2010 Resolutions Recap

So last year I made the following new years resolutions-

- Eat more veges and fruit
- Drink more water.
- Go out drinking and socialising more
- Go to the theatre more
- Go to exhibitions more
- Read more
- Do more casual tech shifts and lighting designs
- Learn more

I think I did ok with most of those. I got right into the healthy food thing at the start of the year but it dropped off in the middle with winter but then came back once things warmed up. So this year I’m going to try and be (fairly) healthy all year around. I brought myself a Britta water filer and a years worth of filters in January last year. The water from it really does taste better and I have drunk more as a result. Its not quite second nature yet though so I’ll keep working on that.

I got to go out more last year than in 2009 thanks to rewriting my job description so I wasn’t working nights all the time. Also I met a bunch of people on here that I go out with semi-regularly now and I helped organise the 2010 SGAU Ball which was THE BEST night out I’ve had in AGES. I think I can continue to improve in this area but I definitely made a great start in 2010. I also joined OkCupid and have had some lovely chats with some pretty cool people and while I’m not convinced I’ll find the love of my life on there its been fun discussing zombie apocalypse preparedness and other random silliness and I look forward to meeting a few more people from there for coffee.

I saw some great theatre this year but there is always room for more, there are a couple of things I really wish I’d seen but didn’t get along to. What I haven’t done well with is exhibitions, I definitely need to go to more of those! I did see the Olaf Eliasson exhibition at the MCA and it was awesome, and I WILL make it to see the Annie Leibovitz one soon.

I did manage to read a couple of books last year which I don’t think I did at all in 2009 so that’s awesome. I need to make more time for that though. I mostly read on the train but its only three stops so that doesn’t give me much time. I suspect there will be some quiet times at work where I’ll be able to get a bit in this year. I think I’ll try and read a book a month.

I went from being full time (40hrs a week) to part time (30 hours per week) at work this year so that I had time to do social things in the evenings and do casual tech shifts in other venues and do my own lighting designs. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go but I ended up busier and making more money that I would have staying full time. I didn’t do much casual tech stuff but I did cover for Chris as Technical Manager for 5 weeks during the pre-production of our biggest, most technically outrageous show ever which was a pretty great opportunity. I also did 8 lighting designs which is awesome! One of them is being remounted by Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne this year and another has lead to another great design opportunity at Belvoir this year. 2010 was a fantastic year for my career and 2011 is already looking pretty exciting.

I had a plan to learn something new every month in 2010. It didn’t really work out that way but I did do some cool stuff. The highlight was doing a two day glass blowing course in Canberra. I’d like to do more of that, glass blowing specifically and other similarly cool things. I’m going to try and learn or do some thing awesome every month this year. I have June sorted with a trip to Europe. I’ll be doing a Vectorworks course at some point and a bunch of photography courses as well. Its often hard for me to fit things in around my odd work schedule but I’m going to try even harder this year. Doing cool things that aren’t work related really is great.

At some point last year I decided to try and buy less stuff. I got rid of a lot of things I didn’t need and wanted to have less clutter in my life and save money. I did pretty well with this. One of my rules/exceptions with this was to try and buy second-hand. Looking in my wardrobe nearly all the clothes I brought were second-hand. The exceptions are the cheap coloured cardigans I live in during winter (I now have 11 of them in 9 colours because I can’t find my navy blue one) and a nice going out top with fireworks on it that I love. I’m pretty happy with that effort, both the lack of buying new clothes and the awesome vintage/second hand stuff I’ve brought that is so much cooler than any new clothes I would have brought. I am starting to realise though that as awesome as the vintage pieces are some of them are wearing out really quickly, they aren’t as general purpose as I’d like and they don’t tend to be very mix and matchable so I probably do need to buy a few simple things. Especially since I’ll be doing summer twice this year. I’m going to continue with the vintage theme though and try and buy interesting pieces rather than just the very functional boring stuff I got in the habit of buying while I was a student.

So that’s how I went in 2010, stay turned for the plans for 2011.

New Years Blog

Happy New Year everyone!

