clevermanka (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clevermanka) wrote2012-02-05 08:09 am
clevermanka) wrote2012-02-05 08:09 am
Entry tags:
Grab a cup of coffee, because this is a long one
So. Yesterday. The errands went well. Mostly. Let's recap.
The yoga class was a total fail. I hope that the fail was largely on the part of the instructor, and Kundalini Yoga isn't as awful as all that. We spent sixty minutes doing seated breathing exercises. That's it. Just breathing. And a few chants. You'd think with all that focus on breathing, she would have actually, oh, given instruction on how to do the breaths correctly, but no. She just kept calling out "Power Breath!" and I wanted to call back "The fuck is Power Breath, bitch?" and also "Can we please at least stand up?" Because jesus, my hip was killing me. During one ... part .... (I can't bring myself to call it a "pose") we were supposed to pull energy up from "the muscles between our legs" and I was like what does that even mean? Was she talking about our pelvic floor muscles? Inner thighs (we were in Easy Cross-legged Pose)? And then she gave it a name, but didn't say it clearly and didn't repeat the explanation, so I was stuck hearing her say this (not clearly understood) word over and over having no idea what she meant. During alternate nostril breathing, we just kept breathing in on the right and out on the left. No switching. At one point, I looked up at her (we did most of this with our eyes closed) and she had switched sides, but hadn't told the class. o_O I could go on and on about how much I disliked this class, but I think you get the idea. The only reason I didn't roll up my mat and leave is I didn't want to look like a bitch in front of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pamelonian. We chatted it up before the class, and I didn't want to give her a bad name by association. Especially since she's one of the representatives of the studio hosting the class. So I lasted out the hour, but it was close. If it had been a ninety-minute class, I think I might have died from an expired will to live.
Then I went home and ate lunch withmckitterick. Lunch was good. Except it made me swell so much that my tee shirt started to ride up like Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons. JFC.
Then, to KC. Penzey's and Tasteful Olive shopping went great. Huzzah.
I metorrin at the AMC 20 on Nall for our Ghost Movie time. We went in, sat down, and I'm like "What's with all the teenage girls?" Then the realization hit and we looked at each other. Daniel Radcliffe. Oh god. It was going to be one of those movie experiences. And it was. I did finally break down and tell the girls behind us to Shut Up, Seriously, Y'all. Which, to their credit, they did. Wish I'd been close enough to do the same to the annoying twats two rows up and to our right. I couldn't muster the motivation to get out of my seat to chastise them.
The movie itself was really good. If you like ghost stories, this is a good one. It's basically La Llorona in early 20th century England. With some well-done Jump Moments. I'm pretty jaded when it comes to that sort of thing (it helps that I don't startle easily, even in real life), but there were two times during the movie where I almost jerked from surprise. Impressive! Suspense: You're Doin' It Right. During another scene, there's a long build-up with what could be footsteps or knocking that speed up and up and I realized it was perfectly timed to the increase of one's heartbeat as one watched the scene. Very clever!
Wardrobe discussion;I liked what they did with the costumes--it reminded me of the way Jeeves and Wooster's creators mixed styles and props to give a sort of timeless past feel. Certain wardrobe elements (like Mr. Radcliffe's) were quite Victorian-esque, but other characters were clothed much more late Edwardian. And the automobile, which figures prominently in the story, looks to me to be 1915 at the very earliest (and would have been a damn fancy auto for that). Putting Radcliffe in the old-fashioned clothes was a good choice. One, it distances his character (he's very much A Man Apart here), two, he looks damn fine in that get-up, and three, by dressing him so differently than the other men in the movie, it somehow alleviates the overall impression of oh my god how small he is. The man is just tiny. Charisma out his ears, but so wee.
So anyway. Movie = Good. Audience = Suck My Dick.
