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Friday, March 12, 1999
One year ago: Hiding Things
I experienced a mail storm this evening (reminds me of "maelstrom"!). Cera Kruger did one of her rare updates, and sent out notify mail. Unfortunately, one of her subscribers had set an out-of-office feature on his email program to "reply all" to every message he received, which set up an endless loop. I think I got about five hundred email messages, all from this one guy! So I sent email to the postmaster at Cera's server, who worked to correct the problem and succeeded after a short while -- good!, and the postmaster at this character's ISP, who bounced the mail -- lame! It was exciting while it lasted. I had visions of the animated brooms of the sorceror's apprentice, bringing more and more water.
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I had two things on the agenda for this evening: Friday Night Practice, then seeing my buddy Joe Ross's band at the OK Hotel. I walked down the street to the basement dance studio a few blocks away and got down to dancing.
Jonathan Garrigues was the teacher for the lesson that comes in the middle of practice. My music background meant that what he said wasn't precisely a new revelation to me (I have a Bachelor of Music, though I've never used it professionally) but it was good stuff to think about. He gave a brief rundown of musical forms that are commonly heard in swing music, and gave us some exercises that helped us work with the music's harmonic and rhythmic structure of tension and release. Natural choreography! For example, if a verse of a song contains four eight-beat phrases, with a cadence or change on the fourth, you could do the same move three times, then do something else on the last phrase! Unfortunately, a lot of the time this isn't up to the follow to decide; but at least I can listen to the music and follow any styling or phrasing that the lead is doing.
I danced with Jonathan after the lesson was over. and I think I got most of the breaks along with him. He's always fun to dance with, anyway.
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A friend I met up with at practice was going to see the Green Pajamas too, so instead of driving myself (my original plan) I asked him if I could ride with him. He said that would be fine, but then he remembered that he wanted to visit a dance at the local Catholic church before heading down there. Since I didn't really want to go to this dance (an eighties dance given by the young adult group) I gave him my address and walked home. He could pick me up on his way downtown. I was confident that he'd be able to find me, since he's driven me home before. I really should have written it down, though! (Note: foreshadowing!)
I got home, got caught up on email, spoke with Jack on the phone, then went and waited at my living room window so I'd be able to run out quickly when my friend arrived. But he never showed! I watched the traffic for about an hour, until it was so late that I really wouldn't have gone even if he had shown up. I was torn between worry and irritation.
I sent my buddy email, asking what happened. He replied, "I'm so embarassed -- I forgot the directions. Just space out entirely. Maybe it's my cold or lack of food or maybe I'm just stupid. Anyway, I just got back and the band was great but the bar was VERY creepy.
The water-front dive of movie stereotype. My apologies...."
Oh, well. I'd have liked to see the band; I've enjoyed them when I saw them before, and I like listening to their CDs at work. Maybe they will be doing another show soon.
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