asthran | Entries tagged with dancing

Let's see..... last update was in Georgia.

On the music front: Concerts in Denver were great! De/Vision again, and I brought Masha with, and she got to tease one of the band members for wearing a Russian shirt but not knowing Russian. Then I got to see Alter der Ruine and Mr Kitty, which was super exciting because they are up-and-coming (or maybe just to certain music snobs) and they only had a handful of tourdates. Then Grendel bookended the end of CO and start of MN. Grendel-MN was an interesting show, because they were doing military helicopter exercises downtown, which pissed me off, which really added to the aggrotech atmosphere of the concert. I also noticably damaged my hearing as that concert. After that, MN was all about clubbing, and I had so much fun! The music rocked - I loved the DJs and the DJs loved me - and I got to know a couple more people there. I'm really looking forward to Hard Mondays again next year! I should probably dampen my enthusiasm actually. I went to "Be.witched Wednesdays" at Numbers in Houston, and it was much with the lame. But there is a Mr Kitty concert at the end of the show, so that will be excellent!

Business-wise, the year has been going great! Mostly great workers, and we bought a shoppe in MN, and I got to leave someone else to run the shop while I went to Kirsten and Damon's wedding! That was incredible.

I'm still not certain what my next extended vacation will be. M'era Luna in 2015 or 2016? More likely 2016 because I don't want the shoppe opened for the first time without me. Or maybe Australia in the winter? Or Bali or New Zealand? Or maybe I should just start a general fund and try to be impulsive! Within certain limits, of course!

I more or less got over Jon in MN. It's a little wierd seeing him now.... hopefully getting past this awkward stage won't take more than a year or two... and certainly all the cute boys in MN helped! I might just be addicted to NRE. It's certainly a thought.

My cat has fleas. I have fleas. My whole house has fleas. Thankfully, my house is only 220 sq ft, but it's still frustrating!

I'm posting this from my hotel room in Muskogee, OK.

I ended up deciding to stay on site last night, and waking up around 4 am to drive here for the faire, but then after my car took a site bump more roughly than usual, I looked under my car to see a rubber thing with a bit of broken off rusted post dangling from part of my exhaust. I made a late call to my brother, and ended up deciding to play it safe and get Mechanic Brian's opinion before leaving site, which of course meant the earliest I'd leave site would be maybe 9 or 10. It turns out the piece is relatively minor, so I didn't need to stay in Waxahachie even longer to get something replaced (I was worried that maybe struts were involved or something). So now, after an unpleasantly hot drive up here, I am arrived 4 hours before the Castle's Ceilidh, yay! I have been told it will be a *real* ceilidh, and not something with only small amounts of dances for everyone, so I am eagerly looking forward to seeing how well I can pick up on what I presume will be more Scottish-type footwork.

I'll be starting my drive back up to MN after the faire closes tomorrow night, and anticipate a cool night drive up, though I may grab a nap if necessary. I'll probably pull in mid-day, and I'll be staying at

waterbugkek and

jacktheslipper's place. My aunt's service is on Thursday, then I will leave immediately from the family reunion on Sunday. While in town, I hope to: Help Mom with the kitchen remodeling, go to the credit union to see about getting pre-approved for a loan for a diesel truck, celebrate

jacktheslipper's birthday, investigate a new cell phone/wireless internet provider, possibly help a friend with some sewing piecework, and hopefully even hit Hard Mondays and Wednesday night dancing at the Dubliner.

Anyone else have suggestions for what I should do with my time while I'm there?

The Church in Denver is, hands down, the best industrial/goth club I've been to.

- The music is superb! They actually played Qntal! Qntal! And all sorts of other great music! In the two rooms (one goth focused, the other industrial/EBM), I didn't hear a single song that seemed out of place, from Siouxie to Skinny Puppy to Revolting Cocks.
- There were people there! Lots of people! Before 11pm! I actually had to get used to the idea that I would occassionally touch someone else while I was dancing, because the dance floor was just that packed.
- The price can't be beat. No cover before 10, $5 thereafter, and $2 wine and wells all night.

The only bad thing is that it is on Sunday night, but thankfully, working in a shop is a lot less stressful on the body than pushing kids around all day, so I should be able to swing it every week.

Oh, and Irish dancing in Colorado is pretty cool. There's a 'Ceili Club' that meets up in Denver on Thursdays at the Bennet School of Irish Dance. The dancers there are very dedicated - they're not as casual at dancing as it seems like folks can be up in Minnesota, but that's all right, because in the space of one hour we danced three dances that I would consider intermediate, including some interesting variations, and I picked up some nice showmanship techniques.

