feeling blessed again….

so, i froze my ass off last night. as one of my fire family stated "wow, this is the most fun you can have getting frostbite". heh.

we had a show last night. it was an outdoor show in weather that was approximately 20 degrees, give or take a few icicles =) it was a smallish show, not too many people wanted to brave the weather to see this crazy group of freaks spin fire, but i suppose we were the only warm ones on the whole street =) we made our own bonfire. heh. there’s something entirely unique about spinning fire in the winter that i knew i missed, but didn’t realize how much until we did this show. last year, we performed at northstar, a local ski resort, on new years eve. all of the sensations and everything are different performing in cold weather. instead of figuring out how nekkid you can get and still not get any of your jiggly bits burned, like in the summer or on the playa, you are trying to think about how you can not feel your face but still smile…..how many layers CAN you get on and still look sexy? how many layers can you peel off and not cause permanent damage to the aforementioned jiggly bits? can i effectively spin fire with my gloves on? two sets of gloves on? (this really isn’t a concern for me because i HAVE to wear gloves with one of my fire tools or burn my hands, but i did appreciate anew the coverage they afforded my cold hands).

hot pizza, coffee, and cider tastes MUCH better when it’s freezing outside and the slice of pie you take from the box is steaming and fresh with gooey cheese goodness. people with backpacks carrying warm liquid goodness should be sainted, i am sure. trying to figure out if the smoke rising is coming from your breath or your fire tools is an entirely unique experience. so, you get the point. it’s also a great good to have one of our members (who is an attorney) have his office a block away from the festivities so we could defrost between sets.

the bottom line, however, is that it was FUN. this crazy, zany, dysfunctional fire family of mine, i adore them. i hope i always feel about them the way i do right now, because this feeling, this is good. not one of them is perfect (nor am i), but we all share the love of this crazy art form and i think we all genuinely care for each other. i sometimes think the last year would have been much, much more difficult for me if i didn’t have these people around me, just being who they are, but accepting me for who i am.

one of our members had a really close call on a car accident on his way home last night. i am glad he’s okay. today, i remain grateful for my life and the people in it.

happy friday, everyone.

*peace* 

returned, from adventure….

 last week i spent with my honey in austin, texas. a good friend also moved there recently. i hope things work out for her. she has a man who loves her, but it’s very different there from anything she’s used to. people are strange, as jim morrison would say….

i saw lots of cool stuff in austin, things i’d not seen before. i had never been to a presidential museum and was able to visit the lbj presidential museum. it was very interesting and i bought a book about lbj during his white house years. i admire what he accomplished and feel bad that his enduring legacy seems to be the vietnam war when he gave this country to so very many other wonderful programs.

i also visited a cave that was cut off from human existence or interference for millions of years. it was very cool. there were little tiny bats hibernating on the ceiling. individual bats only, that we saw. they are such fascinating little creatures. their appendages and features are so tiny, but so detailed. one bat even had little condensation droplets on his fur, and he was most definitely in a deep sleep.

i saw the stevie ray vaughn memorial down by the river. that was cool and it felt good to pay my respects to someone who died way too young.

i saw how my husband is when he’s at a conference. much like he is at home, he likes to hibernate and not go many places. heh. that was somewhat amusing. i was afraid he would be mad at me for wanting to scamper madly around this place i don’t know if i will visit again but he seemed okay with it and glad that i wasn’t mad that he didn’t want to do anything.

i was indoctrinated into the ethos of texas state history, which i have to admit is a little frightening for me. i also saw a mexi-arte museum that made me feel like i was honoring my roots, even if i took a phone call while in the gallery space. i was the only one there, and i thought how sad that more people don’t enjoy such things that are low cost or free.

we stayed at a swanky resort-type place compliments of the government who sends all sorts of army it types to these conferences for networking squared….networking and talking about it stuff. heh.

i also ate some awesome food. i had texas bar-b-que, and tex mex food that was yummy and tasted very different from stuff that we have here. i also had some really yummy greek chicken, hummus, and tofu fries. leave it to americans to find a way to make tofu unhealthy. fry it up, baby =) they were good though, served with a sweet and sour sauce for dipping. i couldn’t eat them all, though =)

the university in austin was amazing. relatively speaking, i work at a smallish university, but it seems that austin and the university have grown up together in a symbiotic, incestuous relationship, sharing space and all being the center of this community. i saw a student services building that looked like a sky scraper to me. parking there was REALLY outrageous, i should tell people here who complain about parking. more than three hours in a garage is a minimum of $8. there are lots of city buses that go all around there. and so many people, in that small area! all with longhorn clothing on, it seems almost cult-like. perhaps it’s just so striking because it’s ORANGE.

