I think it’s apparent that I haven’t been keeping up with this blog for a while. It’s not for a lack of things to write about, but a lack of time, really, and I think some general blogger burnout (I mean, c’mon, I’ve been at it for like 7 years). I’m astonished by the number of hits I still get on The Meanderwalker, though, so I’m not ready to just shut it down.

But! If you’re interested in keeping up with what I’m doing, check out my portfolio website, where I also keep an up-to-date “news” section about stuff I’ve been doing and thinking about. The funny part is that I do more interesting things now than I ever did when I updated this blog regularly.

CHECK IT:
http://laurenfrohne.com

Last Thursday, I flew with 20 other student from UNC’s School of Journalism to Quito, Ecuador. Our flight from Atlanta ended up being delayed several hours, so we didn’t actually get into Quito until 3am local time. And to add to the discomfort, they made us wear surgical masks all through customs until we were screened for swine flu.

The next morning, after getting oriented at Universidad de San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), our guides took us around the city for some photo opps. We swarmed town centers and tourists stops with SLRs.

They also took us up to the top of a monument of Mary that sits on a mountain (El Panecillo) right in the middle of the city and you could see everything:

Quito is probably one of the biggest cities I’ve ever seen (step aside, NYC) — it just sprawls forever into the mountains.

Saturday, we headed to the Galapagos in separate groups. My group of 8 students and 2 coaches flew directly to San Cristobal. The other group flew earlier in the morning to the island Baltra and took boats to Santa Cruz and Isabela. They’ll be coming over to San Cristobal (where the USFQ facility is) after a couple of weeks.

We were met at the airport in San Cristobal (which is pretty much a large cabana) by one of our guides, and after some confusion about National Park Fees and waiting in a long line to get out of the small gate at the front of the airport, we headed to the hotel. We were supposed to be staying at a hostel called Hotel Mar Azul, but found out as we were passing Hotel Mar Azul that were were actually now staying at a place called Hotel Casa de Alicia. It’s own by a woman from Brooklyn, NY of all places, and she is amazing (I’ll post photos of the place tomorrow).

After getting settled, we wandered around the city a bit. Here are some photos of San Cristobal:

A street that may or may not have a name.

We found out yesterday that the town pretty much shuts down on Sundays.

Sunset with kids and, yes, a sea lion. Sea lions are literally everywhere on the beaches (which are small in terms of sand), and they make the most ridiculous barking noises. Also, we have 12-hour days here: the sun is completely risen by 6:30am and it sets at pretty much exactly 6:30pm — it’s weird.

This statue of a fisherman looks like The Incredible Hulk. People aren’t really green here, but they do eat a lot of seafood. So far, not including breakfast, 3 of 4 meals have been seafood. I’ve mostly been eating rice and steamed vegetables — as I expected I would. Last night I had beans for the first time since leaving home, and it was incredible.

I’ll hopefully update here fairly often with photos and stuff. But also check out my flickr photo set with some lo-res selects (the internet here is slow). Also, some good news is that I’ve not yet bee burned by the equatorial sun, but I am going to the beach today, so we’ll see how that turns out!

This semester I took an Intro to Video Production class. It’s a core competency course for me, which means it’s a really low-level undergraduate course, which means it’s primarily filled with sophomores and juniors. Luckily, one of my fellow first-year master’s students also decided to take it, because we had to partner up with someone for the entire semester, and since we’re taking 3 out of 4 class together, our schedules matched up really nicely for getting our projects done for this class.

Our final project for Video (due yesterday) was to make a music video. Our professor gave us a list of artists we could choose from (like, The Platters, Ella Fitzgerald, BB King, Stephen Sondheim, etc), but we persuaded him into letting us do Tom Waits’ “Hold On.” Here’s what we came up with

(Click the link to view on Vimeo):

Tom Waits – “Hold On” from Lauren Frohne on Vimeo.

It actually turned out to be a really fun project. We were both a little worried it would be too time-consuming and tedious and conflict will all the other graduate-level junk we had going on, but it was fun to shoot, our talent was great, we liked our footage and it wasn’t too tedious to edit together. Overall = SUCCESS.

