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.

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.

resolution

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.

it gets better...

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

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.

monday morning

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...

klx

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.

really tired rambling

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.

there and back again

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.

my scuff muscles hurt

sugarfoot stomp was fantastic. collegiate shag--both single and double, texas tommy, peabody, flea hop, pony trot, blackbottom, charleston... i love my obscure vintage dances, and for once i got my fill. plus i got to see my old southeast crowd (and some fun non-southeasterners!), hung out in asheville, danced to crazy fun music, competed in a solo charleston comp (despite the fact that i knew i was WAY outclassed and would've almost preferred to watch from the front!), and generally had a super-great sweaty time.

i've decided to declare my dance scene as hampton roads. because i live too far away from virginia beach, none of the dancing actually goes on in hampton, and i can't seem to pronounce norfolk properly. (naw-fuhk. yeah.) people will get used to it and figure out that i'm talking about all of the above. or they won't. either way, sticking to it.

on to convincing everyone i know that they want to go to san francisco shag jam in october, so we can really get collegiate shag planted around here...

(and shoot. all dressed to go running, had picked out a brand new route from mapmyrun.com, and now it looks like a storm's moving in. grr.)

long time no post

still jobless, and the idea that "i ought to be looking for a job as first priority" has led, more or less, to a sort of procrastinating paralysis across all areas of life. one day, maybe i'll learn to do something other than play solitaire and organize my music when i have too much to do that i don't want to deal with. i hate hate HATE the application and interview process, which is why i've typically just gone into temp agencies to deal with the problem of obtaining a job. i promised my mom, though, that i'd start getting in a bit more of a hurry about the jobhunt as soon as i get back from this trip (one of the last major ones that was planned before i moved); maybe it'll help to start unfreezing other domains first.

let's see, since i logged onto blogger last... it's been philadelphia for the workshop with kevin and sharon, then d.c. for big big event, then vblx last weekend, and now knoxville to go to alice and kris's wedding (HAPPY WEDDING DAY, yay!). shannon, who's kindly hosting me, is headed out to nashville for today, so i have a bit of time here by myself.

of the recent weekends, philly was probably the best in terms of adding new dimensions to how i think about dance; kevin st. laurent and sharon davis taught a one-track workshop that became, for me, basically a day to meditate on "how the heck this stuff works." by taking the simplest stuff out of pattern, and making us really lead and follow it, they produced pretty incredible results for a group class, and made it challenging for all levels (well, i was challenged, anyway). jesse and i also shared an opportunistic last-minute half-hour private lesson with kevin on sunday while david was taking one with sharon... the thing that struck me most was how kevin was able to correct some of my connection problems without actually saying anything -- he, through his connection, could make me aware of the tension i was carrying... very cool stuff.

big big event was a very, very sweaty weekend, but wins hands-down for best dancing. friday night, solomon douglas's band was in the best form i've ever heard them -- granted, i'd only heard them at lindy focus and on cd, but they were rocking out. the hot club du jam cellar's debut was also highly entertaining -- watch out for them! ninety-plus-degree heat and classes in non-air-conditioned venues don't mix all that well, but there was plenty of good material. peabody with chad and midori and "antiquated vernacular dances" with mike and casey were enough to get me even more excited about the sugarfoot stomp weekend (coming up 4th of july!). the boilermakers and russ wilson on saturday night were also delightful.

uh oh, i need to duck into the shower if i'm going to make it to the... um, scenic outdoor location?... on time! hopefully i'll get around to more rambling before another month's gone.

roadtrip!

totally last-minute! david, jesse, and i will be hitting bal night in d.c. tonight, then driving to philly for a workshop with sharon davis and kevin st. lauren, then to nearby pottstown, pennsylvania, to dance to the boilermaker jazz band.

jesse and i survived teaching the intermediate lindy class together last night -- we're kind of a disaster since we approach dancing from such very different perspectives, but i think the final result, complete with last-minute compromises, actually went very well. so everything's sunny, and i need to pack!

scattered

until i get a chance to call and find out why our home internet's still not hooked up, here are a few things:

• CHEX was super-fun. awesome people, lovely location, excellent DJs. geoffrey was the lone knoxvillain who drove over -- still enough to make me a little homesick, and i've officially realized the shim sham's just not going to be the same without him calling it!
  
• i like living near the ocean. it's still pretty obvious who's from the landlocked state.
• this was the weekend without a hairbrush. or a wallet. or phone. i left my purse in a subway restaurant in kenly, nc. fortunately, people are super-nice. i realized my mistake two hours down the road, got david's wife heather (also our lovely hostess for the weekend!) to look up the phone number, and called -- they had the purse and returned it to me on the way back through sunday. i owe big thanks to jesse and david for letting me mooch all weekend while wallet-free.
• the count basie ghost-band's appearance in the neighborhood = good occasion for a mini-exchange up here next weekend (memorial day). come play?
• i'm closer to unpacked. the boxes never end, though.
  

