I performed a dance solo!

I actually did it…

It was for a benefit, for a good friend with breast cancer. I nearly hyperventilated beforehand, and I almost hyperventilated again afterwards.

I’m glad I did it. Everyone said, “Now it will be easy next time.” Um, no. Maybe in another thirteen years I’ll do another solo. But I think Nyssa understood that I did it for her. :) And she’s the one who mattered.

See more progress on: Perform a Middle Eastern dance solo

The loss of two legends

If you haven't heard, Robert Jordan, author of the best-selling fantasy series The Wheel of Time, died Sunday afternoon. This comes on the heels of Madeleine l'Engle's death on September 6, just ten days earlier.

For me, this is a sad, sad thing. The Wheel of Time is one of the best fiction series I've ever read, and currently my favorite. I started reading it about the time The Lord of Chaos was out, around 1995. I remember how quickly I read them all...and how quickly I re-read them. That's no small thing, considering that each book-and there are eleven in the main series-is at least seven hundred pages, and two are over a thousand! I've since read every book at least two times; some I've read as many as five times.

Madeleine l'Engle, however, goes back much further. I'm thirty-four; when I was a kid there wasn't exactly a wealth of science fiction and fantasy literature for us. Basically, it was Madeleine l'Engle or C.S. Lewis's Narnia books. And like many sci fi and fantasy geeks "of a certain age," A Wrinkle in Time was my introduction to the genres. I say "genres" because it blends the two, using science to explain its fantasy elements.

Even today, I love her work. Of course, I can read through them just a bit faster now... But my husband has never read them; can you believe it? He went to school to get a library degree, and he's getting a teaching certificate so he can work in a school library media center...and he's never read A Wrinkle in Time. Simply amazing.

But Robert Jordan and Madeleine l'Engle had something else in common: both were openly observant Christians. Jordan was a "High Church" Episcopalian (his words); coincidentally, l'Engle appears to have been an Episcopalian, too. So while the lose for science fiction and fantasy fans is great, it's even greater for us Christians among them.

It's comforting to know that, regardless of the suffering they experienced at the end of their lives, both are free of pain and sorrow right now, and living a life of joy in heaven. So I grieve for myself and for this world, and most of all for the families they left behind.

60% Nerdy?

Wait, that's a lot, isn't it?

You Are 60% Nerdy

You may be a bit surprised with this score, but your more of a closet nerd than an actual nerd. Stop denying your inner nerd! You're truly dorkier than you think.

How Nerdy Are You?

How many times must I say it? I'm a geek, not a nerd!

Back from Dragon*Con!

It was great! It was wonderful! It was totally exhausting...

What did I do? Well, I talked about geeky stuff with my geeky friends, played geeky (perhaps even nerdy) board games, did some roleplaying with Blackmoor, and blew up an entire sector.

Oh wait, that last one was Mir-O-Wyn... She also ate computer chips and plotted the overthrow of Alpha Sector, but that's standard behavior for a Matter Eater in Purge.

I ate Suno and things which I can't pronounce or even read the labels of. (But my friends assured me it was, indeed, food...) Yeah, that was a field trip to Suno and Super H Mart.

Costumes were fun, too. I modified Thunder Paladin, (excuse me, the Shade of Trokair), giving him a +1/+1. (I was a +1/+1 counter on Sunday. Comfy costume...)

I loved Dragon*Con. When can I go again?