- I have a Squirrel Name. I am She Who Pours Water from the Earth.

The squirrel that's been eating my food is bold as brass, and won't get scared off as easily as most squirrels would, but it gets really freaked out when I squirt water at it from a sport-top bottle.

- ( Swing dancing )

- ( events of the last day )

- ( on the plus side )

Yeah, Scarborough is so my dancing faire:
Sat and Sun - Country Dance practice before cast call (8:30), and any other times I can get away from work.
Mon - Belly dance class on site, at 6 pm. If that doesn't happen, there's also more country dance in Dallas.
Tue - Italian Ren in north Dallas, through the SCA.
Wed - Swing dance in Dallas.
Thurs - The Church (industrial/gothic), also in Dallas.

While dancing is good, I realized that if I go to all the dance stuff I want to, I'll put 280 miles on my car for dancing alone, which is crappy, so I'm going to try to carpool as much as I can.

I had an awesome Pres. Day weekend.

( excessive detail, yay! )

I finally have a functional atm/debit card again, after almost 4 weeks without, so I've been spending money like crazy.
- I got my A/C, powersteering, alternator, and timing belts replaced, for $330. Woot!
- Ich habe Das Musical Elisabeth auf DVD (und das Libretto) gekauft!!!! Nur 44,45 Euros!
- I've bought some stuff for fire poi (a fuel tin, zipper baggies to spin out fuel), two half-gallon water bottles, some bulk groceries from CostCo, and a new wallet! Yay! Now if only I could find a silver-backed tarp for my tent....

I had fun at the ceili last Friday, and got to learn all sorts of cool smurfy English Country Dances at SCA dance practice on Tuesday! I'm looking forward to the Estrella War Ball, and getting to try them out with a lot of other folk.

Does anyone out there know if there's a relatively painless way to figure out if a particular melody is already in existance? I started humming something at work today, and I'm wondering if it's some random song that's been stuck in my subconcious for a while, or if it's something I made up. It would be neat if I made it up, though it would be even more neat if it was in my range :-(

I'm scheduled to work 50 hours so far at Block over this next week, and probably will do the same the week after. I will be one dead Deba once Peak is over. Dead, but halfway to my buy-lots-of-pretty-clothing goal.

spent some time clicking around on an online java keyboard. This is what I can come up with for the first line.
1/4 C, 1/8 D#, 1/8 D, 1/4 C, 1/4 G, 1/4 G#, 1/8 G, 1/8 F, 1/2 G

I started my temp job at CostCo today. I'm doing demos (ie, samples); it's good practice for chocolate at the AZ faire. And, paying for car repairs is good.

I had a good time at the ceili tonight. There was a random company dinner at the Irish Cultural Center just before the ceili started, so there was close to a 1:1 ratio of new folks to experianced dancers, and thusly most of the dances were easy ones, alas. Wierd AZ Irish trivia: They think that Waves of Tory (sp?) is not a simple dance, and Strip The Willow is casually refered to as a "zipper." Bad parts: It only lasted 2 hours, there were only 7 or so dances, the dances were all easy, and it's the only organized Irish dance event in the metro each month. It is possible to dance at pubs, depending on the band and all that, but that just doesn't cut the mustard, imo.

I have far too many posts with a subject line of "Assorted/random stuff/crap." I think maybe I should start using random quotes instead. Or maybe just changing the subject line. I dunno.

( random dance blathering... )
And today's quote of the day from the Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs" (from a male speaker): Gee, if only I had some sperm!

I picked up A Feast for Crows at the library today! Yay!!! I've also finished Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Fanny rocks; I would have given in under all that pressure.

'Tis the season to raid my savings account and buy Hanukkah gifts. Of course, I only know what I'm buying for a couple people. I'm going to hope that for basketball games, halfway to the back in the upper section and dead center is better than halfway back in the lower seating but directly behind one of the baskets.

I'm coming up on 120k miles on my car - that means a new belts! Wheee! When I got my oil changed, they did a very thorough visual inspection, and pointed out that my power steering belt is cracked. So, once HRBlock training wraps up next week, I'm going to work through Adecco until the tax season gets rolling in Jan, and that should cover that.

I've been looking into fire deities, as when I did my first burn I felt awkward with lacking any knowledge whatsoever, and have realized that honoring Pele is definitely the way to go for fire poi, instead of going Classical, as that's what I generally feel more comfortable with.

