Being Amber Rhea

I was looking through my photos on Flickr trying to find one to crop for a submission to the 2008 Blogger Boobie-Thon (I decided to go with this one) and I came across my photoset from our December 2007 trip to Columbia, SC and remembered how happy I was then.*

I was talking to someone recently (can’t remember who) and telling them how happy and at-home I felt in Columbia - but that realistically I probably wouldn’t want to live there. But I just feel a deep connection with the place - probably because of all the family history there.

Btw, my grandmother found an old photo of the family home at 1429 Laurel St., hiding in a random dresser drawer! There’s no date on it and it’s damaged in two corners; I’m going to take it to Myott Studio next week to be framed in archival glass so it can be well-preserved and put on display, not hidden away in a drawer.

Now, back to trying to write a post about all this business; I’ve been having such trouble finding the right words.

* Not to imply that I’m unhappy now! Just that I have really good memories of that trip, it was a really great time, and something about it felt very special.

Quickly, before I go to bed… here it is, my burlesque pole performance!

Our latest eight-week session of Level 5/6 at PoleLaTeaz focused on burlesque. I found it very challenging, but overall a good kind of challenge. This is the routine I put together for the end of this session. It features less pole work than usual, and more theatrics.

Click To Play

If the embedded video doesn’t work, go here.

I used to keep a “secret blog,” whose existence was revealed to only a handful of people, wherein I gave everyone pseudonyms and wrote about exciting things like the gory details of my sex life, and boring things like the gory details of job interviews.

The last time I posted to that blog was November 2006. It served its purpose when I needed it. I haven’t deleted it, because who knows, maybe sometime in the future I’ll need it again. But I was going back and looking at some of the old posts, and realizing that they do chronicle a very significant time in my life. This one in particular, I just thought was so sweet that I wanted to post it here.

Fair warning: if you’re going to be weirded out by X-rated language explicitly describing acts of fornication by people you know (read: me and Rusty), and/or if you’re my mom, don’t read below the cut. If either of those descriptions apply to you and you choose to read anyway, well, your reaction is your responsibility, not mine. Don’t act weird.
Read the full post »

I decided to take Rusty’s idea and run with it. I probably got a little carried away, but hey, I like photos. You’ll notice I only posted photos of positive/happy/fun occasions - not because I’m trying to rewrite history, but because I think it’s important to focus on the good. As such, you won’t see any photos of the crappy old apartment and related drama, the Platinum Stages pole saga, or other stupidities of 2007. This is a retrospective of all the good stuff that happened this year!

Also, this is not a post that will be kind to folks on slow connections. I’ve placed the photos below the cut (as they say on LiveJournal); you’ve been warned!
Read the full post »

The IDTEVASW event at Charis last night was a success! We had a great turn-out, some inspiring conversation about local action that we can take, and only one technical difficulty. ;)

I was really happy to see how many names were on the contact list by the end of the night! Soon we’ll be putting together some kind of Google group or listserv or something. By this time next year, we should be able to put on a huge, bad-ass event that will get tons of people’s attention!

Thank you to everyone who came out last night and participated. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

And of course, thank you to Caitlin and Tabby for all your hard work leading up to yesterday!

The song my Secret Santa Stripper picked for me to dance to was Nasty Love by Lords of Acid. I had never heard it before, but I like it, and I’ll be downloading it from iTunes!

More photos here.

It was a good night. :)

After work today, Rusty and I will be heading to Augusta, where we’ll be staying overnight. Then tomorrow morning, we’re heading to Columbia, SC, to continue my hunt for family history (as previously described), take photos of the city, and just relax.

We’ll be in Columbia until Saturday. We’ll probably record a podcast while we’re there; we actually have topics ready for two separate podcasts: one talkie, and one movie review podcast. It’s also likely that I’ll finish Bob Jensen’s book tonight (only a few more excruciating pages to go) and write some sort of book review.

Maybe it will rain in Atlanta while we’re gone.

Last night, a group of PoleLaTeaz students (and a few instructors) went to Mardi Gras, a strip club in Marietta. There were women who had been to only one PoleLaTeaz workshop all the way to women (like me) who are in the Level 5/6 pole class, and everything in between. There were women who had never been to a strip club before and women who were old hands at it, and everything in between. There were about 50 of us total. Management seemed perturbed at first. Heh.

