Tonya - - Page 125

January 25, 2007

Street Samba, Part Deux

Quenia Ribeiro DVD

Last night my friend, Kathy, and I took Quenia Ribeiro‘s Samba class at Alvin Ailey (me for the second time now, Kathy for the first). Kathy seemed humorously dumbfounded (like I think everyone is the first time they try the dance!), but she seemed to have fun — at least I think she did! But I thought it was actually harder this time — it seemed that the actual steps were more complicated than last time. Then, I at least knew where to put my feet on the floor, and just struggled like crazy with moving my pelvis and rib cage properly. But this time I couldn’t even get the steps down well enough to focus on body movement. Ugh.

In class I saw an acquaintance from my ballroom studio. We chatted a bit and she said she’s trying to save money by taking street Samba instead of ballroom as well. I guess I’m not the only one overwhelmed with the cost of ballroom…

Anyway, Quenia told us last night that she will be in Brazil for the next month for Carnival (lucky lucky her!), so there will be a substitute teacher at Ailey, which will probably be good for me since the sub hopefully will not know how advanced all of the “beginner” students are (maybe the more advanced dedicated Quenia students won’t even show?…) and will go A LOT slower. Fingers crossed anyway. Well, I bought Quenia’s instructional DVD and am going to practice like crazy over the next month so maybe I won’t be such a sorry sight when she returns! Hopefully by just watching her on tape, SOMETHING will seep in…

Speaking of great Brazilian dancers … the awesome Chimene sent me this link. Funny thing is, though of course I HAD to add it to my blogroll immediately (the link is the exclamation points at the top of the ballet section, because that is how I think of him — in exclamation points 🙂 🙂 ) and know I am going to be searching MySpace for his comments to his friends, I can’t help but feel kind of weird doing so. I remember reading a discussion on Ballet Talk not long ago where people were agreeing that it was probably better not to meet your favorite dancers for fear of disappointment. Not that a huge amount of info is revealed on MySpace, but still, do I need to know that he’s “in a relationship” or that some of his friends seem a little … hmmm … outlandish!? I don’t know… It’s just weird seeing someone who has kind of a celebrity status to you, whom you admire / worship / have a gigantic crush on 🙂 just talking freely in an open forum like that .. and whether it’s actually hanging out and conversing with or just watching in on the conversations of said admiree / idol / crush object — I mean, you’re bound to be disappointed if they don’t live up to your expectations, if they’re not perfect, which they won’t be since they’re human of course…

On the other hand, look at the cute cute puppy! (who looks rather contemplative in this pic). And look at his answers to the profile questions 🙂 … Ugh, how could anyone not just LOVE him?

January 24, 2007

LVHRD, Dewars, and Dueling Architects

LVHRD event Last night, my friend, Alyssa, and I went to an event that Kristin had told me about when I met her on Sunday. (She also posted about it on the Winger, here). LVHRD (live hard without the vowels), an arts organization whose mission is to bring together progressive artists, holds events throughout the city in which different kinds of artists compete against each other. The materials to be used in the competition and the location of it are not disclosed until the day of the event and are then relayed to participants via text-message. They’ve previously held competitions between dancers, visual artists, and fashion desingers, but last night’s duel was the ‘Battle of the Architects.’ A duo of female architects from two firms were given a limited amount of time in which to plan and design a layout, then build a model of it. The main material to be used was — cheese, which female registrants to the event were told in the text message to bring. I had a Media Bistro panel discussion to attend immediately before, so Alyssa bought our cheese — Alyssa rocks!

alyssa

After letting the architects go at it for three hours (oh, by the way, the competitors are separated by a big screen so they can’t see what the other is up to), we voted by text message for our favorite.

Field Operations (above) was the winning team. I think everyone liked them mainly because they wore dresses made of material that they used in building their model — so throughout the competition they ended up cutting off large portions of each other’s costumes (the one with the more geometric design ended up with a rather short skirt). Interesting schtick. Below is the other team, Balmori Associates:

team 2 The LVHRD people all had cameras and video recorders and were going around snapping pictures, which they’d then post on the giant screen behind the action. In the very top picture above, if you look hard at the screen, you can see Kristin. They got two silly ones of me — one where I look like I’m on something serious while talking to Tony Schultz from the Winger, and another where I’m at the front of the crowd at the stage looking a little too excited about getting a shot of one of the models.

