Lair of the Lost Girl

I've had two formal Aerial Silks classes so far, and I'm still as utterly besotted with the art as I was after my first sampler.

It helps that our class is small - 4 of us total, plus one teacher. 3 of us have never done any aerials at all before; one girl has been through the Level 1 class a few times but is still working on building strength and comfort with the form. So there's a lot of direct communication with the teacher, and we each have "our" silks, and we tend to play and move at our own pace.

The first class was mostly about getting comfortable with foot locks (wrapping the fabric around your foot in such a way that it'll stay put without any further attention, freeing up your other leg), and various ways to balance and pose once you're there. Yesterday's class went from there into inversions (hanging upside down in the silks) and hip keys (essentially, lying on your side in mid-air, parallel to the ground, with the silks wrapped around your inner thigh and hip, both hands and feet free). And I can't get enough of it.

The more I do, the more natural it feels - like somehow I'm just *supposed* to be upside down in mid-air wrapped in fabric. I know it sounds absurd, but I hate putting my feet back on the ground.

And I'm a bit worried at how easy it all is. I've done enough motion arts to know that easy can often be 'not getting your fundamentals right' - and there's something that seems off when three girls are falling and getting tangled and grunting and straining and I'm... rolling up into a pose and wondering what the trouble is. Unfortunately, since I'm not falling, the instructor is spending most of the time with the other students.

He's not ignoring me; I'm getting the occasional nod, or the reminder to point my foot out instead of keeping it parallel, or to curve my back instead of arching it. But I'm afraid that either I'm doing something basic wrong, or that I'm going to get overconfident and have an incredibly rude awakening very soon.

(The instructor did, at least, manage to find a conditioning exercise that kicked my butt after I finished the first two "too easily" - I have been introduced to the core torture that is hanging leg lifts, and damnit, I will master them if it kills me....)

Ultimately, this is heaven. It's in the air and upside down and dancing and using all of my body and my strength and I want to do it every day and I never want to stop....

So today was the last day of my cake-decorating class, at least for round one. And while I'm not actually good yet, I'll admit that I'm at least measurably better than I was.

In particular, I learned this week that buttercream ribbon roses are a lot easier to make than I had anticipated. Our final assignment was to design and decorate a cake using the techniques we learned through the class, and while I'm no master.... I'm at least willing to share what I made.

( hidden, for those who don't care about amateur cake.... )

Today was the first session of my two-day Beginner Motorcycle Training class, where they promise in two days to take us from 'never been on a bike before' to 'licensed drivers safe to release into the wild.' I have been looking forward to this class with a mixture of excitement and terror for most of a month, now.

The classroom part I have no serious worries about - I can memorize and recite things no problem. It's the actual riding that scares me. When I say I'm green, I'm utterly green. I've been a passenger on a bike before, but I don't know anything about how they work or how to drive one, and I've never driven a manual transmission vehicle of any sort before. And I am cautious, and I like to practice things until I'm PERFECT before I stop.

This has served me well in dance (I will just go into a room by myself and drill one move or one routine for hours until I can do it forwards, backwards, right-handed, left-handed, and in my sleep), and in surgery (I spent most of a year doing all of my hand-sewing using surgical instruments to get my technique right), and in just about every handcraft and physical skill I've ever tried. It doesn't work so well in a class with eight other riders, where you have about 15-20 minutes to practice a particular riding drill at full speed before you move on to the next thing.

I am overcautious, over-timid, and over-slow. It doesn't help that, when I'm the one driving, suddenly 15 mph feels like OH MY GOD TOO FAST and how the hell am I going to brake in that short a distance and swerve and freak and which hand is the clutch and which hand is the brake and oh yeah, foot brake too and TOO FAST SLOW DOWN NOW! When in fact I'm holding up the rest of the line.

But the teachers are patient and supportive, and continue to reassure me that I can do this; I just need to relax, loosen my arms, speed up, and have faith. And my classmates... well, most of them just don't pay much attention to each other at all, and the ones who do are pretty nice too. And by the end of the day I at least felt like I had the hang of starting and stopping and shifting gears, and had accepted that speeding up would not kill me, and would actually make some things easier.

I have one more 8-hour day, at the end of which I'll have to pass a test to show I've gotten all of this down pat, or at least down passable.

I can do this. I've brought living things into this world and taken them out of it; I've danced on stage in my underwear; I've walked 60 miles in the heart of July; I've taken a living creature, drugged it unconscious, cut open its abdomen and pulled out its organs and sewed it back together and had it walk away that afternoon in better shape than before I started. I've jumped out of a plane. I survived having a Saint Bernard eat part of my face, and went back to work three days later. I can ride a goddamn bike.

I just... you know. Wish I had a week or so to practice in private, at my own pace, before being tested on it....

(Yes, I know it technically still is going on. But I have to work tomorrow, so no Sunday night/Monday for me. Also, I'm pretty sure that 3 days of con is about all the con I can tolerate, so right now I'm glad to be in my nice, warm, quiet home.)

