FWD had a post recently on singing in Sign where they linked to videos of people singing songs in ASL, BSL and Auslan. The signs are more dramatic/vivid than usual and worked into dances in some cases and they utterly hooked me. I've been particularly enjoying Lee's BSL Songs, which you can see on his youtube channel here.

I've been very pleasantly suprised by how many signs I recognise as-is, and am beginning to pick up a few new things as well. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have been.

We're seeing Alice in Wonderland in 3D tomorrow evening, then I'm off to a yoga class. I've not done any Yoga in years, but I enjoyed it a lot back when and it helped me out a lot with my hips. I'm hopeful it may help me with the joint problems I've been having recently by being a low impact way to strengthen the muscles around them, improve my flexibility a little and generally be a reasonably fluffy yet effective form of exercise that'll go well with dance. Trip report to follow ...

Profile slow is the most wonderful trance high when it clicks - a deep, silent space of eyes hips body and being a part of something larger than yourself. It happened tonight and I'd missed it so much. The only drawback is it's very hard to muster conversation afterwards until you've escaped and come back up into the world.

We've focused a lot on coreography today - even moreso than usual, in preparation for the Hafla at the end of March I suspect. The idea makes me more than a little nervous but also feels very right indeed.

Cycling home afterwards with Gibby Haynes crooning into my ear as if he's sat there right behind me, rain in my glasses turning the streetlights into a mess of neon spiderwebs the world feels like a very wonderful place to be.

I should mention also that I am now the proud owner of a Bellynut 18 yard dance skirt, which is quite the most beautiful and fabulous things I have ever owned. The picture at the top shows you the fabric and the detailing on the brocade. If you want to see the full thing, nudge me via email/chat and I'll send you a picture .

Today has been very strange. I called in sick and slept for half of it, then spent the other half at the hospital being poked, prodded, used as a textbook example for medical students and wishing one of the, otherwise very nice, kind and clever doctor types a little bit of a manner adjustment. I will say something next time, maybe ... if I'm feeling brave enough.

I did make it back with a heap of new medicine (currently decorating my desk in a very pretty pyramid shape) and, if with no real assurances of success (or reassurance and encouragement of any kind at all, damnit ¬.¬), in one piece. The unexpected snow this morning had melted, so I was able to hobble home as best I could, and am now having a quiet evening with Ezekiel while we cook things with rice (or she cooks, I plonk dishes and kind of assist), wait for the tendrils of checkdisk and vista sp1 to give us back her computer and I discover a new rule to live by for domestic harmony ...

... do not make up little songs about the Donkey of John Belushi and animal buttes while doing the dishes if someone who picks up earworms easily is listening. that is all .

I have also had a very exciting offer from someone I am dearly fond of to go and see the new van Gogh exhibit the next time I am in London, and the prospect of another friend visiting on Saturday ... two things which I look forward to as soon as mister the plague departs.

There were people here! Our little geekhaus had four of us rattling around inside it in various states of statitude. The Doodle was here, because he is the doodle and he is awesome (which meant we were frequently serenaded by guitars - would have played bass also but it just ... wasn't happening). The Boy was here and bringing the delights of geeky conversation, Civ 5 and particle physics scrabble (and also a car! oh wonderful world!). Ezekiel and I were here as well, of course, because this is home and that's usually where we reside.

The unfortunate thing about this gathering is that we've been having the plague by rota. Ezekiel had it, the boy had it, and now it is my turn. While I had any number of possible things to blame the fact that I was losing my voice and feeling kinda out of it by the end of Friday on, it was in fact stupidarghickybug which needs to go away. Hopefully we've none of us given it to Doodle and he can go on being happy and fabulous and not glaring at us and muttering 'Curses!' every so often.

So, with a multitude of geeken in der hausen, games were played, South Park was watched, an inordinate quantity of herbal tea was drunk (except for the boy, he consumes coffee in quantity - I have to fight the urge to lean over and smellll it) and, while I sat in front of the computer and failed to be together enough to write any reports (instead keeping company with delicious irc people), we plotted an adventure of epic proportions.

Arising and finding ourselves bright and noon-ly, we headed off to Greenwich in the most wonderful horseless carriage piloted by the boy. It was huge, smooth, fifteen kinds of nifty and (most delightfully) if I curled up just right it had plenty of space for a ridiculously tall person to sleep in the back - yay! The boy is also a pretty mellow driver, so it was a lovely safe space to nap like anything. (The boy is apparantly amused/impressed by my ability to sleep anywhere, any time in almost any situation at the drop of a hat. My Nap-fu is strong and keeps me together through almost any kind of weather). Once we'd deposited the car, it was time to go exploring and explore we did.

