(no subject)
1) Those of you interested in good singing, people doing hilarious impressions of other people, or French: check out this video, in which a lady named Véronic Dicaire imitates Véronique Sanson, Patricia Kaas, Lara Fabian and Edith Piaf in quick succession. (I list the singers in case that's useful information for you; personally, I only know Edith Piaf from this list, but I heartily enjoyed it anyway.) There are about 30 seconds of intro talk, and some discussion at the end, and if you watch to the end she does a Celine Dion impression too. Thanks to la_rainette for the link.
2) Bit by bit, our new apartment turns into a habitable living space instead of a collection of rooms filled with boxes! Right now, every room but the guest room is actual living space, if you ignore the fact that the walls are still mostly bare and there are a few bins shoved discreetly into corners and closets.
3) A meme! From half my friendslist, but most directly from silveraspen:
Comment with "Come at me, bro," any question-requesting phrasing you like, and:
- I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
- Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
- Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.
From Aspen:
1. If you had to spend a day as a flower, which one would you choose?
Well, most flowers get water and sunlight and nutrients from the soil and occasional insects or hummingbirds stopping by, and as far as I know that's all they ask from life! So really just about anything would be equally enjoyable, I suspect.
Let's go with a rose or a cherry blossom. Both of these are pretty, and also laden with centuries of symbolism, so I might get to feature in some entertainingly dramatic scene! And if not, I'd have a day of sunlight and looking florally attractive.
2. What do you like most about Scottish dance?
There are a lot of things I like about it -- the music, the fact that the basics are easily accessible but there's always more technique to work on, the fact that social dancing means you don't need a performance to get the full experience -- but what it really comes down to, the main reason I keep doing it instead of wandering off to some other dance style, is the people.
I got into Scottish country dancing because my parents did it. They met at dance class; all through my childhood, they'd go off to dance class every Wednesday night and leave us with our weekly sitter, and every party we hosted was full of Scottish dance friends. This means that for many years, "family friend" was synonymous for me with "Scottish dancing friend." We moved to Vermont and then I moved to Boston, but that mostly just expanded the circle.
Scottish dance means that I go to class every week (more or less) and I know every one of the forty or fifty people in the room; if I don't recognize someone, I know they're new. It means that I can go to Montreal, Philadelphia, D.C., Ohio, California, anywhere in New England, and walk into a dance class and know that I will know people in that room, and if by chance I don't we'll have acquaintances in common. It's a vast social network that I grew up with and can happily plug right into that's almost entirely distinct from my internet and other networks (although there's a bit more overlap nowadays), and it's one I find very comfortable. Like the internet, Scottish country dance is a great equalizer -- you rarely know what someone's day job is, and it's frequently a surprise when you learn -- and it trends towards older people, which is a nice counterbalance to some of my other circles of friends.
Plus, you know. The music! Social dancing! The fact that I'm good at it! The fact that it makes my brain work! It's all fun.
3. Through an incident involving overcooked spaghetti, a massive dose of radiation, and a swirl of plume moths, you have been gifted with absolute mastery of one skill. Which one and why?
...Oh glory. I am tempted to say THE ABILITY TO BE DECISIVE, simply because I can't decide what would be best here! But that would not be best, I know that.
For lack of a better answer, I'll say cooking. (Including baking, because that's something I'm too lazy to learn a lot of the finer food chemistry points of.) It's always useful! Everybody loves delicious food! And I love cooking but also find it distressingly easy to be lazy about it and just make quick-and-easy meals a lot. I suspect that absolute mastery would at the very least give me a lot more options for meals that seemed quick and easy.
4. What kind of yarn (or cloth, if you'd rather) do you prefer and why?
Short answer: anything that isn't synthetic. Acrylic just isn't interesting to the touch, and if I'm going to be working on a project for long enough to finish it, I want it to feel nice on my fingers. (I've worked with acrylic, of course, and it has the advantage of cheapness and the fact that nobody's allergic to it.)
Slightly more detailed answer: wool and wool blends are my go-to standard, and I love the sturdier kind of mohair blend, but I really love alpaca blends. So soft! I'm sure I would also love a lot of the more expensive blends if I let myself play with them more often, but I try to avoid temptation so far as yarn is concerned. I generally only buy it for a specific project, because otherwise I would have crates and crates of unused but gorgeous yarn, and knitting is easy to make into an expensive hobby anyway.
