May 29, 2011

• Sunday Shoutout: Manic_Lizard

  This week I bring you Manic_Lizard
  I think Aryn is a beautiful, incredibly talented young woman and I believe you will too.
  
  

  1. Can you give a brief outline of your life, family?

  I was born out in California, but only lived there until I was 2 when the Earthquake of 1989 scared my parents back to the East Coast, though 2-year-old me thought it was fun and wanted to do it again.  We lived in my grandmother’s house for maybe a year, we went back recently and the only thing I remember is the carpet.  By the time I was three, we had moved to New Jersey to the house I grew up in.

   

  I had to move home a little over a year ago, back to the house that I grew up in.  So I live with my family, which consists of my parents and my two younger sisters, aged 17 and 19.  We also have two dog (a Norfolk terrier named Trooper and an American Eskimo named Merlin), five or six fish (depending on the day, and if we’re fish-sitting), and five chickens (three mixed breeds named Batman Anagram, Tara-dactyl, Luna, and two red hens named Lucy, and Racecar Rosie).  My boyfriend Evan and I have been together for something like 15 months, and I highly expect this to be the man I spend the rest of my life with.  I’m the assistant manager at a discount bookstore, though only for another month because we’re going out of business in June.  Eventually I’d like to get out of retail and get a degree in Occupational Therapy and specialize in autistic children.  I think they’re so completely unique and interesting; I’d love to have a better understanding of how those kids think.

   

  I don’t do “brief” very well …

   

  2. What are your main interests, hobbies or collections?

  I’m an avid reader.  Unless I get very stuck on a book, I usually blast through two books a week.  I read just about anything, mostly fiction, but inside fiction I read scifi, fantasy, romance, literature, chick lit, mysteries, historical fiction, etc.  I’ve recently been discovering a love of nonfiction though it’s something I’m really only just beginning to explore.  I’m currently reading Flags of our Fathers, about the men that were in the iconic Iwo Jima photograph and loving it, the last book I read was The Magicians, which I really rather hated.

   

  I have a huge interest in religion.  I identify as Pagan,but because I do so much looking into religions, my actual spirituality takes from religions all over the world.  I just think it’s a fascinating world.

   

  I’m learning how to make jewelry.  I’m rather proud of myself because I was recently able to repair Evan’s lucky necklace.  I’d like to do more inspired by the Steampunk genre and the 50s.  Steampunk and other sub-culture conventions are just a blast. This is an older piece (last year, pre-lip piercing), my grandfather made my grandmother a pair of earrings from thimbles, as earrings I’d never wear them but I love it as a necklace.  That’s where a lot of the jewelry I make comes from, old pieces of jewelry and nick knacks from years past.

  

  
  

   Oh, and also, I’m an amateur photographer.

  
  3. You just got a new camera,what kind did you get?
  When did you become interested in photography?

  I just bought myself a Canon Powershot SX30IS.  It’s not a DSLR, but it’s the top of the line in point and shoots and does everything that a DSLR with all the right lenses would do with only a fairly slight difference in quality.  I actually only started learning the fisheye feature recently!  My Powershot S2IS lasted 6 years, so $630 isn’t awful for a heavy-duty camera.

   

  I honestly don’t remember when I became interested in photography.  I remember receiving my first camera as a gift in 6th or 7th grade and being thrilled.  There are so many print photos of my life from Middle School floating around my house because of that camera.  It must have been High School that I learned how to use my mother’s SLR, but frankly I don’t remember.  There are two pictures, that I took during the same year though I can’t remember when exactly, one during the summer a close-up of a seven-legged spider and one during the winter of my driveway covered in snow that I come back to again and again and point to as my first real “experience” as a photographer. I actually just found the print and the negative to these photos.  WOO!

  

  

  For the most part I take pictures of landscapes and nature.  I really love macro and colors found in just plain view.  When I take pictures of people I don’t like to pose them or anything because I’d much prefer to have a candid shot.  I use photography as a way to show what I see when I look at the world, and I feel like by trying to manipulate it, I’m changing that vision.  Granted that’s not always a bad thing, but it’s just not what I like to do.  Personally, I think some of the best pictures I’ve gotten are completely candid.  It’s a moment thing.  I want to capture the moment, but not change it.

