Christmas List '08

Schmincke Horadam Watercolor Set
48 Horadam Watercolor Half Pans
Totally expensive, but I need it for school next semester.

Books:
Any of the "Patterns of Fashion" by Janet Arnold
"Drawing Fashion" by Susan Mulcahy
"Dressed for the Photographer" by Joan Severa
"Ingress in Fashion" by Aileen Ribeiro
"Vanity Fair Portraits" by Graydon Carter
"Looking through the Lens" National Geographic book... any National Geographic book with people in it.
Any book, really.

Black opaque tights

Lotion- body

Lotion-face (with SPF and something that prevents wrinkles.)

SET hair product

Personality Quiz- Just like the old teen magazines...

	Your Major and Minor Personality Types
	Characteristics of all four personality types can be found within each of us, but there is almost always one personality type that is dominant. We call this the major personality type. The Chemistry Profile also identifies your minor or secondary personality type. You exhibit some aspects of this personality type, though not to the same degree as with your major type. Your major personality type = Explorer Your minor personality type = Negotiator You are an EXPLORER/negotiator You are a highly spontaneous person who always likes to try new things. Novel and unpredictable situations don't bother you; instead you find them challenging and exciting. You tend to be focused and resourceful and you are able to juggle a lot of projects at the same time; as a result you are sometimes a whirlwind of activity. You have a firm grip on reality and enjoy living in the present tense. But you have a keen imagination that enables you to lift off from time and space to be remarkably creative. You are humorous. You are able to laugh at yourself, and you like entertaining others. You have a deep sense of compassion. You can show genuine insight into the needs of others; you are good at listening and talking; and you express a genuine desire to be helpful. Yet you are easy-going. Your tolerance for others and their beliefs, your lack of prejudice, your ability to compromise and your occasional antics make you popular with others and a great companion.

How your personality breaks out:

Explorer - 32% of your personality

Known for high energy, high creativity and spontaneity. Seeks novelty, risk and pleasure. Intellectually curious and not easily swayed by opinion.

Builder - 14% of your personality

Usually very popular. Deep attachment to home and family. Calm demeanor and low anxiety. Often consistent, loyal and protective.

Negotiator - 28% of your personality

Excels at seeing the big picture, long-term planning and consensus building. An intuitive thinker who is flexible, verbal and socially skilled. Imaginative, empathetic and nurturing.

Director - 24% of your personality

Daring, original, direct and inventive. A non-conformist. Skilled at abstract thinking and short-term planning. Often assertive and quite competitive. Tough-minded and efficient.

Love, Love, Love

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

- Walt Whitman

I had a dream this summer:

I am the audience/narrator and see a man literally falling through the gaping hole of his life- his memories, his experiences, his seasons, his time. He smacked and thumped and ricocheted off these experiences as if they were tree branches on his way from the heavens. He was a victim, falling through without control. He came to a splat at the end of his vertical, gaping timeline and suddenly his consciousness joined mine, the narrator, the audience. The vision paned into a long shot and suddenly the audience/narrator could see all lives, all timelines, not just of people but the universe as a whole. We, the collective, were the powerful and all knowing.

This vision influenced the duration of my summer. I went to Nantucket with Kevin, Mel, Claire, and Jason. It was truly an amazing time. Not only was it a beautiful, want-for-nothing experience, but we also were all on the same wavelength and were very much a unified family. Knowing that I can have this unification with people, with the collective, is now something I try to seek out as much as possible. I have new thoughts on being in love and what it is to be married to someone (to be tapped into the same wavelength, to become the same person.)

It’s an interesting new outlook, and I feel it palpably in the air. Change, the 1960s the 1860s, Walt Whitman, Hair in the Park- it’s here as it always has been.

The Public Theater's "Hair"-playing this summer in Central Park.

In other related news, I will be in a (gasp) nude reading of Walt Whitman's “Songs of Myself” this coming weekend. I was inspired; I'm in grad school. It all goes.

I want the gloves, I want the glory

I desperatly want to join a bell choir... though it seems surpisingly difficult if you do not belong to a church. Is there a non-church New York City hangbell choir?

Truer Words...

Alison: Erin, you can’t call someone, say you have gossip, and then have it be about yourself. That’s not gossip; that’s a confession.

Cops on Segways

As of this summer, Minneapolis cops use a few T3s to patrol the downtown area. This is ridiculous and rad at the same time aka I'm in love with it. This video is amazing- two cops showing off their skills... sirens and all.

