We don’t yet know her final results, but we know that she didn’t place in the top half of her competition. She was one of 79 dancers in her group, and this is literally her fourth competition since her six month competition ban (for switching schools) was lifted. Because of when she switched, she actually went eight months without competing, and she had to learn all new steps, so she’s effectively started all over. Given that she’s just recovered from Swine Flu on top of everything else, I think it’s amazing she went at all. As I told her, I’m not going to be unhappy with whatever her results wind up being, I’m still going to be insanely proud of her. She says as long as she doesn’t come in last place, she’s happy. ;-p
We could have stuck around till 6:00 to get results, but when they posted the top half list and she wasn’t on it, we both voted to just head for home instead. It’s been a LONG month and we’re both tired as hell. Hopefully this entry will be coherent, but I’ll apologize in advance if it’s not. I’m operating on the last little bit of juice I have — it’s not even 7:30 and my bed is beckoning already! I’m going to sleep and if anyone wakes me up early I will track them down and shoot them.
I conceded (temporary) defeat on the new dress — with all the rushing around getting ready for Oireachtas, Thanksgiving dinner (alas for only 16, not 23 — with 23, I’d have had all of my main family here), and still not being recovered myself, I just wasn’t able to do it. So she’ll have a fresh new dress to start off 2010 with. We made some mental changes to the new dress while we were admiring (and sometimes laughing at) other dancers’ dresses, and when we got in the car and started for home we started comparing ideas and we’re both on almost exactly the same page it turns out. The big difference of opinion is I keep thinking a soft skirt would be nice and she insists upon the traditional three panels across the front. (And since it’s her dress — and the solo dress is supposed to be an expression of the dancer, not the dressmaker — she trumps me!)
It was kind of odd, seeing so many of the dancers from her old school. Some of them were friendly like always, others were cordial, but not chummy. Some were a bit stand-offish, and a few acted like they’d never laid eyes on her before. One girl’s mom decided to be a bitch and just about got the Red Forman treatment from me …
Been too busy trying to recover from this damn flu, and running myself ragged trying to keep up with the kid’s schedule, but …
Missy is dancing solo set dance at Oireachtas on Friday. Missy found out just before she got sick with the flu, and totally forgot about it (if you’ve had the full blown H1N1, you understand; if you haven’t had it, trust me, you can get so sick that forgetting things here and there won’t be surprising at all) so we didn’t find out till the Monday we were cleared for public contact again — that is, Monday the 9th of November.
Jeannie had bought Missy’s fabric for her new solo dress while she was here visiting — along with Missy’s birthday presents and agreeing to pay for the black belt club at To-Shin Do for Missy (see this post on Missy’s blog for details!) but I hadn’t realized she was going to need it yet, so I hadn’t started on it at all.
So, I am in the midst of a rush job. This fabric is amazing looking — unfortunately though, it’s not embroidering well, so we’re going with the bare minimum we can get away with and I’ll worry about reworking the skirt properly later on. AFTER Oireachtas. When I’m not still (a) trying to recover and (b) not rushing my ass off to get it done in time.
And of course she’s been having extra dance classes and workshops to get ready for Oireachtas — and she’s had To-Shin Do classes PLUS her graduation on this past Friday when she got her yellow/black belt. So I haven’t even been able to just sit down and work on it. I am finishing embroideries right now (knock wood! I’ve had to redo them so many damn times) and tomorrow I start putting it together.
Thursday is Thanksgiving dinner, here at our house, so I’m going to have to get it finished as much as possible by Wednesday since all I’ll have time for are the finishing touches on Thursday. She dances Friday morning. I wish her group was not till Sunday, give me a couple more days to work on it!
I have the Queen song “Under Pressure” stuck in my head right now … wonder why?!
Last month Missy began making major changes in her bedroom. As soon as funds permit, we have a can of paint to buy, and then her room is going to finish undergoing a transformation complete with (here’s hoping!) stenciled walls hung with assorted sundry including embroidered kanji messages. “Believe” “Dream” “Dance” “To-Shin Do” “Ninja” (actually “Shinobi”) and so on. Just shy of a dozen. She’s talking about throw pillows with these words too! She also wants (yeahrightsure) a bean bag chair with all of these words embroidered on it. (That one ain’t happening.)
So anyhow, the transformation is underway and we’ve started accumulating the things we’re going to need a little bit at a time. Tonight, we got the stuff to make (hopefully!) stencils. (Including satin white paint and 14k gold metallic paint for the stencils as well as a silver/gold glitter spray for the ceiling — we still need to get room paint as well as rope lights.)