I'm also starting to listen to music with a thought towards choreographing something for a specific piece. So far, I really like Pistolero by Juno Reactor (I have no idea which remix) - it varies between slow with lots of places where I could stall a lot, and a good fast pace that I'm comfortable with. I'm not very keen on the idea of spinning to music that has a steady 10 billion BPM through the whole song. However, for Pistolero I'd want to try and figure out how to pull off an Old West looking dance, so it might have to wait until I've choreographed a few other dances and have some sort of clue of how to go about it.

The roach population in the apartment is greatly reduced, I feel accomplished.

In the next week I'm going to try and hit more dancing things - belly dancing classes to try and get more comfortable with that, the local SCA group has their last dance practice of the year next week, and there's even a local ceili next Friday, woo!

( random crap )

... is so much different here than in Dallas. And it really shouldn't be, I think, except maybe that this is more "my turf" and so I feel more inhibited, that I have a mold that I would be breaking out of, a social identity that doesn't exist in Dallas because there, I don't exist. And I don't care.

But I did come *this* close several times to just dropping my pool cue (yes, I played three games of pool at Zero) and just giving myself up to the music. Some awesome stuff. Much, much, much better than the dreck in December. Of course, I was given the impression that tonight was special, that tonight was a special gathering night or something.

Was propositioned, declined. With some practice I could become a decent pool player, maybe. Saw only a few people. Had a horrible urge to start spinning poi about 1am, closest I got to that was spinning my necklace around a bit.

I had an awesome night at The Church last night. Danced a little, until the DJ put in KMFDM's 'Godlike' and the dance floor cleared. It was pretty funny, as KMFDM seemed to have that reaction at the Macalester dance nights I went to a few years ago. So after chuckling a lot, I went out and danced like a maniac through the rest of that, 'Stigmata,' and a Die Warzau track, wooo! After recovering I spent a lot of time on the floor, until one o' clock or so.

I recognized an artist by the music video - who would have guessed Trent Reznor has such a distinctive chin? But yeah, I think I'm going to have to keep an eye out for the new NIN release, and see what I think of it. I rather enjoyed 'Hand that Feeds.'

I still want to know what that incrediable cartoon anti-Bush music video is! Does anyone know?! It could be some sort of Flash video, and features such images as: Bush driving up in an ice cream truck, handing TV-cones to children, who lick them and turn into sheep; and Bush leading a herd of sheep through streets lined with TVs, and when a couple sheep climb the to the top of the TVs, a laser burns the letter 'S' (for 'sedition') onto their wool, then they are shot with spears with 'traitor' flags, killing them.

Apparently some guy was following me around all night, but since I generally avoid eye contact, I have no idea who it was. However, I did see the attractive fire-breather that I met at the drum jam on Monday, and he gave me a good night bite when the club closed down at three. That's a fun little flirtation I have going on there.

This morning I changed the oil and oil filter in my car and then brought it over to a guy who was absolutely convinced that he could have my front passenger door lock fixed in an hour. I am never, ever, going to try that again. Hellish. Ugh.

So, the lock has now been removed from Kass's innards, and I'm probably not going to put the handle back on either, just to reinforce the fact that the door doesn't open. *sigh*

This is the last big weekend of Scarborough! Apparently, there are around 30 Minnesotans here to visit, and my mom (!!) is flying in tomorrow afternoon. It'll be a crazy weekend. There are supposed to be storms pretty much every night, but the days look like they'll be clear, and only in the 80s! These last few days have been awful - mid 90s - and they've been driving me to the library for respite (thus the plethora of posts the last few days). Yay, air conditioning!

It's time for my mid-afternoon siesta. My brain isn't working so good right now.

A belly-dancing class started last week. Damn, but learning a new dance style is a lot harder than I remember it. My shoulders hurt from holding my arms out, my thighs hurt from trying to keep my stance so low, and my tummy hurts from doing up-hips and down-hips. My instructor took 2 months to get belly-rolls, so I'm hoping for a year.

I finally figured out where the $2 theater is, so I went and saw Hitchhikers last week. I'm hoping to see Kung Fu Hustle and Kingdom of Heaven this week.

The nearest liquer store is something like an hour away. I'll just stick with buying Mike's Berry at the Junque.

I finally had the big emotional thing over the boy, so hopefully that's done with. Yay for being single again, and hopefully for a long time. Likely for a long time.