So, as I just mentioned, Tony was there too, and Alyssa and I spent a lot of time chatting with him. Found out that I totally got his bio wrong in my last post — oops! But, he said he rather liked my reinvention of him, so didn’t correct me 🙂 Anyway, he’s really a PHYSICS grad student at CUNY (which explains why 99% of what he says is way over my head!) and teaches at Sarah Lawrence — go here for his real bio.

Scariest thing about the night was that Dewars had hosted the event, so there was a free Dewars bar. Alyssa and I each got a cup of Scotch and gingerale. Alyssa was practically on the floor after finishing about 2/3 of hers, but somehow I downed my whole glass without feeling a thing — extremely weird since I am usually a complete lightweight… Either the bartender must have taken one look at my face and thought I couldn’t handle much alcohol, so went heavy on the soda, or else I am becoming a lush 🙂

January 22, 2007

NYC Dance Blogger Get-Together!

Dance Bloggers Meet in NY

Doug Fox, who runs the excellent, extremely informative and technologically innovative blog, Great Dance, was in town this weekend for a dance conference he was covering. So, several of us NYC dance bloggers arranged a little get-together with him. From right to left is: Kristin Sloan (ballerina with the New York City Ballet, in case you’re new to my blog and didn’t know that from the umpteenth times I’ve talked about / linked to her!) who created the best-known and I think first (?) diary-esque dance blog a couple of years ago — the awesome Winger — and is hence really the mother of all dance bloggers!; Tony Schultz, a modern dancer and PhD candidate in dance and technology at Sarah Lawrence who contributes to the Winger (and has a very fun personality by the way 🙂 ); Parker, a ballet dancer, turned Belly / Latin ballroom dancer AND law student by day who writes the sweet Salome Justitia; Doug; and on the end, little ole me (with extremely flat New York winter hair!) I love how Kristin is holding that light away — in true pro dancer fashion with the flair of her hand!

We met at a little bistro across from Lincoln Center — where else! — and chatted for a couple of hours. Everyone is working on such fascinating projects and is so interesting and ambitious and inspiring. I was so happy finally to be able to meet everyone. I’ve been faithfully reading Kristin’s blog for almost a year now — it was actually the first blog I ever really read (at least daily … okay, hourly…) and is what made me want to start my ballroom one, so it was really kind of surreal meeting her! 🙂 And I can’t wait to read all about this event that Doug attended. It seems that he saw tons of great performances and met many interesting people, so check Great Dance, where he’ll be posting about it for about the next week or two.

Fun fun time 🙂 If you’re a dance blogger and you’re in the area and want to be included in the next get-together, it looks like Doug is setting up a list, so contact him!

January 20, 2007

Are You a Dancer or Are You Just Drunk?

I LOVE this. What a perfect YouTube video for a criminal appeals lawyer / dancer! If only WordPress could embed… Leave it to Chimene, unearther of many a fabulous find, to discover it 🙂 Chimene, you rock!

January 20, 2007

Crazy Dance-Less Week…

It’s Saturday morning and my dance studio just called me to make sure I was okay, since I haven’t been around in the past week and a half. How sweet to be missed 🙂 And I’ve missed them too — I HATE being away from dance for so long… Just had a couple of crazy busy weeks.

Cornelia Street Cafe

Tuesday night I went to the monthly Writers Room member reading series at Cornelia Street Cafe. Readers that night were the sweetly funny Jill Dearman, Douglas Light, reading from his (published — how jealous am I!) novel, East Fifth Bliss, and Julia Lichtblau, who read her charming short story about a Guatemalan girl adopted by U.S. parents making the difficult decision to search out her roots. Just a few months until I read, for the first time, and I’m honestly getting nervous. How I can be anxious about reading in a cozy cafe in front of about 50 people from a manuscript read by practically everyone I know, as well as several agents and editors, and too numerous to contemplate writing classmates, when I have shown off my not so brilliant, two-year-old dancing skills on two real stages to a total of about 1,000 audience members, I’ll never know… but somehow I am. Well, the dance performances have been practice, I guess.

