kait's lindy hop ramblings

8 tracks

2011-06-16T17:41:00.005+04:30

i had Ella Fitzgerald's Live at the Savoy version of "Digga Digga Doo" set up as an alarm this morning... the one where she's leading a HOT band, not singing. it got stuck in my head and wouldn't unstick. i wanted to share. i couldn't find it posted up someplace easily share-able.

so i threw another seven tracks onto a playlist on 8tracks.com and posted it to facebook... thought i'd share here too, since it's a pretty good representation of what i've been overplaying lately. not that i've been playing much for dancers... thursday night classes at the university and agreeing to be at the dance at a particular time don't mix all that well.

(meanwhile, i'll be over at yehoodi radio listening to dogpossum's featured set!)

playlist - 1/14/2010

2010-01-14T15:37:00.004+03:30

first set of the year for me... and also following up what was probably my biggest gap in dancing since i started. (most of a month!)

Ya Gotta See Baby Tonight - Louis Prima 146
Do The Hucklebuck - Gunhild Carling And Her Swing Band 150
Mahzel (Means Good Luck) - Benny Goodman 153
Jazz O' Jazz - Adrian Rollini 173
Hallelujah Joe Ain't Preachin' No More - Harlem Hamfats 166
Who Threw The Whiskey In The Well - Lucky Millinder 160
Touch And Go - Wynona Carr 162
Bogg’s Boogie - Spade Cooley 188
Back to Tennessee - Christabel and the Jons 131
Saint James Infirmary - Gérard Messonnier And The Hot Kings 94
Don't Be That Way - Lionel Hampton 140
Bearcat Shuffle - Andy Kirk And His Twelve Clouds Of Joy, Mary Lou Williams 158
East St. Louis Toodle-O - Hot Owls 162
Celery Stalks No. 2 - Will Bradley/Ray McKinley 170
Are You Hep To The Jive? - Cab Calloway 158
In The Mood - Oscar Aleman 175
Sing An Old Fashioned Song (To A Young Sophisticated Lady) - Fats Waller 163
See No Evil Hear No Evil Speak No Evil - Don Redman All Stars 186
Balti Nights In Birmingham - Bob Hunt's Duke Ellington Orchestra 193

i kept the tempos fairly mellow and stuck to a bigger-than-usual of proportion of familiar over unfamiliar. honestly, that was the dancing mood i was in... trying to feel my way back into my feet, not up for any huge challenges... and with exception of a few folks who'd been to lindy focus or glen echo over the holidays, i figured a lot of the group might've been in the same boat. i got one request for "a balboa" towards the end, but mostly the floor seemed pretty down with comfortable.

while i was in tennessee, i borrowed my dad's car to go see a few friends. for whatever reason, when you plug my mp3 player into my dad's car sound system, it plays files in the order they were put on the player. (it took me a while to find all the recently loaded podcasts first-go-round while driving to knoxville.) rollini's "jazz o' jazz" happened to be the track that came up first all the time... and thus got listened to pretty much EVERY time i made a short enough drive not to mess with it. it's been tending to get stuck in my head at random ever since.

new site

2010-01-12T18:07:00.004+03:30

black friday, there was a really nice sale going on at dreamhost, so i bought myself some web space... i'm playing a little with php, and i thought it'd be fun to have someplace.

i wasn't doing much fit for public consumption, so i installed wordpress just to play with that too.

so now there's a blog at kaitmahar.com (i know, the domain name originality is STUNNING)... formatting around it's not so pretty yet, but i'll be playing. since i seem to have a mix of lindy hoppers and not coming by here, and since i now have a gratuitous number of blogs, i think i'm going to keep this one for the lindy and jazz stuff, and move the not-so-lindy to the other. except i'm lazy, so i won't be moving the archives. subscribe to one or both as you like.

big fan

2009-10-26T17:14:00.003+03:30

i had no idea exactly how spoiled i was by knoxville's downtown west cinema until i moved -- how many small U.S. cities have an 8-screen theater dedicated to the artsy-indie-foreign films? nonetheless, living less than a mile from the naro here in norfolk is making up for a lot.

it's only one screen, so if you want to see a particular movie you have to mean it... it's probably playing once an evening, and if you wait, even a week, it might not be there anymore. the selections tend to run a bit behind knoxville, which i actually find rather convenient, since i can bug friends for reviews on what upcoming movies will be worth seeing. the theater itself is independent (i.e., no regal or carmike affiliation), it has an old-school balcony and stage to go with that one screen, and they host a lot of special events. the local film critic hosts a summertime series of classic movies, environmental documentaries tend to come with local experts, etc. it's neat.

the series that is quickly growing to be one of my favorite things to do in hampton roads, though, is the firstlook film forum. sunday mornings at 10, show up for brunch, a surprise film that isn't showing in the area yet, and discussion. a few weeks back, i saw the latest francis ford coppola film, tetro... this weekend's selection was big fan, written by a former editor-in-chief for the onion and starring that guy who did remy's voice in ratatouille.

while i've been happy with both selections, if they do choose a bomb, there's ample opportunity to lambast during the discussion. and honestly, the discussion is a lot of what draws me. in college, the tennessee tech honors program had a weekly "mindful movie", attended largely by freshmen who could earn what would've otherwise been work-study credit by being active in honors... idea was to watch a thought-provoking movie and then talk about it. i loved it, kept coming long after i had no need for signed papers proving i'd been there, and eventually chaired the committee that chose movies and moderated discussion for a semester. and i find myself referring to the firstlook film forum as "mindful movies for grownups." except with no feet-draggers who have to be there, just interesting people who like to talk about movies. i'm still feeling a bit too shy to actually ask for one of the microphones and say anything during the discussion -- the old habit of wanting to observe a social milieu for a while before actively participating in it dies hard -- but i find it quite cool.

whereas tetro was a film geek's delight --black and white, with stylized, deliberate lighting that's begging to be analyzed, cinematic references throughout-- big fan is more the sort of thing our old mindful movie committee would've chosen. it takes a "what if" --what if a hardcore football fan were beaten up by his favorite player?-- and runs with it. and by creating what are fairly believable characters and taking them through this plot, by finding a rather nice balance between the funny-sad extreme situation and the uncomfortably close to us (one lady who'd laughed more than most of the audience later explained that it was because the main character's family reminded her of her own... and the sports talk radio mini-celebrities seem a lot closer to home if i think about the lindy community for a couple seconds...), the film opens up all kinds of discussions about identity, violence, celebrity, society in general. it didn't come up in the discussion, but i found my mind wandering to the recent re-controversy over the roman polanski rape case, lest film fans get too superior about relegating celebrity criminals and troubled public reactions to the sports world. it's definitely a movie for a broader audience than those who'd normally flock to "sports" genre pics.

(and... i started writing this on monday, got sidetracked, and it's lunchbreak on thursday. time to hit post whether it's ready for primetime or not.)

how i wound up with two bicycles

2009-09-28T07:58:00.002+03:30

a few wednesdays back, i woke up. i did all the usual pre-out-the-door stuff, then went out to the porch to grab my bike.

er, except no bike. just a gaping expanse of porch. with one of the pickets, the one i'd chained my bicycle to, dislocated. (i originally thought it'd been cut... on later inspection, it was more like bent.)

in shock, i called in late to work and started walking. didn't think about stopping to change to comfier shoes... thus winding up with blisters, 4 days before my half marathon. the bicycle thief not only gets blamed for the bike itself, he or she made me EVEN SLOWER that i would've been.

i called in a police report. not because i expected it to have any results -- i'm aware that the norfolk police have other priorities -- but it somehow made me feel better.

i love walking, but not when it means getting up earlier. or being exposed to more rain. life as a non-bicycle-owner just wasn't going to cut it anymore. i started shopping.

while i read craigslist non-stop in hopes of finding my bike or a relatively similar one for a good price, i started visiting the local bicycle shops. i fell in love with a giant hybrid bike that was way out of my price-range. i tried out nearly everything else they had in my size. i dragged jesse down to the performance bike shop in virginia beach and made laps around their store. playing on all the hybrids, i decided that i really like the feel of the ones that are on the road bike end of the spectrum. if/when i can afford a bike for fun, and when i can afford to take my time finding a good deal, i think maybe i will buy a road bike.

but for getting back and forth to work and groceries and errands? need utility bike.

i wound up with a dahon speed d7 from the local bike shop. it folds. it fits under my desk and/or in the corner of the living room, so i don't have to worry about its continuing existence in the spot where i left it. it's cute. it's zippier than my dear old schwinn, and super-easy to carry. it's hopefully sturdy enough to deal with my daily commute for a long time to come. i haven't figured out a big luggage solution that lets it still fold yet (folding pannier baskets are an option, maybe?), but on weekends i've been attaching a file crate to the back rack to haul things around. here it is, posing on the way to the recycling center:

one week after buying the dahon, a week and a half after the disappearance, my schwinn world tourist came back. we got home from one of the dirt cheap blues dances in the early-sunday-morning hours, and there it was -- propped up against the stop sign across the street.

unfortunately, no narrative note left with it, and the bike won't tell me where it's been, so guesses about the disappearing/reappearing act are all we've got. kid whose mom finally noticed and made him or her bring it back? homeless person who "traded it" for a more legit charity bike? bicycling criminal at large just happened to be picked up across the street from the site of the bike theft? (one of our houseguests DID report seeing some police lights over there earlier in the night.) who knows.

the schwinn came back a little worse for wear -- it'd obviously slept outside in the rain for a few nights and had a new clunking sound from the front wheel, and the computer, U-lock, and crate were gone... so now it's spent a while upside down in the living room. the amount of whining i put on while it was gone convinced me that i do, in fact, like THAT bike, so i've finally invested more than i paid for the bike itself for a new set of tires. last night's adventures led to completely exploding one new tube before figuring out how to more-or-less solidly get new tire and tube securely on the rim. bike wheel technology has apparently updated a bit in the last 25 years, and modern tires aren't all that comfortable with classic smooth-bead rims. i decided to stop after the front one so i can give it a little test ride and see if it's really ok before replacing the other...

so yeah. two bicycles. and i guess figuring out bicycle maintenance just might be my newest hobby.

august-september - the organized overview

2009-09-09T20:56:00.000+04:30

once again, it's been long enough since posting here that i can't figure out how to attack. so here's the quick, organized, chronological version of things since the last time i wrote here, with memory supplemented by google calendar and twitter feed:

camp hollywood in l.a.
development of obsession with farmer's market and random food experiments
entering the heart of hurricane season, which is thus far mild but still features enough flooding for a little adventure and further development of my heavy rain phobia
international lindy hop championships in d.c.
bike stolen
half marathon survived
new folding bike!

upcoming excitement:

dirt cheap blues (ok, so i'm not much into blues and therefore not that excited, but i am looking forward to seeing people and need to clean up the apartment TONIGHT so we can host, so i'd better work on the enthusiasm.)
jesse gets 2 weeks off for minor surgery?
new phone - what should i choose?
CSA subscription starts!
further adventures to NYC on the chinatown bus

and on to the omnidirectional rambling. maybe. (and maybe i should split it up into a few posts.)

en route to camp hollywood...

2009-07-29T22:13:00.006+04:30

last chance to update before camp hollywood... and if i'm overwhelmed now with how much has gone on since i last bothered to blog, it won't get better with that. (heh. so when i wrote that, it wasn't really the last chance -- it's now "tomorrow", and i'm stuck in the philly airport for another 3 hours before the 6-hours-later-than-the-original flight to LA that i got stuck with when norfolk's planes weren't getting off the ground this morning. they stuck me in a cab to newport news, where the flights to philly apparently were relatively untroubled. silver lining: maybe, just maybe, for once i'll get something written and hit publish before i can think too hard!)

honestly, the worst of the busy has been over for nearly a month. let's see, vblx was june 19-21... we got access to the new apartment just before that, and had fun hosting a few pennsylvanians in the mostly-empty rooms. jesse was at sea for most of the couple weeks from then until we had to be out, but was around for the final rush. we handed in our keys at the old apartment on june 30... the week leading up to that was somewhat insane. the week after that was also insane, since we had declared we were having a housewarming party on july 10, effectively setting a deadline to unpack. it all got done, more or less. during the moving process, i got to rent a pickup truck -- it's official, dodge ram is not my style, but i did not smash it into anything. i am also almost too wimpy to make half a clothes-dryer moving team -- thank goodness we're on the ground floor this time.

looking back through my calendar, it strikes me that this weekend will be my first major out-of-town trip since going on a quick whirlwind to see the parents memorial day weekend. that's unusual. and fine. i've been enjoying settling into my new neighborhood.

the most major lifestyle difference: bicycling to work instead of 3 hours a day on the bus. i love it. i've been really lucky with cooperative weather so far, so i'm not entirely sure what my rain plan is... the bus, i guess, if it gets so bad a poncho won't help? it's a bit under 3 miles each way through some of the prettiest parts of norfolk. i can sleep in until almost 8 if i need to and get to work on time. (i don't really unless i've been out dancing ridiculously late, because i love the luxury of getting enough sleep and still being able to have an hour to eat breakfast and get a few things done.) there's a grocery store on the way home, among other shops, so i don't have to lean quite as heavily on jesse for our household errand running. heck, there's even an art-house cinema (probably the biggest thing i've missed from knoxville besides the friends there...) between home and work. my friend mark and i have been catching their series of "classics with mal," where the longtime local film critic shows a classic film and then rambles for 30 or 40 minutes about everyone he's ever interviewed who's at all connected to the film. i'm a fan of the story-telling -- it's a neat mix of cinema and local history... a certain boyfriend, who was available to go for the magnificent seven, didn't enjoy the after-lecture, though, and i can totally understand and release him from the obligation to stick around with me if he comes back.

my other big project lately has been working towards being able to run the virginia beach half-marathon in early september. i'm only dancing one to two nights a week most of the time, so it's a good time to do it without too much danger to the knees. i'm up to a PAINFULLY SLOW 8.5 miles for my long run. and a little apprehensive about missing it this weekend... maybe i'll rearrange things to go tuesday or wednesday night. i was going to hoping my shoes and run in cali, but i ran out of space in my bag and decided i wouldn't likely do it anyway. now that it's getting close to fall, the virginia summer's finally warmed up to what i think of as summer -- 90s and humid. after discovering that a little dehydration melts my brain to a disturbing degree the previous week, i took water and ran after dark on sunday. jesse wasn't around to check my conversational dexterity, but i think it was better. (conversation was the main place where i was obviously impaired after running... for example, i remember struggling to tell jesse about a story i'd recently heard on the radio about khrushchev's first trip to the US; i had to resort to calling him "the soviet shoe-banging guy?" because i couldn't remember the words "khrushchev" or even "premier" or "after stalin.")