The part of the project that got me a little frustrated, though, was watching everyone else’s videos in class. It’s not that that were poorly shot or edited or anything. It’s that they all followed the rules and picked songs like “It’s In His Kiss” and “Jolene” and “Tracks of My Tears”), and almost every single one of those videos included a love-sick, sad sally, wet towel of a girl sobbing about the misdeeds of a man or begging for affection. It was kind of disheartening. I mean, maybe our video isn’t any different, except that the premise is reversed: the girl takes an independent leap and the guy is left in isolation; but, they have similar experiences and emotions in their similar/separate situations. But it was a glaring trend among the other videos in the class, which I might add is comprised of 20 girls and 1 guy.

I’m not sure if it’s attributed to the themes in the music of the era we had to choose from, or if those kinds of social and gender stereotypes are still so prevalent in our generation, but it was disappointing to notice that it’s a concept that so many people adhere to.

But either way, we really like our video and you should watch it!

(PS – it’s not really 7 minutes long. It’s 4:30, but I forgot to chop the end of it off before exporting and haven’t been back in the lab to do it!).

I haven’t written in my blog in a long time. And so much has happened, both in my own life (grad school, new jobs, etc) and in the world (Barack Obama is president-elect).

But I’m not going to talk about any of that. Instead, in order to usher in this rapidly approaching holiday season (I can’t wait until Thanksgiving!) I’m going to post my ideal Christmas List:

Williams-Sonoma Cooling Rack – $20 (2 @ $10 each)

I’ve been super busy for the past two and a half months. I go to graduate school full time, I have an assistantship for my fellowship that pays me to go to school, and I have three contract jobs on the side. But, despite this overwhelming amount of work, I always find time to bake cookies on a weekly or biweekly schedule. I don’t even need to look at the recipe anymore. But my cooling method of using a giant plate that makes the cookies bend in weird ways tends to make the activity rather unpleasant. This cooling rack would make the whole endeavor a lot easier and stress-free, and maybe I’d start making a lot more cookies and actually share them with other people!

Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin America) Level 1 – $259.00

I’ve always wanted to be fluent in another language. Well, “always” might not be accurate, seeing as I chose to study Latin, a dead language, for seven years rather than something more practical like Spanish or French. So “recently” I’ve wanted to be fluent in another language. Considering that possibility that I might be spending a month in a South American country this summer, Spanish seems like the most logical choice. See, the Journalism school has a summer class called “Documentary Multimedia Storytelling,” where a class of about 20 students go away to a remote foreign country and document the stories of the people who live there through photos, audio recording, video, text and graphic design. Last year, they went to Thailand. This summer’s trip hasn’t been confirmed yet, but I will hopefully be participating. Plus, I think learning Spanish would be awesome.

Refurbished Apple 20-inch Flat Screen Display – $499.00

Yes, I chose a “refurbished” model. Why? Because I tend to be thrifty when it comes to $800 computer displays. But really, this little gem would make my life so much better. As you may know, I am in a Visual Communication program focusing on Multimedia. That obviously involves working with graphic design software and Flash and Final Cut Pro for extended periods of time. While I have Adobe CS3 on my Macbook, and that is awesome, you can only work with that stuff on a >15-in display for so long. It gets tedious and frustrating! Also, I’m taking at least three classes next semester that will require a large amount of work using these programs — Advanced Multimedia Narratives, Photojournalism, and Multimedia Programming — so a nice home set-up would be a good way to avoid long hours in the multimedia lab in Carroll Hall. The plan would be a 2-monitor set-up running off my Macbook. I dream about this. Seriously.

Apple Wireless Keyboard – $79.00

Okay, this is just a necessity considering my planned set up and a lack of additional USB ports.

Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse – $69.00

So is this.

The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP (Paperback) – $31.49 + shipping

I also really need a good web design book that will teach me basically everything. I know that I can’t just build sites in Flash for the rest of my life. I need to know more HTML, CSS and PHP. Like, from the very beginning. But if anyone has better suggestions than just this book, I am actively taking recommendations!

There’s also a fair amount of nonspecific clothing and shoes on this list. I’m in one of those phases again in which I want to dress like a hip, stylish adult and not the poor college kid that I am. I think this also involves purging my closet again and selling whatever Plato’s Closet will buy from me. But that’s not really a wishlist item.

Isn’t it kind of funny how this alleged “wishlist” actually turned into an update about my life!

I went to Jazzercise at least four times last week. And I’ve accumulated about 15 classes in the past month since I officially joined. That’s a lot of jazzercising, to say the least.

(Sidenote: I also go to pilates once a week and sometimes ride my bike 15 miles; so maybe it’s exercise in general that I’m addicted to. Which is probably one of the better addictions a person can have.)

