. The thermometer says 72, but it feels more like 90. A fine morning indeed, waking up to the sweet sounds of Jeff Buckley’s Lilac Wine, which is my favorite Jeff Buckley song. Then, come to find out in the NYT Arts Section, a movie is being made of this young deceased singer/songwriter.

Maureen Dowd wrote a great column on Saturday about the Prime Minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi, and George W. visiting Graceland in Memphis last week. The photo pictured on CNN website is a tame, welcome-to-graceland shot of the happy family. But the real story was when they were inside the Elvis Museum, and Koizumi started doing, as Dowd puts it, “Thin Elvis air guitar, and Fat Elvis karate chops.”

Everybody loves Elvis, naturally. A couple of weeks ago, Eliot and I were watching the Travel channel. It was a program about night life in Japan - which beats NYC by a longshot! Clubs are open all night, and some don’t even open until 6am. Businessmen and laymen alike share in the fun of drinking at these cozy bars, really the size of a kitchenette. And they all do Elvis Karaoke! The only thing missing from the special were shots of the Robots at the hot dog stands - that’s what I want to see.

The 4th of July came and went like the wind, but not without a few spectacular moments. I woke up in the morning with flashbacks to the morning of Rosh Hashanah, when Eliot and I slept through services. It was 9:30am, and we were supposed to have met my parents at 8:30 at their house. I got right on the phone and we hustled to make the drive up to Gloucester. With fears of the parking lot filling up, we still managed to get Cigarettes, Beverages, Dunkin Donuts coffee, and Egg and Cheese bagels! And we made it to the beach in plenty of time to get a parking spot.

~~~
It was a good day for the beach, and a good beach for the day. Wingaersheek beach in Gloucester has a lot of sand bars, keeping the shoreline very long and shallow. So, no big waves to play in, but having the will to stay in the water for a long time and play catch and actually go swimming is just as good.

~~~~~~

We left the beach when it starting raining, and in some kind of technology-deprived mental state, Eliot and I decided to go to Jordan’s Furniture in Reading to see Superman 3D. What a trip! And I’m not talking about Superman. As you walk in to this white concrete building, you are immediately bombarded with insane amounts of stimulation. This includes, but is not limited to, people flying on trapezes, larger-than-life structures made purely out of Jelly Beans, and a wall-size Green Monster robot that is eating a full-size Yankees player. Very weird, but super awesome in the scope of things!

In other related news, some super smart physicists at Stanford are half-seriously studying the physics of Superman. From Slashdot, “The article tells of ‘a scientific experiment in which a researcher put several chickens in a centrifuge and raised them in twice-normal gravity for months at a time. When they emerged, the chickens were stronger and had larger bones and muscles, and greater endurance. In other words, they were superchickens.’ Do they have human sized centrifuges?”

But speaking of regenerating strength in humans and animals, Stem Cells are still the best forward solution to most diseases, including MS.

From the National MS Society

The nerve cells were transplanted into several groups of rats with spinal cord injury. Some rats also received injections of a drug called rolipram (an agent that also helps to overcome myelin inhibition of nerve regeneration), and some also received cells that specifically secreted the growth factor GDNF (glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor) into the spinal cord. Three months after transplant, rats that had received all treatments — stem cells, rolipram, dbcAMP, and GDNF — had several hundred new nerve fibers, more than any other group. The nerve fibers succeeded in connecting with a lower leg muscle, and the rats showed significant improvement in hind limb grip strength. No other group showed improvement.

On this same thread, I recently read in the NYT that the Roman Catholic church is working to excommunicate scientists who engage in Stem Cell research. I thought this was the “culture of life”. But it seems that to the church, life not yet lived means more than life living.

Sneak Preview!

CAUTION! PLAY WITH SOUND (believe me, it’s really worth it…)

This is my senior tap ensemble class at Center Stage Dance Studio. I’m dancing with them (the only one with the fly shoes). This number will appear in our recital on June 16, 2006 - choreography by Christina Leonard. Enjoy!

Recital Time.(See, Recital 1989) How do I describe it? It’s often known as “crazy” (i.e. insane). Or as my friend said on Gtalk the other day, “Oh snap, so you are in kook out mode.” I have a list-a-mile-long that is actually getting shorter by the day. My productivity levels have gone through the roof in a very physical sense. The digital end of my life lessens as the physical increases. Personally, I like both but there’s something extra special about the physicalities of running around, getting psyched, working the body, spending time with the friends and colleagues, and cleaning dances to be ready for the stage. It is my life, and I love it.

