radio silence

The short version of our story since March is we got to edmonton fine after only one minor car repair and 5 days in Denver visiting Michael's brother and his wife. We ended up in Edmonton much longer than we thought we would due to the difficulty of getting basic things like driver licences and other paperwork done, and finally left for the UAE on June 1. Since we got here, we have encountered many delays and frustrations, though the kinds of things we are facing are not unusual to new UAE residents. We still don't have our residence visas, but we are FINALLY going to be able to move out of our hotel and into our apartment tomorrow, which makes us very happy!

One of the reasons I haven't been posting here is becuase my internet time is limited (no home computer yet of course) and Michael and I have been maintaining our joint blog, Inshallah with our experiences here. Since more of our family members and friends have been checking that one, it's taken precedent for updates. So if you'd like a more detailed version of what has happened and is happening in our lives, surf over there.

last day

So, today is my last day at work. Which feels very strange. This is the first time in my life that I have left a job with the prospect of not working for a long time after, and had that be okay instead of a source of stress. Even if and when I find a job in Abu Dhabi, I still won't be working for months. There's so much to do in that time and yet still I feel kind of cast adrift.

I've been trying to figure out how to bring my car into Canada, which has honestly been a huge nightmare. Check out the list of things to do here and tell me if you believe in free trade anymore!

We haven't even really started packing yet--so it's good that I will have a couple of weeks before we leave. On top of the regular work we also have to have an itemized list of everything we move with us to declare at the border, so that will require some extra work as well.

So I'm sometimes excited, sometimes freaking out, sometimes not even believing the whole thing is happening!

Since today is my last day with regular access to a computer, I won't be online to write here or answer email as much anymore. I'll try to check it a few times before we leave at least, but may not have access on the road, and after we leave Edmonton in early May it's going to be a while before we can get our own computer and get it all set up. So I hope you will excuse me if my posts are even more sporadic than usual this next little while. I'll write when I can, I promise!

big news

We got the official word today

MICHAEL GOT THE JOB!!

WE ARE MOVING TO THE UAE!

Needless to say I am excited and anxious and scared and worried and full of anticipation all at the same time. So much to think about...so much to assimilate...so much to learn...so much to do.

I already handed in my resignation letter though. Boy was that fun!

After being in limbo with no word for so long everything seems to be coming up much too fast. I will be leaving work mid March. Then we will drive from Florida back up to Canada at the end of March. Then, hopefully, we will have a decent amount of time to store our things and visit family and friends before departing to Abu Dhabi.

Life feels more than a little surreal right now....

Johari Windows

Johari windows are something I stumbled across recently on a message board. The whole concept sounds kind of intriguing. So, if you'd like to contribute to mine, point yourself here: Darcy's Johari window

turca to hard rock and beyond

Well, Turca Groove went pretty well all told. Sorry I didn't post an update in a more timely fashion! There is a set-by-set description of the night in my Tribe blog if you'd like to read it. There are photos posted in this album as well. I finished my tribal bra--and my tribal-influenced solo!--in time, and we also managed to have our "zill solo" ready. Strange to dance to no music but us... but I think it worked.

A friend videotaped it for us, though so of course I had to endure the indignity of watching it afterwards. Funny how the mistakes that I thought we had covered up were hugely visible, and the ones that I thought were glaringly obvious were hardly noticed! I also saw quite a few...er...areas for improvement in my dancing. It's always hard to watch yourself and see how you really did, as opposed to how you felt things went. So I was a little less happy with the performance after that.

But, the house was packed with our family and friends and everyone who came said they loved it and had a good time, so I'm trying to forget all the glaring ugly flaws and consider it well done.

I also had my first professional dance photo shoot at the Broward Bellydance Meetup's January meeting, which was a lot of fun. I ended up ordering about 8 of them from the proofs, and I'll be getting digital images with them, so I'll post some of them when I can.

Michael has not had any official word from Abu Dhabi yet, but we think he is going to get offered the job. He's had a couple of unofficial email exchanges with some of the people there, and while they are not coming out and saying directly that he was selected, the inference is clear. There are multiple reasons for the delay...all typical of the culture in that area of the world...so we are settling in to "hurry up and wait" on the issue.

