Weekend Report

We spent a lovely weekend at our trailer in West Virginia. So nice, in fact, that returning to the real world has been an unwelcome shock.

Ohio husbands & co-trailer trash Jerry & David weren't able to make it this weekend so we had the trailer to ourselves. While the trailer is large enough for all four of us, we took advantage of their schedule conflict to use their living space for stowing the bags and spreading out the computers when the mood struck.

Our original plan was to work on replacing the bottom step of the staircase from the road up to our trailer deck but we had rain on and off throughout the weekend, turning our planned yard work into a potential mud bath. On the flip side, skipping the landscaping work meant we could spend more time with our friend, Ben, who came down from the vicinity of Toledo, OH, to visit with us.

Ben Mercer Roseland Campground, WV, 2006-09-23

While there was enough rain to keep us from outdoor maintenance, it was fortunately not especially cool or unpleasant. There was still plenty to do as the residents of the "ruins" area of the campground hosted a mimosa party Saturday morning & afternoon and the management hosted a Saturday night costume party at the rec hall: I have lots of photos of both events but I still have to process and label the lot.

The leaves are starting to change to fall colours but only just: in a couple of weeks, the valley should be glowing in yellows, oranges and reds.

( Click for additional photos... )

Sadly, our schedule won't allow us to return to Roseland again until closing at the end of October.

Weekend Report

We spent a lovely weekend at our trailer in West Virginia. So nice, in fact, that returning to the real world has been an unwelcome shock.

Ohio husbands & co-trailer trash Jerry & David weren't able to make it this weekend so we had the trailer to ourselves. While the trailer is large enough for all four of us, we took advantage of their schedule conflict to use their living space for stowing the bags and spreading out the computers when the mood struck.

Our original plan was to work on replacing the bottom step of the staircase from the road up to our trailer deck but we had rain on and off throughout the weekend, turning our planned yard work into a potential mud bath. On the flip side, skipping the landscaping work meant we could spend more time with our friend, Ben, who came down from the vicinity of Toledo, OH, to visit with us.

Ben Mercer Roseland Campground, WV, 2006-09-23

While there was enough rain to keep us from outdoor maintenance, it was fortunately not especially cool or unpleasant. There was still plenty to do as the residents of the "ruins" area of the campground hosted a mimosa party Saturday morning & afternoon and the management hosted a Saturday night costume party at the rec hall: I have lots of photos of both events but I still have to process and label the lot.

The leaves are starting to change to fall colours but only just: in a couple of weeks, the valley should be glowing in yellows, oranges and reds.

( Click for additional photos... )

Sadly, our schedule won't allow us to return to Roseland again until closing at the end of October.

Mainstream Class #2

Tonight's Mainstream square dance class went pretty well, much like last week. We're keeping the six newbies and added another from last Thursday's open house so I'm happy with the numbers: at this point in my career, it's probably more beneficial for all involved to keep the class a relatively small size. More than our two squares might eat into my limited but growing attention span.

Despite the lack of parking on site, the class started on time. Review of last week's class went quickly: there was surprisingly little difficulty of any of the prior calls.

This week, we added the half-sashay family (half-sashay, rollaway with a half-sashay, ladies in/men sashay, etc.), backtrack, courtesy turn, right & left thru, two/four ladies chain and dopaso. Again, they soaked it all up and we spent the last 15 minutes of the class simply drilling the calls or looking for novel uses.

I'm going to have to redraft our original syllabus: some of my original thoughts on ordering of calls have been jettisoned out the window and some shuffling has occurred. By the late fall, we'll have our own polished document.

I broached the topic of Columbus Day coming up in two weeks. I wanted to get a feel from the class about whether we should cancel that class session, make it drill only or use that Monday as a regular instructional event. Our newbies wanted to check with their employers and calendars before committing to a course of action so we'll make that particular decision next week. kent4str & I both have to work so we're not traveling anywhere: we'll go with whatever our dancers want.

Mainstream Class #2

Tonight's Mainstream square dance class went pretty well, much like last week. We're keeping the six newbies and added another from last Thursday's open house so I'm happy with the numbers: at this point in my career, it's probably more beneficial for all involved to keep the class a relatively small size. More than our two squares might eat into my limited but growing attention span.

Despite the lack of parking on site, the class started on time. Review of last week's class went quickly: there was surprisingly little difficulty of any of the prior calls.

