Back up on my feet again

You know when you've been working really hard, and have a lot that needs to happen, and you absolutely cannot get sick now because if you do nothing will ever be done? And so you don't get sick, and work through late nights and stressful times, and then finally you have a break. And you relax, and take a breath. And then promptly you get sick. Or is that just me?

At the very least, that was me Sunday through yesterday, felled by some sort of unpleasant stomach bug. I did get out of bed and go into work for a bit yesterday, as I had a demo and a meeting, but I still was thoroughly not up to par. So these pictures are from today, the first day I've felt (mostly) normal.


Dress: Xhilaration, thrifted. Tank top (underneath): Express. Shoes: Naturalizers, thrifted. Earrings: handmade.


Also, this dress now appears desperately wrinkled from being sat down in at a desk most of the day. Oops.

I don't have very much else to say, today. I'm quite behind on my blog reading and commenting, which is sad because I like seeing what everyone I know in blogworld is up to. I've just been in bed, reading historical fiction and sleeping. And not wanting to eat, which is completely foreign to me and really quite disturbing. My day tends to be marked out by meals, for better or for worse. I know the cycles of my stomach and generally, in my conscious and subconscious mind, am aware of when I'm next going to eat. Heck, my regularity with mealtimes (and complete awareness of when I need lunch NOW, please) is a bit of a joke around the lab. But this week, I just haven't felt like eating. And that makes me feel like I'm inhabiting someone else's body.

The really terrifying thing, though? The awareness that I had, for a few moments, that I lost a little weight...and labeling that, in my mind, a "good thing." No, it's not a good thing if I lose a few pounds because of sickness and dehydration and not wanting to eat more than saltines for a couple of days. But it's scary to me to see that little voice in my head could pop up and be pleased at how little food it took to satisfy me for a day. I've never had disordered eating behaviors, thanks to a strong love of food. But I've definitely gone through periods of trouble with my own body image and self-confidence, times when I wanted a metabolism that would be easily satisfied with small amounts of food eaten on occasion, rather than one that demands (and relishes) my regular mealtimes. I certainly need to get back to my workout routine, yes. I need to make sure I'm eating primarily food that is healthy and good for me and nutritious. I prefer when I'm strong, I prefer when I'm eating food that gives me energy and fills me up for a while rather than just the quick burst of a sugar high. But I also have a sweet tooth, and some curves, and a personality/metabolism that enjoys the process of preparing and eating tasty food. I do really like my body, I think. (I hate that my impulse is to qualify that, water it down with the "I think"! Are we not allowed to say we like our bodies?) So...I do. I like my body quite a bit. And I will be glad when it's over fully being sick.

I suppose I did have a bit to say, after all...

Triple the fun

So now that I'm back to quiet days at the lab, I have a little more time to play with my style. I even was pretty good about taking pictures over the last few days (if not posting them immediately). Helpful in this effort is the cheap extensible tripod I picked up a couple of weeks ago. It fits in my handbags easily, but goes up to 40 inches or so. I had tried the gorillapod flexible wrapping tripod idea, but one of the legs on the one I got popped off within a few days, and I generally had a hard time than I'd expected finding trees/posts/other things around which to wrap a tripod. So this new one is working much better for me.


This was Tuesday's outfit. Top: H&M, thrifted. Skirt: thrifted. Shoes: Nordstroms, thrifted (I can't tell you how many times I've worn these sandals since I got them early in the summer...). Bag: thrifted. Earrings: handmade.

Wednesday:

Dress: thrifted. Black silk blouse: Calvin Klein, thrifted. Shoes: Chinese Laundry, thrifted. Bag: thrifted. Belt: thrifted. This outfit started with me trying to wear this cream dress that I'd gotten a while ago but hadn't worn, yet. But it's strapless, so I chickened out from wearing something strapless to the lab and layered another blouse over it. I need to find some occasions to wear strapless, somewhat-dressy things before the end of the summer!

Thursday:

Dress: thrifted. Skirt: Forever21. Sandals: Wet Seal. Belt: thrifted. I had a couple of casual meetings this day with people I had not yet met, which always makes me a bit over-conscious of what I'm wearing. I liked this outfit well enough. Also, look! It's obvious that I only rarely change handbags...I just stick all my stuff into one and leave it there for a while.

