Saturday, February 28, 2015

Viennese Ball 2015

Wow, VBall was =awesome= this year!  Probably the best time I've ever had at a VBall, it was just good times all around.

I had dinner with Isabelle and Jeremy--the initial plan was to eat at Gochi's but we forgot to make a reservation and the wait was going to be too long so we tried out a mediterranean place on Castro instead.  I had an entree that was....essentially a plate of beef and lamb slices, with some cubed bread and yogurt.  Haha, meat and carbs...if I went again I would order something else with more variety probably.

VBall wasn't in SF this year!!!  It was at the Hyatt in Santa Clara which meant it's only 15 minutes away, hooray!  The new venue was a bit interesting...the layout was a bit strange but I didn't really have many complaints with it.  It did feel a bit smaller than the usual place, but VBall never really has enough space as a general rule anyways (until later in the night).

Opening was great!  JJ and Lewis, you guys did such a good job...and of course I was fangirling all the time at the pretty dresses and cuteness.  Ahhh, everyone was so pretty~  Mad props to everyone for doing so well!  And, I even liked the ballet performance this year!  I don't know if I just didn't like the previous choreographies or something, but I actually enjoyed it quite a lot, which was a pleasant surprise.

The viennese waltz contest was soon after...much sooner than I had anticipated.  I joined because...they were playing great music and I wanted to dance to it!  For this one instead of tapping people out they just picked 3 people to be the finalists, which was interesting.  I think either way is fine...but I didn't like how this year for all the competitions they had the 3 finalists dance at the same time.  It does save time, I guess, and makes sure that theres no first/last bias or music differences, but I think it's just too hard to watch 3 different couples at once, too much going on.  I'd rather have a chance to get to watch everyone individually, you know?

It was so nice getting to see everybody!  That's really the great part about VBall, is that everyone goes!  Just get to go around and say hi to everyone, see all their pretty clothes and outfits...it's really just a party with some dancing as an excuse to dress up (as opposed to Jammix or Big Dance where dancing is really the main event).

Deca premiered their new choreo, Say Something (starting off awkwardly because the music was too soft and had no good lead-in...), and then Danse Libre had a new choreo by Jason and...Julie I think?  It was great, lots of cute moments and personality coming through and matching with the music, so props to Jason & Julie for that!  And then Deca performed Carmen, which I was actually really impressed by!  They made some mistakes I think, but the energy was there, and I really liked it!  Props to Diana for making the choreo in the first place, it's a great one and it was a good choice!  Really reminded me of what Deca is all about...it was awesome!

Me and Rachel got 3rd place in the Cross Step competition despite fully expecting to get tapped out before then...whoops.  It was kinda cool how we had full couple gender representation for both the cross step and swing contests (boy-girl, boy-boy, girl-girl)! (counting me as a girl I mean)  Speaking of the swing contest, it was pretty much the same as always...pretty dang great, but nothing compared to that year back then with the legendary performance of Paul & Chris.  Don't think that will ever be topped...

Apparently I never danced a single dance in the Swing room, haha...oh well.  Lindy is super hard to dance with my outfit anyways--sleeves and arm mobility and everything.  I got some dances in the contemporary room though--not that many just because it was pretty empty in general.  I danced with some people I didn't know in the waltz room!  One lady who had a gorgeous blue dress, and then another older woman who didn't really know how to dance that well, but it was still fun!  I think her husband was taking a video of us as we danced....

I got to catch up with Christina, who was there!  She asked me to give her advice on her following, so I explained to her things like pushback pressure, how to maintain connection, powering through her spins so that she's not behind, and tracking your partner...she actually understood pretty quickly, I was impressed!  And, I met Winnie!  Yet another friend made b/c of common interests of pretty dresses and cute things...xD

Overall just a great night in general, I didn't get to dance with many people but that's...just kind of how it goes at VBall nowadays since I'm too busy just going around watching performances and saying hi to people.  Such a great time...I'm really happy.  Great job everyone for putting it together, putting on great shows, dancing great, and just being awesome.

Next up, Boston Tea Party...

Friday, February 27, 2015

Don't know if I'm ready to face the world today...

I guess everything will be okay though.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Don't give up...don't ever give up.  And don't ever forget.