I had planned on staying home and baking a tart on NYE but a friend convinced me to accompany him to a party in Darling Harbour with a killer fireworks view. And I *LOVE* fireworks! The display went for about 15 minutes and was localised for that particular precinct and only a small portion of the overall Sydney NYE display (the biggest in the world). I filmed about three and a half minutes of it on my iPhone without really looking at what I was doing and it turned out pretty ok. The last 45 seconds are the best.

And my start of ’11 tart-

I spent a week at home in Townsville over Christmas visiting the folks. The highlights were going out for dinner with Jack, my partner in crime from work, who is also from The Ville, eating ice cream at Frosty Mango and festive food. It was really nice to chill out, read and eat for a week and although I was annoyed I didn’t take my hard drive with all my TV seasons on it it was kinda nice to have a break from that too. I had some good chats with both of my parents and found out some interesting family history stuff. I’ve started looking into my family tree a bit. So far I’ve just looked into the QLD births deaths and marriages archives but its fun (although talking to people and getting the juicy stories is better )

Jack and I went to Cactus Jacks, a Mexican themed restaurant that is an institution in Townsville, and had cocktails and I had the MOST amazing steak. Townsville does much better steak than Sydney. Then we went to a couple of clubs on Flinders St where we sat in a corner and judged everyone’s TERRIBLE dress sense and dancing and just generally played big city elite. We left the first place when the moves on the dance floor got so bad we couldn’t dance with straight faces and we left the second when a small group of people left and we realised there were literally 15 people in the whole club.

Yum! -

My favourite thing to do in Townsville is drive about an hour north to Frosty Mango a tropical fruit ice creamery that grows its own fruit on nearly 80 hectares of orchards. They have flavours of ice cream that are made from fruits lots of people have never heard of. I had three flavours; sour sop, champagne & 24c gold and lime & basil. It was awesome. Then on the way back we drove past my grandparents old beach house and it started to rain. It had been raining heaps before Christmas to the point where we weren’t sure we’d be able to get to Frosty Mango because there were reports of the highway being closed. On the way back out to the highway we drove past a lost dog trotting along the side of the road. We picked her up and drove around to a few local shops to see if anyone knew her or was out looking for her and ended up taking her home. Her owner came and picked her up that night, she’d spooked and jumped a 5ft fence when the thunder started.

Frosty Mango -

Lost dog -

I’ve just realised all three of my Townsville highlights revolve around food. That makes sense really because pretty much all I did while I was there was eat. My favouritest festive food is Chocolate Cherry Rounds. I don’t think they’re all that common outside my family but they fit in very well with rum balls and apricot balls that are definitely a common Christmas nibblie. I discovered this year there is actually nothing cherry in them though which disappoints me a bit. I think I’m going to get the recipe off my mum and add some chopped glace cherries and see how they go. My mum has also made my Grandma’s apple crumble as well as Christmas pudding for desert two years in a row now. This is a tradition I very much want to see continue. I don’t like pudding but the apple crumble is to die for! And mum’s ice cream sauce (another traditional favourite) goes well with both. The one thing I didn’t have at home that I usually do is fish and chips. The fish in The Ville (Spanish mackerel instead of flake in Sydney) is so much yummier.

How Chocolate Cherry Rounds are supposed to look on the left and how they look after eating too many rum balls while making them on the right.

I took Mitsu home with me again this year. She spent a fair amount of time hiding but she acclimatises to new places fairly fast as far as cats go. She’s not a huge fan of being stuck in her cage tho for the flight.

Unhappy face

Much happier relaxing at home

That’s probably enough for now. I’ve got a bit more outstanding stuff from 2010 I’d like to mention in a blog and I’d like to do a year in review kinda thing based on last years new years resolutions and make some new ones for this year but for now I’ll leave you with two versions of my new haircut; the conservative and the less so.

Conservative/lazy/its going to be windy

More fun but also much more work and easily fucked by the windiness or sweatiness

Brain Melt

I hate being sick. I can’t think straight and my eyes are doing funny focusy things which is not great for someone who’s job is to look at things then talk critically about them then make them better. There is so much unprocessed information swimming around in my head at the moment that I don’t have the time or clarity to work through. Quite a bit of it is work related, I need to think about my goals really seriously and be sure that design is what I want to be pushing. And deeper than that is some fundamental stuff about artist versus technician, my process and collaborative relationships and respecting myself as an artist. Heavy stuff. Wanky stuff.

