worst president ever....

i love me a good protest song...

Worst President Ever

pretty much sums it up =)

blood moon weekend

friday i worked half a day. i mean, i was there. some work was actually accomplished, much to my chagrin, but motivation was not high, it was a blood moon weekend!

by noon, i was ready to head out, and my friend i was carpooling with was to get me at 2pm. a quick lunch and then home to pack. i hadn't packed previously, but the weather promised to be nice in sacramento, so i wasn't too worried about that. we headed out pretty much on time, and the drive was lovely. watching the fall foliage was amazing. it's so interesting to watch the trees turn their vibrant colors, some yellow, then interspersed with bright reds and oranges. fall is truly an enchanting time, hinting at the bareness of winter, but giving a colorful and grand show before we are left with nothing but stark, bare trees.

we checked into the hotel without incident, and our room was decent. i think i may explore different places to stay if we make the trip next year, the place we were was okay, but seemed sort of expensive for what we got. it seems we could maybe do better. being there, though, was familiar, and yet new. having been there before, but the experience was new with a new companion. we headed to dinner reasonably early, then back to change for the show and get all fancied up, and head to the venue. one thing for which i was incredibly grateful over the weekend was my husbands tomtom gps thing. that little thing is amazing. i had pre-programmed all our destinations into the unit, and just had to tell it where i wanted to go and it took us there. i wonder sometimes at the routes it chose, but it never failed to get us where we needed to be =)

once we arrived at the venue, we were almost immediately greeted with the other members of the group who had come down in a separate car. everyone was there, and it was on time. huge relief number one taken care of. erika was on her stilts, which was awesome. that woman can't seem to stay off them, but they seemed to enjoy that she was there, so that part was good. we went inside to get the lay of things, and they were pretty organized. i got to connect and say hello to the beautiful amy or unmata and her partner and the tech advisor for the show, raven. they were awesome to be around and we kind of just got to chill until close to time for the show. this is always an interesting show because the stage space is somewhat small and presents some logistical challenges. someone took video of our stuff, it should be posted soon, i will post a link, perhaps, when it's posted. the show went very well. we were third from the end, and that seemed to be good placement for us, within the context of the groups that were there. we got the theme award, apparently being the only group who paid attention to the theme, which made me proud. our crew was very small, we only had seven performers, but then managed to pick up three guests who had come to our burning man decompression party, so that left us with an even ten. the show was pretty amazing. technically, we had some challenges, but we pulled it off, and there was one duet i was especially proud of. this young girl i asked barely two weeks before the show to do a duet with a tall, lanky staff spinner and she said she would. they learned a really awesome lift in less than two weeks and their portion of the performance was stellar. me and cindi also did a non-traditional piece that i hope to keep and perform again later in the year.

there were a couple of groups we could totally learn things from, and i hope that we can work towards that. we have our own style, and the gradation of things being what it is, we did well, but i'd like to improve. one can always improve, no?

after the show, we headed back to our room quickly, then went to the blues bar that was right down the street from our hotel. we had asked a bunch of people to meet us there, but who knows who was going to show up, ya know? several did though, our guest fire breathers who performed with us, and they were super fun to hang out with, and rog and his lady showed up for a bit, but they left pretty early. after the bar closed, we headed to a late night restaurant for some snack food stuff and that left us back at the hotel about 3:30am. it's a good thing i am of the mindset that all late nights such as those are training for burning man, or i might have been tired the next day =P as it is, training is good, right?

cindi and i both being semi-morning people, we couldn't sleep past 9am. we headed out to forage for food and walk around the downtown area. it was really cool. the merchants along the area we were in sacramento were having like a safe merchants trick or treating event thing for local kids, so we had a great time getting to look at all the costumes on the littles. it was pretty fun. saw lots of really cool little shops with lots of really expensive clothing. wow. we had greasy spoon breakfast and thai food for dinner, then it was time to head to the theatre for the blood moon show, disease 101. the show was great, but the topic was sort of depressing. although there were humorous aspects of the show, it's hard to be uplifting talking about lice, cancer, parkinson's disease, mental illness, things like that. it was an interesting choice, one that took courage and which i admire by amy. all in all, it was a good show. we ended up sitting with and getting to visit kerry and her group, who had also come down for the fire show. it was great to see her and what she's doing with her group. they happened to have an extra ticket for the after party, so that meant we only had to buy one, so we did that and headed there after the blood moon show.