The host, Stan Richardson, was a bit punchier with the readers this time than last, asking them questions like, what is your most prized writing accomplishment (what am I going to say, my blog???), and what hours do you keep at WR so people know when to mob you, and, do you have anything else in your life that you’re proud of. The only question he asked that I would have any kind of interesting answer to was, when did you join WR. I joined right after Brooke Shields (who I assume was using the Room to write her memoir about her post-partum depression). They take everyone’s picture when you join and then post photos of the new members right above the entranceway for about six months. So, my lovely mug shot, in which my eyes were half closed, was right beside Brooke’s superstar photo gracing the doorway for six long months. I never did see Brooke in the Room, although I’m an evening and weekends member; she was probably there during the day. Or maybe she just joined thinking it a prestigious organization, and really has her own fancy loft somewhere in Manhattan in which to write? In any event, even having a crappy picture next to Brooke’s gorgeous face, I have to admit I felt very cool belonging to the same organization 🙂

Entrepreneurial publishing panel at Small Press Ctr

Wednesday, I attended a panel discussion organized by the Women’s National Book Association, on alternative publishing methods, entitled “Entrepreneurial Publishing: Print-on-Demand, E-books, Back-into-Print, and Other Alternatives to ‘Publishing-as-Usual'”. Ever since reading Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail (which I actually discovered through dance, when Kristin Sloan posted on the Winger about attending his book-signing party), I’ve been interested in how the internet is affecting the publishing industry. I was particularly interested in POD (print-on demand — basically self-publishing wherein a small number of books are printed and sold by the author directly on Amazon, for example), but knowing very little about publishing, I still don’t entirely understand it. I oftentimes feel, when I am attending a publishing panel discussion, that I’m eavesdropping on a conversation already underway since most of the audience members are in the industry. But I do glean small bits of information, which is why I go.

Anyway, one of the most interesting parts of the discussion was a last-minute addition to the panel — Adam Bellow, who is pictured above with the mike. Bellow (who I just found out by doing an internet search so I could link to him, is the son of Saul Bellow — wow!!!), is an editor at Random House who just started a new pamphleteering press. He said that pamphleteering has in the past been very important to intellectual life — think John Stuart Mill‘s On Liberty, On the Subjection of Women, John Locke, Adam Smith, etc. etc. etc. — and that creating such a press was not possible until the emergence of the internet and the lively intellectual culture it created. Hmmm. Sounds very cool!

Here are some books they had for the taking at the discussion — two romance novels published by Lori James’ Linden Bay Romance, which specializes in electronic formats and trade paperback, and one from Bellow’s company, which is titled, “Everything Could Explode at any Moment: Dispatches from the Lebanese-Israeli Front,” by Michael J. Totten. How very fascinating that the internet has made possible the return of lively 18th and 19th Century intellectual-political discourse!

books from the entrepreneurial panel

Then, Thursday night I pulled practically an all-nighter at the office finishing up and filing a brief. And last night I tried to go to a birthday party for a fellow dance blogger — happy birthday, S.J.! — but only made it about ten percent of the way through before having to go home and crash, ridiculously early, on a Friday night 🙁 (and, to boot, was so tired I forgot to take pictures — bad bad blogger!!!) Anyway, I’m pooped and looking forward to a relaxing weekend…

January 15, 2007

"Dirty Talk"ing Angry Macho Homophobes

Evangelina and me at Dirty Talk

Who us? Of course not!!! Above is a picture taken last night of my good friend Evangelina (who is on the right) and me (sorry for poor picture quality; could my camera please not have a nervous breakdown whenever both zoom and flash are used simultaneously???) We’re in the very comfy lobby of the off-off-Broadway theater Center Stage, waiting to see a new play called “The Dirty Talk.” It was a special occasion because it marked the foray of Evangelina’s husband, Michael, an accountant and actor, into theater producing — go Michael!

Dirty Talk box office

The play was good. It was about these two men who agree to meet in person after having met online in one of those naughty-talking chat-rooms. Only the one guy, characterized by the title of this post, thinks he is going to be hooking up with a Hooters-working nursing-school student with the stereotypical enormous breasts, instead of a sensitive bisexual man. The two end up stuck alone together in a Jersey cabin out in the woods during a nasty thunderstorm, and the encounter eventually compels the first man to explore the reasons underlying his, shall we say, problematic personality traits, which are partly responsible for ending his marriage, and which stem from upsetting childhood experiences in which his father attempted to “make a man out of him” via various disturbing rituals.

Why do men do that to their sons??? My grandfather and grandmother did that “becoming a man” b.s. to my dad by forcing him into the army. But he was far too sensitive for the military, and I think it’s permanently damaged him psychologically.