i think i last wrote about blood moon, and there’s more to write, but perhaps not today. today feels nice. it is bitterly cold here. it’s been almost a year since my mom passed away, and i am feeling grounded and generally happy. i don’t really believe in regret, but wonder if i did everything for her i could. i miss her still, but know she would be proud of how we are conducting our lives. i feel her sometimes, around me.

i decided to have christmas spirit this year. i bought a live tree and decorated it. i have been making cookies, and cooking a lot. it feels nice. my sister doesn’t live with me anymore, and this, too, i think is a good thing. she seems happy doing what she’s doing, and as much as we still depend on each other, i think it’s healthy for us to exist on our own, too.

that’s all for today.

peace.

new inspiration, fresh start?

why is it that new blogs always make one want to post more? it's like, you have to rebuild everything in this new and interesting place. i have a number of other blogs, i don't post often in any of them, and yet, here i start yet another one and make two posts in two days. i suppose i could be considered fickle. eh. not sure i care.

today was a good day. i don't have to go to work for the next nine days and i am really, really happy about that. i get to go to austin texas next week. i've never been there and i am pretty excited about it. i spent all day today printing out places i'd like to see, maps from the hotel to those places, and how i am going to get there. we will see how it all works out.

i was seriously bummed because bellydancing class got canceled tonight. it spat snow for a little while this morning and looked pretty menacing, but didn't do much else with the flakey white stuff the rest of the day. it's continued to look like it might though, so i guess they didn't want people driving out to the community college with the potential out there. heh. maybe i will dance to some dvd's tonight, or just chill and take it easy.

i'd really like to buy a digital camera this weekend. we will see.

i think that's all for now.

peace.

hmmm....

another blog. well, well, well. i've been blogging for about ten years, i think, and have never had one here. maybe it's time to integrate all those personalities =) or not. i am a GEMINI. many people know me as that. i am also a mother, a wife, a bellydancer, a fire freak, a black rock ranger, a burner, a cynic, a pagan, a unitarian, a liberal, and sometimes, a mess.

welcome to my nightmare...

peace.

time goes on….catching up…blood moon 10/20/07

 it’s been so long since i’ve written. i feel sort of guilty, but not really. i see some friends doing the NoJoMo and i sort of feel bad. there’s all sorts of stuff happening, having tons of fun and living life, the issue just becomes having enough time to get it all recorded =)

of course, i started all this, and now i have to go to a meeting. i will continue when i get back and post when it’s done. wooo hoooo =)

okay, meeting is over and my head just feels marginally like exploding =) it’s for a summer program and it’s horrible that we have to plan things so far in advance, but also pretty cool. hopefully i will be able to do some cool new stuff this year with all that. here’s hoping.

so, what the last month and a half has been like for me? it’s been awesome!

about ten days after my last entry, i went to sacramento to dance with an awesome set of ladies. we got invited to unmata’s blood moon regale and it was awesome! they do a fire show on friday nights, and i had contacted the leader of unmata to possibly set up some workshop and when she wrote me back, she invited us down to perform! i had posted this on the message board for the fire troupe and never really got a response, so i sent some personal emails and started organizing the gig. we rehearsed, we reworked pieces, i anguished that people who didn’t volunteer didn’t like me (only briefly), my wonderful dance sister got us great rates on a hotel, we made plans, i printed maps, we even went on a scouting trip down to the area. finally, by october 20, we were ready to go =) there were going to be a total of 12 or 13 of us, some staying most of the weekend, some heading back directly, and some heading back the next day.

we got there with relatively little incident. one of our members is having a rough time, so we were there for her and listened a lot on the way down. i am glad we could be there for her, she’s going through a rough time. we got checked into the hotel, and in pretty short order, all of us were there and in our rooms. i was rooming in the mini suite with the craziest and most wonderful lady ever. it took us no time to get settled in and we explored a little bit, chilled, and before you know it, it was time to get ready for the show…..

the show was AMAZING! everyone at this show was doing fire, but i think the thing we realized is that everyone else were dancers who used fire as a prop, we were fire spinners who used dancing as a prop. not sure if that makes sense, you might have had to have been there, but it made perfect sense of the time! i am so thankful that i received the training in safety that i did from our folks! some of those safety folks didn’t really seem to know or understand what they were doing and some of the performers were kind of scary. even though we might not have been the greatest dancers, i still think we brought something unique and interesting to their fire show. i have never been more proud or felt more accomplished in my life, because this one, *I* did. i arranged it, and it was a huge success. i was a little freaked out about having to eat right before the show which all the other little skinnies wanted to do, but i dealt well with it and only felt marginally like melting down =) we did find an awesomely cool little brew pub within walking distance of the hotel though, so that was good =) note to self: fringe and fire don’t mix well =)

after the show, we decided to go back to the room, and our room ended up being the gathering spot. that was cool, there was tons of booze, we even picked up a stray brand new army officer somewhere, and were all up way too late, to the tune of after 4am, and then crashed for some much needed rest. the next day was all about shopping and being pampered. we had scoped out this awesome little vintage store on our way down and wanted to hit that again. we spent hours there, everyone managed to find something they liked and then some of our party left while others stayed longer and we shopped some more. we found this cool little bistro on the street and stopped there for lunch. the food was amazing….so much so that we pretty much ate the next three meals there!