the after party was one of the best parts of the weekend, although the entire weekend was an experience in itself. i think by the after party, several of the dancers and volunteers are just so delirious after having worked so hard to put on the show, it's a little time for them to be silly. seeing raven polka was definitely a highlight. and talk about how boys are icky. can i get an amen sistah? hahahaha...it was in fun, but also very amusing and largely true, for me.

managed to get in some shopping, too, for family and for myself. found some jeans of a type i hadn't been able to find locall, so was very happy about that. sunday we headed home. we went through apple hill on the way home and MAN was it crowded! when i've been there before, it's after halloween and i now understand the wisdom of that choice! we actually turned around and did something different because just the road to GET to some of the places was backed up for miles and miles. the drive home on hwy 50, though, was very pretty, with more glorious fall colors.

i wanted to document this weekend, and tell about it, but i think i've lost the flavor of the weekend. perhaps i will make another post that is random snippets and images from the weekend.

that's it for now, anyway.

peace!

p.s. tonight i get to WELD for the first time! WOOO HOOOO!

thursday...

today, i am tired.

it's a long week, which i knew was going to happen, but now that it's here, boy is it long.

there is cool and interesting stuff happening in my life.

on tuesday, i began taking a welding class. this man who teaches this class is very awesome. a couple of people i know through the fire group have taken classes from him, and i went to speak to his class last year about participating in our fire arts festival. as it turned out, he didn't actually end up participating in the festival, but it was cool to talk to him, and there's something very primal about metal sculpture that appeals to me. so, some other friends from the fire group and myself decided to take the class. the class is called welding for art. although being with friends was the impetus to my follow through, i've wanted to take the class for awhile. the assignment this semester is to be instructed on oxacetalyne torch useage without supervision to create a non-representational metal sculpture. that makes me tingle just to think about. raaawr. i can't wait. i have class again tonight, at which i am hoping to remain embarassment-free from falling asleept due to pure exhaustion. i can do it! also, now i get to go and buy cool welding shit. i am going to own me some carhart overalls probably, and a welding shield with both a clear face plate and a #5 tint that folds down in the front, leather gloves, and a groovy half-bill welding hat and leather boots. it will be hawt. there might have to be a picture posted at some point if i can contain all this hawtness. heh. he said our sculptures could be functional as long as it remained non-representational....which means i can try to make it spit fire =) that might be too much to take on in sevent and a half weeks, not considering myself traditionally creative, but we will see. there will be welding and fire in my life at some point soon =)

yesterday, i worked half a day, then went and picked up a girlfriend, we ate a quick lunch, then drove to sacramento. she had another friend she was supposed to meet to attend a tina turner concert and this friend couldn't go at the last minute, so she invited me. she had already paid for the ticket, so if i drove and bought dinner, she said we'd call it even. sounded like a helluva deal to me =) we did a decent amount of shopping, we saw the venue for our show this weekend, i showed her the hotel, and then we headed to old town for more shopping. there's a really awesome costume shop down there that has lots of cool stuff. it's called evangeline's, which always gives me a little thrill because that's my mommy's name.

we ate at this amazing place on the river called joe's crab shack, which i gather is some sort of chain. The food was pretty good, we split a bunch of appetizers so we could get more tastes of things. one of the things we had that was absolutely amazing was a pomegranate mojito. that was all kinds of minty goodness. when we came out of the bathroom, there was this cute dancy song on, and all the employees were lined up and boogying, it was very cute and there was this delicious morsel of a bald man getting his groove on. i tried to order one of those in extra large, but they wouldn't let me. damn. nice eye-candy though. mmm mmmm.

