It's done!

That's right...and I DIDN'T fall down! And I remembered ALL the choreography! Woohoo!! It actually was pretty fun and not as nervewracking as the first time Nic and I danced the Guild show. Don't know if that's because we had more people in our group (as opposed to a duet) or because I was more confident this time, but I'm goin' with it.

Mom and Dad left, which was hard but good for them at the same time. It's weird, becuase I haven't lived with them since I was 19...over 10 years now, but it still feels a little like a security net I didnt' realize was there is gone. Like suddenly I'm really on my own. Stupid, I know...as if I haven't been on my own since i moved to Mpls, or since I got married, or since we bought a house. But none of that logic fixes the empty feeling I have when I think about how I can't really go back to MY house in Duluth, to the barn I spent so many hours in, to the pasture Shadow and I raced over (probably lucky I didn't kill us both), to the house I grew up in. It's not home anymore: it'll be someone else's home now. And that's just damn sad.

Change is hard and painful 99% of the time. I know I just need to work through it. I wonder how much of this is normal and how much is due to my own insecurities about being "adult" and about being married. It's been almost 5 years since we actually said vows...more than 6 that we've been together, and I still worry often that he'll decide I'm a HUGE mistake and say buh-bye mental girl. I know that's probably childish and silly, but there's a part of me that can't help it, and it feel a little like a support has been removed. Not an essential-to-everything support, but a support none the less. And it's not even my 'rents moving...after all, LA isn't in another country (I'm sure non-Californians think it is, but as far as I know a MinnesOtan doesn't need a passport to visit there yet). It's the childhood HOME that's gone. I'll get used to it, but this was a pretty rough weekend all around.

So now it's Monday night at 9pm. I should really log on and do some work. Even more so, I should plug in the flash drive and work on the book I've been neglecting for the past two months. But instead, the bed calls to me because the stupid alarm starts screeching FAR too early these days. Ugh.

Vacation!

It's Horse Expo weekend. It's also the weekend my parents are making the final move to Los Angeles and the weekend Nic and I are in the Guild of Oriental Dance annual show. Yeah. I'm not really ready for any of the above, to be honest.

Bellydance was not my usual positive-body-image class last night, for some reason. Maybe it's becuase I had a bad day anyway...one of those shitty days where every stupid, inane thing goes wrong for absolutely no reason. So I probably had a bad attitude going in, but watching myself in the mirror while attempting to dance was just a sad sad sight. Oh well...they can't all be good shimmy days. Seriously, some moves I KNOW I can do just would not work properly. And then we rehearsed choreography for Sunday's performance. I haven't performed for over 2 years, so I'm already nervous as hell, and we have a couple of excellent dancers in our class. I'm not one of them...I'm sort of hoping nobody pays attention to me in the back row with those two (my sister is one of 'em) in the front.

Took the day off today to hang out with my hubby, who starts the awesome new job on Monday that will 1) keep him happy with mechanical doings, 2) pays enough to allow us not only to catch up on stuff but maybe to actually get ahead and 3) has normal hours/days off/holidays. Yay! So we're celebrating on this rainy, cold day by sleeping in (as much as Thor allows), going to starbucks, and heading for the Horse Expo for the day.

Rawr. I'm random today. My house needs a good cleaning (and the garbage needs to GO AWAY). We saw The Forbidden Kingdom last weekend...I'll probably stick a review up here on that one later. The short version: it was fun!

TGIF doesn't even cut it.

Yeah. that's really all I can say. Thank any and all deities that I might actually be able to catch up on my sleep this weekend.

Only one more week until the Guild show. I get sick just thinking about it...I'm SO NOT READY.

Feeding the Ravenous Imagination

Ok, maybe not HEART, but I have been completely swept away. I must say, these books are even more engaging than Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar novels, and for me that's saying something. Seriously.

If you have any ANY interest in fantasy novels I highly recommend Anne Bishop's Black Jewels series. Definitely not for children, this adult fantasy (and by adult I don't mean porn). Brutal is the best word I have for her work, in the sense that you simply cannot put them down once you've been hooked, and that hook gets you in the first chapter. Dark but not overly gothic, violent but not overly bloody, and sexy but not generally explicit...I bought the Black Jewels trilogy a few years ago in a single book and somehow lost it during one of our moves. I picked them up again at hte library a few weeks ago and have completely given up on TV while the series is in my house (now 6 books: the original trilogy, a stand alone novel set a few centuries earlier, a book of novellas in various time periods, and a follow-up novel). The main characters? Sataen, Lucivar, and Daemon SaDiablo. That's right peeps, they're the heroes. It's awesome. What a pathetic word to use in a review, especially by someone who supposedly has some affinity for writing, but I honestly can't come up with anything better. Most Excellent, as Roberto would say. Most Excellent.

www.annebishop.com

I will own every one of her novels by this time next year. I guarantee it.

History Channel: The Great Misinformer

I was so irked at The History Channel today I had to send them a comment. We're watching a show that's supposed to investigate whether Cleopatra actually killed herself using a famous FBI Profiler and modern forensics. I think it's a great idea. Except for the same glaring issue that plagues ALL of the History Channel shows: Christian-value based experts who assume ancient peoples had the same social mores and values that we do now.

Guess what Pat Brown: Suicide WAS NOT a last resort by a person in extreme pain in Cleopatra's time. Suicide was a better option for Cleopatra than being paraded by Octavian as a war prize in front of the entire roman population, only to rot in prison forever or be killed in the games as Vercingetorix was. Christianity took such a dim view of suicide because it WAS seen as an honorable, viable alternative to being killed by the state, and suiciding would take away martyrdom, becuase by killing yourself you take your fate out of God's hands.

Sometimes I really love the History Channel for bringing ancient knowledge to light for the average person. most of the time I hate it for being inaccurate and using experts who don't bother to learn any of the history before they comment on something.

ARGH!!!

I fully accept that killing herself with a snake is unlikely and probably part of the mythology of Cleopatra, but having an expert say she wasn't the type to kill herself at all is just damn idiotic. Of course she doesn't fit the modern profile of a suicide: she wasn't a modern woman. Idiots. Ignorant fools.

SAUSAGES!!

If you haven't seen it yet, go to youtube and watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UHKB6nQrzM