Holiday Weekend Recap

Nice long weekend. I worked more than I would have liked, and got less done than I planned.

Battled with the Dwarfs of Disorganization and won back the dance room, including moving a dresser into the newly organized closet that is now dedicated to workout/dance clothing.

Laundry gnomes have been dispatched, and in their place are clean folded or hung up and put away clothes, no longer taking over the tops of dressers, piled high in laundry baskets threatening to spill out or already on the floorspace in my room. Nearly a revelation!

And, the Ogres of Chaos have been beaten back into hiding, with THE PILE of filing and sorting that has taken over our dining room table nearly completed.

This means packing for the General Skills workshop this coming week will be easy; I know where everything is!

Have enjoyed many meals at home, cooked by my wonderful DH.

Took a long walk by the river. Went to the Farmers Market, bought a couple lettuce plants and some herbs, still need to pot them before I leave for the GS.

Watched some good movies and some bad ones:

Daybreakers was bad, but in a really fun way. Independence Day is our annual treat for this holiday, and this year we decided to watch the special edition. Extra scenes were worth the extended time. Invention of Lying was cute, but not worth going to the theater. Fortunately we do most of our movie watching through our personal collection, or via Netflix. Have watched too many episodes of Farscape to keep track of, and just one episode of Star Gate. I know the end for SG-1 is coming (we are on season ten), and I hate ending so I tend to prolong them.

Never got the yard mowed, but DH has vowed to get it done while I am gone. It really is a meadow right now and I feel bad for him having to do it alone, but every time we were ready to work, it rained!

Gabby’s Great Escape, or how to make Joyce nervous

Over the weekend I moved my little corn snake (Gabby) from the boaphiles rack back into a glass tank. I felt like she was getting shy from having a little tiny window in a deep dark cage and did not have enough room in her 1/4 of a level anyway, I could not afford to give her more space in the rack so I bought a secondhand glass cage with an “aftermarket top”. There was a small gap that I thought I fixed (the cage should have had one of those screens that slides into the top like a drawer, but that was missing and the edges of the slides looked like they had got a little melted from a heat lamp so trying to find a replacement would not have worked anyway), and the lid that fit onto of the cage was very secure, plus I had a strap around it so I figured she could not get out.

I was wrong.

Came home last night and checked on her first, and found she has escaped. TERROR and PANIC set in. I have two cats, and two ferrets (ferrets spend most of their time in the playpen in the living room). My little cornsnake could easily be mistaken as nothing more than a fun toy for them. I was MORTIFIED. I close the door to the office/snake room and start looking around, not really expecting to find her. Fortunately, she was under the boaphiles rack and I only spent maybe 5 minutes in this agitated state.

Put her in her strike box, along with all the other snakes into their strike boxes (the stack of rubbermaid tubs I have for this specific purpose is a bit comical), fed everyone, and though the others went back into their respective homes, Gabby is still locked in her strike box which I know she cannot escape from. I gave her water, put some nice heavy items on top of the strike box (just to quell my nerves, the strike box actually locks), and will fix that glass cage edge over the weekend to totally eliminate that little gap in Gabby’s cage.

Journey Outside Part 2: TribalCon VI

TribalCon V1

My 5th TribalCon involved lots of travel, flying from Alaska to Seattle and then ultimately with a final destination of Atlanta. The travel to the con was an adventure that I won’t easily forget (you may read about in the previous blog entry), but the con itself was far more amazing that I can remember in previous years, perhaps because I now perceive things differently and have an express intent when I attend such workshops, or maybe because I find the whole journey and what it took for me to get there to have a great monetary value. Either way, my eyes are wide open right now and this year’s teachers and participants have touched me in a very personal manner.

Donna Mejia’s lecture on Thursday was amazing. Not only was the content of great value, reinforcing some things I have been contemplating lately that are personally very tough subject matter for me to deal with, but she presented them in a way that felt very safe, and the lecture participants provided lots of input in a similar manner. Her materials were presented in an intelligent and cohesive manner, and though she used some humor, for the most part she was very gracious, kind and gentle in the lecture. Thank you Donna for being such a great role model and for dealing with tough subject material with grace, eloquence, and tact.

Friday classes were without a doubt, fantastic. They were also the hardest for me physically and widened my eyes about what I need to work on for myself, and while I thought I might have trouble with some of the core work, there was a lot of information about shoulders presented that I have found most helpful as a teacher.