I am performing at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino this weekend...with Diana again. Guesting for my teacher Myriam. It will be great to dance to live music again! We are outside, and I'm assuming we'll be there more for "ambiance" than anything else. Doesn't meand I'm not nervous though! I'm working on a new costume that will hopefully do for some cane dancing, which I haven't been able to do for some time. See a sample photo here .

Counting down to Turca Groove

Well, tomorrow night I have my first public bellydance performance in close to a year. My friend Diana and I are performing at a la Turca restaurant for their monthly Turca Groove.

We have three sets planned, each with a duet and two solos. We are going to dance the choreography we learned at the Aziza workshop in November, a karsilama (9/8) we created ourselves to the Turkish standard Rompi Rompi, and a "zill solo" we just finished last week! That one will have no muscial accompaniament....just us on finger cymbals. Which means, of course....no room for error. Diana has showed it (on paper) to to her and Michael's drum teacher, Joe Zeytoonian, and he said he thought it looked good, so hopefully it will be received well. For my solos, I am going to dance to the Hossam Ramzy drum solo I used to use for my gig at the Sawadee (Naima's hip from Sabla Tolo), the first track from Light Rain's Valentine to Eden, and Inanna by the tea party. That last will be my first tribal style dance...I choreographed most of it, but parts of it, and all of the others, will be improvised.

Naturally, things were going pretty smoothly until our rehearsal last night, in which I rediscovered mistakes I thought I had fixed weeks ago, thought up a bunch of new mistakes to add in, and totally lost control of my veil. Argh! Better now than Tuesday I guess.

As for the rest of life....

Michael has been selected for interview at the Petroleum Institute in the United Arab Emirates. He's been posting about it regularly on his blog, so I won't recap too many of the details here, but he has been told informally he's a strong candidate for the position and I think there's a good chance he will get it. Moving there would be quite an experience...sometimes I'm more excited, and sometimes I'm more scared, but either way it would be too interesting an opportunity to pass up. We have been reading up on the area as much as we can, but there is not a lot of UAE-specific info out there as far as travel and etiquette guides go...most focus on places like Saudi Arabia. The UAE is more liberal than a lot of the Middle East...but of course "more liberal" would be a relative term and we're not really sure what to expect. Michael will find out more when he goes, I guess (they're not flying me out with him).

We had a pretty good Christmas and New Years all things considered...about as good as a Christmas in Florida can be. Hung out at home, read our new books, listened to our new CDs, and ate good food mostly.

And that's the highlights of the past couple weeks :)

Yuletide greetings

Happy Winter Solstice, everyone.

What are you worth?

Apparently, I'm worth $1,900,570. No word on whether that's US or Canadian dollars ;)

HumanForSale.com

Trying to gear up for Christmas in Florida...which is kind of surreal. I wish we could be at home, but I didn't have enough vacation time for both the wedding and Christmas so I had to choose. I can never get into the "Christmas Spirit" here...too hot, too many palm trees, no family, etc. So, it will be a quieter and more melancholy holiday than usual.

Michael and I went to see Ansuya perform at Uva Restaurant last weekend, which was a lot of fun. Michael had never seen her dance before...she was amazing, as always. She's going to be teaching workshops on Improv dancing and Indian fusion in January, and I'm thinking I'll go to both of them.

My friend Alina didn't get the gig at the Renaissance Fair, which is a bit of a disappointment. I don't blame her for not wanting to go so low that we were practically not getting paid at all, but it would have been fun if it had worked out. There's a possibility they may pick up the troupe for next year, but of course I won't be around then :(

It does mean, however, that Diana and I can concentrate solely on our January gig at a La Turca, which is good because I have a couple of solos I need to polish up! And a coin bra to coin! And costume pieces to find and...and....the 10th is going to be here before either of us know it!

On the front page of today's Sun-Sentinel: Middle-income workers now being priced out of S. Florida's housing market:

From city halls to the state capital, politicians have talked for years about the need for more affordable housing. Task forces were formed. A state housing fund was created. Builders promised to deliver.

