Catching Up: International Night Dance Performance (2017_04_21)

Late in April of 2017 (the 21st, to be exact), Miri's CCACC Chinese Dance class was invited to perform at the Tilden Middle School International Night.  Not everyone could make it, but the girls did a great job of filling a massive space (performances were in the gym) with roughly half the normal number of dancers.

On the way into the school for International Night

We all enjoyed the many types of food from around the world being given out!

The girls had to quickly learn a routine modified for the extra space & missing dancers!

"Anybody have a safety pin...?"

There was a parade of nations that included countries from Europe, Asia, and all the Americas, and then the various performances began.  After being treated to several dance & musical acts, it was the girls' turn....

...and they did a great job entertaining the audience!

After the younger group performed, the older girls wowed the crowd despite almost the entire class being unable to attend the event to perform.

Afterwards, more groups performed --  including two families with very young children -- and the event closed out with a couple of very spirited K-pop numbers by a group of older girls.  Our girls missed a couple of the numbers because they had to get out of costume, but they still enjoyed watching most of the other acts.  Once all the hoopla ended and the event came to an official close, there was time for some congratulatory high fives and even some running around to burn off excess energy, and then it was time for all the families to return to their own international homes for the evening.

"Ya done good, Binky!"

High velocity fly-by

All in all, it was a very enjoyable evening and successful public performance for the girls. Next stop... an outdoor stage in downtown Rockville!

I Gotta Go Back HOW Far...?!?

I was perusing Facebook the other day and took a few minutes out from my usual politically-inspired rants to re-introduce myself in the Rumor Queen group.  One of the other members commented that she used to like reading my blog and I figured it ain't dead yet but that I probably needed to find a way to catch up on more of the past events I'd normally be posting about (and kept promising I'd catch up on).

Since I'm so very good (not!) at paying attention to what I'm supposed to be doing, I sat down to get more of my coursework done a few minutes ago and instead decided to check the stats on this blog.  Thinking back to the RQ exchange, I started digging through to find the last "real" update (a post with photos & an account of an event or performance) and realized that the last time I "caught up" on an actual event or performance was for our trip to see "Beauty and the Beast" -- all the way back in April of 2017.

ARGH!

Okay, here's the deal: I'm still not a big fan of GIMP but I can at least do some basic resizing of photos so they're not multiple megabytes each, so I'm going to start going back in time & adding at least a few photos & videos from the (many!) events & dance performances I've been intending to post here "as soon as everything's working properly again and I have some free time."

(Note to self: time is decidedly not free. Ever.)

Gimme another day or two (there are over 60GB of photos to pick through) and you'll start seeing more old-style illustrated posts here; I'm aiming for at least one every 5-6 days, but I'm making no promises about keeping a standard posting schedule for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for hangin' in so far!

Catching Up -- or at Least Trying to Catch Up!

Well, I've got good news and bad news.

The bad news first: My laptop is still a ginormous problem.  I spent two full days doing nothing but wiping the drive and reinstalling the OS, and then chasing down & reinstalling all the applications, and then weeding out the applications that didn't work with the new OS... and then spent another 3-4 days chasing down applications that might (maybe kinda-sorta after a fashion) replace some of those that I'd lost but needed.  There was a bushel of unpleasant discoveries -- mostly related to major applications I needed that turned out to NOT be compatible with the "compatible" version of MacOS if it was installed in case-sensitive mode (I'm lookin' at you, Adobe... and the Poser folks... and a couple of minor apps... <sigh>). The bottom line is that I'm going to have to do. it. all. again.

Until then -- and I have a LOT of catching up to do on my coursework and a few other things first! -- I am still unable to manipulate digital images properly (the MacOS version of GIMP is very powerful and absolutely free, but for some reason no matter what I do every saved file looks like "soft focus" and a few basic tools remain resolutely unusable and/or nonfunctional).

So for the next week or three, I'll resume posting here sans images.  Sorry gang, I'm really trying -- but I'm beginning to see a faint image of my portrait appearing next to several corollaries of Murphy's Law in an old quotations dictionary I have.

Okay, now on to the good news...

For the third year in a row, AJ and the Pipsqueak and I spent a week in Rehoboth Beach (Delaware) with two other families that include some of Miri's closest fellow adoptee BFFs.  I wasn't sure I wanted to go -- I had to push hard to get my laptop working at all in time to take it with me and really didn't have the funds -- but in retrospect it was a great week that led to a lot of very nice new memories (and just a little sunburn, thank you SPF 50 sunscreen).  I returned home with about 7-1/2lbs of assorted shells & interesting rocks picked up on the beach (occasionally resulting in being knocked over and/or smacked in the face by a wave to much laughter from my niece), about 3GB of new photos & videos (about 2.5GB of which are good thanks to the oddities of the little Fuji waterproof camera I borrowed from Mom), and much lower numbers for my blood pressure. All in all, a great time with positive (hopefully lasting) side effects.  I even managed to win a couple of stuffed animals for Miri during our visit to Funland on the boardwalk!

More good news...

The Pipsqueak closed out August with a busy, busy day -- first a checkup from her pediatrician, then time with AJ at Mommy's work, then an open house at school to get a taste of 4th grade. (Waitaminit -- how'd that scrawny little baby get into fourth grade so doggone fast?!?!?). The checkup showed no problems and my niece called me on the phone afterwards specifically to chortle at me for messing up the other day; she'd asked me to measure her while we were all at our folks' house, and I came up with 52" but according to the doctor her official height is actually 53" -- she's sprouted just over five inches since her last checkup!  Miri's correction of her uncle's measuring goof was repeated later in the day when she Facetimed me from AJ's office (Mommy had stepped out to deal with something, and when the cat's away...)

I also got a call from her later on -- including Mommy on speakerphone -- to let me know that she got the teacher she was hoping to have for the upcoming semester, and he's really cool and really fun and uses one of those red dot light things to point instead of walking around the room to point at things and he's got a couple of big fish and a little lobster in a tank in the classroom and he also has a bearded lizard named "Norbert" in the classroom along with a tame snake in a fishtank and she's going to go to the classroom next door each day for advanced math but then will be back in the room and her teacher is kind of a Harry Potter fan because he wore a Sorting Hat today and... I think at that point she stopped long enough to take a breath and AJ jumped at the chance to get a word in edgewise.   :-)

So anyway, as I told her, it looks like it's going to be a really good year for her in school. (She's been working her way through a book of math exercises for the past few weeks with our help, and by George I think she's got it.). She's also signed up for a vaguely ridiculous number of dance classes at SBA -- did I mention she made the studio's dance team? -- PLUS is continuing with (at least some of) the CCACC/CLAPS Chinese dance classes PLUS is still in the synagogue's Youth Choir... so it's going to be a busy year for us all!  (It's all good, really -- any complaining I'm doing here is purely for comedic effect and I'm so proud of this little girl that I could bust!)

So there you have it, a bit of catching up and an explanation for why this blog remains (at least for the time being) text-only.  I'll catch y'all soon again...!