Mostly, recital time always brings me consistency. Alot can be inconsistent in life, whether it be love, relationships, good and bad hair days, splenda or sugar, Pall Malls or Basics… I tend to thrive off the constants, and there are some constants that I have been extra thankful for…the studio being one of them. What would I do with myself? The studio is like my heart and soul, and I’ve always used dance as this emotional release. Not in any super spiritual way, but moreso in the releasing-endorphins-from-movement sense. It’s really effective, I’ll tell ya.

Looking towards the future, things are looking up. I get to do more shows! Melrose Youth Ballet, which you heard about back in December ‘05 Yes, that’s me dressed up as a Victorian mother on stage, but this year there will be no waltzing, no curling of the hair, and no pretending to be prim and proper. Hell no peoples, I’m officially Assistant Director of the entire operation. It took a year of being their bitch to gain their confidence in me, but that’s okay because it’s all in the past. Here I am today with the mad skills of putting on shows, and they got to recognize big C when she brings down the house!

It really was no miracle. What happened was just this. The wind began to switch - the house to pitch and suddenly the hinges started to unhitch.

Today I got this phonecall from a mysterious woman from the temp agency that I supposedly work for. Oh, except for the fact that they never call me. And really, I call atleast every 2 weeks to check in about job openings. It’s really kind of worthless. But today they “found a perfect fit” for me. The person who reccomended me for the position was Joe, the man I met one on one with at my interview at the agency. The position was mostly administrative, working for the Harvard School of Public Health. I like Schools of Public Health personally. They fund a lot of research studies, and often times pay people to participate in them. I did a couple of them myself while I was in college. Also, the one’s I really like are ones that fund programs for the community. But I don’t know much about the Harvard one, I’m sure it’s fantastic. They needed someone to work in the department that deals mostly with “sensitive issues, such as death.” I would be fielding calls from patients/family members and other people who are near losing someone, or have lost someone already. Well, I thought, I’ll hear this one out. All the while thinking, “why me?” I know I’m a sensitive girl, but come on…

All in all, death is something I like to keep in close quarters. It has been ever-present in my life in the second degree for the past few weeks. And my heart can only reach so far, and it has been going out to friends and family for some time, and I want to save the good parts of it that are left to make more round trips when round trips are needed. You know, hearts use flyer miles too.

And to end, with a shameless shout out:

Center Stage Dance Studio
presents its 9th annual production…

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Friday June 16, 2006 ~ 7pm
Winchester High School
80 Skillings Rd, Winchester MA

[be there or be square]

A lot going on. I saw Reflections…

It was hot, sunny day and the ancient ruins of a building unknown to me were crumbling on my left. Patio tables, fully decked with fried breakfast goods laid in plenty, surrounded a scene somewhat deserted. Running through with my friend, we stopped in delight and started filling our pockets with goodly treats. Turning the corner, a band of busboys and waiters start walking towards us. We dash past them, dropping a few pakoras along the way. Finally, we reach our destination. A house with no walls. A giant mountain is the setting of the living room, but somehow we have digital cable, and plenty of sofas. In the kitchen, an exotic woman is cooking. As if we have known eachother for a long time, I rush to her and give her a hug and immediately start helping with the food. My friend, whom none of these people have met, is dressed in a dark blue blazer with a bin on his left lapel. Touting the name of a political candidate, the exotic woman sees him and orders that he will not be allowed in the house. At dusk he will be killed.

Pleading with her, she refuses to comply and says that anyone who supports her opponent in the running is not to be in her house, and certainly she will not let him live out the rest of his days. Somehow, the worry fades away and while she continues readying the feast we go to the living room and watch the Olympics on digital cable. The room is filled with faces unknown to me, but personalities so familiar. Some are speaking Spanish, and my replies in English seem not to phase anyone. We carry on a conversation that in reality would make no sense, but in this dream hold so much weight and genuinity.