'k, with 2 hours here to go in the airport... time to switch from rambling on to wandering around for a bit.

testing, testing

2009-06-16T23:02:00.004+04:30

am i on tehran time yet? scott westerfeld is hoping putting everyone's blog on UMT +3:30 will overload the censors trying to shut down communication among iranians. tiny effort, why not?

even if the election looked clean, censorship sucks.

last night's set

2009-06-06T08:54:00.003+04:30

at the attucks. lee DJed the first half hour, then i took over, then jeff. it's suddenly gotten to be a very different crowd -- lots of college kids. some of them are ODU, some are home from the summer from other places. they all seem to like the neo/rockabilly/jump blues/otherwise-rock-influenced stuff more than i do. as i realized that, my set got a lot more r&b/crunchy/kansas city than i'd really prepped for. still, got to try out some fun stuff, and the floor was relatively unkillable.

Oh Babe - Lucky Millinder 170
Bearcat Shuffle - Andy Kirk And His Twelve Clouds Of Joy, Mary Lou Williams 158
Fiddle Diddle - Lionel Hampton 142
'Tain't No Use - Benny Goodman 155
8, 9 And 10 - Slim Gaillard 181
Up Above My Head I Hear Music In The Air - Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Ostrich Walk - Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen 174
All That Meat And No Potatoes - Will Bradley/Ray McKinley 137 (this one was prob'ly the roughest going of the evening... pretty likely to just stick to the fats version from here on out.)
Drop Me Off In Harlem - Mills Blue Rhythm Band 143
Ta-Hu-Wa-Hu-Wai (Hawaiian War Chant) - Andrew Aiona 186
Why Do Hawaiians Sing Aloha? - Fats Waller 147
Sing Me A Swing Song - Benny Goodman 188
Go Down Moses - Louis Armstrong 107
Come On Over To My House - Jay McShann 141
Teardrops from my eyes - Ruth Brown 145
Rag Mop - Joe Liggins And The Honeydrippers 154
Swing, Brother, Swing - Billie Holiday 151
Moten Swing - Kansas City Soundtrack 156 (why didn't i remember that i have the KC band's "king porter stomp" instead?)
Sweet Sue,Just You - Jimmie Lunceford 158
Southland Shuffle - Ella Fitzgerald 192 (listening to this one again now... and wow, i love the piano player! whole album, as recommended by allen kerr on lindybloggers, is awesome.)

what makes a bad neighborhood?

2009-06-03T22:31:00.004+04:30

now that we're moving to an apartment that's sometimes purported to be in one, i'm curious.

people keep telling me to drive through as dark's falling, to trust my instincts. i hate to say it, but i really don't have much in the way of instincts about this sort of thing. abandoned-looking houses with busted out windows everywhere spook me, but the upkeep in the couple blocks around us looks fine. i've been tracking on spotcrime.com, and i can't really see much difference in the number of incidents between where we're moving and the supposedly "good" neighborhoods -- car break-ins and occasional robberies seem to be pretty standard for the city. people seem to cite folks standing around outside as a telltale... but it's summertime, and i tend to take that as neighbors being much more likely to have an idea what's going on in the area. and not being too afraid to be out -- that's good too.

we've committed now, so it's too late to back out... ok, we did insist on adding an early termination clause to the lease, just in case it's too good to be true. but what do YOU look for when scoping out a neighborhood?

ebooks: the verdict so far

2009-06-02T00:25:00.000+04:30

no kindle for me. not yet. want, but not want enough to pony up the cash.

however, i've recently been carrying around jesse's netbook because he wasn't using it and it's teensy and adorable. and about the weight of a book anyway. plus, i recently noticed that the cross-the-water buses (aka the MAX) have internets, which occasionally comes in handy... and/or distracting.

anyway, since i was carrying book AND computer around, i thought i'd give combining the functions a go. after a little shopping around, i found that ereader.com had digital editions of some of my current brain candy series (jim butcher's dresden files, for the curious) for cheaper than most.

and now i've finished that book. and bought another. and have a couple things off project gutenberg stored for good measure.

for now, though, i'm still keeping a real book on me, too. minor irritations i find with reading via the netbook: bootup time (hear that dedicated reading devices don't have much of this), not so great in full sunlight (again with the kindle fixing it), shortish battery life (go go dedicated devices), and having to keep electronic devices off for big portions of airplane flights... the ones that really bug me, though, are the not being waterproof -- not that conventional books are terribly waterproof, but reading in the bathtub or by the pool or carrying a book around in the rain is risking a book, not my entire library and a pricey device! -- and feeling conspicuous. the latter will improve with time, but right now it's a bit of an issue... if i'm sitting out in the open reading along on the netbook, people seem compelled to talk to me and ask questions about it, which is pretty much the opposite of what i want when i'm trying to lose my environment in favor of a book. i expect that any of the fancier dedicated gadgets would just make this one worse. jesse suggested that the easy way around this is putting in a pair of earbuds, even if they're not playing anything. guess i'll give that a go on ebook #2.

there's plenty to love, though. #1, weight. the process of packing up the apartment is making this one hit home... i get attached to books, i have a hard time bringing myself to sell or donate the ones i've read and loved; if i can keep 'em in (pretty smallish) files, problem solved. on the other hand, however, lending gets a bit messier. (tangent - anybody want to "borrow" any of the novels i've read recently? for long-term to forever? jesse's asked me if thinning the bookshelves would be possible, and i figure handing things off to friends would be easier on my packrat instincts.)

an offshoot of the weight issue, if i can keep the battery running, i'm not going to realize halfway through the trip to work that i'm at the end of my novel and have nothing to keep me entertained the rest of the day's trips...

for the netbook, anyway, low light is no problem. it at least feels less disturbing on nighttime flights or in cars than the little spotlights.

the eyestrain isn't bad. granted, i haven't been sitting down for hours-long reading marathons lately, but with the adjustable-size font i think it may actually be less straining than a typical paperback if you're not out in the sun.

as a good little environmentalist whenever it starts to get convenient, i don't think i'm really concerned that they're charging as much for a bunch of electrons as they do for a paperback. print media publishers are struggling, a little profit's not going to kill anyone. and with ereader, anyway, i don't think the books actually are as expensive -- most of the full prices are comparable, and they apply a little credit to your account with each purchase to go towards the next one. and it's quite a bit cheaper when you're too antsy to wait for the paperback edition.

if we all switched to ebooks, i'd miss the physical bookstore experience -- i admit it, i love going, grabbing some overpriced coffee, browsing my way around slowly, reading backs of books. i love the conversations that start when you go to a bookstore with someone.

but anyway. so far, tentative thumbs up on the ebooks.

setlist - attucks, 05/21/09

2009-05-23T05:14:00.005+04:30

after i got off work yesterday, i had a bit of a migraine.

first dental checkup in six years hadn't helped. (no cavities, but some of my teeth are looking unusually worn... the dentist wanted to know if i grind them at night. i don't know, but later internet research reveals that this and the headaches MIGHT just be linked!)

so anyway, i napped in jesse's car (which i'd borrowed because of aforementioned dentist appointment) outside the dance through about the first hour of the dance... and then went in and almost decided that i really was feeling a bit too sick to stay. jeff was willing to keep spinning.

but. i hadn't djed in a while and felt like i needed to do a bit before VBLX. plus, i've been flakey enough because of transportation issues, and those weren't in the way for once. the floor was dying when i took over (no fault of DJ... it was a slow night for what's a small crowd anyway), and it didn't get better... so the last few on here are just things i really wanted to hear on the big speakers more than things i expected anyone there to dance to!

Mahzel (Means Good Luck) - Benny Goodman 153 (on the personal overplayed list...)
Blitzkrieg Baby (You Can't Bomb Me) - Count Basie Sidemen 130
Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall - Charlie Barnet and His Orchestra 149
T'Ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It) - Jimmie Lunceford 159 (there were a couple kids from va tech in who wanted a shim sham. i pause when the lyrics start! nobody else here does!)
The Hatchet Man (Chop, Chop) - Casey Macgill's Blue 4 Trio 165
Potato Chips - Slim Gaillard & his Shintoists 144
Froggy Bottom - Andy Kirk and His Clouds Of Joy 153
Let's Do It - Billie Holiday With Lester Young 152
Celery Stalks No. 2 - Will Bradley/Ray McKinley 170
The Gal From Joe's - Duke Ellington 164
Savoy - Lucky Millinder 170
Isle Of Capri - The Firehouse Five Plus Two 168
Walkin' The Dog - Bunny Berigan 182
C Jam Blues - Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra 142 (desperate last-ditch attempt to get life on floor again... i think there were 2 followers left by then, so not-so-successful.)
I'm Feeling Alright - Big Mama Thornton 106 (it's a blues scene, right?!?)
Salty Dog - Lizzie Miles with Sharkey & His Kings Of Dixieland 194
Fry Me A Cookie With A Can Of Lard - Will Bradley/Ray McKinley 153 (LOVE the title. song, i'd like to play it for a really creative crowd of advanced dancers sometime... it alternates fun groove passages and kinda-dissonant not-really-swing. but not for an average local dance night! i wouldn't have a clue what to lead to it.)
Everybody Rock - Ella Fitzgerald 188

moving again!

2009-05-12T19:01:00.007+04:30

i feel like i've been under a writing block lately... too much happening too fast; living it is fun, but i try to write, and i get completely overwhelmed. the last several weeks, in total blur format: d.c. for dclx, new york via chinatown bus kinda for babble (but mostly for wandering), conference in richmond, new york again for frankie's funeral and my birthday, work a week, find an apartment, shop for jesse's new car, sign up for half marathon, make it through the state inspection at work...

but it's time to start breaking through the weight of things to tell. easiest way? start rambling incoherently.

my current can't-shut-up-about topic is moving. we're not moving far, just a grand total of 18 miles if you have a car... but if you don't, or even if you do and traffic sometimes makes that particular 18 miles take two hours to traverse... it's a different universe.

norfolk has neighborhoods. each with a cute little sign. long before we really started looking at specifics, i started talking to people about neighborhoods.

everyone says to live in ghent. it's cute, in walking distance to a whole district of bars and restaurants, not very far from downtown. unfortunately, also seemingly out of our price range for anything with central air conditioning. not really an option when boyfriend isn't really a fan of the muggy hot southern summers. (it's been really gentle weather thus far this year, but i'll be amazed if the 70s last into june!)

we wound up finding a place in park place, just north of ghent, which is actually one of the ones people tend to recommend avoiding. BUT! it's a couple blocks off the campus of old dominion university. completely renovated condo -- a dishwasher, hookup for washer and dryer, and modern-looking electrical sockets were all also among missing features for most of the places we looked at. and a crime map utterly fails to convince me that the particular area is really any worse than the rest. maybe i'd worry more if we were trying to raise children and ensure they stayed out of trouble, but for us it's fine. under 3 miles from work, so i can bike maybe 40 minutes instead of riding the bus for 3 hours a day. half an hour each way by bus if the weather gets bad. 6 miles to the base where jesse's ship should eventually stay once they get the bugs worked out and get it away from the shipyards...

aside from the details of the place, though, i think i'm most excited about living in the same community where i work and play. two of the things that really appeal to me, the conflicting urges i live between, are the impulse to explore as much of the world as i can... and the need to really dig in my toes and become a part of wherever it is that i find myself. that second option means working to build the reality i want instead of continually wandering around to see if what's out there already. getting involved.

and somehow, that little 18 miles makes such a difference for that mission. local buses, unlike the cross-bridge ones, run 'til around midnight. so the curfew for having to figure out an alternative way home becomes four hours later. i can try out activities independently without worrying so much. explore in more depth. volunteer. see if and where i fit. maybe even go back to school... (available tuition assistance from work kicks in next winter!)

i'm excited.

excitement! new york!

2009-04-23T07:06:00.005+04:30

my poor, greatly neglected blog!

alas, i've gotten a little too at ease with rambling in 140-character chunks, so twitter's been getting all the attention. and it's linked to facebook now, so those ramblings get comparative tons of feedback. am i still anathema if i admit that i actually like the new facebook layout and tend to use it more now?

BUT! i'm going to new york city this weekend. the excitement cannot be contained in 140 characters!