Anyway, my only gripe with the play was with the second character, who I thought was just not fully fleshed out enough. I understood his need to pretend to be a woman online, but couldn’t fathom what he was thinking by actually showing up at the cabin as … himself. At one point, the other character asks him, “what were you thinking?” and he doesn’t really have an answer. So, he seemed to be more of a catalyst for the other, more compellingly dynamic character’s self- exploration.

The acting was excellent, and the play was by turns hilarious and sad. I used to go to these small off-off-Broadway plays all the time when I first moved to New York, and haven’t been in a while. I’d forgotten how much I like them. You can sit practically onstage, where you can see the action up close and really feel like you’re a part of it. To me, you get so much more out of the production than you do a big Broadway play, which, in those huge theaters, is so distancing in comparison. Evangelina and I have both been so busy — me with dancing and writing and working, and she with her new marriage and her and Michael’s decision to buy some property upstate and build their first house (!), that we haven’t seen each other in nearly a year. But, as with all close friends, the minute you plop down next to each other on the sofa with a glass of wine and start yapping away, it’s like you just saw each other!

I hope everyone had a nice day off today in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King. I didn’t have to go into the office, but I brought some work home, which makes me feel a bit guilty, being from the Evan Mecham state and all… But, at least I only read the transcript from my next case’s Voir Dire (Jury Selection), which I don’t see so much as work: it’s one of my favorite parts of the trial since it’s where I get to “meet” all the different kinds of New Yorkers who are considered for selection on my client’s jury. Anyway, WordPress blogs don’t take kindly to YouTube embeddings, so I’m linking to Doug Fox’s post today, for The Speech!

January 13, 2007

Arty Farty Meme

I’m stealing this from Konagod. Because it’s a fun one, and I like how some of the questions are phrased:

1) Name a book that you want to share so much that you keep giving away copies:

I can’t afford to buy copies to give away, but I’ve lent out my copy of Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andrei Makine so many times that pages are now falling out.

2) Name a piece of music that changed the way you listen to music:

I’m not a big music person, but I’ll never forget the first ballroom Samba class I took at DanceSport, my first studio, with this extremely fun, but somewhat crazed 🙂 Greek woman named Roula Giannopoulou. I’d never heard Samba music before, nor had I ever taken a Samba dance class, and I have no idea now exactly what piece of music she played, but with the wildly intense percussion produced by several kinds of drums, intriguing sounds of other musical instruments I didn’t recognize, the different timing, the beautiful, poetic flow of the Portuguese (which of course I didn’t understand), and just the overall mad-fun atmosphere the music created, I knew I was going to love the class before Roula even made her way back from the stereo to the front of the mirror to show us the basic. As I learned the dance (and the other Latin dances as well), I had to concentrate really hard to hear the beats, so I wouldn’t be off-time. It also made me interested in the culture which produced it, which I knew from from the foreignness of the music alone, must be quite different from my own. So I guess it is in these ways that I learned to listen to and think about music differently: not just to get lost in it, but really to hear the drum beats, the rhythm, the way it was all put together, and view it as a window into another place…

3) Name a film you can watch again and again without fatigue:

In the Name of the Father — for the music, the story, Daniel Day Lewis, the setting, everything…

4) Name a performer for whom you suspend all disbelief:

On screen, Sean Penn; on stage, Jose Manuel Carreno.

5) Name a work of art you’d like to live with:

Pot Head, by Paul McCarthy. People accuse him of being lewd, bawdy, and prone to sensationalism, but I think the man tells it like it is 🙂

6) Name a work of fiction that has penetrated your real life:

Just one? — impossible. Middlesex, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Native Son, The Grapes of Wrath, Howard’s End, Crime and Punishment…

7) Name a punch line that always makes you laugh:

This one’s hard for me. I don’t know if I know any punch lines, but I’ve always been humored by the movie line: “Dear Diary, my teenage angst bullshit has a body count.” From Heathers.