We started out with Ariella’s “Yoga Infused Bellydance” , and this class was packed with great information. I recommend her DVD for my beginner students since I really like her breakdown of the movements on it but I had only taken one other class from Ariella at Spirit of the Tribes a few years back and didn’t care for it so I went into this one feeling a little pensive about what I might get out of it. Was I ever wrong! She is beautiful as a teacher, with clear instruction, challenges the student without making it feel like a competition and her class reminded me how much I enjoy the peace that comes with yoga, and has hopefully inspired me to get back into a regular yoga practice.

“ATS Arms” with Megha opened my eyes on a few questions I had, and will change how I teach certain moves, especially with regard to floreos. Her class also gave me some more visualization techniques I can use in my own classes and I got a refresher on how to break down steps from Volume 7 like the Sahra and Wrap turn that I have been struggling to figure out how to teach well. Plus, it is so amazing to see a huge room full of dancers doing ATS steps all at the same time, all with Megha and her lovely assistant Deanna in the lead.

I got to enjoy Sushi for lunch with Monet, Clair, and a few other lovely ladies. Monet has this ethereal quality of calm about her that reminds me why I miss seeing her.

After lunch I decided to skip Heather Stanz’s class. In retrospect, I should have at least gone and sat down on the side to take notes, but I wanted to eat, do a bit of shopping, and given the class was called floorwork and I was already tired, I decided to sit it out. I hear they did not do a lot of floorwork after all because of the carpet, and learned some fun combinations instead. Oh well, I learned a couple years ago I should not try to do ever single class so of all the classes to miss on Friday, this was the best one to miss out on for me.

Donna’s class “Attending to Details” still has my mind reeling nearly a month later. This class was also a huge challenge physically but I am proud that I made it through the whole thing. Must go back and review my notes, though since I did a lot of participating in this class I suspect I did not get great notes. I do think attendance at a weekend workshop with this lady is in my future.

Saturday I woke up later than I wanted so I missed Jen’s “Yoga and Pilates for Belly Dancers”. I suspect that most likely still dealing with jetlag that kept me confused until I got back to Alaska. That four hour difference really messed up my routine all weekend…..

In “The Artist’s Workshop: A primer for the well-rounded dancer” Ariella reminded us over and over we are dancers. As a student of belly dance for just over 8 years now, I still found it surprising to be called “dancer”. And the memory of some feedback from one of the workshop participants still brings a tear to my eye; at the end of the class a woman spoke up and thanked Ariella for reminding her that not only was she a wife, mother, and worker but she was a dancer. Thank you Ariella for reminding me of what I am and what I can be.

“Salimpour Legacy in Tribal” with Asharah was my first workshop with this lovely dancer. I totally geeked out over the presentation she gave about history and time lines of how we get from Jamilla to Carolena, and was surprised and delighted with myself that I actually was familiar with most of what she had to offer. Then we worked on vocabulary and stylization from the original Jamilla format, and I am once again inspired to delve deeper into studying the roots of this fabulous family of dancers.

“Dynamic Fades” with Megha again reminded me that what I think I know is only part of the bigger picture. We went over basic fades with an Arabic, we learned the fabulous (yet not official) Turkish shimmy fade and we got a good breakdown of the ASWAT. And I finally got to dance with my long time e-friend Matthew which made it all the more fun!

Sunday I decided that I was going to honor the body and allowed myself to take the day off from any strenuous work and focused on listening to what was being taught in the classes. Jennifer’s’ “Experiential Anatomy for Belly Dancers “ class was FANTASTIC. Classes like this remind me how much I want to learn more about anatomy, yoga, and how to incorporate it all into movement.

Donna’s “Beyond Stationary Practice was amazing. I observed and took notes the entire time, more watching the teacher in her element (she really is the epitome of a professional educator IMHO) and have a new slew of ideas on how to incorporate more movement into my class’s traveling drills.

I also sat in on the Dance Discussion Group (thank you Monet for the noodles!) and was delighted and relieved to hear what felt like an echo of my own thoughts and practices from our panel of experts on several topics including personal practice, finding inspiration and dealing with burnout.

I skipped heather’s “Creative Dance Composition for Improvisation and Choreograph”. As much as I love to watch this dancer on stage, I just don’t feel a personal connection with her style plus I needed to finish shopping!

