Light The Cauldron

It's time for the final four dancing a billion dances, but we won't know who wins until next week! Top Four Dance Notice how much partner work there was, where it was girl-girl and guy-guy? I thought that was pretty cool. Not sure if there was an agenda for that - I just liked that it was a change of pace. I always like change of pace - you all know that. (Note: apparently there was an agenda, according to Nigel. Blah.) Gotta mention the intros - it seems like Valerie is leaning more on her contemporary style instead of tap, which she started with at the beginning. However, Zack still sticks with the tap shoes for his introduction. Valerie and Ricky: African Jazz with Sean Not really getting the whole "chase" sequence out of the dance. Great dancing, though! I liked the lifts by both of them at the end. Jessica and Zack: Broadway with Spencer Zack back with the stairs! (He had some in the first live episode.) I love how the dancing matches the music ve

Saturday night, Season 8 of Doctor Who  began with a big dinosaur of a premiere. Well, it began with a dinosaur. A gigantic dinosaur tramping around the Thames and making quite a ruckus! The series premiere was an interesting mix of presenting new information while hearkening back to some old information. Let's break it down. Old information: The Doctor changes, but he doesn't change. There was a lot of time spent from Clara's point of view: her Doctor was gone. In his place is an eccentric, old  Doctor. But Clara was reminded from Vastra, the Twelfth Doctor, and  the Eleventh Doctor (surprise!) that he is still the same man. While the Twelfth Doctor might be older and Scottish with eyebrows that want to secede from the rest of his face, he's still the Doctor: a clever man who can quickly come to the conclusion that the dinosaur was set on fire like other people in the city. New information: The Twelfth Doctor recognizes his face. This piece of information mig

Hey! Another belated post due to obligations last Wednesday. Fortunately, I don't have any obligations next week, so my post will be up by Thursday morning! To change it up a little bit, I'm pitting the dancers in a couple against each other. Who were my eyes more attracted to? Who seemed more comfortable with the dance? Who knocked our socks off? Group performance I'm never a fan of costumes that make it impossible to know who is dancing. Do we want to be kept in the dark? No! We want to find our favorite dancer and watch them the whole time. If you have a favorite dancer, of course. I don't anymore. Ricky vs. Valerie:  A moving  prop! They must have practiced that for a long time to find out the right swing of the...swing. Light and airy. Ricky wins the dance for his shoes. Casey vs. Jessica:  Ah, disco. I noticed this last week and this week, but Casey really gets into  the routines. Just watch his face! He's like, "Ooh yea, this is so cool a

Saturday, August 23 is a big day for Whovians. It is the day that series 8 (and year 51) begins of our favorite television program, Doctor Who . We will all be watching this weekend, whether it's in the theaters, at home on TV, or the next day on Amazing Prime (which is what I will be doing). But you should watch it, too. Yes, you. Why? Well, I'm glad I guessed that you would ask that. Here are some reasons. This is a great starting point. Doctor Who  is a series that doesn't flow in a straight line. There's no obligation to go back to the first episode from 1963 and watch every single episode up to last year's Christmas special. (Thank goodness for that.) The show has provided many different starting points for fans. Some want to see what the old series was about, and some might just be interested in anything past 2005 (that's when the new series started). When my brothers urged me to start watching, I began with the first episode of the 2005 re

Welcome to the rapid-fire SYTYCD blog! Top 8 dance: So we all know by now that Rudy went home, so it's a little funny that he's such a highlight of the group video. Tanisha, too. Maybe it's because I already know they went home, and I just am noticing them more. I liked this one, once again, because it wasn't eight different things happening at once. At times there was, but it was restrained. Ricky and Jamie: Contemporary with Travis  There were lots of fun flips and lifts that weren't normal, and it made an average contemporary routine much better. It could have used a few more close-ups of them...well...smiling. (The song was "Smile" after all.) Valerie and Ryan: Samba with Jean-Marc Geez Valerie's outfit leaves nothing to the imagination, huh? Not a big fan of the tailfeather action. You know what I noticed? She dances very well in heels because she's a tapper - she's used to dancing with some heel action. I liked it! Casey

