Just dropped in at the new Awakenings studio to check out the silks and poles with my friend (and instructor) Kira. We took some pictures while we were messing around and trying things out so I thought I’d share them with you guys.  

If you are in the area, come check out the new Manayunk studio yourself! We are having an open house all weekend long.
Friday September 9th from 6:30pm-9:30pm
Saturday and Sunday (the 10th and 11th) from 12noon – 7pm
4151 Main St. Philadelphia, Pa 19127

Hey everyone! I will be assisting in teaching pole dance classes in the Philadelphia area starting in September.

Despite years of learning and performing on my own (I am completely self-taught…never having had any classes or videos until recently), I started looking into local studios to learn even more this past year or so. I found a lot of really awesome studios but nothing compared to the Awakenings studio in King of Prussia. Their instructors are all certified as personal trainers and their classes are, by far, the best organized and regimented.
I was absolutely thrilled when the owner, Heather, asked me to start training as an instructor.

I will be assisting in the teaching of the Level 1 classes (at both the King of Prussia and the new Manayunk location) for the fall session. Once I get my certification and CPR training, I will most likely be teaching classes on my own.

If you have ever been interested in pole dance or pole aerobics, I highly recommend checking this studio out. They have an awesome system of getting their students to build core strength and learn the skills they need to move onto more difficult levels. Plus! My own personal aerials instructor, Kira, will be teaching aerial hammock and also eventually lyra at the Manayunk location. So there is actually more than just pole to learn at Awakenings!

So if you or anyone you know is interested in pole dance, check out the site! We are having a grand opening weekend event at the new studio in Manayunk. There will be free demo classes both Saturday and Sunday! (Sept. 10th and 11th)
Hope to see at least a few of you crazy kids!

 I just recently returned from Pennsic War. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the SCA, Pennsic is one of our largest events in which nearly 15,000 people come together to create a Medieval town for the purpose of sharing research, fighting for our Kingdoms, learning new trades, and experiencing the life of a city dweller in the Middles Ages. (Although, honestly, some people just go for the parties.)

I currently “play” as an early period (most likely Gupta) Indian woman from the region of Andhra Pradesh. There aren’t many of us SCAdians who do South Asian personas and I admit that it is not easy being in the minority. However, I love India’s rich history and culture and I deeply enjoy the research. Not to mention, my garb is much better suited for the Pennsylvania climate in August than my European counterparts’.

Pennsic is definitely one of those things in life that words can not really describe, and so, I was very sneaky and took a few pictures throughout the week to better immerse you in our world:

My normal garb…

Merchant area…

Woodworking trades…

Shopping…

A merchant making more of his wares…

Latin warnings…

John and me all garbed up…

A nice day to air out one’s trousers…

Standing in front of my pavilion…

My bed…

The local coffee shop…

Another merchant area…

Land-boat?…

Night time shopping…

Knitting in our camp (forgive the mundane chair and bottle)…

Sitting on my bed…

The ceiling of my tent at night…

As promised…here is another round of images from my Vancouver trip:

Japa Dog; Vancouver’s famous Japanese style hotdog vendor…

Shopping for cheese…

Hedgehog flavored?

Taking a picture of Cherry taking a picture of our lunch. 

 Japanese candy shop…

New tea place that Matthew told us to check out. It was very good and super cozy inside.

The inside of the tea place…

Matthew catches up with us. Cherry looks upon him fondly.

Various images that Cherry took with her phone…

Although I was out there for a week, the time just seemed to fly by and before I knew it, I was saying goodbye to Cherry again. I can’t tell you how difficult it is to have some of my closest friends live so far away.  I have the same problem with Bob…as she lives out in San Francisco. I am thankful that I am lucky enough to be able to visit them both at least once or twice a year.
I’ve only been back for about a week now and I am already plotting our next get-together. Hopefully the three of us will all be able to meet up soon! We are quite the nerd-force to be reckoned with when we are together and it has been quite a long time since it last happened.

I am here in Vancouver visiting my friends Cherry and Matthew right now. I was very lucky to have narrowly escaped a heat wave that had brought a heat index of over 115 degrees to my area in Pennsylvania. During my stay here in Canada, I’ve been enjoying weather in the uppers 60′s and low 70′s; it is the equivalent of Pennsylvania’s late spring or early fall…which are my two favorite times of the year. 