Knight Owl provided the kanji (incidentally, umm … I need two more — the one I sent you earlier in email as well as “God” please) and I did one of them up in a test tonight. So here’s the test run: 9488 deep purple stitches on white on white cotton. Whaddya think?
Wednesday, September 9 is An-Shu Hayes’ 60th birthday and they are having a party at the dojo that night after class. Missy wanted to give him something and after talking with one of the instructors about things he likes, the decision was made to create a golden dragon.
But first, the research! We knew that there were Asian dragons, and that they were different from the western style of dragons more often seen in this country — most importantly, Asian dragons are not winged. Well, turns out that’s not the only difference! Here’s some more info on Asian — and specifically, Japanese — dragons: In contrast to Western mythology, Asian dragons are rarely malevolent. Although fearsome and powerful, Asian dragons are considered just, benevolent, and the bringers of wealth and good fortune. The dragon is also believed to be a shape shifter who can assume human form and mate with people.
Chinese or Korean imperial dragons have five toes on each foot; Indonesian (and regular Chinese) dragons have four while Japanese dragons have three. To explain this phenomena, Chinese legend states that although dragons originated in China, the further away from China a dragon went the fewer toes it had, and thus dragons only exist in China, Korea, Indonesia, and Japan because if they traveled further they would have no toes to continue. Japanese legend has an opposing position, namely that dragons originated in Japan, and the further they traveled the more toes they grew and as a result, if they went too far they would have too many toes to continue to walk properly. These theories are rejected in Korea and Indonesia.
In both Chinese and Japanese mythology, the dragon is one of Four Legendary Creatures guarding the four cosmic directions (Phoenix – S, Dragon – E, Tortoise – N, and Tiger – W). They are known as the Four Celestial Emblems and were frequently painted on the walls of tombs to ward off evil spirits. The Dragon (Guardian of the East) is identified with the season spring, the color green/blue, the element water (sometimes also wood), the virtue propriety, the Yang male energy and controls rain.
A description we found several places suggests:
The Japanese Dragon has the head of a camel, horns of a deer, eyes of a hare, scales of a carp, paws of a tiger, and claws resembling those of an eagle. In addition it has whiskers and is able to ascend to Heaven at will. This is merely a general description and does not apply to all dragons, some of which have heads of so extraordinary a kind that they cannot be compared with anything in the animal kingdom. The breath of the Dragon changes into clouds from which come either rain or fire. It is able to expand or contract its body, and in addition it has the power of transformation and invisibility.
I don’t know about the head of a camel, but our dragon has whiskers, horns, big eyes, golden scales, and three talon-style claws on each of his paws, so here’s hoping he’s a fairly good stand in for a Japanese dragon! He consists of 33,118 stitches in 6 colors (metallic gold, soft gold, metallic red, metallic white, emerald green and sable brown) on black felt with a glitter wash. We matted it — behind glass to protect it from dust — into an 8×10 frame.
In addition to the one above, there are several photos (none of which turned out all that great, because he’s too damn shiny!) in this album in our gallery.
My system was on its way to doorstop mode because everything was bogged down as it gets over time. Since I was going to have to reinstall windows anyhow, I got this brilliant idea that upgrading to Windows 7 was the way to go. Darin’s been using the beta version for the last several months and using the release client since it came out and he loves it. (After what he had to say about Vista, I was surprised to hear how much he likes this!) I think I will love it too, once I get everything set back up the way it should be. However, in the process of upgrading, I had to reformat the drive so everything had to be blown away, which means that I am now in reload and restore mode.
I got all of my DragonRealms work software up and running again first, I was actually logged into the game and had all of my settings restored within the first hour of getting the install finished.
I expected to lose most of my programs and to have to reinstall everything. I was prepared for it and had all of the disks and serial numbers ready to go, so mostly that’s been going fairly painlessly.
Mostly.
There have been a few fun surprises, like the embroidery half of my Pfaff 2124. My system’s doing fine but the Pfaff’s a doorstop right now because the software drivers for the smartcard station won’t reinstall — we’ve written Pfaff for Vista or Windows 7 drivers (either will work with Windows 7 apparently). It looks like they have them since it says on the site that it’s compatible, but they’re not on the site anywhere that we can find them, so I bet they’re going to charge us for them. Yay. Just yay.
