A California Girl in New York

 So...I moved to New York. Surprise! It's been a long time since I posted to this blog, which it turns out is fine, because NOBODY reads it, so no one cared :) Here's a quick rundown of the events leading up to and including the move:

NYC skyline

mid-July 2013 - Sony Pictures Imageworks let most of us (probably 90% of the workforce in the Culver City office) know that we would very likely be let go at the end of Cloudy 2. For several of us there were mentions of trying to bring us back on as soon as possible, but with the slate of movies lined up at the time (read: almost none) they weren't sure when that would be. Bummer. As a result, I began plans to go on an extended vacation. I've always talked about that trip to Italy, and it seemed like it might finally happen!

late-July 2013 - SIGGRAPH 2013 in Anaheim happened! If you know me, you know that I volunteer with the conference and look forward to it all year. 2013 did not disappoint in most respects, I had a fantastic time as usual :) The only disappointment, which is not the fault of SIGGRAPH and a mere reflection of the industry, was the Job Fair, which was downright dismal. I had created an updated version of my reel and resume to shop around, but there was literally almost no one to give it to. That extended vacation was looking more and more likely, yay!

last week of July 2013 - Back at SPI for my last week, I received a surprise email from Blue Sky Studios saying they had found my work online and wanted to talk to me about a Fur TD position. I was very flattered of course, since BS is a great company and does lovely work, but the studio is in Greenwich, CT and I had no intention of moving. I let it sit for a day or two while I thought about it.

early August 2013 - I thought and thought about it, and given my current work situation it seemed illogical to say no to a potential opportunity, so I emailed BS back saying I would like to talk to them. At that point I still had no intention of moving, I just thought I would hear them out and see what they had to say. Also, SPI ended up extending me one week at a time through all of August to work on hair grooms for films they were trying to get going.

August 29, 2013 - We did a phone interview that went really well. I remember thinking that I liked them, and I felt like they liked me, and I thought that each party could tell the other knew what they were talking about, which is a good sign. They wanted to fly me out to NY/CT for an in-person interview, and I couldn't say no. Part of that was because I'd never been to NYC before and I had a couple friends there I could visit, but I could also tell that there was probably a very hard decision quickly approaching. As much as I was flattered (and relieved) at the opportunity, I love SoCal and my people there and REALLY didn't want to leave.

August 30, 2013 - My last day working in the building at SPI :( Technically I was employed with them through September 3, 2013 (so my benefits would extend another month), but Friday, August 30 is when all the heart-breaking happened :(

September 9, 2013 - I interviewed in-person at Blue Sky Studios. As suspected, the people were great, the studio was lovely, the job seemed tailor-made for me, they have great benefits, they seemed pleased with me and my answers to all of their questions, etc. Damn it. I stayed an extra day in the city with hanging out with my friend Holly from undergrad, who I hadn't seen much since we both finished at MTSU, and Callie from SIGGRAPH. A good time was had by all :)

Holly and Callie showing the newbie Times Square

From here on the dates get a little hazy, as everything was happening super fast.

later that week - BS called with an offer that was ALMOST exactly what I wanted. Because I was being a doody-head and didn't want to move, I counter-offered asking for more money. They came back and agreed! Damn it. So then the hard decision-making process started. I had the weekend to think about it, and as much as it tore me apart to leave my sunny California home, I took the gig.

a week or so after that - My mom was kind enough to take a trip up there with me to go house/apartment hunting. Turns out, things there are just as expensive as in SoCal (great!). We spent a full day and a half looking at different rentals with a couple different realtors, and ended up taking the first place we saw, haha.

There was a house with a tire swing. It almost won on that point alone.

late September 2013 - I spent a couple of weeks packing up my house in CA, sorting out lease and new hire paperwork, finding movers, walking Kizzi at all of our favorite spots, trying to fit in everything local that I had wanted to do but hadn't gotten to in seven years, and in general trying to spend every waking moment with my friends. It should be noted here that my friends were AWESOME and so helpful in this process. I couldn't have done it without them.

October 6, 2013 - I left California :( Kizzi and I packed our stuff for about two weeks, my computers, my cello, some camping equipment for the first couple of days in the new house, and whatever other odds and ends were left and would fit into the car and drove 3 days home to Tennessee. I had asked for about six weeks between accepting the job and starting to give me plenty of time to pack, move, unpack, and go home to see the family in between.

Me and Kizzi on the road to TN

October 19, 2013 - Momma, Kizzi, and I drove my car (still packed to the brim) up to see Grandma Jackie in Illinois on our way to my new home in New York (BS is just across the CT line, makes for interesting taxes). We spent the day with her then got a couple of hours driving before stopping for the night.