I return to the kitchen to try and reason with the chef one more time. I ask her name, thinking that perhaps I would recognize it if she is in such a large campaign for office. She tells me her name is Christina - last name unknown. My eyes widen, and I tell her that my name is Christina too. This connection, like any other, brings us to a point of closeness. I tell her about my friend and that he doesn’t support the opponent. I tell her about the feast we encountered on the way to the house, and that he found that pin while we were running through the ruins. She laughs and immediately understands. She also give us many kudos for taking the food from the patio. As it turns out, the fried breakfast foods were there for the opponent’s luncheon that was to be held that afternoon. She calls my friend in to the kitchen and explains everything. She feeds us well, and we continue tot he living room.

As it turns out, we are in Mexico. My cell phone doesn’t have service and this worries me because yesterday at my dance studio I sold several tickets and forgot to record them in the log book. I need to borrow someone’s calling card to tell my mother, but everyone’s calling card is maxed out. It’s only Friday, and we aren’t scheduled to go home until Tuesday. I can’t wait this long, so I decide that I will return home on foot tomorrow morning.

Everyone keeps telling me that going back on foot would take longer than just waiting until Tuesday. But strangely, I can’t remember how I got there. My only option was to let my feet take me where they would on a journey back home.

Picasa is this really great and fun photo indexing/gallery tool that Google developed. It’s much easier to browse through than My Documents > My Pictures, and also it has built in editing features that work really great! Rotating, cropping, red eye, tints, and my favorite…”Feeling Lucky”.

This in conjunction with the Airtight Interactive Autoviewer Picasa Template makes for fun photo galleries!

My sister Lizzie’s 18th Birthday. A lovely time!

Vitamin D is nicknamed “the sunshine vitamin.”

For those of you don’t live on the East Coast, and more specifically, the Northeast Coast, you should know it has been raining here for approximately 5.5 days. I don’t mean cloudy and drizzle, I mean mostly downpours, and river-like puddles throughout the cities we live in. My hometown of Melrose always has a really hard time with rainstorms like this.

When I was in 8th grade there was a mighty rainstorm that lasted several days. It was the end of October, and our Middle School basement (also known as the cafeteria), got terribly flooded. As did the “Knoll” soccer field, the parking lot, and the front steps of the middle school, not to mention the Lynn Fell Parkway on which the school is located. Needless to say, they had to cancel school for several days. The elementary schools cancelled as well, for fear that children may contract rare forms of Hepatitis. My friend’s father was canoeing throughout one of the soccer fields in Melrose, snapping pictures; for he is a photographer.

I know that it’s old hat to say that the rain is depressing, but I’m sorry, I just cannot lie. The phenomenons of this Earth do amaze me, and yes I appreciate the necessity of water for insect, plant, animal, and human life. But come on! I need the Sunshine to release the Melanin and Vitamin D in my system! I need to feel the blanket of warmth on my face. Life just isn’t the same without fixed pupils squinting in the sun!

To stay up to date on tracking this shitstorm, please refer to 3rdarm.biz ’round the bizclock weather doppler.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. And unintentionally being cheesy, I did feel like there was some sunshine. After teaching a Mother/Daughter tap class (ahem, one mother and daughter showed up) I came home to feed the Munchkin and then headed over to meet the family at my Grandma’s house in Somerville. I felt like the girl that went Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother’s House (We Go). Since there were many people there we met on the 2nd floor Sun-room. It’s a big Solarium with tons of beautiful lush green plants, and glass ceilings. Green paint on the walls with yellow awnings. It really is cheerful. Plus, we played Scrabble, and my Auntie gail won the game.

Later that night my Dad and I played another game at home. Boy was it intense! It was a close game the whole way through. In the end, my Dad won by 7 points. 324 to 317 - a score to write home about if you ask me.

Life’s uncertainty has got my by the bullhorns and is pulling me in to rainstorms and such things that I know little about. Time is on my side, or is it? The future holds the key and I want to go on a vacation to somewhere beautiful. But until then, I’ll try to keep blogging…

It took forever, but the verification process is finally complete!

Here is my sister Ang on Halloween - her rendition of Napolean Dynamite…

Here is my Nani, playing Happy Birthday on her favorite instrument….the comb. Oh, the holidays, how I love them!

And last but not least…our Munchkin Kitty after her first visit to the vet. After heavy sedation for blood tests, she was a little loopy at home. (note the clicking noise in the background…I don’t know what the heck that is.)