I carpooled up there with three other women, none of whom had ever been to a strip club. They were nervous and spent most of the car ride asking about things like how tipping works and if it’s impolite to stare while someone else is getting a lap dance. I answered all their questions and told them that honestly, the most important thing is to tip well, because when the dancers at the club see a group of 50 women coming in, a lot of them are going to be thinking, “Ah, shit, now we’re not going to make any money tonight.”

I’ll admit that when we first got there I was a little worried about whether people would be tipping enough. But as it turned out, our group ended up tipping more than the male customers for a lot of the night, and at one point the DJ chided all the guys in the club and told them to step it up because the women were tipping way more than them.

We saw a lot of amazing pole work, and naturally, the dancers who did impressive stuff on the pole got the most tips from our group. We also cheered and clapped and hollered a lot, which the male customers hardly ever did. One dancer came over after her stage set and said it was a really good atmosphere with us cheering so much. I handed out a few fliers for the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers event, but stopped because I didn’t want to come off like some religious proselytizer handing out invitations to a hip Wednesday night church service.

Several of the women in our group who had never been to a strip club before remarked that they were surprised that so many of the dancers had small boobs and/or looked “normal.” That made me chuckle a bit. Another stereotype dissolved.

There were a few downsides to the night. First of all, we found out Mardi Gras no longer has amateur night. That sucks, because Liz, Lisa, and I were all revved up to do amateur night there (even though the pole on the stage they did it on last time is right up on the edge; but we figured we could make it work). Now, instead of amateur night, they have “costume night” where the strippers dress up as naughty nurses, naughty teachers, or naughty any other profession other than stripper. Boo to that. So that leaves us with only two clubs (that we know of) that have amateur night! (Lisa has been making a spreadsheet.)

Later we heard an announcement that two new dancers were auditioning on the side stage, so we decided maybe we should just come and audition. We wouldn’t get all the prize money, but it would be fun; and we could still take a road trip to another city to do amateur night. So when/if we do it, I will let a select few local pals know.

Also, Liz and Lisa had brought a friend with them (who had never been to a strip club before), and when the four of us were walking back to the table from the restroom, some guy slapped their friend’s ass. So Lisa punched him. The ass-slap sucked, but damn, the punch was awesome.

All in all it was a really fun night. We saw a lot of awesome dancing and pole work, talked to a lot of really nice dancers, and just generally had a good time. Also I admit I found it really hot watching some of the dancers give lap dances. And we became even more convinced that we could totally clean up at amateur night, if only we could find a good place that does it.

Almost one year ago today, on my 27th birthday, I graduated from Level 1 pole dancing.

Today, on the day before my 28th birthday, I will graduate from Level 5 pole dancing, and get my black garter. From here on out, it’ll be continuing practice in “Level 5/6,” because after tonight I’ll have attained the highest level!

A retrospective of graduations past:

Tonight we have to do a two-song set, and Angela has highly encouraged us to have a theme instead of just randomly choosing two songs. My two songs are Garbage’s “Only Happy When it Rains” and Rihanna’s “Umbrella” - so I call my theme ‘Make it rain.’ Yes, the pun is intended and my tongue is stuck firmly in my cheek. But an effective rain dance is exactly what we need in Georgia right now!

I’ll post photos tonight or tomorrow morning, of course. I feel like I should say something deep, but words are failing me. Just… it’s amazing how much can happen in a year.

Rusty and I are back from our 4-day road trip to the Carolinas. It was a good combination of planned and spontaneous; I just wish we’d had a few more days.

First we went to Greensboro for ConvergeSouth 2007. We got there in time for about half of the final session of the day, wherein Jason Calacanis demonstrated the power of Twitter by Twittering his phone number and then Robert Scoble called him. Based on what I’ve heard and read, people seem to be split into two groups - those who thought this was cool/amusing/impressive, and those who thought it was obnoxious. My reaction falls somewhere in the middle, but leaning toward the “obnoxious” side, I think. Part of that is just because I’m non-starstruck with Scoble.

