Breaking into Dancing & Dancing into Break

So I've been thinking about trying a dance class for awhile now for a few different reasons. I've been in need of some regular exercise for one. I realized this two weeks ago while sprinting across the Denver airport with Adam to make it to our connecting flight in time and not getting very far before I was wheezing, coughing, and had cramps all over my body. I was also sore afterwards. I'm not proud of this, but that's what a desk job for two years will get you if you don't put any effort into exercise outside of work. Another reason being I've kind of always wanted to try it. It looks like fun. My only experience with it had been gymnastics in the second grade and Irish dancing that I briefly tried out last year and didn't continue due to scheduling restraints. I also need me time other than the hour in my car on the way to work and back. 

I finally narrowed down my research to three studios that work for my schedule, location, price range, and have pretty high ratings. This week has been my trial week to see what classes I really enjoy and might want to include in my weekly schedule. Monday night I tried a nice Broadway dancing class that I really enjoyed. I think once I have the moves down it can be a great form of expression and release of built up emotions. Tonight I have a Beginner Ballet class, which I think will help with overall form and basic moves often incorporated in many other dances. Saturday I have another Theater dance class to try out and Sunday I have a Beginner Hip Hop class. Basically, I'm getting a taste of what's out there to see if I enjoy any of them enough to stick. 

Last night I went to a class called "Intro Breaking into Choreography". I was excited to try this class so I could eventually choreograph my own dances for music videos, etc. I think it would be a useful and fun skill to have that could potentially open up more doors for things I've always wanted to either participate in or create. So last night I headed out from work around 6:30, found parking after circling the block two times, and headed up to see which room I was going to. I found it and sat in a chair right outside, waiting for it to begin. I was about 10 minutes early. An instructor and a parent were around the corner talking very loudly about break dancing and I thought to myself that I was glad I wasn't here for that class! I didn't even know the studio taught Break Dancing. A few students started arriving and looking into the studio my class was supposed to be in. They looked a little different than the Broadway class students had looked on Monday...they didn't wear tight shorts and a tank top or ballet/dance shoes. One guy wore a beanie. The girls didn't have their hair up in a bun. Their hair was lose or under a hat. One girl had green hair. They had baggie clothes and converse shoes and kind of looked like these kids: 

         

 

I was the only one with a tight tank over my sports bra and short gym shorts on with my hair up in a pony tail. I basically looked like this: 

I quickly put together that I was in the wrong class and a sinking realization hit me that the title of the course, "Intro Breaking into Choreography" didn't mean an introductory choreography class you could "break" into. It meant Introduction into Breakdance Choreography. 

On the inside I looked like this baby:                                       On the outside:                                                                             

Slightly more composed, but still an "oh shit" face.

There was a good minute that I pondered my available options I had. One was quietly getting out of the chair and leaving. No one yet knew what I was there for. True, I would waste the $13 I paid for the class and the $10 I to park my car, but I would soon be safe in my car with a funny story to tell Adam when I got home. Oh, and I would get home at 8pm instead of 9pm. The other option was sticking it out and giving breakdancing class a shot. I paid for it, might as well see what it's about at least? It'll probably be a great work out either way and if I suck, hey, it did say "Intro" in the title so it's supposed to be for beginners. So I figured what the hell. It would be a funny story for Adam either way.

And you know what? It actually ended up being a lot of fun. Despite my fear of being outcast, everyone was super friendly and open. Nobody looked twice at my odd wardrobe choice. The student next to me offered to practice the routine we learned with him. I got a great work out all over my body (I'm still really sore). The teacher was super hands on and had a great personality. She bonded with each and every one of her students and got down on the floor with each of us to watch what we were doing and give us tips. I got a high five from her after I got a step right. And I was actually the first one in the class to learn and "trust myself" enough to do this "freeze": 

Ask me to do it for you next time I see you. It's pretty cool. 

But I took away something much more important than the moves I learned in that class. I'm one step closer to reaching out of my comfort zone and facing my fears for the bigger picture of taking chances and living life. I judge myself so hard for not fitting in that I miss the very crucial information that no one else is. Think of how many missed opportunities I've already had in life because of this preconceived notion. And how many us do everyday. Think of all the great people we could meet and amazing experiences we could have if we just simply...lived.

Also, this was a pretty funny story to tell Adam when he asked me how dance class went. 

