Safe Drive, Awesome Show

Ok, let's get the important part out of the way! Obviously, since I'm posting this, I did not die in a horrible car crash due to the awful weather. Actually, the weather wasn't bad at all. But lest you think that I was freaking out about nothing, both of the friends that I was attending the show with contacted me yesterday afternoon to make sure that I knew how terrible the weather was in Phoenix, and to make sure I still felt OK driving up. But humorously enough, the only rain I hit was in my own neighborhood! Our weather in Arizona is fickle and prone to short bouts of violence, and by the time I hit the Phoenix area, the storm had died down. It rained a bit during the show, but no rain on the way there or back. So yay for that!

Now the fun part... the show! I'm so glad I decided to go! My friends Meghan and Jen (two awesome Anaya classmates) had pretty good seats, I guess maybe 8 rows or so back from the stage (I didn't count), so we had a good view of the show. Not close enough to count the sparkling crystals on the costumes, but close enough to not miss any subtle moves, which is really important. Belly dance is best when viewed from close-up, but not so close that the dancer is on top of you, because then you get a crick in your neck (been there, done that).

The show itself was great. There were a couple of numbers I didn't really like, and some truly misguided costumes (bell-bottom one piece pant suits gave us flashbacks to the 70s, even though we were all three born in the 80s), but the rest of it was fantastic. There was a mix of Indian-inspired pieces (to fit the Bombay Bellywood theme), Egyptian belly dance, tribal fusion, other fusion, and proptastic numbers. Many numbers featured multiple elements -- Egyptian and tribal dancers with props, all on the stage at once. I really like how the show choreographers manage to come up with ways for Egyptian and tribal-style dancers to perform at the same time, to the same music, and each showcase the best elements of their dance.

And oh my goodness, the costumes! Almost every number involved a costume change, and almost all of the costumes were incredible. The tribal gals of course went for lots of layers, as we are wont to do. The Egyptian dancers mostly had sleek, modern costumes with bead and crystal embellishments. The Indian-inspired numbers featured appropriately Indian-inspired costumes in eye-popping colors.

I totally recommend this show for all of my belly dance friends, as long as they have a tolerance for fusion. And I'd also recommend it for my beading friends, if you want a night of entertainment and eye candy! You can visit the Bellydance Superstars website to see if the tour will be in a city near you.

Super fun belly dance week!

I've been focusing most of my talk lately on beads and jewelry, since this is technically a blog for my Erthe Fae Designs business and not a personal blog for all the silly things going on in my life... but hey! Belly dance is still awesome and I feel like talking about it.

This week is the start of about a month and a half of awesome belly dance events almost every week! Tonight, I'm off to Mesa to see Bellydance Superstars Presents: Bombay Bellywood. I wasn't going to go, because there are so many other events coming up and almost all of them are in Phoenix, which means a lot of driving. But then I realized, what the heck was I thinking? This is THE big bellydance show, should I really let a little drive discourage me? Especially when the tickets were half-off if you knew the right coupon code?

Of course, Phoenix is experiencing thunderstorms and hail and flash flood warnings, so it's going to be more than a little drive... but I've already got my ticket so there's no backing out now. Wish me luck!

Thursday is my usual class night, beginner and intermediate Anaya Tribal. We've been learning and practicing formations in intermediate, as well as constantly practicing and improving the moves we already know.

Friday and Saturday is the Plaza de Anaya Intensive. Friday is an awesome show, featuring the workshop instructors and many PdA teachers. Saturday I'll be taking workshops with Deb Rubin, Zafira, and Jill Parker. I'm pretty excited!

Party Time!

Tonight I'm driving up to Tempe for a black light belly dance party. It will be my first time driving up to Tempe by myself... good practice for the weekly drive I'll be making for class.

Should be a fun time... I still haven't decided what I'm going to wear. I'll have to open my costume closet and see what jumps out at me. I'm thinking it might be a good evening for my 25 yard green skirt.

Unstoppable!

Yesterday was a really good day. Not only did we get the "all clean" on Daisy's mystery lump, but I then proceeded to go to the MVD and pass my road test. I'm a licensed driver! Armed with this license, I drove myself to the gym and lifted 115lbs, a new record for me.

