St. James

It's time for my favorite annual fall festival!! The St. James Art Festival starts today and runs through Sunday and I could not be more excited. I don't think I have missed this festival for the last 12 years. I started going when I was a freshman in high school and became instantly addicted.

I'm headed out there in just a few but I thought I would share my excitement with you! I know that's exactly what you were looking forward to. :)

I'll post again tonight with a photo-filled recap for your perusing pleasure, until then! Auf wiedersehen!

Autumn ramblings...

I got this from a friend and felt like changing my journal.

Who sleeps in bed next to you?
Gil on occasion. Since we're in separate apartments it doesn't happen as often as I would like :)

What's one of the stupidest things you've done?
Oh there are quite a few stupid things I've done. It's hard to narrow them down to one that stands out above the rest...

What kind of magazines do you read? What news sites do you read?
I have a subscription to Cosmo and Women's Fitness, as well as Backpacker Magazine (not really sure how I got that one...) and a couple online photography mags. News sites.... hrmmm... Mostly yahoo and the courier-journal online.

If you could see one band in concert right now, any band, dead or alive, which would it be?
Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Rosemary Clooney, Harry Connick Jr., are you seeing the trnd here? I like the crooners :)

What's really disgusting?
SPITTING!!! Soooo gross... and raisins.

Name one odd item within five feet of you.
Hmmm... A mini dragon sleeping in a bottle cap...

What's your current fandom/obsession/addiction?
How I Met Your Mother and Eureka

Where would you like to go right now if you had enough money?
Bora Bora. There is a little hut over the water just begging for me to come live there for the rest of time...

What are you most excited for?
Our vacation in January.

What websites do you always visit when you go online? What's your favorite place to visit?
DeviantART, My Yahoo!, Facebook and my favorite webcomics.

What was the last thing you bought?
A couple of those smell-good reed oil diffusers. Now my living room smells like vanilla and cinnamon and my bathroom smells like apple cider. Both remind me of fall, my favorite time of year!

What's your favorite season?
As stated above, FALL! The colors and smells of the season are amazing and it's the start of festival season. Besides even at 26 it's hard to resist the urge to jump into a pile of freshly raked leaves... though my Dad doesn't really appreciate it any more now than he did when I was 6... heehee

Does the weather affect your mood?
Not really my mood so much as my temperament. I know that sounds like the same thing but it's not! I get more introspective and quiet when it's cold, grey, and rainy but I'm not in a bad mood per-say. I'm always up for more cuddle time then too! :)

What is your zodiac sign?
Cancer

What new skill do you want to learn right now?
I want to re-learn how to ride a horse, western style this time instead of english.

5 things (not people) you can't live without?
Internet access, my camera, books, my claddagh, and piano music!

Do you have any siblings?
One brother and two step-brothers. Though we didn't grow up together so I was pretty much treated as an only child.

What's something you'd like to say to someone right now?
I'd like to ask my father about our family tree.

What subject in school did you remember being the easiest?
Music... for so many reasons it was the easiest and the hardest.

Worst Blogger Ever...

I'm pretty sure that description fits me pretty accurately.

As it stands I've been pretty busy trying to stay out of trouble, putting together my new apartment, and working my heiney off managing the portrait studio. It's all rather boring really but seems to take up huge chunks of time.

Tonight tho I am going to be completely and utterly couch potato-ish tho. It's gross and rainy out, Gil has a guy's night out and I'm left to my own devices which means: MOVIE NIGHT! Oh yea, I'm already all set up with a couple movies (Martian Child and AirTV: The Movie,) some yummo popcorn and my Colts blanket for premo-snuggletasticness! Yea, it doesn't really take much to make me happy. :)

I'll try to be more consistent with my blogging... HEY, I said try, no promises! Love ya!

-Toodles

"Work? It's Derby Week!!"

Oh wait, it's not Derby week, and technically the Derby Festival is my work... Oh dear... =D

Since October I have been working with the amazing staff at the Kentucky Derby Festival. Who knew that it took a full-time staff of 22 people an entire year to plan and prepare for the three weeks worth of Derby Festival events?! Oh, and by the way, did you also know that there are over 70 events?? Yea, me either.

My primary function is to work three days a week for the VP of Communication - Aimee Boyd. She's a pretty laid back boss for being the head of a department of two that's entirely responsible for ALL media coverage, most print pieces, and all just about every TV spot that the festival has. Oh, and we run the website too. HA! Getting back to what I do, well, it's not much at the moment. During the last few months I have been doing a lot of prep and clean up work with our archives and updating the media guide for 2009. The real work started this week with my writing my first magazine piece for the Festival magazine! Yup that's right I'm being published in a legitimate magazine. Granted it only runs for one month a year but that counts!!

I'll also be writing for and dealing with the local media throughout the next five months. I get to set up press conferences, do interviews, give press credentials. It's all pretty cool. Did I mention that I'm also on committees for several of the events? Plus, I currently have my own intern. You heard me right, the intern has an intern, lol.