Back Back Back

I’m back from my two week vacation of home paradise. Homemade food, drive-in movies, Milky Way stars, clean rivers, swimsuit lounging, sleeping-in to all hours, etc. are a thing of vacation past. School starts on MONDAY, and I still have a lot of reading to do.

My Junior year of High School my parents moved from the home/hometown where I grew up. The new house contained enough bedrooms for everyone in my family… except for me. I took the hint, and from that time on my personal items have either traveled with me or have been contained to “The Closet”. “The Closet” contained: books, clothes, pictures, awards, clippings, art projects, stuffed animals, memorabilia, cards, craft supplies, sewing supplies, year books, etc.

Every, EVERY time I go home my mom’s task for me is the same: to go through “The Closet”. Over the years, as my tie to the items lessen, more and more has been thrown out. This trip home was no exception, and, with this very thorough cleansing, “The Closet” has halved itself once more. Only the essentials now survive (which was necessary as I have been informed that “The Closet” will now be relocated to a harder-to-reach storage space).

It’s completely amazing to look back on all the artifacts from my past. Some positive standouts of this exorcism:
I was an awesome artist beginning at the age of two. I’m framing five of my favorites ages two through six.
I was a good looking high school student and never ever knew it.
People like me. They really, really like me. Teachers, friends, etc., I have the cards to prove it people.

It’s also amazing to see what high emotions are thrown around when you are young. I read through a series of VERY dramatic emails I printed, which mapped out the downfall of a middle school friendship.

Boys also seemed to be a heavy topic. Boys are never quite the same in high school as they are in “real life”. This is good, but also not as chaotically romantic, which can be lovely fun. For an example (also found in “The Closet”) I doubt a New York man would ever try to woo me with a poem such as this:

Of every splendid star harnessed high in spaces sea
Sweeping thorough the heavens, with beauty true and free
I will tell the celestial story the never best I can
Of the brightest start of all- her name Erin Brianne
For all other starts composed of jasper and pearl
Can not vie with her most free and uncaring curl
She gives off the presence of such magnificent light
That everyday I can’t wait for the night
Her words are like music, her walk is a dance
The life of a star, heart beating romance
‘Till every moment with her is spend with a song
With a starlight so bright, the night is so long

Looking into the pouring sky I am driven insane
For she is the only star I see through the haze of the rain
And each time through life that I see her cry
From the heartless society of evil gone by
A small piece of myself flows down her cheek like tears
Embracing her pain, easing her fears

For that dark September bight when she was born
A small piece out of heaven was torn
And fell to the Earth
For a miraculous birth
Before that night all stars shown bright as the sun
But as she fell, their beauty transcended into one
Now every star is dim and very small
While there is a child from Heaven with the beauty of them all



Seriously. How sweet.

My Dionysos

I decided to create another blog for books/media/theater and short thoughts on them. A place for passages, clips, and quotes I love and want to record for posterity.

Media I’ve consumed can be found at:

http://mydionysos.blogspot.com/

Shoo Fly

I’m home and ten pounds heavier. I like to think of it as ten pounds of happiness and not my mother’s cooking/my over-eating.

However, one thing that does not make me happy is the swarms of horseflies that can be found by our backyard river. Kayaking, swimming and floating all become almost unbearable when they are out. Today I lost a pair of sunglasses in the current when I was thrashing about due to their terrible bites.



My mom’s advice on battling the flies: “Put a feather in your hat.”

My mom, Katie, and I, in swimsuits and hats, had no feathers. We replaced them with branches and made our way down to the river. Looking like hobos, the flies still bit.




My dad had a more straightforward solution. “Wear a shirt and put a fly-strip on the back of your hat.”

That is how I caught five (live) flies on the back of my head during a two-hour kayak trip today.

It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

No. Joke.

Hair Icon.

Ticker number?

Temp Agent: "Erin, are you comfortable on a trading floor?"
(Beat)
Me: "Well, I've never been on a trading floor, but I'm comfortable everywhere I go."

Money has been short, so....

Today. Erin Schultz. Trading floor.

I giggled throughout the day at the absurdity.

The details:

• A THIRTY line telephone bank
• Assisting thirteen men in sales
• A "Big Boss" with "bat phone" to cover
• Lots of ringing/yelling/money talk
• Me

My responsibility is primarily the phone. It does not have a receiver and sits directly on the desk, always at hand. The process is as follows:

Telephone rings/"hit" the line/yell at the trader to pick it up (seriously YELL across the room)/hit release/continue

There is some yelling, swearing, a man tossing a baseball, and the "Big Boss" called his men in the conference room with a football nestled in his arm.

I am totally amused. I am totally terrified.

I texted a simple "OMG" to Claire.