The O2 arena is big. Think of the biggest thing and make it more big-ly and that's exactly how much big you need to worry about. It is also packed to the brim with resteraunts, nightclubs, cinemas and other silliness and OH GODS PEOPLE! Under other circumstances I'd have wanted to find a convenient hiding place and wait it out but, I had been given a job and that is the best way to distract a Weasel when crowds are teeming - I was being a wheelchair engine.

I like being a wheelchair engine, it mostly requires observation and listening ... and pushing, lots of pushing. It also gives you something to lean on a little at all times, no matter how your legs are doing. Being a wheelchair engine rules.

Once we had braved the dome, and played a brief game of hide and seek in the square outside (entirely accidental - never assume you can catch up with an engineer and meet him on the way back from the car, he will have found a vastly more efficient way of getting back to you). I made a fateful decision. To whit: let's not take the riverboat and the DLR to get to Grenwich proper, lets all walk it! It's not far.

The four of us are now under strict instructions to ignore this any time I say it unless we have a map and already know the route - yes, even me.

Following a protracted wander around some awful architecture in the millenium village and along a wobbly little high street, we found Greenwich park and proceeded to explore. This eventually resulted in a hill which Ezekiel, quite wisely, decided to avoid while the boy and I charged up to the top to satisfy our geeky desires to stand in two hemispheres at once along the prime meridian! It was just a flying visit but still exactly what we wanted (see photos at top and bottom of this post ). There will have to be a later visit plotted with much enjoyment and stroking of interesting pieces of engineering (and cheering at the climbing tower at london Bridge!)

After that, battered feet and aching geeks were rested in a nice little foodpub, where pasta and fish pie were the order of the day. though we were sadly bereft of chocolate things of any stripe and description. We made a wander back to North Greenwich and the O2, acquired a loop and stored a chair and got ready for musiche.

Nitzer Ebb I'd not heard in years, but they've held up well and are really fun - the singer has that kind of mad bouncy enthusiasm that can move anyone and they're hella danceable still. I'm going to have to pick up some of their newer stuff sometime. But really, everything we were there about was the headliners.

This was one of the best depeche Mode shows I've seen - they didn't play the standard setlist from the tour this show should have been a part of, instead playing a whole bunch of older stuff and classics and really playing the hell out of them too. We got incredible different versions of personal jesus and a few others with a lot more improvisation .. and chattier between songs than I've ever heard them. (And I never expected to be singing happy birthday to any of them in my life Or to be hearing them making filthy beautiful techno noises). We chair danced like pros, made ridiculously loud screaming noises (some of which I regret doing on top of this cold) and generally had a hell of a good time. I resisted standing up for most of the show, as the smallest Mode fan I'd ever seen was in the seat behind me (Ezekiel asked later and it turns out he was six! so precious ...) But had to go for it at least a little on personal Jesus. Mrrrr.

After a nice sleepy wander home (Falling asleep in cars is just awesome and I almost never get to do it) and a bit of a fuzzy headed night, we ended up playing a rather ridiculous game of monopoly in which, despite being utterly not-there due to cold medicine etc, I appeared to absolutely clean up. Since then we've packed the boy off home (with a carfull of doodle), and have been quietly pottering, cooking, watching TV et al. I'm quietly trying to see if I have enough brains left in my head to do some finance writing - but I fear there is nothing up there but mucus ¬.¬

Clearly we need to have people descend and have adventure weekends more often .

Tal has been feeding me a diet of classical, Newfie folk and prime Bluegrass - and this is a source of immense happiness to me. I've put the album this song comes from (Not all who wander are lost - Chris Thile) on rotation while cycling and it turns a wet ride home in the dark into a gorgeous happy cycling meander of awesome - something about the rythm of the music and the rythm of the bike, very easy to get lost in it.

I like that kind of getting lost, it feels very alive indeed and sometimes that feeling is in short supply - so I cultivate it wherever and whenever I can .

Dance is continuing to rock my world. The stuff we're doing now doesn't quite have that crazyintimate feel that the strict face to face stuff did, but the overall mood feels a little deeper now we've done that, and things like shouder tacks, very solid/definite ATs shimmies and some things we've been doing with hip figure eight things tied into ferreos just feel very right. I need to work on my upper body strength though, and Joint rubbish is making some things harder than they need to be.

Ezekiel has suggested an absolutely top plan for this that I rather like though ... going back to Yoga. It helped so much with my walking and my balance/centre last time that I'm hoping it could really do the same for me if I go back again. I'm going to start having a sniff around for a class I can work into the schedule alongside ATS and other gubbins ... watch this space .

On that subject(ish), I now have a most magificent partner in crime for the Domba weekend - Raindog and I are gonna be dancing our arses off in workshops together and enjoying drunken Hafla magic - this fills me with fucken glee because for various reasons we don't get to do nearly enough things together.