This week, we added the half-sashay family (half-sashay, rollaway with a half-sashay, ladies in/men sashay, etc.), backtrack, courtesy turn, right & left thru, two/four ladies chain and dopaso. Again, they soaked it all up and we spent the last 15 minutes of the class simply drilling the calls or looking for novel uses.

I'm going to have to redraft our original syllabus: some of my original thoughts on ordering of calls have been jettisoned out the window and some shuffling has occurred. By the late fall, we'll have our own polished document.

I broached the topic of Columbus Day coming up in two weeks. I wanted to get a feel from the class about whether we should cancel that class session, make it drill only or use that Monday as a regular instructional event. Our newbies wanted to check with their employers and calendars before committing to a course of action so we'll make that particular decision next week. kent4str & I both have to work so we're not traveling anywhere: we'll go with whatever our dancers want.

Upcoming C1 Boot Camp

Work on the boot camp continues.

Some folks who expressed an interest have opted against attending. I have two people from NYC and one from Philadelphia who are now planning to attend, and one from Atlanta solidly confirmed. That's 13 confirmed people with three more possible. Not bad.

I'd love to point folks to our DCLS web site or even use our club mailing list to solicit additional community housing space or angels, but as luck would have it, our domain name resolution is experiencing problems. Not a big deal but our web-weasel is in Europe for the next few weeks. Figures.

Some folks are asking for advice on super cheap motels but I've had to disappoint them: there's no such thing as cheap rooms in downtown Arlington, VA. One will have to look a much further distance from the downtown to find cheap rooms, or opt for a place in the more dangerous areas of the nation's capital.

I'm hoping to purchase bottled water, soft drinks and light snacks on Wednesday or Thursday night. I'll also need a sign-up sheet, a receipt book, a few signs to post, extra flyers to plug our upcoming fly-ins and flyers for Ett's C1 Monday night dances (which kent4str and I can't attend because of our commitment to teach Mainstream on Mondays). One dancer suggested making something akin to graduation certificates but I can't get behind that idea: it just seems somewhat juvenile to me. Besides, no one could ever claim to be a proficient C1 dancer after this kind of boot camp: a lot more floor time would be required to achieve the skill level I'd associate with some kind of certificate or graduation ceremony.

I'm also hoping I can con some angel into helping with the food delivery. We'll likely be ordering pizza on Saturday (possibly on Sunday too but I'd like to have something else for variety) but I don't want to have to drop out of the class myself so I can hover around the street to wait for the food delivery. At this point, I'm still waiting for my local contacts to relay what preferred pizzeria we should be contacting.

Anyway, the entire enterprise is in motion and we'll see how it goes.

Upcoming C1 Boot Camp

Work on the boot camp continues.

Some folks who expressed an interest have opted against attending. I have two people from NYC and one from Philadelphia who are now planning to attend, and one from Atlanta solidly confirmed. That's 13 confirmed people with three more possible. Not bad.

I'd love to point folks to our DCLS web site or even use our club mailing list to solicit additional community housing space or angels, but as luck would have it, our domain name resolution is experiencing problems. Not a big deal but our web-weasel is in Europe for the next few weeks. Figures.

Some folks are asking for advice on super cheap motels but I've had to disappoint them: there's no such thing as cheap rooms in downtown Arlington, VA. One will have to look a much further distance from the downtown to find cheap rooms, or opt for a place in the more dangerous areas of the nation's capital.

I'm hoping to purchase bottled water, soft drinks and light snacks on Wednesday or Thursday night. I'll also need a sign-up sheet, a receipt book, a few signs to post, extra flyers to plug our upcoming fly-ins and flyers for Ett's C1 Monday night dances (which kent4str and I can't attend because of our commitment to teach Mainstream on Mondays). One dancer suggested making something akin to graduation certificates but I can't get behind that idea: it just seems somewhat juvenile to me. Besides, no one could ever claim to be a proficient C1 dancer after this kind of boot camp: a lot more floor time would be required to achieve the skill level I'd associate with some kind of certificate or graduation ceremony.

I'm also hoping I can con some angel into helping with the food delivery. We'll likely be ordering pizza on Saturday (possibly on Sunday too but I'd like to have something else for variety) but I don't want to have to drop out of the class myself so I can hover around the street to wait for the food delivery. At this point, I'm still waiting for my local contacts to relay what preferred pizzeria we should be contacting.

Anyway, the entire enterprise is in motion and we'll see how it goes.