my stress for the night happened later when we were going to the next show, the dancing one. i had done my homework and printed a bunch of directions up for the places we needed to be. the issue became that i didn’t label any of my directions, so when the time came to go to the show, i took us to the wrong place! i felt really stupid after having had some catty thoughts about other people, the universe gave me back a big ‘ole raspberry =) we had already valet’d the car, so we decided to cab it to the venue. what followed was the most harrowing e-ticket cab ride i have ever experienced in my life, but it was fun and i felt so ALIVE!

their show was amazing. i can’t believe these folks work on this all year and just get an idea for a piece they have to do, and no one sees the finished product until days before the show. it looked so well put together, it was really impressive. i might post some video if/when it happens.

sunday was brunch, tired but satisfied, and the end to an amazing weekend. i love my fire family. there’s so much i am leaving out, the little details, but i am currently feeling like ADD girl and can’t seem to stay focused on this, so i think i better end it. i will leave myself with some images from the weekend, in words:

• cute army officers can be smart too…..hooray for napolean dynamite quotes
• hot grrls rule and knock my socks off….and hot takes many forms
• i have the greatest friends in the world….we are truly a family…we annoy each other but there is an underlying caring that cannot be replaced
• being a freak in a brew pub turns lots of heads when you jingle by
• hooray for lacy purple underwear
• boooo for crusty purple eyeliner that requires a layer of skin to be removed with it
• i love fire more now than i ever have

=)

that’s about it.

peace.

keeping on….

i am trying to get back into the habit of reading and writing almost daily if not every day.

when i got home from burning man this year, one of the things i decided to try to change in my life was caffeine consumption. i am going to try very hard to give it up. so far, i have been successful by not drinking any coffee or tea that isn’t decaf, and that only rarely. my big challenge right now is diet soda. i LOVE diet soda and i had bought a case about a month and a half ago that was not caffeine free that we need to finish up. after that, no more for me, or i will buy the caffeine free variety. i need to get d to help me finish the rest of that soda! i am marginally interested that in going to fast food places and such, VERY rarely are you able to get a drink that is both caffeine and sugar free, aside from water. i guess i need to drink more water, eh? heh.

i think i caught a wee bit of a cold from one of the midgets we encountered this weekend. for whatever reason, i was feeling super run-down last night and i think i might have been asleep by 9pm! i had a wee bit of a sore throat, which i believe was from nasal stuff, so i medicated myself with some night time stuff and conked out. i did make dinner for my family right after work, made it to fire class yesterday, although i didn’t feel like doing much (didn’t dance, that is), picked up my poi half-heartedly and spun one time when i got to cold to function without burning something. heh. then headed home early and sacked out. maybe it was still just recovery from the weekend. i feel okay today, but slept in AGAIN, made myself about half an hour later than normal from work and STILL feel a bit tired. hopefully, i can OD on echinachea and vitamin c for a little bit and knock this out, if it’s a virus, before things get ugly. i hate being sick!

my daughter has been seeking me out lately to say hi, connect with me and make sure that i hear about her day and happenings. she’s doing really well in school and i can’t tell you how happy this makes me. she’s first in her class in her math class, and doing well in the others too. it feels great to have that young woman in my life and in my house. her housekeeping skills still leave A LOT to be desired, but i am hoping that will come with time =)

have a great day, everyone.

peace. 

weekend of good times….

my weekend was fabulous! we had a great time with our friends in napa. i feel like my boundaries were respected and that we had a nice, relaxing weekend. the bed we slept on in our friends house was too hard for hubbies back, which made him pretty stiff all weekend, but he managed to have a good time still, which was awesome.

friday night, we were a little afraid because we didn’t leave until about 6pm, and almost as soon as we headed into the hills, it started snowing…lightly at first and then by the time we made the pass, it was coming down really hard and sticking. that is always a little nerve wracking for me because a car is several thousand pounds, and sometimes i wonder what keeps them on the road in icy conditions! lucky for us, we managed to make it through before things really started to stick or need plowing and also before they could erect any road controls. we really road the gauntlet on that one!