  
  

  These three photos are from my birthday trip to the Natural History Museum
  and are a few of my favorites of the day.
  

  

  
  

  
  

  
  4. What brought you to Xanga?

  One of my best friends from college had been on Xanga for years, and while at the time I was a livejournal loyalist, he introduced it to me so we had a place to share our photography – we had just started Project 365 (take a photo a day for a year).  A blogging platform with a photo uploader?  SICK!    Livejournal got catty in a way I couldn’t handle.  I mean, sure we’ve got Xanga drama, but here I usually succeed in keeping my nose out of it.  So I moved here permanently and discovered that the community was awesome … and well, here we are.

   

  I’ve never completed P365, but me and that same friend are actually restarting it now.  I’m rather excited.  I’m going to try to keep Xanga updated with those.

   

  5. What is your passion, pet peeve?

  Passion: Working with people with special needs.  I really find this the most rewarding thing to do in the world.  There’s nothing quite like helping someone overcome an obstacle that they’ve been struggling to overcome.  Be it as simple as tying shoes, putting on a bathing suit, getting into bed, or as complex as overcoming a fear of heights and an actual inability to use leg muscles to ascend the climbing wall.  At the camp I work at, the climbing wall is my favorite place because so many kids get to climb it, or make it up in some way we have created for them and they get to a place they never thought they’d get.

   

  Pet Peeve: People who ask me questions about things without trying to figure it out themselves.  If there are bright yellow signs all over the store, they might tell you something useful.  With kids I get to say things like, “How do you think we could figure that out?” and use it as an educational experience.  With adults, that’s a bit patronizing…  Honestly, I guess my pet peeve is working retail in general.

   
  6. I remember you posted photos or you in your Grandmothers vintage dress,what is your fashion style and where do you like to shop?

  My fashion sense rotates between the “I don’t care,” jeans and a random t-shirt look, over the top costuming, and 50s style dresses, though I do prefer my jackets a little more hippie styled.  It really just depends on the day.  Modcloth.com is my place of choice to get my dresses.  They have a fabulous selection and a fabulous return policy, for those of us who are a little iffy about buying clothes online.  Conventions are definitely the best places to buy costume clothing, though really nice costume jewelry can be found on etsy.com.  Tshirts usually come from bands I’ve seen or woot.com.  I’m not a big shopper obviously, if I go shopping for clothes I’d rather go thrifting or to a small town and go from local store to local store – that’s usually where my jackets and skirts come from.
  

  
  

  7. What challenges have you faced recently?

  Well, I’m currently facing the unemployment challenge yet again.  I guess that hasn’t been faced yet though since it’s still being dealt with.  The last challenge that I conquered was when my boss was out for medical reasons for a month and I had to put up the new bookshelves in the store without closing it and almost completely without his help.  Other than the unemployment disaster though, right now my life’s pretty good.  The biggest annoyance is that Evan totalled his car, and since I don’t own a car seeing him has become difficult, but we’re working it out, buses and trains have become our friends.
  

  
  

  8. What is something you have learned about yourself these last few months?

  That I’m a lot more competent than I’ve ever given myself credit for.

  ..Yeah, that actually covers it pretty well.
  

  
  

  9. What is something/someplace you have always wanted to do/see?

  I would love to go to Burning Man.  The problem is that it always falls aroundabout Labor Day, and that’s right around when school starts so when I was in school it didn’t work and now that I’m working retail all the back to school sales make it impossible to take time off.  Being unemployed doesn’t really work either since it requires a plane ticket and finding a way to survive in the desert for days.  Someday I will go if it kills me.  I love the whole idea of erecting a community of people from all over the place to do fun, crazy, spiritual, sexy, political things in the middle of the desert for a week and then scattering back to “real” life afterwards.
  

  • 7:56 pm
  • 20 Comments