October 20, 2013 - We arrived at my new place! Late at night mind you. Yay camping gear in an empty house!

October 21, 2013 - Cable and internet installed, I decided I'm such a TV nerd that I couldn't wait any longer for my stuff to get there and needed to go buy a TV. I was missing all of my shows! At that point we didn't know yet when my stuff would arrive. It was Monday and could have arrived anytime through the next weekend. Also, this day there was a lot of cleaning, figuring out where things would go, getting used to the new area, and ALMOST DESTROYING THE BASEMENT WITH THE WASHING MACHINE. That was fun.

October 22, 2013 - Momma flew out for the day to go do a work thing (she came back later that night). Also, my stuff arrived! Ok, so now I have two TVs, no big. One in my bedroom, woo hoo!

Hello stuff! I've missed you!

the rest of that week - My mom was kind enough to stay with me for most (or maybe all?) of that week, helping me clean, unpack, organize, shop for new stuff for the house, and just generally help get Kizzi and me settled in :) We also took a day and went to do touristy things in NYC, since she had never been before! I can't remember now if she left that Saturday or Sunday, it's all kind of a blur. Regardless, her help was MUCH appreciated.

Momma's first NYC subway ride

October 28, 2013 - My first day at Blue Sky. It was a warm welcome during a week of Halloween festivities. I've had some trouble learning the way they do things here (very different from Sony) but in general it's a great company, they treat us very well, my Sup and co-workers are very kind and understanding, we're working on great projects, and I should be happy here. I'm still learning how to not be close to all my SoCal friends, and the winter was a tough test of my willpower, but we have all survived and the outlook here is bright!

So that's it as far as timeline goes. I've now been here right at 7 months and am fairly well settled in. I have a few friends, Holly, the friend who lives in NYC, and Gerarda, the lady that lives in the upstairs of my house, who have made it much more liveable for me here :) Perhaps I'll talk more about my winter woes in a future post, but probably not because mostly I just want to forget them.

I'm happy to announce the return of my Kitchen Misadventures series! One of the best things about moving here is that I have a big backyard, so I started a big (for me) garden! Things are already growing like weeds and I plan to document the progress there in future posts. My friend Oba and I also agreed to split a CSA share for June-December, so we can all look forward to more games of Name that Vegetable! Yee and Katya will have to play online :)

A preview of the garden, starting small.

Also, I will be starting a new series, I Spy. The above mentioned backyard happens to border reserved land for the drinking water reservoirs of White Plains and NYC. The actual reservoirs are a couple of miles back, meaning that really my backyard borders forest. I was worried at first about what kind of little beasties we might see back there, and so far nothing dangerous has made an appearance, but there have been some surprises. Stay tuned for that!

Kitchen Misadventures and Overall Updates

Whew! It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks (months?) since I've updated here. So much has been going on that there just hasn't been time to put my thoughts down on...blog. Here's what I've been up to in a nutshell.

• CSA veggies - So I finally used some of the kale in a CSA box fairly successfully! I made a kale salad to serve Maya and Michelle when they came over one evening. It turned out really well, I actually liked it! The kale texture overall kind of bothers me, it feels kind of sharp in your mouth. I know that sounds weird, but that's the best way I can think of to describe it. I'm told that I might like baby kale better, so I'll try that after this CSA series is over. 

Blurry pic of a lovely salad :)

I found the recipe for this salad online here: http://www.shockinglydelicious.com/better-than-trader-joes-kale-and-edamame-bistro-salad/

Maya and Michelle posing with the lovely salad

It has all kinds of good stuff in it: kale, homemade Italian dressing, fresh mint (from the CSA box!), fresh basil (from my own garden!), edamame, garbanzo beans, cranberries, and carrots. I will try it with the baby kale next time and probably love it even more :)

Mojito fixins

As you may  have gathered, there was fresh mint in the CSA box this time around, which prompted me to try making Mojitos! They turned out delicious if I do say so myself.

Delicious Mojito all put together.

I think this is my favorite CSA attempt yet, and of course it's a drinky drink :) Oh well, this still gets an A+ in my book!

Zucchini (and hot dogs) on the grill.

One last CSA entry for the post, zucchini on the grill. And guess what, I liked it! I sliced it up, painted both sides of it with a mixture of olive oil and seasoned salt, and grilled it for about 5 minutes on both sides. It turned out quite nice, another vegetable win, woo hoo!