DCLX to ATLX

dclx was a lot of fun. as predicted, the music was fantabulous. kathy, our host for the weekend, was great... beyond the usual sleep-space and showers, she fed us home-cooked meals, took us around to see the cherry blossoms and monuments, and was generally just outstandingly nice to talk to.

i quickly learned that while i may lead a bit around here, i really don't have the traffic control skills to lead on a crowded exchange floor. that's ok, it's something to work towards. the crowds weren't nearly as intimidating as they were two years ago... knowing lots of dancers from other exchanges does a lot to transform an undifferentiated mass of people who're (in my head!) too amazing to want to have anything to do with me back into the friendly, lovely people they actually are.

all the bands were excellent, but saturday late-night was when i really hit my stride and had some of my best dances for the weekend. i really, really hope the cangelosi cards get a CD out sometime soon, because i desperately want to share them with people who haven't gotten a chance to travel around as much. besides being generally fun and danceable, they do some especially exquisite trading back and forth between vocals and instruments with blends that sometimes sound like entirely new instruments... love it.

the floor sunday night was really sticky -- i hate that for the organizers, because i'm sure it wasn't when they checked it out. (having more warm bodies in the room, a recent rebuffing or lack thereof, warm temperatures, drinks being served... it can severely alter floor conditions.) it's hard not to dance when the boilermakers are playing, so i did anyway, but i wish i'd remembered sooner that i had a pair of peds in my purse for just such occasions... if suede won't slide, sometimes putting peds on over the shoes is the solution. in this case, it didn't result in super-slick, but it was enough to seriously improve my mood for the last four or five songs the boilermakers did (including the only jam i saw all weekend! dclx with all the silver shadows out of town is a little different...) and for the rest of the night. i caught a ride from dance to diner to airport with the atlanta folks for our early-morning flights... i got home around 10 a.m. and slept through most of what was left of monday.

and... tonight it's off to atlx!

DCLX!

despite a little terror about dancing in D.C. based on going to events there very early in my lindy career, the bands pulled me in this year. and now i'm pretty freaking excited about it!

why the terror? during events, anyway, it tends to be very follow-heavy, and the events are big and overwhelming... plus, it's easy to get shuffled to the side of the floor where all super-jerky-armed leads are. (i truly don't mind dancing with beginners, even get outright delighted when they're having a good time, but i found DC to have more of the painful variety than a lot of places!) plus, last time i was there, i hadn't quite learned to appreciate fast lindy yet... (average D.C. dance tempo is about 150% ours, i'd say. or it was. knoxville's sped up a little lately.) so, last time around (about 2 years ago), i spent most of my time there being too shy to ask people to dance, and having a not-so-wonderful time when i was dancing... basically, doing the slow crumple-into-heap thing that happens when a dance night goes poorly.

now, though, i solo dance or lead when i can't find a lead... and i get really excited about boilermakers and jazz vipers and cangelosi cards and gordon webster and... well, more or less everyone who's playing! whee!

and, um, i made some coffee with a french press earlier, forgot about it for about 20 minutes, and then drank it anyway... i think the caffeine's hitting my system, and i really shouldn't be attempting to write anymore because i'm getting a wee bit spastic. but yay for taking my last two vacation days, and if you're in D.C. this weekend, dance with me!!

bumper car pavilion

for fans of the d.c. lindy exchange... i'm pretty sure that the photo featured here, from 1924, is of the same bumper car pavilion where they hold dances now. the new orleans jazz vipers will be playing there friday evening this year. and yes, i'm registered to go. not 100% certain i can get there, but registered.

jetlag...

got me. i'm otherwise safely back from california, but after the overnight flight monday night, i slept from 9 p.m. until almost 9 a.m. last night -- making me late this morning and not so sure when i'm going to have time to do laundry before heading to enter the blues this weekend.

adventures were had. boyfriend's family and some of the friends were met. dancing was done.

but i'm just taking a quick break from work, so more on all that later.

highly volatile travel plans!

the california trip is off.

it went from logistical hitches making me skittish and irritable yesterday evening -- jesse didn't know how soon he could get there, which meant figuring out what to do with myself in L.A. for an indeterminate amount of time. not to mention suddenly needing lodging, since we were intending to stay at his mom's.

to worse -- he came back this afternoon with the news that he has to work monday. after scrambling around to find a workable plan, it became evident that it wasn't happening.

upsides: i still have a voucher good for a ticket to L.A. or to elsewhere. (just not for flying directly to san diego this weekend, hence unreasonably messy logistics; since it was a free ticket, i have to give 14 days notice) MLK day weekend's looking like a possibly a good time to use it to go meet the family and see the area. and i get to catch some of lindy focus and a reunion with college friends.

so the current plan: work friday and monday and keep my vacation days, dance friday night, hang with people i never get to see often enough on saturday and sunday, and head back to asheville to dance all night new year's eve. i hate to miss the last rhythmic arts festival, and i hate not getting expected time with the boyfriend, but other than that i'm pretty freakin' excited about plan b.

it's not that i have bad credit...

i just don't have any credit.

i don't like borrowing--my finances are seriously simple, and i like it that way--so i normally don't have a problem with that. but increasingly, i'm finding a few places where life's a little easier if you have a credit card. so i applied for one. denied.

for getting from los angeles to san diego for the rhythmic arts festival this weekend, life will be much easier if i can rent a car. the one time i previously rented a car, they wanted either credit card or proof that you live where you live. then, i took a copy of my lease.

now i'm on month-to-month, so i have no current lease. no big, i think, as i run out to fish a bill out of the mail.

despite having filled out the little change card a few times, my electric bill still gets addressed to "kate p mahar". not bad, but not quite. d'oh!

hope it's close enough.