Guns, Ice Skates, and Lunches

A day late... better than a year late, right? :)

My Saturday started very early, and ended late, and as a result I completely forgot about making a blog post.  Which is probably for the best, as it would've been sleepy rambles last night.

I was invited to go shooting (as in, with guns) in the desert a couple of hours north of me by a friend of mine, whose husband came up with an automatic game system, of sorts.  I can't say much about it, as it's a currently un-patented, but he has an app that lets the targets move in pre-programmed patterns and then it's simply point and shoot at the one that's currently up.   The group they invited up were all beta-testers, helping him with finding issues with either the software or the mechanical part of it.

They had a bit of a competition set up for who could shoot all the targets in a row the fastest.  I didn't participate in that; it's been about four years since I used a gun and I'm very much out of practice of hitting my target (plus they were pretty small, but I don't really feel like that's an excuse.  I think I could've hit them well enough a few years back).  Despite that, though, it was fun.  I pretty much just used small pistols and a revolver - which was quite fun to use.  I also shot a gun that's similar to what the army uses, which I've never been near before.  Very little kickback, and very light.

Afterwards (for a very different change of pace), I went about half-way home to an ice rink that's open for a ten-hour stretch for public skating on Saturday afternoons.  I've never seen a rink with hours like that.  It was a small place, but very nice.  It's been about a year since I went skating at all, but for all that I haven't forgotten anything.  Like riding a bike :).  It took me a couple of rounds around the rink to get used to it, and then I skated for about two hours.  All the dancing has certainly helped my endurance and leg muscle strength, because I'd be very sore today otherwise.  As it is, I actually slept in a bit this morning.

Also, it being Administrators Week (who decides these things, anyway?), the attorneys took out all the non-attorney staff for lunch.  It was very nice; although I've worked in the admin profession for three and a half years (three different places), this is the first time I've received acknowledgement for it.

Catch-up Part Two

In my defense, I've been busy.  And at least I'm sticking with publishing once a year, right?

I was looking over my last catch-up post, and I think I'll just go over that first.  I've gone on hiatus with my writing/editing/summarizing/transcribing business and the acting (the auditions, while they went well (I got a callback!), didn't pan out into actual jobs), was in a play, ended my hiatus with my craft business, kept up with the ice skating and archery, got a job, and moved out of my parent's place.

Archery has gone really well - I went ahead and bought a glove, bow, arrows, and a bag, and made (with assistance from my dad) a hip quiver out of PVC pipe (and a shoelace).  For Christmas last year, I got a leather arm guard with a dragon on it.  I'm looking for a proper back quiver, but I'm currently lacking the funds for that.  It's a 25-pound bow, so I can't shoot more than about a dozen times in a row, but I'm getting better.  It helps that I don't have to go to a range to do it - whenever I go back up to the mountains (parent's place), I can shoot.

For my ice skating report, I've gone ahead and bought myself a pair of white skates, and got some orthotics for them as well.  Orthotics are a wonderful invention.  I still feel extremely awkward looking, but I don't fall down much.  Since my new job (started in March) I haven't had more than one or two chances to skate, but I'm working on my schedule.  It would help so much if there were more skating rinks in LA.  My knees won't be a problem, at least :).  In September, God healed them - completely.  I've been living for seven years with a lot of pain.

My knees weren't aligned correctly with my hips - I came out of the factory, like that, and in college, somewhere between carrying a bunch of books and running all over campus, they gave out on me.  I've done exercises, adjusted my way of walking and taken Aleve to handle the pain, but without surgery to place the knees where they needed to go, I was going to be like that for the rest of my life.  Even surgery wasn't a guarantee (and the thought of it creeped me out, plus the dis-alignment wasn't so major that I was forced to choose between having surgery and not walking at all.)  I've been wearing orthotics, which makes for buying fairly expensive shoes, but I don't need them now.  I can't run a marathon or anything yet, because I have about seven years of not using my muscles to make up for, but not being in constant pain (anything from very mild to very severe) is a novel, and wonderful, experience.

Acting-wise, I was in a Christmas play last year, It's a Wonderful Life, at the Santa Clarita community theatre.  It was loads of fun, and I was Miss Andrews.  I've tried out for a few more since, but I'm a bit limited in that I can't sing, and community theatres love doing musicals.

Job - I've got a real job!  Like, 9-5 type job.  I'm an office administrator at a small law firm (boutique, I think, is the word for it), which is so funny considering my background.  I applied in a whim, because he said he wasn't looking for someone with experience.  I had a grand total of six months work experience of being in an office, and figured I could do everything on his 'must-list' (even though I had absolutely nothing on his 'wish-list'), so I applied.  And he hired me.  I've applied to UCLA for their paralegal program, and that starts in February, so I'll let you know how that goes.  (Work's paying.  Which is good, because I totally couldn't afford it otherwise.)  It's 11 months long, twice a week, and at the end of it I get to take a test and be certified as a paralegal.  I'm very excited for that, AND happy that I get to go back to school.  Cause I'm weird like that and like it.  I am expecting my sanity to take a bit of a dive sometime next year. :)

And no, before you ask, I am not planning on going to law school and becoming a lawyer.

