Start to Finish

Whew! That was weird. I just came back from an orbit. I was lost in space, couldn't find my bearings. I knew what had to get done, but had no pathway to get where I needed to start.

In hindsight, 4 trips in March/April/May (5 days at Cues and Tattoos in Seattle, 10 days at GS/TT in Michigan and 8 days in Pura in Barcelona, 5 days at Tribal Fest in Sebastopol) wasn't such a good idea, especially when I'm trying to produce Devotion in June and keep you all posted on the progress after such a phenomenal KickStarter response.

So what happened was...I was talking to my Mom yesterday. We meet every Sunday afternoon when I'm in town. We have tea. I do whatever tasks she has lined up (yesterday was setting up a wireless connection - oh, the ethernet cable goes in the slot marked with a circle, not with an arrow - got it.) And we talk. We talk about all sorts of things. My Mother, Bess, is a retired librarian. She is really smart and interested in everything. She is able to carry on a conversation about almost anything if you give her a little info. She is 88 years old, an avid birdwatcher, walks every day and can take the SamTrans bus anywhere on the planet. Mom is full of enthusiasm and positivity, but can also lob a mean reality check (watch our Warren Buffet, she is not happy with your decision to mine coal in Montana.) But sometimes she just sits and listens.

Since we haven't seen each other much in the past months, there was a lot to catch up on. I found myself on a rant, trying to make sense of the fact that I was orbiting and couldn't land on the path of logic that is the balm for Capricorns. After practically going hoarse from monopolizing the conversation I finally paused long enough for her to say, "What are you going to learn about iMovie when you go to the Apple Store tomorrow?" I replied, "I want them to show me how to take some lecture footage that I've loaded into the program and walk me through the creation of a simple project from start to finish." BING!

After a few more minutes I told her that I had projects waiting at home and had to go. I drove home along Skyline Blvd, a strange semi-rural ridge that separates Daly City from South San Francisco which is shrouded in fog 90% of the time, it's also a great place to think. The phrase start to finish kept running through my mind. When I got home the house was empty because Loretta is house-sitting for a few weeks. As much as I love to come home to her company, the cat, dinner preparations and more chatting, I really needed an evening of total solitude. I sat down at the computer and completed the projects from start to finish. It was as if I had been released from the orbit and had landed back in the land of logic. I woke this morning to a renewed sense of Capricorn. I drank tea, knit for a bit while I watched a knitting video (check out Craftsy.com if the mention of knitting video makes your heart race.) I felt my brain start to focus, reached for my notebook, made a plan for the day and am here with you right now.

So that's it. You are now deputized, in the reading of this blog post, to say to me Start to Finish anytime I fail to post or complain about being too busy. I also added a Follow By Email gadget so you cane be notified when I post, which should be frequently. Please sign up and let me know, via comments, that you are out there. Tomorrow's post will be the journey of the Devotion project that I promised you back in February.

Dancing in front of the Family Tree

Michigan; debuting the new GS format; 2 Day GS ATS® Classic and 2 Day GS ATS® Modern at the CCPlus Dance Center, hosted by Czigany Dance.

We asked our FCBD® Sister Studios how we could streamline the 4 day 20 hour course and they gave us great insight which we put to use; the Anatomy and Music lectures will be available as On-line Classes, with pop quizzes, review and practical application in the studio class; after this year Floorwork will become an option as it's not really a general skill. We are keeping it through this year because it was in the course descriptions that had already been booked-but it's really a specialty and not applicable for everyone and you can certainly be a full-fledged ATS® dancer without it! We've also arranged the step families as topics whenever possible (walking, undulations, etc.) and added a What is ATS®? talk at the start of the course so the whole package is a continuum rather than a roster of steps. 

With this lighter load we've been able to expand the number of students we can accommodate in GS for ATS®, thereby reaching more students at one time. Suffice to say the new format is a success!