I really meant blog entries to be the exception to the 301 rule, not the norm. and I’m still qualifying this as exercise #12, because I haven’t been to bed yet, dammit.

This was another night of juxtaposition for me. I danced at Artopium with my troupe this evening. It was wonderful — the weather was perfect and it was a great group of people So we danced outside in the fresh air, and there was a breeze that blew the veils all around so they danced as much as the women wielding them. And Kelly pulled rugs and pillows up to the very edge of the dancing space and encouraged the whole crowd to come to the front to be a part of the dancing. It was such an appreciative audience, and I loved dancing so close to them. The energy was phenomenal. I did a full-on 7-minute drum solo and didn’t appear to lose anyone, so I’ll call it a success.

The juxtaposition came with my other major project today. Okay, well, two major projects. Firstly, I finally finished the damned curtains. They’re officially hemmed and hanging in the dining room! YAY!

Second, Stv’s hard drive went kablooie today. As in, won’t boot. So we made a mad scramble to Fry’s to get an external HDD case, a new hard drive for his laptop, and a back up HDD which we should have bought a long time ago but never did. So now we’re stuck trying to figure out how to get the data off his old disk if at all possible. So far we haven’t had any luck getting a computer to register the disk’s existence. Uh-oh.

So anyway, I’ve spent the last, oh, three and a half hours after my show and some food installing and formatting his new hard drive and getting some basic software up and running. Stv has managed to lose his Windows install disks, so for now I have him running Ubuntu, which is a Linux-based open source OS. I’m not that great with Linux, but I managed, and I’m pretty proud. However, watching me figure out how to get software onto the machine has rendered Stv afraid to touch it, I think…

What happened to exercise 11, you ask? Well, I spent yesterday evening working on a character synopsis for the next RPG I’m playing in. She’s terribly enigmatic and not an entirely nice person. But that is part of what makes her interesting. Anyway, I didn’t see a reason to post it here, but I will if anyone is interested.

Now then. I have never considered myself to be a particularly domestic person, but I’m slowly coming to the realization that I am. It is a strange progression that we go through. One day you’re a crazy liberated partying college kid, the next you’re a go-getter, career-minded, fully modern woman. Then you get married and while you lose serious Cool Points, you still firmly believe that you are DIFFERENT from all those other extremely uncool married people. And then, one Tuesday morning, you wake up and realize that in your spare time you’re knitting scarves and making tablescapes and sewing curtains for your kitchen. Not that you aren’t still all the other things, but just that this habit of priding oneself on your lack of domesticity, which I would argue is typical of my generation, is total self-delusion. You have become a Domestic. And I’m not talking beer.

I suppose from the outside looking in, the thoroughly modern domestic career-woman is quite humorous. Tonight, if you peeped in my kitchen windows (which I hope you didn’t do), you would see a blond bent over a sewing machine on the kitchen counter, with a set of carefully pinned, open-weave curtains strewn all over between last week’s mail and her glowing laptop. She is slowly, painfully sewing channels in the fabric panels for the curtain rods on the sewing machine she’s used maybe twice since she got it. This woman is also biting her lip and swearing under her breath in the most colorful language imaginable while she tries to avoid sticking herself with the needle or any of the pins sticking out of the slippery fabric at odd angles. Add into the picture the blinking bluetooth headset hooked over her ear and the command prompt on the laptop and you can begin to get the full picture …

So based on the wise comment from Ginger on my previous post about waxing my legs, I decided that rather than attempt it again myself, I would defer to an expert. Going into this, I realized that I know next to nothing about professional leg waxing, so I decided it would be a good topic for tonight’s writing exercise.

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So I’m supposed to write my words today as well, but I am out of time and haven’t pulled an exercise together, so for now, I’m declaring that plain old blogging about my day, as long as I share a few interesting insights, should count.

The Mediterranean festival was a huge crush of people. There were far more attendees that I have ever seen there, and the church volunteers weren’t really prepared for it, poor things. The air was absolutely steamy with sweat and humidity. The main stage at the entrance had heavy base, and played Mediterranean dance music all night. It was an almost irresistible draw for me, and my friend Zanj and I spent much of the evening dancing in our chairs. The good news was that after a series of long lines, we did manage to find said chairs. There was the line to get in, the line for the food tickets, the line for the wine after we had the food tickets, the line for the food after we had wine. Wow. We got a few nibbles and sat down, and the focus turned to fine conversation over the rumpled tablecloths. The festival had long rows of folding tables lined up end to end, in classic church dinner fashion. Appropriate I guess, given that the whole amazing event is a benefit for St. Elias orthodox church, and has been for the past 75 years.

After a few hours the crowds began to thin out, and having finished our bottle of wine, we made for the dance floor. Zanj and I hopped and shimmied like madwomen while our other girlfriend sat in the front row and watched the little girls spin and twirl and stomp their feet. Unfortunately we caught the dancing when the band was on break, but everyone was still caught up in the piped in songs. What is it about dancing in the street that is so liberating?