AND! i'm taking the chinatown bus up. and wandering around most of the day saturday. i've bopped around the country quite a bit the last couple years, but i've not done much of this kind of travel -- the go-be-a-tourist kind. i'm packed pretty lightly, but even so i have the guidebook that i bought last year when jesse and i thought we were going to the city over xmas. (he wound up having to work, i wound up hanging out in his room in albany with his space heater...)

plan is... after work, head to gym, work out as excuse to take one last shower before my night on the bus. meet up with jill, who's coming to town for rugby, and jesse, and eventually some of jesse's coworkers... hilarity ensues? as long as i make it to get on the bus tonight around midnight, sleep on bus, and wake up in manhattan in the morning...

from there, the plans get even fuzzier, but definitely include the strand bookstore and lots and lots of walking and exploring (the brooklyn bridge? the cloisters? wandering central park? greenwich village?) and eating things i can't get here (i've proclaimed that i'm going on a mission for stinky tofu in chinatown, but we'll see how that goes once i've actually smelled it... black and white cookies, egg creams, ny pizza and garlic knots, proper pastrami sandwiches... if i eat everything i want to try in one day, i will explode!). i can't wait. and then, hopefully, i can catch up with the dancers (especially the old friend who's offered to host me!) and eventually do some dancing at babble.

and then... ride back on sunday! with jay and david. short trip indeed. will let you know (possibly in 140 characters or less) whether my idea of fun corresponds with real fun.

capoeira

2009-03-27T15:30:00.000+04:30

makes me hurt. but in a good way, all sore muscles.

last night was my second week trying the class that meets in the same building where i regularly swing dance. i watched for a little when i showed up early to teach a dance class a few weeks ago, and got transfixed.

it's interesting to be this awkward at something again. up through the end of college, i always assumed i was naturally unathletic and that there was no point in even trying... then after a little while out, i signed up for a karate class for something to do. and there, in a sport that isn't primarily about running or catching or throwing or any other motion people start doing at a very young age, i finally got it -- of course i'm naturally unathletic, everybody pretty much is, but nature can be overcome. there, most people who didn't come in with prior martial arts experience looked pretty awkward at first... and then they slowly stopped looking awkward. and the belts reminded everybody how long the people who looked really good had been there. rates varied a little, but it was clear -- it's more a learning thing than a nature thing.

capoeira unlocks totally different degrees of freedom in movement than most activities. the hands as well as the feet are points of balance, and the idea is to move and dodge and attack in a way such that nothing but hands, feet, and occasionally head hit the ground. it's kinda amazing... i dance, i mimic movement relatively well now... but the instant you start treating my hands like extra feet and expect me to use them in balance, brain turns idiotic and i find myself getting stuck, unable to tell my body how to do what i want it to do until the instructor or one of the more advanced students breaks it down for me again.

i'm looking forward to watching it become more comfortable. and thankful to be experiencing beginner syndrome again... sometimes it's much too easy to lose sight of when i'm teaching. there's still a twinge of embarrassment here and there when i'm really struggling with something, but i can grin and bear it -- it's a phase, and i'm pretty sure that if i stick i'll get through it.

i've semi-volunteered to teach lindy hop for the next 4 weeks, so it'll probably be a while before i can continue with the capoeira. but i'm excited about getting back to it when i can.

the internet is amazing

2009-03-02T02:45:00.003+03:30

jesse, who's recently picked up the ability to make a killer pina colada, accidentally bought a few cans of coconut milk instead of coconut creme. not the same.

i, meanwhile, had completely forgotten about a couple sweet potatoes i had bought a few weeks back. adventures in putting up groceries this weekend brought me face to face with them.

i don't cook. not much. so figuring out what to do with extra coconut milk does not come naturally.

solution? ask the internet.

on a whim, i googled "coconut milk, sweet potato recipe." i got piele. add ginger root, we're set.

it's yummy. yay internet.

short stuff

2009-02-20T23:13:00.008+03:30

i've not been getting around to writing about things lately... so bullet-point time.

virginia -- like, the same virginia where philip morris is based, the one where jamestown started commercial tobacco production back in the early 1600s -- just put through legislation banning smoking in most bars and restaurants. hallelujah, i didn't really think it'd get passed!
i worked at project homeless connect all day yesterday. one of the cooler things about my job is the opportunity to do things like this - as part of the job. and it was an eye-opener. the event served more than 500 homeless folks yesterday... tons of volunteers and most of the local human services agencies were out to match people up with housing, medical and dental care, i.d. services, haircuts, new shoes, care packets with sanitary items, towels, clothes, food, you name it. the heartbreaking part was when things ran out -- men's shoes and dental appointments for the day were among the first to go. my day was split among escorting folks to the restrooms near the initial line (the restrooms were in a hallway that gave access to the rest of the scope arena... the facility didn't want people wandering the entire place), taking exit interviews, and handing out clothes and tote bags with towels. i'll certainly be back for the next event this summer.
unexpected side effects: i took up using cloth grocery bags. (wow, most of a year ago! didn't realize it'd been that long.) among the other cool things like it being really much easier to haul a lot of groceries around, it's finally causing me to act more like my parents, at least on one point, and a relatively good-for-me one. they've always been bargain shoppers and scoured out tons of coupons--it's a benevolent obsession. me, i'd normally forget to use any coupons i found, so i didn't bother much. with the cloth bags, i collect coupons IN the bags... so they're with me when i go shopping. plus, the market in downtown norfolk where i grab lunch and snack supplies has double couponing... so i'm slowly getting more addicted to the game. this week, i bought $22 of food for $12!
jesse's ship made it through sea trials! i might get to see my boyfriend again now and then! he even has a 3-day-weekend! oh, and there's some nifty video of the thing actually moving from the outside and (jesse's video) from the inside.

donate your gift card leftovers

2009-02-18T23:11:00.005+03:30

just happened to notice the link on the salvation army site while i was working on updating their local listings.

just happened to have exactly the kind of gift card they're looking for sitting in my wallet -- mostly spent, with maybe a couple dollars left that i'm pretty unlikely to use to buy anything.

it's a cool idea. and i can get rid of the card now without feeling like i'm throwing away money.

50 years

2009-02-03T17:52:00.006+03:30

this week marks 50 years since the norfolk public schools ended their state-sanctioned campaign of "massive resistance." rather than integrate, they shut the public schools down in 1958... and didn't reopen until forced to on february 2, 1959.

a lot of the norfolk 17, the first handful of black students who entered the formerly segregated schools, are still in the area and talking about their experiences. the current mayor and governor just apologized on behalf of the city and state.

it just blows my mind, though. as i quickly approach turning 30, fifty's suddenly starting to seem like not-such-a-big number, things that you can look up people to talk about instead of flipping through history books. 51 years ago, black schools and white schools. right here. defended by government.

i guess i shouldn't be so surprised that injustice recently existed in my society -- i mean, it still exists, just not this particular instance of it. still, it happened to strike me this morning as being really pretty unbelievable...

resolution

2009-02-02T22:01:00.010+03:30

i've (mostly*) sworn off lindy travel that involves missing days at work. it struck me the other day that i haven't been out of the country since 2002... this is pitiful. i don't want to buy a transatlantic or further ticket without two weeks to make it worthwhile, therefore i'm weekends-only for a while. expect to see me a lot in d.c... remind me of this when my resolve starts to crumble.

* i AM going to use that free plane ticket voucher collected on the way back after new year's! not sure where yet, but that one won't go to waste.

this weekend was particularly and unexpectedly nice. jesse was on fast cruise, so i was halfway expecting to spend the whole time at home. instead, friday night, i went to see avenue q with victor and jay, then rode up to d.c. on saturday with jay. we hung out around the smithsonian for several hours, then met up with my college pals jill and carboni (i hadn't previously known that jill calls him "jack"... needless to say, nobody had trouble remembering their names). our attempts to start a singalong on the subway did not work, but at least they made us laugh a lot. dinner with them and another 6 or 7 lindy hoppers at an irish pub took a very long time -- the place was packed, and we were a big party. we missed more than half the dance, but i had a fantastic time socializing with everybody at dinner and can't really say i regret it. plus, coming in that late, i was able to have an awesomely intense awesome hour of dancing. afterwards, we went to a diner and drank milkshakes and danced to oldies... we crashed at samantha's, didn't get up 'til late, then made our way back to hampton roads. very good times.

proof

2009-01-27T00:00:00.006+03:30

because my mom wanted some that i had, in fact, bought a chair...

granted, it's not much of a sitting chair, more of a curling up chair. those of you who visited my old knoxville apartment know i'm not much on conventional furniture--no chairs there, unless you counted the futon or the yoga ball. jesse has had a desk chair in the current apartment for a while, but this is the first chair i've owned in several years.

and this is approximately the least cluttered our living room has ever been. hurrah? (or maybe a sigh because neatness in my universe is directly related to unbusy time at home... and i obviously haven't been dancing or traveling or otherwise socializing enough lately. but at least i'd be a lot more comfortable having people over now...)

new president

2009-01-21T17:41:00.005+03:30

has anyone seen any good estimates on how many people watched yesterday's inauguration ceremony, either in person or via tv or internet? something more quantitative than "enough to break the internet"? (and yeah, i was on the cnn stream from work until it got too choppy near time for the ceremony... most of my floor gathered in the volunteer crisis line room to watch on the tv there.)

while yes, the speech was inspiring, and yes, it's a historical event no matter what happens from here out... the thing that got me most was the sheer number of people wanting to be there and wanting to believe that this guy can lead us to work together to make a better united states, a better world. if he can keep that goodwill and hope going even without a miracle cure for tough times, that's a mighty beast to leverage.

and i gotta give it to them -- starbucks chose an awesome moment to unleash their pledge 5 campaign, bribing folks with coffee for signing up for five hours of community service... hope it works.

hope it all works.

half a year, illustrated

2009-01-20T06:04:00.004+03:30

i'm uploading something like half a year's worth of photos today. not that i've had my camera out all that much. and it shows -- most of the ones i took toward the end of 2008 are extra-super-blurry. i still hate using my flash, but i've gotten worse at making things come out clear anyway. while i'm waiting on the rest to get to flickr, i'll post a few random shots...

in honor of the inauguration tomorrow, here's the photo i meant to post on election day, of people lined up outside the polling place in the rain:

the battleship across the street from my office:

at least the current apartment clutter is a little bit better than this, from when we'd moved in most things but unpacked almost nothing:

a heron in the park a few miles from here where i liked to go running back when it was warmer:

jaredan and davenne dancing in the park when michael q. and i took the crazy road trip down for chatta-atl-nash-knox-nooga-ville:

joanna, airborne during the charleston comp at lindy focus:

the roanoke star! (from the week i spent there training for my job in september):

husband and johnny in the interlude between nicci's wedding and the reception:

bush sr. speaking during the commissioning for the ship named after him:

netflix instant play in ubuntu

2009-01-14T18:09:00.007+03:30

(it's geeky. i warned you. but you can make fun of me for regularly destroying operating systems. and there's windows involved, but it's free for now...)

ok, so a while back, i installed ubuntu and realized AFTER damaging the windows partition that i didn't have my vista cd anymore.

honestly, i mostly don't really miss it. i've adjusted to amarok instead of itunes, star office instead of microsoft office... there's a free replacement program for almost everything. the one thing i hadn't gotten working, though, was netflix instant play movies. i missed it. i didn't miss it enough to justify the trouble it took to get it, but, er, once i get an idea in my head i can be a little stubborn.

when lifehacker came out with instructions for getting a windows 7 beta key, i went ahead and downloaded a copy.

then i installed virtualbox on ubuntu. and screwed up bigtime -- it needs your user account added to the group "virtualboxusers". instead of sudoing up and editing the /etc/group file directly, i tried to use a graphic group control tool. not sure what went wrong, but it cleared the /etc/group file of everything but the new group... resulting in a daemonic mess where most of the computer services didn't have access to necessary files and i didn't have access to admin powers and... well, let's just say it wasn't working so well. after a while booted into single-user mode with help from a fresh install's /etc/root file sneakernetted over from jesse's computer, i got back a lot of the basics... but couldn't get the networking to work. since the internet is my main source for all aid, i eventually got frustrated, backed everything up, and reinstalled ubuntu. total geek-fu failure, lesson learned, don't mess with that file unless you know what you're doing. but i have a nice, clean install now.

and set up virtual box again. and installed windows 7 on it. and it worked!

except the networking didn't. various blogs eventually pointed me to the fact that the virtualbox i'd gotten by apt-get install was not, in fact, the latest version. go to the webpage. install version 2.1.0. give windows the new, improved virtual network connection. and voila!

and... trying to run a netflix instant play movie in the windows media-based internet explorer player bluescreens my box. which is much less annoying than a traditional bluescreen, i have to admit -- unlike with a real laptop crash, i can go play/research on the internet while i wait for things to get back to normal. after tinkering and giving windows more hard drive space and more memory, i decide that the player's probably just not compatible with the beta internet explorer yet.

so i install firefox. and then netflix's silverlight player. and EVERYTHING WORKS! well, kinda herky-jerkily. but ramping the virtual box's base memory up to 1200 MB (which is more than virtualbox thought was a good idea given my modest laptop, but oh well) mostly fixes that... the audio gets smoother after a little tinkering with settings. it's good enough that i watched the first half hour or so of persepolis despite it being well past my bedtime by the time i got things working last night.

so, happy camper. i'll be happier if/when netflix gets things worked out with the DRM folks to support instant play for linux, but for now i have a ridiculous setup that more or less does the trick.

save the glen echo dance ranger

2009-01-12T21:52:00.009+03:30

most of the lindy hoppers who've traveled to washington, d.c., for a dance event in the last several years have danced in the glen echo park, either in its spanish ballroom or its bumper car pavilion. it's really an incredible venue -- the ballroom is restored to its 1930s-era luster and comfortably holds something like 600 dancers. it's usually one of the main venues for DCLX, and we sweated our way to near-total dehydration there during a mid-june heatwave for jam cellar's big big event this year. if you add in regular saturday night dances with live music, it's really a big part of what's probably the largest swing dance community east of the mississippi.

recently, there's been a flurry of e-mails and a facebook group, all upset because park ranger stan fowler's been reassigned after 30+ years of service in glen echo. mr. fowler, it turns out, has been a driving force behind a lot of the restoration work there, and he's been instrumental in bringing the dance communities out to it. the washington post just put out an article that makes it pretty clear how much we owe stan... and clarifies that he still had things he wanted to do there in the few years he has left 'til retirement and didn't want the transfer (i'd wondered!).

so here's hoping! if you're interested in working with the d.c. dancers who're trying to get the decision reversed, look for the facebook group "Saving Glen Echo Dance Ranger" or join the yahoo group DanceRanger.

recovery!