Speaking of which… well, I’ll get to it in a minute. Friday night we went to the ConvergeSouth barbecue at David Hoggard’s house (and they actually had veggie burgers!) and met BlogHer co-founder Elisa Camahort and contributing editor Laurie White. They were both so nice, funny, and down-to-earth; I really enjoyed hanging out with them. Oh, but how this relates to Scoble… well, somehow he came up in conversation, and I mentioned being disgusted with his behavior at ConvergeSouth 2006. Elisa said she’d seen he and Maryam give the same presentation at a different conference, but they were very much co-presenters. We wondered whether she had seen them after I had, and maybe Scoble took my criticisms to heart. Later that night I did some research on Google and it turns out, Elisa did see them after I did. Ha!

Saturday we had a good time at ConvergeSouth; I liveblogged Elisa’s keynote and did a bit of Twittering throughout some of the other sessions. Of course, the inevitable J-School/B-School session - otherwise known as “journalists vs. bloggers” - got ugly pretty fast; but I’ve yet to be in one of those sessions where it doesn’t turn ugly. At 1:00, I led a session entitled Podcasting and Beyond. It seemed to take the folks there a few minutes to understand that they weren’t just “the audience” and I wasn’t going to talk at them for an hour; once that became clear, we had a good discussion. I recorded it and will put it up as a podcast soon.

Sunday morning, we left Greensboro and headed to the Carolina Raptor Center. This is a place just outside of Charlotte where they rehabilitate injured birds of prey. Their goal is always to release the birds back into the wild, but some birds aren’t able to be released, due to the nature of their injuries. These are the permanent residents at the CRC.

I highly recommend this place to anyone who has even the remotest interest in birds! (Which should be everyone.)

After leaving the raptor center, we decided to head to Columbia, SC. We’d been meaning to go there eventually anyway, so we figured there’s no time like the present. Columbia turned out to be a pretty neat town. We didn’t have as much time as we would’ve liked to walk around taking pictures, because it was almost dark by the time we got there, and on Monday I spent most of the morning doing research at the courthouse. I’m trying to track down some family history there… but I’ll do a separate post about that. Rusty did sneak away and photograph two Kress buildings for me, though:

We’re planning to go back to Columbia the weekend of December 8th. At that time, I’m sure we’ll take five million photos.

On the way back home, we stopped in Augusta for lunch with my parents. It was a totally last-minute decision, so I was glad they were available for lunch!

So that’s what we did on our 4-day vacation. I love road trips, and I’m already ready for another one. Hopefully we’ll be able to get in a few day and weekend trips between now and December.

Last night was the PoleLaTeaz student showcase, and I was one of seven students in the show. I’m still reeling today! On one hand, I can hardly believe I actually did it; on the other, it seems like, “Yeah, of course I did it; why wouldn’t I?”

I was nervous beforehand, but once I got to the studio and started warming up and talking with the other six ladies in the show, the nervousness started to melt away. I went third, and hearing all the cheering and applause for the first two performers helped a lot, too. When it was my turn to go on, I had a brief attack of nerves again, but I pushed it aside and marched into the room in my five-inch platform heels.

Now that I’ve gone through with this, I feel even more confident than before about my pole dancing ability! I’m my own worst critic, but honestly, aside from a very very minor things that no one else would be able to notice, I really do think I kicked ass!

Here are a few photos Rusty took after the show (they didn’t allow photography during the show, and it was too dark anyway):

More photos here.

I feel really good, proud, and happy (and bruised)! And I’m looking forward to class tonight!

Not to end this on a negative (and really, I don’t think this is a “negative” per se), but I feel I’d be lying by omission if I didn’t mention it… it did hurt that none of my friends (other than Rusty, of course, and CaSandra, who attempted to be there but was held up by highway construction) came to the show. This was an extremely big deal to me, and I wanted my friends to be there. I understand that some people had legitimate conflicts; this thread should not devolve into a flurry of justifications. I’m simply stating, honestly, how I feel. Friends support friends at stuff that’s important to them… and this was important to me.

