Last night I went to Oakland in a green jumpsuit. That is all.
[^ photo by Mick Frederick]
I’m so hood.
So I have a sister.
In fact, I’ve had one my entire life. I just had no idea.
Long story short:
It was almost four years ago. I was on tour with American Aquarium. We were playing a show at The Evening Muse in Charlotte, NC, with Jeremy Fisher and the North Labrea All-Star Conquistadors (to be specific). I was turning 20 at midnight.
(photo from that night)
I was sitting at the merch table, blogging away (writing this one, actually), and I check my MySpace inbox to find a message from a Brandi Price – my older sister. At this point, I’d never heard anything about a sister. Needless to say, this came as a little surprise.
My dad had died a few weeks ago, and apparently in the sorting through of his estate it was discovered that he in fact had another child. The estate lawyer contacted her and provided her with information that eventually led to her finding me on MySpace. She unfortunately never met my dad, and had no idea who he was until receiving the news that he was dead.
All of this was a bit emotionally taxing, if you will, but man, it’s an exciting feeling to discover you have another sibling! Interacting with her was amazing – she has an eerily similar sense of humor and even writing style to me – I sometimes felt like I was writing to myself. Genetics at work, I suppose.
Brandi and I obviously had a lot of catching up to do. The next six months were filled with long letters back and forth, ranging from lining up our pasts to talking about boyfriends. It was awesome. And then… she disappeared. Her messages stopped coming, and eventually she deleted her MySpace account completely, without a word.
I’ve spent the last two and some years incessantly searching the depths of the internet for her (how can someone related to me be so hard to find online?), I had pretty much given up on finding her again.
Then, Saturday morning, I check my inbox to see an email from Brandi Price.
Guess what? She lives an hour and a half from San Francisco, and we’re grabbing a drink on Friday. I finally get to meet my freaking sister.
23 years late, but it’ll do. 
Healthy train report: Week 1
Hi all! As I mentioned in my last blog, I’ve made a plan to get healthy again, and will be keeping the interwebs posted as a means of accountability/reason to keep it up.
…and by the way, it’s actually working.
This has been my process so far:
- Breakfast: Eggy/protein breakfast before I leave for work, usually two boiled eggs and some beans I cooked the night before.
- Lunch: A little bit of meat, and a lot of beans/vegetables (usually leftovers from dinner I cooked the night before), or Caribbean/Mexican food from down the street (plates w/ no rice or tortillas)
- Dinner: I cook a ton of delicious meat, beans, vegetables. Then I eat it.
- Saturday: Cheat day. Ate lots of bread and potatoes and BBQ sandwiches and beer.
- Notes: I actually cheated a little bit every day (oops). I also only went to the gym one day this week (I’m aiming for at least three).
Results: *
- Lost 6.5 pounds (143.5 to 137)
- Lost .5″ in arms (mid-bicep)
- Lost .5″ in legs (mid-thigh)
- Lost 2.5″ in waist
- Lost 2″ in hips
- My face has lost some weight, and literally looks different.
* No, I’m not intending to sound like an infomercial, and no, I am not obsessed with my measurements. I didn’t even own a scale until a week ago. I just like seeing and tracking data, especially as motivator for change.
More Notes: I eat a lot, and continued to eat a lot this week – just of protein and vegetables instead of noodles and sandwiches. I am way less hungry, have no sharp jumps in blood sugar (crazy shaky hunger attacks and random sleepy/dizzy spells = gone), and am actually spending significantly less money on food than normal (more grocery shopping/cooking at home).
Holy shit. This is actually working.
I also just ordered some workout equipment to use at home, in addition to going to the gym. I’m not really prone to building muscle, but I’m going to try to put some muscle-y pounds on these bones.
More updates to come!
hp
Posted in healthy trainTagged diet, four hour body, health, healthy train, results, tim ferriss, week 17 Comments
Back on the Healthy Train.
A coworker recently told me (endearingly) that I am a habitual planner. Funny, I had never sit down to think about it, but I’ll be damned if I am not, in fact, a habitual, borderline-obsessive planner. I make resolution after resolution throughout the year, related to health, productivity, work, life, you name it. I don’t necessarily carry all of these plans out, but I just keep on planning anyway.
Reasons could be:
- I suppose planning keeps me entertained and my spirits up when I feel like my life is becoming a bit too ordinary.
- I think that going through more than a decade of rigorous classical piano training ingrained in me a sense of perfectionism – that is, a constant desire to do better than others as well as myself. Long story short, I’m never satisfied.