After the movie, I had twenty minutes to get to Costco, so I went to the one on Blue Valley Parkway which was really unfortunate. The GPS was fucking up and kept telling me to take weird turns, so I got there just barely in time (although I could have found the other Costco without the GPS, I don't think I'd have made it there by 6:00). Once there, I remembered that the stock at this store just isn't as good as the 95th street one. The produce was sorta bleak (the first three packages of red bell peppers I picked up were moldy), and they didn't even have any organic spinach. *sigh* But okay, I got three of the five things on my list.
After that, it was off togrnvixen's to pick up the ointment for my hip. And the GPS told me that her address didn't exist. The fuck? So, okay, I used it to get to the highway and then navigated myself from there. This meant I wound up driving like thirty blocks on Antioch instead of taking the correct exit, but oh well. I found the house and the ointment. Thanks, grnvixen!
While in her driveway, I typed in the address to get directions to Union Station, wheremiischelle's show was taking place. And it told me that there was no West Pershing Street. Oooookaaaaay. I unplugged it, let it power down, and started over. The second time, it acknowledged the existence of West Pershing. Once in the general vicinity, though, it basically started puffing on a big old doobie and had me driving (literally) in circles. I unplugged the damn thing, retraced my route back to the highway, and just followed the posted signs to Union Station.
I need to figure out how to update the software on that GPS, for real.
And then, there was the bellydance show. Three of the six dancers were very good. Three were not.
Let's get the Nots out of the way. One wasn't ready to perform in a professional show. She was lovely and vaguely competent, but she had no clue how to dance to her music, and her performance lacked spirit. One was...well, I wasn't sure if she was a good dancer who just wasn't showcased well in this environment, or if she really was that awkward and out-of-tune with her music. And the third one. Oh my god. Her first number, she came out and I prayed it was a joke dance number, but I knew it couldn't be because no bellydancer under a certain age (or status level) tries to pull off comedic performances (for good reason). Then she started dancing...sort of...and my fears were confirmed. She wasn't nearly a proficient enough dancer to even attempt a joke dance routine. Watching her was painful. At one point, I realized I was wearing A Look and I did my best to school my features since I was sitting on the second row and I was sure she could see me. She was just awful. And obviously people are telling her she looks great, because she was totally confident in her hot-shitness.
But now, the goods!miischelle was, of course, lovely. Your first number, I could tell your heart wasn't in it. =( By the mermaid one, though, things were picking up, and by the time you got to your Fire Elemental performance, you were mesmerizing. Damn, Fire number was spectacular. Good dancer number two had a fantastic second performance that showcased her particular dance form quite well. She wasn't as comfortable in her first number (with Isis wings), although a large part of that could have been two music mess-ups during her performance (poor thing). My favorite dancer of the evening, though (no offense, M, honey), was this tiny young thing who came out and did 100% pure basic old school cabaret with a huge smile and some of the best control/technique I've seen in a long time. And holy shit she knew her music cold. I got the impression that if the sound had cut out completely, she just would have kept going, with the music still playing in her head, and hitting every accent note right on time. I adored her. And of course, she's in St. Louis. *sigh*
During Really Horrifying Dancer's first number, I wanted to textmiischelle to say "You failed to inform me that this experience would have been much better ON ACID." But then I realized that, through her various comments about the prep for the show, she basically had.
And then it started to snow on my way home and I spent the drive doing my best not to freak out about speeding down a very wet I-35 in the Crossfire. I-35 N, just past 635 is where I hydroplaned and traveled sideways at 55mph for a quarter mile during rush-hour traffic before finally wiping out another car (just one, thank gods) in 1995. It's the one time in my life I've ever blanked out. I felt the back end of my car going out of control, the next thing I knew I was looking through my windshield through someone's passenger side window, and the next thing I knew, I was parked on the left side of the highway and I couldn't see anything because my glasses had been thrown off my face. I have no memory of my car going sideways, no memory of hitting the other car, and no memory of pulling over to the side of the road. I do remember my first reaction was being impressed that I managed to get the car over and not hit the median despite being pretty much blind without my glasses (which I assume flew off when I hit the other car). Anyway, driving on any wet highway makes me nervous, but especially driving on a wet I-35.
