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!
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