Now don’t confuse the dissatisfaction with lack of appreciation or optimism – believe me, I appreciate every good and mediocre and awful experience I’ve ever had in my lifetime. Rather, I just don’t like to sit around. I feel like there’s always something new or better that can be done, and I have a need to pursue it.
So in the last year I’ve made AT LEAST 3 major plans around getting healthy, ranging from running every day (if you know me well, you know that I’ve never run in my life, but I actually did this for a while), going to the gym every day (also did this for a while), going on a whole-grains/fish/vegetable diet, going vegan, then going 90% vegan…. the list goes on.
Well, I have a new plan, and I think it’s finally time for me to not half-ass it and actually make this work.
I recently stumbled upon this blog post in Gizmodo, essentially an excerpt from Tim Ferriss’ Four-Hour-Body, describing what he calls “the slow-carb diet.” By that night, I had the book and was 200 pages in.
In a nutshell, the slow-carb diet is as follows:
- Don’t eat any white carbs or even whole grains.
- Eat lots of repeating meals consisting of vegetables, legumes, and proteins.
- Eat a high-protein breakfast within 30 minutes of waking up, every day.
- Don’t eat fruit.
- Don’t drink calories (no juice, soda, alcohol, milk, soymilk, etc.)
- THE BEST PART: Take one break-day a week to eat whatever the heck you want. The break-day serves to prevent your metabolism from leveling off at a lower rate – thus, eating crap on break-day actually facilitates weight loss. I expect most of my break-day meals to consist of fried chicken + noodles + pie.
I really don’t find this diet to be daunting. I love vegetables, legumes, and proteins, and can think of plenty of ways to cook them. And for whatever I feel like I’m missing out on, I can just eat it on my break-day.
So last night, Aaron and I went shopping at Trader Joe’s, bought a ton of cheap veggies and beans and lentils and meat, grabbed a scale and tape measure from the neighboring hardware store, and headed home to get started. I’ll be measuring my progress (literally) every week, & posting updates on the blog as a means to keep myself motivated.
My goal is to lose 20 pounds of fat, and gain 5 or so pounds of muscle, leaving me with a 15-pound loss total. I know 20 pounds sounds like a shitton, but I’m 5’9″. The changes on me aren’t THAT drastic. For instance, I lost almost 40 pounds from 2007 to 2008 and it didn’t look like I lost a human or anything. Either way, I’m looking forward for getting back into the healthy-zone.
Helena at biggest, 2007: 157 pounds
Helena at healthiest, 2008: 130 pounds
Helena at medium, now: 143 pounds
That’s all for now from the healthy train. I’ll have updates for you next week!
hp
Posted in healthy trainTagged diet, four hour body, health, new years resolutions, slow-carb diet, tim ferriss6 Comments
New year, new blog!
YAY!
Seriously guys, I’ve been wanting a new site forever. The other one looked fine and all, but it was extremely limiting in a variety of ways:
1) I couldn’t post a blog without a photo to accompany it. That’s silly. What if I just want to post a word or two (like this post, for instance)?
2) With the old design you could only browse one post at a time, and in a way, this made me feel like every post I made had to be some epic production. Maybe this was possible when I was touring or traveling, but these days, not so much. I now need something better suited to casual scrolling.
3) I had no leeway with the design. I couldn’t add a sidebar, nothing. Also silly.
4) It was a free WordPress template that anyone could copy and use for themselves. I’d rather have something a bit different.
So I’ve slowly been working on this new design, on and off, for probably 10 months now. I would have loved for it to happen sooner, but I am teaching myself HTML and CSS as I go, and that, in combination with being busy with life in general, made the learning/researching/coding an exhausting and timely process. I still have a ton of kinks to work out, but I think it’s ready enough to make live and just go with it until I read some more tutorials and stare at the code long enough to figure it out (or until I get a headache and back off again).
ALSO – I’ve gone back and added a ton of epic old stories from touring and traveling – I had never posted them online other than in my old email list and on my MySpace blog (throwback). Feel free to browse through them by clicking on “travel stories” or “tour stories.”
Again, YAY! Happy 2011.
xo,
hp
2010 recap.
Ooooh 2010.
2010 has been a very unique year for me. It’s probably the most stable my life has been in at least five years – staying put in one city, stable income, relationship, 9-5 schedule – quite an adjustment for me. That said, it’s still been a year full of big changes, developments, preferences formed, lessons learned.
Most of the big changes came in March. I was working a job that, despite sounding pretty cool, made me quite miserable. I felt incredibly overworked and undervalued, and spent a good bit of early 2010 quietly hunting for jobs, though quiet jobs hunts never seem to be too productive. Fortunately (though it didn’t seem that fortunate at the time), I got fired. I immediately tweeted that I needed a job, and within five days, got hired by an incredible communications firm, where I still work today.