Bottom line from last night? It went great, I feel great, and I’m already looking forward to the next time I can perform in front of a packed room! :)

This amuses me for several reasons…

Why is the cartoon of a dude? :P Boo.

Here’s the extended results description from the site itself:

You’re not in this for the money, for you blogging is all about the passion! Sure you might make a little pocket change now and again, but you know that it’s the content, the audience and the people that are what makes blogging great!

You’ve been blogging since Nick Denton was in diapers. When it comes to blogging experience, you are the authority on blogging. Heck you probably even have a blog where you give advice about blogging!

You love web 2.0 stuff like Digg and Delicious and you’re involved in more blogging groups, networks and activities than anyone else you know. With all your connections, you make Neil Patel look positively anti-social!

FWIW, I think Digg pretty much sucks. I obviously heart del.icio.us, though. And whoTF is Neil Patel?

In happy news, my new pole (and stage and other assorted parts) arrived last night and it’s almost completely assembled! We’ll be making a trip to Home Depot after work for sandbags, which were supposed to come with all the other stuff, but which Platinum Stages naturally forgot to enclose. This new setup is a hell of a lot more sturdy than that sketchy “semi-removable” whozit. Only downside is the pole isn’t very tall, so climbing will be very unimpressive, and going upside down might not happen. We shall see! In any event, I’m excited to finally have it! And this means I can actually get some practice in before Sunday’s student showcase (!!!!!).

October is always my favorite month. I can’t put my finger on exactly why (I swear it’s not just because my birthday is at the end of it), but the weather plays a huge part. October weather in Georgia is just perfect to me. The air gets a certain autumny smell that makes me feel refreshed and generally optimistic.

A lot of shit has gone down over the past month and a half, and a lot of it has been (and currently remains) un-bloggable. It’s certainly not going away with the advent of October, but things are feeling so much better overall. We’re in our new apartment in Decatur, which feels way more like home than the old place ever did, even with furniture positioned haphazardly and boxes still stacked everywhere. Our plan is to stay here for a year, and then buy a place. This is going to be a good year.

And October is going to be a good month! It’ll be a busy month, but busy with good, fun, life-affirming stuff.

Upcoming awesomeness for October:

• Oct. 5: North Fulton Drama Club’s production of Merry Wives of Windsor.
• Oct. 6: Harvest ‘07 Erotic Art Show
• Oct. 12-13: BarCamp Atlanta
• Oct. 14: PoleLaTeaz student showcase - I’m performing!!! :D More details to follow.
• Oct. 18: Sex, Wine and Chocolate. (If you’re planning to come, buy your tickets now; space is limited.)
• Oct. 19-20: ConvergeSouth - I’m leading a session entitled “Podcasting and Beyond.” (Hmm, gotta make some PowerPoint slides this week… but only a few, I promise!)
• Oct. 21: After we leave Greensboro we’ll be visiting the Carolina Raptor Center, and then moseying back toward Atlanta, stopping along the way to photograph various small towns and Southern oddities.
• Oct. 22: Day off work for continued moseying if necessary, or sleep and whatever else.
• Oct. 26: Club 2Risqué new facility opening party.
• Oct. 28: Recording a new episode of the GA Politics Podcast at Manuel’s. (This is the part where I sit around and sip tea while other people talk about politics).
• Oct. 30: My birthday a.k.a. 28 Years of Amber Rhea.

Somewhere in there I’ve gotta find time to do mundane things like renew my driver’s license and upgrade the blog to WordPress 2.3, but that hardly warrants placement on the List of Awesomeness. Oh, and Jenny… are you still coming to visit? :)

This video is awesome for several reasons:

First of all, obviously, that’s some seriously kick-ass pole dancing. Not only is this woman strong and talented as all get-out, she makes it look effortless and all her movements flow seamlessly.

And, how friggin’ cool is it to pole dance to Swan Lake? I played the oboe throughout middle and high school, so I think it’s cool in that regard, too.

Now somebody watch this video and tell me, in all seriousness, that pole dancing is just “swinging around a pole” and pandering to the Male Gaze. That much-linked Colbert Report bit looks pretty stupid next to this.

Next step, for me: get off my duff and check out a few more amateur night competitions, then sign up for one myself.