this made us sort of late to the concert, but that seemed to be okay, at least half the rest of the people were late too, so we actually ended up being right on time =) tina turner was pretty amazing. i had a teary moment during "what's love got to do with it" because my mom loved that song. it just sort of hit me, but didn't last long. she would have also liked the concert. it was interesting. there was lots of dancing and lots of theatre in the production. she had some cool stage props, there was fire (yay!) and elevated platforms and even a crane that swung ms. tina out into the audience. not sure i would have initiated the $120 to go on my own, but it was a good opportunity and i am glad that i had the chance to take it. we did lose my car after the show, but approximately 1/4 of the rest of the people were in the same boat. everyone kept pressing their panic buttons on thier key clicker thingies to try to find which car belonged to whom. it was funny. the ONLY down side is that we didn't get home until 2am. four hours sleep is not enough!

but, today i am content, looking forward to more welding class, and thankful as ever that my life is what it is.

peace.

monday musings...

written 10/20/08

last thursday, i got an article in the paper that is pretty cool.

tinyurl.com/4co7eo(link opens in new window)

then, i had a great weekend.

friday, the fire group performed for the college homecoming. i had to ask if there was a special paper that i had to sign because they made everyone sign a "hold harmless" piece of paper saying none of us were employed by the university and if we got hurt spinning fire on university property, that we would not sue them or file a workers compensation claim. except i do work for the university. what a sad and litigious society we live in where that's a standard operating procedure. no, i didn't have to sign an extra form, and the telling of it made me giggle because they asked if i encountered or was expected to fire spin as part of my normal job functions, because that would be different, ya know. ummm, no. mild mannered database geek by day, fiery dancing goddess by night, yep that's me. heh. we had been asked to carry the torch into the bonfire circle and to light the bonfire. this was a big honor because in years past, it has always been done by the fire department themselves. i wonder if they were secretly pleased, or if they were secretly disappointed? i was proud the my fire group has enough "educated" people that we were able to send seven people to do this torch thing, myself included, who were all alum's or at least one degree from this university. we were very dramatic and hoped they would play the "chariots of fire" theme song as we jogged along, but kids these days...they probably don't even know what that is....we didn't get the music, so we made our own. it's probably a good thing no one was in hearing distance of our flight to fire, none of us can sing very well or make that "chhhhh" sound like on the song. it's funny that that sound is considered very inspirational and positive in that context, but the same sound in a "halloween" context denotes creepy psycho-killer people names jason. see, context really is everything =)

saturday evening was the local burning man decompression party. i was to organize our ranger presence, and i probably should or could have done a better job of it, but luckily everything went very well. the party was amazing...it was our largest yet, and this one was "official". this means that a portion of our proceeds went to the black rock arts foundation who continue to fund burning man and non-burning man art around the world.

there were enough rangers and aside from the usual battery of drunks, silly people indulging too much and then falling down, and random weirdness, it was good. i got to spin some fire, and i did it in khaki, which was pretty cool to me. we generally wear black when fire spinning, and khaki when rangering so rangering and getting to spin in the same night was pretty cool. it's interesting to know so many people. it was actually a pretty neat arrangement. there was this one club that has a front room, and a back room. out the back door of this club is an alley, and we had the entire alley backed off, and there were burning man theme camps and art placed back there. there were several burn barrels and other incindiary and neon and large-ish art back there, and that's also where the fire spinning was. on the west end of the alley, there's another back door to another club. we also had that club as part of the large party, which was way cool. they have a super expensive sound system that's so bad ass when you stand in front of the bass sub-woofer thingies, you can feel the beat move your hair and reverberate in your solar plexus.

i was very proud....my son rangered with us and he did a good job. it was the first time i have brought him to a party and felt like he had an amazing time. he's a good boy and i am proud.