I've moved out of the mountains down to the city :'( into a one-bedroom studio.  I love my place - it's very out of the way from everything, and only three miles from downtown Pasadena.  The apartments are renovated from music studios which were renovated from being a factory.  It's a brick one-story (once but no longer an extremely important factor) building that's covered with vines.  I think I've always wanted to live in a building covered with vines.  I'm not sure why.

Crafts - I've renewed some of my items on Etsy - you can see them on the sidebar.  I went to a craft fair, and saw that someone was taking plain bobby pins, alligator clips, and other types of hair pins, and gluing buttons, beads, and ribbons to them.  And then charging $3 for them.  My natural inclination is that sewing is better than gluing, when whatever you're working with allows for that, so I did some research, discovered that yes, $3 is the general charge for that sort of thing (more if whatever's attached to the hair clip takes more work to put together), so I'm going to go ahead and give this a go.  My ribbon-tying techniques need some serious work, so I'm pretty much sticking with buttons, which are a lot of fun to work with.

I also took a soap making class last week.  It wasn't so much the 'make the soap from scratch', but a 'add herbs and other things to the soap, using a melt and pour base'.  It was a lot of fun, and it's extremely easy.  And clean.  When I'm making the soap, I wash my hands a ton.  It also makes for easy clean-up.  The pot, spoon, and molds have the soap to clean them already on them.

So far, I've tried using clear glycerin soap (can't get much more generic than that) with vanilla, lemon, chocolate mint, and cherry extract.  Chocolate mint (it's handmade) smells wonderful in a bottle, and great in foods, but it's awful in soap.  I love lemon, but either lemon extract, lemon juice, and lemon peel don't mix well or it's another thing that's awful in soap.  Is there commercial lemon soap?  Cherry soap is my top favorite.  Then, I added ground coffee into the vanilla soap, and though I don't like coffee or coffee smell, it makes for a nice soap.  I mostly used some plastic molds, but after a handful of uses, they stop working so well - the heat from the soap, I think, causes them to melt.  I'm buying some silicon molds, so we'll see how those go.  These ones are going to be used as quick Christmas gifts, but after I've got some consistency in making them and some scents and colors, I'll start selling them.  Also, apparently, you can take the soap, let it cool a bit in the pan, and then roll it into a ball.  Five-minute soap ball.  I'm a bit limited in supplies, so I've mostly just rolled them in crushed oatmeal and lemon peel, but it gives them a nice look.

Catch-up

SO.  BEEN AWHILE.

I saw that somewhere on the internet some time ago, and just knew I had to use it myself someday.  In all serious, though, it has been awhile.  Since, like, September?

Here's a brief summary for the catch-up: went on hiatus with the writing/editing/summarizing/transcribing, continued to keep trying with the acting, had a couple of auditions (professional, I mean) in December, got a call back in January, signed up with a calling service (Virgo Talent, cause they're reasonably priced (about the only one out there that I could find) and do commercials), and ended my hiatus.

I've also started learning ice skating and archery, as well as becoming very acquainted with various muscles in my legs and upper back.  Learning ice skating is going much faster than the archery, since I can just walk into any rink during their public sessions (of which there are a lot), rent skates, and go at it for as long as I want.  I did get one lesson before I went out on my own, just to get some of the basics.  So far (it's been about 3 weeks) I've only fallen once, and I didn't hurt myself - key component here.  With my knees, if I land on them, I'll be done walking for at least a week.

Oddly enough, even with my bad knees, skating doesn't hurt at all.  My leg muscles have gotten a lot stronger, which I'm hoping in the long run will strengthen my knees.  I'll just have to wait and see.  My theory on the my knees is that skating, as opposed to walking, doesn't cause impact on my knees.  Either way, I love the skating and recently bought a pair of skates (save on renting, and have cool white skates!).

As for archery, I can only go when they're doing lessons.  I've gone to two ranges, and the closer one is a bit better for returning archers (though not so great for beginners; I'm glad I went to the further one first for that).  Both of them use recurve bows, which are the best for beginners.  The price for good equipment is about $400, so I'm going to wait until I'm much better before seriously considering it (and anyway, as a starving artist/actress, I can't afford that).  At a minimum, though, I'm thinking about getting myself some decent leather gloves.  It really stretches the back muscle in-between the shoulders (one I'd never really thought about it) and though the bow isn't heavy, it feels heavy when you're aiming it and pulling back an arrow.  Lifting small hand weights really needs to go on my schedule.

Hopefully my next post won't be X months late.  :)