I’m at the point now where I have a hierarchy of favorite Jazzercise instructors, several favorite Jazzercise routines, and even a favorite “spot” in class (as far away from the smelly lady as possible). Yesterday in class, our instructor told us to look up a video on YouTube (I was probably one of about 3 possible people in class who knew what YouTube was) of a football player doing the Jazzercise routine to Shake & Pop, and since it is my favorite Jazzercise routine, I obviously did::

But don’t get me wrong, it’s still really, super weird and ridiculous. I’ve never done so many grapevines and ball changes, with so many jazzhands, in my entire life put together (including the time I took tap dance when I was like 5 years old). Oh, and the bouncing… there’s so much bouncing, kicking, and skipping. Not to mention, some of the songs and routines we do are just bizzare. Like, we did this one to a John Fogerty song — I’m a CCR fan and everything, but I assure you that there is absolutely nothing “jazzy” about John Fogerty.

I also can’t get over how much the ladies (who go to class even more than I do) absolutely love Jazzercise. They have the time of their lives for an hour each day, hooting and hollering and singing along to all the songs, clapping and kicking and loving every minute of it. I mean, I get it. I just can’t get over it.

While I was looking for that football player clip, I also came across these old Jazzercise videos, which are so ridiculous I can barely watch them – maybe you can:

But, Jazzercise has come so far in the last 20+ years, as per this new commerical:

And, here’s a clip of the CBS Early Show talking about what a “phenomenon” Jazzercise is becoming again (and not just with old ladies!):

I feel pretty validated, though, knowing that I’m not the only young person who has a ridiculous amount of fun and gets a lot out of Jazzercisin’ (and now I know that I can particpate in very crowded Jazzercise classes, if I should move to New York).

And, one day, while I was wiping the embarrassingly copious amount of sweat from my face, Mrs. 500 Classes told me that I’m doing really great for someone who’s never even done Jazzercise before. Which I believe is the highest compliment that someone of her Jazzercise caliber can give.

A large (and frankly, scary) part of my graduate program will include being creative and having actual artistic skills (which I have very little of). Another large part (that I feel more comfortable with) is storytelling; but I’m already feeling anxious about all the details that go into telling other people’s stories: how to find “good” compelling stories, how to deliver the story, how to illustrate it. And also, coping with not being good at it to begin with.

I’ve only recently gotten into This American Life — which is, honestly, really absurd because it’s basically exactly what I want to do with my life — but, Ira Glass is quickly becoming a source of information on storytelling and the creative process. And today, I came across these videos of him offering exactly that:

I don’t mind that he tends to be long-winded and repetitive – I like to hear what he has to say about what he does. He’s not afraid to admit that he wasn’t always so awesome at this whole thing and give some insight to people who want to do something similar (aka: me). Not to mention, he offers a unique voice to media (radio and tv and the internet) that is so oversaturated with people who look and sound the same.

(via LifeHacker)

If you keep up with me in real life in any capacity, then you already know that I’m leaving my job at the end of this month to begin the masters program in the School of Journalism at UNC. They are giving me a fellowship, which is why I’m able to just up and quit my job (hey, I gave them 4 months notice okayy); and, I’m going to study multimedia with the intention of hopefully building a career out of it, all while having the opportunity to do some awesome stuff over the next two years (like traveling) — and (maybe most of all) to not have a real job for a while!

So, I’d like to attribute my lack of blogging for the past 6 or 7 months to the whole grad school process, like, studying for and taking the GRE (twice), waiting in anticipation, and interviewing. And, if I could, I’d also attribute it to not being able to “announce” anything officially because of my job and the clients we serve (did you know that just about anyone can read the internet??). Since it’s really all I’ve wanted to talk about for almost 4 months now, it was that or nothing. But I can’t really blame anything but my own lack of interest and inspiration; although, I’m hoping that this post will open the flood gates a little (especially now that I have 4 weeks left in my job). And I’m sure this blog will become largely about my grad school experiences and the things I’ll be working on in the near future (sorry).

Anyway, here’s a sampling of the types of projects I will be helping/learning to create within my program:

• http://www.atacamastories.org/enter_eng.html
• http://www.rcrusoe.org/
• http://www.whitecitystories.org/
• http://carolinadelnorte.jomc.unc.edu/

Obviously, since I love storytelling and multimedia, I’m pretty excited about all of this.