January 11, 2007September 18, 2022

Ugh, My Sinatra Suite Is Not Goin’ So Sweet…

Extremely corny play on words, I know…

Ugh. Last night I had another ballroom lesson with my private lesson teacher, with whom I’m working on a foxtrotish version of Tharp’s Sinatra Suites for the school’s next student showcase, coming up in April. I had a very stressful day at work, and I was so frazzled I completely forgot to eat, which, before a dance lesson, is just not conducive to success. At least not with me. About half an hour before I had to leave for the studio, I tried to scarf down some yogurt and granola, but ever since I developed my Globus a few years ago, scarfing is just not possible; I have to eat s-l-o-w-l-y. Anyway, I managed to ingest about 1/4 of the cup, while stretching and packing up some home-work for later in the evening (nothing like multi-tasking!). But, with only a bowl of cereal and small cup of coffee about nine hours earlier, that quarter cup of yogurt wasn’t enough to keep me focused.

I think. Or it could just be the increasingly weird dynamic I seem to be having lately with my teacher. He seemed to be yelling at me for everything. He kept telling me to look in the mirror at how bad I looked, how crooked and broken my lines were, and how horrible my posture was. And I couldn’t always understand what was bad. Maybe you just can’t see yourself properly in a mirror. (And, he told me to bring a camcorder to my next lesson, so I could videotape myself, which I think is a good idea, since I do seem to pick up on things I hadn’t seen in the mirror … as long as I don’t obsess too much over my flaws). But, in the mirror at least, I don’t always understand how what I’m doing is not right. For example, I’ve been told before — repeatedly actually — that, since I have hyperextended arms, they should be a bit softened (slightly bent at the elbow so as to look graceful and not harsh) — have been told that by both ballet teachers and Pasha, my erstwhile Latin teacher. But this teacher tells me hyperextended is good and I need to make maximum use of that and show it off by making sure my arms are completely straight out at all times, never the least bit bent. But sometimes I couldn’t extend my arms as long and straight out as he wanted me to — I was reaching and reaching and stretching, while he kept chanting “more more more” but they just wouldn’t go any farther out without pulling my blasted shoulder out of its socket! And, when he’d pull on an arm to try to help me make that line, that’s exactly what it felt like! Or, he’d twist my rib cage area if I wasn’t doing “cross body movement” properly, or slap my wrist down if it my hand was extended outward instead of down, or he’d twist my wrist if he wanted me to hold my hands palms facing up instead of down. And some of the ways he was handling me were a little scary. I know he was just trying to correct me, but I had to ask him, nicely of course, if he could be a little gentler, especially with my left wrist since I have a partially torn a ligament in that one, and could have to have surgery if it gets any worse, which I most definitely don’t want. He apologized and explained that he just didn’t want to have to keep repeating himself, and besides, if I didn’t learn how to give him my body weight properly and to maintain the proper push / pull connection with him, especially on a trick like a lunge or stretch, I could hurt myself very easily.

I know that’s true, and that if you don’t have proper technique, both partner-dancing and alone, you can incur serious injury. But on the other hand, I have a very hard time learning when I feel like I’m being yelled at. I just get all flustered and can’t do anything right. And, we were going to put this overhead lift into our routine, and I know myself, and if I’m the least bit scared of the guy I’m dancing with, I’m not going to trust him and I’m subconsciously going to be pulling myself down while he’s trying to get me up into the air, and we could both hurt each other. I need to feel very comfortable with the guy in order to trust him, and in order to do hard things properly. I actually don’t see how anyone can dance with a partner they don’t feel completely comfortable with. It makes me feel for professionals who have to partner someone they’re not comfortable with.
Anyway, I don’t know if it was the lack of food or the pressure but I just couldn’t do anything right, and I couldn’t even remember the rather simple choreography we’ve done so far. I really thought at one point he was going to kill me! I mean, I know he wants me to dance well, and of course I want to be the best I can be, and I appreciate that he is serious and not lazy. But, on the other hand, I am never going to be a professional dancer, and this is supposed to be fun. I think for the first time, after leaving a hard day at work behind to head to the studio, I did not feel my stress-level lessened. Maybe I should put this routine on hold for a while and save the showcase for next October when they have it at a Manhattan theater (as opposed to Long Island, where it is in the spring), when all of my friends can attend again. In the meantime, I can lighten up and maybe learn some standard ballroom from the standard teacher, reducing my private lesson to every other week instead of every week to decrease expenses…. I hate to abandon some of the pretty Tharp-esque choreography I was trying so hard to learn though … although what we’re doing doesn’t look much like what Baryshnikov and Elaine Kudo were doing on the tape anyway… I guess genuine foxtrot ballroom and balletish ballroom are two completely different things. I hadn’t realized that. I have a lot to learn about dance, apparently.