2009-01-12T17:52:00.007+03:30

something somewhere between a cold and the flu had me for most of the last week. i've been referring to it the lindy focus plague based on the number of "i'm sick!" facebook statuses among fellow attendees -- seems i'm not the only one who had a really awesome time then got home and collapsed.

last monday, i was coughing my way along, still healthy enough to take unfamiliar buses to the norfolk airport after work to greet jesse on his return from california (i can't really claim i "picked him up" since he was the one with transportation) and pick up my bag, which had continued on its merry way there instead of switching to the later newport news flight with me. i have the sort of boyfriend who, even when he's been traveling all day, makes quite an excellent chicken soup and doesn't complain too much over being exposed to germs from a dance event he didn't go to.

despite the soup, i utterly failed at getting out of bed on tuesday. all limbs were suddenly convinced that gravitational acceleration had multiplied itself by ten over night. i think i tried to call in to work, but they finally called me -- i'd fallen back asleep before getting the phone dialed. i slept probably 20 of 24 hours that day.

wednesday was a bit better, but i was still dizzy and tired enough to stay home. thursday, i had already scheduled a routine doctor's checkup (yay health insurance kicking in!)... the hospital is a mile and a half away. a mile and a half isn't much of a walk under normal circumstances. it knocked me over. by the time i got to norfolk around noon, my floor full of moms/co-workers took a look at me and started yelling that i shouldn't be there. i did stay, and worked friday too, and i thought i was doing alright.

but comparatively... even with hours and hours outside in the cold on saturday for jesse's ship's commissioning (i want to write about that too!), the weekend made so much difference. this morning, i made it to the bus stop on time with ease. i didn't hit snooze five times despite having gone to bed later than i did any day last week. i wasn't dragging my feet by the time i got from one end of plume street to the other. it's the silver lining on these kinds of viruses... just when you start to think that life really is THAT hard, just when you get used to working around all the snivels and fatigue, lung capacity starts kicking back in. and all of a sudden, having what's normally "normal" energy is really, really fun.

the gym's still going to be hell. at least i have a slightly better excuse than the simple "failed to work out for three weeks."

and now jesse has the plague. i owe him some chicken soup.

it gets better...

2009-01-05T01:04:00.003+03:30

after it became apparent that standbys for the 2 p.m. flight to newport news weren't getting called, i wandered back into the main hub of the airport. jesse's advice of trying to sneak into the USO (because apparently charlotte's airport USO is the best he's seen) wasn't looking so practical, so i got some frozen yogurt.

just about then, my old college pal wayne walks through.

the randomness really astounds me. i mean, i figure that my friends are probably somewhat more likely to be on the road than the general population (they tend to be an adventurous, shifty bunch), and a bit more likely to be going up and down the east coast than a random selection of americans, but the odds of being in the same part of the airport at the same time still can't be very big.

wayne was on the way back to new haven from huntsville. he had an hour layover time, so he too got frozen yogurt and hung out. time was very pleasantly killed.

airports are fun. (here's hoping my 6:00 flight goes out, though. even airports are better in moderation...)

lucky

2009-01-04T21:28:00.005+03:30

i hope i don't jinx myself by saying so, but i have a long history of pretty good luck with airplane travel. usually, my flights are on time if not a teensy bit early. i've only lost luggage once, and that was going to my parents' house on the way back from a year as an exchange student (back in the days when i had plenty of spare clothes there). In fact, that time, temporarily losing the luggage mostly just saved me the trouble of dragging my two huge bags around the airport to get through customs.

today's going pretty well that way. i'm on my way back from a pretty excellent christmas-new year's holiday (more on that later, perhaps?)... my first flight this morning, i got a whole row of seats to myself and slept soundly from nashville to charlotte. now, they've announced that they need passengers willing to fly into newport news instead of norfolk. free round-trip ticket up for grabs! newport news is actually closer to home than norfolk is... and buses run later from there.

so now i'm either flying in 30 minutes or 4.5 hours... no real hurry to get home. life's good, and i'm likely going to be taking at least one more plane trip in 2009.

big smile for the day

2008-12-26T23:43:00.005+03:30

via my friend matt's livejournal, a story on DIY adjustable glasses. the idea is to help all the people without access to opticians and corrective lenses. can you imagine having to retire when your vision started changing due to age? or even not being able to read at all because your vision was never so great?

at $1 per pair... i, for one, would happily put in $30 or so to get a pair, for pure glee at seeing how they work. (and, well, with no more vision insurance, $30 would be a steal for a spare pair of glasses.) wonder if one laptop per child's give one get one idea for capitalizing on the neat-o factor could be used to help raise funds... give twenty-nine, get one?

for the grammar geeks

2008-12-23T21:00:00.005+03:30

all of you are reading the nytimes blog after deadline, right?

back in college, one of my pastimes was marking up the student newspaper on the friday afternoon after it came out. just for fun, more than out of any desire to help or criticize; it was a relaxing activity like working a crossword. the oracle of that era was an easy target... during the 2000 election controversy, they had a headline about "flordia."

it tickles me, though, that somebody gets to do that for the new york times--the publication that frequently served as our paragon of style and good editing when putting together honors program publications. and gets to count it at as part of his job. that rocks.

quick admin note

2008-12-23T18:29:00.004+03:30

i suspended the loudtwitter service for now. i put a gadget (complete with annoying ads!) in the sidebar here in case anyone not on twitter was all that interested... but, um, there seems to be a lot of overlap between the people who follow twitter feeds and the people who follow blogs, so i thought i'd quit repeating myself.

monday morning

2008-12-22T18:28:00.003+03:30

cold, so cold. and three buses in a row were headed to newport news this morning, none to norfolk. (we're pretty sure the 8:15 was a newbie bus driver going the wrong way.) so i was an hour late to work, but not all that upset over the prospect of skipping going out for lunch to make up the time. staying inside is good. second cup of coffee, and my fingers are almost thawed.

i don't want to move to florida. but some days it doesn't sound so bad. (and a lot can happen in the years it's likely to take to get the carrier up to snuff and to make mayport carrier-ready, anyway...) they were planning to take the boat to norfolk today for the first time, but the newspaper says they're putting it off. not sure what that means for when/whether i get to see jesse before i leave for tennessee. it's strange how quickly it's gone from being normal to see each other every four to six weeks to having two weeks apart seem like a horribly long time.

speaking of which... madcap adventures to come! i'm flying to my parents' the 24th, driving to crossville the 27th for nicci's wedding, on to asheville the 28th for lindy focus, back to cookeville on new year's day to catch some of the reunion, then back to the parents' and flying home in time for work on monday. honestly, i'm a little exhausted thinking about it, but it'll be so much fun once the momentum gets going... once i figure out just how exactly to pack for all of it and how to get myself to the airport...

mumbles and factoids

2008-12-20T11:09:00.001+03:30

09:09 migraine yesterday = i went to bed after work. now bouncing around on 11 hours of sleep!

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

mumbles and factoids

2008-12-18T11:15:00.001+03:30

14:28 investigating and eliminating potential duplicates in the database = not so entertaining. but it needs to be done.

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

mumbles and factoids

2008-12-16T11:09:00.001+03:30

11:08 making sure all our employment resources are up-to-date... the newspaper's sending people our way!

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

mumbles and factoids

2008-12-14T11:06:00.000+03:30

05:46 up before 6 a.m.... after sleeping... on a saturday?!?
10:31 granola with yogurt is much more satisfying than chex with yogurt. (discovered AFTER pouring cereal that there's no milk, oops!)
20:08 no-show DJ for richmond tonight... jesse's car's not feeling so good, too late to get another ride.
23:09 ice-skating! it was fun until i took off my skates and accidentally kicked jesse's knee with the back of the blade... yowch.

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

mumbles and factoids

2008-12-12T11:04:00.001+03:30

11:08 i've got a bruise and/or a sore muscle in the palm of my hand. how do i do stuff like this?!?

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

new venue!

2008-12-11T17:32:00.004+03:30

last night was the debut for us dancing in the douglas high studio in hampton. this place is under a mile from my apartment, which is a nice feature when one does not have a car. the fred, where we usually dance on wednesdays, had other holiday plans. wendy found the doug for us back when jesse was trying to get a performance team started... that fell apart, at least for now, but we still had contact info. i hate organizing, but it sounded too good to waste.

the venue's great. sprung wood floor, lots of space, mirrors, not too pricey. we could easily use it as an exchange venue or for regular lessons.

the sound system didn't show up.

still, after a quick run home to get a cord and a handful of cds (for until we figured out the setup), we got things going on the house system. it wasn't a huge crowd, but it was enough to try out the place. and beth brought incredibly yummy cupcakes. next time, we can confidently go all out on promoting and getting people there, i think.

jimmy carter vs. the worms

2008-12-09T21:01:00.003+03:30

i first saw this on saturday... i didn't get around to writing about it then, but it's been making me giggle every time i see a caduceus on signs around town ever since. share the mirth, right?

it really sort of sounds like a comic superhero sort of battle, but jimmy carter has a death warrant out on a parasitic worm that grows up to three feet long in humans and has to be painfully, slowly reeled out when it blisters through the skin. nick kristof blogged it on saturday when carter announced that we're down to 5,000 cases worldwide. it's looking likely to be the first disease in history eradicated through behavior change, without the use of vaccines or a cure. proper water filtering techniques do the trick. jimmy carter's winning.

if you go from there to the wikipedia article on guinea worms, the story gets even cooler. seriously, beyond the usual getting public health aide workers into remote areas to educate people and hand out filters... carter's negotiated ceasefires to fight these things.

i don't recommend an image search for the queasy of stomach.

the caduceus connection? according to wikipedia, the caduceus (and the less commonly used but probably more correct staff of asklepios) may actually have evolved from a picture portraying worms wrapped around a stick, not snakes. guinea worms. the still-standard medical treatment involves wrapping the worm around a stick or piece of gauze as it's extracted, so theory goes that the symbol comes from a picture of one of the services offered by ancient doctors.

so now every time i see a caduceus, it's not just "doctor's office here." it's "hah! humans are winning this one!" go jimmy carter.

mumbles and factoids

2008-12-09T11:05:00.001+03:30

06:22 had to drop jesse off at work to keep him from being late... on the up side, i'm awake now.

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

mumbles and factoids

2008-12-08T11:03:00.001+03:30

14:08 not dancing this afternoon after all... oh well, hazard of not having a car. the bus system on sunday's not really a viable option.
21:02 just put in the e-mail to announce dancing in hampton this wednesday night... no turning back now!

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

mumbles and factoids

2008-12-06T11:03:00.001+03:30

09:20 oops... finished my book on the way to work. usually try to anticipate this and bring an extra...
09:53 starting my morning with a tantrum on the database issue log... always fun!
02:33 went to bed at 9 p.m., but back up ever since jesse left for work around 1 a.m.

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

russian tea

2008-12-04T19:06:00.005+03:30

tang plus instant tea plus spices (or in the particular case, cinnamon candies that melt when hot water is added)... i hadn't heard of it before, but a co-worker brought some yesterday.

the name intrigues me. i'm obsessed with hot beverages anyway. this leads to research.

wikipedia, illustrious source that it is, claims:

"Tang is a featured ingredient in Instant Russian Tea (a variation of Wassail), a hot drink mix popular in the Southern US made with Tang, instant tea, ground cinnamon and cloves, and sometimes instant lemonade. Instant Russian Tea is often given as a holiday hostess gift."

shannon, who grew up in illinois, knew it. i, born and raised in tennessee (albeit by non-southern parents), didn't. i don't think it tastes that different from what my parents used to call "percolator punch" --warm and fruity and spicy-- but it's been ages since i've had any of that, and there was certainly no tang involved!

the question i still can't figure out, though, is: why russian? tang wasn't around until the late 50s, so it's hardly an old, traditional recipe. i find all sorts of links around the interwebs from articles talking about samovars to recipes for this stuff... but no one's explicitly saying how or why you get from A to B. i did find at least one reference to tea in russia frequently being served with lots of lemon and sugar, but that's about as close as i got in a casual web search...

craving fulfilled

2008-11-30T05:34:00.003+03:30

baked sweet potato = yum.

i've traditionally never been much of a fan of sweet potatoes. my main exposure to them was, up 'til relatively recently, as candied yams at thanksgiving. honestly, if it weren't for my grandma's german-style noodles, i probably would've starved at thanksgiving as a kid; i was a parent's nightmare picky eater (and i hear it's genetic... so i'm likely doomed if i ever have offspring!). i've since come around to most dishes, but i still tend to get a pretty small spoonful of the yams.

i've since discovered, though, that if you keep it really simple and add butter and salt instead of marshmallows, i love it. today i was out at the grocery store as much as an excuse to use my new bicycle basket (yay!) as because we needed anything, and randomly grabbed a couple of huge sweet potatoes. scrub, foil, bake on 325 degrees for 80 minutes (thank you interwebs)... that's about as much cooking as i've done in quite a while.

and i just gobbled down all of mine before jesse really got through poking and prodding his. oops.