Also, as part of my scholarship, I have to work for a professor or a program within the school — so I guess I will have a “job,” but it will be contributing to my education and it’s something I really enjoy, so I will not designate it as a “job” — I just didn’t know what it would be and I didn’t know when I would find out. Well, I got a packet last week full of information about my orientations and seminars and all the logistical things about school beginning. And I also found out what my job will be for the school year.

It felt a lot like that part in the beginning of any season of MTV’s “The Real World” — you know, the part where they find out what their “jobs” are going to be while they’re living the in the house — except, you know, actually real. I opened the packet, read the letter, and then exclaimed to Mike: “I’m going to be working on Carolina Week’s website this year!! Woohoo!“

Carolina Week is the School of Journalism’s broadcast news show that airs twice weekly during the school year. It has all the aspects of a real news show and you can watch it on the UNC’s basic cable channel, or you can watch past episodes on their website. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll be doing specifically, though, and the professor in charge will be in Beijing until late August, so I guess I’ll just have to wait in anticipation again.

It’s okay, though, because I like the uncertainty. I feel like this whole change is full of what I’m going to call “postive uncertainty,” by which I mean that I know it will be awesome and I know what to expect to a certain extent, but I have no idea what my day-to-day schedule will be like, who I’m going to meet, where I’ll be going, what classes I’ll be taking, etc etc etc. It’s such a refreshing departure from my everyday routine for the past two years: go to work, write lots of press releases, look forward to lunch, get through the afternoon, go home, try to figure out something for dinner, go to sleep early, and then do it all again. Ideally, I’d like my overall routine to be somewhat the same, but all the details inside it to change regularly.

That, and I love school and homework and papers and projects.

I can’t wait.

I’ve been doing yoga and pilates regularly for about two years now, so I’ve been feeling pretty strong in the ab region. But any time I try to go for a run these days, I start huffing and puffing about 5 minutes in and it ends up taking me about 20 minutes to run one mile (and I keep woefully saying to myself “I USED TO RUN 5 MILES A DAY DAMMIT!!”). As a result, I always talk myself out of running one way or another, until finally I just had to concede to the fact that running 5 miles a day just doesn’t work into my life right now. And I really don’t like gyms. I need structure, scheduled times, regularity, familiar faces.

Obviously, I need JAZZERCISE.

It’s weird – when you become interested in an aerobic exercise-slash-dance class that dropped out of the mainstream trend pool right around the time you were born, you find it’s pretty difficult to confidently work it into a conversation in order to gauge the interested of your friends. I’m not sure how it came about — we were probably talking about how we’ve both fallen entirely out of shape from sitting at a desk day in and day out — but somehow it came to light that my carpooling friend KatieB and I both secretly wanted to try Jazzercise.

The only problem: I’m not very coordinated and I have no rhythm that is at all applicable to any sort of dancing scenario. And this became more than evident last night at our first-ever Jazzercise class.

Our local Jazzercise troop (I say “troop” because their hierarchy of franchises is eerily similar to the Girl Scouts) meets in a low-ceilinged room tucked away in the back of a small Methodist church about a mile away from both of our houses in Durham. Once we snaked our way through the halls, following the stream of older, t-shirt-clad ladies, we were met by an overly enthusiastic woman who greeted us with open arms (like, literally). It’s possible she was more excited for us to be there than we were (and we were pretty stoked – I was telling my coworkers how excited I was all day). She also told us that since it was our first class, it was FREE, which increased the general excitement level even more.

We finished filling out our information cards and getting the quick orientation just in time for the class to start. I didn’t have much time to size up the rest of the Jazzercisers, but I did notice that the majority of the women (who were, on average, at least 20 years my senior) were not exactly “svelte,” per se, even the ones who were celebrating their like 500th class, which made me a little bit skeptical about Judy Sheppard Missett and her workout regimen.

But, I was skeptical for all of about 5 minutes into class, at which time I started to sweat and suffer from a side-stitch. Not to mention I was practically tripping over my own feet trying to do the triple-step march and the criss-cross leg jumping. There was a lot of bouncing happening, and it was obvious that I hadn’t done much jumping recently, since I found that I’m not used to different parts of my body falling victim to gravity in much different ways.

I got the hang of it by the third routine or so. I think it was the Mary J. Blige track where I really came into my own, though. Just in time to slow things down with a little Amy Winehouse. Yeah, I didn’t know what kind of music and routines to expect, either, but apparently they update the music regularly (although I’m not so sure the dance moves have changed much since the 80s). I’m also pretty certain that none of the other women in the class besides myself and Katie even knew who Amy Winehouse was, though, since we were the only ones who laughed when the instructor — an entirely normal-looking fitness instructor — cracked a joke about Amy Winehouse being “a really pretty girl” (see left).