Got my red garter! I’m part of the first-ever PoleLaTeaz level 4 graduating class.

More on Flickr. To bed with me now!

I did it! :D

Time for bed now, as I am suitably exhausted. The video of my routine turned out pretty well, considering the low light. It might be on YouTube in a few days… I haven’t decided yet.

(I promise, I’ll make a pole dancing category on here eventually.)

Update: There, now I have a pole dancing category. I still wish I could have multiple categories on here… but, I don’t wish for that badly enough to abandon my homegrown blogging system.

I’m back at work today. Ah yes… back on the ol’ 8:00-8:00 shift. There will be more ranting later; I even bought a Glamour magazine yesterday, because an article in it pissed me off so much that I’m sure I had smoke coming out of my ears, and I need to refer to the article in order to properly rant about it. Not sure when I’ll get around to all that, and besides, I don’t like feeling angry and riled up all the time; so in the meantime, here’s a photo of hotness.

Yeah, I get to climb all over that every night. I’m a lucky, lucky, lucky woman. (”I’m a lucky devil!” -name the reference)

Here it is, my final post of 2006 (unless my typin’ fingers start to itch again between now and midnight, that is). No “Favorite posts of 2006″ this year. Sorry, I just can’t bring myself to run the SQL queries. I’m lazy.

I was happy to meet a lot of new, awesome blogfriends in 2006, mainly in the feminist ’sphere. Yeah, sure, there were the Great Blowjob Wars and all that hoo-hah, but really, in a way, that’s part of the fun. And I don’t mean that in a jackassy way like “Look how superior I am to all of this,” really.

2006 was, too, of course, the Year of the Podcast for Rusty and me. We launched the Georgia Podcast Network and have been going at full-speed ever since. I would say we’ve become minor (very minor) local celebrities, but again, I don’t want to sound like a jackass and I don’t want to jinx our good fortune!

Far too many friends, family members, and friends and family members of friends got sick or died this year… but I don’t want to talk about depressing stuff like that. Here’s hoping for fewer shitty events of that nature in 2007.

My new year’s resolutions are very boring. Really I only have one resolution: rinse with Listerine every day. See? Boring. I initially used “resolutions” in the plural, because I could’ve sworn I thought of another one a few days ago; but now I can’t remember what it was. Oh well… as my grandfather used to say, “must’ve been a lie.”

My 2007 goals are going to amateur night (as previously mentioned), and being more confident in general.

Events I’m looking forward to include BlogSavannah Un-Conference, SoCon07, and PodCamp Atlanta.

And, most of all? I’m looking forward to getting to spend another 365 days with Rusty. (Cue collective “awwww” or puking noise, depending on your disposition.)

Four years ago today, the shit hit the fan and I found out my husband was really a woman trapped in a man’s body, and everything fell apart and I honestly thought I would die. On my blog, I barely alluded to it (look up the entry for Dec. 31, 2002 if you’re curious). I kept on going as if nothing was wrong, or at least that was the appearance I gave the outside world. Well… four years later, let’s just say things are immensely better than I ever could have imagined, and for some reason now at this moment I feel all sappy and filled with looooove. I’m going to go grope the GDBF now.

Here’s a playlist* for New Year’s Eve. Stay away from those amateurs tonight, and have fun!

• This Year - The Mountain Goats
• Girlfriend - Matthew Sweet
• Chocolate - Snow Patrol
• Speed of Sound - Coldplay
• Still Dirrty - Christina Aguilera
• Feelin’ Love - Paula Cole
• All Mine - Portishead
• Driving Sideways - Aimee Mann
• I’m Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon To Your Star - The Boy Least Likely To
• If You Feel You Must Go, Don’t Go! - Of Montreal
• Dilaudid - The Mountain Goats
• Shout It Out - Adrianne
• Squares - The Beta Band
• Modern Love - David Bowie
• The Good Life - Weezer
• Invisible Men - Elf Power
• Forecast Fascist Future - Of Montreal
• Glory Box - Portishead

* Note: This is also the track list of the Christmas CD I burned for Jenny and Niki. So, ladies, if you haven’t opened your gifts yet, you now know what one of them is! But don’t worry, there are other surprises to be had in those packages.

