The Weekend That Was

On the whole, it has been a good weekend. The only negative aspects can be directly attributed to Friday night but I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

kent4str called Advanced for the Zig Zaggers Friday evening. We had two squares of dancers and I think the evening overall was quite successful. I was feeling rather tired when we returned home but not so tired that I didn't take some extra time to mull over some C1 choreography I'll be calling on Monday evening. That's where things started to go wrong.

I'm very comfortable with C1 but I haven't tried sight-resolving a lot of it; for the most part, I work from pre-written scripts. Some of the calls can generate interesting setups very quickly, especially if the starting formation is a little unusual or uncommon. Having an exit strategy if not a complete resolution which can be smoothly delivered without causing pain to the dancers is a Very Good Thing. Still, my square dance calling future would be much easier if I could sight-call stretches of easy to moderately difficult C1 with some degree of proficiency and flow, leaving scripts for the hard stuff.

At this point in my career, however, walking through C1 choreo exclusively in my head takes an enormous amount of mental energy, focus and concentration. There are eight bodies with their arrangement, position and functional relationships to retain, along with general flow and handedness to retain while simultaneously remembering the definition of the call in questions. So many variables, so few brain cells. Anyway, after an hour of doing this in my head, I was too mentally stimulated to sleep. By the time my brain had calmed down to a restful state again, it was close to 4:30am. *sigh*

kent4str and cuyahogarvr indulged me by letting me sleep in while they went to the local farmers' market Saturday morning. When I was functional in the early afternoon, we went out on errands.

The first stop was at a trailer & camping supplies vendor east of Frederick, MD. We acquired some plumbing and electrical bits for our trailer which we intend to visit next weekend in West Virginia.

Next, we watered the plants at the home of kent4str's parents. We're not quite sure where they are right now: they were planning to eat their way through North Carolina then go on to Ohio but we were uncertain about their precise schedule. In any case, their house is intact and their plants are now watered.

To reward ourselves, we indulged in ice cream in Mt. Airy, MD. I recommend the chocolate cake boat: it's a 6"x3" base of chocolate brownie with two huge scoops of ice cream and generous quantities of chocolate syrup. I also recommend sticking with the regular instead of jumbo size 'cause that's a lot of ice cream.

In that same mall, kent4str bought some additional plumbing stuff for the trailer and then he & cuyahogarvr selected bourbon for a friend and chocolate vodka for our house at the liquor store --and made me pay for it.

After a surprisingly efficient visit to Sam's Club, we landed at home where we had a quick dinner and a quicker nap before heading to Baltimore.

timcub and markgarciachris recently moved back to Baltimore from Philadelphia. Philly's loss is Baltimore's gain and we were happy to join them Saturday evening in a housewarming at their new abode. I love their new place... I like the decor, layout and use of space. We knew some of the folks at the party and made a few new friends too. My only regret is that my Dear Employer pulled me out of the fun for an hour to sit on a conference call when one of our production database systems collapsed.

Our Sunday has been relatively relaxed. I've caught up on some minor stuff like cleaning up my laptop, posting some additional photos to my web site, looking through my C1 stacks for Monday's dance, etc.. kent4str and I were being all butch in the front & back yards, trimming hedges & vegetation; in all, we have have four very full & heavy bags of yard waste out front to be hauled away by the country early Tuesday morning.

I still have some trivial things to do to occupy my brain for the next few hours but since Monday is going to be very, very busy, I'm planning an early bedtime tonight.

The Weekend That Was

On the whole, it has been a good weekend. The only negative aspects can be directly attributed to Friday night but I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

kent4str called Advanced for the Zig Zaggers Friday evening. We had two squares of dancers and I think the evening overall was quite successful. I was feeling rather tired when we returned home but not so tired that I didn't take some extra time to mull over some C1 choreography I'll be calling on Monday evening. That's where things started to go wrong.

I'm very comfortable with C1 but I haven't tried sight-resolving a lot of it; for the most part, I work from pre-written scripts. Some of the calls can generate interesting setups very quickly, especially if the starting formation is a little unusual or uncommon. Having an exit strategy if not a complete resolution which can be smoothly delivered without causing pain to the dancers is a Very Good Thing. Still, my square dance calling future would be much easier if I could sight-call stretches of easy to moderately difficult C1 with some degree of proficiency and flow, leaving scripts for the hard stuff.

At this point in my career, however, walking through C1 choreo exclusively in my head takes an enormous amount of mental energy, focus and concentration. There are eight bodies with their arrangement, position and functional relationships to retain, along with general flow and handedness to retain while simultaneously remembering the definition of the call in questions. So many variables, so few brain cells. Anyway, after an hour of doing this in my head, I was too mentally stimulated to sleep. By the time my brain had calmed down to a restful state again, it was close to 4:30am. *sigh*

kent4str and cuyahogarvr indulged me by letting me sleep in while they went to the local farmers' market Saturday morning. When I was functional in the early afternoon, we went out on errands.

The first stop was at a trailer & camping supplies vendor east of Frederick, MD. We acquired some plumbing and electrical bits for our trailer which we intend to visit next weekend in West Virginia.

Next, we watered the plants at the home of kent4str's parents. We're not quite sure where they are right now: they were planning to eat their way through North Carolina then go on to Ohio but we were uncertain about their precise schedule. In any case, their house is intact and their plants are now watered.

To reward ourselves, we indulged in ice cream in Mt. Airy, MD. I recommend the chocolate cake boat: it's a 6"x3" base of chocolate brownie with two huge scoops of ice cream and generous quantities of chocolate syrup. I also recommend sticking with the regular instead of jumbo size 'cause that's a lot of ice cream.

In that same mall, kent4str bought some additional plumbing stuff for the trailer and then he & cuyahogarvr selected bourbon for a friend and chocolate vodka for our house at the liquor store --and made me pay for it.

After a surprisingly efficient visit to Sam's Club, we landed at home where we had a quick dinner and a quicker nap before heading to Baltimore.

timcub and markgarciachris recently moved back to Baltimore from Philadelphia. Philly's loss is Baltimore's gain and we were happy to join them Saturday evening in a housewarming at their new abode. I love their new place... I like the decor, layout and use of space. We knew some of the folks at the party and made a few new friends too. My only regret is that my Dear Employer pulled me out of the fun for an hour to sit on a conference call when one of our production database systems collapsed.

Our Sunday has been relatively relaxed. I've caught up on some minor stuff like cleaning up my laptop, posting some additional photos to my web site, looking through my C1 stacks for Monday's dance, etc.. kent4str and I were being all butch in the front & back yards, trimming hedges & vegetation; in all, we have have four very full & heavy bags of yard waste out front to be hauled away by the country early Tuesday morning.

I still have some trivial things to do to occupy my brain for the next few hours but since Monday is going to be very, very busy, I'm planning an early bedtime tonight.