December 4, 2006 - A Thought
You know you're a square dancer when . . .
You see a sign, "Maximum Room Occupancy - 90" and your first thought is, "Gee, it doesn't look like eleven squares will fit in here."

December 3, 2006 - Singing Call
"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose, And if you ever saw it . . ."
The floor came to a complete stop during the singing call as Ray sang. Granted, he does have a nice singing voice, but as I looked around at the three squares standing motionless, I thought, "Shouldn't we be doing something?" Glancing up, Ray all at once realized we'd stopped dancing, "Oh yeah, alemande and weave."
"I guess he got caught up in the song," Larry said.

November 8, 2006 - Fiesta
The San Diego Square Dance Fiesta was last weekend. They had some really good callers this year; Scot Byars, Tim Marriner, Mark Clausing, and Cindy Whitaker.
Friday we danced some Plus and some Advanced. We had the strangest experience in an advanced tip with three couples we didn't know. These people seemed bound and determined to move as little as possible. "Up to the Middle and Back," they didn't move. "Allemande," they didn't move. "Right and Left Grand," they didn't move. I guess they only wanted to do the advanced calls, but even those were done with an absolute minimal amount of movement. They did do a "Grand Square" at one point though, which was surprising. I thought we would all just stand there for that one, too. This is dancing? But as Lloyd pointed out, they didn't make any mistakes. I hope they were having fun. It was kind of hard to tell since I didn't see a single one of them even crack a smile during the entire tip. (Very weird.)

Saturday Lloyd was working during the day but I still needed to go to take care of the Fiesta water. We misjudged how much water to leave in the Park Club Friday night and another bottle was needed there. Since I didn't see anyone to help, I decided I could probably do it myself. Cossing the parking lot was okay, but I was having some doubts by the Recital Hall. I made it as far as the Puppet Theater before I had to admit I'd made an error in judgement and simply could go no further. Luckily, like a knight in shining armor, LaMar appeared from out of nowhere. "Su! - What - are - you - doing?" he said, "Let me take that." Which I gladly did. Otherwise I might have spent the entire day sitting on the curb leaning against a bottle of water.

I couldn't find a dance partner in either the Plus or Advanced halls, so I decided to spend a couple hours at the zoo, before replenishing the water again and taking off to pick up Lloyd and get ready for the evening. But when I got back, there happened to be several extra people at the Intro to C, so I ended up dancing Challenge all afternoon (Go figure.)

The first half hour of Saturday evening was fun with all four callers calling at once and everyone in one hall. Then, as everyone split up, we moved to the Youth Hall for the evening. The dancing there is fast and furious with all the frills; very high energy with lots of twirling, kicking, and swinging each time home is reached (no clap, clap, clap here). This is the closest to the dancing we used to do in the 70's that I've seen and a LOT OF FUN! The tempo is faster than that in the other halls and the breaks are shorter, with no rounds in between.
After one tip, the young kid I was dancing with looked up and said, "Whoa, I think I am going to need some time to recover from this." Time to recover? - considering he was maybe all of ten years old, that is just hilarious. I said, "You are way too young to be saying that." "No, really," he said, in total seriousness. (Ha ha) Well, I certainly hope his recovery time was faster than mine. I think I pulled a muscle in my leg, or re-injured the one I hurt a few weeks ago. Two days after the Fiesta and I still could hardly walk, but I'm feeling a bit better today. I hope I'll be able to dance again by this weekend. Buddy Weaver is calling at the Whirlaways on Friday and Rodney Tannehill at the Sandpipers on Saturday.

October 30, 2006 - Busy Weekend
We had a very full weekend of dance scheduled for this past weekend.
Friday - Nasser Shukayr called for the Whirlaways. He was doing a new call (or calls), Right and Left By, Right and Left By-By, and Right and Left By-By -- By. It was just a silly novelty call used for one tip. Don't look for it at any other dance though, as he just made it up. He's always fun to dance to.

Saturday - I spent the afternoon going over all those stupid definitions in preparation for the Magic Squares Dance. It's like studying for a test to dance with them. How crazy is that? As it turned out I found the caller to be very slow in tempo, with predictable and unoriginal choreography. It felt more like a class than a dance. Call-Move-Stop-Wait-Next Call. They said she was calling to the level of the floor, but I was one of the weaker dancers there, so if she was calling to me, she grossly misjudged my abilities. I could have moved a lot faster. In fact we do dance a lot faster even in the class. There was just no life or pizzazz to the dance, not to mention all the dancey moves have been removed from Advanced. Also, there are no singing calls, so the tips are shorter, and there are no rounds in between, but the breaks are just as long as if there were, so there is a lot of standing around time. This was a boring dance.

Sunday - We were planning to go see the Scottish dancers perform at Balboa Park in the morning, but unfortunately the performance was cancelled. Too bad, I was looking forward to seeing them in a non-class environment.
Sunday afternoon Scrambling Squares held their third "Live Music" Dance which is always fun and the only live music square dancing offered in San Diego. One thing I like about Scrambling Squares' dances is that in a two hour dance you get two hours of dancing. They don't have Rounds, but instead of filling the time with breaks, the time is filled with more square dancing. There was a good turn-out including some dancers who'd never come before. I was disappointed, however, that several people I'd talked to, who had indicated an interest in coming, didn't make it. I think they would have really enjoyed the dance.
Then, Sunday night, we dashed over to Ruffles 'n Beaus for their annual "Black Light Fright" Halloween Party Dance. Everyone wears black or white. They hand out white gloves, turn off the overhead lights, put on the black lights, and we dance with our hands glowing in the dark. "It's a real nightmare for a sight caller," Pat said. (But, of course he said it good naturedly.)
We were kind of tired at the end of the day, but considering we danced pretty much six hours straight, I guess that was to be expected. And, like Bill said, "Two good callers in one day." Well, Wow.

And, with the Fiesta coming right up, we'll have another full weekend of dance next week.

October 21, 2006 - Coffee
Lee looked at the hospitality table and the sign announcing "COFFE". "Coffee should have two E's," she said.
"Did you do that?" she asked me.
"No." (But thanks for thinking I'm stupid.)