If anyone mentions Pinterest to you, there is that vision that you get in the back of your mind, right? You know what I'm talking about. The phrase "I got this from my Pinterest board!" provokes images of cute little home decor projects, fancy centerpieces, or delicious chocolate desserts. At least, that's what it does for me. Most people who have a Pinterest account are thought to be middle aged moms who find really cute ideas but never actually do  them, right? Well, not exactly. Not anymore. Pinterest was created, I believe, to share ideas and "pin" them to your various "boards" that you could create. People could follow your boards and pin the ideas they liked to their own boards, and the sharing process would start all over again. The pins could take you to various sites all over the Internet, where you could find how to make that gorgeous macrame lampshade or something. I'm sure many people still use it primarily for food and de

Short and Stout I have begun to get a real liking for a stout beer. For someone who normally doesn't drink beer (or if she does, it's a wheat beer) liking a stout beer is certainly strange. In Longmont, there is a brewery called Left Hand, and they produce a milk stout called Nitro. Don't ask me why I chose to drink it one night, but I did, and I really liked it. I liked it enough to remember the name and order it a second time. I really like New Glarus' Spotted Cow, but to really throw off my friends, I tell them Nitro is my favorite beer. They usually give me a pretty entertaining look. School Returns Monday begins my sixth year of teaching, and in these final days of summer, I'm finding that I am so prepared that I don't have a whole lot to do in the classroom! We private school teachers don't have to turn in our keys over the summer, so I am in my classroom for a couple of hours about four times a week in the summer. I can do all my church an

FACT: The enjoyment of a movie is directly related to the experience of the moviegoer. I recently went to my local cinema to enjoy everyone's favorite movie: Guardians of the Galaxy . Well, almost everyone. (I thought it was good - not fabulous.) It turns out that the theater recently did a major overhaul, converting into a dine-in theater. I was not expecting that, though it was nice to have a little table for my Buncha Crunch and a reclining seat. The thing I really wasn't expecting were the patrons surrounding me. To my left were two preschool-age boys. To my right was a preschool girl. None of them could keep their mouth shut during the movie. Did the cruddy experience I had affect my enjoyment of the movie? I have no doubt that it did. If I had been in a quiet, normal theater (like I was expecting for the first showing of the day), I would have allowed myself to be taken for a crazy ride. But because I kept being taken out of the experience by annoying children (wh

It's Tara Lipinski time! Last we saw her, we were all raving about her television prowess with fellow figure skater Johnny Weir. Now she's with Mary and Nigel. Hopefully the snarkiness continues! Group Dance I enjoy the fact that we can actually see the dancers' faces in the group routine. I hate spending half the song wondering who did that flip. The ladies look fine in their outfits - the guys? Not so much. I'm no longer a huge fan of the group routines because some people (*cough* Tyce! *cough*) load up the routines with eight things happening at the same time, and it's so hard to follow. I like those routines that have the group (or just two groups) doing something together. Introduction Blip: I keep forgetting Zack is tap! Bridget and Brandon: Bollywood with Nakul Dev Mahajan Somehow Brandon always gets stuck with Bollywood, disco...or both! He's awesome, but isn't he originally contemporary? Out of all the ladies, Bridget is the one I rem

My family did not camp when I was a kid. Scratch that. My parents hate camping, so we never did it. That's better. My parents' idea of a vacation includes a hotel room, pool, and continental breakfast. It does not  include mosquitoes, campfire smoke, and the lack of a shower. While we did many a road trip, we never parked our car at a campsite. However, as we children grew older, we actually discovered that we liked  camping. I was influenced by one of my friends, Erin, who used to do a three-week camping excursion that included family camp and church camp. When we were in college, my group, the Fantastic Five, decided to use Erin's camping prowess and go camping ourselves! We've camped together three times since then, with varying degrees of success, but it always guaranteed a good story. This weekend I went camping with my church, and had a very good time. While there wasn't a large amount of mosquitoes, there was a large amount of hairy caterpillars,