My dance notebook got rained on, again. Damn rain. Damn paper. Why can't they make water-proof paper? At least this time I only lost a half dozen dances, instead of several dozen dances collected over three or four years.

I've been really big into telling people my long term goals of late. Here goes... In three or fours years, I want: A truck with a topper, 4WD, ABS, AC, cruise control, a CD player, and a hitch. A trailer. A cat. Solar panels and a wind turbine. Flat-screen TV that doubles as a computer monitor, all implied energy drains powered by aforementioned items. A three panel mirror so I can see myself dance and spin poi.

I'm learning the Lilt, which is an awesome solo/performance reel done by lots of the Texas types! It's awesome! I can't wait to show off the first half to all of y'all back home!

Heh, it's so easy to post when I write them up ahead of time....

But seriously, this is more personal rambling. Doubt that m/any of y'all'll care, feel free to skip it.

What with the Hell Week from Arizona, arriving on Friday night, and barely getting my tent set up before I went to sleep, I didn't have any time to brace myself for getting ready for a new faire, with a different plot and a different cast. Add to that that my previous time here was spent as a visiting entertainer, but that now I'm approaching it from more of a crafter's angle, and it left me feeling quite off kilter.

I feel like I've regressed several years in my interactions. I've always had slow responce times, but in-character conversations feel more awkward. I haven't the faintest idea how to respond to flirting (not that I ever have, with the more recent exception of during dancing), and I feel utterly tongue-tied when someone kisses my hand. (Oooh, someone bowed over my hand, but didn't kiss it! That was so cool!) I did manage to say a couple things that proved there's *some* sort of brain inside my skull, but nothing I'm overly proud of.

Meh. So, I guess, I need to work on character development, and figure out if the young noblewoman Corinna bears any relation to this strange Corinna who works for a living, yet has opinions on fine Italian dancing.

- I wore a *gasp* short sleeved chemise (with elastic!) for the first time ever this weekend. I know I should feel horribly guilty, but hey, it was free!

- Late Sunday, when it was slowing down, I was singing Gamen/The Vulture (in English), and a patron walked by, stopped and listened, and said my singing gave him chills. He came back five minutes later and told me that, no, seriously, I should send a demo CD to American Idol. Heh, so much for keeping my ego in check. Now I need to learn *how* to sing, instead of just doing it, and how to blend and all that shit.

- I'm camped next to the same group of girls I was camped next to in Arizona. Yay, this'll rock!

- I'm making more money here than I thought I would. Woot! I'm getting dental work this summer!

- Every time I saw a flower person walk by I would miss my boy. *sigh* I miss my boy....

- I saw

spanishbubbles on my trip here. That was awesome; it's amazing how you can not see someone for two years and pick up right where you left off (except for understanding lawyer-speak. Sorry, babe! I now understand how you felt when I'd talk about taxes!)

- If I seem to be posting stuff for the edification of all of y'all who read my journal, and it's not interesting, feel free to be like, "Hey, Deb, but what about Insert-Subject-Here?"

- It was awesome to see

iarroganti again! Um. And

gem_handler, and

doveshadows, and

dancingbearkat, and other familiar people too, but

iarroganti was an unexpected surprise.

- I figured out why there's so much more dancing here than at other faires! It's because there aren't any dancing stage shows - no Morris dancers, no Royal Scottish Country Dance Society folk, only a few lone belly dancers.

- Ah! There's a picture of me from first day! Wow, but I look bad....

Hey, I thought of something to post.

Turns out the dance roster for Terpsichory this season is going to be damn near entirely new. On the bad side, I'm going to need to try and teach myself a shitton of Italians. By myself. Ouchie. On the good side, of the dances we are keeping, I was able to run through them completely, right of the bat, no mistakes. Woot!

It was a pretty good weekend, as far as the job side of it goes.

I got a raise, woo! And, because two people walked off the job last weekend, I was moved from the tiny little tertiary booth to the main booth by the front gate, and it looks like I'm likely to stay there. In addition to being paid more now, I'll get more in tips - I can hope for $20 in tips a day, and over $40 on good days, up from single digits at the tertiary booth.

My boss said she likes my singing my hawks, and it's gotten some of the other people behind the counter singing a bit too. One of my coworkers asked me something, referring to me as "Singing Queen," and I was slightly offended until I realized that it was probably just her Cockney accent.

Isn't that scary? I've somehow aquired accent-snobbery from a country I've never even visited...!