Visiting Cherry is always one of the most relaxing vacations that I take. Although she is one of my photographers, we don’t ever shoot when I come to stay…in fact, we usually avoid obligations altogether. Instead, we choose to spend most days chatting over tea, visiting museums/aquariums, and gaming. I can’t tell you how badly I needed this vacation. The past two months I’ve been working almost full time as an editor/proof-reader as well as trying to balance my normal schedule of aerial classes, website work, finishing projects, and keeping up with my hobbies. (Some of which I am working on here because they need to be finished before Pennsic.) Things are always hectic in my life but I don’t think I’ve ever been as over-worked as I was before coming here. I am hoping this vacation should give me the reset I needed and I will be able to charge full-speed ahead into my projects when I get home.

I’ve taken a lot of pictures (surprisingly, almost none of Cherry or me…that always seems to happen) and there are enough that I will be dividing them between this entry and the next. (Hence the title “Vancouver Part 1″.) You may notice the filters and effects on the photos. I’ve really grown to like the Instagram filters that the iPhone users have and I found some ways to mimic those with the help of Cherry. I’ve had some great fun playing around with them the other day.

I like Cherry’s guest room a lot…it is very relaxing and cozy:

This is the beach only two or three blocks down from her house:

We went on a walk looking for all of the places that they shot scenes from the show Dead Like Me. This is the intersection and area that George gets hit with the toilet seat in the pilot episode:

You can see that not a whole lot has changed in this area if you watch the scene from the show. Check it out! 

I am fascinated with any place that calls soda “pop”. I think some Americans in the Midwest call it pop but I don’t think anyone from the Northeast area has used that term since the mid 1950′s and it reminds me of old movies. It seems that most of us in the Northeast use the proprietary eponym “coke” to describe all colas.

A few days ago we took a trip down to the aquarium…
 

In the rain forest area, they had one of those open exhibits that you can walk through. To my horror, there were two sloths hanging from high up in the trees of this room. (Most of you know about my fear of sloths, I’m sure.)  Luckily, I felt comforted by an Aquarium worker who was holding the pelt and claws of a dead sloth nearby. This seemed to keep the others at bay.
    

Chai tea break…

Cherry’s mini burgers…

Cherry always has the most detailed and entertaining board games at her place. We seem to stay up late many nights battling Lovecraft-type horror and monsters.
 

Cherry’s little Chibithulu sneaks into our games:

Other random photos that Cherry took over the past few days:
“Serious food is serious business”

More to come!

Heads up! This is going to be an extremely heavy picture blog post. Sorry about that!

John and I recently took my sister and her husband down to Orlando with us. This was actually my sister’s first time to Florida so we planned out a crazy week for her…featuring lots and lots of theme parks.
I will let the pics speak for themselves.

First day in Orlando at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

We really lucked out because the week that we went was the beginning of a Star Wars week. This delighted my sister and Christian since, as you can see from their shirts, they are quite the Star Wars fans.

Christian is gay for Mark Hamill.

I’m more of a Star Trek fan myself.

They had to push a bunch of kids out of the way to get a turn on this thing.

Why does nothing ever work on this ship?

Allie’s new boyfriend.

I don’t know who that guy in the back is….but I like him!

Gaston puts the smack down on some random guy.

John actually let us take a picture of him.

My sister’s first time at the Magic Kingdom. (And possibly last…as I had suspected, she was not a huge fan of it.)

Ahhh…yes…it wouldn’t be the Magic Kingdom unless I get stuck on a ride for hours. Last time it was Splash Mountain…this time we got stuck on Space Mountain.

Taking a break from walking.

That kid in the corner looks as though he thought Christian might actually have had a chance at doing it. Boy, was he disappointed!

Yay! Back at Universal! (Allie’s first time at the WWoHP)

Don’t tell Richards we took his car out for a spin!

I don’t normally brag…but I am AWESOME at the MIB ride/game.

Hogsmeade! Time for Butterbeer!

Sugar overload.

I really love Butterbeer.

Christian is a light-weight.

I also love Pumpkin Juice.

Here I am again..another Butterbeer in hand. I think that if I was part of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, I’d probably have to play the town lush.

So that is our last trip down to Orlando until the end of summer. (It is just too hot and too crowded in July and August.)
However, we shall be going back again in September…possibly twice in September! It is going to be hard to lay off the butterbeer for that long though.

I’m not sure if I have talked about RBCDays on this blog yet. But just in case, I shall explain it again.

My friends and I have these parties at my house called Rock Band and Cake Days. What we do at these parties is pretty self explanatory…play Rock Band and eat cake. My friend George and I started RBCDay about two and a half years ago when we decided that rather than celebrate Valentine’s Day, we would start our own nifty holiday. Hence, RBCDay was born. George seems to be my partner in crime when it comes to most fun inventions and ideas. You may remember him from my blog about the Moo-Moo Massacre…as he also had a hand in that as well.

