a new house to fit my hobbies

Apparently my house was NOT made for hooping! Did you know that it is actually dangerous to try to choreograph a hoola hooping belly dancing routine in a square living room? Or any other room in the house? Things will fall off the shelves if hit by flying hoops! I need a round house!
I'm actually pretty serious about that... I've always loved organic shapes and have coveted adobe houses for about a decade now. I envy all you southwestern folk! They just aren't all that practical here in the Zone 5 world. Every time I see one in a magazine (often portrayed in mags such as Natural Home), my knees go weak when I think of the lovely navaho blankets draped across my hearth and sofas, as I curl up in front of my organic-shaped fireplace. I LOVED the hobbits' homes in Lord of the Rings, with the round doors and adobe and plaster-looking insides. There is actually something I could build here in the north that would be a compromise - it's a sprayed cement round home built by Monolithic. There are actually a couple within a few hours of Ottawa, that people have built in the last few years, and we may go visit them over the winter. I'm sure one of their houses would have a place to hoop! I'll just have to start thinking about where to put my square furniture...

tania, like a dancer

So, I pledged some money to a local college radio station for their recent funding drive, during one of Arek and my favourite programs, Drunken Master Review. It's a program where a bunch of guys sit around talking about new and old movies. They know pretty much everything about every movie ever made, and they are absolutely hilarious. So... since they gave out the phone number as we were driving home one night, I just picked up my handy cell phone and called right away. The helpful guy on the other end of the line took all my info, first name, last name, address, etc, and credit card info. Later during the show, the Drunken Master and his friends read out the names of the people who had recently pledged, thanking them. They get to my name and the person on the other end of the phone hadn't given them my last name (it's very long, Polish, and complicated, not unlike my husband hahahahaha), so they just had my first name.

"We'd also like to thank Tania... with no last name... so.. just Tania... aaahhh she sounds like a dancer..."

You could not have tickled me more pink. I started clapping and laughing, a bit like a lunatic, but a happy one none-the-less! I don't really know why it pleased me so much, I DO like to dance, I'm positive I would never introduce myself as Tania, dancer, but it just was funny that he picked one of the activities closed to my heart.

I just about picked up the phone and pledged again!

Anyway, I promised you a glimpse at my hula solo.... I'm currently taking a belly-dancing class, and in mid-December, our class is putting on a recital. My teacher gets all her classes together once in a while, with a friend's classes and they have a show-down of sorts, well, just a recital really. It is mostly just all the other students, plus one guest per student, so it adds up to about 150 people! Our class is starting to put together the choreography, and the teacher thought it might be neat to have each of us do a mini-solo (just about one minute), with PROPS! So, someone will dance with candles, some with swords, some with sticks, and the only prop I could think of that I had, was a hoop so that's what I'm doing! I'm not sure how it's all going to work out, but I'll keep you updated. I tried shimmy-ing with the hoop, but instead of looking sexy and dance-like it looked like I was trying to seizure myself out of a Jeffries tube! (3 points to the first person to email me knowing what that is)

halloween geeks please!

So, you take one Dremel tool,

Several pumpkins,

Several patterns from the Dremel website

One family,

And mix for great results:

My brother in law did the following one without a dremel, just the old fashioned way with a knife. You can't see it in the dark picture, but in the other picture below, you can see he cleverly used the inner guts as pumpkin vomit.






We actually didn't have the pumpkins out at our place tonight. We went to our friends' house and put them out there, as we were helping them give out candy. They just had a baby this week, and dad was taking the other boys out trick or treating, while mom was home feeding, so we took over the job of door answerers. We all dressed up like pirates and answered the door with mighty "Hars!", and "Hello maties!"

Also, happy 9th birthday Wally-wally-bing-bong-woo! aka Warlock: