Last weekend former roomie/officemate/bellydancing partner MissAngela got married to DerHugh :) It was a beautiful ceremony and we all had a great time :)

( More AND PICTURES under the cut )

This morning at 5:30 a.m. we got the last bit of our data :) Two nights was enough for our program so that was good :) I'll be posting about all this stuff in great detail later - I actually have it all written down ;)

Tonight, I'll be doing a public talk at the Mauna Kea Visitor's Center :D Yay!! That should be fun! It will only be about 15 minutes long but I'm sure I can convey what I need to - love of astronomy and a little science ;) I gotta get to work on it now...

However, I do want to treat you to two pictures :)
( Oooo, pretty )

A happier post!!

I finally got pictures from the recital from last Monday up and ready for viewing!
In attendence were Kevin, Krupa, Paramita, Alvin, Phillip (plus young daughter), Ginny (from out of town!), James, Thomas and various other people for other members of the group :)

Pictures are here (I decided to show by tag this time) (if you want to see pictures from all dates, go here).
And for everyone's visual enjoyment, MOVIES are here! (the CHARA website has been flakey lately so be patient and try again later...)
It is really interesting to see myself dance...

Here are some teaser pics ;)



These two were taken by Phillip Mitchem who was kind enough to give them to me :)

Monday is the next time you'll be able to see Erika the Belly Dancing Astrophysicist in all her glory!! ;)

It will be on the campus of Georgia State, at the Rec Center. It's also a much shorter show than those at the Imperial Fez and you don't have to buy any food :) Therefore you have little excuse to not come ;)

THE TIME IS DIFFERENT FROM WHAT I FIRST SAID!
We'll start at 7:30 p.m., not 7:00 p.m.

******************
MONDAY, July 31st
The Georgia State Rec Center for our class recital
7:30 p.m.
I will be the only one you'll know there - Angela will be out of town. But that is where the whole class puts on a show - I'll do a solo number or two, other people will dance as well. It is about a half-hour long.
Oh, you can get in if you are not a student!! You just would have to show them a picture ID and sign something that says you won't work out there or something...

And I'll (we'll?) likely do the next amateur night at the Imperial Fez (it sounds like some of the girls in the class might be into it).
TUESDAY, August 15th
More info on that later as things develop.
**********************

Hope to see you there!

Hey, here are some pictures from the Imperial Fez Amateur Night in July :)

   

Look, I'm not wearing glasses!!
I don't like the way I look without glasses as much as I like me with glasses... Meh.

I have finally uploaded a great deal of photos to my new Flickr account :) Yay!! I'm sure I could figure out a better way to organize them, but yeah, still a neophyte at this...

So, there are 2 sets - one for last year containing pictures from 2 different performances and one for this year containing, currently, 5 different performances (although I've actually performed 7 times this year - two have no record).
Go to this web address:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dancinastrophys/sets/
Or if you want to see in order of upload, go here.
You might also be able to look at things via the tags that I put on them... I dunno. Good luck.

If you want any of the pictures in higher resolution form (usually 1600x1200 or vice versa), just let me know which ones and I'll send off an e-mail attachment or something :)

Here's a teaser ;)

(from the private performance for my family in my backyard in May)

I just got home from the Star Bar where I heard 2 very fine bands indeed :) Friends DancingDave and BootyShakinSteve came to the show too :)

The opener: The Joey Allcorn Show - a band from Columbus, they play lots of old school country - Hank, Johnny, Buck, HankIII ;) and their own stuff. But it was very cool :) Plus they had a pedal steel player!! :) I'll check them out again if they come into town again :)

The headliner: Rocket 88
From Orlando, they were quite big during the height of the swing craze in the late 90s from what I hear. But they never played Minneapolis :/ They were high energy and had highly dance-able tunes so DancingDave and I danced a bunch :) After the show we met a couple of the band members - lead singer (Michael) and lead guitar (Mark) - nice guys :) I always like to thank the bands afterward if I'm around for the end of the show, I like it and they seem to as well :) Lead singer Michael had a really great shirt on... Simple and just really cool!
I'd go see them again most definitely.
We got merch from them too! Well, paid for it, but yeah, I thought you'd all like it :)




Yay! Rocket Girl T-shirt!! :D

NEW ICON!!!
(I totally needed a new one cuz those two I have - getting old for the belly dancing)

The Fez was quite the hoppin' place tonight...

So I got there, slightly late (like about 7:45) but found I was there in plenty of time. I started talking to everyone and found out that there was going to be a party of 100 people that night!!! There were THREE professional dancers there - lovely Juliana (from 2 months ago), lovely Deliah (from last month) and a lovely Brazilian girl who's name I never caught... All the people there for the amateurs were sequestered over on one side - actually, a very nice cozy part of the restaurant. However, that area was slightly awkward to dance in - two levels and very narrow.

The large group was some sort of hotel bunch and they were a bit inebriated... But they were all having a good time.
A number of guys wanted to stick their dollars in the girls' tops - that's a big no-no!!!

I ended up dancing solo because Mina (the other possible girl for the evening) didn't show :( Alas. There were 4 other amateurs though so I wasn't the only one, I just had to do my thing solo. You know, it was quite fun just playing with my music - I do like to improvise anyways so yeah, it worked out well :)
They had the Fez Fest (amateurs) cordoned off from the big group so we really only danced for a few people - the 3 pros worked everyone though.

Various things I learned tonight...
- about how to direct people to tip into the hip belt (I didn't have to use it ;) )
- that professional (cabaret-style) dancers don't use jangly hip scarves because you are "not a good dancer" then - it shows you need help
- somehow I just let my hips go and damn the shimmying was easy this particular night ;)
- I can't see someone with a dollar for me when I have my glasses off :/

Cool things:
- the owner came over to me and asked me to get out there while the other 3 (professionals) were dancing!! And to make sure to work the room :D That was super-cool!
- the manager gave me his card and also got my number - the girls said it was likely to get ahold of me for parties and such :D
- the women in the big group were especially nice at the end - they got themselves out there dancing with us and had a grand old time!
- I got 3 bucks :) Yeah, that's not a lot, but I didn't do any dances to get money - the 3 girls made $206 between the 3 of them!

I didn't get any pictures tonight - I left the camera in the car on accident :( But here is a picture (another one) from last time I was there.


I almost didn't go but I'm glad that I did :)
And I got good food :)

P.S. you can kinda tell that I wrote this while tired... heh.

Alas!! My belly dancing gig for Saturday night has been usurped by go-go dancers!!! :(
Damn.

So, here is what the gig was:
- the birthday party of a nightclub owner in Augusta, GA
- it is a "white" party (everyone is supposed to wear white)
- there's going to be a white tiger apparently!!

As a group, we all practiced last night (til quite late!) but found out this morning that the organizer chicky didn't want us anymore :(
And I was going to get to wear a super-nifty bead-encrusted outfit...

A little backstory...
On Wednesday (that's 3 days before the show), the organizer chicky suddenly asked, "So, do you have white costumes?" Umm, have you EVER seen a belly dancer in a white costume? The answer was no. We could give her white veils but that was it... Maybe if she'd asked 3 weeks ago when she booked us something could have been done... Not all white costumes though... Icky.
Also on that Wednesday, organizer chicky asked if we belly danced to hip-hop. Umm, again, 3 days beforehand? Three weeks ago we could have done something. She was worried that since people will have been dancing to hip-hop and then our show would come on that the mood would be ruined or something... What does one expect belly dancers to dance to? Slow moody songs?? We wanna shake our groove things!! And be snake-y sometimes ;) People would have thoroughly enjoyed it.

So, what my teacher thinks really happened is that the go-go dancers are willing to stay all night (us = 45 min show) AND they were probably cheaper.

Ah well. OrganizerChicky had to pay a deposit so I'll get a little from that... But alas! My first paying gig is a dud ;)

To tide everyone over, here is a picture from the recital in May of this year...

I like this one because it is so action-packed :)
I really have to remember to ditch the glasses while dancing...
By the way, those are exercise balls behind me :)

So back to Calgary again. While there I took many pictures of interesting things, so that's what this particular post will be about. There will be another post relating the goings-on of the meeting itself and another about Banff National Park.

On to the pictures! ( behind a cut for your viewing pleasure )

I just got a call from my belly dancing teacher :)

"Whatcha doin' on Saturday evening?"
"Thus far, no firm plans... Why?"
"Wanna go belly dance in Augusta and get paid for it??"
"Awesome!! I'm in! :)"

So, I get to go with 4 other people and we're gonna dance for some club owner's birthday party or something...

Just in case astrophysics falls through... ;)

A couple of pictures I've been sitting on for far too long - they're from the Imperial Fez in May.
       

I'll give you all more later ;)

New icon debut (I'm a paid user now)!!! Thanks to noangelshere for the picture!! Hee hee!! It's a "pop icon" ;)

Softball Steve was able to get cheap(er) tickets for a bunch of us to go to last night's Thrashers hockey game!!! Woooot! He also ended up winning a couple of tickets and turns out they were in section 106 and so he left us up in 308 ;)

Here are some loverly pictures :)

I very much enjoy the Thrasher's logo (especially when things are all swirly...):


( More pics and story under here! )
Interestingly, it was warmer in the ice rink than it was outside...

Yeah, I've already posted about Saturday, but I needed a picture of something before I posted about Friday!

In Creative Loafing a couple of months ago, I saw that the Variety Playhouse was bringing in BR5-49 :) YAY!! They are are great country band and I love to go see live and stuff :) I especially like when I have a dance partner!! My friend David also likes to dance to the country/rockabilly stuff and so he's been thrilled about it too. The other people playing that night were the Avett Brothers. Then we found out that local rockabilly act Johnny Knox and Hi-Test was the opening opening band - rock on!!

We decided to first go to the Vortex - yum!!! Friend Bert joined us, friend Trey decided he couldn't come down after all :( Ah well. We rather stupidly had the Vortex fondue - cheese sauce and tater tots!! And then burgers and tater tots. Ooog - not the best idea we found out later in the night... But right afterward I felt pretty good!!
We arrived late and therefore entirely missed Johnny Knox!!! Damn. But, I did procure a free comb from Johnny and then he decided to give out some free t-shirts. First, when he announced it, a lady came up and he tried to give her this one shirt and she said, "I can't wear THAT!! I'm a mother!" I piped up and said, "I'll wear it!!"

Eeeheehee :) I suppose I should have made the boobage a bit more apparent, but hey, it's a unisex shirt...

So we saw the Avett Brothers - a cool interesting band - they had a LOT of heart and a lot of beard :) They were a three-piece outfit - acoustic guitar, stand-up bass and BANJO!! Not terribly dancable, but fun to listen to.
Then BR5-49 came out and they were just great :) I liked them better than the Avett Bros. but they're just different.
I danced and danced and danced, especially since I was one girl between two dancing guys :)
I was home by 1:15 a.m. and I had a great time :)

Spring has sprung here in Hotlanta!

I have daffodils!!


In other news, my kitty has acquired a friend... Panic goes outside in the mornings and wanders about and then meanders back in occasionally to see that I'm still around and to say hi. While I was brushing my teeth, he wandered into the bathroom and hopped up on the toilet and then in came the other kitty! I've seen OtherKitty before - s/he has been in the house before even. It's weird. Panic seems to be generally okay with this kitty. OtherKitty even ate some of Panic's food and he didn't complain. The only time Panic got upset was when OtherKitty jumped up on the counter. I've never let OtherKitty wander the house before but I suppose I was curious as to what Panic would do. I kicked OtherKitty out after getting on the counter...
OtherKitty seems to have owners because s/he looks well-fed and has nice fur and did not protest when I picked him/her up to put him/her outside.

I don't know what Panic wants me to do - keep OtherKitty out and away, 'adopt' OtherKitty, or just let them frolick outside. After I kicked OtherKitty out, Panic wanted to go back out there. I wouldn't let him for a while and then I did but then I needed him to come back inside shortly after that. He didn't want to come back in - he even ran away from me for the first time (I wonder if he didn't want to be "demeaned" in front of OtherKitty). When I got to him and picked him up, he yowled (like when he doesn't want to be picked up).

Anyways, I cannot 'adopt' OtherKitty (who probably has owners anyways) because RoomieAngie is allergic to cats and lordy, I shouldn't bring in another one!
I guess I'll just let them frolick...

From eleven50 last night (this morning?):


The polka-dot pants in the back there belong to the guy on stilts.

( A couple more )

Shows how much fun I had, hunh??

There are two reasons for my soreness.

First, in the continuing saga of leaf rakage in my yard, I finally completed the front yard this weekend!! WoooHooo!!! It's only taken 3 months... Now, yes, leaves are biodegradable and yes, they can provide good fertilizer to the lawn, but if they are COVERING said lawn and happen to be absolutely massive sycamore leaves, they KILL said lawn. Not fun. So I raked and gardened for 4 hours on Sunday. Roomie Angie and friend Tony helped in the last bit there (really nice because light was fading fast). We filled up 5 bags with just the front yard. And I have a large pile of sticks (damn sycamore). We had a bit of fun (we had to tamp down the leaves you know):

My hands didn't blister but they were going to with much more work... I was slightly sore :(
The back yard awaits... Ooog.

Second, my lovely day of 2 aerobics classes as described yesterday - my calves are quite tight and the rest if me isn't really too bad, but I can feel it. I decided not to go lift weights today because of it. I'm gonna go stretch... I'll go dancing tonight though :) Wheee!!!!

Ah, it's been a good weekend :)
Yesterday (Sunday), I was going to rake the multitude of leaves that are in my yard, but then RoomieAngie said, "Would you like to go hiking instead?" Now this was an interesting proposition... After some hemming and hawing, I decided to throw caution to the wind!! I chose a less-than-flattering outfit (but an effective one) and her friend Anthony picked us up, then we went to pick up her friend Katie and THEN we decided where we were going to go :)
We ended up at Sweetwater Creek State Park - a lovely place with lots of people - comes with the territory I suppose (being very close to Atlanta).

Anthony, RoomieAngie and Katie along the creek.
( A couple more pictures behind the cut )
One of my favorite things to do while hiking is scrambling over rocks - it's just so much fun!! I got to do lots of that yesterday and ended up out in the middle of the creek a couple of times :) Never got wet though!

After our hiking, we meandered the city a bit and then we ended up in East Atlanta. As we weren't terribly hungry, we first went to Joe's Coffee Shop and then we went to La Casita :) I like their chips :) terracinque also likes their chips because we saw him there, getting some chips for take-out! Wild.

As we grad students like to do interesting things, zatosan organized a trip to a Thrashers game :)

There were 12 of us including noangelshere and ellynkath
( Pics behind cut )
The game was really quite exciting - the Thrashers score 3 goals in the first 5 minutes!!! Wild.
During the first intermission, they had some sumo hockey!! 99X was involved with that. The second intermission had some kids playing hockey out there. Also during the second intermission, the crew had to replace one of the Plexiglas (?) panes as a flying puck caused a huge star-shaped crack in it!
But, I found that one of the most interesting things was the bird (a thrasher). First, it just sat there all nice and pretty. Then it opened it's maw...

( What happened next? )
We all had a great time - I got to beat together a couple of inflatable hockey sticks so I could make tons of noise, I sang along with the organ, I continually asked zatosan about the rules... Our team won 6-4 - it kinda became quite a battle in the third period and so it was very exciting :)

The Christmas/New Year's was great :)
I saw lots of my family.
I saw several friends but mostly in Minnesota. I actually don't really have friends in South Dakota - I was terribly shy at the time (and I was rather bitter about having to leave Southern California) and I have lots of cousins and stuff there so friends weren't as necessary.

The Tuesday just before I left was the busiest one - everyone wanted to do stuff on Tuesday.
7:30 a.m. - met my friend Kelly for breakfast - it was the earliest I got up :) That was fun :)
8:45 a.m. - got back to Tyan and Dad's place and cleaned and such
1:04 p.m. - Mom showed up - it was her day off and she drove up from Sioux Falls to see us!! Nice Mommy :)
1:06 p.m. - Todd showed up!! He was early... But it was great fun to get him and the girls of my family together - good thing we didn't gang up on him over anything - he'd be melted :)
6:35 p.m. - both Mom and Todd left :( We had a very good time.
7:00 p.m. - went to meet XN - we had cheesecake, a lovely conversation, a wet walk back to his place, then we played video games (I loves Dead or Alive 3!!) then my sister joined us and we played more games.
2:30 a.m. - we realize it is 2:30 a.m. - no wonder I was getting punchy!!

Here is a lovely picture of some of the snowfall I got to see. There are a couple more pretty pictures behind the cut.

( More pictures )
The snow was great packing snow ;)
But the sunlight... Eeek - between Christmas and Jan. 4, we had a big 4 hours of clear skies. Icky. I tried and tried to get a picture of the Minneapolis skyline with blue sky behind it but I did not succeed :(

Ah yes, dancinastrophys danced tonight, in front of people, performance-y style :)
Observe:

( More pics behind the cut :) )

I took belly dancing this semester and at the end of every semester, the 2 classes get all guzzied up and put on a show. Most of my particular class chickened out and so it ended up a duet and the other gal I was with almost chickened out too - she's got terrible stage fright but faced it :) I was proud of her. I totally would have done it solo though - one must perform!!
Oh, the outfit is not mine - our teachers had a bunch of stuff.

Many thanks to noangelshere for being my photographer :) Perhaps next semester she'll join me!

One interesting thing I noticed: out of the 13 people who performed, I was the only white girl!! Wacky.

Damn, the pics look better against a non-white background. Grrr...

In an effort to keep myself on the night schedule (as I'll be observing again in a couple of nights), I meandered over to see Ginny at her telescope. It happens to be full moon at this time (Mars is looking quite nice right next to it!) and it was really kind of odd that I could see perfectly well enough to not have my flashlight on at all.
I think this picture captures it the best:

Eerie moonglow!!

I'm going to bed now :)