Still need to ramble on about Imogen Heap, the fact that my glasses are absolutely awesome and the impending arrival of the most beautiful skirt since the turtle beneath us hatched, but that iwll have to wait as tomorrow is set to be all kinds of busy. Ezekiel, Doodle, Horatio and I are all set to go explore Grenwich then see Depeche Mode rock the O2 arena - this is going to be epic adventurez .

Amy and I were at the doctors the other day, and we noticed that the Foster Mill was being torn down. That place has been an object of fascination to me for more than twenty years. built in the 1800s and shut down in the latter part of last century I didn't even realise it was a flour mill at first - it felt like some sort of postapocalyptic industrial church to me when I'd see it from the station. I'm not sure what they plan on putting up there (the details of the CB1 development have been under debate forever and a day) but i'll miss the old thing regardless.

The last week has been a bit odd. It started well last Saturday with FlowJam; a live event with Bellydancers, Drummers, circus skills people, poi dancers, contact jugglers and all the rest - it's being fun by Guy who I know from Firetroupe, ATS and Cambridge Community Circus and I'm wondering if it's a precursor event to (or connected somehow with) the Elements of Flow weekend event this summer. The whole thing was fantastic though. We started off Bellydancing to some Solace until the drummers got warmed up, then I spent the rest of the time alternating between Bellydancing, poi spinning, dancing with the most Beautiful dance fans I have ever seen and occasionally sitting round in an exhausted little heap - it was wonderful. We hut the Cambridge Blue afterwards for a few drinks as well where I was able to get the hell over my shyness a bit and have a great time talking with some friends from dance and fire troupe. Guy is going to run these monthly and I can't wait for the next one.

Thursday was rather nice as well, Dance class in the evening went well, I felt more back into the rhythm of things this week, and was partnered up with Madeline (I hope I've spelt that right) for the evening, so we got to talk a bit and to do some lead passing and stealing in clock formation which was rather good fun. I paid Nicola for the Domba weekend (Which I am absolutely ridiculously hyped for - a whole weekend of ATS workshops? yes please ) and acquired another interesting homework assignment - this one is slightly less confessional and slightly more crafty and it's caught my imagination a bit (I just need to have a bit more patience with it .. varnish takes awhile to dry ¬.¬

Yesterday we went over to my folkses ... and I took the bass and my gubbins with me so my brother and I could have a bit of a Jam. We played through a whole bunch of songs (some of ours and some others), did a bit of writing and recorded a couple of backing tracks for Ezekiel to sing to (Toad the Wet sprocket - Pray your Gods and One Eskimo - UFO). We also got one of our songs down in protools to have a fiddle with later on and seem to have our routine back for doing more complicated things. We're going to try and make it a more regular thing again - I'm very excited about this. We've been making music together for over fifteen years now and something about it just feels 'right'.

On the less fuzzy side, this week has involved some knotty little stress points at work, a great wailing and gnashing of joints and an unprecedented cluster of migraines I was decidedly less than impressed with. I've got some new medication for the latter from my doctor and am having a round of blood tests on Monday morning to look into both and see if there is anything new to see. Between this stuff and the back and forth with the hospital I'm at least feeling like this stuff is being paid attention to - which is nicer than having it ignored. The work stuff, while being a bit on-edge, seems to be leading to some good opportunities and some rather amusing (if slightly intimidating) trips around the country to see people that will, fingers crossed, lead to me jumping off a train one evening tomorrow and arriving at class, dance gear and office gear in tow fifteen minutes later. At least I'll have my bike .

In other, other news, Mass Effect 2 is incredibly good, about the best thing I've played in an age and a half. I'm not that far in however, as I keep getting distracted by an absolutely wonderful novel draft written by the housemate of a dear friend. I expect I'll get further along between reading this draft and the next one .. I promise not to spoil anything .

The best thing showed up in the post yesterday; a copy of all of them with teeth: monster hymns and sermons by Little Light. Ever since someone first showed me the seam of skin and scales and it just reached in and grabbed me with an almighty 'hell yeah!' I've been utterly loving on her writing. So having some of it in chapbook/zine printed format is made of win and awesome.

In other news, this week I actually hit the point of being short-sighted enough to want to do something about it when I realised that my facebook status was uncomfortably blurry. Upon getting my fuzzy little ass to Boots, I discovered that eye tests are faster, more fun and more sophisticated than they used to be when I was younger. I also discovered that the staff at my nearest Boots Opticians are friendly, professional and (in the case of the guy who helped me try on umpteen thousand frames while we picked out the right ones together) have great customer manners and the patience of saints.

I should have a couple of pairs of deeply funky glasses in a week and a bit, and will be sure to get in the way of a camera once they arrive so I can show you all. I'm mostly just looking forward to looking at stuff with them on - it was quite the revelation how far and how clearly I could see.