Now, RBCDays occur not only in February, but sporadically throughout the year. We generally have anywhere between 20-30 people attend. (Although I think we had more than 30 at this most recent one.)  Luckily my friends are a clean crowd and none of them are big drinkers, so we don’t actually have many mishaps when it comes to keeping my house clean. They pretty much pick up after themselves and they all take off their shoes (and they use coasters!) so it’s all good.  

Pictures never do RBCDay justice, so this time, I decided to take a video!

I just wanted to take a moment to not only show off some new aerial dance images and videos…but also to promote the studio in which I have recently started attending.

I discovered the Pole Academy a few months ago when I met and befriended one of their instructors. It is one of the few (and possibly only) pole dance studios in the area that also teach other forms of aerial dance (like silks, lyra, trapeze, etc). Although I really go there for the silks and circus arts, they also have pole classes in the adjacent room that I go to just for fun after my silks class. In all the years I have taught/performed pole dancing, I have actually never had any real formal lessons; I have always been completely self-taught. As a result, I have some very peculiar ways of performing certain holds and spins. It was about time I learn the proper way of doing things.

Here is a short video of some of the poses and tricks I’ve been working on and messing around with…as well as a few clips of things I’ve already mastered.

Here I am playing around on the aerial hammock…

And here is my instructor, Kira, messing around with the trapeze…

If you live in the Doylestown/Philadelphia area and you are interested in aerial/pole dance, I highly recommend that you check out this studio! It is a beautiful, clean building in a very nice area. The instructors are all extremely talented and the cost of classes is minimal (especially if you do a monthly rate).
PA Pole Academy

I apologize for the delay in posting more images from my trip last week; I have been quite busy working on writing projects and prepping site updates for May. I recently got a proof-reading job for a book that is to be published by Oxford Press in a few months. So, at this point, I am trying to clear some of my own personal writing projects off my plate…allowing me to devote more time to this book. I apologize in advance if I seem to be absent from my various online social profiles or if it takes me quite a long time to respond to e-mails.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent all of last week in San Francisco visiting my close friend Bob. We spent much of the weekend working at WonderCon but I still had several days to spend with her before heading back to Pennsylvania. After all the excitement and dealing with crowds at the convention, we opted for a quieter, more peaceful week. We would meet up for lunch in between her classes at college, or sit at the park, or walk around the city. I was thankful that the weather was quite pleasant the entire time I was out there. We spent many an afternoon sitting on the balcony of Samovar that overlooks the park, sipping tea and chatting.

I also discovered a knitting shop not far from Samovar and the park. I feel in love with this place almost immediately upon entering the room. The shop is called Artfibers and it is located on the third story of a building on Sutter Street. It is unlike any knitting supply shop I have ever been in. Rather than just having shelves stacked with skeins and balls of yarn, it instead features tabletops that are covered with samples of knitted fibers. Below each tabletop are bins that contain large spools of the fiber that can be measured and cut to the exact yardage one needs. I wish we had something similar here on the East Coast; if we do, I have yet to find it. I spent at least a good hour or so in that shop before purchasing some pretty new yarn to play around with. Next time I go back to San Francisco to see Bob, I will be sure to come with a list of fibers I need for new projects.

Just like last year, I was out in San Francisco with Bob during my birthday. I guess it is becoming somewhat of a tradition for me now. I don’t normally place too much importance on birthdays but it is a rather happy coincidence that I seem to always end up visiting Bob during that week.  She asked me what I wanted to do to celebrate this year. Although I am always reluctant to make much of a fuss about it, I did agree that going to dinner would be nice and then perhaps donning the famous flying squirrel outfit once more. (It is a Kigurumi outfit that Bob and Kawai have hanging up in their closet…I’ve grown quite fond of wearing it.) Oh…and of course, to top off the evening, watching Galaxy Quest.
So here I am, with good friends, watching an Alan Rickman movie dressed as a flying squirrel. I really couldn’t be happier.

(Ps. Bob, you are awesome for indulging me so!)

Now I am back home, absolutely swamped with work, and missing one of my dearest friends. I must say, looking out the window, the dreary weather today is a good match to my mood.
I would sit and write more but I am afraid I must get going. I have an aerial silks class tonight and I want to get a make-up tutorial done before I head out this evening. I have to get the new site updates done by this weekend. (If anyone is interested in submitting tutorials, I would really love the help this week!)