But now -- with teachers, police officers and young professionals joining the ranks of those struggling to find homes they can afford -- South Florida's housing crisis has taken on new urgency .... 'It wasn't on our radar screen to keep track of how fast the cost of housing was escalating,' said Deputy Palm Beach County Administrator Verdenia Baker. 'Our housing market has outpaced our salaries ... We are going to be a community that has to import our workers.'

Well duh. Anyone who lives here could tell you that. The rent on our "affordable" apartment--the twenty six year old building which seems to be going downhill more and more by the day with paint peeling, walls cracking, potholes gaping, garbage piled up by residents in 3-foot piles in front of the chutes, garbage piled in 10-foot piles in the parking lot by management, and so forth--is being jacked up to close to $1100 a month, with more rent hikes to come after they start their much-promised much-delayed renovations and improvements. Thanks to property tax and insurance increases friends I know who've bought houses in the past 3 or 4 years say they would not be able to afford to do so today even with the inflated prices their current homes would fetch on the market (read farther in the article quoted above and you'll see that housing prices have risen 80% in three years with the median price in Broward now at $383,900). You'd think that the people who can afford this stuff, and the developers that build here, would realize that they have a vested interest in creating a community where the people who mow their lawns, serve up their Starbucks lattes, teach their children and patrol their streets could live. Even if it is on the other side of the gates that separate them from the riffraff. Strange.

But, enough of things that I can't change and soon won't affect me anyway and on to other news. The Aziza workshop I went to on the weekend was really good...if really tiring! Aziza is a fun person and a great teacher and performer, so it was really a joy to take a class with her. She lives in Montreal (wish I did too!), though she is originally from Portland OR. She has just released a Practice Companion DVD that I bought at the class. I have been too busy--and too sore!--to practice with it yet, but I will break it out later in the week.

A couple of performance opportunities have come along for me and my friend Diana...we will be doing a restaurant night in January and maybe some dates at the Rennaisance Festival Feb-March. We are busy trying to find music and create dances for them.

Finally, Michael was shortlisted for a position at the Petroleum Institute in the United Arab Emirates. He had an "informal pre-screening" phone call that lasted 2 hours (!!!) last weekend, and on Monday he got an email telling him he'd made the shortlist. Which means that he will probably be flown out there for inperson interviews and so forth. Exciting and scary all at the same time. It's something we wanted, but when the possibility is here now in your face rather than out there for someday it's a little more scary. No word yet on if/when he will be flown out, and what comes next, but whatever happens it should be interesting!

what's new

Our broken window got fixed yesterday. Cleanup continues on the apartment grounds, but it still looks pretty crappy at this point. I've posted the pictures we took right after the storm online...take a look on our Webshots page.

After three days of complete disoganization and and utter chaos at work, we are back open and functioning normally, if on a reduced schedule. All of our computer classes and programs are being cancelled.

No more military and Red Cross helicopters buzzing over my house constantly, but many cities still have curfews and most traffic lights are still down, which makes driving at night extremely dangerous. We had some rain these past couple days, with a return to hot muggy temperatures, so a lot of people have suffered further damage and more structures are being condemned. In most areas 30%-40% of customers still don't have power.

My mom sent me a link to this article interviewing the creator of Rex Libris. I'm not usually a comic book collector but I think I could really get into this one!

post wilma

Sorry to be so long posting this...today was the first day after the Hurricane that I got back to a computer. Michael and I are both fine and except for a one blown out window (small) and one bent one (large) we suffered no storm damage to our apartment. We prepared well enough to get through the first couple days, and as grocery stores have continued to get back open we have not had to worry about food or water.

Going through the storm was probably one of the most frightening experiences I've ever had. Six hours of huddling inside the hallway, listening to a battery-powered radio and feeling the air pressure inside pop our ears as the building shuddered with each 200 km/hr gust. The power of it was absolutely incredible. Watching our windows shudder and bow during the fierce, back end of the storm, we were absolutely sure that they would not withstand the wind and break. I'm still not sure how they managed to hold up. Even if we'd had shutters, they might not have helped--a lot of people had their shutters come off in the middle of the hurricane. This was definitely worse than the Tornado I rode out in 1987, even though the damage was worse--that storm took off our roof, but at least it was over within a relatively short period of time!