... ooh, three weeks ago, a real british-type person stopped me as I was hawking in the lane and said that my accent was a fairly good approximation. Wooo!

On Saturday it was a little slow (rain chased everyone away midafternoon), so I went and pretended I was an entertainer by attending the closing gate show.... didn't get to dance with Gaelic Thunder that time, but sang along during The Mermaid.

Oh, and even though I'm still not keen on some aspects of Tartanic's stage show, Adrian is a pretty cool guy. Not anywhere near as irritating in real life as he is on stage. *grins, laughs* ...I need to find four more people who know the dance Nonesuch, and he can help me learn it, yay!

I haven't posted a whole lot recently, since all I've been doing is playing EQ *hangs head* and EQ2....I'm enjoying myself though, rediscovering how to have fun in the games, and what my play-style is... it's interesting.

Anywho, I finally did some things other than EverCrack...

I've bought and washed some fabric for hoopskirts, and I'm going to focus on those next week. Goals: Cut main pieces, and call Rachel and set up a good time to use her serger. Ideally use said serger as well.

On Saturday I went to the Cappaferro Cast Party - got to watch the preview and an extra for the DVD, and listened to the 80's cover band After School Special. That was pretty fun, and I now need to get the soundtrack to The Passion of Christ. It also put me in a mood for dancing... So kireeonna and I are going to hit Hard Mondays in a couple days, and I've been itching to check out dv8's new night at Ground Zero... I like what I see of his playlists, so we'll see... I just want to find a night that's like Thursday nights at The Church... /drool ... I'm thinking Hard Mondays might have the best chance of that.

Sunday I went to Terp rehersal and danced, yay! I was distressed at how much of Bizzaria d'Amore I'd forgotten/was rusty at, but got through it ok, after many many run throughs. I wish we had males dancing it though, because then I get to flirt and steal someone's hat. Na ja, what are you going to do? Besides get more men in the troupe? *laughs*

After that I hung out with

unknownpoet a bit, played some DDR, and went to the PBS/TPT station to do the pledge drive for MRF. It was actually busy there, for the first time since I've started doing them, which was a nice change. I feel like I earned my 15 food coupon books this time.

Other random stuff.... last week I was involved in some awesome RP with Cor and Fey, and lost the frikken log!!! I stupidly tried to move the file down to my own computer, and didn't leave the original on

ganuk's machine... and now the disk I put it on is not only unformated, but it isn't even formatable any more. Fucking floppies. Grrr.

This week I'm going to try and pry myself away from EQ a little bit, and get some errands done, and sewing. Wish me luck!

I keep on thinking, 'Hey, I should put [insert topic here] into my livejournal' then I keep on forgetting the topic... *sigh*

This weekend was a good weekend on site. Some ups and downs, and some interesting complications to the job thing, but I won't post anything on that until the matter is resolved.

I had an interesting conversation with a patron on Saturday, and had to make the awful decision of having a meaningful conversation, or staying in character. *sigh* So, I chose the former, and hope that was not too ill-done.

We had been talking about Her Majesty's attendance at the evening dancing, and he made mention of how he felt almost blessed to ... then he stopped and retracted the word 'blessed' because it had, perhaps, too strong of a religious connotation. I thought that was surprising, as wouldn't a well-bred young lady of some stature in the Renaissance unquestioningly be religious to some degree? So, I made a quiet jest, saying that well, perhaps he might prefer the word 'fortunate,' if he did not feel uncomfortable with the blind chance and luck that implied.

That led to him questioning my ... 'technique' as it were - Do I have to say things I don't mean while I'm working? How strong is the difference between what I feel and what Corinna feels? Are my reactions to the politics of the Chess Board faked, or am I really that naive and sheltered?

It was very interesting, and I hope he walked away from the conversation with a greater appreciation of the village and its inhabitants. I know I learned a great deal about the average patron and their knowledge base. Very, very informative.

Profile

asthran

April 2017

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Dec. 24th, 2025 09:16 am

... a deviant path is the only way ...

... dissolution of illusion is something so serene ...

Entries tagged with dancing

General life update

travelling

the Church, and Ceili Club

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

miscellany

assorted stuff

SCA dance

assorted stuff

(no subject)

clubbing...

Church, car stuff, and LAST WEEKEND!

Internet access really throws my schedule for a loop

My last post today, really

miscellany

(no subject)

lots of randomness

(no subject)

(no subject)

Profile

April 2017

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags