DC Lambda Squares Club Night

DCLS dances different programs at our Thursday club nights, depending on the week of the month: 1st and 3rd Thursdays are Mainstream & Plus night while 2nd & 4th Thursdays are Plus and Advanced. The occasional rare fifth Thursday is A2/C1 night. Last night was one of those rare nights.

justetthon was calling as she does many of our A/C evenings; sadly, she was a little under the weather with a cold, picked up during her travels last weekend. Bless her heart, with assistance from modern pharmaceuticals, she propped herself and plowed on.

We have club members taking Advanced classes with two other area callers currently so the evening was dominated by A1 calls, giving the newbies additional floor time.

I danced all of the A2 and C1 tips and all but one of the A1 tips, quite possibly the most dancing I've done at a club night in months. I'll admit my C1 was a little sluggish: I haven't danced much in the past two weeks so everything was working slowly. Still, I'm happy to report that my mistakes were few and not particularly catastrophic: when our square exploded, it was a shared effort. :-) I do need to get more floor time in before ACDC next February though.

DC Lambda Squares Club Night

DCLS dances different programs at our Thursday club nights, depending on the week of the month: 1st and 3rd Thursdays are Mainstream & Plus night while 2nd & 4th Thursdays are Plus and Advanced. The occasional rare fifth Thursday is A2/C1 night. Last night was one of those rare nights.

justetthon was calling as she does many of our A/C evenings; sadly, she was a little under the weather with a cold, picked up during her travels last weekend. Bless her heart, with assistance from modern pharmaceuticals, she propped herself and plowed on.

We have club members taking Advanced classes with two other area callers currently so the evening was dominated by A1 calls, giving the newbies additional floor time.

I danced all of the A2 and C1 tips and all but one of the A1 tips, quite possibly the most dancing I've done at a club night in months. I'll admit my C1 was a little sluggish: I haven't danced much in the past two weeks so everything was working slowly. Still, I'm happy to report that my mistakes were few and not particularly catastrophic: when our square exploded, it was a shared effort. :-) I do need to get more floor time in before ACDC next February though.

Bah, Humbug.

Today is December 1. I can now mention Christmas without nauseating myself.

I just can't bring myself to think about Christmas prior to December 1. I know many folks like to start at US Thanksgiving; some start immediately after Halloween. Some neighbours apparently start on Dec 26 the prior year as they haven't taken down the xmas lights yet. I'm mulling over organizing members of our civic association into a posse of vigilantes, sneaking around yards in the wee hours of the morning cutting the power cords to the arrays of decorations in mid-January.

In any case, Christmas is going to be a daily topic of conversation for the four weeks prior to Dec 25 so I actively resist any attempt to extend the period to six, eight, ten, 12 or more weeks prior to xmas.

The weather has a lot to do with it. I can't get into any sort of holiday spirit until it gets cold and we have at least a prayer of seeing snow. At the moment, it's 70 degrees F outside with a light drizzle, hardly the stuff of Christmas cheer. Until the sweaters come out of storage, it can't be xmas, no matter what the calendar says.

I'm mildly amused how the most strident atheists and church-and-state-separation activists heartily embrace baby Jesus' birthday. He was apparently not good enough to be our lord & saviour, but He's just fine as an excuse to go shopping.

We plan to go stalking & killing a tree on Dec 10. That gives me a few days still to clean up the house enough that we can place a slowly dying plant in the living room. I wonder how much our county spends in special tree collections & mulching every January...

Now the pressure is on to create a wish list to ease the shopping burden on others. The wish list is harder than you might think, really. I'm (nearly) 40 years old: if I needed something, I probably already have it, and if I don't have it by now, it's probably not that necessary. Still, purchases of real estate or bearer bonds would be received with tremendous gratitude and/or sexual acts not involving blood relatives, pain or animals.

Shopping for others is always a traumatic thing for me. I have some ideas but I'm starting much later in the year than I usually do. Fortunately, we have the Internet. Apparently, it can be used for more than simply pr0n, such as shopping for pr0n. I'll spend a little time this weekend spelunking through eBay and various search engines to see what I can find.

I'll save the topic of xmas cards for another post.

Bah, Humbug.

Today is December 1. I can now mention Christmas without nauseating myself.

I just can't bring myself to think about Christmas prior to December 1. I know many folks like to start at US Thanksgiving; some start immediately after Halloween. Some neighbours apparently start on Dec 26 the prior year as they haven't taken down the xmas lights yet. I'm mulling over organizing members of our civic association into a posse of vigilantes, sneaking around yards in the wee hours of the morning cutting the power cords to the arrays of decorations in mid-January.

In any case, Christmas is going to be a daily topic of conversation for the four weeks prior to Dec 25 so I actively resist any attempt to extend the period to six, eight, ten, 12 or more weeks prior to xmas.

The weather has a lot to do with it. I can't get into any sort of holiday spirit until it gets cold and we have at least a prayer of seeing snow. At the moment, it's 70 degrees F outside with a light drizzle, hardly the stuff of Christmas cheer. Until the sweaters come out of storage, it can't be xmas, no matter what the calendar says.

I'm mildly amused how the most strident atheists and church-and-state-separation activists heartily embrace baby Jesus' birthday. He was apparently not good enough to be our lord & saviour, but He's just fine as an excuse to go shopping.

We plan to go stalking & killing a tree on Dec 10. That gives me a few days still to clean up the house enough that we can place a slowly dying plant in the living room. I wonder how much our county spends in special tree collections & mulching every January...

Now the pressure is on to create a wish list to ease the shopping burden on others. The wish list is harder than you might think, really. I'm (nearly) 40 years old: if I needed something, I probably already have it, and if I don't have it by now, it's probably not that necessary. Still, purchases of real estate or bearer bonds would be received with tremendous gratitude and/or sexual acts not involving blood relatives, pain or animals.

Shopping for others is always a traumatic thing for me. I have some ideas but I'm starting much later in the year than I usually do. Fortunately, we have the Internet. Apparently, it can be used for more than simply pr0n, such as shopping for pr0n. I'll spend a little time this weekend spelunking through eBay and various search engines to see what I can find.

I'll save the topic of xmas cards for another post.

Gay Callers Association square dance caller school

The GCA has formally announced their caller school for May of 2007. We have it annually in the days preceding the IAGSDC convention (Denver, CO, this year). Many thanks to the All Join Hands Foundation for their sponsorship, allowing the GCA to make deep discounts in the tuition costs and offering scholarships to prospective new callers who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to attend.

The application forms and further news will be on the web site in the next couple of weeks.

Gay Callers Association square dance caller school

The GCA has formally announced their caller school for May of 2007. We have it annually in the days preceding the IAGSDC convention (Denver, CO, this year). Many thanks to the All Join Hands Foundation for their sponsorship, allowing the GCA to make deep discounts in the tuition costs and offering scholarships to prospective new callers who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to attend.

The application forms and further news will be on the web site in the next couple of weeks.