Our phone lines survived but both power and water were out until late Thursday/early Friday. Quite a surprise that we got back up that soon--many are still waiting and the target date for full restoration is November 22nd. Lineups for supplies were terrible the first couple of days--looks like a lot of people did not prepare like they should have!--and since there were only a few gas stations operational, lineups for gas have in some cases exceeded 6 hours. Fortunately neither Michael nor I had to go to work last week, so we could stick close to home and conserve our fuel. The first few days you can blame people for not being prepared, but after that people have to start going out to get to work, to line up for ice and water (apparently some stations won't give you supplies unles you're in a car), and you can't really blame them for needing to drive.

Of course, once you get out on the streets the traffic is a nightmare. Most traffic lights are still out--either no power or totally blown down and destroyed by the storm--and rather than being understanding and patient Florida drivers are showing their usual aggressiveness and lack of regard for traffic laws. Most intersections are four-way stops, which for this population pretty much means drive at your own risk.

I am back at work now, though we are not open to the public due to lack of a/c. Apparently FPL is afraid that if they turn on the chillers for this complex it could blow the grid in this area again. Only 5 libraries, many of them smaller branches, were able to open today, but we still all have to report to work or take annual leave now that the system is officially "open". I'm sure those few buildings will soon be wall-to-wall with staff who, like me, refuse to burn up vacation time because their libraries can't operate.

So that's the news. More updates as situations change ;)

rays of hope

I discovered something interesting today...

I was in the 290s, looking for The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle (for any non-librarians out there, the 200s are the religion section in the Dewey Decimal System). Walking down the aisle to the shelf, what should I see in the 299s but...a growing selection of openly Wiccan books! Amazing.

You see, when I first started reading up on Witchcraft, anything not under the cloak of research into god and goddess figures was relegated to the Occult section. That's still the main place to find them. It seems a major shift in policy to move these books from "Parapsychology and Occultism" to "Other Religions". And one that I, personally, can't help but be happy about. Who knows, some day we may even be legitimate enough to be boring ;)

Wilma is apparently not going to hit us until Sunday or Monday now. I'm still hopeing for the best case scenario: a three-day weekend with no power outages and nothing more pressing to do but hang around in our pajamas reading and watching Dark Shadows DVDs....

here we go again

Well, overnight, Hurricane Wilma went from a category one storm to the most powerful storm on record for this area. We have had no news about Broward County's official plans, but I assume that the libraries will be closed for the weekend, at least. The storm is supposed to make landfall Saturday, and is headed right for us by way of the west coast.

Gas stations are already running out of fuel, apparently...my tank is running on empty so hopefully I'll be able to fill up before it's all gone. It seems like every time gas prices start to go down, even a little bit, another storm comes along and oil companies jump on the chance to jack it right back up. I hesitate to think about what I'm going to be paying tonight.

At least we have lots of ice...a whole freezer full. We saved it all from the last big storm. We are expecting to lose power again, at least for a little while.

Well, all we can really do, I guess, is shop for some more food supplies, hunker down and hope for the best.

I found the first collection of Dark Shadows on our Hallowe'en display this week, so I am finally getting to watch it after hearing about it for so long. Apparently there's at least 22 collections in the series, and if they're all like the first they've got 40 episodes per collection. That's a lot of television! I only hope that the library has most of them...I haven't checked yet. Don't think Michael is enjoying it as much as I am. He definitely hates the opening and credits music!

Wasted an afternoon at a new County-mandated class yesterday...you know, if you're going to force me to go to a class about filling out a form, it would be nice if you spent some time, any time, during the class, actually, oh....talking about the form. Or something. As usual, the teacher, from County HR, admitted she knew little or nothing about Libraries Division, and couldn't answer many questions. And as usual, the most instructive outcome of the class was to find out how little Libraries Division actually knows and how much they do wrong. Frustrating? What makes you think that?

At least now I can take a deep breath and remember that it's not my problem any more, and doesn't affect me, because soon I will be Out. Of. Here.

holding pattern

Once more, long time no blog...but then, when I started this venture I didn't count on the fact that my life would sometimes be so routine and boring that I didn't have anything to share! Somehow I always pictured my entries as being much more interesting and erudite than they often seem to be. Oh well!