Needless to say, I'm feeling pretty good about life right now. I'm in the perfect frame of mind for Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, as the proud owners of a large, sturdy dining room table, Chris and I get to host for the second year in a row. I spent today driving around town getting things for Thanksgiving, though I was thwarted in my quest for a few key ingredients, which means a trip to another grocery store later tonight.

Tomorrow I get to clean the house, and make some preparations for the little gift bazaar I'm doing on Sunday. Never a dull moment!

Wish me luck!

Tonight I'm going to drive to Tempe for the first time. It's about a 1 hr 45 minute drive from my house. I've only driven on the highway once before, so this is a pretty big jump for me -- but it's something that I have to start practicing since I'll be doing it at least once a week for the next year or so.

I'm trying not to worry about it too much, and am focusing instead on this zill rhythm that we're supposed to master by the end of this class. I've been mostly just practicing the finger movements at various times and places, because let's face it, it's not very feasible to break out finger cymbals at the gym. But today I actually put them on and walked around the house practicing. The dogs ran away and hid, which is better than what I expected -- barking and jumping. Perhaps I can actually practice dancing without crating them now, so long as I'm also zilling.

So much driving!

To make up for lost time, I did a lot of driving this weekend. Parking practice, errands, date night, daytime and night time driving. I have to drive Chris home from laser eye surgery* while he's loopy on Vallium, so I need to be confident enough to be as if I was driving by myself. Of course, if he's loopy enough to be a distraction, I'll have to call someone else to drive us BOTH home!

*Surgery performed on his eyes with lasers. Not surgery to give him laser eyes, which would be 500 times cooler.

Driving like a driving fool.

Just a quick update for those who are cheering along my driving progress... Though I'm not quite ready for rush hour yet, I'm at the point where I'm confident enough to drive on any road in Tucson now. I'm still having a little trouble getting the right speed for turns, and my parking skills are atrocious, but I can get around town. Chris is of course taking advantage of this ;)

In other news, we saw 9 today, and it was really awesome. Gorgeous graphics, engaging story, lots of suspenseful action. I'll save my full review for the e-zine I write for, but I do highly recommend it. Just bear in mind that it may be too intense for little kids! There's plenty of death and scary robot monsters.

Aren't weekends supposed to be relaxing?

What a busy weekend this has been! I drove back and forth across town so we could take care of Chris's friend's pets (his cat is so beautiful and soft!), we had a game yesterday, yoga today, and then Casey came over and the three of us spent just over an hour working on the game room. We got two large wall panels up, and Casey cut the drywall for 4 small panels, which Chris and/or I can put up at any time. That leaves only a couple of spots left for drywall, then it's time for tape and spackle, and after that, PAINT! The paint is my favorite part, because it will brighten the room up. Drywall is really drab and ugly without any paint.

Anyway, yoga was awesome, and all of the driving has given me a lot more confidence on the road. I almost agreed to drive the three of us to get gelato tonight, but I decided to let Chris do it. I could probably drive there, but I'm not sure how well I would have done with driving and conversing with Chris and Casey. Better to remain on the safe side.

So now it's time to grab a couple of hours of vegging out in front of the TV, watching a DVD of Psych and stringing crystals, before facing another busy week.

Driving update

Just got back from Chris's friend's apartment. We're taking care of his cat and guinea pig while he's out of town, and I've been doing some of the driving. Today I drove us there and back, my first time hitting the road in the middle of the day, with traffic and stuff. Also, my first time running a red light, because I misjudged how quickly I needed to stop when it turned yellow. Oh well, no one's perfect.

I'm almost to the point of being ready to tackle some major roads, which means I'll soon be able to drive anywhere in town, and Chris will soon take utter and complete advantage of that and make me drive everywhere. I guess it's only fair, he's been doing all of the driving for the 11 1/2 years we've been together ;)

No driving today

I planned to practice driving tonight, but it was *really* windy. Not only does this make it harder to control the car, but since we haven't had a lot of rain, it's very dry, so there's blowing dust everywhere, messing up visibility. So since Chris was at gaming yesterday, that means I took the entire weekend off from driving. Well, after the crazy ordeal Chris put me through on Friday (driving halfway across town and back on dark, narrow roads), I deserve the break.

In other news, I set a secret goal for myself last month -- to actually update this blog daily, no matter how busy, tired, or cranky I was. And I did! 31 posts in 31 days! Woohoo! I'll try to do the same this month, though the NY trip may throw that off.