First of all, thank you thank you thank you to everyone who replied to my last post, and to everyone who took the time to say hello, keep me company, and give me hugs at the con. I had been a bit worried and uncertain going in, and I wound up having a very good time. There was one minor brush with panic on Saturday night, but I had an excellent friend to carry me through it, and other than that all was good and more than good.

This was an odd year for me; it was the first time in years that I haven't been part of either programming or staff. I decided to take this as a low-key year, and it was both liberating and unusual to be able to wander around the con and do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. The up side of this was the freedom; the downside was the fact that Arisia is cold enough and short enough on hangout space that there really wasn't anywhere good to just sit and socialize.

That said, I did manage to find good time with friends, and I got to spend a decent amount of time dancing, both of which were just what I needed. But the true highlight of the con for me was getting to wear the costume I've been working on for most of the past month.

I'm not a very good seamstress, and even though I can sew a bit I honestly just don't like to. But I love the challenge of finding costume concepts that require minimal sewing. And I've had a lot of downtime this past month. And metaphysick has been introducing me more and more to Star Wars. And so I thought to myself, 'Huh. I bet I could make a Twi'lek costume....'

And so I did. And I managed not to chicken out of wearing it on Saturday. And it looked kind of like this....

( Pictures, hidden because my vanity should not overwhelm your friends-page... )

I've never done a serious hall costume before, so it was a fascinating experience. Apparently being painted blue turns you into a rock star (and makes you Even More Fascinating Than Usual to toddlers), and it made just walking around public spaces a major event. On the other hand, I've found that wearing an elaborate enough costume does wonders to help me overcome my phobia of having my picture taken, so the attention and camera flashes were an overall-positive thing. I'm fairly certain I'll wear the costume again next year (and, with luck, airbrushing will be much easier and faster in the future)...

Other than that... there were friends, and there was dancing, and now there is thawing and enjoying the quiet. All in all, a good weekend.

So today was the Boston Run For Your Life, a 5K race/obstacle course filled with zombies. I've been training for this for a few months, and this morning I ran it.

Well, by "ran" I mean "slogged." And, for the record, I wound up zombie chow. But it was still pretty darn awesome.

umbran and I went through as part of a team with two other friends, and that was definitely the wisest choice we made. Matching (incredibly loud) tie-died t-shirts made it easier to keep track of each other, and pack tactics were the only thing that let us survive as long as we did.

There was a lot less running than I had anticipated, mostly because the majority of the course was a heinous struggle through ankle-deep (or deeper), slimy, sucky mud. (By sucky, I mean suctiony. Not just lousy. Which it also was.) At one point I had to pause to help another runner who had gotten trapped when the mud sucked the sole off her sneaker. So, instead of jogging for half an hour, it was more slipping, sliding, and trudging for an hour, interspersed with brief but adrenaline-filled sprints as the zombies rolled, lurched, or ran at us.

Yep, ran. There were speedy zombies. Which is where pack tactics came in handy - as a team, we always had at least one person to peek ahead and call out when there were zombies around a corner or hiding in bushes, and another at the back to holler when what seemed like a slow lurcher decided to follow us at a dead run. More than once we thought we had made it past a pack, only to have someone shout, "RUNNERS! GO GO GO GO!"

There were fewer obstacles than I had anticipated, which was a bit of a letdown; that's a lot of what I love, and most of what they had were just mud and water challenges. That said, some of the obstacles they did have were pretty darn cool. The unlit house full of fog was creepy as hell, and the full-hill slip-and-slide into a chest-deep pond at the end was terrifying and awesome. At least, for me, with my simultaneous fear of drowning and love of adrenaline; I almost opted out of it and I'm incredibly glad I didn't. The electrified fence at the end? Not so awesome; I wound up knocked out for a second or two, and my legs didn't work for a few minutes after I got out. Not doing that again. Working with the other racers was a lot of fun, too - there was a sense of camaraderie that I didn't see in the Ruckus Race. (In particular, thanks go out to the nice lady who gave me a towel at the end, the man who apologized to me after slip-and-sliding into me in the pond and knocking me underwater, and everyone who pulled other runners out of the mud.)

We managed to actually turn it into a bit of a roleplaying game, too; I think at least one set of zombies actively decided not to chase us after, when we saw them approaching, I clung to umbran, kissed him thoroughly, and then pleaded with him to run and save himself, and another started to lurch for me, moaning and shouting, until I unleashed a full-on horror movie scream at him that left him a bit reeling and confused long enough for me to clamber up a ladder.

Alas, I was finally taken down in the last half-mile. By then umbran was out of flags (runners are given 3 flags; when zombies take all of them you're infected - you can finish the race, but you're registered as dead at the end), and I was down to one. We made it for quite a ways by holding hands and keeping my remaining flag on the side next to him, so none of the zombies could reach it, until we hit a knee-deep pond filled with grabbers, where we had to separate; someone grabbed my last flag as I scrambled out before I could get the momentum to run again.

