Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Through the Rabbit Hole or Something

So apparently I walked into the craft store after lunch and fell through the rabbit hole.

I'm standing there perusing the selection of tote bags and around the corner I hear two women like, GETTING INTO IT over amber and crystals and spirituality, and which hand receives spirituality or something. We are talking palpable tension over the disagreement here, like the kind of tension that would cause two drunk people to start throwing punches but in two sober spiritualitycrafty women means they are just thinking supersnide thoughts about each other with the fire of a thousand suns?

And then I'm trying to pay and leave but the cashier and the customer in front of me are busy rehashing a recent auto accident that the customer was in, and then, what seemed to be every auto accident either of them or their known acquaintances had ever experienced including permutations of insurance and hit-and-runs and court dates and HANGING THE PERSON WHO HIT HER. Figuratively, of course. I think.

I just wanted a plain tote bag to sew for my mommy :-(

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Practice Makes Better and Whatnot

I have been lucky in my belly dance experiences to have some pretty great teachers.  The common traits of these great teachers are how well they explain movements, how they emphasize posture and dancing to protect your body from injury, how supportive they are, and of course what beautiful dancers each is on her/his own.  To this end, they've also all related how much they practiced and drilled when learning belly dance themselves, to get moves built into muscle memory. 

The first couple of years of my belly dance classes, I had enough musical ability and memory for choreography that with average practice I could perform routines adequately with my face and feet pointed in the right direction.  Which is fine when I perform in public once or twice a year.  But, now that I'm trying to push myself to perform more often and as a soloist, that's not enough.  So I've committed myself to daily drills even if it's just for 20 minutes.  And OF COURSE my hip shimmy is feeling less brokedown and busted.  My great teachers are all annoyingly right, it seems :-)

In other news, the dating internetz is an even more terrifying place than the tiny corner of it that I've experienced.  Check out Date Wrecks but not for at least 30 minutes after a meal, unless you want to see that meal again. 

In crappy news, at some point probably a month or so ago I injured myself and seem to have gotten myself a good case of tennis elbow.  Which sucks ass because I want to be continuing my cardioweights routine AND practice poi spinning but I am afraid to make the injury even worse.  I found some stretching exercises for it online a couple of days ago that seem to be helping so far.

Jeannette Daft's Tim Burton hafla went really well and now I am buckling down to knocking out a choreography for fundraisers hosted by Zafirah and Donna Diva at the end of the month. 

Till next time, I'll be fixing my brokedown shimmy

D