Moon Moon, the Christmas Reindeer

So early this week I had the idea to bake some sort of holiday themed goodie to bring into work on our last day before our holiday break and to give out to family/friends over the holidays. I wanted to do something cute - I randomly brought in Minnie Mouse themed cupcakes early this year and they were a big hit. ------------------------>

So this week I looked around the web and I found a cute reindeer peanut butter cookie recipe that looked super easy to do. I'm still fairly new to baking I didn't want to attempt something I didn't feel confident I could pull off. I went out to the grocery store yesterday to get the extra ingredients I would need to bake tonight.

Now, I'm not the best judge on telling when food is ready to come out of the oven. I'm either way too early or way too late, so I usually have my boyfriend, Adam, double check that part for me. I rolled up the cookie dough balls, stuck them in, and called Adam down every time I thought they might be ready and finally he ok'd them to come out. The trick with this recipe is you have to add the "antlers" (pretzels) and the "eyes & nose" (M&Ms) immediately after taking the cookies out of the oven so they harden around the decorations and set in properly. I had two sheets full, so I asked Adam to stick around to help me with this step, which he thought would be fun and had no problem doing.

We were acting stupidly silly with each other and joking about the back story to the different reindeers. Adam even made one with red eyes and sharp antlers to make it a "devil reindeer", the one spoof out of our set that we would keep for just ourselves. Once we were all done decorating, I started switching the cookies over to a cooling rack. They looked so good! I was so proud of how they turned out - they looked a lot like the picture! I got over to Adam's pan and something didn't seem quite right. They didn't really look like the picture and I couldn't figure out why. The more I studied them to find out what was wrong, the more they looked like "special" reindeer. Their faces were contorted and you couldn't tell their eyes apart from their noses. And then it hit me. Adam hadn't noticed the pointed noses of the reindeers I had pinched while they were dough to form the structure of the faces. He had completely disregarded this and gone with his own "vision" and placed the eyes and noses randomly and all over the place. All of Adam's cookies looked like this and he had more than half of the batch on his pan.

I asked Adam, in hysterics, why his cookies didn't look like mine to which he explained to me that he had "creative freedom" with his and made some into birds and some were to look like David Bowie and/or an alien. "But I didn't want birds and David Bowie cookies...I needed reindeer!" I asked Adam why he didn't just put the noses on the spot that was meant for the nose like I did on mine. He just didn't see it... This is why I don't ask him to help me decorate things. No one sees my vision... le sigh.

These are what the Reindeer cookies were supposed to look like:

These are what mine looked like: 

These are how Adam's turned out: 

I mean, really? What is that? This one doesn't even have antlers:  

This one was supposed to be an alien, according to Adam, and I tried to fix it for him by adding the nose and now it just looks like a tweaked out bird:

This one is his "Krampus cookie", aka devil reindeer:

And I don't even know what this one is: 

All I can say to you, Adam, is...

I published my book!

http://www.amazon.com/kindle/dp/B00GI2XAME/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_eos_detail

I received the copyright registration back after submitting to the Library of Congress Copyright Office months ago and now I can finally put my poetry book out for the world to see! Kindle download for free if you're an Amazon Prime member! Hard copies will be for sale soon as well. 

My new video: Pokemon 151 Voice Impressions + Ash

It's Been Awhile

It's been nearly a month since I posted anything on here, so I'm playing catch up. Nothing huge has happened, so just little updates :)

I've been in the process of acquiring a new set of doctors for me to see that are closer to where we live and that work better for me. Adam and I are now seeing the same medical practitioner and dentist, which is nice.


I attended the Action on Film Festival at the end of August with my Mom, Ally, and Adam where my short film, Until College (http://www.untilcollege.com & https://www.facebook.com/UntilCollege), won the Best Musical Award.

Chance has been enrolled in Intermediate obedience school this month and he already graduates next week! Our plan is to get him all the way through the Advanced course so he can be certified. That will mean we'll have more protection over him and ourselves if there is ever a scuffle with another dog or an incident in our future with Chance. It will also mean that he will be able to test for TDI Certification for him to become a therapy dog and participate in programs. Yay, Chance!

We visited the Ronald Reagan Library this month and saw the Lincoln exhibit with the hat he wore and a ton of other stuff. Here's us on Air Force One:

Lincoln's Hat

This month it has been SO HOT, especially in the valley. To keep cool, we went to Malibu State Creak Park to swim in the lake and had a beach day with family. I haven't been to the beach in three years! Felt great to be back in the relaxing atmosphere and in water again. 

