Let's See: Swing, (class), swing, books, clay, swing, (practice), singing, swing. Am I obsessed?
So I found another swing dancer at my BMC class Monday night. (Is it bad that I kind of have a collection of people who are mine and who I can drag swing dancing?)
We had to read our papers aloud... which kind of exposed how little editing I had done, but it did become somewhat cohesive before the end, and I didn't want to take any of it out. (Allison's problems with editing, step 1) And I felt like I put a good amount of detail and feelings into it, and it wasn't a list. Not the best paper, but one of the honest ones in the class. Which I suppose is a good thing.
Took the Blue Bus over to Haverford and hung out in Magill until Naomi's class got out. Drove home with Naomi, went to swing for a bit for some free dance, and brought out my camera again. I"m getting better at grabbing pictures of swing, but I'm going to keep working on it. Because I want stills to be able to have the energy of video - which I haven't gotten to yet.
Read a lot of YA over the past couple of days - all lent to me by an awesome swimmer (yay Steph!), who reviews them and gives me the ones that she thought that I'd enjoy. So far she's been right. Of the 5 I've read, only two's had no vampires. But those did concern 9/11, or death in a more personal light, so... yeah. Soulless (Carriger) was a pretty awesome steampunk, and the heroine hit a lot of people with her parasol; Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side (Fantaskey) was substantially more in-depth and better written than the title would make it out to be, and (this just has to be said) substantially better plot-wise than Twilight; Love is the Higher Law (Levithan) nearly made me cry by interweaving the story with 9/11 and the various reactions to it from 3 New Yorker's perspectives; Vampire Academy (Mead) was much less trashy than the cover made it out to be and took an interesting spin on the vampire mythos - some dangerous, some are pacifists, some are mortal, some are not; and the last book was If I Stay (Forman), which was about choices faced by a 17-yr-old, some normal and some abnormal.
Is it just my reading preferences, or do nearly all of the new YA novels seem to cater to girls, with butt-kicking heroines or romantic relationships?
Talked to my ceramics prof, and evidently to get back into the idea of making things, I'm supposed to be making 25 tea bowls. #1: YES. Getting to make things in large quantities. #2: I may have to throw a Japanese tea ceremony and figure out where to get some matcha, if I end up with as many as I want (I threw 10 and trimmed 5 so far. I feel like I'll probably end up with 30 or so.)
LaB last night was quite entertaining - Sloan and the Stonebacks came down; I brought in a full car (which was supposed to be full-er, but I'm glad I didn't have to drive home in the snow with 6 people in my roommate's car) - Andrew, Ashley, Jake, & Chelsea. The last 2 were swimmers who had no idea what they were doing, but picked it up surprisingly quickly. Twas a blues night, which helped a bit, and Jake's pretty good at making stuff up, even when he's not intoxicated. (His dancing gets substantially... looser... when he's drunk). And Sloan seems to have resolved his existential crisis and actually has a Plan! I was impressed.
The person who didn't end up coming was Dinah; I got honest-to-goodness yelled at by Sarah, because evidently I'm too nice and I'm stealing people away from fencing? Didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and she was particularly grumpy, but still. I was a little miffed.
Spent today finishing reading; got out of practice grumpy, sore, and partially drowned (Anne was remarking about how Valentine's day might be inoppurtune for pink hair for those of our team who, you know, are actually in relationships, and I gave her a 'well, there might sorta be something', and she jumped on me - literally - for details. Which were not forthcoming, despite the gagging and spitting. And as to any questions in that regard: no, I don't know either.)
Choir was nice - there was a 4-measure section that just builds spectacularly, and our director kept going off on tangents. Sirkka and Frank came back to DK afterwards for tea (and to watch trashy music videos that our director had alluded to) and Jake ended up coming up. And then there was an impromptu swing party, through which I shattered a lightbulb, but was still very pleased with myself.
(Also, my internet is up for the first time in 48 hours! Yay!)
EDIT: Oh, drat. I'm completely unprepared for Adolescence tomorrow. Oops.
We had to read our papers aloud... which kind of exposed how little editing I had done, but it did become somewhat cohesive before the end, and I didn't want to take any of it out. (Allison's problems with editing, step 1) And I felt like I put a good amount of detail and feelings into it, and it wasn't a list. Not the best paper, but one of the honest ones in the class. Which I suppose is a good thing.
Took the Blue Bus over to Haverford and hung out in Magill until Naomi's class got out. Drove home with Naomi, went to swing for a bit for some free dance, and brought out my camera again. I"m getting better at grabbing pictures of swing, but I'm going to keep working on it. Because I want stills to be able to have the energy of video - which I haven't gotten to yet.
Read a lot of YA over the past couple of days - all lent to me by an awesome swimmer (yay Steph!), who reviews them and gives me the ones that she thought that I'd enjoy. So far she's been right. Of the 5 I've read, only two's had no vampires. But those did concern 9/11, or death in a more personal light, so... yeah. Soulless (Carriger) was a pretty awesome steampunk, and the heroine hit a lot of people with her parasol; Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side (Fantaskey) was substantially more in-depth and better written than the title would make it out to be, and (this just has to be said) substantially better plot-wise than Twilight; Love is the Higher Law (Levithan) nearly made me cry by interweaving the story with 9/11 and the various reactions to it from 3 New Yorker's perspectives; Vampire Academy (Mead) was much less trashy than the cover made it out to be and took an interesting spin on the vampire mythos - some dangerous, some are pacifists, some are mortal, some are not; and the last book was If I Stay (Forman), which was about choices faced by a 17-yr-old, some normal and some abnormal.
Is it just my reading preferences, or do nearly all of the new YA novels seem to cater to girls, with butt-kicking heroines or romantic relationships?
Talked to my ceramics prof, and evidently to get back into the idea of making things, I'm supposed to be making 25 tea bowls. #1: YES. Getting to make things in large quantities. #2: I may have to throw a Japanese tea ceremony and figure out where to get some matcha, if I end up with as many as I want (I threw 10 and trimmed 5 so far. I feel like I'll probably end up with 30 or so.)
LaB last night was quite entertaining - Sloan and the Stonebacks came down; I brought in a full car (which was supposed to be full-er, but I'm glad I didn't have to drive home in the snow with 6 people in my roommate's car) - Andrew, Ashley, Jake, & Chelsea. The last 2 were swimmers who had no idea what they were doing, but picked it up surprisingly quickly. Twas a blues night, which helped a bit, and Jake's pretty good at making stuff up, even when he's not intoxicated. (His dancing gets substantially... looser... when he's drunk). And Sloan seems to have resolved his existential crisis and actually has a Plan! I was impressed.
The person who didn't end up coming was Dinah; I got honest-to-goodness yelled at by Sarah, because evidently I'm too nice and I'm stealing people away from fencing? Didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and she was particularly grumpy, but still. I was a little miffed.
Spent today finishing reading; got out of practice grumpy, sore, and partially drowned (Anne was remarking about how Valentine's day might be inoppurtune for pink hair for those of our team who, you know, are actually in relationships, and I gave her a 'well, there might sorta be something', and she jumped on me - literally - for details. Which were not forthcoming, despite the gagging and spitting. And as to any questions in that regard: no, I don't know either.)
Choir was nice - there was a 4-measure section that just builds spectacularly, and our director kept going off on tangents. Sirkka and Frank came back to DK afterwards for tea (and to watch trashy music videos that our director had alluded to) and Jake ended up coming up. And then there was an impromptu swing party, through which I shattered a lightbulb, but was still very pleased with myself.
(Also, my internet is up for the first time in 48 hours! Yay!)
EDIT: Oh, drat. I'm completely unprepared for Adolescence tomorrow. Oops.