Around the same time, I met Aaron. Upon meeting him I was pretty sure he’d end up being my boyfriend. Sure enough, still is.
I’ve gone through a series of quarter-life crises over my photography, professional life, etc., but I continue to meet and work with folks that bring out the best in me and value what I bring to the table. As 2010 comes to a close, I’m surrounded by people who value and appreciate me, and that is the best gift I could possibly fathom receiving.
2010 largely set the stage for 2011, and I’m prepared to have an even better year-in-summary 12 months from now. So that said, 2010, you were good to me, but I’m ready to put you to rest. Move along now.
Anyway. Here are some photo-highlights from 2010. As I was sorting through my year in photos today, I noticed that this year in retrospect felt significantly shorter than 2009 – largely because I didn’t actually take many photos or write blogs this year. Frankly, that sucks. So in 2011 I vow to start taking more photos and blogging again, if anything, for the sake of my own sustained memories – that’s why I started this blog in the first place.
So, for those of you who read this from time to time, hi, and thanks for reading.
Happy new year!
hp
2010 recap photos:
Visiting North Carolina.
Having visitors from North Carolina.
Photogging SF music makers.
SFMOMA times.
Underground times.
Above ground times.
Dolores babies.
Road trips to Santa Cruz.
..and then driving until you reach Hermosa Beach by morning.
The first of many photo adventures with Aaron.
Lake Tahoe.
Wondercon.
Megavisits.
Road trips to Portland.
SF photo adventures.
Getting a Minolta for my birthday, and immediately becoming obsessed w/ film.
Visits from Yogi & Party Boy.
Exploring California.
Heading back to North Cack to shoot Hopscotch Music Festival, visit family & friends, and intro Aaron to the dirty south.
Baker Beach times.
Business meetings in LA…
Visits from Erin & JT.
Riding holiday trains through Niles Canyon.
Getting a Yashica Mat for Xmas, and shooting medium format for the first time (something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time).
END!
My thoughts on reflections & adventures.
So today I was featured by the awesome folks at Photoavent – a digital advent calendar of photographers (as the name may imply). Folks were to use a photo that was particularly important to them and provide details on the process of how they got the shot. Here’s my entry.
The Background:
I wouldn’t say my photo taking has much of a process. I’m constantly on the hunt for new and adventurous situations, and I have a tendency to observe interesting details in what may seem mundane to others. Once I find the situation, I just document it.
I have been taking photos as long as I can remember. I was the girl in gradeschool who everyone always counted on to have a camera on her at football games or birthday parties. I took lots and lots of pictures. Fairly bad pictures, but pictures nonetheless. I simply found the process of documenting and sharing exciting moments as exciting, if not more exciting, than the moment itself.
In the years that followed, I quickly learned that I had a taste for adventure and a need to document it. I traveled on a whim whenever possible, toured the country a few times, and tirelessly explored my city, documenting every bit. I started my hobby of photography and storytelling, first via email list, then later via queenofthepavement.com, and continue to do so to this day.
I’m settled into San Francisco now, and not traveling like I used to, but I’ve realized that if you treat everything like an adventure, whether it be a spontaneous road trip or pretending to be a tourist in your own town or just wandering around your neighborhood, you’ll find your life far more exciting and worthy of documenting.
The Shot:
Prep was minimal, other than spontaneously buying a plane ticket from North Carolina to San Francisco, renting a car, driving to Sausalito, jumping in the air, and shooting a self-portrait, mid-air, in a storefront reflection. Reflections fascinate me – they’re a sort of living distortion of reality, and I find myself observing and photographing my environments through them often.
I’ve probably taken (technically) better shots, for sure, but I always come back to this shot when browsing for favorites. I’ve always felt this photo best captured the excitement I associate with my new discoveries and experiences. That’s really what photography’s about for me – being able to revisit a photo or story and feel the excitement and novelty I felt in that moment, and hopefully being able to share a bit of that feeling with others as well.
Tech Specs:
Camera: Canon EOS 50D
Focal Length: 18mm
Aperture: f/3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO: 200
Mild level adjustments in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom
Go check out the calendar to find some new photogs around the country. Glad I could be a part!
END!
Posted in Jumping., san franciscoTagged adventures, photo advent, photography, reflectionsLeave a comment
Stray photos – Summer/Fall 2010
Here are some stray photos that never made their way into a particular blog post.
July 2010
My bedroom window & my very round head. I think I was excited because my hair was finally long enough to put in a bun.
Adventuring in the Mission.
Aaron had very curious facial hair at this time.
Late-night spontaneous trip to Ocean Beach. Aaron’s facial hair has transformed slightly. Also, please note our San Francisco “summer wear.”