5. Is magic real?
No. But reality is pretty magical.
This entry is also posted at http://genarti.dreamwidth.org/3586.html. You can comment on LJ or DW, whichever you like.
comments at DW.
2) Bit by bit, our new apartment turns into a habitable living space instead of a collection of rooms filled with boxes! Right now, every room but the guest room is actual living space, if you ignore the fact that the walls are still mostly bare and there are a few bins shoved discreetly into corners and closets.
3) A meme! From half my friendslist, but most directly from silveraspen:
Comment with "Come at me, bro," any question-requesting phrasing you like, and:
- I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
- Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
- Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.
From Aspen:
1. If you had to spend a day as a flower, which one would you choose?
Well, most flowers get water and sunlight and nutrients from the soil and occasional insects or hummingbirds stopping by, and as far as I know that's all they ask from life! So really just about anything would be equally enjoyable, I suspect.
Let's go with a rose or a cherry blossom. Both of these are pretty, and also laden with centuries of symbolism, so I might get to feature in some entertainingly dramatic scene! And if not, I'd have a day of sunlight and looking florally attractive.
2. What do you like most about Scottish dance?
There are a lot of things I like about it -- the music, the fact that the basics are easily accessible but there's always more technique to work on, the fact that social dancing means you don't need a performance to get the full experience -- but what it really comes down to, the main reason I keep doing it instead of wandering off to some other dance style, is the people.
I got into Scottish country dancing because my parents did it. They met at dance class; all through my childhood, they'd go off to dance class every Wednesday night and leave us with our weekly sitter, and every party we hosted was full of Scottish dance friends. This means that for many years, "family friend" was synonymous for me with "Scottish dancing friend." We moved to Vermont and then I moved to Boston, but that mostly just expanded the circle.
Scottish dance means that I go to class every week (more or less) and I know every one of the forty or fifty people in the room; if I don't recognize someone, I know they're new. It means that I can go to Montreal, Philadelphia, D.C., Ohio, California, anywhere in New England, and walk into a dance class and know that I will know people in that room, and if by chance I don't we'll have acquaintances in common. It's a vast social network that I grew up with and can happily plug right into that's almost entirely distinct from my internet and other networks (although there's a bit more overlap nowadays), and it's one I find very comfortable. Like the internet, Scottish country dance is a great equalizer -- you rarely know what someone's day job is, and it's frequently a surprise when you learn -- and it trends towards older people, which is a nice counterbalance to some of my other circles of friends.
Plus, you know. The music! Social dancing! The fact that I'm good at it! The fact that it makes my brain work! It's all fun.
3. Through an incident involving overcooked spaghetti, a massive dose of radiation, and a swirl of plume moths, you have been gifted with absolute mastery of one skill. Which one and why?
...Oh glory. I am tempted to say THE ABILITY TO BE DECISIVE, simply because I can't decide what would be best here! But that would not be best, I know that.
For lack of a better answer, I'll say cooking. (Including baking, because that's something I'm too lazy to learn a lot of the finer food chemistry points of.) It's always useful! Everybody loves delicious food! And I love cooking but also find it distressingly easy to be lazy about it and just make quick-and-easy meals a lot. I suspect that absolute mastery would at the very least give me a lot more options for meals that seemed quick and easy.
4. What kind of yarn (or cloth, if you'd rather) do you prefer and why?
Short answer: anything that isn't synthetic. Acrylic just isn't interesting to the touch, and if I'm going to be working on a project for long enough to finish it, I want it to feel nice on my fingers. (I've worked with acrylic, of course, and it has the advantage of cheapness and the fact that nobody's allergic to it.)
Slightly more detailed answer: wool and wool blends are my go-to standard, and I love the sturdier kind of mohair blend, but I really love alpaca blends. So soft! I'm sure I would also love a lot of the more expensive blends if I let myself play with them more often, but I try to avoid temptation so far as yarn is concerned. I generally only buy it for a specific project, because otherwise I would have crates and crates of unused but gorgeous yarn, and knitting is easy to make into an expensive hobby anyway.
5. Is magic real?
No. But reality is pretty magical.
This entry is also posted at http://genarti.dreamwidth.org/3586.html. You can comment on LJ or DW, whichever you like.
comments at DW.