Everyone loses touch with their roots as they grow up.  Even me.  But never give up, anyways.  Keep trying.  In the end, nothing of what we do will matter and we are all destined to return to the dust from which we came.  But still, try, for it gives meaning to life.  Accept the fact that the past will never return, but commemorate it, remember it, and realize how important it is.

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I woke up yesterday from an oddly sad dream that left me in a sad mood...I was actually a little down for a good part of the day, I don't know if it was from that, or just general blues.  It wasn't a bad day or anything, just had a...forlorn?  A forlorn mood.

Work has been alright.  I had a nicely invigorating discussion with a coworker from another team that left me feeling useful and validated, so that was nice.  I also had a massage, yay.  Ah, speaking of massages....I can still feel the tension in my shoulders, haha.  xD

A very close friend of mine told me a secret yesterday that was a rather big deal...at first I didn't know how to react at all.  But it's really quite nice after I thought about it!  I really care about them, I think they are just...a wonderful person, and a wonderful friend.  I think hearing it made me realize and think about how thankful I am that they are my friend.

Still been playing SFIII:3rd strike with the guys at work.  Been playing more Makoto than anything else, which has been really fun, since I'm finally "getting it" in terms of how to get in there and do damage.  Still not landing karakusas though, so I still need to work on that.  I haven't been playing Chun as much just because...apparently my Chun kicks around everyone's butt since I can hit-confirm back+fierce into super and then they just die...haha.  I tried working on cr. forward into super in training mode but I can't for the life of me hit-confirm that one, there's just not enough time (19 or 24 frames...).  I guess my reactions are just not that good in 3rd strike--I also have a lot of problems blocking wrong and playing wakeup games =(  So I need to work on that.  For now cr. forward into super will have to be for counterpoking and punishing.  Still can't get makoto's karakusa->stand fierce->super either, it's hard to get everything right.  Still working on the SA2 followups too, bleh (the easy ones).  Just gotta practice everything, I guess.  The guys at work do a bunch of punishable stuff, I just haven't learned to deal with it the right way yet.

I've been playing Don't Starve (well, technically the Don't Starve Together Beta) recently, it's pretty fun!  Someday me and my friend will get together and maybe just do an endless world and do a bunch of exploration and really get things going.  My last run had me dying in early winter to a random ghost after getting low on health on the way back to my base.

I'm working on my first music commission today!  This is the first time I've actually been doing commission work for someone on their game--I'm just using OHC time for it, which is nice because it's timeboxed and forces me to be efficient.  At some point I need to figure out good guidelines for terms and pricing for licensing and post it somewhere that I can point people to, but for this time we're just kind of figuring it out as we go...it's working out really nicely since the guy is really reasonable and easy to work with.  I'll be livestreaming at http://twitch.tv/ddrkirbyisq at 6PM PST 9PM EST if you want to tune in.  Hopefully I can come up with something decent!

VBall is tomorrow!  I'm pretty excited...I actually have thought an unreasonable amount about the cross step waltz competition, hah... -_-;  I wanted to pull off some fancy moves in it but I haven't had the chance to figure them out so I don't think that will happen.  Sigh, I'm horrible lol.  I'll be wearing my red and white shrine maiden outfit again, didn't have any time or effort to make anything new, whatever!  I should double-check it tonight to make sure I don't have to sew up any seams or anything...

Visited Deca on Tuesday!  They are doing okay, I know it's not the same as before.  You know, because I'm not there anymore of all the old fogies leaving and everything.  But it was nice!  Looking forward to seeing them perform tomorrow...wishing them a good performance.

By the way, https://virt.bandcamp.com/track/la-danse-macabre-lich-yard is my new jam at the moment I think.  Virt, you are amazing and you rock.

It's been a while since just doing a dump of what is going on...it's nice, I think...

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Having inspiration this morning; wish I could just ditch work and go make music instead...

damn...it's a pain.  Everything is getting to be a pain, sometimes.  But I should just forget it, leave it be.

I've been playing 3rd strike, still practicing my execution.  I'm waiting for a new Cthulhu PCB to come in the mail so I can actually hook it up to my PS3 properly, and then I'll start trying to play online, get my butt kicked a bunch and hopefully start getting better.

I bought an MTGO account, haha, but haven't started using it...

I've actually been feeling quite nice about life lately, just...not at the moment for some reason.  It'd be nice if I can have a good night tonight.