Amelia

In short:

-afrikate and her awesome kitty S. are staying with us. It's really fun. I am a little bummed that they are leaving, but very happy afrikate is getting her new place!

-I now have 8 students in my class and we're past add/drop. This means I get my full salary. Awesome!

-We're doing Renaissance art this week. It's fun.

-Good thing I'm getting paid because I went to this woman's basement in Severna Park MD last week and bought two very expensive bellydance costumes.

-And then brought them to class and were told how much they did not fit properly.

-So I went back today with backup (afrikate and L. from bellydance class) and have 2 different, more expensive, costumes that I hope will be better.

-I am still undecided/ambivalent about performing in the class recital next week at Mem Sahib.

-Two weeks ago I did a 2-day Ravenchase in rural VA. It was pretty awesome. Especially visiting yogaville. That big lotus shrine out in rural Virginia. (We had to run around it looking for information to break our codes, not very yoga-like, still awesome.)

-We also spent way too much time in Farmville, VA. Yeah.

-Last weekend we went to Brooklyn to Come Out and Play.

-There were many awesome games. My favorite was one put on by the Disney imagineers called Unwritten Storybook. We were the elves (complete with ears) and had to join with other groups (royals, outlaws, etc.) to complete tasks (testing out the castle's defenses with a big ball and water balloons, "jousting" with balloons, archery with nerf weapons, etc.). After each battle or event we went back to these tables and filled in storybook pages with our own narrative (eg the elves went to the thief's forest and battled the fairies in an archery contest...) and decorated the pages with stickers and glitter! Games with art and crafts. We have a book. It was awesomely fun and they fed us a tasty lunch feast afterwards. Did I mention the entire event was free. Fantastic.

-We also played:
Shabbat-put! Olympic games, Sabbath rules. (Fun, funner if I had been the fastest, lightest, or strongest of my team.)
Cross My Heart + Hope to Die A game inspired by the labyrinth of Daedalus, set in a life-size maze. (Interesting. Lots of running and confusion, would have been better if the room hadn't been so hot. The maze "walls" were hanging strips of fabric.)
It Lurks in Gowanas. Solve the canals mystery before you're whacked. (A fun mix of using microsoft tag reader, walking to different locations, and a story told through youtube videos, with a little "chose your own adventure" thrown in.)

-Sunday we played The Time Traveler's Knife Brave time travelers take man's first tentative steps into the future, but before they can see the future, they will have to iron out the knots of the past. (Incredible concept, game play could have been streamlined. I had more fun than most of my team because aside from our main mission I was a secret cyborg. I had to meet other cyborgs, and together we brought about the cyborg revolution in 1965).

-The best part of Sunday was being in Green-Wood cemetery. If you're in the area you should totally check it out. Beautiful with lots of famous people buried there as well.

-This weekend I'm going to a family reunion in West Virgina.

-The next weekend it's con.txt (yay!)

-The next weekend is Adam Lambert, although I am only going to 2 of the 3 of the east coast shows that many of my friends are attending.

-The next weekend in July 4th.

-The next weekend is the end of my summer class and mid-July. WTF.

For You: The BP Oil Spill Re-Enacted By Cats in 1 Minute

I trapezed the last two Fridays.

#9:
Worked on split and got it about an hour in. Unfortunately there were only three of us so by the time it came to catching I was exhausted and couldn't catch it.

I blame my failing core strength on:
-not being in good cardiovascular shape and therefore having shitty endurance
-needing more core strength (maybe pilates in January? I don't know.)
-having a hardcore bellydance class the night before that focused on camels (spinal undulations) and snakes (body undulations that use a lot of obliques)
-not sleeping well the previous night b/c D. was back from his business trip and the snoring was intense. I woke up 4-5 times
-starting my period (during class, not fun, you know what else isn't fun? putting in a tampon in a portapotty)

I made progress on the trick, but didn't have the greatest class.

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Then there were zombies in Princeton that were awesome and zombies in Richmond that were not.
Still, yay, Ravenchase!
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#10
Went today with insptr_penguin. She did awesome starting out with an accidental ankle hang. (It was really cool). Her catch looked great and would have been perfect if she had let go with her knees.

I worked on the split getting the different parts down, but not smoothly enough for catchable timing. I practiced wimpy straddle whip again and I think it was catchable. (Scout assures me that wimpy straddle whip is indeed a real trick done by professionals and not just the baby version of regular straddle whip.) Unfortunately Neil and I didn't catch it. The first time our timing was off and I didn't reach up enough. The second I brought my hands around instead of straight in front and I missed him by just a little.

The weather was gorgeous, blue skies and 70s (in November!) after a week of rain.

We had a two day Ravenchase race this weekend. It was a great race although Saturday we walked *a lot*. One team calculated they walked 10 miles, it may have been close to that, we walked most of the time for 7 hours. We were very sore Sunday and I'm still stiff this morning. I also developed a large blister on the sole of my foot Saturday that burst Sunday during the race. It's not comfortable, I wonder what shoes I can wear to work today? bayleaf got shinsplints on Saturday that were so bad she couldn't race on Sunday and was google support. The name of the race was the "city of magnificent distances" (Washington), and they weren't kidding.

( Some race details )

D. and I did the Valentine's Day Ravenchase in Philly today. It was the perfect (February) day to race, blue sky, cold but not inappropriately so (30s), and only a little wind. It was a little like our very first Ravenchase together in Baltimore which was also freezing. The major difference being that ellen_fremedon was also on our team then.

The race was a nice mix of locations (public buildings, park, plaza, and commercial art gallery, no cemetery woo!), clue types (find the plaque, puzzles--including one monster 4-part clue with a varying backward Cesar shift that took us a bit to solve, dig in the leaves for stuff, and talk to the actor, actually also sing to the actor and then he took our picture in front of the LOVE statue, awesome!), and group types (us, a veteran team that's done almost all the Philly races, some couples, a family, a birthday party, and a monster bachelorette party).

This is the first race that D. and I have done together, just the two of us. I was slightly concerned, but we worked very well together and had a great day.

As an extra-special bonus we came in first!

We solved all of the clues without any hints and were the first to the bar. The race was very well written as all the teams came in around the same time (within a half hour of each other I think). I think we might try to do some more by this couple. They do the northeast so Philly, Princeton, NYC, etc.

On our way out of town we stopped at Jim's and got cheesesteaks. I had never had a cheesesteak before in my life, isn't that strange? Anyway, they were really yummy and set us up well for the drive home.