Jenny Cruise over at Argh Ink has posted an excrutiatingly funny review of The Action Heroine’s Handbook.

Definitely read though the comments — there’s some seriously sage advice for the next time you’re saving the world.

If you could give action heroine’s everywhere one piece of wisdom, what would it be?? Comment here — I’d love to know.

As most of you know, I have a soft spot for fairies and cartoon pinups. Don’t ask me why.

In a conversation with a coworker a looong while back, he clued me in to some new artists that I wanted to post here before I forget all about them:

Strangeling: The Art of Jasmine Beckett-Griffith — Gothic, fantasy, and fairy art. I love the big beautiful eyes.

Josh Howard: Comic Book and Pin-Up Artist — Dead@17 is quite Buffyesque. The bulk of the gallery is goth and punk pinups. Some of the styles I like, some I don’t. But he’s got a Hermione, and for that alone, I adore him.

Psst … curious about where I got the complementary color scheme for that oh-so-lovely announcement up there? I found it on kuler, the Adobe color theme tool. I highly recommend it. Pre-fab color schemes by people far more talented at that sort of thing. Yay!!

I am convinced there is some magical method to leg waxing that I don’t understand. I know so many women who can buy those little drug store kits and seem to have no problem with this shaving alternative. For me, I end up making a huge mess of the bathroom, getting wax all over the floor and the bathmats and the counters. It takes me at LEAST 30 minutes to do just one leg, and just the lower half at that. In reality, I never even get that far, because after 20 minutes I am sweating and swearing and in great discomfort, and I feel like I need to do an Alice in Wonderland-style snakenecked impression just to have a prayer of defuzzing the backs of my calves. So I give up, obey the “24 hour” rule, and two days later I go back grumbling and attempt the whole process again, usually with little further progress, until I give up and decide it is “good enough.” What is the secret, I ask? How am I supposed to pull this off? Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m just destined to shave my legs every week for the rest of my life. I can’t believe I’ve been so thoroughly unmanned (unwomaned?) by a box of white-chocolate scented putty-like goo …

I’m sitting here waiting for midnight, and realized that as long as I’m not going to be able to sleep, I might as well give this poor old blog some love.

So much has been happening. Work has been incredibly hard lately. I think I’ve been promoted twice (seriously) since I last wrote. I’m now managing a team of developers and a bevy of contractors. I love the challenges of it, but I find it scary and people management is much more bewildering than I expected.

The fabled summer trip ended up taking us to Mexico, where we spent a week on the Mayan Rivera, in a resort about 20 minutes south of Playa del Carmen. It was exactly what I needed. We rented a car one day and drove into the interior of the peninsula, taking the opportunity to see Chichen Itza and Ek Balam. On another day, we did Tulum and one of those adventure parks where you do a couple of zip lines and rappel into a cave, where we got to do some pretty amazing cave snorkeling through a (very cold) underground river. The rest of the time we spent on the beach, where I read copious trashy novels and watched the storms out at sea. Thankfully, few of them came ashore, and we had sun most of the time we were there. I’ve posted a few pictures on Flickr should you care to take a look.

What else? I have successfully taught my first ever beginning belly dance class. I had a lot of fun, and I think the girls did too. I wasn’t as into the technicalities as I probably needed to be, but I achieved my personal goal of making it a fun and supportive environment. I really enjoyed teaching, and found teaching a physical subject to be an interesting challenge. It is difficult to describe how something feels, and to come up with appropriate analogies to illustrate it. Everyone’s body feels things differently. I actually found that sometimes, actually physically guiding the movement for them was the only way to get the movement across. I have a good starting arsenal of descriptions ready now, though, so hopefully the next time will be easier.

I was quite pleased with Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. I finished it the weekend after it came out, as I was unable to get a copy in Mexico. Yes, I even looked at having Amazon ship it to me, but it was going to cost $40 and would maybe reach me before I left to come home again, so I opted to hold out until I was back in the states. It was murderous. I’m still reluctant to hold forth on the book too much lest some poor unenlightened soul stumble across this. So more later.

Steve’s family came in this weekend and we had a good time. We took the nieces to see the stage production of Hight School Musical that Zach Scott is doing. I have to admit … I really liked it. It was adorable. A wholesome Grease for the tween generation. I leve the theater bopping along with a big stupid grin on my face. Love or hate the corporate entity, there’s something indefinable about Disney Magic.

No, I haven’t given up on the summer trip thing. I’ve just been slow to get anywhere. It’s now looking like one of two options:

1. A cruise to Bermuda
2. A trip to Cape Cod

Can I just say that I win either way? Since my traveling companions have to be on the East coast the first week in June, that’s looking like the date. Earlier than I’d like, but I can’t really complain…

I grew up spending summers on Cape Cod. I’ve taken Stv once, but never my other friends that we’re traveling with. So it would be neat to share that with them.

On the other hand, I’ve never ever been to Bermuda, and a warm beach sounds really appealing.

Hmm.