That's all of my kitchen misadventures for now. I have several types of summer squash, more beets, cabbage, and avocados still left from the last box to use. I think I'm going to try the squash on the grill, not sure about the rest yet. Programming Note: This week is the last box of CSA vegetables and I have decided not to sign up for the summer session. This is partially because they are not offering the mini-boxes this time around, and those have proven to be more than enough for me, and also because I'm tired of chard, kale and beets. It has been a GREAT experience though, and rather than take part this time I think I will make an effort to go to the farmer's market or produce department and pick something new once a week, so I still get exposed to new and different vegetables. That should work, right?

• summer garden - I have a garden growing, and I haven't managed to kill anything yet! That's pretty impressive, right? I have an orange tree on the side of my house (as you might remember from a previous post), so free oranges there. I have a Pink Girl tomato plant that has actually survived since last year (wow!). Yeah, I bought it because it was a Pink Girl, couldn't pass it up. The new additions this year are strawberries, green peppers, and basil. The new basil plant replaces Basil the basil plant, a housewarming gift from Mr. Joe Eckroat that sadly did not survive the winter, or rather Oz the Great and Powerful. I bought the strawberries as bulbs that were already fairly established and raised the peppers and basil from seeds. Cool, eh? 

Tomatoes are hearty, what can I say?

Baby strawberries

Baby basil

Baby peppers

Ok, so maybe these pictures aren't particularly exciting to anyone but me, especially since they're fairly old. I'm happy to report that the tomato plant has a big, juicy tomato starting to pink up, there are about 5 strawberries starting to grow, and the basil plant is about 10 times the size pictured here now. I've already used basil from it a couple of times. The pepper plant, unfortunately, looks about like it did here. Weird, eh? Not sure what I'm doing wrong with that one, but it's hanging in there.

• SIGGRAPH approaches - This is always a fun time of year for me, and a horribly busy one. If you know me at all you know how much I look forward to SIGGRAPH week. This year we're in Anaheim, CA, home of Disneyland! I'll be on-site all week, volunteering with S3 (SIGGRAPH Student Services) and supporting the SV Program. I was on the General Submissions Jury for the first time this year, so I was given the opportunity to Session Chair for a few talks throughout the week. I'm also excited to have been asked to head up a special project we're calling SIGGRAPH After Dark! It's a special movies-in-the-park type screening, though we're not sure yet that it will be possible to put on the show. I should find out this week whether or not we get to do it. Fingers crossed!

• Two theme parks in one day - That's right, I have achieved the unachievable, or at least the inadvisable. I have visited two different theme parks in one day! And we're not talking two related parks, like Disneyland and California Adventure, or something like that. Two weekends ago I went to Six Flags Magic Mountain in the morning and early afternoon and Disneyland later that evening. It was a crazy fun day :)
  
  
• House guests - My cousin Becky came to visit! She brought her boyfriend Duane and his son Brandon with her. They were in Las Vegas for a few days for a conference and then drove West to stay at my house for a few more days. I took them on a driving tour of everything interesting I could think of around here and took them by some of my favorite restaurants in the area. We also cooked and hung out at the house a lot. It was nice to see them, I hope they enjoyed themselves!

The Hollywood sign

Becky, Brandon and Duane at the Hollywood sign lookout

The view from the Hollywood sign lookout on Canyon Lake Rd., Hollywood Reservoir left and Hollywood sign right

• Cloudy 2 Film Festival - I've been working on a short film with my teammates at work. We entered it in the film festival put on at work by our current show. It was a lot of work but turned out pretty cute.  Unfortunately I will probably never be able to post it here, as it contains confidential material, but hopefully it's enough to know that this is one of the projects that has been keeping me busy. 

So there's the update. One more CSA box to go and a lot of SIGGRAPH news to come!

Reminder to do fun stuff!

I often find myself just kind of comfortable with the way things are now, with my current day to day lifestyle, with the status of my career, and so on. I clean my house and play with Miss Kizzi on the weekends, and generally watch movies with me friends and stay fairly local. This is a good thing for the most part, it's nice to be comfortable, but I tend to forget how quickly things can change, especially in the VFX industry that I call my own. But amidst this comfort, once in a while comes a jarring reminder that change is coming, and sooner than I would like.

Today it was an offhand comment from a co-worker, one of my favorites in fact. He simply said something to the effect of "...that will happen in 2015, but I probably won't be here to see it." A couple of us asked where he was planning on going, and he said he just meant that none of us are likely to be here at our current place of work in 2015, such is the state of our industry. Truth be told, I don't have work lined up for after my current show yet, and likely will have several months off in between this and my next project. I'm planning to travel and visit some family and friends. I'm actually really looking forward to this time and kind of hope that I do have it off, though the uncertainty of the future in this industry is still pretty unsettling.