AC adapter woes

2008-11-29T20:26:00.002+03:30

i woke up this morning to find my computer had turned off. (passed out by my laptop, as tends to happen weekends when jesse's working nights -- i try to stay up to adjust to his schedule a bit and fail.) it didn't want to come back on. it was acting like the battery had drained, except it was plugged in.

my instant reaction? go login as a guest on jesse's laptop, start shopping for new AC adapter cord.

fortunately, i ran across this article before i bought anything.

internal circuit breaker. that was it. is this a part of standard laptop ownership training that i missed? i wrote a thank-you note to the guy who wrote the article.

music from 11/20 in Williamsburg

2008-11-29T02:14:00.006+03:30

this one was from the once-every-six-weeks graduation dance in williamsburg; wendy runs 6-week courses in three levels of basic lindy hop, and this is the party at the end. while she's got some regulars who are comfortable social dancing, and several folks from the wider scene usually show, the dance is beginner-heavy. i try to keep the music easy. this time i got first half, which meant keeping it even easier. as often as not, this leads to playing lots of stuff that was "top 40" in the knoxville scene back when i was starting out...

Shout Sister Shout - Lucky Millinder 140
Potato Chips - Slim Gaillard & his Shintoists 140
Swingin' On Nothin - Jo Stafford 125
Solid as a Rock - Count Basie 136
Ja-Da - The Famous Castle Jazz Band 152
My Baby Likes To Bebop - Ella Fitzgerald 140
Everybody Eats When They Come To My House - Cab Calloway 154
South Of The Border - Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra 146
Let's Do It - Billie Holiday With Lester Young 152
Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop - Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 136
Winter Weather - Benny Goodman 156
I Got The Sun In The Morning - Artie Shaw 138
Baldhead - The Fabulous Treniers 139
Yes Indeed - Dick Haymes With Harry James & His Orchestra 159
Now You Has Jazz - Louis Armstrong 172

happy turkey day!

2008-11-29T00:41:00.000+03:30

dunno why loudtwitter doesn't seem to be shipping over right now, but lesson learned: i ramble a lot more if i bother with the one- or two-sentence stuff. for the better or the more boring...

we had turkey dinner over at jesse's boss's. nice family, excellent food, not quite like going home to MY family but awfully generous of them. and it was fun to have thanksgiving with kids around for the first time in years. i remain stuffed.

but not too stuffed for a glass of eggnog. i'm a bit of a grinch on many things holiday -- too much fuss, too much commercialism, and i'm not leaving the apartment before noon because black friday's really not my thing. but eggnog is excellent.

~~~

i didn't read the news for a couple days and all of a sudden mumbai's a mess?!? ugh.

~~~
ok, after noon, jesse just got off work (pity the poor navy guys who had to work after their turkey dinners!), and he wants to go shopping. so i suppose i'll peel myself away from the computer...

rumba, november 17

2008-11-26T15:12:00.003+03:30

jesse and i djed last monday night. it was a small crowd to start, and i had second set, so a lot of it was just struggling to get anyone to dance. this week, the crowd was a little bigger, and beth and i traded 4s... that format's a little less frustrating for the venue, i think.

Rag Mop - Joe Liggins And The Honeydrippers 154
Save The Bones For Henry Jones - Nat King Cole & Johnny Mercer 145
Ragtime Cowboy Joe - Pied Pipers 138
Love, Nuts And Noodles - Rosemary Clooney 217 (this one officially doesn't swing. won't play it again!)
Solid as a Rock - Count Basie 136
Gotta Pebble In My Shoe - Chick Webb 159
Hellzapoppin' - Louis Armstrong And The All Stars 170
Ja-Da - The Famous Castle Jazz Band 152
Jump for Joy - Duke Ellington with Ray Nance 188
All That Meat And No Potatoes - Fats Waller 146
Sixty minute man - Billy Ward and his Dominoes 130
Let's Do It - Billie Holiday With Lester Young 152
All of Me - Lizzie Miles with Sharkey 160
The Gal From Joe's - Duke Ellington 164
The Walkin' Blues (Walk Right In, Walk Right Out) - Jesse Powell Orchestra 166
For The First Time - Kay Starr 168
We'll Meet Again - Paul Barbarin's New Orleans Band 163
Bei Mir Bist Du Schon (Album) - The Andrews Sisters with Vic Schoen and His Orchestra 167
The Preacher - Quincy Jones 155
Chief - The Dutch Jazz Orchestra 125
Froggy Bottom - Andy Kirk and His Clouds Of Joy 153
Doin' What Comes Natur'lly - Pied Pipers 146
John The Revelator - The Dirty Dozen Brass Band 122
Chicago - Dutch Swing College Band 206
Don't Get Around Much Anymore - Bob Crosby 146
Chloe - The Dorsey Brothers 160
Why Don't You Do Right? (Album) - Benny Goodman and His Orchestra 125
Nature Boy - Johnny Hartman 145
They All Laughed - Gunhild Carling And Her Swing Band 131

human barometer?

2008-11-25T23:28:00.003+03:30

i've been noticing lately that the debilitating headaches seem to correspond to big weather changes. last time, it was a big drop in temperature. yesterday, i spent about 24 hours with a headache; when the rain finally got here around 7 or 8 p.m., i was suddenly fine.

just discovered that the weather channel online has an aches and pains forecast, theoretically good for predicting arthritis and migraines. think i'll start watching and see if the correlation is real.

mumbles and factoids

2008-11-25T08:51:00.002+03:30

09:50 severely limited report types make me grumbly. seriously, i'd rather learn sql than have to manually look up hundreds of phone numbers.
10:31 yay macros! still gonna have to look up the numbers, but at least getting from report to useful data columns is just a few clicks now.
11:00 will DJ for food! (well, and a ride home. waiting to see if any of the peninsula crew is planning on rumba tonight...)
11:52 sinus headache plus sore back muscle that hurts when i inhale deeply equals likely to skip the gym again today... sigh.
15:58 beth, while not of the peninsula, is heading to northern virginia for thanksgiving after the dance. logistics solved, dancing on!

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

eastpak

2008-11-23T22:09:00.003+03:30

back in probably 1994 -- beginning of high school-ish, i guess -- i talked my parents into buying me a freakin' huge backpack (or so it seemed at the time... i hadn't yet encountered hiking/hosteling backpacks). because high school books were big. i think it was something like $40, which at the time seemed ridiculous, but it had a lifetime warranty.

i carried it all through high school and college. recently, with the advent of daily adventures on the bus, i started carrying it again. the right strap, the one that gets twisted off the shoulder a lot when i'm reaching for something in the bag, started to fray. i looked up the address.

i sent my decade-plus-old backpack back to the company for warranty repairs.

just got it back. new straps, and i think they patched up a couple other places that had looked less than new.

so yay eastpak. and yay for the parents for getting a pretty great deal.

and now my laptop bag is getting torn up... no such warranty on it, alas. maybe i'll just get one of the protector pockets and use the old eastpak when i need to bring it along.

klx saturday late night setlist

2008-11-23T21:12:00.003+03:30

from 11/15, the 3-5 a.m. shift, shared with mike marcotte. approximate reconstruction, because i still hadn't gotten the hang of actually having to manually save them.

Drunk (Album) - Jimmy Liggins 165
Take It and Git - Andy Kirk & His Clouds of Joy 161
The Donkey Serenade (Album) - Artie Shaw 147
Sunday - Kay Starr 155
Sugarfoot Stomp - Harry James 165
Swing, Brother, Swing - Billie Holiday 151
Midnight In Moscow - The Firehouse Five Plus Two 180
Diga Diga Do - Joe Venuti & Zoot Sims 225
Hellzapoppin' - Louis Armstrong And The All Stars 170
April In Portugal - Oscar Aleman 182
The Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me - Glenn Miller 174
A Study In Brown - Bunny Berigan 198
Swingin' On Nothing - Bob Crosby 129
Tap Room Swing - Adrian Rollini 179
Hallelujah Joe Ain't Preachin' No More - Harlem Hamfats 166
'Tain't No Use - Benny Goodman 155
Salty Dog - Lizzie Miles with Sharkey & His Kings Of Dixieland 194
Drop Me Off In Harlem - Mills Blue Rhythm Band 143
It Dont Mean A Thing' - Duke Ellington 178
Dinah - Lino Patruno & His Blue Four 224
Ta-Hu-Wa-Hu-Wai (Hawaiian War Chant) - Andrew Aiona 186
Why Do Hawaiians Sing Aloha? - Fats Waller 147

mumbles and factoids

2008-11-23T08:40:00.001+03:30

10:51 currently rating nearly every song in my library as "bad"... (just using rating as a binary to say it's been looked at and tagged.)
18:19 dancing in richmond tonight!

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

mumbles and factoids

2008-11-22T08:18:00.001+03:30

00:07 can preview while DJing in linux! audacious plus amarok = easy set-up. i still want to learn mixxx, though.
07:17 Snow!
10:41 the office bathroom has a phone. it's blinking like it has voicemail. now i'm tempted to call it and see what the greeting is.
16:15 "extension 3049 does not answer. please leave a message after the tone." i did not leave the bathroom any new voicemail.
21:45 ok, so it was mostly removing code instead of coding... but i got an amarok script to make my playlists look like they used to for posting.

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

last thursday at the attucks

2008-11-22T05:05:00.011+03:30

not a bit in the right order (didn't realize the program i saved the playlist from was likely to scramble it!), but here goes:

We'll Meet Again - Paul Barbarin's New Orleans Band 163
Madame Dynamite - Eddie Condon 184
The New Call Of The Freaks - Luis Russell 138
The Hot Canary - Paul Nero 151
Comes Love - Billie Holiday 107
Sunday - Bunny Berigan & His Orchestra 192
Celery Stalks at Midnight - Will Bradley 156
Twenty-Four Robbers - Jimmie Lunceford 144
The Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me - Glenn Miller 174
For The First Time - Kay Starr 168
Coquette - Bob Crosby & The Bob Cats 186
Chloe - The Dorsey Brothers 160
I Like Pie, I Like Cake - The Four Clefs 160
Ubangi Stomp - Warren Smith 162
Bassology - Slim Gaillard & his Flat Floogie Boys 159
Hit That Jive, Jack - Four Vagabonds 190
Ta-Hu-Wa-Hu-Wai (Hawaiian War Chant) - Andrew Aiona 186
Why Do Hawaiians Sing Aloha? - Fats Waller 147
Yam Brown - Bob Hunt's Duke Ellington Orchestra 241
This Little Light of Mine - The Boilermaker Jazz Band 168
Sugarfoot Stomp - Harry James 165
I Want A Roof Over My Head - Helen Humes 154
Dinah - Lino Patruno & His Blue Four 224
Doin The Voom Voom - Duke Ellington 196

mumbles and factoids

2008-11-21T09:26:00.001+03:30

08:56 unexpected issue: big, fuzzy knee socks plus wide-leg pants -> odd-looking static cling. but my feet are warm today!
11:04 temp employee no longer!!
13:41 gmail themes! NINJA!
00:07 can preview while DJing in linux! audacious plus amarok = easy set-up. i still want to learn mixxx, though.

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

DJing, linux, whistling, ice skating, beer

2008-11-20T18:45:00.007+03:30

tonight will make four DJ sets in eight days (attucks, klx, rumba, williamsburg)... that's a lot for me, even when i'm NOT trying to adjust to a new software setup. at least it's keeping the cost of dancing low. and it's not exactly like i mind having an excuse to go around with at least one earbud hooked to my mp3 player most of the time in hopes of finding more gems i didn't know i had.

overall, the transition to linux has been pretty smooth. i still haven't figured out use of two sound cards simultaneously, but i have enough clues that a long morning hanging out in pjs ought to help. (can you tell i'm looking forward to doing not-so-much this weekend?!?) i just saw a bug log claiming that my biggest complaint about amarok, the program i've been using to replace itunes, is fixed in the version that's in beta. (generating smart playlists by "label does not contain" doesn't work so well right now. and itunes smart playlists were kinda a cornerstone of my organizational system.) plus, john and brooks in atl have been big helps -- judging from swingdjs.com, atlanta must be the linux lindy hop DJ capital of the world.