And now this has turned into complete babbling, so I'll stop.
But yeah, basically: Kind of a lot of suck for one Saturday. I was thinking the cold and wet might keep me home today, but now I'm thinking I could really use some Dance Church today.
The yoga class was a total fail. I hope that the fail was largely on the part of the instructor, and Kundalini Yoga isn't as awful as all that. We spent sixty minutes doing seated breathing exercises. That's it. Just breathing. And a few chants. You'd think with all that focus on breathing, she would have actually, oh, given instruction on how to do the breaths correctly, but no. She just kept calling out "Power Breath!" and I wanted to call back "The fuck is Power Breath, bitch?" and also "Can we please at least stand up?" Because jesus, my hip was killing me. During one ... part .... (I can't bring myself to call it a "pose") we were supposed to pull energy up from "the muscles between our legs" and I was like what does that even mean? Was she talking about our pelvic floor muscles? Inner thighs (we were in Easy Cross-legged Pose)? And then she gave it a name, but didn't say it clearly and didn't repeat the explanation, so I was stuck hearing her say this (not clearly understood) word over and over having no idea what she meant. During alternate nostril breathing, we just kept breathing in on the right and out on the left. No switching. At one point, I looked up at her (we did most of this with our eyes closed) and she had switched sides, but hadn't told the class. o_O I could go on and on about how much I disliked this class, but I think you get the idea. The only reason I didn't roll up my mat and leave is I didn't want to look like a bitch in front of
pamelonian. We chatted it up before the class, and I didn't want to give her a bad name by association. Especially since she's one of the representatives of the studio hosting the class. So I lasted out the hour, but it was close. If it had been a ninety-minute class, I think I might have died from an expired will to live.Then I went home and ate lunch with
mckitterick. Lunch was good. Except it made me swell so much that my tee shirt started to ride up like Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons. JFC. Then, to KC. Penzey's and Tasteful Olive shopping went great. Huzzah.
I met
orrin at the AMC 20 on Nall for our Ghost Movie time. We went in, sat down, and I'm like "What's with all the teenage girls?" Then the realization hit and we looked at each other. Daniel Radcliffe. Oh god. It was going to be one of those movie experiences. And it was. I did finally break down and tell the girls behind us to Shut Up, Seriously, Y'all. Which, to their credit, they did. Wish I'd been close enough to do the same to the annoying twats two rows up and to our right. I couldn't muster the motivation to get out of my seat to chastise them. The movie itself was really good. If you like ghost stories, this is a good one. It's basically La Llorona in early 20th century England. With some well-done Jump Moments. I'm pretty jaded when it comes to that sort of thing (it helps that I don't startle easily, even in real life), but there were two times during the movie where I almost jerked from surprise. Impressive! Suspense: You're Doin' It Right. During another scene, there's a long build-up with what could be footsteps or knocking that speed up and up and I realized it was perfectly timed to the increase of one's heartbeat as one watched the scene. Very clever!
Wardrobe discussion;I liked what they did with the costumes--it reminded me of the way Jeeves and Wooster's creators mixed styles and props to give a sort of timeless past feel. Certain wardrobe elements (like Mr. Radcliffe's) were quite Victorian-esque, but other characters were clothed much more late Edwardian. And the automobile, which figures prominently in the story, looks to me to be 1915 at the very earliest (and would have been a damn fancy auto for that). Putting Radcliffe in the old-fashioned clothes was a good choice. One, it distances his character (he's very much A Man Apart here), two, he looks damn fine in that get-up, and three, by dressing him so differently than the other men in the movie, it somehow alleviates the overall impression of oh my god how small he is. The man is just tiny. Charisma out his ears, but so wee.
So anyway. Movie = Good. Audience = Suck My Dick.