In a mermaidy mood.

I must have mermaids on the brain today. Napping Treasure Hunter is the Daily Special, and I'm working on a brooch in very aquatic mermaid-y colors.

There's not too much else to say today, except that I did my first driving on an actual road today, driving around other actual cars. Minor backroads, but Chris might have me tackling street lights and traffic by Sunday. Well, that's his prediction. I'm not as confident as he is.

Good-bye, comfort zone

A lot of people have asked me, over the years, why I didn't drive. There have been various answers, but the big one is that I do not like to leave my comfort zone. At all. Driving seems a very scary and complicated thing -- piloting a large metal object at speeds ranging up to over 75 mph, on roads with other people doing the same thing. The very idea of having to judge whether or not I could pull out into a road in front of someone, or wait for them to pass by, is terrifying. Chris refers to it as intuitive physics, and we all know that I suck at science (if you didn't know before, now you do).

But anyway, it was finally time to get out of my safe little comfort zone and get behind the wheel. And already I'm trying to find new comfort zones and stay in them. Chris's self-appointed job is shoving me out of those comfort zones, like a mother bird flinging her chicks out of the nest. Tonight I wanted to go back to the nice, straight, empty UofA parking lot. He made me go to the curvy Reid Park parking lot, with a few cars parked in it and lots and lots of curbs to avoid, and turns to make. Then I wanted to stay in the little sub-lot with no one in it, and he made me drive in the lot right in front of the dog park, where late-night dog lovers were still in attendance.

Despite my griping, I did fine. I almost hit one curb a couple of times, but otherwise I made good progress on making turns, and quickly got into avoiding speed bumps. Hey, even when you're only going 5 mph, those things are annoying.

Well, that's enough confession and driving talk. Tomorrow it will be back to beads and jewelry!

Busy Sunday

Today was spent in a sort of catching-up mode, as Chris and I ran errands, did things around the house, and took over parking lots. Nothing really exciting enough to blog about, just the sort of day-to-day things that didn't get done while he was in TX this past week.

Yesterday, I did buy some beads to hopefully make a necklace that I'd been stymied on. Oh, how I love lampwork, but every now and then (ok, fairly often actually) I get a bead that's really tricky to match. This was one such case, made even trickier by the fact that I want to string it in a cool tribal-style necklace, so seed beads were out. Anyway, I should get that necklace made tomorrow or Tuesday.

Chris took tomorrow off, so assuming no emergencies come up for him, I'll probably spend much of the day away from the computer again -- perhaps practicing my turns, perhaps working on the game room, perhaps just vegging out and watching Netflix. But normal blogging should recommence on Tuesday.

Parking lots

Today is the day that Chris and I got kicked out of the mall parking lot, because you're not allowed to practice driving there. Nevermind that we were using a quadrant that isn't near any active stores, that no one else was in it, and that I was driving approximately 5 miles an hour. Apparently I was an insurance risk.

And that is really all I have to say tonight. Tomorrow I'll be taking my dangerous low-speed turns down to an empty UofA parking lot and see if they kick me out, too.

Learning, always learning

Hey look, the Gossiping Pixies are here to tell you what's going on in my life! Well, not really, but they are today's Daily Special.

My class on Thursday was great. Crowded, hard, but great. Dancers of various ages, levels, and even genders pretty much filled up the floor (but with enough room left that everyone could move), and got a crash course in Beginner A and B before we could move on to C. I have a few moves I need to practice, and arm cues that I need to try to remember.

One of the most fun things about being a dancer is the costuming, so of course I did a little shopping while I was there, too. I bought a pair of black Tribal Fusion pants, and found a cute sheer embroidered tie-front crop top on the used rack for only $5. I think it will look cute over my bra, or over my teal halter top. I'm going to try to limit myself to 1-2 new costume items a month, otherwise I'd go crazy and my closet would explode from all the goodies.

Then yesterday, I finally went to the MVD and got my learner's permit. Yes, at the age of 27, I'm finally learning how to drive. I've had various reasons for spending the past 11 years relying on other people for rides -- some were genuinely good reasons, others were excuses. But I've decided now that I want the freedom to get in the car and go wherever I want, without relying on husband, family, or friends. Tomorrow should be my first lesson. Wish me luck.