Taking these classes is a bit of a bittersweet revelation. Some days I am so happy to live where I am, and to have found a niche for myself, and a wonderful community of dancers especially given how small my new hometown is, yet there are days and times like this weekend where I feel that I am doing myself a huge disservice by living so far away from advanced teachers specifics to my style and interests. Guess that just means more trips “Outside” : )

Sunday night after it was all over, I watched the FCBD Volume 8: Floor work that I bought over the weekend and feel like I have a lot of work to do before my next General Skills but after being a bit worried about floor work at my first General Skills (GS) in 2007, I now know I can do it and have all the tools I need. And the Yoga warm-up on the DVD is excellent,; I think I just found a way to incorporate more Yoga into my weekly routine! The universe told me this weekend to add yoga back into my life and then it showed me one way to do it. Double win! This was my fifth year attending, but my 1st year coming from Alaska, and even with getting stuck in Seattle for 11 hours (missed a flight), I still think this is and was worth every penny I spent getting there, and every hour of slept I lost being there (4 hour time difference made me a bit crazy!)

Journey Outside Part 1: Adventures in Traveling

Traveling to TribalCon this year included some extensive air travel, something I have not done for a good many years. I decided to take an early flight on Wednesday, so that I would be in ATL with plenty of time to get checked in, rest and be ready for the keynote speech with Donna Mejia, something I am still looking very forward to doing.

Early travel meant being up at 5am, no easy feat for Joyce. But, I did it, and was on the plane by 7am enroute to Seattle (SeaTac). Our flight was a little delayed, but the big news was that my second flight had been delayed by over 2 hours. I got a call n Tuesday to inform me of this, but when I got the airport in Fairbanks they did not have that information, so coupled with my lack of sleep, I arrive at SeaTac just after 11am local time quite confused. I found the flight, and it was originally scheduled to leave at 1:10, but had been changed to 3:55. So I figured I had a few hours to kill and decided to wander. I stopped at the Body Shop, but was too tired to make any decisions on what to get, so I wandered around the food court trying to figure out what to eat. I settled on Fish and Chips from Anthony’s Fish Shack/House which I was less than impressed with; next time I will go to the Japanese place that had spicy tofu (nestled next to the Wendy’s in the found court which is why I didn’t notice it the first time).

After eating I wandered the main terminal a bit more, finding lots of places to sit and plug in my laptop while I goof around on FB, tribe and my email. Decided that I just was not satisfied with the fish and chips I had, so I stopped in DISH D’Lish to get a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich, and a big mocha. They had a place where I could charge the laptop, so I ate, surfed a bit more, and enjoyed my coffee. I noticed my laptop said it was 2pm, so I decided to pack it up and head out to the subway to get to my gate. By the time I arrived, the board had a new depart time of 3:27, so I quickly walked to my gate, only to find it dark, deserted of all passengers and the two attendants looked like they were packing up shop.
I had missed my flight.

Apparently my laptop does not pick up local time, and was an hour behind, so when I thought it was 2pm, it was actually 3pm local time. Even so, I should have made it! Why the airline changed the time by over two hours and then changed it again to an earlier time is beyond m e, but there it was; I was at the gate no later than 3:28, but the plane was gone. Sigh.

A nice attendant found me the next flight, the redeye at 10:30, and gave me a couple of meal tickets for my trouble. SO, it is now 9:30 local time, and I am waiting at the gate for the flight. I will not let the gate out of my sight, until I walk through it. The good part about this is I had time to fix my blog, and get in an hour of work. I am scheduled to arrive at 6am (time change, flight is only 4 hours) and I plan to sleep on the flight and then sleep more at the hotel, so until tomorrow, have a great night!

Look! Moose!!!

There was a moose at my house when I can home from dance class tonight (correction, it was Dec 15, 2009 when this happened). I did not see her when I first go home, but she rounded the corner of my fence and was RIGHT THERE in my little back yard. My neighbor mentioned her baby was in my front yard and that I should be careful. Mama moose had me cornered at my van when I got home, and was no more than 5 ft away from me (with my van between us). I was a just a LITTLE SCARED!

When I finally got into the house, with my heart pounding I ran upstairs, grabbed my camera and went out the front door. The baby was lying down in our front yard, and when I came out onto the front porch, it took off. He was also BIG!