If anyone out there knows where to get updated Pfaff drivers online — we’re still waiting to hear back from Pfaff — I’d be very grateful. I very much need the machine working so I can get busy on Missy’s next dress, but even more importantly right now, we’ve got a piece she wanted to do for An-Shu’s birthday on September 9th, so I’m hoping Pfaff won’t let the email languish or that we’ll find ‘em somewhere soon. Plus I want to do something for Anna’s birthday (August 26) for her new classroom. She just has to tell me what. That’s a hint, Anna.
The good news is once the drivers are updated, all the various BuzzTools software packages are already reinstalled and running flawlessly under Windows 7.
Also waiting to hear back from the people who made the weather-sig thing I’ve been using on my email the last three years. I bought it back in 2006 and have never had the slightest problem with it, until now. When we reloaded it, it decided that it was a new install and needed to be registered. Well, I bought it back in 2006 and it was a download. I have the install file, but I no longer have the email that gave me the registration code. I’ve written them too, asking for them to send me my code again, but so far no response. ::fingers crossed:: I don’ t want to give it up, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to buy it again just to keep using it, so I hope they keep records. I’ve looked on all my old email archive disks and I’m damned if I can find it. I’m wondering if it was something that came on a text file with the download or something and it didn’t save in the install folder. I don’t know, all I know is I want it back without having to pay again!
Hmm … speaking of things I bought a long time ago, I need to reinstall my From My Kitchen software and make sure that still runs.
Still, though, only two known problems so far with that kind of thing, so I’m feeling pretty good about that end of it.
What I *really* didn’t anticipate was all of the fine tuning and tweaks that you accumulate over time — I even lost my mail rules and let me tell you, I had no idea just how many of them I had!
The worst part is I did this willingly. Enthusiastically, even. I think I need my head examined. ;-)
Got a lot going on, not much time for blogging. I’m hoping things will somewhat settle back down to a more normal pace after the end of the month.
A few quick highlights … I twittered (& facebooked!) but didn’t blog yet about Missy’s Lansing results: 11th in reel, 9th in slip jig, 6th in treble jig, 7th in hornpipe and 4th (with a medal and trophy) in treble reel. She’s a bit irritated that she didn’t do better, but geez, this is just her second feis after 10 months of not dancing! I think she’s doing fantastic and her TCRG is pleased as well. I swear, she’s her own worst critic.
Missy and I have sketched out some solo dress ideas, the plan is to start the new season with a new dress. This time we’re going to try something a little different, see if we can’t start a new trend! I think we’ll be going with a traditional three panel skirt, though. She wants a one-piece, I’m leaning toward a two-piece. We’ll see what happens. We’re both thinking blues this time around, something deep and rich. We’re broke as hell though, so whatever it is will be from something I already have on hand unless I can get one of the three we have on hand sold.
I had a doctor’s appointment last week Monday with all the usual lab work. Everything must be okay because I haven’t gotten a phone call saying come back in. The bruise on my inner arm has *finally* started fading. Take my advice and don’t get diabetes. Next appointment isn’t till October and that’ll be the flu shot appointment. Missy’s already grousing about it.
I’d say that next week we start back up the homeschooling and she’s starting 9th grade, but if the truth be told, she’s never really taken much of a break this summer. She kept right on working and has gotten about 1/4 of the 9th grade work done already; she’s trying to get herself ahead enough to test out and graduate early. She wants to take off a few years to work and save up some money and then go to college later on. She has goals in both dancing and To-Shin Do that she wants to attain before she moves on to college work; she’s got plans!
On the To-Shin Do front, she’s graduating next Friday (a week from today) and getting her yellow belt. (She’s planning on going for the black belt, and she has no intention of stopping there. She’s decided that she wants to make this lifelong, she says that there’s more than just the belts to mastering it and her intention at this point in time is to just keep going.) She’s done so well so far and I’m of course bursting with pride! As promised, she’s gotten her tabi. She tried to tell me she hadn’t officially earned them yet, since she doesn’t get the belt till the end of the month, but I told her to go ahead and start wearing them — and Mr. Norris concurred so she gave in.
She’s got a party tonight with some friends, the annual 4-H party. And another one coming up – September 9 is An-Shu’s 60th birthday and there’s a potluck and party at the dojo that night. She’s got a wall hanging planned for him, I told her I’d help her digitize it and then stitch it out for her.