Today was a successful day for photography. Rusty and I got up early this morning and headed to Little Five Points at around 7:45 a.m. (A woman rolled down her car window, waved at us, and shouted, “Welcome to Little Five Points!”) Even though we were there for over an hour, we really only managed to cover Euclid Ave. Then we went to Radial for breakfast, came home and got the L5P photos off the cameras, and headed back out to the abandoned John Wesley Dobbs Elementary School in Thomasville Heights. (We intend to eventually photograph all the currently vacant Atlanta Public Schools buildings.)

After that second photo expedition, my camera looked like it was finally getting ready to give up the ghost for good. Sigh… well, it’s served me well for over three years. I’ll need to get a new one soon… Duane, tell me about yours, because I think that’s the kind I want! (Garrett talked me away from his.)

Conversation from a secluded parking lot in L5P:

Rusty: I could do you back here. That would be hot.

Me: Yeah, it would… -oh wait, there’s a dude under those stairs.

Oh, also at Dobbs Elementary, we encountered a suspicious character wandering around the property and even inside the building. We’re pretty sure he was there to either buy drugs, or use drugs. Drug-free school zone, indeed.

We’re back from the whirlwind success that was the Kos Q&A (Jerome was AWOL). Rusty is putting the final touches on the audio; in the meantime, I’ll finish what I started.

As you’ve probably read at Rusty’s blog by now (since I directed you there) this year has been amazing for both of us. Best year of my life - and I’m not one to casually throw around superlatives. We started as friends with benefits, because that’s what we both wanted at the time; little did we know that we’d come to enjoy the hanging out, talking, watching the Daily Show, etc. as much as the 11-on-a-scale-of-1-to-10 sex. Three months later we were officially “dating” (a wholly nondescriptive term, but there isn’t a more accurate one in the bass-ackwards popular lexicon, so that’s what I’m relegated to using), but May 9th, the night of our inaugural fuck, is by far the more significant date. -Incidentally, May 9th was also the first day of the Great Blorgy of 2005; as far as I know, we were the only participants that swapped fluids as well as blogs.

As Rusty mentioned, the week or so leading up to the actual hook-up (another term I sort of hate) was rife with innuendo-laden emails. To wit:

Amber:

As to our previous conversation, while my resume is not up to date, I feel confident that my practical experience makes me an excellent candidate for whatever position(s) you would have me in.

Rusty:

Regarding your qualifications for the advertised position(s), the hiring process requires multiple, lengthy interviews. They all take place in the same afternoon or evening, and scheduling is flexible.

Amber:

I am typically available a few nights a week, although I can be more flexible if need be, assuming the interviews in question are lengthy and multiple as per your email. One of my concerns is the length of the commute, but I trust we will discuss this and other requirements during the negotiation phase.

And so on.

Finally I decided we’d reached our innuendo threshold, and the rest is history.

It’s not often that you can say someone scarred you for life (literally!) and it was worth it. But then, I had no idea that your garden-variety indoor carpet could draw so much blood. I started to have an inkling that Rusty was a keeper, though, when he got out the carpet cleaner (that, btw, is not an innuendo) and scrubbed away all traces of aggro* fucking. Nothing I like more than a man on all fours on my living room floor.

Who knew I’d fall in love with a fella named Rusty who went to college at UT and drives a big red truck? Truth is stranger than fiction - and much, much hotter.

* Ed. note: Pls. disregard inaccuracies in that product of drunken blogging.

Yep, it’s Valentine’s Day. I feel like I’m supposed to do an obligatory post about it; however, I don’t know what to say. I’ve never been very into the whole Valentine’s Day schtick. The GDBF and I are having a bit of a low-key commeroration, involving a homemade dinner of tofu parmesan and probably a potential noise complaint.

Update: via Duane

Oh, and he got me a cool book: Misquoting Jesus (I’m actually much more excited about it than the picture suggests, but it was taken at around 8:30 a.m.). Not exactly your typical V-Day present, but what would I do with flowers or chocolate? Flowers die, and chocolate always disappears far too quickly, only to taunt me with its absence.