Fun stuff
Published Tue, Nov 25 2008 11:44 AM
A couple of years ago, one of my wife's co-workers invited us to come and watch her and the Plateau Scottish Country Dancers perform at the Pacific Northwest Scottish Highland Games and Clan Gathering. We went, but we somehow missed their performance. We still had a lot of fun.
This year we went again, and once again, we missed their performance. But this time we did manage to hook up with Cindy and had a pretty good time watching the opening ceremonies and hanging out. Cindy invited us to learn Scottish Country Dancing and to join the group. We thought about it for a while, and this November we decided to give it a try.
I've got two left feet, or since I'm actually left handed, maybe I've got two right feet. In any case, I've somehow managed to get through forty-nine years of life without actually learning how to dance. Betty's been wanting to take dancing lessons with me for a long time, and so now we're finally making the time, and it's a lot of fun.
As far as I know, I don't have a drop of Scottish blood in me, but I am interested in Scottish lore and culture. Betty doesn't know for sure, but she does have some ancestors from the British Isles. Anyway, Betty and I found the highland games to be a lot of fun. When we move to Tennessee (things are coming together on that front) we'll probably look for a local group of Scottish country dancers to join and go to the nearest highland games whenever we get the chance. It's that much fun.
Starting in January, we're going to be learning Scottish Gaelic. We'll be taking a ten week course every Wednesday night. I figure I might as well get a jump on it, so I looked for some online materials. The BBC has a page with several bits of instructional material, so I think I may be in for a good time online.
I've always wanted to learn a new language. Maybe this time I might actually succeed.
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Stanford Matthews responded with:
 | With the Scottish thing, Ubuntu and something about Tennessee it appears you are going to be quite busy. Break a leg doesn't seem like the appropriate way to wish you luck and I don't know Gaelic, so....... good luck with that.
BTW, attending events in the community can be quite refreshing under most circumstances. Just enough to connect to one's surroundings and yet get away from the day to day. |
Perri Nelson responded with:
 | Yes, I’m going to be pretty busy, but I usually am anyway. I also hope to squeeze some racing into my schedule this year. All of these “extracurricular events” keep me sane though, especially with the way that politics goes these days.
Fortunately I've already learned Ubuntu. Most operating systems are fairly easy to learn. It's the various development environments that are a pain to pick up. KDE? Gnome? Which version? Or should I stick with simple UNIX style utilities using standard input and output streams? A lot of that depends on what sort of software development opportunities I see out near Tennessee.
My wife has wanted to move out east for some time, and Tennessee seems to be the place to be. My mother lives there, and it's fairly centrally located as far as my side of the family goes. We went there last summer (2007) and she really loves it. We've been planning on the move ever since, but now it looks like we'll be able to finish the things we need to do here to make it possible. We may be able to move by this summer.
We'll see though. Like all things, it's a work in progress. |
Christopher Hamilton responded with:
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