I really would like to take some time soon to go through my closet and figure out some fun outfits, instead of trying to pull something together in the morning right before I head out for the lab. I feel like I'm in a period of being kind of unsatisfied with my closet...not so much for the contents, as for my inability to figure out how I want to wear some of these things. I've been leaning toward a more vintage-inspired style recently, and would really like to do more experimentation with silhouette and shape, but it can be tricky for me to find outfits that make me feel pulled-together and stylish. Because I'm somewhat curvy, good fit and certain proportions seem to be really important for clothes to show off my shape rather than make me look schlumpy. For instance, though I dearly want to wear a couple of the thrifted blazers I've picked up over the last year or so, I haven't figured out a way to wear something with defined shoulders that balances well with the rest of my body and doesn't just make me look square all over (or that could at least do that in a way that pleased me). I'm still learning what works well on me/fits how I'd like to look, though. The creativity of the style blogosphere helps, here, in inspiration and exploration. Though it's also easy for me to fall into the trap of "If only I had some of their cute vintage dresses and beautiful shoes, then I too could be effortlessly stylish!" forgetting that what looks amazing on one person with particular coloring and a particular body type/height might or might not be flattering on me. Anyway. I've been thinking about this for a few days, and wanted to share...

Hope everyone has exciting weekends ahead!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled life...

I have survived the opera rehearsal period! And all of the technical elements I'm responsible for worked well enough. So that's a good thing. After a couple of weeks of daily 15-16-hour days in the theater (they let us in at 8AM and kicked us out by 11, or midnight if we'd arranged that beforehand...weekdays, weekends), we had an open dress rehearsal for an invited audience, packed up everything, and just put it on a boat for Europe, where the show will open in September. It's an amazing, crazy process. And now I am incredibly drained, physically and mentally. And have a fair amount to do before we go meet the show in mid-September. I took last weekend completely off, which helped a bit...

In the hot days of July, I really wanted to spend a lot of days looking like this (taken a couple of weeks ago before rehearsals picked up):


Shirt: Ann Taylor, thrifted. Skirt: Forever 21. Sandals: Wet Seal. Bag: thrifted.

But most of the time, I looked something more like this:


Top: BCBG, thrifted. Capris: Forever 21. Shoes: thrifted. Giant bag that could hold all my stuff going back and forth each day: thrifted.

Only imagine versions of this with a long sweater, because it was COLD in the theater! And with long jeans or black pants, because it was...cold in the theater. Still with the sneakers and flat shoes, though, because I had to be ready at any time to climb to the catwalks and do whatever was needed technically.

But it was all good. And we made things happen (though I can't take credit for the robots, I did make the set piece hanging in the second photo into a musical instrument, and have been helping the interactive visual elements):




Absolutely a traditional piece of theater, right?

Fun with Summer Dressing

I wore this on Monday and just loved it. I'd picked up this white blouse at the dollar-a-pound a few weeks ago (when it started getting hot and I realized that I ought to own much more white clothing). However, I hadn't figured out a way to wear it that didn't look fairly unflattering on me; a high round neck is not usually my best style, and the big sleeves and space in the torso could easily read as a baggy t-shirt. But when I tried it with this high-waisted skirt on Saturday evening while cleaning up my closet, then added a patterned belt, it worked for me.


I don't think it photographed quite as well as I would have liked, but I still really enjoyed wearing it. I've mostly been at the lab this week, working on code for the show, so it helps my energy levels to be a little bit dressy.


Shirt: Jack McQueen, thrifted. Skirt, Ann Taylor, thrifted. Belt, thrifted. Necklace, handmade from vintage pin and chain. Shoes: Naturalizers, thrifted.


A gratuitous dinner picture, too! Chicken with tomatoes, olives, and feta, plus roasted potatoes (from the farm share) with rosemary and garlic. SO good.


And this is actually what I wore today, for a long day of coding and interaction design work at the lab. I got a little portable tripod on a whim last weekend, making it much easier to take pictures outside! I still have to get used to the blogger thing of self-portraits in what could potentially be public areas. This may be why my photos from Monday were taken by a wall at the back of a building, near a dumpster.


Dress, thrifted and hemmed. Skirt (as petticoat), Forever21. Shoes, Nordstrom, thrifted.

Hope everyone's week has been going well so far!

Random outfits!

We are full swing into tech on this show! We finally moved everything into the theater on Thursday; it's amazing seeing the set that we've seen drawings/renderings/models of for years be put up in real physical space, in an actual theater! And I absolutely love being in theaters. I feel that theaters are places that are designed and made for storytelling, for the construction of other worlds, other universes. For intimacy and for entertainment and for virtuosity and for emotions. There's not just the actual physical space (which is generally really interesting), there's also the traces of the spaces that have been created inside that space, and the anticipation of those that are yet to be created. (Every time I end up in a theater, I know I'm doing the work I should be doing...)


Oh, right. I wear things, too.


I wore this outfit sometime last week. These pictures were taken in the warehouse space we've been renting for all the exciting robot-building and such. The top is Ann Taylor (thrifted), the skirt is INC (also thrifted), and I'm not sure what the shoes are (thrifted, again). I'm really interested by how I've begun to wear a majority of outfits that are mostly/entirely thrifted. I think this is because my shifting style has been helped along by thrifted clothing, especially the dollar-a-pound...