The gerbils (Danny and Chouko) have another litter of babies — four of ‘em. That brings our total gerbil count to 11. The big hamsters (Houdini and Bess) have just had a litter of babies as well, our first set of babies from them! We’re not sure how many there are, about 7 or 8 it looks like, but it could be more. Bess is being very protective. So our large hamster count is 2 plus however many babies there are. Maggie’s already requested a set (boy and girl) as soon as they’re big enough to give away. All of our small hamsters are past their fertile stage (for the most part, the females are only fertile the first year of their life) so we won’t have any from any of them. Our dwarf hamster count is thus holding at 8 (well, 7 dwarves and 1 roborovski to be precise).
The doggies are *not* going forth and multiplying, because all three of them are fixed, and thank God for that. I do not need puppies too!
I have a stack of articles bookmarked that I plan on blogging about — including one about the various Czars that have been appointed by The One, and of course there’s plenty going on in the world, I’ve just been too damn busy to write about it!
Bear with me and things will hopefully be back to normal soon!
Bright and early tomorrow morning (5 a.m.) Missy and I will be heading out for the Great Lakes Feis in Lansing, Michigan. She’ll be dancing five dances — reel, slip jig, treble jig, hornpipe and treble reel — on stage 3. Her competitor number is 1425. We’ll be home late Sunday night and I’ll post results as soon as we’re home. This Feis gives out full results before you leave, so even if your kid doesn’t place (like mine will be doing!!) you still know your results and have the judges’ comments (if any) before you head for home.
The one thing she’s worried about is they’ve decided to dance the boys with the girls at this Feis and she’s convinced (from past experiences which certainly seem to support her contention) that the boys have an advantage right off the start simply because they’re boys. I understand that boys only have a few competitors and you’re trying to give them bigger groups. Combine age groups on the boys then, but don’t stick them in with the girls. Looking at the competitor list it looks like she’s got two boys in her age group. Hopefully they’ll at least not dance them by threes this year. If she didn’t need the Feis so badly after all these months of not being able to compete, we wouldn’t even go to this one. We probably won’t next year unless she needs it to qualify. But that’s neither here nor there and we’re not going to ruin our day by focusing on the negatives or being prepared for unfair results or anything of the sort. She’s been practicing and polishing and Katie’s pleased with her Columbus results and expects she’s going to do even better in Lansing. Here’s hoping!
Update! I have no idea why, but I just woke up out of a dead sleep with a nagging feeling I should check the stage assignments. Well, there’s nothing *wrong* with the stage assignments but there is a huge notice on the site which reads:
Non-Championship Boys will NOT compete in Girl’s competitions
We sincerely apologize for the confusion and inconvenience, but we were just contacted by the NAFC and told that we had broken a rule when we combined the boys and girls competitions. We are in the process of removing all the boys from the girl’s competitions and the boys will have their stand alone competitions. We will also make every effort to combine boys into qualifying groups.
None of the girls’ competitions will be affected by this.
The registration list and the stage schedule have been updated with the change.
Again, we are very sorry for all this, and your understanding will be greatly appreciated.
I have no idea who complained or what happened, but yay! Thank you NAFC! And now, back to bed!
Cross your fingers, say a prayer, light a candle, send some thoughts up to the universe, cast a spell, make a sacrifice or whatever, she’ll take ‘em all!
Also send a few thoughts my way too — I have three dresses up for sale and we’d love to unload one or two (or all three!) of them. I’m pricing them low and taking the best offer in the hopes of moving them. I don’t want to have to haul them back home and I’d love to have the cash to help finance her next one which we’ve already started planning. Figure we’ll start off the new Feis season (which starts October 1) with a whole new dress to go with the new school. (Well, not so new now, but still!)
Just a little something to share before I hit the hay
Today at To-Shin Do, Missy was informed that she will be receiving her next belt (yellow) in the graduation ceremony at the end of the month.
I had promised her a pair of tabi as a reward for reaching the goal (rather than my just buying them for her, she wanted to make them a goal to work toward) so she’ll be getting those too.
I’m so proud of her!
This Sunday is the Great Lakes (Lansing, Michigan) Feis. If she can keep the high she’s got from the news about her graduation, she’s going to have a great day there, too.
Now what we REALLY need is to have a good day on the used solo dress rack this Sunday and sell one (or two … or all three!) of the solo dresses we’ll have up for sale too. I’m going to put the prices down low in hopes of selling them without having to advertise them. One of them is *never* worn, one has been worn about four times and the other one is her pink and black one that she wore for about a year and a half. I figure I’ll put $300 on each of them and see what happens — hopefully, someone’s going to get themselves a bargain — we could really use the money (to pay for the graduation & the tabi if nothing else!). ::fingers crossed!::
This is going to be one of Those Weeks, I can tell already. My oldest daughter would say that it’s one of Those Months, and who knows, she may be right.
