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Friday: Off at 4pm for a 5pm departure. Wow, the air quality is BAD. We really noticed in the plane. We were all glad Rob was instrument rated. It does make beautiful patterns winding through the hills down by the Grapevine, though. If it were just fog, we'd call it lovely; since it's smoke, we say it's nasty.
Snarfed dinner at Burger King on the way to the dance. C3A went fine; it was fun to dance to Clark.
The air conditioner in our hotel room was acting oddly. My is it ever humid in the LA basin. Nothing like where I grew up, of course, but I've gotten incredibly spoiled.
The moon was orange.
Saturday: Up early for my almost-daily run. I was thankful for the overcast! I learned a few things: I don't run nearly so fast (measured by heart rate) on sidewalks as I do on a treadmill. People honk at runners a lot in ... um, whatever subsection we were in. My new shoes give me blisters.
The C3B was fun, and we got a demo of "hexagon square dancing" - NOT the hexagon squares y'all probably saw at a gimmicky Mainstream dance fifteen years ago; these are shaped like hexagons, and all Mainstream choreo can be done in those and can time out well. It's mindbendingly wonderful.
There was no evening dance session. Most everyone went out to eat raw fish. Repulsive. Unfortunately, almost any food-socializing leaves Rob and therefore me out. Nobody likes our company ENOUGH to compromise on the food, and we do need to eat, so we splinter off from the group. I can't really blame anyone; eating where Rob can eat gets very, very old very, very fast. But still, it's a bummer sometimes. (Probably a little more so for me -- he at least gets food he likes.) We found a little coffeeshop, studied C4, and sat in the hotel's sauna for half an hour.
I made enough sleepy goofs in the C3B that I decided not to dance the C4 the next day. I really think I'm not sleeping well at all. I made sure to find my Sweden tourbook and my call definitions to read.
Sunday: Of course, one can hide only for so long. There were thirty-three people, and two of us were supposedly there only to watch, so that left thirty-one -- one dancer shy of four squares. Oops. I had good strategy; I'd be in the bathroom when everyone squared up. But when I walked back into the room to watch, seven people would get up, and square dancer manners dictated that I should dance. The other watcher had intelligently left the area. So I got dragged into a few.
The pattern for these things is that the last square to form tends to contain the least skilled dancers. I don't know why. Shortly, I decided that I was either going to get into squares where the dancers were more skilled (because I NEED the help) or I was going shopping. Several people encouraged me to stay. I got better about getting into squares earlier, and had great fun from that point onwards. I'm not exactly an asset or anything, but I'm no longer the worst one out there either. That's cool.
Rob said he was surprised at how well I was doing. Other than me, he's my worst critic, and he is often surprised when I do anything well. Ah, love. (pardon me while I hurl.)
The flight back was equally grimy. At 12,500 feet we were above most of the muck. Descending into the Bay Area was like wrapping our faces in gauze. The sun became orange, then deep red, then we saw what we all believe was a SUNSPOT with our bare eyes, then the sun faded grayly until it was gone from view entirely. The airport had its beacon and lights on; for ground-dwellers, the sun had set, despite the fact that it was technically still well above the horizon. It wasn't visible in the slightest, therefore it was night and the lights needed to be on.
Hungry now. Going to eat.
Snarfed dinner at Burger King on the way to the dance. C3A went fine; it was fun to dance to Clark.
The air conditioner in our hotel room was acting oddly. My is it ever humid in the LA basin. Nothing like where I grew up, of course, but I've gotten incredibly spoiled.
The moon was orange.
Saturday: Up early for my almost-daily run. I was thankful for the overcast! I learned a few things: I don't run nearly so fast (measured by heart rate) on sidewalks as I do on a treadmill. People honk at runners a lot in ... um, whatever subsection we were in. My new shoes give me blisters.
The C3B was fun, and we got a demo of "hexagon square dancing" - NOT the hexagon squares y'all probably saw at a gimmicky Mainstream dance fifteen years ago; these are shaped like hexagons, and all Mainstream choreo can be done in those and can time out well. It's mindbendingly wonderful.
There was no evening dance session. Most everyone went out to eat raw fish. Repulsive. Unfortunately, almost any food-socializing leaves Rob and therefore me out. Nobody likes our company ENOUGH to compromise on the food, and we do need to eat, so we splinter off from the group. I can't really blame anyone; eating where Rob can eat gets very, very old very, very fast. But still, it's a bummer sometimes. (Probably a little more so for me -- he at least gets food he likes.) We found a little coffeeshop, studied C4, and sat in the hotel's sauna for half an hour.
I made enough sleepy goofs in the C3B that I decided not to dance the C4 the next day. I really think I'm not sleeping well at all. I made sure to find my Sweden tourbook and my call definitions to read.
Sunday: Of course, one can hide only for so long. There were thirty-three people, and two of us were supposedly there only to watch, so that left thirty-one -- one dancer shy of four squares. Oops. I had good strategy; I'd be in the bathroom when everyone squared up. But when I walked back into the room to watch, seven people would get up, and square dancer manners dictated that I should dance. The other watcher had intelligently left the area. So I got dragged into a few.
The pattern for these things is that the last square to form tends to contain the least skilled dancers. I don't know why. Shortly, I decided that I was either going to get into squares where the dancers were more skilled (because I NEED the help) or I was going shopping. Several people encouraged me to stay. I got better about getting into squares earlier, and had great fun from that point onwards. I'm not exactly an asset or anything, but I'm no longer the worst one out there either. That's cool.
Rob said he was surprised at how well I was doing. Other than me, he's my worst critic, and he is often surprised when I do anything well. Ah, love. (pardon me while I hurl.)
The flight back was equally grimy. At 12,500 feet we were above most of the muck. Descending into the Bay Area was like wrapping our faces in gauze. The sun became orange, then deep red, then we saw what we all believe was a SUNSPOT with our bare eyes, then the sun faded grayly until it was gone from view entirely. The airport had its beacon and lights on; for ground-dwellers, the sun had set, despite the fact that it was technically still well above the horizon. It wasn't visible in the slightest, therefore it was night and the lights needed to be on.
Hungry now. Going to eat.
no subject
> The pattern for these things is that the last square to form tends to contain the least skilled dancers. I don't know why.
My theory is that it’s because the strong dancers want to dance, so they by-god get up there together in the front of the hall, ready to go, as soon as the caller starts making get-ready motions (cueing up the record and that). While the front’s filling up with them, the weaker dancers hang back, uncertain whether they even want to try dancing this tip, and half-intimidated by the presence of the stronger dancers and by the aura of superiority the better dancers project (whether they intend to project it or not, they almost always do). In the end, the weak dancers huddle in the back where they can’t hear properly (leading to more screw-ups because they mis-hear calls), and where they hope their flubs won’t be laughed at or snorted at too badly by the rest of the hall when, as is inevitable, they break the square (and maybe the whole floor).
no subject
Speaking of the ability to hear, it's amazing what a difference that makes. If the caller is hard for me to hear, my brain devotes computational capacity to audio processing, and believe it or not I start to screw up even when I understood the call correctly! Last night we had a C4 group dancing to a poor-quality audio tape, and when we eventually gave up and picked a tape of a different dance, we all did much better.