I also need to process, and probably blog about, Love Me Tender and Take Your Time..

And then there is all the feelings and emotions. Blah. I had a bit of the thing with that tonight. The rational part of me could see the issue was situational and no ones fault but the emotional side was still hurt. Normally I’d try and talk myself out of it because I was not hurt deliberately but I didn’t have the energy so I’m sticking with being shitted off. Also Matt and I are back in our little routine of non-exclusive boyfriend/girlfriendiness. That’s so not going to end without a fight. Or one of us finding a real boy/girlfriend. But the sex is great and who else can I have lengthy text conversations about laundry with? Yeah laundry. And weather too. We’re disgusting text message whores.

I have a new other half at work. I should write something about the briefness that was Teegan Two. He lasted four weeks. Now I have Jack, Teegan Three. He’s awesome. It helps that I loved him already and we used to live together so he’s Teegan compliant already.

It seems strange that I feel bad that there are bits missing from my blog. I meant to write about the Spencer Tunick shoot and The Suicide bump in and didn’t get to it. I mean its not like I really believe my loyal readers are waiting with baited breath for me to fill in the gaps. And I’m not sure I really have anything I need to get off my chest or vent about. Its just a matter of getting it out there*. And I feel I should for some reason. Hmm. I might add that to my list of things to think through.

Maybe I think too much.

* I went to say “get it down on paper” but that is not right. Should it be “get it up on screen”? Odd that they’re directionally opposite. There’s that thinking too much again. Jack is not going to help with that. These are the sorts of things we can debate at length.

Saturday Night

So apparently eating makes me feel better. I am taking this as licence to eat as much as I like. People are already complimenting me on my work on The End which is extremely weird as its not in the theatre yet. Its good thought because its putting me at ease a bit. I’ve been pretty nervous with it being a Company B show and also after I wasn’t super happy with how The Suicide went but I’m looking forward to making some art next week.

I went to the Surry Hills Festival today and was hugely disappointed. They’ve moved it to two different parks and as a result its much smaller. Also the content was disappointing, lots of vintage clothes stalls but not much else that was interesting. I did manage to get a funky hand made top, some cool sunnies and try some interesting New Zealand soft drink. It was also nice to see Sian. She told me Tom has plans to move to the UK with Jemima next year which is upsetting for many reasons. I’m hoping its confusion on Sian’s part and he’s just talking about travelling over there for a while after The Sapphires tours over there. I’d miss him and Jem’s so bad for him.

I’ve decided I’m staying in tonight rather than going to the party. I need my rest. Big things are afoot!

Sickly Child

I am sick.

It started with a just a sore throat that I desperately hoped was just from spending a few hours in a theatre that has 3 tonnes of dirt in it but no. Yesterday afternoon/evening I went from a tickley throat to barely able to move curled up on the couch asleep at 11:30pm. Although even now its just throat and feeling generally crappy, I hope that’s all it is and it goes away quickly. No snotty monster for Teegan! I have so much to do this weekend, I need to order gel and fluros this morning and I don’t have a swatch book at home so I need to go into work for that. I’m seeing a run of The End at 2:30pm in which I’ll need to get a good idea of cue points, I’m going to the Surry Hills Fest and I would love to go to Ikea but I don’t think I’ll have time for that. Tonight there is a party for a bunch of old uni friends I haven’t seen in ages including Mike who moved to the UK to do a postgrad degree, moved to Canada to work for their government and has gotten married since I saw him last. He was a pretty big influence on me in my New South days. He was THE tech guy on campus and I learnt a lot from him, was encouraged a lot but we also had our problems, some to do with him not being ready for a new generation with new ideas and some with me being pushy and clueless. It will be interesting to see him again. Then tomorrow I’m meeting with Flip to talk about lighting for Crave, then some SUicide Girls members to talk about ideas for the SGAU Ball, then I’m FINALLY seeing Love Me Tender and then we have to bump out The Suicide which is going to suck big monkey balls. EVERYTHING is covered in dirt. I’m kinda worried about things like the dimmer racks and the motu. Everything needs a blow out. It’ll take forever for the theatre to recover.

