Rakkasah!

It was great! :-) I had a lot of fun dancing at Rakkasah on Saturday, as well as looking around at all the pretty sparkly things, and watching other people dance. I know I had a few mis-steps on stage. Oops. Oh well. It was kind of bittersweet though, last performance with the troupe. I'm sad, and yet, it has to be this way. Sigh. I'm definitely not done dancing, just not sure exactly what to do now.

I'll post pics when I get all of them, and when the performance is posted online.

last chance, last dance....

Oh my, I keep forgetting to post this!

I will be dancing at the Rakkasah West Bellydance Festival with the Arabian Jewels troupe.
7:24pm on Saturday March 13th
Richmond Memorial Auditorium
27th & MacDonald Ave; Richmond, CA

This is quite a fun event!

Now, I do have to tell you... this'll be the last time. At least in the foreseeable future. I've made the somewhat difficult decision to stop taking classes and bow out of the troupe. I go on good terms (with almost everyone), and hope the friendships I've made will stay alive. I do plan to visit their performances sometimes, and my teacher will always be dear to me.

I don't know whether I will take classes again somewhere else at some point. Time will tell. I do enjoy the dancing, but can only take so much of certain personality types.

Anyway, gonna give it all I've got on Saturday, my last hurrah. :-)

cover girl

I keep forgetting to mention that I am a cover girl. Yeah, seriously. Bet you never thought THAT would happen. Check this out:

Don't feel bad if you're not sure which one is me. I'll put on some bright pink arrows for your convenience (I'm sorta behind someone in one of the pics anyway):

Get those autographs while you can.... ;-)

How's my thumb? Eh, it's okay. If it was a horse I'd call it "serviceably sound." I'm just not sure it's ever going to be normal. No problem straightening it, but it still hurts to try to bend it all the way. My left hand spends hours and hours gripping whatever I'm scrimming, so it's getting lots of use. I never wear the splint anymore. It looks even wonkier than it used to. There has been a bump on the left side of the last joint since I was 11, but now it's much bigger. People actually notice it now. ("Oh wow, you have a bump on your thumb.") Maybe it's just that people are looking at my thumb more now that the entire world knows I stupidly mashed it with a hammer not too long ago. Oh well, makes me special I guess.

Despite getting lots done today I am not posting WIP pics because I have not inked most of what I was working on. So it won't look a whole lot different in a photograph anyway.

weekend warrior

Wow, Sunday night already. I think I'll sleep well tonight. Saturday was busy with the usual 4th of July festivities. Food, friends, family, and a few fireworks. :-) It felt like kind of a whirlwind evening.

Today was the dance performance down at the Galt Festival. We had an hour long spot, but nobody danced that entire time (whew!). It was good, the weather was very nice although it was pretty windy which made for some veil challenges. I think it was a really good show though, I hope everyone who saw it enjoyed it. :-)

The group that performed tonight:


Me getting my veil all tangled up:

upcoming dance performance!

Yay, a belly dance performance! Come out and see the troupe, and hope it's not so hot that our makeup melts. ;-) This should be a great show. I'm in EIGHT dances (wow!) and guess what, you can actually see me in all of them! Wow! Be there or be square! See http://www.galtfestival.org for directions. Free parking, $5 admission.

Rakkasah!

I'm sooooo tired. But it went great! I was able to get someone to shoot pics on my camera too, yay!

The intro (I'm second from left in photo):


Dancing the Marco Polo dance (I'm on right in photo):


I'm not sure which dance this was (I'm second from left in photo):


The troupe afterwards (I'm second from left in photo):


Oh yeah, these girls are always trouble ;-) (I'm on the right in case you really haven't figured this out yet)


A totally hammed up pose from the intro dance (taken afterwards):

wish me luck!

Tomorrow's the big day! Rakkasah West bellydance festival! I'm on stage at 6pm. I've got everything all packed up, my fingernails and toenails are painted bright red, I'm feeling good about it! I hope to have photographic proof of this, but I can't promise it right away.