Michael's been out of town for a week--he went to Spokane WA to visit relatives. He'll be back on Sunday night, though, which means I guess I have to pull myself out of this exhausted-all-the-time-crash-and-burn rut that I"ve been in ever since he left. I don't know if I'm too self indulgent, too unmotivated, or just plain lazy, but I haven't been able to do much more than drag myself from bed to work to couch to bed this week. I sleep and sleep only to find that I am just as tired waking up as I was when I went to bed, and I'm holding a lot of diffuse, low-level tension in a lot of areas for no readily apparent reason. Not sure what's up with this, but hope it cycles off soon.

Still haven't dealt with the Blue Stone crap. At this point I really just want to completely dissociate myself from it all--I feel like I've been shut out, and like my life has moved on to the point that Rob and Bill and their oh-so-precious five-record deal really have no place in it. Add to this that whenever I steel myself enough to yank myself out of denial and actually call a lawyer, they don't return my calls, whether I'm working on cold calls or referrals from their family and friends.

Other than that...not much going on. One of my dance classes is on haitus this month, so I'm not as busy with that. Aziza from Montreal is coming to Miami in November to do a workshop, which I plan on registering for. I've been attending Bellydance Meetup events when I can, but many of them are quite a long drive away so I have to be picky about it.

Just overall...feeling kind of blah, and stuck, and wishing we were both somewhere else.

black times

I've kind of avoided posting anything about Katrina's gulf coast hit, and the horrific aftermath, because these events have really been challenging my faith in the basic decency of humanity. Between the looting and violence on the ground, and the pathetic government "response", I'm saddened and deeply disappointed.

I did, however, participate in a Katrina relief fundraising effort by my Bellydance meetup group that raised $400. A previous event had raised $200, and now we will be donating through a group member whose employer will match contributions. So I'm feeling good about that.

My neck hasn't been feeling too good lately; I visited Michael's chiropractor for a "free evaluation appointment." Bad decision. Though he apparently gave my neck the most subtle adjustment possible, the only time I've experienced significant neck pain is in the week following that appointment. For a while I was really scared that something was wrong; fortunately, after about a week it started to improve dramatically, and now I feel much better. I still have more cracking noises in my neck than before, and sometimes there's just a twinge of acheyness after a long day, but I haven't lost any range of motion and I'm assuming that, long term, I'll be okay. Mr. Chiropractor's office staff, of course, told me that pain was "normal" and "goes away during treatment". Mr. Chiropractor himself, naturally, offered me free physiotherapy treatments to help it feel better. Thanks, really, but really, NO.

Michael had this web page outlining the Lies we learned in Library School sent to him by a colleague. Pretty much sums up our experiences perfectly. I've felt so disillusioned in so many ways since I left SLIS...I'm starting to think that the only way I will find a *good* job that will *pay me decently* is if I leave the profession and take my skills elsewhere. Not quite sure what direction to go yet...but...there's got to be many many better things to do with one's life than sitting in a desk, bored out of one's skull, getting paid less than one would working retail.

(Seriously. Michael's brother supervises people who manage those little sunglass kiosks in the mall. They get paid more at their jobs than either of us do at ours.)

Well, this has been a downer of a post. I'll leave on a more positive note: this weekend I am attending workshops put on by Alexandra King, one of the most highly regarded dancers in the U.S., with two of my closest dance friends. And boy am I looking forward to it! Can't wait.

catching up

Well....long time since I've updated here. Hope you'll forgive me...I have been a little busy after all!

Of course, the big news is that the wedding is over! I haven't written much about the whole planning and implementation process, as both Michael and I have confined wedding discussion to our joint blog, The Big Event. The short version of the story is that everything went really well, and we thoroughly enjoyed both our wedding and our honeymoon in Jasper National Park. The only bad thing about the experience is that it was over too soon! Anyway, if you surf on over there you can see more details, if desired, and also find links to pictures of my bridal shower in Florida, our wedding day, and our honeymoon.

