Swine flu. Not kidding.

Well, it's true I've got it, though no one seems to believe me when I tell them.

Let me tell you that it sucks. Started out at four in the morning on Saturday with severe headache and body pains less than 24 hours after a mis-diagnosed infection. Turned into vomiting, fever and the inability to move without crying. I had a bit of a struggle to get my agent to believe that I wasn't going to be working, first off because I'm sicker than snot and secondly because I'm vomiting with a fever. I've been a food employee for quite a while in the past, so I know legally I couldn't be working in a food service capacity with the possibility of having an infectious disease. Went to the quick care thinking that it was a reaction to the anti-biotic I had been given the day before, she looked at me and sent me to the urgent care down the street. Mind you, I had been crying since about 7 am at this point, and it's now... 10? I was sitting in the waiting room at the urgent care, crying, when a lady came over, gave me tissues and gave me a big mom hug (the kind that last forever). "You will be blessed today, child, you will!" she said. She made me feel better.

So I have the misnamed swine flu, or H1N1, if you prefer to be elite and non-sensationalist. And because of said flu, I have lost 4 gigs (one being a week long for next week). This is putting serious pressure on the household income.

I'm stuck in my house until saturday on a quasi-quarantine. Someone, please send sushi delivery to my house.

(photograph by Chris Young)

To do list.

Today will be productive, I swear.

It seems like it takes me two days being home to actually do anything. Yesterday I cleaned up the sewing room so that Model Sarah could sleep there, and I kept getting distracted and inspired by buttons, ribbons, stamps.... I have so many things I have to get sewn before I have time to do anything else. And then I remember that I was cleaning the house after spending three hours sorting lace trims.

Today I pay the bills. All of them. I'll get invoices done, all of those packages shipped. I'll unpack. I'll get laundry done. I'll go to the gym.

If I get it done, it will be a miracle.

It's good to have you with us

even if it's just for today. Outside the sun is shining, feels like heaven ain't far away.

Home, tomorrow. I think about it, and this is the first place I've lived outside of my parents house that I regularly call home. In college it was "my room" or "the dorm" and everywhere else it was "the apartment". Now, it's home. I feel like it's mine, and the thought of leaving it and maybe moving somewhere else in the future is weird. Nothing in the house matches, it's all a mish-mash of things people have given us or we've found discarded on the curb. But they are ours. None borrowed, none to get packed up for the summer while we're home on vacation.

Home. Tomorrow.

(photograph by Sean Ryan)

If you are going to San Fransisco...

...be sure to wear flowers in your hair.

Is it possible to long, even miss, an era you were never part of? I catch myself listening to Simon and Garfunkel, The Mommas and the Poppas, The Beatles and I long to be a teenager with my mom, getting my girlfriends together to listen to a new record that one of us got with our paycheck from the five and dime. Not being tethered to a cell phone, a computer... the moon landing and a summer by the lake.

I wouldn't want my brothers being shipped off to Vietnam, the scare of nuclear weapons... all of those things, but I think about the things happening now in the world, and I don' t things are really any better or worse. They are just different.

With the work I've done with www.classic-pinup.com (modeling for and promoting the charity calendar) I've found a love for the WWII era. The fashion, the music, the history... all of it really intrigues me. I love dressing in period clothing and going to the reenactment events, flirting with soldiers, dancing, and zooming around in period military vehicles. My grandmother told me that my pinup work would have made my grandfather, a veteran gunner, proud. I wouldn't wish a world war on anyone, but I sort of want to go be my grandma's best friend for a while.



(top photo: http://gamini.org, bottom photo: American Air Museum, Long Island)

Going on adventures

I have always been an adventurous person. For a while, I was scared of doing new things, not because I didn't want to, but because I was afraid of what people might think. When I was in college, I was offered the chance to drive an amish horse and buggy. I turned it down because I was scared. I look back and think- "well, that would have been cool- quite the story." But I was afraid to do it and didn't. Now that I travel a lot on my own, I take up every opportunity for adventure I can, because if I don't do it now, I might not ever get the opportunity again.

I like to take back roads, I avoid highways. You never know what sort of interesting store or roadside attraction you might find. I'd rather stay with people and buy them expensive dinner than spend the money on a mediocre hotel, for the company and conversation. Likewise, I love to host traveling models (and an occasional tall photographer...), feed them and share my home.

This trip has given me lots of new experiences- mushy green beans at a hole in the wall home cookin' cafe (thumbs down), a bed of nails (thumbs up) and a visit to SPACE CAMP!! (two thumbs up, that fulfilled a childhood dream of mine).

I was apprehensive at first about my trip here, since I had next to nothing booked. I was afraid that I wasn't even going to break even, but I did fine all things considered. But I'll be coming home with more than my share of rent- I've got a smashed penny to prove I was at Space Camp :D

(photo by Asylum)

Fort Payne, Alabama and a ring flash!

I can officially add Alabama to my roster of states. I went with Serge from Atomic Dots to shoot on some really high rocks (almost a poem here...) and a pond on some private land owned by a landscape photographer. Really beautiful area.... did you know that cactus grow in Alabama? I had no idea, but saw a bunch on our hike. FYI- little ants will defend their rocks by biting you in the bits. Consider yourself warned.