Adam & Caitlin at Beach

At the lake

Adam and I have been catching and keeping up with a lot of our favorite shows lately. We are finally all caught up on Dexter in the nick of time for the final episode EVER - coming out next week! We're excited to finish up this series and move onto our next new show - Orange is the New Black. We've been keeping up with the final season of Breaking Bad and it's been intense! We're both waiting for Hannibal to come back on the air as well as Game of Thrones and American Horror Story. I'll be waiting for The Walking Dead and True Blood also (not Adam's favorite shows). And I've been watching my guilty pleasures: Kate plus 8 and Teen Mom, which Adam does not partake in with me. 

Adam has been busy creating his web comics series, "the grand adventures of cody & chance".  I made a website for it where you can see all the comics, drawings, and have access to the online store: http://codychancecomics.blogspot.com. There's also a Facebook page: www.facebook.com/codychancecomics. Besides working on this, Adam's day job has been finishing up his work on a short film he was doing VFX for called 'Four Winds' (you can see the trailer on their website: http://fourwindsfilm.com) and has been editing video game trailers for the company WayForward (http://www.wayforward.com). He actually edited this video here for a campaign of theirs: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1236620800/shantae-half-genie-hero. 

The company I work for, Electric Entertainment (http://www.electricentertainment.com), has just announced three films we will be making, one of which with Martin Scorsese executive producing with us! Here are the links to all the announcements: 

http://variety.com/2013/film/news/toronto-martin-scorsese-dean-devlin-on-board-the-wannabe-1200599767/

http://www.deadline.com/2013/09/dean-devlin-sets-next-directorial-effort-as-electric-entertainment-picks-up-two-projects/

The president of my company, Dean Devlin, is also going to be directing his global disaster film with Skydance and Paramount (http://www.bloomberg.com/article/2013-07-16/aAXCWoqkPFR0.html). Looks like we have a lot coming up! 

I'm waiting for the official copyright for my poetry book to be sent to me so I can finally publish it! It's called 'There's a Light Underground". I can't wait until it's out there for the world to read! Adam drew the cover image for me: 

In other writing news, I've been posting "articles" on buzzfeed.com and a couple of them have been featured on the main page and gotten a bit of "buzz"! Here's a list of all my articles published: http://www.buzzfeed.com/caitlin873. 

We've been having game nights hosted at our place with a group of friends about once a month for a few months now. It's been really fun! We've enjoyed playing all sorts of board games like Game of Thrones and Catan (which I FINALLY actually WON last time). We also try new games each time. Pandemic was my favorite that was introduced to us. I'll probably buy that one myself...eventually! :)

The game of Catan that I won =P

That's all the news for now! Catch you next time!

The Days of the Week as said by my Dogs

 

My Sad Attempt at Watermelon Cupcakes

I made Minnie Mouse themed cupcakes last week (blogged in a previous post). That was my trial run at themed cupcakes. I love themes. I love themed birthday parties, holiday themed things, seasonal, anything with a theme, really. So Minnie was a great first theme. Easy to make chocolate cupcakes, even though I've never baked cupcakes before. Easy to put pink strawberry frosting on top, stick white chocolate chips in it, and easy to twist Oreos and use the non cream side as ears - just stick them into cupcakes after being frosted. Bam. Done. It was so easy, I was ready for something more challenging (I thought). This time I wanted more of a purpose for going all out on a cupcake. I though, hey! - my sister loves watermelons and watermelon themed things and it's also summer time - watermelons fit summer time theme and I can show them to my sister and give some to her! Perfect idea.

Image in my head

I made the cupcake mix and put in some red food dye. Mixed in some chocolate chips with it too and then poured it out into paper liners in the pan. The mix was a little more liquidly than the Minnie ones were. I thought something seemed a little off about it, so I added a little more flour. Still didn't feel quite right, but I shrugged it off and threw them in the oven. 22 minutes later and they were ready to come out. The chocolate chips, the "seeds", were not visible through the paper liner, which was a bit dissappointing. That was one of the main effects I was going for to make it look like watermelon. I decided to let them cool and would take off the paper lining after so you could see the seeds in the red cake better. When time came to do that though, the paper stuck right to the cake and it looked horrible. So, I frosted the cupcakes with their liners on and tried to make them still look somewhat resemblant to watermelon. I experimented, tried out different ways that they could maybe still pull it off. I got frustrated and ended up with this assembly:

This is a watermelon with the seeds on the outside...  

This is a "tall, grassy hill with poop droppings all over it"
according to my boyfriend, Adam. 

This is happy watermelon Steve. He's just happy to be here. 

This is happy watermelon Harold. 

And this is what happened after I tasted one. They were really, quite awful. Adam agrees.