We'd barely got back home before Katrina hit. We've endured other hurricane events in the past five years, but not a storm that hit Broward County straight on as this one did. Needless to say we feel very fortunate that the only impact the storm had on our lives personally was 2 extra days off and 55 hours without power. Reading by candlelight and living on peanut butter sandwiches and crackers seems pretty tame in comparison to the experiences of people farther south and, now, in the Gulf.

Though it was expected to hit in northern Broward County, Katrina jogged south right beforehand to land closer to the Broward/Miami Dade county line instead. Usually, this would have been bad news for us, because most hurricanes apparently carry the worst of their weather in the northern part of the storm. This one, howevery, atypically had the most rain and wind in the south. Miami-Dade and Homestead/Florida City areas got hit really badly--with the duration of the storm, the wind, and all the rain and flooding, many residents there said it was actually worse than Hurricane Andrew in 1993 even though Katrina was "only" a Category 1.

That was a phrase we heard a lot, actually, during the hurricane and in its aftermath. There was a lot of complacency beforehand--"Oh, it's only a Category 1 storm." At least one news outlet was telling people that there was no need to put up hurricane shutters, since Katrina was so "weak". I went to the grocery store Wednesday night after work to get some supplies, and one stockboy there told me that he had no idea why everyone was "panicking" and buying up all their water and nonperishables, adding that he was planning to go to the beach the next day!

Afterwards, the shocked stories started rolling in. One former news employee and long-time Floridian interviewed from his home in south Miami-Dade said that he had never been scared of a storm, but sitting through this one with no shutters up watching the glass of his patio doors bend and ripple as his neighborhood got torn apart for five hours straight had terrified him. Editorial writers rushed to publish columns about how "we will never underestimate a storm like this again. We forgot that any hurricane, even a 'weak' category 1, is still a hurricane; now we know better."

It all just kind of boggles my mind. Sure, this particular area has not been hit directly by a hurricane in years, but, hello, people? 90 mph winds and torrential rain at sea level are still dangerous. Even if you're still suffering from storm fatigue/ennui from last year, how dumb do you have to be not to realize that a weaker storm that hits you straight on is still worse than a stronger one that hits miles away?

Well, we've still got the most active part of the current hurricane season yet to go, so I guess everyone will have plenty of opportunity to put their newfound lessons learned into practice.

Much as I don't even want to think about the situation, I'll end today with a short update on Blue Stone. The news is not good. The label either can't or won't do what they need to to sign with them (I've been kept away from them so I don't know for sure what they actually said). Rob and Bill have signed with them already, however, and have offered me a "partnership agreement" that will give me ownership rights to a percentage of the band and the profits on the work I've done. The problem is that despite their protestations that "no one will ever find out", as far as I can tell this is still not legal for me to sign it.

But, they don't seem to care. The Official Blue Stone position is that It's Too Late To Do Anything Else Now, so even if I can't sign it everything will go ahead as they have planned and I will, quote, benefit from the exposure, unquote. Oh, don't forget that I could have "solved the problem" by getting married in a quickie ceremony months early, in Florida, and then applying for a green card, which Michael and I had decided was not in our best interests given that we're leaving the States no later than next August. Because restructuring my entire life around a band's requirements--a band that, after this experience, I'm not even going to work with anymore--is perfectly reasonable, right?

So I need a lawyer. I've tried asking for recommendations and cold-calling offices, but no one has returned my calls yet. Somehow I think that even if I agreed to work for free (oooops, sorry, for the exposure) it would would still be illegal...wouldn't there be a whole lot of "volunteer" non-US non-immigrant workers if this loophole actually existed? Wouldn't that kind of negate all the laws stating that we have to be paid the same and treated the same as US citizen employees? Anyway, at this point I would be willing to screw up the entire release just to prove that breaking the law is, you know, wrong, and immigration fraud isn't something to take lightly. Even if you figure "no one will find out".

Sigh. I was warned by people smarter than me that this could happen. But nope, I trusted my friends. Even after all the problems I've had here that have stemmed from trusting people who didn't deserve it. Well, if you know a good lawyer in South Florida, or one who lives elsewhere but would be willing to advise me, give me a call.

ooops

Okay, I really should have checked the template changes more than once. Then I would have noticed that the new profile picture was huge and distorted the entire look of the page. I've tinkered with the blog template and that should fix the problem. Only time will tell...