i had a strange experience. the back room of the one club was very crowded and very hot. there was a burlesque show going on, and many of the burlesque lovelies are my friends so i wanted to be there to support them. about an hour or two before, i had had a jaegar bomb to drink. for those who might not know, this is red bull and jaegermeister. very tasty, but energy drinks are bad for people who don't do that stuff often. i don't know if it was that or the fact that i had had some to drink and not really eaten much during the day, but standing in that crowd, i hit a serious wall. i started to feel very woozy and light-headed. i thought i might either throw up or pass out, so i had to get out of the crowd. i sat on a couch for a few moments and once i was sure i was not going to puke or pass out, i knew i needed air. i headed outside and needed to leave within half an hour of that. i think no more red bull for me, or at the very least, i will get the sugar free kind. i think plain old shots are safer, though. i don't know that it was the red bull, but that's all i can think of.

sunday continued the "lazy" theme. i had begun a pot of beans cooking saturday and they were well-cooked in the crock pot by sunday. so, i endeavored to make home-made pinto bean chili and then added some noodles later in the day for what our family calls "ghoulash". it was totally yummy, and we had made home made bread to go with it. that and more reading and a lot of laundry and chillaxin' was had on sunday.

this will be a busy week. tomorrow i start a welding class, which i am excited about. will try to write more this week.

peace.

keeping on....

written 10/13/08

i am still here.

life goes on.

it's good, as always says the eternal optimist.

i was told recently that i was one of "those people". people that make things happen, make changes occur. i don't know if i want always to be one of those people. sometimes it feels like a really big responsibility. sometimes i can't help that. but then, i just want to hide. that's what i've been doing lately, hiding a lot.

it never ceases to amaze me how valuable escapism is sometimes. it's fall, and things begin to hibernate. mercury has been retrograde, it goes back direct in another two days, but i've been evaluating and trying to figure out how i want my life to continue.

i've also been reading. it's been a really long time since i read vociferously, but i found a series of books that had me completely enamored and now i am bereft because i have read them all and the next one isn't due out until sometime in the fall of 2009. i am pouting. i've been rereading, which is something that's beyond rare for me, it's virtually unheard of. how can i care so much about people who are the invention of an author? they are awesome characters, i must say.

i am going to france next year. i am looking forward to that at the same time that i recognize i need to stop spending money the way i have been in order to be able to afford this trip, to continue paying for it, to work towards something besides my immediate gratification. after france, the world is my oyster. if i can make this happen, and i will, there's nothing i can't do. but what i really NEED to do is find some more tax deductions, because my husband and i are ALMOST DINKS and it's going to be scary to think of not having many deductions in the future. i think "where does it all go?" and then know in the same breath that i live a very good life and pretty much spend money at will. that's probably not a long-term saving strategy that's going to get us very far =) this is a rambling entry of the miscellaneous stuff that's in my head.

my nephew is doing good at basic training. he called yesterday. i said hello to him and then handed the phone over so others in the house could also talk to him. he hurt his foot there, thought he had a stress fracture, but being almost 1/3 of the way done, he doesn't want them to make him stop or not finish, so i think he's just going to work through whatever is wrong. he says they keep jerking him around, but i think the most important thing is that he's working through it. he realizes, being there, how much he needs this in his life. he's learning things i would not want to know in a million years. i don't want to know how to bash down doors, throw tear gas, and shoot people. it goes against everything that i am, but i would do it if i had to. what a dichotomy.

do you ever wonder about that? how lazy and safe we are these days? our existences stopped being about survival a long time ago. even people going through hard times don't have to worry much about disease, hunger, clean water, basic education, oral hygiene, reprodutive choice. my brain is atwitter with all sorts of things.

but that's enough for now.

i want to get back in the habit of writing again, it's good for me.

peace.

Man redux, he's in the Army Now...

written 9/8/08

before i tell of my burning man tales, let me say that today is the day. my nephew leaves for the army today, to go to meps and do some more medical stuff and then he's off to basic training. i told him i loved him this morning, i gave him money yesterday to get his stuff because his mom wasn't available. i told him i believed in him, that i knew he could succeed at anything he put his mind to. I hope he knows that and remembers it. i think he will do fine, but this is something i wish he didn't think he had to do. at the same time, i feel guilty because now i will get my office room back. whatever he doesn't take, it goes in his mom's storage or in the trash. i can't say I am sorry about that. i went grocery shopping yesterday and thought about how i didn't have to buy the stuff he likes. i've not sent off one of my kids to the military before. it's scary.