Think happy thoughts for me! :-)

Asparagus and UFOs

My day started much earlier than normal for a Saturday. This morning was the bellydance performance at the Stockton Asparagus Festival. It went pretty well over all I would say. I goofed up once that I'm aware of but it was pretty minor, and I'm sure I smiled more this time even if it was a fake smile. I know some of the other dancers goofed up a lot worse than I did. Seemed like a pretty big crowd, and thank you to those who came to visit. :-) It was a pretty toasty day, and lacking anywhere to change clothes we just wandered around for a while in costume (with cover-up) until it was absurdly hot, and then had ice cream for lunch and went home. We sure got some funny looks, but I'd like to think I was checked out for being such a hottie, not just that I was dressed funny with gobs of flowers in my hair...ha ha. Hey, a girl can dream! ;-) If I had been there as a spectator I would have liked to have seen the craft booths but it just wasn't practical to be wandering around in all that garb, even though I shed as much clothing as I could possibly get away with under the cover-up. ;-)

I would imagine the toilets at an Asparagus Festival must be fairly potent. Bleh.

Anyway, I took about a half hour to veg out and unwind when I got home and then plunged in to working on the book cover for most of the rest of day.

I saw a UFO this evening while spending a few minutes in the hammock in the back yard. Okay it wasn't really a UFO (probably) but it was flying and I could not identify it, so...yeah. My best guess is a strangely shaped mylar balloon, REALLY high up. It was bizarre, and just totally mesmerizing. Weird shape, sort of in two parts like two squares joined at the corner, very shiny metallic, rotating at a constant speed (fairly slow) and blowing in an absolutely straight line. So weird. With no context of what it was I could convince myself it was anything from something about the size and altitude of a high flying hawk, to something the size and altitude of an airplane.

Well, I'm über tired and have another busy day tomorrow. I'd better go to bed. The other night I dreamed I was trying to pilot a small airplane and I was distracted while trying to take off and drove it headfirst into someone's pigeon loft, and even though it only screwed up a little bit of the wire the pigeon dude was trying to get me to fix all kinds of other crap too. What the heck?! I have some doozies. Anyway, off I go.

Rakkasah!

Whee! What a weekend! :-) It was kind of a blur... but in a good way.

*note* I will add more photos as I get them from people, I don't have much right now.

"A" and I left town late Saturday morning and drove to Vallejo for the Rakkasah festival. It was in a new location this year, with two full stages and two buildings. It was nice that it seemed a little more spread out, more room to walk around, but there needed to be a lot more seating! We spent a couple hours looking around at everything and buying a few things (I got a super cute t-shirt emblazoned with the word "bellydancer" and you'd better believe I'll wear it in public, and also a tie-front top for costume) and then we watched a bunch of performances. There are a lot of different styles of dance, and it was neat to see everyone's interpretation and costumes. There's also quite a range of talents, and that I must say is something of an ego boost, being rather much a "newbie" myself.

It is also refreshing, if not downright empowering, to see women (and men! not many men though) of ALL shapes and sizes dancing. Kinda makes me feel pretty. :-) Though mainstream culture seems to worship the ultra-thin, it isn't so in bellydance, where curves are actually a good thing!

Anyway, we took off a little after 4 to start getting ready, which takes a LONG time (hair, makeup, complicated outfit, flowers, etc). Met up with the troupe in the hotel lobby at 6:30 and headed back to the fairgrounds. This was the first time they had seen the outfits I designed/sewed, so that was pretty neat, I got a lot of compliments on those and I must say we really looked fabulous.

We hung out backstage for a while, and time flew, and we were all standing there gabbing thinking we had a while yet to go when suddenly they announced us and our intro music started and we all said something along the lines of "oh crap!" and ran to the stairs and onto the stage. It was a chaotic start, but no biggie. The performance was 15 minutes long, consisting of 6 dances (well, technically an intro, 4 dances, a finale). I was in 4 of them. Nobody was in all of them. It was a blur. What seemed to take so long in practice absolutely flew, and there really was no time to think about what was next or anything. I did pretty good, I think, I mean at least as far as not forgetting stuff. I missed one beat of one step. I probably did not smile the whole time, in fact I know I didn't. Hopefully I didn't look awful though. I'm just not a very smiley person but I tried. :-) I was nervous but not really all that bad, and nothing like that solo I did in January where I was shaking like a leaf.

