surfacing

Attempting to surface after a long busy weekend... hopefully I'll catch up on LJ sometime soon. Hopefully I'll find something for breakfast to get my brain started properly. And then hopefully I'll post a lot of stuff.

My inbox bears a resemblance to the Augean Stables just now...

Pretty Little Dead Girl review

The only way I'm going to coherently get through the weekend's backlog of posts I want to make is chronologically, I think.

So, Friday evening. Off I went to meet up with fordprfct and kattelyn, with plans for shopping for pink presents, pink wrapping paper, pink ribbon, pink plates and napkins and cups, and wai!, the pinkness!, all for a certain little girl's upcoming birthday party.

I got stuck in traffic. Gawdsawful traffic, ended up getting off the fwy as soon as I could and going the long way around. However, fortunately for me, my copy of Pretty Little Dead Girl, Seanan McGuire / cadhla's album from OVFF, had arrived that day, and I'd grabbed it to take with me, as Dwynwyn has a CD player. And suddenly I didn't mind the traffic delays nearly as much. Because the last track of the album finished playing just as I parked my car in front of the house in Euless. There's timing for you.

Well. The first few tracks started off as good music, I was enjoying it, oh that was interesting, sure. But then I hit track 4. And from there on, WOW. I mean, I don't usually like live albums, but this was wonderful.

River Lies - eerie, creepy, GOOD. Fascinating. The kind of song that you want to read the story - but you know you already have heard the soul of it.

Maybe It's Crazy - I'd read the lyrics online (go ahead - I'll wait) and was looking forward to it. It's better with the music, and with hearing her wonderfully smoky sensual voice. However, it was also frustrating. From the laughter of the audience and some description I've read of the performance, I bet it would have been wonderful to have been there and seen it. But as a recording, it suffers a little, at least to me with my hearing issues. I had a hard time understanding the words in a lot of places. I am really hoping that PLEASE Seanan please, she will put it on the upcoming studio album. Please. Because I love it. It's like the sapiosexual Spark-fan anthem!

Vampire Slayer Blues - I love this song. I love love love it. It keeps getting stuck in my head. I want to finish this review so I can go play it again. I want to learn it for filksings, although I dunno if I have the lung capacity - how does she go that long before taking a breath? faxpaladin, if I learn this, will you be my Watcher? (I have to admit I don't get the spoken stuff at the end, but this is probably because I live under a rock and don't know who Christian Slater is. Or possibly it's because I'm only up to season 3 in watching Buffy.)

Modern Mystic - She has a description of various of the songs on her LJ here. She described this one as a RPG song, so I'm thinking right, some song about a character I don't know in a campaign I don't know, this one will bore me, not interested. Not paying much attention. Then the song started. Just the richness of the sound caught me the first time through - again, that sultry voice. And then I was realizing the complexity of the rhyme - the langorous slow feel of it, and the strong use of feminine rhyme scheme. I love that. She is queen of it. Ooh yeah.

Fly Little Bird - okay, wasn't I just praising her for slow langorous feminine rhyme? Now here she is coming at me with quick, dancing, almost choppy (but darn it that sounds like a negative word and it isn't) masculine rhyme and it is fantastic, complex overlying patterns and oh wow. Why don't I just go offer to have her babies now? And this was a LIVE album? OMG. It's not like this is a group - as I understand it, this is just backup singers she roped into singing with her for OVFF. Right? Wow. That's some talented people. (I wanna go to OVFF!)

Sycamore Tree - like Fly Little Bird, in that the arrangement is just amazing. That's what floors me the most about this album - it's not one person writing really good songs, it's that she writes these complicated multivoiced songs that make my brain feel all quivery good listening to them. The song had a lot of impact to me, I can only guess how it must feel for someone who actually grew up in a small town environment.

They just put up a new order page for the album. It's here:
https://www.seananmcguire.com/secure_order.php

Go. Order it. My understanding is that this will not be up indefinitely - she's only selling it this way for a short time. So be quick. You can thank me later.

Me, I'll be off here replaying mine. I've had Vampire Slayer Blues, Fly Little Bird, and Sycamore Tree all competing in my head as earworms. (Sarah Tapper loves Harry Marshall...)

Friday night shopping

So, I mentioned much pink shopping for Maggie?