After the movie, I had twenty minutes to get to Costco, so I went to the one on Blue Valley Parkway which was really unfortunate. The GPS was fucking up and kept telling me to take weird turns, so I got there just barely in time (although I could have found the other Costco without the GPS, I don't think I'd have made it there by 6:00). Once there, I remembered that the stock at this store just isn't as good as the 95th street one. The produce was sorta bleak (the first three packages of red bell peppers I picked up were moldy), and they didn't even have any organic spinach. *sigh* But okay, I got three of the five things on my list.
After that, it was off to
grnvixen's to pick up the ointment for my hip. And the GPS told me that her address didn't exist. The fuck? So, okay, I used it to get to the highway and then navigated myself from there. This meant I wound up driving like thirty blocks on Antioch instead of taking the correct exit, but oh well. I found the house and the ointment. Thanks, grnvixen!While in her driveway, I typed in the address to get directions to Union Station, where
miischelle's show was taking place. And it told me that there was no West Pershing Street. Oooookaaaaay. I unplugged it, let it power down, and started over. The second time, it acknowledged the existence of West Pershing. Once in the general vicinity, though, it basically started puffing on a big old doobie and had me driving (literally) in circles. I unplugged the damn thing, retraced my route back to the highway, and just followed the posted signs to Union Station. I need to figure out how to update the software on that GPS, for real.
And then, there was the bellydance show. Three of the six dancers were very good. Three were not.
Let's get the Nots out of the way. One wasn't ready to perform in a professional show. She was lovely and vaguely competent, but she had no clue how to dance to her music, and her performance lacked spirit. One was...well, I wasn't sure if she was a good dancer who just wasn't showcased well in this environment, or if she really was that awkward and out-of-tune with her music. And the third one. Oh my god. Her first number, she came out and I prayed it was a joke dance number, but I knew it couldn't be because no bellydancer under a certain age (or status level) tries to pull off comedic performances (for good reason). Then she started dancing...sort of...and my fears were confirmed. She wasn't nearly a proficient enough dancer to even attempt a joke dance routine. Watching her was painful. At one point, I realized I was wearing A Look and I did my best to school my features since I was sitting on the second row and I was sure she could see me. She was just awful. And obviously people are telling her she looks great, because she was totally confident in her hot-shitness.
But now, the goods!
miischelle was, of course, lovely. Your first number, I could tell your heart wasn't in it. =( By the mermaid one, though, things were picking up, and by the time you got to your Fire Elemental performance, you were mesmerizing. Damn, Fire number was spectacular. Good dancer number two had a fantastic second performance that showcased her particular dance form quite well. She wasn't as comfortable in her first number (with Isis wings), although a large part of that could have been two music mess-ups during her performance (poor thing). My favorite dancer of the evening, though (no offense, M, honey), was this tiny young thing who came out and did 100% pure basic old school cabaret with a huge smile and some of the best control/technique I've seen in a long time. And holy shit she knew her music cold. I got the impression that if the sound had cut out completely, she just would have kept going, with the music still playing in her head, and hitting every accent note right on time. I adored her. And of course, she's in St. Louis. *sigh*During Really Horrifying Dancer's first number, I wanted to text
miischelle to say "You failed to inform me that this experience would have been much better ON ACID." But then I realized that, through her various comments about the prep for the show, she basically had. And then it started to snow on my way home and I spent the drive doing my best not to freak out about speeding down a very wet I-35 in the Crossfire. I-35 N, just past 635 is where I hydroplaned and traveled sideways at 55mph for a quarter mile during rush-hour traffic before finally wiping out another car (just one, thank gods) in 1995. It's the one time in my life I've ever blanked out. I felt the back end of my car going out of control, the next thing I knew I was looking through my windshield through someone's passenger side window, and the next thing I knew, I was parked on the left side of the highway and I couldn't see anything because my glasses had been thrown off my face. I have no memory of my car going sideways, no memory of hitting the other car, and no memory of pulling over to the side of the road. I do remember my first reaction was being impressed that I managed to get the car over and not hit the median despite being pretty much blind without my glasses (which I assume flew off when I hit the other car). Anyway, driving on any wet highway makes me nervous, but especially driving on a wet I-35.
