Performance Group: the Good and the Bad

(I actually wrote this last week, and delayed posting until now.)

This week was dress rehearsal for our English Country Dance Performance Group, summer session. This Saturday is our first summer performance, at the local Pirate Festival. We have two more performances and then this session will be done. I have been amazingly stressed over building number of dance events, so even as much as I enjoy dance group I will be much relieved when this session is over.

Last week my family went to family camp. I've probably mentioned here before that I do not enjoy camping or sports, so other than the possibility of meeting new friends I wasn't excited about attending. However, despite sleeping in tents and all that, it turned out to be surprisingly relaxing. Jen and I did call dances one night, but being disconnected from the World Wide Web forced us all to stop thinking of upcoming this and looming-on-the-horizon that. Which was good for all of us.

I've been surprised at the amount of stress generated by dealing with a few really outgoing people, who really don't mean any ill but cause disruption by simply being unknowingly loud. How can some people be so loud and just not notice it?

Oh well. Session is almost over. Performance group has it's ups and downs. I've learned the hard way lately, but made some good friends, and I look forward to continued relationships and new friends too.

Trouser update

Sewing helps: Chocolate, music, and extra thread.

The trousers, dictators of my life, are getting done:

And after that I have five shirts to sew:

I'm getting tired of sewing white.

The two main points of my Life

Dance activities are going well. The Ballroom has been rented for December; I may actually make more than $20 on the classes I'm teaching next week; and we have two more performance practices before dress rehearsal and actual performance. I will be very glad when the summer classes and performances are over, because as enjoyable as it is to teach dance this round has been rather stressful: exhausting physically with all the sewing of costumes, and relationally as I deal with unwitting and unruly performers. People can be so(to put it bluntly) rude without(I think) even knowing it. Do I ever do that? I hope not.
The trousers are coming along. I have the six aforementioned pairs mostly constructed, and I have to cut another soon and then move on to the men's shirts. Our sewing room is not air conditioned, and with this abnormally hot weather sewing is a real chore. Plus I'm really getting tired of looking at the boring white bedsheets that make up the trousers. It may come to a point where I say to the guys, you're wearing them whatever stage they're in so just deal with it!