now, to burning man....it was an eventful year, and one that more than anything else, forced me to count my blessings and realize all the things that i need to be grateful for in life. i went out early, a full week before the event started this year, and my husband was to follow on thursday, because of a stupid army thing. follow he did, and i am so glad he decided to wait for our campmate to caravan out with her! he had thought about leaving the evening before, but decided to go ahead and wait for her. he thought he would be there by noon. i was eating lunch in the commissary when i got a radio call to come back to the office immediately. i told them i would be there as soon as i finished lunch and they basically said "no, now." this annoyed me because i couldn't think of what could be so important as to force me to scarf my lunch down.

when i got to the office, there was my campmate, saying these words about my husband having crashed the motor home. he blew the passenger side tire and cascaded down the embankment, totalling our playa home in the process. i think the only words that registered at this point were "but he's okay, he was out walking around and surveying the damage." now, i don't talk a lot about what i do out at burning man, but i am a ranger. we are community members who use skills we are given in training to help people in black rock city. it's like any cohesive group of people, they talk about being family, brothers and sisters, and like any large family, it's dysfunctional at times and has it's share of drama. never have i been more glad to be a part of this group of people than i was at the moment i found out my husband had crashed the motor home! within half an hour of having been told of what happened, we were on our way out of the city with six pickup trucks full of rangers (man power) and empty truck beds, all had just said "of course" and made it happen to retrieve all our belongings from the side of the road. i swear, driving those 37 miles to get to him was the longest 37 miles anyone has driven EVER. every rolling hill we went down, i kept thinking to myself "we have to be there soon, i can't stand this!" finally, we crested a hill and off to the far side, i saw the motor home. at first site, i thought "oh, it's not that bad..." but after walking around the front to see the door mostly torn off, the battery hanging by two wires and obviously cracked, and the miscellaneous wreckage all about, my conclusion was, "okay, maybe not".

the bottom line, however, is that aside from some deep bruising on his tummy from a close encounter with the steering wheel, my honey seems to be fine. have i mentioned how blessed i feel at this news? we rushed back to the event so that we could get him checked out. all of us were very worried about him, what with how adrenalin can mask injuries and such, and especially with his having a bad back. i think the emotional aspect of the accident, however, will take him a long time to get over. he beat himself up over wrecking the motor home pretty often during the event, even though he was quiet about it, but i kept reminding him how herculean an effort it must have been just to keep the damn thing vertical. all the time, going out to or coming back from the event, we hear of fatalities on that two lane road, of serious injury from people encountering the same thing, but flipping the motor home, changing their lives forever.

i will write more about the rest of the event later, if at all. it seems right and appropriate to put the accident in it's own entry. it cost us $720 to tow the motor home 37 miles because of the amount of time that it took to winch it up the embankment and get it towable. we had to tear the door the rest of the way off, and one of the gas tanks had been torn completely off, among other things. i am actually surprised it didn't take a flatbed to tow it away. i am sure that would have cost more. i don't remember off hand if i just got liability insurance on the thing or if we had rv insurance on it. i owe money to my campmates now because they helped us out with cash and credit to pay for that after we'd already tapped out to get to the playa.

i will say, though, that we didn't let it ruin our event. we hadn't planned on tent camping, but that's what we did. it was dusty, and gross sometimes, and we added a daily ritual of shaking out our bed things of the dust. it took a long time to organize everything, i am still not sure that's done =) hubby says he doesn't want to own another motor home. we didn't realize how much shit we had stored in there until we had to take it all out and try to figure out where to put it when you had another vehicle and then it's just gone.

we still had a great time, and a great year. i feel like i accomplished a lot this year, got to experience some new things, and made a difference to the rangers. i am not sure i can ever pay them back for what they did for me this year. and they did it just to be nice, because i am one of them. truly warms the cockles of my cold, dead, heart =)

enough gushing for now! i am back, and have a bunch of reading to do to catch up!