Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept
Oct. 23rd, 2011 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyspriteI have had a very educational weekend. For example - experience and experimentation taught me that there is no way to get from my house to the Route 128 train station in rush hour in less than two hours. A tiny woman who looked like a cross between Dr. Ruth and Rosie the hobbit taught me how to lie convincingly. And a former Russian Special Operative taught me how to kill a man with a tea strainer.
This weekend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tpau and I went to Stiletto Spy School, where we spent all day yesterday undergoing intensive training on how to be Bond girls. And I have to admit,it was about as awesome as it sounds like it would be. I had heard of Spy School when divalion mentioned it here, a couple of years ago, and the idea had stuck in my head until, after hemming and hawing and imagining and thinking about how much fun it might be, I finally decided to get off my lazy behind and pick a date and go.
Getting there was, alas, half the battle - another lesson learned this weekend was that when you have two people traveling from different places to the train station to take a journey together, make sure you're both talking about the same train station. Once I realized that our tickets weren't departing from South Station, I scrambled to find a way to get to the actual departure point, and between normal traffic, a school bus accident, and the general horrors of driving through Boston, I missed our train in spite of leaving myself an extra hour of wiggle room for the drive. Luckily, we were able to transfer our tickets to a later train, andtpau was able to ride out my storm of grumpiness and catastrophizing, and we made it to NYC with a minimum of actual stress, spending most of the trip gossiping, trying to force down the truly atrocious Amtrak "food," and earning major points with the drunk guys in the seats behind us by being willing and able to discuss the finer points of zombie movies and chili cooking with them.
We checked into our hotel, crashed for the night, and set out the next morning to go to school. I was impressed by how immersive the experience was - earlier in the week we were all told to send in our spy names, super spy powers, and an idea of what we were hoping to get from the weekend, and the head of the school was careful to make sure that these were all used. There were spiffy uniforms, no real names were used at any point, and the half-dozen of us training together wound up feeling like a pretty close team by the end of the day.
The first class - breath control and knife fighting, taught by said former Russian Special Operative, was my favorite, much to my surprise. I'm not sure how a deeply intimidating man and his surprisingly tough assistant managed to make a class like that feel both safe and useful without having anyone there feel ridiculous, uncomfortable, or embarrassed at any point, but they did. It was largely focused on show and simple tips and tricks; we all knew full well that we weren't actually learning knife fighting - but at the same time, it was... well, an adventure, and a chance to play with new styles of movement that I hadn't explored before.
The second class, after lunch, was the only slight letdown of the day, and I'll admit that's purely my personal preference. When I registered for the event, part of why I picked this date was that, instead of their burlesque/bump and grind class, they were offering a class on seduction and flirtation - which, while goofy, is at least not something I already know. So I was a bit disappointed to find out that 'seduction and flirtation' was, in fact, a bare-bones beginner basics dance and movement class taught by a burlesque performer. It was a lot of fun for everyone else, but... well, I already know how to walk across a room in a syncopated fashion, wear a boa, and take off a pair of gloves. Some of her discussion on presence and body language was interesting, but I would have had more fun with, say, a more active class that touched on styles I didn't know. Ah, well.
And then there was the Tiny Lying Hobbit Lady, whom I have a total girl-crush on and would love to invite to my parties for the rest of my life. I wasn't quite sure of what to expect from a class on Deception Detection, but it certainly didn't involve a woman my mom's age wearing coke-bottle glasses explaining to me how she used the fact that she was a pathological liar to create careers in both gang infiltration and psychotherapy. She may, in fact, be the most interesting person I have ever met. I am, as everyone there learned, a truly atrocious liar. I am, however, a fairly decent lie detector, and I will happily accept that as the more useful skill, overall, in my life.
And then it was over, and there was more bonding, and hugging, and lamenting the potential return to reality, and contemplation of how to apply our newfound skills with tea strainers, winter handwear, and body language mirroring to use in our day-to-day lives, and this morning there was another train ride home, sadly without the entertaining drunk guys to fist-bump and cheer over the latest episode of the Walking Dead and argue whether it was okay for dudes to cry at 'Armageddon.' But there was more gossiping, and speculating over what we should take on as our next adventure, which is always good.
In the meantime, I'll spend the next week or so enjoying being a badass fabulously deadly super-spy....
This weekend
tpau and I went to Stiletto Spy School, where we spent all day yesterday undergoing intensive training on how to be Bond girls. And I have to admit,it was about as awesome as it sounds like it would be. I had heard of Spy School when divalion mentioned it here, a couple of years ago, and the idea had stuck in my head until, after hemming and hawing and imagining and thinking about how much fun it might be, I finally decided to get off my lazy behind and pick a date and go.Getting there was, alas, half the battle - another lesson learned this weekend was that when you have two people traveling from different places to the train station to take a journey together, make sure you're both talking about the same train station. Once I realized that our tickets weren't departing from South Station, I scrambled to find a way to get to the actual departure point, and between normal traffic, a school bus accident, and the general horrors of driving through Boston, I missed our train in spite of leaving myself an extra hour of wiggle room for the drive. Luckily, we were able to transfer our tickets to a later train, and
tpau was able to ride out my storm of grumpiness and catastrophizing, and we made it to NYC with a minimum of actual stress, spending most of the trip gossiping, trying to force down the truly atrocious Amtrak "food," and earning major points with the drunk guys in the seats behind us by being willing and able to discuss the finer points of zombie movies and chili cooking with them.We checked into our hotel, crashed for the night, and set out the next morning to go to school. I was impressed by how immersive the experience was - earlier in the week we were all told to send in our spy names, super spy powers, and an idea of what we were hoping to get from the weekend, and the head of the school was careful to make sure that these were all used. There were spiffy uniforms, no real names were used at any point, and the half-dozen of us training together wound up feeling like a pretty close team by the end of the day.
The first class - breath control and knife fighting, taught by said former Russian Special Operative, was my favorite, much to my surprise. I'm not sure how a deeply intimidating man and his surprisingly tough assistant managed to make a class like that feel both safe and useful without having anyone there feel ridiculous, uncomfortable, or embarrassed at any point, but they did. It was largely focused on show and simple tips and tricks; we all knew full well that we weren't actually learning knife fighting - but at the same time, it was... well, an adventure, and a chance to play with new styles of movement that I hadn't explored before.
The second class, after lunch, was the only slight letdown of the day, and I'll admit that's purely my personal preference. When I registered for the event, part of why I picked this date was that, instead of their burlesque/bump and grind class, they were offering a class on seduction and flirtation - which, while goofy, is at least not something I already know. So I was a bit disappointed to find out that 'seduction and flirtation' was, in fact, a bare-bones beginner basics dance and movement class taught by a burlesque performer. It was a lot of fun for everyone else, but... well, I already know how to walk across a room in a syncopated fashion, wear a boa, and take off a pair of gloves. Some of her discussion on presence and body language was interesting, but I would have had more fun with, say, a more active class that touched on styles I didn't know. Ah, well.
And then there was the Tiny Lying Hobbit Lady, whom I have a total girl-crush on and would love to invite to my parties for the rest of my life. I wasn't quite sure of what to expect from a class on Deception Detection, but it certainly didn't involve a woman my mom's age wearing coke-bottle glasses explaining to me how she used the fact that she was a pathological liar to create careers in both gang infiltration and psychotherapy. She may, in fact, be the most interesting person I have ever met. I am, as everyone there learned, a truly atrocious liar. I am, however, a fairly decent lie detector, and I will happily accept that as the more useful skill, overall, in my life.
And then it was over, and there was more bonding, and hugging, and lamenting the potential return to reality, and contemplation of how to apply our newfound skills with tea strainers, winter handwear, and body language mirroring to use in our day-to-day lives, and this morning there was another train ride home, sadly without the entertaining drunk guys to fist-bump and cheer over the latest episode of the Walking Dead and argue whether it was okay for dudes to cry at 'Armageddon.' But there was more gossiping, and speculating over what we should take on as our next adventure, which is always good.
In the meantime, I'll spend the next week or so enjoying being a badass fabulously deadly super-spy....
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 11:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 08:04 pm (UTC)I already know how to ... wear a boa
I thought it was a python?
no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 12:32 am (UTC)I see what you did there.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 11:58 pm (UTC)*facepalm*
Um... yeah. I totally meant to do that. On purpose.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 01:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-25 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-27 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-27 10:15 pm (UTC)Actually, wouldn't Spy School make an awesome larp? Probably a four hour larp, with a class or two plus other roleplaying -- but I could even see a full weekend game where the organizers lined up actual experts (or people who could plausibly play experts in a LARP) and classes-in-character served as a significant portion of the event.