Whew! Second moose sighting since moving here and this was a little close for personal comfort.

Happy Holidays!

We decorated out new little Christmas tree tonight. Complete with 501st ornaments, light up Millennium Falcon and talking Trek shuttle craft, M&M droids, free trade ornaments and a Grinch. We decided to forsake the purposely tacky multicolored star only because the tacky topper made the tree topple.

Also enjoyed hot chocolate with cinnamon sticks and peppermint schnapps, we call these drinks “Grinches”. Not grinchy about them, indeed, I feel pretty jovial right about now!

TribalCon! (Feb 24-26, 2006)

Its all kind of a blur right now, but one of the blurs that leaves a happy warm fuzzy feeling in your heart. I had so much fun! And so much shopping and dancing my body and brain was screaming at me last night as I tried to teach and share the wealth of information that I picked up.

And no Ice!

The dance classes were so much fun, and so informative that I am still trying to decipher my notes! Picked up some sassy new twists on tribal combinations from the adorably funny and hot lady Rachel, as well as rekindling my love with the veil in her Sunday class, the fan class, much like Onca, was sassy sexy fun, and Jennifer’s yoga class reminded me how much I miss having yoga in my daily schedule of late!

The Show – DAMN. I wish I could remember more – can’t wait for the video to refresh my memory! It was a little warm in the room, and I had a couple glasses of wine combined with some Night quill since I have been fighting a cough for weeks now, so everything was VERY SUPER SHINY. Folks I saw last year that I have befriended since like Gypsy Red Tribe was awesome with their fan dance, Devyani was perfectly precise and pretty, Awalim KICKED major A$$, and other groups I discovered last year were great treats too: Masmoodi and the Naughties were amazing hip hop funkified, Blue Moon Bellydance had an amazing pairs of sword and pot dancer and Dance of the Fates were ginormous winged beauties to behold! I also finally got to see some of my tribe friends perform that I only knew from tribe – The ladies in Mandara can spin like a whirling dervish, Onca & Baraka Mundi were a HOOT with their saloon girl Flamenco fusion outfits and fan dancing (open ….and close and open and close them fans like you mean it, and they did!!), and so many others that were wonderful to watch as well!

Drum class on Sunday rocked my world – I was a little intimidated to take a class with master drummers Solace and Tim Rayburn, but they made it a lot of fun! I didn’t know I could drum for so long and keep up with the others! And I am so proud of my student; she came to that class having never done drumming before and did great! Happy thoughts and total sense of contentment….

The video room – freaking awesome! I mentioned this elsewhere (Tribal Style, A Documentary tribe) but what a GREAT thing this was! I popped in to see some of the films that were playing at this event. They used a projection system and a big screen and it was BEAUTIFUL! Life sized dancers performing on the screen – wahoozah! I wanted to stay in that room the whole weekend and watch all the videos but alas I had also signed up for every single TribalCon workshop and couldn’t stay….

And now we have to wait a WHOLE YEAR before we can do it again?

Thanks again Awalim!

TribalCon 2005 or IceCon 2005?

TribalCon 2005 or IceCon 2005?

The first annual TribalCon (www.tribalcon.com/) was to be held in Atlanta GA over the weekend of Jan 28-30.

We drove the imperial shuttle (my minivan) up to Atlanta from Tallahassee, with 5 other folks Friday, arriving about 5pm, and caravaned with 3 of our other friends. Our plan was to stay with our friends Keith and Barb who live in Duluth, and while Tara and I danced, the rest of them were going to be gaming (RPG). Five other folks showed late Friday night for gaming, rbinging our total to SIXTEEN so there was a houseful!

Saturday morning the ground and all vehicles are covered in ice. However, having experience in living in cold climates before, I am dressed and ready to go, have the car warming up, defroster is on and only need to find an ice scraper. Someone in our group has one, but his car is frozen shut! After a fiasco trying to get into the car with the ice scraper, and trying to scrape the layers of ice off my van, Tara calls to find out the ice storm came which had come through Atlanta Friday into Saturday, had shut down the school where the events were to be held at due to power outages. This coupled with dangerous driving conditions, postponed much of the events scheduled by a full day.