The title of this post is referring to part of my overall reaction to that realization, that this job isn't going to last forever. I would like to take as many opportunities to see the area that I'm living in right now and experience it with my friends out here, because who knows when one of us is going to move to a different part of the world, or when we'll have our lives taken over by OT, or whatever. So yeah, here's to weekend warrior trips with friends!

Side note, I haven't been posting much lately because a) I've been busy with a SIGGRAPH project that I am very excited about and b) I haven't been cooking/experimenting with the vegetables much because we've kicked into OT at work and I have (regretfully) been hitting up the fast food a lot lately. I resolve right now to do better! I also will be posting some research and sketches and whatnot for this SIGGRAPH project as soon as I am allowed to. It's going to be a good one :)

Lots of little bits

I'm getting behind on this whole blog thing, busy week! Quick update on what I've been doing...

I spent some time in the ER Monday morning because a good friend of mine got in a bicycle accident. He's ok, nothing too bad happened, but he was lucky this time. The last time this particular friend was in the hospital it was a much more dire situation, so I think all of us in his world were happy it was only a sprained wrist. No big deal, right?

In preparation for losing my job in a couple of months, I've been hitting up all of my doctors for my annual exams. Last week was the dentist, this week the general practitioner. I don't usually do all of this preventative stuff, which I'm not saying is good, I'm just usually not on top of things like this. I end up only going in when I'm sick and never get the full work-up done. This time I did the fasting thing, got the full physical, had an echocardiogram, and had blood drawn. They've been trying to call me with the results today, which I'm sure are fine, but we've been playing phone tag. Still, I feel better already checking this one off the list.

I'm having a yard sale on Saturday, which was supposed to be an easy way to get rid of some nicer junk, and instead has become a big project. As it turns out, my city has some super weird restrictions on yard sales. You have to apply for a permit, and the small print on said permit states that you cannot hold a yard sale, wait for it, in your yard. There are also hour of the day and signage restrictions. It was almost enough for me to give up, but I already had several other people committed to coming to sell their own stuff, so on we go. We're two days out now and I have a million things to do tonight to get ready. I just hope we make some money, I don't want this all to be for naught!

I am one of the crazies who went to a Wednesday night midnight screening of Star Trek: Into Darkness. Let me tell you, it was worth it :) I had such a good time, that film did not disappoint! I have absolutely no complaints, there were several surprises, and the action was so good that I wanted to see it again immediately after. I am probably going to try to see it again this weekend.

Last but not least, another CSA box arrived today! I still have about half of the last box, so yeah, I'm falling behind on the cooking and veggie experimenting. This time around there was a lot of the same (kale, beets, onions, carrots, oranges, cabbage), with the welcome addition of fresh mint and zucchini. And yes, there was chard. Sigh. Yee is now the proud owner of some fresh chard. I'm totally making mojitos with the mint, if I can figure out how to muddle that is, other than that I have no plans for this food. I will have to try harder, after the yard sale!

Kitchen Misadventures: Chard on the Grill

My last experience with chard was not great, but it was in the CSA box again this time around, so I wanted to try again. I asked friends for recipes and searched the net, but the easiest/best sounding idea was Jojo's suggestion to grill it. Sounds great, right? I wanted to grill some hamburgers, hot dogs and marinated chicken anyway (when I grill I do a lot at a time so I don't waste the propane by turning it on and off for short spells all the time), so I thought this would be a great I read another suggestion online to massage the chard with a little olive oil and sprinkle in some salt and pepper, so I did that.

 

 Doesn't it look so pretty in the bowl? I REALLY want to like this stuff! 

I laid it out on the grill after I was done cooking all of the meat. The "recipe" (tips and tricks really) said to only grill for a minute on each side, so it was a quick process. I could kind of tell while it was cooking that I was in trouble. Frankly, it just doesn't smell good to me.

Still looks kind of pretty all grilled up and ready to go inside! I took it in, tried a piece and immediately dry heaved over the trash can. Sigh. This one was not a success. I think those who actually like chard would think this was great. I, on the other hand, clearly am not a fan. I don't like the smell, I don't like the taste, I don't like the texture of cooked greens.

Chard, I'm sorry, I think this is where we have to part ways. It's not you, it's me. You'll find someone new, I promise.

Please don't let there be chard in my CSA box next week.