I'm glad a few people were there who knew me. My mom was there, and A's parents and husband, and CS, AS, and JG. And to my complete amazement so were JJ and CM! I was doing this move with both arms outstretched, looking at the audience thinking "gee I wish JJ could be here--OMG there she is in the front row!" I know I looked shocked and did a little wave and immediately realized that would show on the video, oops! Tee hee.

For those of you who missed it, there will be more. I don't know any upcoming dates at this point but I'll be sure to pass them along.

Most of the ladies from the troupe got together in the hotel late that night for pizza, and that was fun, I really enjoy getting to know everyone better. I slept poorly but amazingly woke up at 8, go figure. On the way home A asked me if I'd ever been to Ikea, and since I hadn't... we went. Wow, that place is totally overewhelming. Very neat stuff though. I found a perfect light for the microscope (I'm having trouble getting enough reflection) but they were out of stock. Bugger. I'll check back later, as they are not available on line. Then I played "Rock Band" with A and T for a while, and the official verdict I think is that even in "easy" mode I pretty much suck and have no musical skills. This should not come as a shock... ;-)

Headed home, napped, fed critters, dinner, movie, blogging, need to go to bed...

I can't wait for the next performance!

Pictures!

There's me on the left, not smiling...

It took me a while to figure out what I'm doing in this pic, because it's an odd position for my arms, but then I realized this is when I'm doing what we call the "wave step" in one dance.

Sorry this is sideways, but here's a video!!! Thanks JJ. :-) I'm on the left. You'll have to lean left to watch this, I couldn't figure out how to rotate it. Grr, I can't get the video to upload, so if you can open .AVI movies here's the link:
me dancing!

cold

My overwhelming impression of today is this: cold. Or perhaps "OMG so cold, I darn near froze my... coins off!" The performance today was interesting. Not a huge crowd but they seemed to enjoy it. Unfortunately it was running quite late. I'm not sure what time we actually got on stage (outdoors!) but we all stood huddled up like those penguins braving an Antarctic winter while waiting our turn.

"A" and I did two dances. There were five total, but two were solos and the other is one we don't know. Other than the weather it was fun, and afterwards we went out for ice cream (on a cold day, yeah, I know...) at Cold Stone, and that was fun just to sit around and shoot the breeze and get to know people better. There were only six of us in the performance today.

Here are a couple pics my mom took before we left here. I do have permission from "A" to post these but she wants her name to stay anonymous so if you know who she is please don't put her name in the comments. (I'm on the right, in case you didn't already know that).




No scrimshaw today. Back to it tomorrow, plus I had better start my stupid sales taxes. Icky!

what a weekend

I barely slept Thursday night, the wind and rain started up during the middle of the night and made so much noise that I woke up many times and stayed awake worrying about what was blowing away or falling over. The damage was pretty minor in the morning, just some branches down and the chicken house doors blown open on one coop (ripped the latches right off!). The rain and wind kept up all day and for a while I was out there slogging around (evidently rain pants have a "shelf life." Mine have apparently expired, brrr!) tying leaning trees to the fence, tying the chicken house doors shut, putting up extra panels to block the holes where the fence had blown down, etc. Wild weather. I had to leave by 2pm if I was going to make it down to Hollister before dark. I kept hoping the weather would clear but I finally just decided to go. It wasn't as bad a drive as I had thought it could be. The wind was a lot better, so the first hour and a half of the trip down I-5 was just steady rain, and I saw a LOT of accidents, including a big rig sideways blocking all the northbound lanes. I was glad I was going south. 152 was a little scary, it was very windy and rainy going over the pass, and there was a lot of water flowing across the road in some areas. Note to self, do not apply brakes when going through water downhill on a curve. Nothing like a little hydroplaning! Whee! :-0 I drove my car this weekend, and as strange as this is it's running really well lately. I know the belt can't have anything to do with the transmission, but the transmission seems way better ever since the belt and pulley got replaced. Whatever...

I got to Hollister a little before 5pm and found the show room pretty empty. It was looking like a lot of people wouldn't show up, but I think by Saturday morning most of them did. I took 12 birds. Numbers seemed to be down a bit this year. I got the birds cooped in, fed, and watered, and had some dinner at the show hall with a small group of friends, then headed back to my hotel room and got into jammies and watched TV for a while until D.W. finally arrived and came over for drinks and chit chat.