It could not be summed up more perfectly.

About my New England vacation....

...enough said.

WINE!

“You should get drunk! It’s fun!”

(Quote from my newly informed drunk dial of Friday. A VERY fun Friday with Kevin, Greg, Claire, and Craig Middleton... what a motley crew.)

I've got no strings to hold me down...

I have been seriously madly deeply in love with my life right now. Temping, yes temping, has provided me with some (gasp) fulfillment.

Temping for me is the tasting platter of employment. I have been booked at a variety of short term placements and each has provided insight into places I COULD HAVE worked- my fictional lives (lives not lead, jobs not done, parallel universes). I have worked at very corporate real estate offices, accounting firms, and today I’m working here. (Got to get around the Google alert somehow).

The jobs have provided quick blimps of insight into New York employment that I could not be privy to in any other way. I do not have the energy, desire, or time to have a career in these fields, but I do have time to answer your phones for the day. (I will not vex on how time is bringing us all down by not allowing us to explore our full selves completely, not allowing us the years to become experts and explore magnitude of paths. That and money. Time and money will always fight against our complete fulfillment as an individual. Of course time will always be the big winner in that three way fight.

And I digress….)

Temping has also made me appreciate my path and the choices I have made. I would complain previously about having “office jobs.” Believe me. I have never, ever had an office job. Fashion PR and event planning are about as untraditional as it gets when you compare it to working in a cubical at an office called White, Straight, Old Guy and Associates. (A demographic I have never have the privilege to work with before.)

Perhaps the biggest reason I love temping is I know it is going to end. In mere months I will be a school girl again and will be fully interested and invested in what I’m doing. One can not over-emphasize what one can overlook and muster through when there is an end date in sight.

In other news, I decided I’m going to New Hampshire with Mel for the next few days (and I didn’t have to ask permission from an employer… love temping flexibility). I am very much looking forward to the trip. I need a beach. As I told Claire yesterday, “I feel like I can not be kind or love someone fully. When that happens I know I have to get out of the City for a few days.” She called me insane, but it’s true. This City, especially in the heat and summer, gets in your head. After you're out for a few days you always want back in, but getting out, especially for a girl who loves trees, is necessary.

Photos of nature at its best in the next round.

Looking for a Sublet!

Come live in my spacious, Williamsburg loft. Room available in Aug and longer if need be. Huge room (pictures to follow). $1113.00.

Smooth Operator of Life.

It has been a long, long while since I have blogged. I think it might be a good thing. My life has been so full of… life… that I haven’t had a chance to record it.

Ok, fine. I’ll stop with the east coast attitude and perchance admit that it could be a bad thing I didn’t have a spare moment to reflect. However, there have been some major changes. A job, another job, Internet dating (how could I have not blogged about my month long social experiment of internet dating!!!), a steady boy to date (not found through Internet dating)- all have come and gone.

I quit the PR gig and have worked for an event company making party magic for the New York social elite. It was the first job where I was really given a great amount of responsibility in terms of managing large amounts of money, plans, vendors, freelancers- problem-solving to the max (my first love). Plus I got to be a bit bossy on the job site as the big boy in charge. It was great fun, nice perks, but a ton of work and many, many, many working hours. (Check out a few of the parties.)

I then received a wonderful gift from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts- admittance. Free admittance to receive an MFA in Costume Design. Plus health insurance. Also free. Money. Stipend. Enough to live on. How could I pass up a lovely chance to have someone pay me to take watercolor figure drawing classes and discuss at length the ins and outs of human behavior set on stage? Well I really couldn’t. I said yes and was mailed the required reading list for the summer.

I explained my situation and, out of respect, gave my event company a great length of time to replace me, two months. Because of the slow summer at the company, they gave me two weeks. As I was currently living month-to-month, paycheck-to-paycheck, I only had one thought: I. AM. SCREWED. How could I pay my bills until school-stipend time?

I realized I was long due for some scrappy, crafty, problem-solving nonsense. I found a sublet for my room in July. (I found him on Craig’s List. I did not meet him before he moved in. He plays “Smooth Operator” on continuous repeat.) I am now living in my roommate’s room for a few days while he is out of town. It will then be a nomad’s life here and there on New York couches. I will also temp in the mean time and will make ends meet with pure prudence.

It really is me at my best. Making it work. And, as always, the "Hair Chop" (scroll down after clicking). This time instead of doing it myself I paid $19 at Great Clips. What a moment of insane irreverence. Lovely.



(Stay tuned for weekly updates on the traumatic, awkward, afro-ed growing out phase of my poor, poor hair.)