A week and a day ago, I turned 30. It was not such a momentous occasion, although I certainly enjoyed celebrating in Vilnius (Lithuania) with friends and colleagues at an international folklore conference ( Read more... )

Sitting in the Toronto airport, where happily there is free wifi. Unhappily, however, I was told that my luggage from Indianapolis would check straight through to Amsterdam, but no, it did not--I had to retrieve 2 giant suitcases from the carousel and lug them between terminals and recheck them ( Read more... )

This allergy/sinus/whatever thing is finally started to go away; today's the first day I woke up without pain in my throat, though my head's still a bit stuffy. I've been getting 8-10 hours of sleep a night and not doing a lot of strenuous stuff during the day, so that must be it. Now that I'm finally feeling better, I'm gonna see if I can't run 8 ( Read more... )

I have some internet access here in Chennai, so I thought I'd post a brief update ( Read more... )

I just got this video uploaded to Youtube, and I think it's one of my favorites. Check it out and let me know what you think if you have a chance. Slinky performances like that are so enjoyable for me; I think that performances shows off a lot of my skills nicely, too (floorwork, layered shimmies, and so on ( Read more... )

As some of you know, I'm a member of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR). I've been to two of their conferences, in Tartu, Estonia and Athens, Greece, and they've always been a blast. I love travel, I love seeing my international colleagues, I love the feeling of scholarly camaraderie.

So I'm heavily inclined to go to the ( Read more... )

Tonight is Bloomington Belly Dances! I'm super-excited about my steampunk-cyborg solo and my ATS duet with d_c_m (we're dancing to "Ederlezi Trance" from the Tribal Nexus CD by Phil Thornton... but honestly it was tough to pick just one song as that CD is pretty awesome ( Read more... )

Off to Boise for the American Folklore Society conference this week. I'm excited to see friends and get my paper over with and hopefully gain some inspiration/ideas in order to actually start working on my diss ( Read more... )

Travel and other commitments have kept me super-busy this summer (in a good way, mostly ( Read more... )

I came. I saw. I rode the mechanical bull ( Read more... )