Barely slept Friday night (can't sleep in hotels, ugh!) and got up early Saturday morning. I got my birds cleaned up as best I could, and to my dismay discovered that one of my black pullets had molted most of her neck feathers overnight. Cripes! What is up with that?! My pullets are molting neck feathers right now, but I was relieved to hear it's not just my crazy birds doing that.

I spent the day talking to people and looking at birds, and sometimes sitting there by myself wondering where the heck a couple of my friends disappeared to because I really wanted to talk to them and barely got the chance. Hmpf! I also bought a pair of birds. What? Yeah, I haven't bought birds for about ten years (except that Silver Duckwing Old English rooster a couple years ago). I saw this pair of Black Rosecombs in the sale pens and even though they are past their show prime they looked like really nice birds. I asked the owner what bloodline they are from, and they are from a line that I was thinking about buying and having shipped in, so basically I saved a pile of money not getting birds shipped in. Score! I wasn't expecting to buy anything there but I think it was a wise decision, since I do need to outcross my flock.

I was pleasantly suprised to see that one of Black Breasted Red males took Best of Breed, and even more surprised that one of the BBRed females won Reserve of Breed (I had the only Rosecombs there, but this isn't saying much for my blacks I think, lol!) I was REALLY surprised when that BBRed male went on to win the RCCL class. This is the sort of thing that makes ripples and upsets people, because a "colored" Rosecomb is not one that people tend to expect much out of. But I like to prove them wrong, and this show seems to be the place to do it. Last year I had Reserve RCCL with one, and two years ago I won Reserve Grand Champion with one. Woo hoo!

They finished up the judging late Saturday afternoon, since some people had to head home because of flooding. There was no way in heck I was going to leave that night, besides... I had plans.... ;-)

Months ago when I was talking to L.R. about bellydancing, she asked if I would be willing to do a little something for J.R.'s 70th birthday party this weekend. I had to think about that a bit, since it meant doing a solo performance (C.S. and I put on a very small "private party" show there last year, our debut...) I agreed to do it.

So after a very nerve-wracked dinner with D.W. I headed back to my room and spent an hour and a half getting dressed. It's amazing how long it takes to do costume, hair, and makeup, and by the time I finished getting ready I was so nervous and scared I was shaking. It's so much easier to do that with a group of people! I really should have had someone hang out with me just for moral support when I was getting ready, I was a wreck. W.L. came over shortly before the party and took some photos with my camera. He has a bunch more on his camera but I probably won't get those til next weekend. I hope there are some good ones!

The worst part has to be the last five or so minutes before the performance, sitting there alone in my room so nervous I was afraid my dinner wasn't going to stay put. And then it was time to go, time to just tell myself it'll be okay... So I called over and said I was on my way and out the door I went....

The first part of the intro song played while I waited outside the door, and then when I heard my "walk in music" start I pushed the door open and stepped inside and seriously I could have just croaked I was so scared. I could see that the room wasn't set up quite as I had planned, so I was going to have to dance in the middle, meaning there would be people behind me. Oh well, I figured that was their problem, they could have moved.

The dance itself is really all a blur. I was scared, and I was trying to see who all was there but also sort of afraid to see who all was there. There were about 20 people there. The really good news is that I didn't screw up at all! I was afraid I was going to miss a step but I didn't. The only problem at all was my sleeve got hung up for a second on my belt, but I got it loose pretty quick. I could tell that some people were really enjoying it, and some looked uncomfortable. Maybe because it's me and seeing me do that was kind of shocking? Whatever. Nobody got up and left, which was good! It was way too "close quarters." It would have been nice to have more distance between me and everyone else, but there wasn't anything I could do about that. So it was a five minute slow song and a 1.5 minute fast song, and then I bowed and left and went back to my room and congratulated myself for surviving, touched up my makeup, had a glass of water, wrapped myself up in my veil and headed back over to visit with everyone. Several people got photos with me, and W.L. took a bunch of photos during the performance, but I don't have those yet.