By the end of the hour-long class, I was exhausted. And sweaty. And I felt pretty good about it. We talked to the instructor for a couple minutes before leaving — after she had packed up her microphone — and I think she was more than happy to see a couple of people in the class that were actually younger than she is. She mentioned how some of her friends think Jazzercise is weird and dated and she always has to tell them “We don’t wear leotards and leg warmers anymore, I promise!” As if that makes it better somehow? I told her that I wish we did.

While I sat on the couch for the rest of the evening, watching reruns of What Not To Wear, I could feel my body getting achier and achier. And right around the time I was going to sleep, a muscle in my right arm started twitching, it kept twitching all night, and it’s still twitching as I write this. But I had so much energy that I could barely get to sleep. Also, my sides and back are still really achey. And Katie text messaged me at about 10:30pm last night: “I can barely move!“

I’d say it was a pretty good workout. And I pretty much laughed through the whole thing while the older ladies in the class hooted, snapped, clapped and wooed at all the right times in the songs. They obviously love it and go to class almost every day of the week.

Needless to say, we’re going back on Sunday.

“The will to blog is a complicated thing, somewhere between inspiration and compulsion. It can feel almost like a biological impulse. You see something, or an idea occurs to you, and you have to share it with the Internet as soon as possible. What I didn’t realize was that those ideas and that urgency — and the sense of self-importance that made me think anyone would be interested in hearing what went on in my head — could just disappear.”

That’s from Emily Gould’s 10-page story in New York Times Magazine about oversharing on the Internet. While I relate uncannily to much of her story — and not even in the Internet sense, but more in the being a 20-something woman and dealing with changes in your life sense — this quote definitely stuck out to me because it’s a condition I’ve been stricken with lately when it comes to The Meanderwalker.

I used to blog daily about whatever I happened to be mulling over or whatever interesting junk I’d come across on the Internet that I felt needed my commentary, whether it was read by anyone or not. In the past 6 months, though, I’ve lost this compulsion to share my thoughts and things online. I’ve posted blog entries serving only to direct friends to my Twitter or Tumblr pages if they want online tidbits from me, but neither of those really offer the amount of insight that a nice, long WordPress post does. I use Twitter, I reblog on Tumblr, and I read other people’s blogs everyday; so why am I not participating anymore?

Maybe it’s just that I have nothing going on or haven’t been thinking critically about the world around me? Maybe I’m just really busy all the time? Maybe it’s a reflection of the ever-changing Web 2.0 world we’re living in? Or maybe I’ve just been oversaturated with the Internet — staring at it until my eyes glaze over and I resolve myself to fact that I will never actually be able to consume everything or stay up-to-the-minute; that I’ll never be able to keep up with it all AND be a part of it, too.

I’ve been keeping a blog in some form or another for about six years. It’s always seemed like a natural compulsion that seamlessly integrates into my life. I never thought about it or had to make a point of doing it, it’s just something I do. And I think that’s where I lost it — when I started thinking about it too much.

To end this on an positive note: I’m optimistic that my Will To Blog will return eventually. Until then, readers, in true Web 2.0 fashion, I redirect you my Twitter and Tumblr pages.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Also, for what it’s worth, I’ve started writing in my moleskin notebook again. What’s next, watching movies on Beta?

Wired published this great article in its March issue addressing the fact that video – including film and television – is traveling down the same path that music did in the late-90’s and into the early-2000’s. That path being the quick descent into free mass distribution via the Internet; also know as Piracy.

I know that I’ve nearly exhausted the conversation about how I don’t like to pay for music anymore — or anything on the internet really (with the exception of my Flickr pro account, but they lucked out with that one). But I can’t emphasize enough about what it means that I, a typical 20-something with disposable income, haven’t bought a CD in almost 5 years and I rarely buy DVDs either now, although I watch movies and tv shows available on DVD all the time.

The article gives a quick but detailed analysis at the status quo of video piracy and how to deal with it, but here’s the take away:

The lessons from the music fiasco are clear: Trying to limit the inherent advantages of digital files is a losing strategy. The way to stop piracy is to make everything available — easily, legally, and at a fair price.

Anyone can find and learn to use torrents. Why not embrace it and figure out another way to make it profitable?

Related Wired reading in that regard: Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.