Also interesting: since I've been reading style blogs/paying more attention to my daily style/blogging myself, I've been much more aware of what I see people around me wearing. I ride the T or walk down the street and am just amazed at all of the beautiful, stylish, creative people I see expressing themselves through their clothing. I love seeing how the details of their outfits show me who they are, or who they're trying to be, or who they want to be, or who they accidentally/purposefully are portraying.


And this outfit was yesterday, actually. I keep trying to find things to handle the heat waves we've been having. The shirt is thrifted BCBG, the skirt is thrifted, and the shoes are thrifted Chinese Laundry. The earrings were a gift from my college roommate a few years ago.

Hope everyone has had a nice weekend, without too much work to do! (did I mention I was at the lab/theater most of the day?)

Fireworks and a heat wave!

Wow, has it been hot this week. I feel sorry for everyone else on the East Coast...up over 100 degrees (at one point the weather report claimed 106!) on Tuesday, and in the 90's the rest of the week. Thus, dressing has been for attempting to stay cool (as I'm working in our opera space away from the lab this week, with more limited air conditioning) and as comfortable as possible, and yet stay at a socially-appropriate amount of clothing. All we can talk about this week is how much we want to leave behind opera responsibilities and go to the beach or something. Anyone have tips for how to dress when the weather is scorching and you're going to be really sweaty?


This was my Monday outfit, which worked fairly well but photographed poorly (apparently, this shirt is more see-through with a camera flash. This may have been the only appropriate picture I took). All pieces are thrifted (including the Goodwill black strappy sandals that you can't see but that I've been wearing a few times a week since I got them).


And, since I promised you pictures of the Boston fireworks celebration... here's a few! It really was a lovely evening; it's great to be out with the crowds, seeing the fireworks up close with tons of people similarly excited. My group got to the riverbank around 6:30, and it was already pretty packed. Mind you, the fireworks don't start until 10:30...


I also love how every year the show tends to have new kinds of fireworks...new shapes, new movement. I can't believe it's possible to keep inventing more variations on fireworks! My favorite were a series of small ones that started low to the river and propelled their way upwards in an undulating pattern that reminded me of jellyfish. Just beautiful.


So yes. A busy week, with the next set of opera rehearsals on the horizon. We have design meetings (and review of content) tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. I really love this stuff, though.


Hope everyone is keeping relatively cool and looking forward to a good weekend!

Updates

Has this summer been FLYING by for anyone else? With rehearsals and working on things for the show and our impending next rehearsal period where all the technology has to be finished and working and good, it seems like time has been progressing much too rapidly for my taste. We finished the first rehearsal period a week ago, with basic blocking completed, but still to fully integrate the performance sensing systems I'm working on, the interactive visuals, or the robots (lots of rehearsals with people carrying around music stands and pretending to be robots, though...) The technical elements had just started being worked in. So...in a week and a half we load into the theater where we're rehearsing in Boston, we have a week+ there for tech before the performers come back, and then we have a week more of rehearsals and an open dress rehearsal. Then we pack up everything up and ship it to Monaco, where the opera will have its premiere, and meet it in September for setup and the show. It's going to be exciting/terrifying.

Just for fun, a blurry picture of me with some of our robots (taken by a coworker with my camera):


The big bad news from last week: I'd left my work laptop in our rehearsal space at the lab over the weekend, and when I got back it was no longer there, nor was the not-recently-backed-up opera code that I had been writing. Fortunately none of the other gear in the space had been touched, but unfortunately I then had to spend most of last week recreating my code. But now I seem to have everything back up to speed, I think...but wow. Back up your code, everyone. Or, you know, whatever else it is you work on.

Some good news: the lovely Tieka of Selective Potential re centlyhosted a giveaway by Annie of Time Enough for Drums, who has a great Etsy shop, Timely Vintage. I was the lucky winner of a Timely Vintage gift certificate! I picked out a couple of items from Annie's shop, and she sent them immediately. Everything was carefully wrapped and beautifully packaged!


I got a beautiful pink vintage eelskin purse...the texture is amazing! (I wasn't sure I liked the idea of eelskin, but this is such a great piece...)


And this vintage owl brooch, which I had my eye on since I saw it in the shop. He's got so much character! So, thank you, Annie and Tieka!


And why not an outfit from last weekend. I wore this for running by a couple of garage sales and a brunch production meeting (though I'm not sure that "brunch" is the appropriate title for a meeting that runs till 4PM...).


Details:
Skirt: INC, thrifted.
Sandals: Naturalizers, thrifted.
Shirt: thrifted.
Bag: thrifted.

Hope everyone had a nice Independence Day weekend! I'll post some pictures of the Boston fireworks later...