I'm not really sure what inspired this... I'm not sure anything in particular did, actually.

Rob and everyone are out at their Senior Banquet, which leaves me on my own!  

This week has left me running around a lot - brief summary?  Let's see... Basically, I usually run an experiment with an auto-sampling system, but Chip (my advisor) and I think that the required setup is giving us some weird mixing (or rather, not mixing) and skewing the results.  Ergo, that leaves me (pitiful grad student) running through it manually to satisfy curiosity.  Translation?  For 40 hours I took a manual measurement ever 2 hours....

Needless to say, constantly interrupted sleep has left me kind of exhausted.  A quiet night on my own is exactly what this future-doctor ordered...

Like I said, I'm not sure what triggered this spiral but I all of a sudden had a craving for some oldies-but-goodies, in the movie department.  I understand this classification could qualify everything from the Casablanca era to the Breakfast Club days.  But I'm talking childhood.  I know - you all immediately jumped to Disney.  WRONG!  :)

My selection:

Quite the line up, eh??

And probably not even close to your wildest guesses...  What can I say - I'm a strange kid :)

These were some of my mom's favorite movies and we had some quality mother-daughter time.  Usually over popcorn and some red nail polish.  Although now I completely understand why I had to close my eyes for some parts...  

Best. Idea. Ever.


P.S. I only remember like 2 brief scenes from Legends of the Fall - I either had my eyes covered for a significant portion of it or we just didn't watch it as often - I'm guessing both.

I received an email a few weeks ago from an incredibly sweet girl, Grace.  Her boyfriend was, as she put it, "dead set" on having her make his first set of Greek letters after he finished his membership initiation.  

On the hunt for a starting point, Grace managed to stumble across my tutorial and wrote me a very nice note to say how helpful it was.  (P.S. I LOVE getting messages like these...)  Her boyfriend joined a chapter of Sigma Chi so she wanted to ask me about the letter sizing, given that it's only 2 letters instead of 3.  (Just for reference, they're traditionally still the 4-inch size).  Grace decided that she wanted the letters to fill out a little more of the shirt though, so she resized her stencils to be 6-inch letters.

Didn't they turn out great??

Wonderful job, Grace!

And happy sewing, everybody! :)

Saturday, March 31st

(Yup - I'm more than a month late... My excuse this time?  I was the Competition Coordinator, which on top of being a PhD student was enough to pretty much drain me for a few weeks... but I've just about recovered and am finally getting all caught up!)

The competition ran unbelievably smoothly and I'm thrilled with how the whole weekend went.

I was really nervous that I wouldn't be able to dance at all (yup... the whole back thing still not going so well) but given all the work I put into planning it, I begged and pleaded with my physical therapist to let me.  I actually was fine the entire weekend and my back didn't lock up at all!  (Well... until I tried to shampoo my hair the following Tuesday... that apparently was the straw that broke the camel's back?)  

Matt and I weren't sure how we were going to do, overall given that I hadn't really danced at all the 2 weeks before the competition (and unfortunately haven't danced since, either...) but we survived!

Standard was first thing in the morning and we generally did pretty well!  My back was really tight so by the time we got to Viennese Waltz I kind of wanted to cry, but as we warmed up and stretched it definitely improved.  

For Gold Standard, we placed first for Waltz/Quickstep, first for Tango/Foxtrot, and second for Viennese Waltz.

Check out those wings! ;)

For Gold Smooth, we ended up taking first in Waltz/Tango and first in Foxtrot/Viennese Waltz! 


Woo hoo!!!


More or less sweeping the morning?  I'll take it!

P.S. I love this picture because it's super rare for Matt to smile like that during Smooth or Standard.

Rob and some of his family came to watch (thankyouthankyouthankyou!!) for a little bit and he took some video of smooth:  

It was so nice to have a little cheering section there for me.  :)  I'm definitely a fan of "close to home" competitions.

By the time we got to Rhythm, we kind of decided to just cut loose and go with whatever!

Kicking it off?  Krista and I danced Silver Swing/Mambo together!  I led Swing (shown here at the right) and then I quickly ripped off the black sweater with our number and gave it to her so she could lead the Mambo!  No callback, but ridiculously fun and totally worth it...

For the rest of Gold Rhythm, Matt and I ended up with fourth in Bolero, fifth in Rumba/Cha Cha, and fifth in Swing/Mambo.  We danced the hell out of it and played with it more than ever - amazing.

Yup.... that's right... we brought it.

And guess who else "brought it"???  MOM AND DAD! :)

They competed for Newcomer Cha Cha and Rumba - there was a lot of stiff competition but they were AWESOME!  I could be a little biased... But I think they were a pretty strong team favorite!

Like I said, all in all the competition went beautifully - but the weekend isn't even close to over!

As soon as the competitive dancing was finished, we packed up, changed, and headed out to the Crooked Lake House for the second annual Dancing at the Lake, co-hosed with our local chapter of USA Dance.  We had some social dancing and a professional showcase by two of our judges - Ricardo Sopin and Iraida Volodina.  (They are incredible dancers and super nice people!)

The icing on this cake?  My sorority formal was happening - same time, same place! - in the other banquet room.  The 6 of us that are on the dance team were thrilled that we were able to pop in and out of both.  :)  And we invite all of the girls over to see Ricardo and Iraida, which was pretty awesome...

The long day and late night didn't end the festivities - all day Sunday was some more dancing!  Well... for some of us anyway.   Ricardo, Iraida, and Jen Volpe (our regular professional coach) each held a workshop and then private lesson session for us.  I think Matt and I ended up taking 4 lessons - and my back held up through it all!!

Was I exhausted?  ummm... HELL YES.

Was it totally worth it?   Again - hell yes.

:)