other thing to do while flannel-pajama-clad this weekend: figure out how to make netflix's instant play movies work with linux. or if not, there's always jesse's desktop windows machine, i guess.
~~~
random downtown norfolk coolness... there's this one guy who's incredible at whistling. like, if i were going to record a song that featured a lot of it, i'd probably seek him out. i first noticed several weeks back... another guy was banging on the side of one of the bus shelters, being a little obnoxious... the next thing i knew, it'd developed into a regular rhythm, which then became this strange little duet with the whistling guy. gorgeous, one of those spontaneous moments you just don't look for when you're standing around at the bus stop. ever since then, when i hear a particularly catchy tune floating in the air (as i did on lunch break -- that's what prompted this), i look around; he's usually in range.
~~~
they're putting the final touches on a seasonal outdoor ice skating rink a couple blocks from my office. hurrah. oh, and parade stands. i didn't know about it, but apparently the grand illumination of the christmas lights is a big deal around here. williamsburg has one in a couple weeks. i think we're dancing in their parade, and for some kind of event in the mall here.
~~~
current beer obsession: legend chocolate porter. it's seasonal, brewed down the road in richmond. thus far i've only seen it at cogan's, the pizza place where everyone usually winds up after the wednesday nights at the fred. then again, i don't get out to beer-drinking locales all that often. but yummy.

mumbles and factoids

2008-11-20T08:22:00.001+03:30

15:41 cold weather is making me want to cancel everything to hang out at home in flannel pajamas with a cup of tea. going dancing anyway, though!
16:08 holiday airplane tickets bought... the madcap nashville-manchester-crossville-asheville-cookeville-manchester-nashville trip is on!

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

mumbles and factoids

2008-11-19T08:16:00.002+03:30

10:16 back to work... whee?
18:54 think costco would take back a jar of artichoke hearts on the basis that we can't open it? (and when i say we, i mean all-out team effort!)
19:54 modern linux continues to surprise me. i hadn't thought to try, but ubuntu had no trouble with jesse's printer. plug in USB and bam!

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

klx

2008-11-17T23:49:00.002+03:30

this year's knoxville lindy exchange was a lot of fun, or at least the friday-saturday portions of it were.

my first time riding the greyhound was not the least bit traumatic. nor were 7 hours in the car with adrienne. we made good time, successfully found the starbucks when we needed it, and got to knoxville in time for dinner.

friday night didn't feel like klx to me... i finally figured out that it was less about what was going on in the dance venues than about ME -- the fact that i wasn't in host mode, wasn't going around making sure everyone knew what was going on, wasn't trying that hard to meet everyone i didn't know. of course it didn't feel like klx as i've known it! the streamliners were in good form (if a little loud!), though, and everything seemed to run pretty smoothly.

saturday felt more like home. i started the day by almost losing shannon's dog for her (i got mixed up about which one is reliable and likely to come back if you let him out...), got to know some of my fellow guests at the casa de shannon and jewel over doughnuts, and headed to the afternoon dance. after that, i skipped the lindy feast and, with davenne, took shannon out for a belated birthday dinner at sitar's. good times. the villains ball went off with plenty of costuming, and christabel and the jons gave the dancing the warm feel that goes with them. michael gamble kicked the late-night off right by playing a kickin' dixieland set in the "blues room" -- i have to admit, that was one of the weekend highlights for me. i got to trade three-song sets with D.C.'s mike marcotte for the 3-5 a.m. shift, and that was another weekend highlight; i really enjoy that format, and mike's a top-notch DJ.

unfortunately, i'm still figuring out the linux DJing, and i forgot to save my playlist. i'll post my best guess at a reconstruction as soon as i get a little time with my laptop, along with playlists from thursday and last night.

i wish we could've stuck around for the afternoon dance, but making it back to richmond in time to have dinner all together before adrienne handed me off to jesse was nice.

i wound up taking yesterday off too... i had asked for it in case travel plans necessitated it. i was defeated by the combination of having the option, needing to catch up on sleep, having the boyfriend with the day off, and finding the world outside my bed much too cold to deal with. i'll probably miss the day of pay, but it totally felt worth it.

mumbles and factoids

2008-11-14T08:30:00.001+03:30

10:09 my croatian penpal from approximately the junior high years just friended me on facebook. craziness!
10:27 decided to take the greyhound up to richmond tomorrow for simplicity's sake...

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

mumbles and factoids

2008-11-13T08:46:00.001+03:30

21:56 woot! dvd player works in ubuntu!
22:17 anybody know a hangout in williamsburg that's public transit accessible and interstate-convenient? meeting up with adrienne to ride to klx!

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

mumbles and factoids

2008-11-12T08:25:00.001+03:30

14:00 santa claus has set up shop at the mall already?!?
15:23 happy veterans day! (banks are closed, so much for buying quarters for laundry...)
19:56 perl is funny-looking! but it worked - perl -pi -w -e 's/C:\/home\/kait\/Music/\/home\/kait\/Music\/Music Backup/g;' *.m3u

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

linux on the laptop, round 2

2008-11-11T17:27:00.007+03:30

i last tried installing ubuntu linux on my computer last september. the lack of sound made it a little impractical -- the primary things i use my laptop for are internet and music, so it didn't last all that long.

a year makes all the difference. now all the drivers work straight from the cd. back in college, when i regularly used linux (mandrake-flavored!), it pretty much took a fairly knowledgeable geek to deal with it. my tech skills have deteriorated, but it's a nice surprise -- ubuntu's user-friendly! i've only gone command-line so far for a few bouts of moving files around, and that's just because i've missed doing it that way.

i was intending to go dual-boot, but, um, "experimental" is probably not the ideal method for figuring out why a windows vista partition isn't shrinking properly. the internet tells me -- too late -- that it's better to use vista's built-in partitioning tools. i think my oops would've been fixable, but i couldn't find my windows cd. (ransacking the apartment did reveal some floorspace we hadn't seen in a while, though...) i finally decided to just go for it. i'm very very glad that jesse talked me into finally getting a backup hard drive; i tend to reformat when frustrated, and having another copy of everything significantly reduced the associated angst.

tonight's project? see if i can get itunes playlists imported over and set up so i can DJ off this system without having to sort all the music again. preferably by thursday! amarok looks promising, and i actually already managed to get from the itunes library xml file to m3u form playlists... they still point to windows filepaths, though, so learning a teensy bit of perl might be in my future.

(and yeah, we skipped the dancing last night... jesse was tired, and i was wanting to play with the fresh operating system. i don't know what was leading to all the confusion yesterday, but not going out was NOT meant as a political statement!)

mumbles and factoids

2008-11-11T08:22:00.001+03:30

11:24 fighting absurdity in the database...
14:03 lots of contradictory e-mails coming in, but i'm pretty sure that there's really no dancing at rumba tonight.
14:30 or... maybe there is.
16:30 scene politics make me crazy. 3 incoming phone calls and 10 e-mails later... (it's on, but dunno yet if jesse and i are going...)
20:43 windows-free! and a little terrified, but yay! (or oops?)

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

mumbles and factoids

2008-11-09T08:14:00.001+03:30

10:57 suddenly pouring rain... maybe i should drink tea and install linux instead of getting out on the bicycle.
12:33 and "installing linux" quickly turns into getting distracted by old photos and stuff i didn't realize i had on the backup harddrive.
16:02 linux still not installed, but at least all my music's backed up now... off to richmond for the 2nd Saturday dance shortly!

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

wednesday night hop

2008-11-08T22:00:00.005+03:30

more because posting a playlist forces me to do the cleanup work like checking to see that the tempos i have in the tags are accurate than because this one actually made anybody dance... wednesday night was a dark and stormy night, the dance didn't get advertised like usual, and the few people who DID show up were more interested in talking about dance and teaching each other than in social dancing. after a while, i gave up and played what i wanted to hear instead of trying to create a dance... so, um, here's what i felt like hearing wednesday night.

Ragtime Cowboy Joe - Pied Pipers 138
Flying Home No. 2 - Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 162
Shout 'Em Aunt Tillie - Chris Barber 166
Functionizin' - Alex Hill 179
Sunday - Bob Wilber And The Tuxedo Big Band Of Toulouse France 153
I Swung The Election - Jack Teagarden & His Orchestra 199
Boy In The Boat - Steven Bernstein 161
This Little Light of Mine - The Boilermaker Jazz Band 168
Take It And Git - Andy Kirk & His Clouds of Joy 161
T'aint What You Do - Sy Oliver 172
AC/DC Current - Charlie Christiana 204
Drop Me Off In Harlem - Mills Blue Rhythm Band 143
I Hear Music - Billie Holiday 167
Tomorrow - Slam Stewart & Major Holley 152
You Gave Me The Gate - Duke Ellington 171
Come On Over To My House - Julia Lee And Her Boyfriends 146
Whistle While You Work - Bunny Berigan & His Orchestra 150
Good Evenin' Good Lookin' - Benny Goodman with Helen Forrest, vocals 157
Killing Jive - The Cats & The Fiddle 183
My Blue Heaven - Helen Humes 163
The Garbage Man - Harlem Hamfats 210
For The First Time - Kay Starr 168
Shorty's Got To Go - Lucky Millinder 146
Belleville Rendez-Vous (French Version) - The Triplets of Belleville 270
That's a Plenty - Firecracker Jazz Band 320
Egyptian Fantasy - Sidney Bechet 98
I Got The Sun In The Morning - Artie Shaw 138
Yes Indeed - Dick Haymes With Harry James & His Orchestra 158
Massachusetts - Gene Krupa 159
Honeysuckle Rose - WNEW broadcast, NYC, May 31, 1947 198
Our Love Was Meant To Be - Count Basie 163
I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me - Boyd Raeburn 171
As Long As I Live - Jonathan Stout And His Campus Five 159

today's collected short ramblings

2008-11-07T18:33:00.002+03:30

08:27 Testing? -from phone
08:33 at work early, playing with porting from twitter to the blog...
08:36 it occurs to me... i started tntech more than 10 years ago. that means more than ten years of process names, status updates, etc.
09:15 one more test post...

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

~~

edit: ok, it works, yay. now switching post time to late evening. not sure how much i'll use this, but i have a twitter account i never really use for anything, so why not?

VICTORY!

2008-11-05T07:32:00.001+03:30

11 o'clock on the dot, and CNN, Fox, and the Daily Show have all called it. looks like i get to go to bed earlier than predicted!

(2000 made me wary about going to bed early on election night... but it looks good, it really really does.)

watching the polls roll in...

2008-11-05T06:18:00.003+03:30

virginia's at 50-49 for obama right now. a couple likely republican districts aren't reporting yet, but fairfax county's only at 35% reporting.

it's not looking like it's going to matter in the big scheme of things -- hopefully the big scheme's not even close. but i'm really enjoying watching from a state that's up for grabs!

i voted!

2008-11-04T18:08:00.004+03:30

i was going to get to tell a tale of slogging a mile and a half each way in the rain for the sake of exercising my right, but jesse happened to get off work early and loaned me his car. (he's still registered in california, so he voted absentee weeks ago.)

i took a photo when i got there. but (a) i don't have an SD card reader handy at the moment, and (b) the line of umbrellas outside in no way captures it -- inside, every bit of hallway in the little elementary school assigned as my polling location was lined up, complete with switchbacks in the final stretch through the cafeteria. two hours. there's a certain splendor in people being willing to hang out that long without even a roller coaster ride at the end, just a paper and a felt-tip marking pen. except for a little disgruntlement over the P-Z line running significantly faster than the others (fastest poll worker? dearth of smiths and thomases and williamses in the neighborhood? who knows...), people were incredibly cheerful over the whole thing, giving big rounds of applause whenever a first-time voter was announced.

yay for being in a swing state where nobody really knows how it's going to turn out. hoping to find someplace fun to watch the returns come in this evening...

and i'd like to make a big shout-out to the people working at the polls all day. my boss is among them, and he told us what a long day he's in for -- 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., plus however long it takes to get through the people lined up at 7.

i got up earlier than usual and didn't get my habitual snooze on the bus, so i may need the free starbucks before the day's out. happy election day, everybody!

how far?

2008-11-03T01:51:00.006+03:30

it's been a quiet weekend. no halloween craziness here. not needing a costume at all made me sort of miss my old office, with the big group costumes and associated hijinx; i need to call and get the rundown on what went on this year.

i put an odometer on the bike. it's starting to become obvious how bicycling folks turn into gear junkies. thus far, it's all simple, easy stuff (headlight, tail light, odometer)... but now i really want a rack to make hauling groceries easier.

if i got the wheel size in there right (i think i did!), i put about 14 miles on it this weekend. i made a google map of today's running around, just to see if my distance is roughly right. it is! because the big red loop is somehow oddly satisfying, i present:

View Larger Map

a few errands, and i found my polling place for tuesday, but mostly i was just enjoying what's maybe the last of the warm days. no great distance, but it's more than i used to ride. speaking of weather... i heard tom friedman in an interview talking about how maybe "global weirding" is a more obvious term/effect than global warming. i'll believe it here. i bought a winter coat thursday evening. needed it friday morning -- there was frost. saturday, it hit 70 degrees outside.

treasure hunting

2008-10-31T17:30:00.002+03:30

a few weeks back, my friend brad asked about a tune that wasn't quite "flying home". all the local swing DJs knew we'd heard what he was humming, but we didn't know the title.

after a lot of listening to samples (and consequently spending all my emusic downloads for the month on things that weren't it but were cool) because i'm too stubborn to just ask the swing djs discussion board, i've got it.

it's (trumpet fanfare) "flying home no. 2". despite the less-than-thrilling moniker, it's a pretty interesting little story. when lionel hampton put together his band, he wanted arnett cobb to play tenor sax for him. arnett cobb had another good gig going, so he didn't join up. instead, hampton got illinois jacquet -- then just a teenager -- to join up on condition that he switch from alto to tenor and "play like cobb". the way jacquet wailed and honked on his improvised solo when they recorded "flying home" in 1942 was so wildly popular that almost every sax player since has played it like jacquet -- it's become a nearly inherent part of the tune, which is highly unusual for a jazz solo. when arnett cobb DID decide to join the band later in 1942, he learned the jacquet way of playing "flying home"... but he also reworked the solo his way, and the band recorded it as "flying home no. 2" in 1944, shortly after the recording strike ended.

(all info taken from the internet, mostly things that pop up when you search for "flying home no. 2" plus "cobb", so no guarantees! found this in my unfinished draft posts from last weekend...)

mornings

2008-10-27T16:53:00.003+03:30

at some point on the bus on the way here this morning, i started giggling over the realization of exactly how horrified the junior high-age me (the one who could spend an hour trying to hairspray my way into compliance with acceptable early 90s curling-ironed coiffure, usually unsuccessfully) would be with my current morning routine.

