Litui.Net

Bereft of updates on happenings of the past year and being something of a copy-cat, I’ve decided to wrap up 2009 in a single post. I am, however, going to try not to duplicate events too much.

NYC

My pal Dave and I set for New York in May to take part in the celebration/memorial for the birthday of Frankie Manning. This was my first time in New York and it was definitely among the most amazing cities I’ve been to. The two of us stayed on 32nd and Broadway and spent the first few days of our trip exploring the city.

Manhattan was far more dense than I’m used to and built upward at heights that ensured my head was tilted back in true tourist fashion while walking down the street for most of my stay. I rode tour buses around both Manhattan and Brooklyn and hopped off and on at my convenience. I managed to take in Central Park, the Empire State Building, Times Square, Grand Central Station, and more. Dave and I even went to see Guys and Dolls with Oliver Platt and Lauren Graham on Broadway. I managed to take a few hours one day to explore Crown Heights in Brooklyn, home to a large population of Chasidic Jews. In Harlem, Dave and I found the Savoy Ballroom marker and enjoyed some amazing chicken.

The dancing portion of the trip was also fantastic. The event ran for almost 5 days. The primary venue was the Manhattan Center including both the Hammerstein Ballroom and Grand Ballroom. On the first full day there was a memorial service for Frankie followed by a second line to Central Park where we danced outdoors all afternoon. Other venues over the 5 days included panels with those who knew Frankie Manning over the years, dance workshops, tributes, competitions, and of course dances every evening.

I learned a lot about dance during my trip and had the opportunity to take instruction from some living legends like Chester Whitmore and Chazz Young. I met Norma Miller and had the opportunity to watch these and other masters dance. Most notable was the dance on stage one night between Chester and Dawn Hampton wherein the two demonstrated how enjoyable dancing could be without being overly complex or athletic. The two were having fun dancing.

While the event was about Frankie Manning and largely Lindy Hop, watching people dance (especially the older dancers in the scene) made it more clear to me than ever that dancing is just moving to the music and having fun with it. Going to workshops and studying moves and technique (as well as being such a beginner as I still consider myself) has made me over analytical about Lindy Hop. I decided then that I would work on rhythm and movement as basic elements independent of Lindy Hop and just have fun with social dancing.

Gaming

This year marked a return to gaming on a more regular basis. Jodie and I started playing World of Warcraft again in the first half of the hear though our interest has dwindled again recently. I became quite addicted to Fallout 3, and have more recently been ignoring it in favour of Dragon Age: Origins which is proving to be one of the best role playing games I’ve played in years.

A group of Calgary swing dancers got together several times to fight for freedom (and gold) and battle supernatural creatures in the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition universe. Our DM is running the War of the Burning Sky Campaign Saga. We’ve been playing infrequently but it’s been a good time. For someone as nerdy as I am, it’s odd that I’ve played so little D&D in the past. Finally my old dice (and some new ones) are being put to use. Hopefully things pick up this year.

Moving

In September I moved to a nice new apartment in another corner of downtown Calgary. Jodie is sharing the place with me. Aside from still missing some furniture, decorations and the like, we’ve settled in quite comfortably. One of the criteria we were looking for in an apartment was the potential to have a cat and this place fit the bill nicely. This year we’ll be filling in the missing bits.

Jodie

Because she’s also awesome. We’ve been together over a year now and don’t hate each other so I take that as a good sign. We went to Edmonton together this year and saw a number of concerts in Calgary including Dragonforce, Blue Man Group, and Video Games Live. I travelled with her to Ontario to meet her family over the holidays. Great people (and cat) and a nice trip on the whole.

Work

Things continue to go well at work. Busy as always and projects are varied. I have more responsibility these days and more opportunities to learn about interesting technology.

Computers

My 2.5 year old Macbook Pro has been flaking out for the past few months. I suspect it’s this issue and now have a case number assigned and a warranty exemption for service. All signs point to the video issue but I need to go to a service centre to confirm. It started as graphical corruption while playing WoW that would crash the software and cause system slowdowns. Now when the corruption occurs, it hangs the whole system and on reboot I get the multilingual kernel panic. I am only able to boot my system again after I repair my partition in Target Disk mode using a second system and reset the PRAM. I’ll be taking it in tomorrow most likely.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 7:27 am and is filed under Blather, Dancing, Gaming, Technology, Travel, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.