Lexan, hay, rehearsals, oh and let's not forget Gaelic Storm!

Recent exploits include drilling through a 1/4 " steel plate, dealing in nuts and bolts, cutting Lexan on a saw and getting Lexan dust all in my hair and clothes (Lexan is really tough clear plastic/polycarbonate.....we LOVE Lexan! :P) , and being very possibly the most energetic person at folk dance the other night......two hours of dancing and by the end I was still bouncing with adrenaline.....throwing jumps and hops in where there were not supposed to be jumps and hops....at the very end the teacher put on the music for a really fast Israeli dance and WHAM came another adrenaline rush......about half a  dozen of us teens who had performed it last year went off doing it......good times :D

But of course I spent all day Saturday at robotics, and also Monday: when other people enjoyed their three-day weekend, I had a one-day weekend......declared Monday night after getting home from an 8-hour robotics day, "Time for a weekend!"

Came home and had to deal with hay for the goats, this involved a lot of hay getting down my back. One of the goats had got out in the day while we were away, and mum and neighbor heroically dealt with the crisis. 

Rehearsal today: I am frantically trying to balance robotics with theatre. I desperately want to be in the play, but the rehearsal dates are lining up poorly with the final few weeks of robotics.... :(  

Then we have a baby chick out in the henhouse, I was lax about egg-collection and the hens got broody. We will shortly be overflowing with baby chickens and I'll be trying to palm them off on people. 

life in the land of the mixing console

Oh, good times. Yesterday we had a splendid dance rehearsal as evidenced by the accompanying pics. Perfected some snazzy tricks. Talked music. Tried to fit all seven of us onto one tiny flattened cardboard box [very interesting]. Felicity did a nice impression of a faun. Phillip did his very best "cat hacking up a furball". Dallan managed to flip me over his back without landing us both on the ground [as I did when attempting it with the hapless Felicity last week].

After that I discussed audio; came home and meandered upstairs to my dad's stacks of speakers and other stuff and..."What's this? A mixing board?!" It's an old Fostex x-26 muli-track tape recorder but I'm pretty sure it can be rigged to be a mixing board of sorts. I spent the evening curled up on the couch with it in one hand and the manual in the other, trying to get my brain around the concepts of "AUX" and "LINE/MIC" and busses and so forth. I'M A TECHIE!!! Oh yeah. Spent a looong time in Wikipedia today trying to figure things out.

The day's score has been a hot mix of '30s French jazz/swing [Django Reinhardt's "Minor Swing" for example] which I am sifting through for the play. We decided that Beatles, happy as they are to dance to, were too much of an anachronism. This is going to be one enjoyable performance.

We have plans for some sort of duet during scene change, there's a couple of duels [we do not think too much about the fact that duels were definitely out in the '30s], there's a sketchy spy in a trenchcoat, a beautiful German spy queen [haha] as played by me, there's two happy-go-lucky good-hearted [if blundering] British lads. Oh 'tis epic. All you folks in the area, come to the performance! The 21st of November: we shall trot the boards at the Western Star Grange....

I just realized that Friday's post was my 100th....appropriately titled "The times they're gettin weird". :)

You will find a new poll in the right sidebar. Also I finally got around to doing some much-needed rearrangement and house-keeping on ole bloggie! Check out the awesomeness. Also my new playlist! Hehe, gives you a sample of what my iPod set to "Shuffle" sounds like :)

Erin go bragh

Walk away, me boys
walk away , me boys
and by morning we'll be free





Been listening to more Flogging Molly and I'm feeling pretty Irish.

I tootled around in Photoshop this afternoon and made this bit of awesomness:

It's me own lovely foot in a pointe shoe; is the tattoo not awesome? I've got only the one pen that works on skin and it had an incident after going through the laundry the other day.

You wouldn't believe how hard it is to take a photo of your own foot that's not terribly distorted.

So I posted on Food Freedom at Carpe Noctem, go check it out!!!

Sorry I haven't posted! :(

I'm sorry, stuff has been going on but I've just not had the inclination to write..... :(

Two new followers have joined: Camellia Dayla [I'd link, but her blogs are private] and smorgan!!!! Thank you!!!!

So Friday at school we had an assembly. I was all unknowing until I got into the office before class with a form to deposit, and there's suddenly this ruckus at the bottom of the stairs--drums, a couple of band players. [Those of you who go to school are terribly familiar with this, but I thought you homeschoolers might get a kick out of it.] Worrying about whether my class was rescheduled [and the TEST!], I floated along on the press of people into the gym. Half-hour pep rally, CHS-ers certainly have a lot of school spirit.

The test [actually it was two tests] went well. Woot!

Good day at school, in other words. I saw a whole bunch of people that I know, which is fun. Happy reunions.

On Friday night our first swing dance rehearsal went very well.

[Here's me, on the far left, in the middle of an apparently violent "pretzel" or equivalent bit of awesomeness]

Saturday I worked most of the day, doing chores around the house [ugh] and yardwork [UGH!] and cutting up Italian prunes for drying.