ok, so i usually brush my hair before heading out the door. but when one is trying to recover from a decade of chronic tardiness and dealing with a bus that waits for no one, sometimes the cosmetic stuff slips. like today. if the watch hits 7 a.m., shoes go on, ready or not, here i come.

(i do keep a gym bag at work with all the necessary grooming stuff, and i can usually duck into the bathroom before anybody sees my just-rolled-out-of-bed look. but me, the 13-yr-old version, would still be completely mortified.)

DJ!

2008-10-24T13:42:00.006+03:30

it's been a good week for dancing... jammin' on the james up in richmond over the weekend, then rumba monday night and the fred on wednesday. wednesday night, i was in the mood to try out some music i hadn't played for a crowd before. there'd just been a beginner bal class, people seemed to be willing to dance faster than usual, and the kind of chunky swing and trad jazz that i'm partial to was working... all in all, it led to the best overlap of DJing for the floor and DJing for me that i've gotten to do in a long time -- none of the clearing the floor with something i wanted to hear and then trying to woo them back with a scene favorite. super fun, and it's been inspiring me to hunt down more interesting tracks for next week. here's the setlist (numbers on the end = tempos in beats per minute):

Swingin' On Nothing - Bob Crosby 128
Sunday - Kay Starr 155
Tap Room Swing - Adrian Rollini 179
It Dont Mean A Thing - Duke Ellington 178
My Blue Heaven - Jimmie Lunceford 172
Take It Easy Greasy No. 2 - Lil Johnson 139
All The Cats Join In - Billy Butterfield And His Orchestra 156
A Study In Brown - Bunny Berigan 198
In The Mood - Oscar Aleman 175
A String Of Pearls - Benny Goodman 180
Are You Jumpin' Jack? - Glenn Miller and his Orchestra 196
Tuxedo Junction - The International Sweethearts Of Rhythm 143
Miser's Serenade - Chris Connor 136
Savoy Blues - The Wolverines Jazz Band Of Bern 138
Nature Boy - Johnny Hartman 145
Sugarfoot Stomp - Harry James 165
The Donkey Serenade - Artie Shaw 147
Solid as a Rock - Count Basie 136
Swing, Brother, Swing - Billie Holiday 151
New Orleans Bump - Jelly Roll Morton 120
Salty Dog - Lizzie Miles with Sharkey & His Kings Of Dixieland 194
Stealin' Apples - Fletcher Henderson 174
All Of Me - Della Reese 160
Hard Hearted Hannah - Ray McKinley 110
Cajun Romp - Wingy Manone And Dixieland Jazztette 139
It Had To Be You - Adrian Rollini 175
Hallelujah Joe Ain't Preachin' No More - Harlem Hamfats 166
Ball Of Fire - Gene Krupa 189
Big John's Special - Mills Blue Rhythm Band 202
The Mooche - Johnny Otis 122
Carioca - Artie Shaw 220
Riff Staccato - Duke Ellington 140
My Buddy - Lionel Hampton 186
Them There Eyes - Roy Milton 146
Douce Ambiance - Robert Bell 170
Let's Misbehave - Boilermaker Jazz Band 198

totally unsolicited endorsement - messagesling

2008-10-15T22:16:00.005+03:30

i've been running my voicemail service on my cell phone to messagesling.com for about a month now.

and i just wanted to say... for a chronic phone-forgetter like me, it's fan-freakin'-tastic. on the phone itself, i get a text message to notify me of new voicemail, and i can call to retrieve it... but it ALSO gets delivered to my e-mail account as an mp3, so on days when i forgot to bring my cell phone along to the office, i still get all the stuff worth leaving a message over. especially critical when my decisions about evening plans hinge on other people's logistics.

days like today. i seriously need to find an a different alarm clock and move my cell phone charger so it never has to leave my backpack at night.

(this blog needs a new name. i'm still dancing regularly if more locally, and tonight's contingent plan is actually the second week dancing at victor's new venue, but i'm a total flop at staying on topic.)

"liveblogging" the debate...

2008-10-08T06:53:00.003+03:30

i was going to watch tonight's presidential debate live.

then i got home from work, saw jesse was still asleep, and decided that curling up for a nap sounded like a good idea.

we overslept. it's almost 11:30, and i'm just now starting the debate. oops.

somehow, using google chat to watch with friends just isn't quite as much fun when they all saw it two hours ago...

shrunk world

2008-10-05T21:47:00.004+03:30

i finally went back and faced the mechanic yesterday. they hadn't called me back as promised with the "low" estimate for replacing the engine in my car, and i hadn't called them back since stalling at least until mom had time to mail me the title felt like a good idea. (i got this car by telling my dad how much i was willing to spend for a car and asking him to find me something relatively reliable. and it worked, at least for several years! so the car was mine, but the title was still in manchester.)

$2,500. nope. nicely, though, they're ok with my leaving the car there until i can figure out what to do with it. donate it? (i'm not sure my income bracket makes a tax write-off worthwhile, but the warm fuzzies would be nice...) sell it to a scrap dealer? put it up on craigslist and see if i can get anyone to offer anything for it? haul it up here and see if jesse's friend weaver agrees that the current engine is really, truly dead? (weaver, by the way, is helping jesse put a new radiator in his car. weaver gets kudos for being nice.)

i might look for a used car once i get health insurance and feel a little more comfortable cutting deep into savings. i'm really uncomfortable with debt... i like to keep my finances simple. income less than or equal to spending.

in the meantime, though, the bus.

the bus actually isn't so bad. i've got the commute to work figured out so that it's actually less of a pain than before... i get there early, i can sleep most of the way. evenings are less reliable, but again i can sleep or read or do whatever. mostly, it's just the extracurriculars that are difficult. wanting to stay out late to dance or go to a club meeting or whatever.

i'm having to ask for a lot of help. this week, i'm supposed to be DJing a dance on monday in virginia beach, teaching on wednesday in norfolk, and DJing again in williamsburg on thursday. that's three different rides.

on the one hand, i'd like to stick with public transit, even once i can afford to do otherwise again. it's one of those things where more people using it makes it possible to finance improvements to the system, and i feel like i should put my money where my mouth is. and i CAN largely find an adequate amount of personal freedom within the strictures of living by bus schedule.

on the other, i'm scared of turning into a mooche. i offer gas money, but still.

the world feels a lot more spread out when you're forced to go slower. on weekends, i've been using my feet or the bicycle for anything under about five miles. there's a lot in that range... still, simply going to walgreens, picking out a route that won't involve encountering heavy traffic, becomes a bit of an adventure.

my horizons are shrinking. i can't just casually run up to costco in newport news to grab a gallon of milk, or over to a friend's house 15 miles away to practice dance for an hour. taking objects along requires more consideration, too -- i find myself avoiding groceries that contain unnecessary amounts of water, because they'll make my backpack heavier. longer travel depends more heavily on whether anyone else is going that way or if i can justify buying a plane ticket.

but there's richness in getting to know what's around me. i went to the hampton museum of history for museum day last weekend. it's been 400 years since the english settled here, and there were kecoughtan indians before that. i found a WPA Guide to Virginia that includes information about what it was like here back in 1939... i like superimposing, imagining the past form of places as i wander around.

interacting more with strangers is kinda neat, too -- in a car, you're isolated from the world. the bus, if it gets stuck in traffic, people start trading stories. i'm getting to know the people who regularly travel the same directions i do, if not by name, at least by face... somehow, having a few people who smile at you in recognition every morning helps a lot, makes it feel safer, gives you someone to share the mirth with when something unusual does happen.

but anyway. i should get my bicycle out before the sun sets!

i don't live in a county anymore

2008-09-25T17:36:00.003+03:30

virginia is weird. i'd idly thought it was a little strange that up to now, even registering to vote and getting my virginia state driver's license (which was finally necessitated not by driving needs but by the desire to get a norfolk library card), i hadn't had to put down a "county of residence" anywhere... but when some odd-looking data yesterday led to trying to look up what county williamsburg is in, i still wasn't expecting the answer to be "none!"

(for reference, my hometown, manchester, has a hybrid school system in which those who live in town go to city schools through 9th grade, at which time they're merged with the county kids, who've already been at the high school for a year... actually, i'm not so sure that i should be pointing fingers at places that choose to have one local government per chunk of land as weird!)

museums!

2008-09-24T18:51:00.005+03:30

just found out - saturday is museum day! smithsonian magazine has a downloadable card good for free admission at a whole bunch of neat places all over the country. and a fairly large number of the participating virginia museums are within reach of the hampton roads transit system. yay free entertainment!

(thanks to lifehacker for letting me know...)

commonplace?

2008-09-23T16:53:00.005+03:30

i've been reading the paper newspaper a bit at work... it gets delivered to the office, and it's good for keeping up with local agency information that ought to find its way into our database. one thing that strikes me as kinda cool about the virginian pilot is that they're totally unintimidated by pointing their readers to the web... and if it's a long URL, they just send everybody to a tinyurl. i haven't exposed myself to real print media on a regular basis in years. is this the standard now? or are they just that smart?

(they also tend to use google maps with pinpoint locations in their online edition. i'm a little more ambivalent about that... not so sure i want to know exactly how close to my place last night's robbery was...)

update: wal-mart and bicycles

2008-09-13T23:34:00.004+04:30

i bicycled to wal-mart to buy a bicycle lock. success.

they didn't let me take my bike into the store. however, the greeter was willing to watch the bike and pointed out a relatively inconspicuous area to stow it. having paid a grand total of about $15 for this bike -- a 70s schwinn world tourist, more or less a slightly more banged up version of this -- that's no problem. i love my bike, but it's not much of a looker. no need to strip to protest its right to come inside.

i always thought the traffic around here was too scary to ride in, but after a few minutes of heart-pumping adrenaline over the audacity of claiming my VERY OWN QUARTER OF A LANE, i got over it and enjoyed the ride.

interwebs!

2008-09-13T21:24:00.006+04:30

now at home. cox cable finally sent out a technician who diagnosed that we'd been accidentally disconnected when they hooked up somebody else in the neighborhood. yay rah.

jesse's car is back in commission, too. so transportation issues involved in participating in a bit of dirt cheap blues tonight are largely solved. i asked google maps for public transit directions for getting to beach-side virginia beach... it said i could get there on monday at 9 a.m.! i'm estimating it's actually closer to 3 hours to get there on weekend schedule, but that was amusing.

when i asked my friend kristin (who had to cut off the conversation to head out for a triathlon -- go matt and kristin!) whether she figured wal-mart would let me bring my bicycle inside long enough to shop for a bike lock (my old one rusted out), she sent me this story. tempted to try it anyway...

kait finds her hot-button issue

2008-09-09T20:55:00.003+04:30

(i need a real blog update with all kinds of recent adventures, but internet at home's been down. and my car is dead. life's been interesting, to say the least... but more on that when the internet goes up at home... this is an official part-of-my-lunch-break-sized post.)

it's no secret that while i'm not exactly a highly political creature, i'm also not exactly an undecided voter. i'm also not generally a one-issue voter. but here's one that's really not much of an issue in the real world presidential election politics, but that made my eyebrows go way, way up.

seriously folks. you just don't mess with the librarians. even thinking about censoring books is not really funny. even in a town smaller than my hometown. dunno that the mccain/palin fan base would agree with me on this one, but i'd like some better explanation of what was going on...

thanks to dennis, who shared a blog pointing to this snopes article verifying the authenticity of a letter from a wasilla resident... which led, in turn, to a google search for palin + library.

hurricanes and widgets and browsers, oh my

2008-09-03T18:47:00.010+04:30

to your right and down, i added a nifty hurricane-tracking widget to the page. this link came out at work, where we're working on making sure we're prepared, just in case anything hits virginia... yes, mom, at this office, i'll probably hear about it if i need to evacuate, even if you don't e-mail me. probably not any faster, but you do have backup if the internet goes down!

the widget seems not to be working yet in chrome, google's new browser. but the browser's pretty. in a little bit of casual, not-particularly-challenging browsing, i can't tell much difference from firefox, but pulling tabs off to independence and regrouping them amuses me far more than it ought to.

*three minutes later* um, the widget does work in chrome now. and it looks like it's going to be a rainy, rainy weekend. who knows...

really tired rambling

2008-08-26T05:57:00.008+04:30

ilhc was intense. maybe more on that when i'm not so tired that my speech is slurry. illustrations necessary.

frustrated and ready to quit forever sunday morning became stopping by skye and marie's class became remembering that dancing's really freakin' fun and tying on my dance shoes. me = a wee bit moody, i guess.

i had to be dragged away from the soul party sunday evening. that's a new one.

sleeping on the way home didn't happen. oops. abi kept jesse awake enough to drive, as intended, but i wound up engaged by the conversation too. much good dance geekage.

the person who's charged with helping me figure out what i'm doing was back from vacation today. yay guidance! and yay, she's really cool!

after work, a police officer was hovering around my car when i got to it. window smashed, gps gone, mp3 player too crappy to bother with, thankful my computer wasn't in there. too tired to deal. i'll clean up the glass tomorrow. jesse helped saran wrap it for now since it's supposed to rain. made it home without getting lost, hurrah.

new fountain pen in the mail!

i need sleep.

public transportation coward

2008-08-21T05:46:00.005+04:30

i really want to try out using public transportation to get to work tomorrow. it being thursday, there's dancing in norfolk, so i can get a ride home.

alas, though, i think i'd better take another week to establish myself as a "good employee" before i risk coming in late and maybe ask around a little about how well the HRT takes traffic into account on its bus schedule... especially for buses crossing the hampton roads bridge-tunnel. anyone wandering by happen to know?

this evening, i went for a run around downtown norfolk instead of fighting traffic after work. it's a nice area to run in, except that the crosswalk signals feel like they take forever when you're trying not to completely lose pace. the exertion felt great, especially since i'm in the midst of what i like to call new-job-mono -- the first summer after i graduated college, i was convinced that i had mononucleosis until i caught onto the pattern that frequent new temp assignments were closely correlated to the exhaustion... my brain tends to overload easily in new environments, but tonight i actually feel appropriately physically drained to go with it. think i'll go sleep now...

matchairi genmaicha

2008-08-15T21:26:00.004+04:30

or "brown rice green tea with added powdered tea."

on the way back from the interview in norfolk yesterday, i stopped to check out a couple bookstores way down granby street. there was a little japanese grocery beside one of them; instead of books, i wound up with tea. (and, incidentally, some really yummy chewy ginger candies!)