August 2010
Mick & Lauren’s wedding! The dude on the left with the sweet beard just got married.
Pete & Esme being cute & shit.
Still cute.
Dude’s facial hair continues to evolve.
REAL. THEY ARE REAL.
We are twins. I’m on the right.
Wandering around California again, this time in an abandoned concrete factory (or something like that).
October 2010
Flying to LA for the afternoon. Yes, for the afternoon. My first business flight ever! Life is fun right now.
Oh, and another fun update – I’m a product photographer for Photojojo now! I’m truly stoked to be working for one of my favorite companies on the planet, and doing what I love at that. I’m still working my day job at theMIX agency, of course, which continues to rule. It’s just great to have a side project that satisfies me creatively and happens to earn me money at the same time! Life is developing swimmingly.
You can see my first gallery of shots on the Photojojo site here.
That’s all for now. END!
NC visitor time, pt. 2
Some highlights from the remainder of Erin & JT’s epic visit to San Francisco.
Burrito breaks with Aaron while the visitors slept.
Climbing to the tip-top of San Francisco. (ok, we took a car for most of the way, but still.)
Riding the F car through downtown – and scoring the back seat.
Full of scenic back-window views…
and zombie views…
Being extra-touristy at Pier 39. (the Myrtle Beach of San Francisco, to give you east coasters a proper perspective).
Eating shitty overpriced crab sandwiches at Fisherman’s wharf while listening to a pharaoh sing Weezer covers.
Sitting at a surprisingly empty Crissy Fields.
Walking up the taller hills in the city…
And eventually standing on top of the taller hills in the city.
And finally waiting for a cab to come rescue our tired bodies from the bottom of Lombard.
So who’s gonna visit me next? Any takers?
NC visitor time, pt. 1
I absolutely love having visitors in San Francisco. This is for several reasons:
1) I left a lot of my best friends and family and otherwise wonderful people I’ve met when I up and moved across the country last year. Getting the chance to see them in person is really exciting.
2) It’s easy to grow numb to the majesty and awesomeness of San Francisco when you walk through it on a daily basis. Having visitors makes me, well, remember where I live.
3) I get to create extensive adventure itineraries, full of my favorite places to go and things to eat and coffee to drink and hills to climb, etc etc. That said, I end up eating and drinking and climbing way more things than normal in a weekend, which everyone should do now and then.
2) I’m a perpetual workaholic, and if you let me, I’ll go a month without emerging from work/project land and making real human contact. Having visitors reminds me to take a break and have fun for a minute.
It’s even better when the visitors happen to be some of your favorite people on the planet.
This is Erin and JT, my very very good friends from North Carolina, and my visitors for the weekend.
The weekend was destined to be very busy. I was doubling my duties as adventure guide with two photo assignments for a certain awesome photo company that I’m shooting products for now (will get into that in a later post) that were due at the end of the weekend.
Anyway. First things first for these guys – I had to introduce them to delicious SF food, so I took them to the most delicious place I could think of – Naked Lunch.
We all got the pork & apple sandwich. I watched Erin and JT go through the SF-food related emotional rollercoaster that I found myself experiencing two years ago sitting at Tartine. Total elation and disbelief at how incredible the food is that you are ingesting – as well as depression creeping in with the knowledge that, as a non-resident, your access to food experiences of this quality are limited and thus you are setting yourself up for disappointment for the rest of your non-SF-resident life.
From there we moved on to Chinatown. It was rainy/gross outside, but we managed to keep ourselves entertained.
We had one small goal associated with our trip to Chintown – find animal hats. At the time, we felt that animal hats would be a great Halloween investment because A) they could be the basis of a very cheap half-assed yet qualified Halloween costume, and B) they are cute and perhaps we’ll wear them again.
So we explored and explored…
But we could only find…
small ferret-like animals.
and cable cars.
and cat displays.
and more cat displays.
and piles of… well your guess is as good as mine.
Finally, we found what we were looking for. I bought a bear hat (a tribute to New Bern and Bear Plaza and Barry Barrington, obviously), as well as a panda hat for Aaron. Erin bought a raccoon hat and JT bought a bunny. We were set for the holiday.
Exploring continued southward towards the Financial District.
As usual, the city was full of interesting characters.
Our next stop was Cole Valley and the Upper & Lower Haight, where we ate crepes, drank beer, watched the world series, and saw SF costumery in action.
We celebrated our Halloween as critters with a sushi dinner at Domo in Hayes Valley, then drinks at our neighborhood Minibar on Divis.
A good day of Halloween critter adventuring complete. More to come in pt. 2.
END!
