Hello from New Mexico!

We made it! After a very looooong car ride, we made it past the Texas border, across multiple mountains, despite screaming little ones and cramped conditions and got to my grandparent's house at seven-ish. I even drove for about an hour *gasp* Don't worry, we picked a nice deserted stretch with few cars, which equal much fewer possibilities for accidents. :-)

We found time this afternoon to go shopping at Jo Ann's where we finally picked out a pattern for the ball! Mine is going to be the big picture on the left. The dusty blue one. Ellentia (funny, the spell-check suggested Clementia) is going to have the lighter blue dress in the upper right-hand corner. Jordan is set on having a green dress, and since we didn't find any green, we just stuck with the stuff we found for my dress, a gorgeous royal purple. I'm so excited!


I suppose I shall refocus my efforts on answering Spectre. I am an admitted fan of Dancing With The Stars. I watched almost every episode this season - the few I missed were due to Lamp-Lite conflicts which I actually find more important - and the highlight of my Thursday morning is finding out who was eliminated, to either hurrah or to hiss. Okay, not quite hiss. ;-) However, if you were to go to the DwtS Forum, you'd never call me "too into it" again. Which brings about an interesting point I'll recover later. Why do I like it so much? The point is? I don't know, really.

I am a dancer, of course. I love to dance in a mirror-lined studio on polished hardwood floors to music playing from a stereo, leaping in carefree jetes in the Wal-Mart parking lot, or spinning around and around in my backyard to a whole orchestra I can hear in my mind, almost more than anything else. Not a ballroom dancer, but I still love dance.

I enjoy seeing people learn to dance. Watching Emmitt dancing the Waltz was almost magic. Of course there's the cons - egotistical divas who's favorite activity is looking at themselves in the mirror, the poor singers who don't even know what horrific sounds they omit, and total dancing failures like Master P and Tucker Carlson who couldn't dance to save their lives. And let's not forget the whole purpose of the show - to get good ratings which equal more millions for the producers.

But really, favorite movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and The Princess Diaries (rumored to have been viewed at a Boy Scout function) display negative themes. In Pirates, women display a good deal of cleavage, not terribly unlike the less than modest outfits worn by dancers on DwtS. Foul language is spoken with vehemence, and lets not forget, the pirates walk merrily away at the end, completely unpunished.

In Princess Diaries, a nun calls 911, is put on hold, and exclaims, "For the love of God," Mia regularly drive without a valid permit, and Mia's mother divorced her husband to continue her art hobby, a fact that's made very light.

In conclusion:

Frustrated celebrities walk out of rehearsal. Catty professionals continuously belittle their dance partners, other pairs are seen sneaking kisses between rehearsals. The ladies dress is less than admirable. Unprofessional and unsportsmanlike behavior is often shown by contestants. Now compare this to things I could be watching on Primetime TV, viewing on the internet, or consuming at certain parties.

It's probably a bad habit I must eventually rid myself of. My life would certainly be no worse if it were not to occupy my Tuesday nights. And yet...is it so terrible?