The other exciting bit of human enhancement I have coming up now is the acquisition of a cyborg tooth! The gap that my poor wee babby tooth gave up the ghost in six months ago (it almost made it into my thirties. A pretty good innings I think?) is going to be fitted with a rather impressive/amusing titanium spike and capped, filling in the gap in my molars with a pretty little piece of ceramic biting gear. I am rather looking forward to this .

Off to sneak in a shower before work now, I need to see if I can buy enough time to succeed in my quest for a pair of un-laddered tights before 9am .

This post is a direct lift from the Straight dope messageboard and you can find the original here. I liked it too much not to share, so here it is.

Has anybody ever heard of Prehistoric Creature Day? It's on Friday the 13th. Every Friday the 13th is Prehistoric Creature's Day.

I used to work as a server at an upscale-casual suburban steakhouse. One Friday the 13th, probably a half-hour before I was due to be cut, my manager comes up and tells me to take table thirteen. "Have fun with it," he tells me.

So I go over to greet table thirteen - it's a man and a woman, maybe in their mid-forties.

And twelve stuffed dinosaurs.

Friday the 13th, I was told, is Prehistoric Creature's Day. If you have any prehistoric creatures in your house, you have to take them out to a nice dinner on Friday the 13th, or else they will become angry and rampage through your house, creating a huge mess. So this couple, not wanting to spend the next day cleaning up after a squadron of angry reptilians, had brought their brood of dinosaurs out to dinner.

Most of them were kind of small (the kind of stuffed animal you could put on your desk at work), but there was one rather large triceratops, to whom I offered a booster seat. The rest of the dinosaurs sat on the table.

A dinosaur ordered a bottle of (expensive) wine.

A dinosaur tasted the wine, and declared it good.

The man and woman ordered their respective entrees, with plenty of side dishes to feed the rest of the crew.

Somebody else dropped off the food, and when I came by a few minutes later to make sure everything was ok, the table had been rearranged to accomodate all of the dinosaurs and their different culinary preferences. The carnivores were positioned around the steak. The herbivores gathered near the broccoli. The fish-eaters were crowding the fried lobster tail.

Everybody was a fan of the bread, and I brought over a refill.

While they were eating, I went over to my manager. "Manager," says I. "These are by far the coolest, weirdest people we have ever had in here ever. We have to buy them a free dessert."

Manager agrees, and so after the plates have been cleared, I go back to the table with the dessert menu, and tell them that, in honor of their special day, we would like to offer them a complimentary dessert.

One dinosaur -I think he was a brontosaurus- was very excited by this. Aided by the man, the dinosaur runs very excitedly to the end of the table, eager to look over our desserts! He loves dessert! He loves - oh no! All of a sudden, the chipper brontosaurus wilts in the man's hands, and drags back to his place on the table. The man explains "He's sad because he doesn't read English. But dont worry, we'll read it to him."

They ordered dessert, everyone enjoyed it.

I forget if the man or the woman paid the bill - I just know it wasnt a dinosaur, which makes sense, as it was their day. They were being treated.

And that was by far the best table I ever had in my year and a half of waiting tables.

love
yams!!

This is dedicated particularly to the friend who first introduced me to T-Rex day, they know who they are .

I spent most of Saturday in Burwell with the fire troupe and now I can't feel my arms . We were having an all-day rehersal/runthrough for the Cambridge University 800th anniversary fire show and despite it being cold enough to freeze the $x off a $y the whole thing went well and was all kindsa fun.

I'm not actually performing in this one (not nearly ready for that sort of thing), instead I'm assisting Rob backstage, running around making sure toys are dipped and spun off and ready for people to come on and off. I think it's mostly going to consist of following directions and being extremily careful of the college grass, but I love backstage stuff so it should be a right giggle.

Because of that, there wasn't an awful lot for me to do (it being a dry runthrough), so when I wasn't sorthing things out I was helping cook up a small mountain of chilli, having deep and meaningful conversations with a two year old and generally futzing about inside while basking in the luxury of underfloor heating. I swear this is the only reason I still have toes this morning. It was damng ood fun to get to talk to people in a situation where we weren't all dancing around in the dark and on fire, hopefully we'll get to do this a little more in future.

The event itself next Sunday (the 17th) and if you're in Cambridge then, you should ttly be there, it's going to be awesome.

I spent a fair amount of time outside spinning to keep warm, and managed to have a play with several new fire tous outside by the bonfire later (in between bouts of marshmallow roasting). Enough so that my shoulders are throbbing this morning - between this and ATS restarting, January is going to be a rather sore month I think! Worth it though.

This makes me very happy indeed for reasons I am unable to even begin to explain; so I thought I'd share it with you all. It is passing the time most excellently while I try to rescusitate webguide on our media server to queue up the new series of Being Human for recording.

(Of course, I could just use the media server interface to schedule it, but where's the fun in that?)