And then it was over and I was soaked to the bone, freezing, infected with zombie plague, and well and truly full of awesome stories. I don't know if I'll ever run again; the electric fence, the cold, and the mud-to-obstacle ratio were a bit less than ideal. I know I'm definitely going to work it as a zombie next year, though.

Now, though, I'm warming up, waiting for my turn at the shower, and contemplating nap versus Avengers. After that? Time to start practice walks for the 3 Day. No rest for the undead....

There are not enough words in the world to describe how much I love having a regularly scheduled tabletop game that I am a part of.

I love having people over on a regular basis; it makes our house feel more like a home. I love the chance to see my friends at least once every couple of weeks. I love cooking for people, and the excuse to make large or complicated recipes that it just doesn't make sense to put together for just umbran and myself.

And I love the game itself. I love the drama and the excitement, and the way that just dealing out cards sometimes can become a moment of triumph. And I love the dorky stick-figure drawings and baroque-to-the-point-of-ridiculous plans and the way we sometimes wind up laughing hard enough to completely derail the plot for a few minutes. I love the running gags that develop, and the obscure language of references and in-jokes, and the stories that we build with the world and each other.

And, you know, sometimes after a day of typing records, turfing phone calls, and cleaning up after mistakes untrained staff make, I just love being a badass gun-toting voodoo priestess in the quasi-lawless wild west.

There are worse things in the world than refusing to be too old to play make-believe.

So I have woefully neglected to mention here that, in addition to working and making food look like acorns and severing my arteries and stuff like that, I have also been working with the Boston Babydolls, helping out with their new show, 'V for Vixen.'

Sadly, Oberon and I are benched as a team until he learns not to sink his fangs into my delicious creamy flesh in the middle of a performance, but the troop has a bunch of fabulous new performers, and I have been invited to use my superpower (Learn Choreography Instantly - 3 point Advantage, or Incredible rank Power Stunt, depending on your system) to help them revive some really awesome numbers that haven't been seen in some time. I've also been tapped for backup dancing on a couple of numbers.

Anyway, it's going to be a pretty darn awesome show, and y'all should come see it. Bonus "I <3 Ladysprite" points will be awarded to anyone who can figure out exactly which choreography bits in which numbers are my fault/responsibility.

Tonight is the production of Henry V.

I should be worried. I should be jittery. I should be having pre-show anxiety, wondering if I've got my lines down just-so and if I'm going to wind up in the right place at the right time. So many of the other people involved in the show are getting nervy, and wishing they had another rehearsal or two, and I know what pre-show ramp-up is supposed to feel like, but all I feel right now is... slightly eager. Maybe a little impatient, maybe a little bit of meta-anxiety about the fact that I'm not anxious but I should be.

On the other hand, I've got it much easier than most of the other cast members. Unlike almost everybody else, I'm only playing one part (Katherine, the French princess), so I've only got one set of lines to memorize. I don't have any costume changes, unless you count putting an overdress on over my gown for the final court scene. The closest thing I have to fight choreography is remembering not to let His Majesty get too handsy with me during the wooing scene. And I'm acting opposite both wonderful actors and friends I know and trust. So my role here is fairly simple and easy.

It's interesting - dance performance has always been my first love, and my first choice for whenever I'm onstage (though even with that it's only been within the past few years that I've let myself acknowledge how much I truly love performing), but there's a completely different sort of fun to this sort of acting that I have to admit I'm learning to love, at least a little....

Perhaps I should have remembered that all of Katherine's lines in 'Henry V' are in French before I agreed to play the part....

Well.

I've got 5 months to learn two scenes. I can do that. The fact that I don't know a blessed word of the language means I have no bad habits to unlearn. Right?

Anyone want to coach me on my accent? I warn you, it's likely to be beastly.....

Arisia is coming up Real Soon Now.

I just got my List Of Panels that I'm on. It's ridiculous. I'm on panels at times that I've stated I won't be at the con, including the 'Morning People' panel that has been scheduled at 7am. (Cute? Maybe. Funny? I guess. Reasonable? Nuh uh.) I'm on, I think, more panels than I had listed as my maximum.

However, all of this pales in the face of the one fact that has given me the Quivering Fangirl Heebie-Jeebies. I am on a panel with Barry Longyear.

Barry Longyear. Who I met at my first-ever con. One of the few authors whose autograph I have. Whom I hold vaguely in awe. Me. On a panel with him. Nobody-significant me, on a panel with an actual author-type person, with fans and everything. I'm used to being on panels with other Arisia-attendees, most of whom I have lunch with on a monthly basis, not with pros.

Pardon me while I hyperventilate for a moment.

Yes, I know that he's a real and normal person, and that I'm probably just as qualified to discuss portrayals of science in the media. And I've met genre pros before, and at least I'm willing to bet he's less likely to get drunk and try to hire me as a dominatrix than the last such encounter I had. But.... this is a guy whose name has been significant to me since I was about 14.

Wow. It almost makes up for the 7am panel....