Well, I'm back.

Back? What do you mean, 'back?' You haven't been anywhere...unless you've been in the wardrobe. Phew, Lucy the Human Mothball!

Sorry...momentary Junior High Flashback. Let's all here it for school productions that turn Lewis Carroll into contemporary musicals...

Tampa was great. As a matter of fact, it was so nice that I really wish I was still there, relaxing by the pool, instead of back at work. No hot tub, no massage therapist, and there was that pesky meeting I had to go to, but overall the socializing and the relaxation were well worth the drive. I even have some fun stories about the Neilson Media trainees that now have the privilege of saying they "partied with librarians and know what we're really like!"

heheheheheheheh. If only they knew....

Things are calming down at work a bit, at least in the last day or two. My boss is finally back, and will hopefully not need any more long absences. The deadline on our database evaluation project was extended, so I don't have to worry about not getting it done on time. Now I just need to find a couple hours for the schedule and the statistics, and we'll be all set.

No other news, really, except I think I made my best attempt at shoulderstand yet in class Monday night.

Ouch.

This week I am feeling the burn. Constant tension in my shoulders, neck and back, daily headaches, constant fatigue ... I think it is a very very good think that I will be away from work for the rest of the week. The trip to Tampa is work, technically, but the meeting has a reputation for not being anything strenuous, and since we have a couple of days in this resort as compensation I am thinking relaxation will finally be possible! The pool, the hotub, the spacious 2-bedroom suite with a bottle of wine in situ... I just can't wait. If I'm lucky they may even have a massage therapist on staff!

Entertaining article on msn today about Blender magazine's list of the worst songs ever written. Why I am I not surprised to see Jefferson Starship on this list? “The truly horrible sound of a band taking the corporate dollar while sneering at those who take the corporate dollar,” indeed. The sad thing is I actually liked this song when I was a kid.

hmmmm...maybe I shouldn't have admitted that....

Danced at the Thai place again last night. This time the people I invited actually came, so we had a decent crowd for once! As usual, I felt like I was doing a terrible job, but the people in the audience liked it so maybe I am just too hard on myself. I know, I know, it's so hard to have people telling you you're good all the time, right? But I am feeling a severe lack of constructive criticism lately. I see the gap between my skills and that of advanced students and professionals--which is totally appropriate given that I've been bellydancing for less than 2 years!--but I don't know how to bridge that gap on my own. I know I should practice more, but what with work and other life stress and my own inertia often by the time I get some free moments I'm too tired to even think of moving. Or my household chores are long overdue and it's a choice between dancing or having clean underwear to wear and clean dishes to cook in. Plus I'm afraid that if I just keep practicing with bad technique, I'll just get better at doing the moves badly. If that makes sense.

Anyway, self-criticism aside, we had a good time last night and ended up closing the place with a Karaoke party. Which actually, seems to happen a lot when I'm there. The staff found out I sing, and now every time I dance there they fire up the machine afterwards and bug me till I go up and sing a bit. Then I get someone up after me, and next thing you know it's 11pm. Not exactly what I expected from a bellydancing gig but I'm not complaining!

Stress at work continues to abound. We're all feeling the burden of being continually understaffed and being worried about my boss, who is still out sick and going for a heart catheterization test early next week. He may or may not end up having some form of surgery the same day, depending on what they find. So he may be back in a few days, or he may wake up to find he's had a heart procedure done and needs to take more time off to recover. Add a couple of other supervisors that are sticking their micromanaging fingers into every pot, and things are not fun. We have just about reached the breaking point here, I think, and the worst thing is that I don't know how to stop it. I've already talked to our uber-manager, but while that finally got some things across it seems to have made other things worse. The stupidest part of it all is that I've kept my boss informed of everything I've been doing, and he's approved of every single thing, to the point of thanking me for sending particular emails or saying things that need to be said. So it's not like I'm out in left field, making naive and idiotic decisions. But the message I'm getting from others here is "stay in your place...don't try to do things that are above you...you are not important enough to be consulted about things that concern your staff or your department." AUGH!

Sorry. Can't discuss this situation without deteriorating into a rant. Some days I just want to pack up and go hide in my parents' basement until I can find another job...

Moving on to other, less depressing topics:

Song number 4 is in the can. I haven't heard the finished version yet, as we just recorded the vocal tracks last Wednesday, but so far it's sounding pretty good, if I do say so myself. I've been listening to the other stuff, and watching how our style/sound as a group is evolving. In the beginning, the vocals I was doing were really more ornamental, or embellishments to the sound, than anything else. Probably because Rob and Bill were used to working mostly in instrumentals. But as we go along, the vocal tracks are becoming more integral to the music and we're developing a bit more of a signature sound. It's an interesting process to participate in, anyway.

I'm In the middle of planning a trip to Tampa for the Florida Library Association Leadership Orientation next week. This is the event that's supposed to actually teach me how to do my job as Continuing Education Committee chair. We'll see if it achieves that objective...right now all I can see is a cheap trip to a resort hotel away from work on County Time. Woo hooo!

Just when you think you've heard everything...along comes something like this.

This has been a crazy week. First there was the time change...losing an hour always throws me out of whack for a little while and really, who has an hour to lose these days anyway? My boss is still out sick, which means extra business at work. And I've been having other problems at work as well--nothing I can really talk about here but the situation is making it reeeaallly hard to come in every day and be civil to the people involved. What with one thing and another I'm feeling a bit worn down right now. I can hardly wait for the weekend!

Michael and I have finally got to watching the DVDs of The Prisoner we bought so long ago. Every time I watch that show it makes me feel like buying a striped umbrella and going to Portmeirion. I must admit that I briefly considered joining Six of One, but I've heard bad things about them lately...

Well, I decided I needed to actually choreograph the dance I'm doing for the University Centre recital this weekend at about 5:30 pm yesterday. Now I just hope I will remember the thing. I brought my choreo. notes to review today, but between having to compile the building statistics and being on the desk 4 hours I may not have much time to read them over. Wish me luck...

Fortunately, the performances tonight and tomorrow afternoon should mark at least a temporary end to the crazy extracurricular schedule. I've only got two restaurant performances this month, and after February and March I decided to scale back on things a bit to try to get more balance. But then don't I always say that?

I was in the studio last week cleaning up a few vocal tracks here and there ... an interesting insight into the process: there's one high passage in our third song that gets up close to the top of my range, and has a lot of difficult intervals, so we decided to redo it. Seventy-nine takes and two hundred and thirty-seven high b's later, we may have finally got one I can live with. Whew!

And hey, I finally figured out that my book and movie review pages weren't archiving. So all of you people who are not reading my reviews can ignore the backfiles, too ;)