And now this has turned into complete babbling, so I'll stop.
But yeah, basically: Kind of a lot of suck for one Saturday. I was thinking the cold and wet might keep me home today, but now I'm thinking I could really use some Dance Church today.
no subject
I plan to give her another chance because I DID feel energized afterwards, which totally thwarted my plan to take a nap before teaching Kids' Class at 11:30, but I felt great. Also, the instructor is taking aikido from us now. She's coming to my class today, as a matter of fact.
no subject
no subject
I have a really, really hard time schooling my features. I pretty much have to find a reason to smile in order to not look like I am trying to kill with my mind. Maybe I should practice in the mirror.
That retelling of your big accident on I-35 was harrowing even to read. I get very nervous on the highways around KC when they are any amount of wet, too.
Here's hoping your Sunday represents a dramatic improvement over yesterday!
no subject
omg on the comedic bellydancing!!! next time: bring recorder!!! i want to see it! :)
no subject
no subject
I wish you had slept over!
But you got home ok?
Oh the dancing....I DID warn you. We can talk about it at some point....with the DVD perhaps?!?!?!?!? And martini's? or wine.
no subject
Wow, what a shitty day, except for the good dance bits.
I'm glad you made it home safely.
I've done energywork, but I'm also totally baffled by "pulling energy from the muscles between our legs"..it sounds like a horribly bland euphemism for "focus on your vagina." Or maybe she meant "out of the space between your legs and mine" LOL.
no subject
it was crap.
no subject
I advise you against taking up poker, then.
Sunday has been...well. WINE PORN and HOOKAH are helping.
no subject
no subject
Yes you totally warned me. I think I must've just been in denial that it would be quite that bad.
We are so dishing this, too. With the DVD and much wine.
no subject
no subject
no subject
It's really funny, because I saw it and The Innkeepers, which were both very simple, straightforward ghost movies that were very unambitious in scale but quite effective. I don't see those released theatrically very often these days, and yet, two in one weekend! And they were both really good! I honestly think I liked The Innkeepers quite a bit more than The Woman in Black, which is saying something since, as you said, The Woman in Black was quite good and also had the edge of crazy Gothic-y Victorian settings/costumes/houses/toys/etc. I'd recommend giving The Innkeepers a look, though nothing about the experience will be harmed by waiting for DVD. It's slow getting started, but it's funny and charming throughout, and then the last act is just... harrowing.
Anyway, thanks for giving me someone to watch the movie with. That audience would have been twice as annoying if I was by myself. Maybe someday we'll get a chance to catch something with a better audience. Or can just have another movie day and watch something on DVD, where the audience is guaranteed to behave.
no subject
I'll look up The Inkeepers for sure. It seems to have made quite the impression on you!
I hope I didn't weird you out too much when I told off those girls behind us. It got to the point where I had to say something to someone and they were the closest culprits.
no subject
And no, not at all. In fact, you can ask Grace, I told her when I came home that I needed to take you with me every time I go to the movies, because I usually don't tell people off even when I'd like to, and that was awesome.
no subject
I also once screamed across the theater at some douchebag to hang up his phone during Memoirs of a Geisha.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
She is so enthused about aikido. People like that come along only once every few years. It inspires us all! I was one of those students. That's a big reason I want to try to support her endeavors.
I will share with you how the next class goes.
no subject
the really horrible thing was that it was in a grubby hall, and i could SMELL the dust and probably mould, so my sinuses were really not happy with all the heavy breathing.
i have been to a hatha yoga class which was very breath based, but there was some movement, and it was a lot better. i have also been to classes billed as hatha which were pretty normal yoga classes, just with a lot of attention to the breath, they were pretty awesome.
no subject
no subject
no subject