we got to their house by 9:30, and i think everyone was pretty tired. i didn’t realize they had a hottub, oh, but they did, so without too much more fanfare, pretty quickly nekkid hot tubbing commenced. it was just laid back and normal. what a concept! we were gifted the use of their daughter’s brand new big girl bed, in her room, and her parents were nice enough to let her sleep with them for the weekend. the evening passed sleepily…

we slept in a bit on saturday, and awoke to breakfast being made. our hostess was indeed gracious and we got biscuits and gravy for breakfast! yum! it was awesome. then some clean up time occurred, and we headed out to a couple of wineries. some errands needed to take place first, those were readily dispatched, and off we headed to the sterling winery. we had relayed to our hostess that we didn’t want any hugely expensive tastings and weren’t into snooty, pretentious wine stuff…we wanted smaller, free or low-cost, family or down-to-earth type wineries. it was pretty awesome, you have to ride a tram to get to the winery. the decor is reminiscent of a monastery white stucco buildings, very beautiful. there is a self-paced walking tour of the winery and it was fun to read about the process. we got to see an automatic grape crusher, got to see them dump a ton of grapes into it, and then see the giant oak barrels, smaller oak barrels, and surrounding area where the grapes were grown. also got to taste a few.

after that one, we went to another winery that was TOTALLY awesome! It’s called  castello di amarosa and is a full size castle. the tasting there was inexpensive and you have to walk through part of the castle to get to the tasting room. i would love, love, love to go back and do the whole castle tour, but it wasn’t the type of thing i was prepared to pay $30 for on the spot. we did buy some of their wine, though, and it was yummy. they told us how cold the castle gets in the winter time, but that just didn’t seem to dim my enthusiasm for being in a castle. i think anyone who’s ever been to a renn faire has to have at least a passing fascination with castles. it was way cool. i also bought a painting of the castle that was painted with their wine! i am sure this is a gimmick of the wineries, but i had never seen this sort of thing before, i thought it was way cool, so i bought one =)

then, we had heard from another friend i had invited, who had a little boy about the same age as the little girl belonging to our hosts. he had called while we were at sterling, and we were to meet him back down in napa at the cajun festival that was going on during the weekend. the cajun festival was fun enough, it was sort of the end of the day and absolutely everything was very expensive, but i suppose i should have expected that from napa =) we left the cajun festival and went to a gourmet hamburger joint for dinner. it was yummy.

then we returned to their house and had more nekkid hot tubbing. that was fun, we laughed and had a good time, everyone was happy.

sunday, it was our plan to get up reasonably early because we were going to head to the burning man decompression in san francisco. i was looking forward to this as many friends were supposed to be there. i was anxious because i don’t feel like i got to see hardly anything at burning man this year, so i was looking forward to some of the art showing up, and in fact, my favorite piece did actually go, it’s an optical illusion monkey thing that’s very neat. we got started later than we wanted to, and had a prelude to how the day was going to go. the other friend had driven up his smallish rv to their house, and in the morning, he dumped his kid in the kitchen and went back to sleep. then he made us about an hour later than we wanted to be leaving for the city.

once we got to san francisco, we headed in to china town to experience dim sum. some of the stuff i thought was yummy, some was odd, and some i don’t think i would eat again, although it was all interesting. the guys were decidedly less adventuresome, so they were sort of disappointed with the food offerings. i felt bad for our friend who’s idea it was, i think she felt sort of bad, but i reassured her that SOME of us are adventurous. we still had a good time though. driving in san francisco is a trip and something that sort of defies normal anything when you aren’t used to it. between the up and down streets and all the people and road construction, it’s pretty crazy =)

i would say it still wasn’t my ideal time, but pretty damn close =) i would have stayed for the whole thing, but d’s back started to hurt again. there were more fire spinners to see, that we didn’t get to. my group did really good, i did fire safety for them, so that felt good, got to see them all. got a free drink i never got to use for helping out with security for that smallish portion of the show, and got to see much stuff. i think i am the luckiest person alive with the quality of the people i have in my life. it was great to see everyone again, walk around and have a good time. and most important NOT WORK! i could have, oh yes, i could have, but i promised myself and others i was NOT going to do that and i stuck to it.

by the time we headed home, i think everyone was tired, some were cranky, and hopefully all were satisfied at having had a great time. i know i did! we got back to napa for more nekkid hot tubbing, snacking, joking around and just having good times with good people. monday was relaxing in the extreme, and we didn’t leave until after 7pm, which made getting home pretty late, after ten. the ride home was uneventful, weather was good, and life is grand. our napa friends loaded us up with tomatoes and other fruits and veggies still in their garden. YUM!

this is already a novella, but i wanted to get it recorded. may elaborate later, but wanted to get the basics down.

i heart my life, and i heart my friends.

life is good.

peace.