So over all I'd say it went really well, my very first solo! It shocked some people, several of them said they were just totally blown away that it was ME doing all that. I think that's part of the appeal. And several people said they'd never look at me quite the same way again. ;-) I guess that's okay... You know, it's very empowering. :-)

In all the excitement last night I forgot to set my alarm, so despite my plans to get out of bed at 7 and be at the show hall at 8, I woke up at 8:15 and a said a string of expletives when I looked at the clock. I was SO glad I mostly packed up last night, because I'd thought about doing that this morning instead. Ugh. I threw some clothes on and brushed my hair and got over there at 8:40, and more than one person told me I looked like hell. Yeah, I pretty much do first thing in the morning... Plus I had slept really poorly again.

So I packed up the birds, hugged everyone goodbye, had a totally uneventful and pleasant drive home in the sunny weather, unloaded birds, had lunch, sat down on my bed, and promptly fell asleep for a few hours.

I definitely won't be doing that at every show. Next weekend I'll have the art booth there, that's quite enough to deal with!

Here are a couple of pics from last night that were on my camera. (I made a lot of the costume myself, including the veil). I love veils!

letting the Kat out of the bag

Okay, I can't not-talk-about-this any longer. It's not a secret, because some people already know (I think there are about 25, give or take). I've really debated if I wanted the *whole world* to know, but gosh darn it this is just too exciting. I have to talk about it.

It all started a little over a year ago. My friend CS asked me if I'd like to get involved in learning this thing. And my first thought was "omg NO, seriously, me? Really? Is she insane? I can't do that!" But I thought about it more, and figured well heck, it might be good for me, and it might be FUN. So yeah, sure, why not!

So she and I and a few other people would get together every week or two and learn some stuff and practice and it really was fun. And addicting. And thought-consuming, and time-consuming. Things to practice, stuff to make! We showed our skills to a select group of friends last January and people seemed to get a kick out it, which fanned the fire even more, although unfortunately it was hard to get together as much as we wanted.

Last March she and I went to a HUGE festival that featured this thing. Wow, that was awesome, and inspirational.

So in April I talked another friend (I am not sure if she wants to be anonymous or not so I'll just call her "A") into joining this adventure, and we ("A" and I) started taking lessons. Oooh, loved it. Great group, great teacher, totally hooked. Six months of beginner class and then we moved up to intermediate... Two and a half months there and we were in our first performance Wednesday night!!!

Are you confused yet? What the heck am I talking about?

*ahem* Drum roll please....

..........

I am a bellydancer.

If you fell off your chair please pick yourself up. If you don't believe me, believe me. That's the truth. I drooled over the talent and costumes at Rakkasah West in March (when I stayed with my cousin in the bay area), started formal lessons in April, and performed at a banquet in Stockton Wednesday night. That definitely contributed to recently being really busy, as there was a lot to practice and I did quite a bit of work helping A assemble and sew a costume. I totally love it! It's fun, and I absolutely love the group of people. I totally adore the costuming, that's one of my favorite parts, I really like sewing stuff and making stuff and dyeing veils and I *really* like getting all dressed up! Whee! I think there's some appeal in it being something that really surprises the heck out of people too. ;-)

I'm not yet a member of the troupe but am like an apprentice, part of the student troupe. A and I were invited to take part in the performance (at a medical society banquet) on Wednesday, which was really awesome. I was nervous but excited. I made a few mistakes but nothing really major, probably nobody even noticed, and the other ladies said we were great, so yay!

But here's the really super duper exciting news. Thursday night in class we were invited to take part in the Rakkasah festival in Vallejo in March of 2008!!!! OMG!!!!!!!!!!! This is *the* festival, this is a really big deal, I am really quite shocked that I am going to be part of it. That's soooo exciting!!! My teacher has more faith in me than I do!

Looks like there will be one or two performances in January, so I'll probably be talking about those as they get closer. It's been *really* hard not talking about this for so long! But on the other hand it was also kind of fun to keep the secret, and it's still going to take me a few minutes to actually hit the "publish" button on this thing.

I know you want pics! I mostly have pics with other people and I don't think I should post those without permission, so I'm just going to put up one that A took here on Wednesday night. It came out all blurry and weird so I photoshopped it and made it arty, but you get the idea. Fun outfit, funky pose. ;-)

So, my very non-commenty bunch of readers, if this doesn't get you talking then nothing will!