long time no DJ

oh, for back in 2010 when a month without dancing was a long, long time.

this summer, though, i don't have class on thursday nights for the first time in a good long while.  during my little break between semesters, i took a quick trip up to nyc and dc, went dancing one night in each to try to re-energize myself for it all.  i'm out of shape and my lindy's kinda shabby but a night dancing to baby soda jazz band in a williamsburg bar was enough to bring back the love.  so four times dancing in three weeks or so now, building it back up.

my last few dj sets had been so far apart that i'd repeatedly forgotten that my external sound card was having problems... FINALLY got a new one, so Thursday night was my first *real*, not desperately-throwing-together-a-playlist-from-my-most-comfortable-stuff set in probably a couple years.

i got there without really checking the schedule, and concurrent blues and west coast classes were running instead of lindy or charleston. so the set is still a bit making do, trying to keep the tempos way, way down and the music a little further out of the classic swing than i prefer.  the floor's a little beginner-heavy anyway these days, so it may be the way of things even when they shift back toward teaching lindy hop.

without further ado:
Go Down, Sunshine - Odetta 115
Deacon's Hop -  Ronnie Magri & His New Orleans Jazz Band 130
Let The Good Times Roll - Ray Charles & The Count Basie Orchestra 124
 Times A-Wastin - Duke Ellington 113
 Lawdy Miss Clawdy - Little Richard 124
 Cambridge Blues - Johnny Hodges 145
 Are You All Reet? - Cab Calloway 147
 Mean Old World - Sam Cooke 104
 The Mooche - Johnny Otis 123
 Southern Sunset - Sidney Bechet 116
 Ballin' The Jack - Kid Ory's Creole Jazz Band 146
 Moten Swing - Kansas City Soundtrack 156
 Let It Roll Blue - Vipers of Brooklyn 111
 Was That The Human Thing To Do? (feat. Jeff Healey's Jazz Wizards) - Terra Hazelton 147
 Up Above My Head I Hear Music In The Air - Sister Rosetta Tharpe 161
 Happy Weekday Blues -Kermit Ruffins 160
 What a Wonderful World - Billy Collins' Swinginparis 115
 Bli Blip - Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra 130
 Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby - Dinah Washington 134
 The Goon Drag (Gone Wid De Goon) - Sam Price 138
 Blue Skies - Roy Milton 150
 Touch And Go - Wynona Carr 162
 Postcard - Christabel and the Jons 128
 Blues in Hoss' Flat - Count Basie 142
 Begin The Beguine - Alfredo Rey Orchestra 153
 Hit 'Em Up Style - Carolina Chocolate Drops 95

on collaboration and jazz

total rambling here, don't hold me to much, but there was an itch to talk about how relatively disparate ideas connect up in my head.  i don't know anyone playing with the same mishmash of public administration/policy classes and lindy hop background, so blog it is.

i'm not dancing much these days.  i have class on the local dance night, and by the time that gets out it's cold, i'm too tired and hungry to want to bike across town in the dark, and the local group's shifted just enough that it's not really mine right now.  doctoral program = just not up to the minimal level of involvement to make it more fun than chore.  (i'd call myself a shy extrovert, if that helps make sense of the energy balance equation... energy from being around people, but only once i've woven myself into the social fabric a bit.)  might be a while, but i imagine i'll get back to it eventually.

but i've been thinking about dancing.

and more about how dancers get an awful lot done, despite relying a lot on volunteers and flat organizational structures if any and so on.  i do understand that knoxville as it was when i was first learning lindy hop is sort of special -- so many people working with no monetary compensation, wide ownership of the community, a few key players but never the sort of centralized organizing you see most places -- and that i was a teensy bit too late to directly witness how they built that culture.  but it was up and working and amazing (and yes, i still miss it!).

and about how the improvisational elements of jazz bands and lindy hop work.  this jumped off from a comment in one of my textbooks talking about how organizations need to be able to operate to solve 21st century problems, "It could not succeed unless each of those programs supported the overall mission, much as different pieces of an orchestra combine to produce fine music--except that in the case [of complex programs], the orchestra plays without a conductor." (that's Don Kettl, by the way.)  hello, jazz.  well, yes, there are band leaders... but it still seems to me that the level of interdependence and individual player autonomy and the listening skills (even in dance we call it listening more often than watching, i think? because it's part of that back-and-forth lead-and-follow language when there's less full-out imperative, more mutual adjustment)... the skills it takes to make social dancing and improv playing work are really really connected to the stuff we talk about in completely different terms in my classes on org theory and collaboration.  even if it's a metaphorical connection and i haven't figured out AT ALL how to translate the necessary skill set back across.  just a bit of hope... humans can do amazing feats of spontaneous complex coordination and cooperation in music and dance, so why not as governments learning to face big problems?

(off-topic, but i've also been thinking about dancing because i'm playing in the school wind ensemble, BASSOON!  back in that classical setting with right answers and trying to learn to focus on coming in exactly on time... some of this is just lack of confidence from not playing for years, but i have to laugh at how strongly my follower brain really wants to work on the make-the-part-fit-with-the-others part of the puzzle instead of staying with the conductor.  i DO need both here, but there's some retraining work for appropriate relative emphasis and attention.  fun times.)

8 tracks

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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?

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

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

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!

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!

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

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

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

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

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.