Kitchen Misadventures: Bubble 'n' Squeak

What, you've never heard of Bubble 'n' Squeak? Just kidding, I hadn't either, until I started Googling "what to do with cabbage" that is! Then I found this:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/bubble-n-squeak/

Which turned out to be pretty good! On the first day anyway, but I'll get to that in a sec. It turns out that it is called Bubble 'n' Squeak because while you're making it the potatoes bubble and the cabbage squeaks. Cute, eh? Also noteworthy is that in Googling the correct usage of 'n' (is it 'n or n'?) I discovered that it is actually 'n'! I did not know that. The thought is that you replace the letters removed from the word with an apostrophe, so since you're removing both the a and the d from and, you end up with 'n'. Go figure.

Anyway, I feel like this was a fairly successful venture into the world of cabbage. If you read up on Bubble 'n' Squeak at all, you'll find that it's a British recipe intended to use up leftovers. It's basically potatoes (baked or mashed, there are versions with either), cabbage, whatever spices you feel like throwing in there, and whatever leftover vegetables or meat you happen to have in the refrigerator at the time. It is often served as part of a full English breakfast. Sticking fairly close to the above recipe, I made mine with baked potatoes, cabbage, ham, bacon, salt and pepper.

 

I've never cooked with cabbage before and the insecty-looking holes in this one were weirding me out, so I Googled (how would I live without Google?). It said to soak it in salty water for a while to get any buggies out. I did, and none came out, so I hope it was ok?

Below are my dedicated helpers in this project! Kizzi on the left and Sammy on the right. Kizzi belongs to me, Sammy was just visiting for the weekend. I'm pretty sure they were less interested in my vegetable project and more just hoping I would drop something for them to eat.

So I baked the potatoes, cubed them, cut up and cooked the cabbage until it got tender, cooked the bacon, ham and onion together in a little olive oil, and then threw everything together in a skillet.

I'm happy to report that the Bubble 'n' Squeak tasted good! I actually liked it, and ate a bowl full. I liked the taste of the cabbage, though I probably should have cooked it a little more so it was more thoroughly tender.

Because I had oranges galore, I peeled and cut up an orange, threw it in a spinach salad with some walnuts and Brianna's dressing and had a lovely side salad for this meal as well.

The only downside here is that I did not like the Bubble 'n' Squeak on day 2. I'm pretty texture sensitive with food and biting down on some of the less cooked cabbage kinda made me gag :/ As a single person household, I run into the day 2 problem a lot. I had already cut this recipe down to about a third of what it originally called for, and I still had enough left for like 3 more meals that just didn't happen. How to solve this problem?

Still, I'm counting this one as a success!

Oranges Galore!

I have an orange tree in my yard. Let's call him Caesar (See what I did there? No? You don't follow my convoluted naming logic? Orange tree -> Orange Julius -> Julius Caesar -> Caesar the Orange Tree. Shut up, it makes sense to me.). Below is a picture of Caesar on Saturday morning.

It's a little hard to see here, but he had a lot of fruit. He's also got a lot of dead spots :/ So much so that I've been worried about him. I would say about half of the foliage is now dead (it's worse in the back). Caesar has been neglected because, while yes, I'll claim him, I rent the house that I'm living in and he technically sits right between my house and my neighbor's house. So not only is it questionable which house he belongs to, probably if it does belong to my house my landlord should actually be taking care of him. Regardless, he's being neglected and if the 8 months I've been waiting for my window to get fixed, 4 months for the screen door and 3 months for the stove burner are any indication, I don't really have time to wait for the landlord to come through on this one.

Last weekend I took a couple of pictures and leaf samples to the Marina del Rey Garden Center and they advised me to prune and fertilize Caesar, like a lot. I bought some iron supplement from them and in reading the directions it mentioned that you shouldn't apply it to trees with fruit on them. Oh. So Saturday morning I got out the orange picker and a couple of bags and went outside.  Three and a half full bags later I had all the orange fruit off the tree, and I was tired. That's a LOT of oranges folks!

I had planned to keep going and pull off all the green fruit and prune the tree that day as well, but it became clear to me during the picking how hard the pruning would be. I need a ladder and some heavy duty shears. Or I need a professional tree service to come out. I haven't decided which yet, but I'm leaning toward paying someone to do that work for me. Regardless, all I did for the orange project for the rest of the day was give the oranges a bath.

Note, that's only half of them pictured here. And yes, I know you don't have to clean the outside of oranges, thanks very much, but they were really dirty and I didn't feel right handing dirty fruit out to my friends. Anyway, this will be a continuing project. Here's hoping I don't accidentally kill Caesar!