We then went to shoot in a studio downtown, where we had a good time with a red couch and a softbox.

I'm really excited about this image that I'm posting today for many reasons. One- it's awesome (or "hotrageous" as a friend of mine said) and two- I suggested the ring flash. Hotness by me, photo by Atomic Dots. (EDIT: I just noticed that I'm doing almost the same pose in the picture from yesterday. HA!)

Right now, I'm in Nashville, staying with the photographer I shot with this evening. A line of really bad storms came through, and we figured it best that I just stay here for the night and head out in the morning when I don't have to deal with dark, rain, and mountain grades. Tomorrow I'll meander back to Chattanooga, maybe take a non-highway route to enjoy the scenery and find some odd things along the way.

Off on a thrill-seaking adventure!

Phone. I have one.

Phone problem is fixed. Went to the Verizon store today, got the whole crap sorted out and I'm now holding on to a shiny red phone. Holding on very tightly.

Let's pray the rest of this trip doesn't bust up like it did today.

Photograph by Frog516.

Atlanta ate my soul... or at least the phone.

Blarg.

Somehow between texting home to let everyone know I'm safe and sound and waiting to get off the plane and a truck stop an hour or so north of ATL, the phone took a run for it. Grew legs and waltzed off. Poof! GONE!

Shit.

I noticed it gone when I went to make a superfluous phone call about Delilah and a song our friend sings at karaoke after getting cookies and a diet coke at McDonald's. I took the little change I had left to call home (10 minutes of long distance for a dollar!) to figure out what to do.

Really really up shit creek this time. I hope I make it through the next 10 days...

(photograph by Greg Lankenau, who happens to be very tall)

Gearing up for a southern trip and my lactardation

Tennesse, Georgia and Alabama, here I come... maybe.

I've been working this trip for quite a while now, and I still don't have a whole lot of bookings. Oh well, I guess it will give me lots of time to organize my inbox and blog a bit, amongst other things. Does anyone know if RAW is on Hulu? That would rock my socks if it was, I haven't even gotten to watch the show I did pyro for! I'll write about that one sometime next week, methinks.

Lately, all I've wanted to eat is cheese and ice cream. This proves to be a bit of a problem since I'm lactose intolerant, or as we say at our house- lactarded. I can take the pills all I want, but if I consume too much it makes my insides revolt. Yeah, yeah, eat soy you say. I'm in Wisconsin! I'll get flogged! Anyway, sexy milk (sans-lactose) picture by Jeebus Kitten (I think that's what he's going by now).

A new game

So this weekend I played another new game called Bananagram. It's sort of like scrabble, but if you're like me and get sick of the constraints scrabble puts on you ("oh, if only I could re-arrange this entire puzzle I could get this stupid letter to fit!") then you will love this game. Each player picks out a certain number of letter tiles and then has to put together their own cross word. Every time a player uses up all of their letters, everyone has to pick another tile. You can rearrange your tiles at any point. Whomever finishes their pile with the number of tiles in the middle being equal to or less than the number of players (with no spelling errors) wins.

It's cool. You should play it.

I'm gearing up for my trip to Atlanta/Tennessee/Birmingham as we speak. If things go well, I'll probably just make Chattanooga home base and work from there. If not, I may drive up to DC and paint the town red.


(photos by Big Randy Johnson)

Summerfest and Pie (or not)

Tonight we're going to go to Summerfest and check out Shiny Toy Guns, thanks to some free tickets that a friend from out of town won. We're driving with another friend of ours... he's got a press pass and free parking, so while we're WAAAAAAY in the back, getting beer spilled on us by drunken frat boys, he'll be on stage, probably not getting beer spilled on him. Looks like it's a good day to be him!

...but before we go, we'll be picking mulberries at his house. Mulberry pie? Jam? Eat them all before I get the chance to do anything with them? Who knows. This is one of those things I'm nerdy about- I like to can. Like, make pickles and jam and things. I should make myself one of those awesome 50's housewife aprons and be all sorts of domestic in it. Or just make dilly beans :P

Speaking of Dilly beans, I should go get a jar of them out of last year's crop. They are nomtastic!

(today's photograph is brought to you by the great Billy Monday)

D and D at the house tonight!

First things first, I'm naked. Well, not right now, but there is an entry today in the POD 18+ on Model Mayhem of me in the shower. It's pretty hot! If you're on MM, go vote for it :D

So there will be a bunch of people over to play D and D tonight. I don't really get it (not that I've actually ever tried, but I don't really have the patience for it). I'd probably like it, being essentially improv and all. And dragons. I love dragons :D I'll stick to making pizzas and doling out mountain dew for the time being.

This weekend I got to try out a pretty awesome game I'd only heard about, but never had the opportunity to play. It's called "Lunch Money". You're essentially catholic school girls beating the shit out of each other for, well, lunch money. The most fun part is not playing, but describing how you beat each other up- I threw a temper tantrum, took my barbies and shoved them repeatedly up another player's nose. Oh the joys of imaginary ridiculous violence!