One more day

Two fantastic days in New Orleans, one more to go. I'm headed back home on Sunday morning.
Tomorrow, I'll visit the St Louis no 1 cemetery, supposedly one of the most haunted in the world. I'm not bothered by the thought of ghosts - what's really upsetting is having to get up early to see the place. Cemeteries in New Orleans close EARLY. Like, 12pm early. I found this out when I got to the Lafayette Cemetery today at 3:30, only to find they'd already locked their gates.  I lurked for a bit, taking pictures through the fence, and finally ended up wandering through the Garden District, trying to decide which house I'm going to buy when I've got my first squillion dollars.    I'd only be in the place for a few weeks a year, though.  As lovely as those homes are, I don't think I could live here. It isn't summer yet and the humidity is INSANE  - I'm sweaty and shiny and I've got hair that could eat Tokyo. 
The food. . . I could move here for the food.  It is amazing. Rich and spicy and buttery and oh, so wonderful.  I've had some Very Fancy Dinners in some Very Fancy Places but I've never experienced anything like the good food overload that is New Orleans. Pub,  diner, jazz club, or Fancy Pants Restaurant, EVERYTHING is incredible.  I'm eating constantly, just stuffing everything I see into my facehole. It's ridiculous, really.  If I lived here I'd be enormous. You'd be able to spot me (and my humidified hair) from space.
I've taken lots and lots of photos and I can't wait to see if any of them are actually any good. My 365 project is still happening, too, but instead of waiting until I get back to edit and upload a proper photo, I'm sending pictures taken with my cell phone. This way it's uploaded immediately and I don't have to worry about catching up.  EVERYBODY (me) WINS!!

So a girl walks into an airport. . .

And spends the rest of her life there. 
I'm in Dallas right now - specifically, the Dallas airport.  I'm meant to be in New Orleans but that's the thing about making plans: You really shouldn't bother. Our layover here has been extended from 1 hour to 3 hours (and counting).  I'd purchased Tina Fey's Bossypants at the Burbank airport and it was a brilliant way to kill five hours of travel time but now I'm ready for the next thing.  Flooding and thunderstoms, New Orleans, I'm coming for you*!

*eventually.

Photo funsies!

I've started another 365 photo project. Given my previous attempts, it seems destined for failure but NO!! I will finish this one. I'm already very happy with a couple and it's only been a little over a week.
TIME FOR SHARING: I dig this one, from Mother's Day:


and this one, from yesterday:


So, you know. It's good, so far.
One fantastic thing about doing the 365 is because I have my Photoshop open to edit the one photo, the daily pic, I just keep right on editing and the massive, enormous, gigantic backlog of photos I've accumulated over the past year is finally shrinking. It's pretty exciting.

THING I NOTICED JUST RIGHT NOW
I was uploading photos from the trip to Vegas I took in March (catching up!) and wondered if I'd taken any duplicate photos from a trip I'd been on five years ago with my mom - you know, the same building from the same angle, the same Elvis (there's a surprising lack of Elvis in shiny, modern Las Vegas) - and while I found a duplicate, it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. This is from six weeks ago:


This is from five years ago:



I've made the exact same idiotic face when faced with a drink and a camera for at least FIVE YEARS.

say what?

I just found out that a self-portrait* I did years and years ago is going to be on the cover of an vampire novel!! It's being published by a major publishing house in Australia and they've been trying to get a hold of me for weeks to secure my permission. My permission has been gleefully given and I'll upload a picture of the finished work once it's been published in September -I'm not sure I'm supposed to yet. I'll be getting a hard copy (and a check) for my very own.
So basically, now I'm a professional model.

Squeeeeee!

*Technically, it's my photo that's featured but another artist manipulated it and she'll get half the payment for the cover art. She was the one that was contacted by the publishing house initially as the manipulated version of my photo was in her portfolio but since it's my picture, everyone involved had to get my permission to use it. And while it's still recognizably me, it's a very glamorized, vampirized me. So, you know. . . Hooray for us!!!

Inside the egg.

26, a photo by TinyGlimpses on Flickr.

A and I reflected in an egg at LACMA. It's timely because of Easter, see?
And now we're art.

Really? April already?

The weeks just keep on rolling by, don't they? 
Today was kind of mixed bag.
1) Went to the Angels - Red Sox game and Boston won (good)
2) Discovered that at some point in the last two days someone had stolen all the cash out of my wallet (bad) and
3) Celebrated* my dog's first birthday (good).

I'm fairly certain that I've done some other fun stuff in the last couple of weeks but they've been squeezed out of my brain by today's events. My memory retention is very, very limited.
Let's see. . .There were a couple of very nice dinners, one of them at one of my very favorite restaurants in LA, Cafe Figaro. There were a couple of movies, neither of them memorable. A new blouse from a shop in Little Tokyo that ripped across the chest the first time I wore it to work - which reminds me:

THINGS I AM GRATEFUL MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME
How to sew. I hated the learning process, never cared back then about making my own clothes (How was I supposed to make a pair of Jordache Jeans?), was easily frustrated and deeply resentful of my poor mother for subjecting me to such a pointless hobby. Sewing was boring, time consuming, stupid, and, because I'm really clumsy, painful. I hated it and there was no way I was going to do it.  I figured that if I threw enough tantrums my mother would give up the Make Ana Into A Useful Lady project and I'd be free to watch TV and eat tasty snack foods all day. How wrong I was.  I was a stubborn brat but my mother, she'd been stubborn for YEARS before I met her and I didn't stand a chance.  Before I could figure out where my brilliant plan had gone wrong,  I was sitting in front of that stupid sewing machine ALL THE TIME, feeling sorry for myself and making crooked seams. 
My mother is an extraordinary woman and, despite my extreme aversion to learning anything useful, she taught me the basics and set me free.  Twenty years on, I'm grateful for every lesson she gave me and wish I'd paid closer attention. That ripped blouse on Tuesday? Two minutes in the bathroom with a sewing kit from the 99¢ store and my blouse was rescued, my money unwasted, and my decency restored. 
So thank you, Mom. Sorry I was kind of a jerk about the whole sewing thing.

*By 'celebrated', I mean I mentioned it to a couple of people and then gave him an extra treat. He's ONE. It's not like he's gonna feel cheated. Also, he's a dog.

Las Vegas!

Sex and the City machines, a photo by TinyGlimpses on Flickr.

I've been back a week now and still haven't gotten around to uploading the photos. My guy, Captain Timely, uploaded his the next day. This is one of them. The casino here will be featured prominently in my photostream in the near future. It was BEAUTIFUL!!! All fake diamonds and ropes and ..... I don't even know. It was like the very fanciest harem I've ever been in.
Now I'm sitting in J's house while he's out of town, surrounded by animals, my face covered in goop that is supposed to be good for it but is actually scaring me (what if it never comes off? I've always wanted to try a mask, every since I was a little girl watching fifties movie stars pop out of bathrooms with their faces green. Being girly is fun! And scary!), and listening to music I've never heard before. It's good.

I love how hilariously awkward J's pose is. I'd set up the camera with the self-timer and when I walked up to him, he grabbed me around the waist, I made some crack about how prom-photo-y it was, he stiffened up to continue the joke while I relaxed even more to avoid the prom posing and SNAP we look like the couple that couldn't get it together. Or, preferably, the couple where one of us is uptight about picture-taking and the other is fabulously relaxed with awesome shoes.