On the bright side, though, Missy’s ban from competition is finally up (it was officially up on July 10), and thank God for that. If I had to listen to her grousing about not being able to compete much longer, I think I would have gone bonkers!
Now, I just need to get her into the few remaining Feisianna in our region. ::sigh:: That’s not so easy right now, but we’ll do what we can. Here’s her schedule. As you can see, near-by pickings are slim and unfortunately I can’t swing any long trips right now. We had wanted to go to the St. Louis An Samhra Feis at the end of the month, but that’s out because I just flat out don’t have the money.
Unfortunately, at the rate we’re going she’s going to have two before the end of the season, and there’s no way in hell she’ll get to Oireachtas this year. I wish she’d switched schools sooner, she missed all of the local and day-trip ones which pretty much ruined her chances of making it this year. That’s life, I guess. As Mom always said, “wish in one hand …”
The good Irish Dance news is that Katie’s happy with her progress and her solo dress not only still fits, it’s actually a little loose. She only wore it once (Gem City Feis last October) before she switched schools so it’s not associated with the old academy at all. That buys me some time before I need to make her a new one and that’s a good thing. It’s cash-flow issues that are making Feisianna tricky, I sure don’t need the expense of fabric and whatnot to make her a new dress right now.
The Dayton Celtic Festival is this month, Missy and I are signed up to work all three days. As usual, I picked the closing shift each day, so we won’t have to be working during the hottest part of the day till Sunday when it closes early. It runs July 24-25-26. It’s a great festival, if you’re near enough to make it, you won’t be disappointed! Best of all, admission’s free! This year’s entertainment roster includes Gaelic Storm and Dulahan, so you can’t go wrong.
Let’s see … what else is going on …
To-Shin Do is going well, she’s managed to earn a training stripe on her belt and is hoping to move up to the next full belt fairly soon. The Quest Center is having their annual dojo picnic this Saturday, and we’ll be attending that.
The baby gerbils are all five healthy and happy and active as hell. We wound up with one white, one (mostly) black, one tan and white combo, and two that are mostly beige. They’ve learned how to get up onto the hut, it’s only a matter of time before one of them discovers how to navigate the ramps and they invade the upper level of the cage. They’re so cute!
No baby hamsters right now, I believe all of the girls are past their fertile stage, because no one’s wound up pregnant. We’ll be getting a girl for Houdini sometime though, so that we can get another litter of babies down the road. I like pets that you don’t have to buy replacements for!
The doggies — Vixen, Donna and Bonnie — are the same as always, cute as hell and sweet as can be. I confess though, I still miss ol’ Willy. Hell, I miss grumpy ol’ Jake and he’s been gone for three years now.
Missy and I still have our memberships to The Beach and we go as often as possible. For the first summer in ages I actually have a bit of a tan! Missy’s got one too, though she’s even paler-skinned than I am. This August when it comes up for early renewal (during the buy one-get one promotion they have every year) one way or another I’ll be scraping together the money and renewing our platinum passes. You can’t beat the price for a summer’s worth of swimming, it’s way cheaper than a health club or pool membership. Add in the free parking and free drinks (perks of platinum) along with the discounts on food and it’s a helluva deal. And even better than the tan: swimming is working wonders on my blood sugar levels. Take *that* diabetes! Plus, we’re both losing inches (don’t know about weight, because our scale doesn’t work and I’m too cheap to waste the money on a new one. I’ll find out in August when I go to the doctor for my next routine visit). What I do know is I’ve lost two dress sizes so far, and Missy’s right behind me with a full dress size gone as well.
Oh, Missy and I corrupted Derwood! He’s now joined Twitter too. And during SimuCon I got corrupted and joined Facebook. I kept asking what the hell I needed a Facebook page for when I have a blog, but it’s actually not at all the same and I finally understand why so many people have all three — Facebook, Twitter and a blog, I mean. So, here’s where to find each of us, and if you’ve got a Facebook or Twitter be sure to add us and we’ll return the favor:
Be forewarned, though, he’s had his Facebook page longer than Missy and I put together and I don’t think he ever uses it. Sorta like his blog. But hey, at least he’s Twittering. Tweeting? Whatever. He’s using Twitter a little bit!