(one of the bookstores is pretty promising for supplying the cheap used novel habit... even if i've recently rediscovered the possibility of actually checking things out from the library and honestly probably don't need to buy any more books until i've read some of the ones i have. i still miss mckay's, though.)

trying out the tea this morning, i got curious over why this green tea's actually green whereas most of the green tea i buy is more the brown variety. wikipedia to the rescue! japanese green teas in general and genmaicha in specific. turns out that what i have is mostly the same stuff as the canister of "green tea with toasted rice" i had from republic of tea... but with a little matcha--the powdered, bright green green tea used for tea ceremonies and for the characteristic "green tea flavor" on things like ice cream that are not tea--mixed in for flavor and color. i like.

the label on the tea i bought is mostly in japanese (i bought it based on the illustration on the front of the bag), so i'm a little extra-happy that wikipedia had the characters, too. 茶, cha, tea, is familiar hanzi from chinese - i know a very few of 'em!

job!

2008-08-15T02:52:00.006+04:30

as of monday, i'm the database manager for a non-profit in downtown norfolk called the planning council.

i have absolutely no clue how to manage a database. and i told them that. apparently they want me anyway. you can check out the database that will be mine here.

it's temp-to-hire via officeteam, and it pays a fair chunk less than i'm used to making. but the office atmosphere rocks; they seem super-nice. the right team means a lot more to me than the price. and it's an unambiguously save-the-world sort of place, which really appeals to my mostly-dormant-but-not-at-all-dead inner idealist. plus, i get to see how non-profits work and learn new stuff. yay!

there and back again

2008-08-12T02:00:00.004+04:30

the last couple weeks -- connecticut, d.c., tennessee, and home again.

actually, california started the whole thing. see, the boyfriend went to california for a week and a half to visit family and friends and to go to camp hollywood. when the choices are between going someplace fun and staying home with cute and cuddly boyfriend, the comparison is "relatively expensive and yay" vs. "free and yay".... there's a certain amount of inertia to overcome. when the second option becomes stay home by myself, though, financial sense tends to get lost.

so, wanna go to connecticut this weekend for ctlx? absolutely!

getting there was a lot of the fun. one of our local dancers is also a pilot. i'd flown in small airplanes before, but had never been asked to help with the flying.

i got to steer the airplane!

i realize this was probably something akin to letting a four-year-old "steer" a car, but i got every bit as giddy as a four-year-old over it. unfortunately, we quickly discovered that i can either turn the plane or keep the pitch steady... both at once? forget about it!

somehow, in all the excitement about getting there, i never quite stopped to consider where we were going. so new haven -- and YALE! -- were an excellent surprise. the exchange itself was a bit to the blues/groovy swing/soul end of the spectrum for my taste, but the DJs were top-notch in that field, and thus it was an excellent opportunity to work on re-expanding my range. really, though, on this one, the conversations over meals and on the edges of the dancefloor and while just hanging out with our host, jason, were so much fun that they really outshone the dancing for me. conversations that veer all over the place, from mri machines to favorite new york times reporters to bach, make me really happy.

the tuesday night after we got back, jesse came back temporarily -- he had to check in at work on wednesday, so his time in california got a little segmented. somehow, he wound up flying into reagan but had left his car at dulles... excuse enough for me (and shauna!) to go dance at the jam cellar. amazingly, the plan worked -- jesse took the subway to the jam cellar, we all danced, then we took him to dulles before heading home. the dancing was awesome, but it was soooo hot. i'm learning - charming historic buildings go with charming historic air conditioners. i soaked through several shirts, sat out a bit, and was still too woozy at the end of the night to drive before i'd drunk quite a bit of water to rehydrate.

then came lake week. again with the impulsive travel plans. on tuesday, before heading to d.c., i'd realized that (a) several of my good friends who i don't get to see often enough were converging on tim's ford lake in tennessee, and (b) if i go to a temp agency and beg for work as planned, i may not get any vacation for a long, long time and will miss my parents in manchester, about an hour from the lake, i found a super-cheap ticket to nashville (yay priceline!) for thursday.

i didn't think this through before dropping jesse off at the airport on wednesday, but since he was gone (second round) wednesday-wednesday and i was gone thursday-thursday, it made the most sense for me to park my car and let him use it when he got back late wednesday night. this resulted in mailing my spare car key across the country... another plan that really shouldn't work, given my entropy field, but did.

my dad worked his schedule around so he could come to nashville to get me and drop me off at the airport, and they loaned me a car for getting across to winchester -- again with the being a lucky, spoiled brat. i had a really relaxing day at home hanging out with the parents, and then drove out to the lake thursday evening for four days of water skiing, over-indulging in really good food and wine and gabe's home-brewed beer, catching up, playing cards (i'm no card-shark and have to have the rules re-explained to me every time, but they even dragged me in for a couple games), dunking each other in the lake, getting the yoga fans to explain how to stretch the muscles i'd abused during inept attempts at skiing, and other such general merriment. very good times. then back to the parents' for a couple more days, then home.

this morning i've got an interview with OfficeTeam, my old favorite temp company (they got me the job at EODT!). with any luck, the days of impulsive adventuring all over the place will be shut down for a while... i'll miss it, but i need to get back to work.

upcoming dance weekends? the international lindy hop championships in d.c. are for sure. baljam in philly, maybe. dirt cheap blues is in virginia beach, so i can hardly avoid it.

flashback to may 2007

2008-07-29T19:59:00.007+04:30

once upon a time, jesse took me to the five loaves cafe in charleston to see a really fun little band called the v tones. it was one of his last nights in town before he moved to albany, and we had a blast.

today, biffle over at baxter sez put up a post about a band he's playing with that sounds like my sort of thing. i took it as an opportunity to check and see if other towns uphold the knoxville rule that most of the super-fun bands in town overlap by at least one player. (it was always entertaining to watch, for example, jon whitlock, christabel's drummer, on local music fest nights... i can remember one where he had three different gigs with three different bands.) as a matter of fact, biffle's violinist IS listed as one of the frequent guest v tones. certainly no proof, but the evidence continues to mount. and i'm sending word to the charleston dancers that they may want to check these guys out.

the real shock, though, was to find myself on the v tones' myspace page! quite possibly the only video in existence of me dancing bal, and the first i've seen of jesse and me dancing together where we're clearly visible. good times, and i can remember being totally terrified that we were going to kick one of the little kids who were roaming around -- later that evening, i danced with a couple of the little girls, too. so much fun.

Find more videos like this on The V Tones

the personals

2008-07-24T08:51:00.002+04:30

if you happen to be sort of beginnerish at mandarin chinese but wanting to practice listening, you can't do much better than the movie the personals (征婚启事). in it, a young doctor places a personal ad looking for a husband, and the bulk of the movie consists of the meetings that result -- lots and lots of "getting to know you" speech, precisely the topics where i have some vocabulary.

the boyfriend is incommunicado for work from work from yesterday morning to tomorrow evening, so i've been spending more quality time than usual with my netflix queue. this one was actually up on their instant viewing list -- since i have no tv and watch everything on my laptop anyhow, that's a super-nice feature.

knols?

2008-07-24T06:06:00.006+04:30

google knol, apparently designed to compete with wikipedia, is open for business. i just found out, haven't explored much yet, and it seems mostly empty thus far... but it seems an awful lot like everything2, concept-wise. guess it's time to start analyzing what shape i want the public's sum knowledge to take... any opinions on the strengths/weaknesses of the different models?

**

a few minutes later... actually, i don't think knol's likely to compete with wikipedia at all... more complement. with wikipedia, you wind up with the consensus on anything or everything -- the schoolbook version. knol, i imagine evolving into the sort of place where you go read the original texts, listen to the voices behind them, get some perspective via the ratings and credentials, make up your own mind. not good for getting acquainted with a subject quickly, but rich. my favorite history class in college had two textbooks... one was a standard textbook, and the other had sets of three essays on various problems in american history. it gave us a basic structure, but also a way to go in depth in places where there were snarls and where things really weren't that simple. history's a lot more fun when it's about finding the story rather than memorizing dates. i hope that kind of system is what evolves out of having both, rather than one website killing the other.

tea

2008-07-23T23:41:00.005+04:30

the job offers still aren't exactly knocking down my door, so i'm still at home a lot... which means i drink a lot of hot tea at home.

a couple months ago, my mom gave me a french press. she'd previously given me quite a bit of loose tea. the combo is lovely -- i can brew about two big cups of tea to just the strength i like, then smash down the leaves... the second cup stays at that strength while i drink the first, and it's easy to clean (those would be my main problems with teapots).

only now, i'm running out of oolong (my favorite!) and darjeeling, and i haven't found anyplace local that sells loose tea. there's no earthfare; i checked trader joe's -- lots of good deals on coffee and beer, no specialty teas... plenty of tearooms in the further reaches of hampton roads, but past experience says those only very rarely have more than a casual relation to actual tea. any other suggestions? otherwise, methinks i may put in an order at stash tea...

*update* a closer look at farm fresh revealed some bulk tea hiding in amongst the coffee... but no oolong, just english and irish breakfast representing the relatively plain black teas. so i won't go without, but ordering directly from stash is still looking like a pretty good option...

not even raining yet

2008-07-20T15:02:00.004+04:30

now that i'm in hurricane territory, my mom sends me news stories any time anything's remotely possibly heading for virginia. which is probably good, since mom alert does tend to come in via channels (e-mail and phone) that get my attention a lot faster than anything in the media.

the current threat, though, tropical storm cristobal... every single time, never fails, the shape of the word is close enough that my head trips on it and gets a little disappointed when the context makes it clear that it's not a story about local knoxville dancer favorites christabel and the jons. i miss them. however, checking the calendar, they'll be in richmond for a show august 15!

bearcats

2008-07-17T23:53:00.003+04:30

i was reading this article about china's reaction to the movie kung fu panda. it mentions the movie's title in chinese, 功夫熊猫... i was curious how the word for panda was pronounced, so i ran it through adsotrans - xiongmao. "mao" as in cat? check. and it turns out the first character means "bear." so, literally, we have bearcat.

which, as it happens, connects pandas to the blues, for me anyhow. right after big mama thornton's song "hound dog" came out in 1953 (that's right, elvis's was a remake), rufus thomas came back with "bear cat" to approximately the same tune, complete with campy fun sound effects. it was sun records' first hit, and they later lost the lawsuit for plagiarizing. you can hear a sample here.

and so it goes, now you see why my mental pandas are no longer lounging about, munching on bamboo. nor are they waging gravity-defying battles against power hungry ex-con snow leopards. nope, they're scratchin' at the door, purring, and otherwise trying to win their way back in under false pretenses...

another panda-related tidbit i didn't know: firefox is another name for a red panda.

pushups!

2008-07-16T06:49:00.003+04:30

the lifehacker blog put up a link today to a hundred pushup training program, designed to help even wimps like me work up to 100 consecutive pushups in six weeks. being mostly nocturnal for the moment is wreaking havoc on my running ambitions (going and running laps around the interior of wal-mart's gotten a little tempting...), but i can work on this, even in the middle of the night.

initial test, i can do 17 pushups with sorta ok form -- i stay flat, but i'm aware that the pushups aren't as deep as they ought to be to qualify for actual good form. six weeks, here we go.

reload... reload...

2008-07-15T22:25:00.002+04:30

the first act of dr. horrible's sing-along blog, joss whedon's latest project, is supposedly up today... but fan enthusiasm has apparently crashed the website. meanwhile, this site has the teaser. doogie howser vs. captain mal... it's gotta be fun, right?

in other news, i'm awake in the middle of the day because i finally got a call from a company. going in for some talking and some skills testing tomorrow...

nocturnal

2008-07-12T07:22:00.004+04:30

i wasn't exactly meaning to sync up to jesse's current night schedule (his shifts rotate from week to week), but i slept poorly last night and went back to bed for a "nap" this morning when he got home... and woke up around 6 p.m.

and here i am, 11 o'clock at night, not calming down for bed, but digesting "lunch" and trying to organize myself for the time until morning. it's a bit easier to focus with this schedule -- back in school, i often ducked out of the evening and early night for a nap so i could wake up and study from 4 a.m. on, when nobody was interested in socializing. hopefully that'll mean great things for el jobhunt this week.

but i think i miss the sunlight already.

fun with collegiate shag

2008-07-11T07:27:00.004+04:30

i don't think anyone here had even tried to lead collegiate shag when dancing with me prior to last weekend.

and now... tah-dah! we have not one, not two, but FOUR different basic steps present in the hampton roads area!

those of us who went down to sugar foot stomp last weekend learned the two basics that joel and alison presented:

joel and alison single shag = quick-quick-slow, quick-quick slow (or L-R-L-L, R-L-R-R lead footwork, if you will.)

joel and alison double shag = slow-slow-quick-quick (L-L-R-R-L-R)

tuesday, i went down to the virginia beach lesson, where they were teaching a single shag, only starting on the slows... not much different, it just changes where the ones are.

jeff and amanda single shag = slow-quick-quick, slow-quick-quick (L-L-R-L, R-R-L-R)

in williamsburg last night, they had a slightly different double shag... the footwork was the same as joel and alison's, but started on 8 instead of one.

mike double shag = ow-slow-quick-quick-sl (L-R-R-L-R-L)

so i'm totally pumped to have so much shagging, but it's a little crazy. today i did some reading up on the dancehistory.org board. our first three basics, anyway, are all pretty common. among the cool things i found out, shag goes back further in the south than it does in the northeast, probably in the form of single shag. one of the earliest references that peter loggins cites is actually from virginia beach, so i might be in the right place to do some local research this time. during WWII, southerners were exposed to double shag and referred to it as "yankee shag". and yes, there were all kinds of local variations, but most people didn't switch basics constantly mid-song... which makes me feel a little better, since i was having a really hard time following people who switched back and forth at sugar foot stomp!

also, i really want to try triple shag -- slow-slow-quick-quick-slow, slow-slow-quick-quick-slow -- but i think it might make my brain explode.

and, um, for all of you who were thoroughly bored reading about shag... have some to watch?