Shake something!

[ebonlock]

Submitted for your approval and with the use of aelfsciene's wonderful camera (and expert photography of jakejr, my favorite pics from our last recital:

Warming up at home

Pre-performance pose

Baby got back

Apparently this is my best angle

Can you tell we were having fun?

We did it!

We ended up dancing for about ten minutes or so straight through and by the end were ready to drop, but hung out "backstage" to chat with one of our fellow dancers as the Straw Hat folks screwed up everyone's performance music. My youngest sister kept threatening to go back and kick their asses and take over the DJing for the evening. I kinda wish she had.

On the plus side the crowd was enthusiastic and seemed to be having a great time. The dancing was fantastic despite the glitches, and I was delighted to see so many of our wonderful friends in attendance. Aelf and I also got invited to dance in a little over a week with Alyne and some of her friends at a senior center. Not exactly a gig at Menara, but it's a start.

Oh, and I believe there's a bellydance party this Saturday at Menara as well unless I'm much mistaken. I'll pester Aelf about posting details in case anyone's interested in attending.

One more quick thing, the sale at We3 yesterday was stupendous, silkblade managed to find some of our chiffon half circle veils in a gorgeous royal purple and deep green in one of the boxes. Aelf grabbed one of the greens and I grabbed the green and purple to give myself a second set that will match almost all of my other dance costumes. Go me!

And uh, the "Crouching Tiger" move is way harder than the "Magica", we found that out yesterday.


Kinda busy weekend, in that I had loads of work to get done on Saturday and I did it all. This consisted of dropping my sisters at the airport nice and early and cursing the stupidity that is the rerouting they've got going on. You now have to drive all the way around the entire airport just to get to terminal C. Great thinkin' guys. Afterwards I hit Cosentino's (greatest grocery store in the world) and started on the three loads of laundry I wanted to take care of that day. Then straightened up, vacuumed, cleaned up the bathroom, and then faced the horror that was my yard.

Now the front yard was fine, I'd made time just before my sisters arrived to run out and cut it. No problems there. However the jungle out back was another story entirely. I could've been smart and just kicked up the gasoline mower, but the part of me that loves to do things the hard way kicked in and I powered through it with my push mower. My allergies weren't happy, but boy was it ever a fantastic workout! I was drenched in sweat and sore by the end, but felt like I'd started to work off some of the excess weight I put on during my vacation.

Finished up the laundry, took a nice cool shower, and proceeded to spend a good deal of the afternoon vegging and napping on the couch. Also finished up Al Franken's "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot: And Other Observations", which made me wish Al would run for President. Not only does the man seem to know what he's talking about and share many of my views, but he's funny too. Personally I'd love a President with a sense of humor.



I'll admit, it's a vice of mine, I just really like the show and the way the correspondents cover their stories. Always have, probably always will. Scared myself silly cheering for Andy Rooney's piece last night, "It's Just My Opinion", I shudder to think what kind of hate mail the man's going to get for it, though. Was fascinated by the "Clinton Vs. Dole: A Question Of Money" debate, and frightened by the "Exiled Ayatollah Awaits Return To Iraq" story. We're not seriously contemplating putting a religious zealot into a position of power in Iraq..are we? But if not al-Hakim then who? Questions, questions, but very few answers these days.

Comments

Re:

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

The issue of Shi'a ayatollas in a post-Saddam Iraq raises a lot of interesting questions. In addition, Iran stands to lose its standing as the "keeper of the Shi'a flame" in Qom when the Iraqi ayatollas in exile are able to return to the very important holy Shi'a cities of Karbala and Najaf. Anyway, the Iraqi ayatollas in Iran have lived under the kind of Shari'a "democracy" they would impose in Iraq. Given that Iran's corrupt mullahs appear to be hanging onto to power by the thinnest threads, it makes me wonder if there will be another "Iranian revolution."

It's certainly possible, and something I hope Dubya and Co. are taking into consideration. I need to educate myself more thoroughly on this religion, I must admit I have very little knowledge of the different factions and their historical interactions in the region.

[mallen.livejournal.com]

It's certainly possible, and something I hope Dubya and Co. are taking into consideration.

One of the reasons I would be adamantly opposed to military intervention in Iran is that it appears that the majority of Iranians are ready for significant change without any prompting from the outside world.

When Khomeni died, his replacement, Khameni was seen by many Iranian clerics as an usurper without proper religious recognition or respect to command his position as the Supreme Arbiter of All That Is Good and Just (a most excellent job title, I think you would agree :-). See, for example, this recently published open letter to the Supreme Leader which says, 'Your regime is illegitimate, your foreign and domestic policies are failing and despotic'. (A response: 'Those who spread slogans of reform, liberty, democracy, and human rights… are fighting Islam')

Unfortunately, the reformers like Mohammed Khatami (current president) and other intellectuals are unable to effect much change because of the byzantine structure of the Iranian revolutionary government. That structure effectively gives a group of hardliners veto power on nearly every governmental decision. (The open letter goes into great detail about officially sanctioned repression by various governmental organs.) As a consequence, although reform is overwhelmingly popular with the vast majority of Iranians, very little has been accomplished.

Now the population seems to just be fatigued, period. The turnout in the recent elections were pegged at something just over 5%. The unfortunate result is hardliners have reclaimed many of the governmental positions once occupied by reformists.