Anyway, I guess I will be thinking about this — where to go with my ballroom dancing from here — over the long weekend, since I don’t have my next lesson scheduled until next Friday…

But, the GREAT thing about last night was that I saw a very good ballroom friend: the always sugar-sweet, always full of motherly advice, the splendidly charmingly wonderful, Elaine, whom I haven’t seen since our October showcase! She was having a coaching with the studio owner. When, after my class, I practically fell right into her open arms crying, like a ridiculous baby, she insisted I accompany her to her favorite nearby diner for a glass of wine and some much-needed comfort food, and a pep talk. Funny thing about food though is that, when I haven’t eaten all day and I’m completely stressed, I seem to have no appetite. Well, I ordered some very greasy, very tasty fries, and a glass of the house red (just to cut cholesterol levels from ingestion of said fries, of course 🙂 )

Elaine

And here, Miss Elaine is being her silly self 🙂 (Notice my ever so nutritious dinner in foreground):
Elaine II

Anyway, it ended up being a very good night after all, full of catching up on life, receiving sound motherly advice on managing work stress and dealing with dance teachers (!), and enjoying good, trashy comfy food. Thanks Elaine 🙂 🙂 🙂

January 8, 2007

"Bloggies" Are Here…

I’m so new to blogging, I really don’t know how important these blog awards are, but from now through this Wednesday, January 10th, nominations are being taken for the 2006 annual “Bloggie” awards. Again, Dance is not represented as a category, and again, I am annoyed. There is a category called “Topical” which covers all blogs on topics not covered under the other category topics, so you could nominate dance blogs in that category. But since winning is based entirely on the number of nominations and votes a blog gets, it seems to me that any topical blog that doesn’t have its own category is not going to do very well. Not that we all want to be competing against each other or anything, but I am just so sick of seeing dance underrepresented in just about everything…

Anyway, to nominate, vote, or just check it out, go here.

January 7, 2007

I Won a "Rodney" Blog Award!!!

Public Defender Blog Awards Announcement

Ha ha ha — I am extremely delighted to announce that I just won a blogging award (my first!) 🙂 It’s from the Public Defender Investigator Network’s Blog, who suitably named their awards “The “Rodneys,” as in comedian Rodney “I get no respect” Dangerfield, which I think is hilarious! My category is, aptly, “Best Title of a Blog That Has Nothing To Do With the Job” — what, you mean, Swan Lake Samba Girl doesn’t just scream Public Defender??? 🙂 Also in my category, as runner-up, is Knit in the City, a charming knitting blog.

Seriously, this is a very fun honor!! Here are the other winners (most of whom write actual Public Defender blogs!)

January 6, 2007

Front Page of New York Law Journal!

Judge Faulted for Game Show article in NYLJ

So, the story about my case made the front page of the New York Law Journal yesterday! (It’s the one at the bottom, titled “Judge Faulted For Offering Defendant ‘Game Show’ Choice”) My quote is on page two.

article page two

Mr. Perrotta actually closed the article with my words, which made sense because it was a good sum-up of the strange case. He just quoted me saying I was happy that Mr. Nicholson (my client) had the conviction removed from his record now and that the case was very odd and I’d never seen anything like it before. So I managed not to sound like a Valley Girl after all! (I think…) At least if I did say something nutty over the phone like, “I was like, I totally can’t believe the judge did that!,” Mr. Perrotta used the coherent sentence! The reporter’s first name is Tom, by the way, so he shares the same name as the novelist who wrote Election and Little Children. I assume it’s not the same writer — maybe I was interviewed by a famous novelist! Anyway, I’d link to the article online but you can’t access it unless you’re a subscriber to that newspaper. All the guys in the mail room — Pete, Anthony, and Craig — were jokingly calling me “Miss Hollywood” all day and asking for my autograph 🙂

Then, later in the day, Pete brought me this sweet Christmas card from another of my clients, from prison. Look how cute this angel is…

Christmas card from client

And, this must be my fifteen minutes of fame weekend, because Kristin Sloan posted the picture I’d sent to the Winger of my first performance as a child!! She’s still taking Winger reader submissions of their “First Performance” pieces, by the way, so everyone who has ever performed should send one in to her! Do it! It’s fun 🙂