Oh my yes. We went to Target. Got pink wrapping paper, pink ribbons, pink plates, pink cups, pink napkins, pink plastic forks and spoons and knives. After a bit managed to talk fordprfct into putting the helium balloon kit back. Although I feel a bit bad about that - he looked like he would have SO enjoyed himself. Perhaps we should let him do that for a future party. Although I would darn well make him suck helium and talk. So he is warned.

kattelyn, the enabler, led us into the dangerous aisle - adorable kid stuff for home and garden, little wooden tables, butterfly nets, gardening aprons, little garden tools, popup playhouses, popup sandboxes, little sunglasses - all the girls' stuff in pink with butterflies and the boys' stuff in blue with bugs and dragonflies. So cute. Little snail wheelbarrows, ladybug brooms. Awwww. I got Maggie pink sunglasses and fordprfct and kattelyn got her the popup house.

Then we were wandering the toy section - OMG, some of the stuff on the barbie aisle is downright terrifying! I have also decided that Bratz toys are to be added to the list of things not allowed in this house. (Along with Barney, Teletubbies, and Spongebob)

Then there was MUCH wrapping to be done. Pink, pink, pink!

Contra dance and a surprise

So, I'm up to Saturday, right? Saturday. Groceries. Picking up Maggie's birthday cake for Sunday's party. selenite picking up our babysitter. Then - heading out for contra dancing!

We stopped to pick up fordprfct and kattelyn, since they were coming with us. This was their first time and introduction to contra dancing. At least, that's what kattelyn thought. Certainly it was her first. Little did she know... see, she'd been challenging fordprfct to get in better shape, and I'd been helping him PLOT. This was actually his third time at contra dance. He was learning how and starting to build up endurance.

Back on May 7th, when I posted Last night was contra dancing again, first Saturday of the month. Sadly, I struck out on finding babysitters. But selenite was kind enough to send me on my own - well, he SENT me on my own, knowing I was meeting fordprfct to teach him. He took to it like... like a very out of shape duck to water! He did 4 contras with me the first night. Those video clips I posted of me dancing? He took. By partway through the dancing I could see him doing minor flourishes, and then he was picking up mine - like spinning the do-si-dos. By the end of the evening he was introducing/leading flourishes with me! I was very impressed. The last dance they did was a called dance, where they don't teach it to you first - they just call it, and then they change the dance several times during it - and he kept up!

Again on May 14th, when I posted We went contra dancing with friends - that was fordprfct. The music wasn't so good that night, but he was still learning more, and managed to do more dances, building up endurance.

He'd have kept it secret longer - but they're switching his work schedules. It had been that until the beginning of August, all the contra dances would have been on Saturday nights when he works, when he could just go after work, and kattelyn would be out elsewhere. But that's changing. So he decided to bring her and surprise her. I like being part of surprises, it makes me giggle!

Last night the music was great, they had a big circle of musicians and it was good. selenite was helping teach a newbie and encouraging her, I was so proud of him. I only sat out one contra dance all evening, and that was because I couldn't find a partner. fordprfct didn't do that well, but he was dancing more than he was sitting out. I got to dance several times with selenite, including a lovely dance that had a long swing with your partner :-) We had a dance come up with a Gypsy Meltdown, my very favorite contra bit.

It was fun watching fordprfct tell kattelyn the secret. I've been assured that those sounds mean she's flabbergasted.

Last dance of the evening, I'd had dibs on fordprfct, because I was hoping it would be another called dance, like the last two times, and that would REALLY show off how good he is. Nope, it wasn't. The caller started teaching the contra - and realized wait, this was not working out. Said forget it on that dance. Which I appreciate in a caller! Was trying to find another contra dance, but couldn't - so heck with it, had everyone balance and do a really long swing with your partner, and then they went to a waltz.

So there I was, no last contra. fordprfct hadn't waltzed before, but hey, he'd promised me a dance, he said, and was willing to try to learn. So off we go to a corner, and I'm explaining, and starting to show him the steps - wait, don't try to do it first, just watch my feet - um, wait, you're DOING it. Yes. That. Okay, let's go. And there we are waltzing off - okay, a slightly lumbering newbie basic waltz, we weren't adding flourishes and I'm explaining the details of leading as we're going, and we're putting in some basic turns, and hey, waltzing!

So here I am, not only a BookPusher, but a DancePusher. kattelyn was extremely sore the next day, but assures me that she'd do it again if it was on that night. We talked to Tom and Sarah about it on Sunday, and explained and demonstrated and such, and Tom at least sounded very interested. Whee!