Dec

Winter has arrived in California and according to some meteorologists, it’s looking to be prime time for El Nino. This means lots of rain and cooooooooooooold weather. Well, cold for southern California, anyway. We’re currently experiencing our second storm in the past week, though it’s thankfully less windy and not dumping as much water as the first of the season. That one was pretty intense.

We drove up to the summit of Mt. Helix to watch the storm arrive, earlier today. The view is always pretty spectacular from up there, no matter what time or type of day it is. And since the summit is less than 10 minutes’ drive from our home… why not? Okay, so we had an alternate motive for leaving the house today, too. Watching the news this morning, apparently a 50′ pipe fell from a truck on the 125/8 interchange, onto La Mesa Boulevard. Being so close to us, we couldn’t resist heading over there and snapping a few pictures. Nobody was seriously injured and no major damage done (except potentially to a taxi, but whatever).

So here, have some pictures…

Nov

Before you read this blog, please waste three minutes of your life reading this: http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/11/05/o.change.name.after.marriage/index.html

I am concerned that the author of this article is so incensed about 80% of women in America choosing to change their surname after marriage. Does she not have more important or interesting things to harp on about, in the realms of feminism? Haven’t we moved on to more important things, ladies? Perhaps the breaking of glass ceilings? Who would have thought that anyone gave a damn, in 2009, about wasting time worrying about what names we choose to give ourselves. Isn’t that what feminism is about; providing women with the equal opportunity to make choices?

Any one of those famous people she used as examples would be no less talented and no less who they are, had they changed their surnames, they just wouldn’t be a “brand” anymore. That’s right, these women are all brands and their names are marketing tools. Isn’t that counterproductive to the feminist cause? Do you not think there were multiple meetings with agents, public relations representatives, and management firms about each and every one of those marriages and how the name would need to stay the same so that the dollar value could be protected with the familiarity of the name? Those women no longer own their names and those names are not who they are – they are the labels for products or services or talents they provide.

My strongest connection to my former surname was my grandfather and he passed away in 2006. My own family is disjointed and scattered to the winds – so why continue to use a surname with which I no longer feel a bond? I am proud to be my husband’s wife and thus, changed my surname after marriage. I did not do that for my first marriage, because it was not a man or family to which I felt especially connected. Short of selecting a new surname for the both of us, one that was not connected to my former surname or to Muzquiz, I felt much more comfortable becoming a Muzquiz than keeping my former surname. I am not a brand. Changing my name does not erase my past, nor does it negate the talents I have or remove the things I have to offer the world. I am still ME. So, yes, it is about personal identity. I just happen to choose to identify as being proud to be Mrs. Muzquiz.

Faith Salie, before you go parading your idealistic and misguided blathering to the rest of the world about how we should live our lives exactly like you, perhaps you should take a closer look at WHY 80% of us do CHOOSE to take on our husband’s surname. We all have our individual reasons and have made a choice to take on a new name for ourselves.

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.

Oct

I’ll post my own videos and pictures at some point in the near future.

Sep

Lately, I’ve been missing my lip piercings, which were removed in 2008 after a few good years of jacking up my grill. Being one who is obsessed with perfection when it comes to modifications, how did I allow myself to chip a tooth and create a gap between two of them? Simply put: a nervous habit of gnawing on my lower lip, which I have been doing for as long as I can remember. Biting lip + jewelry + teeth = disaster. Out the jewelry came, despite having loving stretched the piercings from their original 14g (1.6mm) to 10g (2.4mm) in size and I now have two indentations below my lower lip to show for it.

Almost every piercing I’ve obtained has been received on whim and has been cared for & appreciated for whatever length of time it happens to be given as being part of my bodily aesthetic. So, today was no exception to my track record of being pierced on a whim: thanks to Matt Southwood, at Enigma, in San Diego… I am now the proud bearer of a vertical labret!

One of the nicer things about the vertical labret, as opposed to “standard” lip piercings, is that the jewelry does not enter the mouth. This makes it a touch easier to heal, as it is not fully (only partially) exposed to the disgusting cesspool that is the human mouth and it does not touch the gums or teeth in any manner. I’m hoping this will help me to avoid tapping it with my teeth when I do bite my lower lip (which I tend to do on the sides, rather than the front portion where the piercing is) and thus, allow the piercing to remain in place for a long time.

Eating and drinking has been a challenge and will more than likely remain as such for quite some time. I’m failing at drooling when I drink water (you can laugh, it’s okay) and I need to cut my food into tiny bites and use utensils to deliver the food into my mouth – even if I feel completely silly doing so… ever eaten a cheeseburger with a fork and knife? – without touching my lower lip or the jewelry itself. The swelling isn’t helping matters, either, but ice water is definitely helping combat the soreness that accompanies swelling (and is, of course, keeping the swelling to a minimum).

Jessy used my Flip to video the entire procedure, and I extracted some shots from that, to share here. They’re not as detailed as in the video itself, since they are frames taken from video, but they’ll do fine for illustrating the fun. I chose to make them black & white, as you can see detail a bit better without the color being washed out. The last shot, in color, was taken with my iPhone about an hour afterward. The pictures show Matt marking my lip, the piercing procedure itself, inserting the jewelry, adjusting it, clean-up afterward, and voila… the final product!

If you’re wondering… on a pain scale of 1-10, this was easily a 7 and amongst the worse I’ve felt. Matt did a spectacular job, but my face – and lips especially – are extremely sensitive, to the point of being ticklish. Nowhere else on my body am I ticklish or sensitive in the same manner, so I’m certain this factors into the higher rating for this piercing. And since I’m asked a lot: the septum was a 0.5 ;)

Aug

Eighty percent of my life revolves around zombies from late March until the end of December. I’m not sure how it evolved into this situation, but it has. Sponsorships from upcoming movie releases, meetings with community representatives, advising people on media pieces, makeup and costuming for video and photo shoots… how did I get here? This is by no means a complaint, but I am well and truly baffled.

Currently, I’m putting together the walks in LA and San Diego for October. Different dates, different crowds, and far different purposes. The San Diego walk is a full event, collecting donations for San Diego Food Bank, getting the local community involved. LA’s walk usually seems to just be for fun, but I’m going to try to turn it into something more this year. We’ll see how that pans out.

I still need to get photos from the Comic-Con walk up on the ZombieWalk:SanDiego site… but there are thousands to sort through. Time-consuming!

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