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07/29/2007
144th, and Proud!
I saw a book that I'm interested in reading, called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It only came out this year, so normally my instinct would be to buy it and read it. However, I'm trying to curb my spending on things like books which I generally only read once. Option #2 would be to look for it at a second hand shop, but for a book so new, it's unlikely I'll find it there for a while yet. Option #3 is to wait for it to come out in paperback, so it's cheaper, but that still doesn't solve the problem of spending money and then having the book sit on the bookshelf because its value depreciated to basically nothing as soon as it's bought. So, I went with Option #4: Borrow from the library. Or, Option 4a in this case: Request it from the library and wait. I'm the 144th person in line waiting to read this book!! I've never put a hold on a library book with so many people waiting, but... there you go. In any case, my to-read pile is still tall enough to occupy me until my name comes up for this book. I'm not sure how long it will take to go through that many people in the request list, but judging from the number of copies in the system and the 3-week borrowing system, I expect I should get it sometime between October and Christmas. With any luck!
So that was my money-saving venture of the day. The non-money saving venture of the day was a shopping trip to the local mall, which was a flop basically. ("Un nul", as I'd generally call it.) All I can say is that I really, really can't stand the current retro 80s fashion! The 80s were a bad enough fashion disaster the first time, so I can't believe it's making a comeback. What are people thinking? This is totally the sort of thing where we'll be looking back at today's photos 10 years from now and going, holy smokes, we were utterly colourblind and hopeless at picking flattering cuts for the human body. Is that a fluorescent pink potato sack she's wearing? Did she get dressed in the dark, when she put her polka-dot sweatshirt over her psychedelic-print shirt? Hopefully when I'm in Europe in the next couple of weeks, there'll be something classier for sale that I can pick up, even if I do have to pay in pounds sterling (yikes).
I sold my violin a couple of weeks ago (yay!), but now I'm already itching to buy a new one! There are a few criteria this time around:
1. It has to be playable.
2. It has to be reasonably-priced.
3. It has to sound good.
#2 and #3 tend to conflict with each other, so it could be interesting. Ultimately though, I don't need a violin. What I really want to do is learn to fiddle -- on my cello. In other words, since I already know how to make a good sound out of a cello, I want to then learn, stylistically, how to fiddle in the Irish tradition (and I want to try for a Donegal regional style, if only because that's about my closest connection to Ireland!). Trouble is, there aren't exactly very many Irish cello fiddle teachers floating around. Soooo, either I'll have to learn on a fiddle and translate that to cello, or find a teacher daring enough to show me the general idea on a fiddle, and have me copy it on a cello. We'll see! The other problem too is the time factor. Basically, I have none. :-) Or, I should say, I have some now, but when orchestra and dance class start back up in September, I won't have any time anymore. We'll see what happens. Hopefully when I go to Ireland shortly I can pick up a whole bunch of interesting CDs and, with any luck, catch a couple of shows. I can't wait!!
19:54 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
07/22/2007
Summer has Finally Emerged
Well, it's been a great weekend. The weather was *gorgeous*, which was a complete contrast to Friday, where it absolutely poured rain all day long - some farmers' fields were basically turned to lakes, with hay bales floating around! Fortunately our house is on higher ground and we didn't have any problems.
So this weekend, I decided it was time to get a new pair of walking/light hiking shoes. The ones I had, I bought them probably in the 1999-2000 timeframe. (I distinctly remember paying for them because I didn't have enough in the bank so I had to pay some cash and the remainder with my debit card. It was a bit embarrassing!). And in fact, truth be told, I didn't think they were all that terribly nice-looking, even back then; I was simply told they were the best design and I went, great, let's get them in my size and get on with them. Now, I'm a bit more confident in my own decisions and more importantly, I listen to my gut feelings a bit more. So yesterday, I bought myself some nice walking/hiking shoes, and I really do like them this time. :-) They're Targhees from Keen Footwear (in the "Concord" mocha brown kind of colour).
Today I went back to the same place I got the shoes, and invested in a quality Messenger bag from Timbuk2. This was the "Commute" model, which has room for a laptop. I don't have a laptop, but it should work great for my Alphasmart. Yay! This one is the all-slate blue one, which was basically all they had. Actually there was one other, but it was a nasty orange colour so I went with the blue. :-)
No more spending money for me for a little while though. Phew! Stuff isn't cheap...!
Two more weeks before I'm in Europe - I can't wait. I'll be staying in Wales for a couple of nights, then Northern Ireland for a week, then back to Wales for the remaining week or so. It should be great! I haven't been to Wales at all, and only spent 3 days in Ireland, so the whole experience should be quite new. I'm sure I'll have plenty to blog about when I get back!
20:32 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
07/07/2007
North American Nationals - 2nd Place!
I am one happy camper today! Yesterday my team and I competed in the Adult women's 8-hand ceili competition at the North American Nationals, and we came in 2nd place!!! We couldn't believe it, especially as we saw some other teams there who were really great also. We put the team together around April or so, and we learned the dance from scratch. It's been a long road, trying to get everyone to dance the same, considering there was a wide range of experience and skill level among our group. Still, it worked out really well.
We danced at about 10:45 am, but didn't get the award til about 4:15 pm. It was a long wait, and the awards ceremony took forever, especially as there were enormous numbers of kids teams, so you got announcements like, "Alright, girls Under-13 8-Hand ceili competition.... In 17th place, we have........ team number [whatever] from [and then you can't hear the announcer from the over the din of 2000 teenage girls screaming at the top of their lungs...]" Then you have to wait for the team to come up and get their 17th place medals and pose for pictures and the audience to quiet down a bit so that the announcer can continue, "Aaaaaaaand in *16th* place, we have..." etc etc etc. Wow that took a long time. The awards ceremony started at 2:30-ish and like I said, we didn't get our awards til about 4:15, and even then it wasn't quite over, as they still had to hand out awards for dance drama.
It really was an interesting experience, especially for my dad, who had never been to a feis before, never mind the nationals. Fortunately he came on ceili day, so the full psychedelic-ness of Solo dresses and costumes never quite hit him!
Anyway, I'm glad I took the day off work, and glad I did this, even though there were moments along the way where I was questioning my sanity in doing all this.
The fruits of my (and the team's) labour!
16:10 Posted in Irish Dancing | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this