metrocake

This pretty much says how our weather is today. It’s so bad officials have actually asked residents to evacuate Fire Island because they’re expecting a bad storm surge. Gah! Glad I’m living on Manhattan island instead… although I’m sure this downpour’s killing the subways as we speak. Hey, it’s happened before…

Back to skewl!

So I started my Digital Photography workshop class yesterday. :) I’m taking it at NYU, and started it all off by being…uh…fifteen minutes late. I totally lost track of time and the class is all the way downtown — I basically had to traverse the length of Manhattan to get there. On a local train. Le sigh.

The class looks promising, though. The focus will be on composition, with the technical aspects as a secondary part. All of that works for me, as I need to work heavily on both. I’ve got to turn off those “automatic” controls and switch to manual… We shoot on Saturdays, then do critique on Thursday nights. Our first shooting session was to shoot in broad daylight, then shoot in an alley. I need to bring in my best five shots to class on Thursday, and I’m NOT allowed to use Photoshop. For ANYTHING. No cropping, adjustment of exposure, NUTTIN’.

: scared! :

I was a little taken aback to realize the instructor was different from whom I’d expected. They had opened up a second section in the class because it was full — so if you went in the second section you’d get more individual attention, which is good. Since it met at the same time on Saturdays, I assumed that it would be the same instructor, just at a different time during the week. Nope! I walked in expecting Joe, whose work I really admire (and part of the reason why I took the class) and instead got Benjamin. :) I’m going with it, though…maybe it’s karma?

Great Big Sea!

Rob and I saw Great Big Sea last night. They put on a frickin’ AWESOME show — always a good time, and particularly good last night. But what happened made the show even better…

See, I have plantar fascitis, which is a bad, bad inflammation of the heel and muscles of the bottom of your foot. Basically, it means I’ve been in a lot of pain and gimping around a lot — I haven’t even been able to put my heel down some days. I’ve been taking a lot of cabs. And gaining pounds. :(

Hammerstein Ballroom, where we saw the band, is mostly general admission but had some seating in the balcony. Typically, we would have gone GA but because of my condition, we needed to sit. This was a good thing last night, since I’d been out shooting with my class earlier — I was in a LOT of pain by the time I made it to the show, despite massive amounts of Advil. And lots of pain during the show, too. :(

Unfortunately, our seats were in the last row of the balcony. For whatever reason, Ticketmaster didn’t show us where our seats were, so it came as a total surprise. I felt terrible, since Rob loves this band, and we had such crappy seats because I couldn’t stand up for the length of a show. We wound up squinting a bit for the first half. Happily, the two guys in front of us moved, so we were able to see the band…just from very very very far away.

But. BUT! During intermission, as I was getting up to hobble to the bathroom, a man came up to us and said, “Are you two sitting here?” “Uh, yes,” we replied. “And it’s just the two of you?” “Yup, just us.” “Would you like to sit in that box down there, on the side?” Stares from us both. “What…uh…YES, sure!” “Here, take these tickets, and follow me.” And we got the Golden Tickets of Fabulousness and followed the very very nice man to the box at the side of the stage…where we got to sit in the front.

Best seats in the house.

Holy shit! :)

The tickets read “comp” on them, so we’re guessing it was Great Big Sea’s publicity person, or tour manager, looking to do a favor to folks with bad seats by filling up AMAZING seats that were going empty. Rob had gotten up to dance during the last song before intermission — we’re guessing that this is how the guy spotted us to take us down. Why not give the seats to someone having a good time? (This is the first show ever, I think, where I didn’t get up to dance. :( Lots of chair dancing, though!) So the picture above? That was taken from our box seats. You can see the rail in front of us. (Go clicky for the big version!) Amazing, eh? Total Cinderella moment! :)

And the Jedi mailbox…

As we were leaving, we heard a guy in front of us say, “…and before we leave, I’ve got to show you the R2D2 mailbox.” Ears pricked up. I went for it. “Um, excuse me? Did I hear you say ‘R2D2 mailbox?’” “Yup, sure did — follow us!”

It was close by, so we went for it. Too bad the couple leaning on it wouldn’t move, since there was a crowd of seven folks staring at them. But still…there ya go.

World of Warcraft Dire Maul run tonight …and I’ve got to do my taxes. That about wraps up the weekend!