Sunday was the epicness that is RenFaire. We went to early church service [very early!] and then picked up Eva and Dallan. Twas a perfect day for faire-going: actually a little too perfect, I got a nasty sunburn.

We got out to the faire site a bit before noon. Lovely area, a valley in the foothills, on a grass-field.

Here's Eva Dallan and myself

L.-R.: Eva [note the necklace she just bought], Sophie [she's the only one whose face is not in shadow, hehe], Dallan [WHY is he wearing a tophat?! and talking on the phone?!], Phillip [in epic red shirt] and behind the camera is Bethany in Scottish attire. We were standing on this really steep slope, trying to get cell-phone reception to arrange rides home and such.

Here's some more of the people we hung out with--I think we're examining a knife right there.

I'm afraid I was very remiss about taking photos :(

We didn't actually do much of anything the entire 6 hours we were there but we were never bored. Did a bit of shopping--I got a fabulous ring and chain-mail-ish necklace. Tug-of-war. Did not watch the joust. Got sunburned, in my case. And really dusty. My clothes smelled like renfaire when I came home: a mixture of wood-smoke and sun.

We had a fabulous time.

Went to folk dance afterwards which was also great, although I did not have time to go home and consequently was extremely hot in my layers of wool!

Yesterday I sort of crashed, was pretty exhausted since I hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before. Rehearsal today, among other stuff.

My posts seem to be getting less interesting and humorous.....sorry! :( But I've been having a good time, it just doesn't show in my writing.

catching roosters

We had to catch roosters yesterday and today. Today, because the ones we caught yesterday managed to escape. The roosters are not tame. The air was filled with the sounds of strife. [We had placed a "free' ad in the newspaper, to get rid of our superflous young roosters which squall at unearthly hours of the night.]
Folks came today to take them away. I sweetened the deal with some hens for sale, also.

Thanks to my newest follower, Eruanna!!!

Last night's folk dance was very fun, although sadly there were only four teens including myself [mostly younger kids and senior citizens]. The large core group of die-hard folk-dancers that never miss a class was conspicuously absent.

I came home and made a midnight snack of raisin bread and Brie and reheated spaghetti from dinner. And lemon cucumbers and tomatoes. Spent way too long on the computer, replying to blog comments.

Made and received a few calls about theatre business, today.

After a stint of yard-work, I took a lengthy bath. I haven't taken a bath in months. Now don't panic, dear peeps. [By the way, the word "peeps" has only come into my vocabulary in the last 6 months. It refers to friends/people/pals. I like it.]
 Where was I...oh yes. I shower instead of bathing. But my shower can beat your bath in terms of length every time, hands down. 30 minutes, easy.  But then not everyone is gifted with the excuse [used to propitiate irascible family members] of having two feet of hair attached to one's head.

And I nerved myself to write the climactic latest post in the role-play over at The Legends Live. A romantic bit, just in time for closing ceremonies on Wednesday. Awwwww. *sniff* A happy ending.

Also I made a header for Kendra Logan--check it out! [Actually she found the pic, I just did a few tweaks on the font/colors and border.] Perhaps I should advertise custom headers like Olive Tree does.....but I don't really have time! I do love working in Photoshop though.

Two rehearsals this week, including [hopefully] a swing-dance rehearsal on Saturday....and omigosh! Birthday! I don't know why I'm excited, actually. All year I've been saying that I don't want to be 17.

Tomorrow Co-op Sale Day is also on the agenda [very devious]. That involves shopping lists, reuseable bags, and goat milk and sundry other goodies.

DINNER........

meh

Various bits of news:

The dance yesterday was okay. I had a huge amount of fun when I was dancing, but the trouble was I didn't dance more than about half the time. Lots of swing-dancing [yay Danzibar! I love it too!!] and line-dancing, all to great country songs.
The meh-factor was introduced by the fact that I did not get asked to dance very often. And most of the people there already knew each other, but not me. Dances are not fun if you aren't dancing, and don't have anyone to talk to. MEH.

Today I noticed that the shirt I had worn had HOLES in it. Yes, that was one of the lovely new shirts I bought the other day!! The seams didn't stand up to vigourous dancing. I am extremely disappointed about this, as prob. all three shirts will have to be returned now--they are all the same exact style/fabric. I did so like those shirts!! Meh--or rather wahh!!

Went shopping again today and I did not find anything that I needed except a pair of socks. Oh, and at Ross dress-for-less I did find a shirt very similar [same brand, even] to one of the Kohl's ones. Not so nice though. It is afflicted with indecision; it can't decide whether to be a shirt or a dress.

I am terribly picky when it comes to clothes. Hence my un-enjoyment of shopping.

m-oh I won't say it again.

Last day of August.

Bad mood. Meh.


sorry this is a gloomy post!! I'm sure I'll feel better tomorrow.