Oh and I need to draw a plan. It’ll be pretty simple but still I have to draw it. I also have bananas in the fridge I’d really like to make into banana bread before they go yuck. I keep buying fruit to make things and not getting around to it quickly enough.

Well right now its shower and get ready time then I’m going to the health food store on my way into work to buy everything they have that will make me feel better.

Nerdy Coffee

I had coffee with Tom, Chris and Sian today. Such nerdery! We discussed in depth the inner workings of dimmer racks comparing triac to SRC dimmers. Well Tom and Chris did, I phased out (pun intended!) I mean knowing how shit works is great but I’m not quite nerdy enough to read up about the electronic components that make up the equipment I use. I am however nerdy enough to use another piece of equipment to override the inconstancies and crappiness of the original bit of equipment. Yay programming dimmer profiles! I dunno when I’m going to find the time for that though. I think I’ll just make a generic slow bottom curve for all the channels to begin with and look at changing specific ones to match each dimmer later. Did anyone else understand any of that?

We also talked about mice because I just brought a new gaming mouse for CADing. Chris ranted about not needing more that two buttons when you’ve got an entire keyboard to use but I find having a few programmed buttons on a mouse makes the world of difference. Also it took all my strength not to point out that if I can do everything with one hand on the mouse the other hand is free to fiddle with myself. It would have been far too easy a win though!

The other nerdy topic was to do with my bed. Since Mitsu pissed on it I’ve ordered a new mattress which will hopefully arrive tomorrow morning and I’m going to buy a new frame because I want to build a murphy bed, a bed that folds up against the wall. You can buy the components from Sweden but I’m going to have a go at it myself. I was telling the boys about it which led to talking about rigging a system of pulleys to do the folding up against the wall which naturally led to the idea of chemsetting some eyebolts in the ceiling and having the bed fly out to the ceiling when not in use. I actually considered it for a while, I mean its totally feasible and covering holes in the ceiling would be pretty easy because a. the ceiling is really textured so the covered holes would blend in and b. people don’t look up all that much. An interesting side note, I have experience with doing damage to ceilings in rental properties and getting away with it because people don’t look up. I’m a professional lighting technician and this is what happens when I try and change a light bulb in my own bedroom-

So yeah we talked about the idea of me having a bed that is raised to the ceiling when not in use and lowered in at night. Even though I’d get chemsets rated to hold more than enough weight I’d want the bed sitting on the ground to be slept in. Also as great as the idea of a swinging bed is I don’t actually think it’d be all that awesome to work up a great rhythm and end up flying out the window. In the end though the underside of a bed just wouldn’t look as good suspended from the ceiling as the cabinet I’m planing on having Govinda make to hide the folded up bed in. Still it was a fun conversation.

Hmm I have a lot of stuff that I planned to blog about that I haven’t gotten around to yet…. I should do that.

Gurlesque

I went to Gurlesque last night with Asha. It was completely awesome. The shows were great and the eye-candy was mouth watering. There was a girl there who I saw on a train the other day and was totally checking out. She is hot in a really scary way though, like prison mama hot. I’ve realised I have a bit of a thing for scary and/or intimidating girls and since I’m a total wuss that’s kinda problematic. There was also a girl who looked very much like Elisha, Matt’s other fuck buddy who lives in Cairns and he never actually gets to fuck and whom I’ve become facebook and text friends with. She’s hot. Both Elisha and her more alternative doppleganger. Asha and I both want to do a show at Gurlesque. I really want to perform again. Its not really my thing being a technician and all but at NIDA they made the TP’s (Technical Production students) perform in a couple of their own shows. They end up being silly and funny like a variety show or a uni revue and they involve a lots of music cause we really aren’t actors but they are so much fun and I want to do a show like that again. I think Gurlesque is a supportive enough crowd for it to be fun without being too nerve racking.

The other thing I took away from the night was I totally need to get more tattoos and I’ve been massively inspired by all the awesome haircuts and outfits I saw. Next time I will dress up and wear a corset I think. I’m really looking forward to dressing up for the Rocky Horror screening later this month.

But right now I need to go and strip the sheets off my bed and throw them out cause Bitchface McFur pissed on my bed. I have ordered a new mattress and I’m going to go buy a new doona tomorrow. I want an apartment where she can go outside when she wants