IceCon

So, now that all the dancing girls’ Saturday plans have been postponed, we go back into the house. Barb is cooking up a storm, making muffins and some kind of egg quiche thing that was oh so INCREDIBLY delicious. Drink a little more coffee, and I am feeling like I will be having a relaxing day, but wait, I am trapped in Duluth for an entire day, I am not a gamer, and with not much else to do, I prepared for my class on Monday, napped, and then about 6pm the non-gaming folks (4 of us) escaped the house to find something to do. After finding the Regal closed, and the AMC closed as well, we found a private theater and thought we would check out “Alone in the Dark”. I love cheesy sci-fi, but this was an absolutely HORRIBLE movie! The theater was also host to a video arcade, and to “Dance Dance Revolution”, an interactive ‘follow the leader with music’ type game, so Barb and I had a dance off, then I danced against the other girl that comae with us (I am so sorry but I forgot the other lady’s name!!) What a blast! This got our hearts pumping, and by the time we were done, we had quite a little crowd watching us

By now it is 10pm, so we decide we should head back to Keith and Barb’s, only to find they were still gaming! but we had not had dinner yet, so, we made up some spagetti and salad, which was delicious, the game wound down, some western movie went in that I am unfamiliar with (Tombstone??) and once my food was gone, my gin and grapefruit was drank, I headed to bed.

TribalCon

We had only signed up for the Saturday workshops, but as it was canceled we attended on Sunday. But everything got all smushed together, since the show for Saturday had been canceled as well, so we went to dance class from 10-3, with an hour for lunch (and, due to no one’s fault but our own bad luck in navigating, we had a horrendous time trying to find food!) and then the evening show was moved to Sunday at 4pm. I was kind of sad since it seemed like ther was not enough time to shop, or relax and mingle much with dancers I had been talking to on various forums like tribe.net. Additionally, the ice kept falling from the trees onto the roof of the gynasium, making it sound like the roof was going to fall in (it didn’t, but the noises got a few gasps from us dancers as well as the instructors, who were absolute darlings about it).

We got out of the show at about 7pm, and we were all starving so we went to get food. Yummy fish tacos and sharing a pitcher of Guinness gave me an attitude adjustment, for the better, and we left Atlanta just about 9pm. I drove for about 1.5 hours, and was so tired my Michael took over while the rest of us slept the remainder of the way to Tallassee about 1:30am. What a great guy my hubby is

The workshops were fun and it is neat to see other people’s style of instructions. I am still tired and sore from Jill Parker’s conditioning exercises (my quads are KILLING me still!) and I know she took it easy on us so I feel like I need to work on that aspect of strength for myself.

The show was also good. All of the dancers were wonderful! I loved the Blue Moon Dance troupe, Awalim, Mamoudi; none of which I had ever seen perform before. Kassar was there, saw them perform at Spirit of the Tribes last year, and I enjoy their performance this time as well. There was another group whom I cannot recall their name, but they wore brightly covered skirts, were very ATS and I loved them too! I know the show was videotaped, and I hope that tapes (or DVDS) will be availbale soon!

Unfortunately, my camera decided it was as tired as I was, and took a lot of fuzzy pictures before the batteries died so I am missing pictures of some of the groups that performed.

Zi’ah was absolutely gracious and endearing the entire time. She is a wonderful hostess, and I hope that she will do this again next year!

This post was originally posted on my website: Feb 1, 2005

Habits of a Bad Blogger

It’s been over a month since my last blog. I think I am just too busy! I moved to Alaska for a variety of reasons, but one of the BIG ones was because we wanted to start to enjoy our time together more, and stop being such work work work people. SO what do I do just one year after I get to Alaska? I open a dance studio, with a small retail store in it, on top of having a full time job.

Hence my recent silence.

I assure you all we are fine. I am just busy and Michael is not a blogger. I swear I will get our pictures from our cross continent move up on the gallery eventually, as well as the photos from old versions of my website. SOMEDAY.

I actually am taking the whole week of the Thanksgiving holiday off from teaching classes and plan to spend some time on me. But that means mostly moving to a ‘new to me’ computer that I bought a few months ago and hav not had the time to move my apps and data to, something I REALLY need to do since my home PC has a failing hard drive.

Look who is 40!

Got a couple of nice present in the mail the day before my birthday, and someone gave me some cake that won’t upset my belly! (it’s been a bad week of tummy troubles)

I also got snow for my birthday. We just won’t discuss why I was up before 9am on a day I thought I would get to sleep in.