See Aimee is preggers and due right before festival so she'll be out of commission for the events. This means Mark Shallcross, Comm. Mgr, will be handling her work, I'll be handling most of his, and Jon (my intern) will be doing the majority of the "intern duties" like sitting in the Mobile Media Ctr during Thunder over Louisville to hand out press credentials.

There's a LOT more to what I'll be doing but it would take forever to try to explain it all now so I'll spare you. I think I'll just update you as it goes. Sound like a plan?

So that's all for now folks, I've got to get to my Forensic Psychology class, yup I'm studying serial killers this semester! So I'll post again later today about the rest of what's up in this thing I call my life! :)

~Toodles

Cold Weather

Makes me hibernate. Hence the lack of interesting things to write about.
I do have a bit of news:
- I'm interning for the Kentucky Derby Festival (woot)! I will devote an entire entry to that this week.
- I've been booked as photographer for my first wedding shoot! Yipee!
- I'm also shooting a rehearsal dinner for someone else.

- Classes have started again for the LAST time!!!!! YAAAAY!

And, uh, yea, that's pretty much it. I'll give lots more details later. Right now, I'm off to dreamland.

I'm sorry for the lack of updates!!

I have three blogs going at the moment and unfortunately I forget which ones I've updated and which I haven't! :( To make up for my lack of updates here I'm going to do some backlog posting to bring this one up to date and then we'll get a brand new, never before written (^_^), sparkly entry!
On to the backlogging!!

Time for a Road Trip!!; Backlog - Oct. 19

Sometimes you just need to get out of town and experience different spaces and places. That’s what I decided to do this past weekend.

A few months ago I purchased tickets to see Cirque du Soleil’s Saltimbanco at The Bank of Kentucky Center in Newport, KY. Since the show was in the middle of the day on Saturday we decided to make a whole day of it. We wanted to experience some of the best that Newport had to offer.

We started our day with a trip to Newport on the Levee. This is an entertainment complex much like our own Fourth Street Live! here in Louisville. They have restaurants and bars, shopping, and it also serves as home to the Newport Aquarium which was our destination.

As I have mentioned before I am a huge fan of all things turtle so when I noticed a Sea Turtle walking around out side the aquarium you know I got excited. Don’t worry, it wasn’t a real turtle, it was the mascot for the Aquarium, Tango the Turtle. I got my picture taken with him and then we headed inside for some fishy good-times!


Neport Aquarium is home to 70 exhibits and 14 galleries and over a million gallons of fresh and salt waters! The whole place was alive with hundreds of different fish and other aquatic creatures. Among my favorites were the Angelfish, Seahorses, and, of course, the Turtles. There was one animal in particular that caught my eye though. It was the Sea Urchins. I never knew how colorful they actually were. Whenever you see them from a distance they look like spiny black porcupines and nothing more. But upon closer inspection I noticed they were actually quite colorful with blues and greens lining the spines, white spots that seem almost reflective around their mouths, and orange lips to draw in unsuspecting prey.
After walking the entire length of the Aquarium we ventured out to make our way to Cirque. As we were walking back to the car I noticed a couple of musicians playing in the court so we headed over to listen for a bit. We dropped a couple dollars into the guitar case and as we did they invited us to play with them for a few moments. I took up a small DJembe drum and had a blast playing with them. I wish it could’ve have lasted longer but it was time to get going.

Cirque du Soleil’s Saltibanco explores the urban experience in all its myriad forms: the people who live there, their idiosyncrasies and likenesses, families and groups, the hustle and bustle of the street and the towering heights of skyscrapers. Between whirlwind and lull, prowess and poetry, Saltimbanco takes spectators on an allegorical and acrobatic journey into the heart of the city.

Saltimbanco is a Cirque du Soleil signature show inspired by the urban fabric of the metropolis and its colorful inhabitants. Decidedly baroque in its visual vocabulary, the show’s eclectic cast of characters draws spectators into a fanciful, dreamlike world, an imaginary city where diversity is a cause for hope. At least, that’s what the billing says, and I agree!

The whole show was completely amazing. There were clowns, trapeze artists, a pretty amazing band, and even a Ring Master! It was like stepping out of our world and into this brightly colored playground of the imagination. This is the third time I have been to a Cirque production and I am completely hooked. Each time it’s something new and unexpected, but everytime is spectacular.

To finish our day we headed back to Levee for some authentic German fare and tasty beer. The Höfbrauhaus in Newport was the first to make the voyage across the pond from Munich, Germany. I have been lucky enough to visit both and our’s certainly does the original justice. They have great food and a new seasonal beer each month. This month they have “King Ludwig” the official beer of Oktoberfest in Munich. I opted for that and some Schnitzel with Noodles. Both were exceptional. For a moment, it almost felt like I was back in Munich.

To say we had a full day would be a severe understatement so I’ll simply say that we enjoyed every bit of it. Newport has tons of things to do and we weren’t even able to see a third. I definitely reccomend it if you’re looking to get away for a while. It’s close enough that you can make it a day trip but far enough that you could turn it into a weekend getaway. I will certainly be back there soon, there is plenty more I want to see and do before I’ll be satisfied!