I'm at work today. Actually, I'm at work all weekend. Sigh. Sundays are a short day, as we only work 4.5 hours, but I still can't get past the idea that working Sundays constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Even the day off in lieu the next week doesn't quite make up for it...

Hurricane Dennis is passing to the west of us, which has made for winds and storms and lots of palm frond debris in the road. Luckily this should be as bad as it gets for us, and the Keys will miss a direct hit as well (though they were still evacuated on Thursday). Four named storms this early in the year is unusual--looks like we're in for another active year.

Finally got back on my yoga mat yesterday after a 6-month haitus. With practice habits like these it any wonder I am still stiff, weak and inflexible? I still really miss Ruth-Ann, our yoga teacher in Plantation who lost her studio early this year. I assume she has yet to find a new place, as her web site has not been updated and we haven't heard anything from her about new classes. She is a really excellent teacher, and her classes were always invigorating and inspiring. Anyway, hopefully I can get back to regular home practice. I have been thinking about investing in this Yoga for Bellydancers video, too. We'll see.

new profile picture!

Okay, my old profile picture is gone. And since I don't really have an online photo album. the only way I can think of to get a new one is to post a picture here and then link to it. I'm assuming it will work. This picture is a year or two old...it's me dancing at the Sawadee Thai restaurant in Ft Lauderdale.

back to real life

My mom went home a couple of days ago, so, back into the old routine for me. We had a pretty good time while she was here. We went to the Everglades on Thursday, where we walked some of the trails, watched some alligators, and had a picnic lunch. Stopped at Robert is Here on the way back for Strawberry Key Lime Milkshakes and souvenir shopping. On the weekend, we had our housewarming party--finally! Not like we've been there four months or anything. I was afraid no one would come--most of the people we heard back from were people who said they weren't coming--but it turned out to be a full house and a real blast. Fortunately, none of the neighbors complained about the drum circle or the zill noise! So we all drummed and danced and visited and had fun. On Tuesday, we went to Naples for shopping, dinner, and the beach. This was the only day that we had anything like the usual South Florida June weather--the rest of her visit was luckily cloudy and cooler. We were both pretty done in by the end of the day but fortunately a good meal and a sunset walk on the beach restored us.

So now I'm back at work, thinking I need another vacation!

Got some disappointing news this week, as the woman who runs the restaurant I occasionally perform at says that she's selling it this month. I guess I'm not really surprised; she's been at it a couple of years or more now and business just never really picked up. I think that the place may not have been as good under the previous owners, which may have played a role. I had been thinking of quitting there anyway, and had really only stayed on because I liked the owner, so for me personally this isn't too bad. I feel badly for her though, and for the other people who dance there more regularly. It was a really nice atmosphere to dance in, and the customers were nice too.

Our hurricane season is starting up with a bang--little more than a week in and we already have our first storm--Arlene--which is coming closer to Florida's gulf coast than originally expected AND may upgrade to a weak hurricane before it hits shore! I guess they weren't kidding when they predicted another active summer. Time to go supply shopping.

vacation!

Well, my mom is finally here! She got in for her visit on Monday night. I have to work a couple of days while she's here, but I've got most of the week off and I am very happy for the break!

Of course, the weather turned rainy the day she got here and has not yet let up. So much for spending her first day here on the beach! But hopefully we will be able to get there a couple of times, as well as get to the Everglades and into Naples for a day like we planned. Whether we do or don't, though, I'm just really glad that she's here. She was overdue for a vacation when she first planned to come, in March, and I'm glad that she can get away and relax for a little while.

Also, in a nice stroke of serendipity, the Origins store in Broward Mall called me today. I had dropped my business card in a prize draw the last time I was there, and I won a facial, makeup session, and hand massage for me and up to 3 people! My mom wanted to visit the store while she was here anyway, and before she came I had actually been thinking of booking a spa day somewhere; I just didn't know where to go. So now we can have a bit of a mini-spa day anyway :)

Now, if only I were at home relaxing over a nice dinner instead of steeling myself to teach part one of Basic Computer Literacy.....