Who doesn’t Jean-Marc Genereaux love?

Last night’s performance finale of SYTYDC made me want to revisit Blake the Judge‘s earlier work as a contestant on Season 1 of SYTYCD. When he talked about what is expected of the Top 4, I was all like, “How would you know, you were cut from the Top 6!” Burn!

That’s not fair though, because he really deserved to be in the Top 4. I was able to verify this, because I happen to have seasons 1-4 of SYTYCD on DVD. Impossible, you say? The show hasn’t been released on DVD? That may be, but it didn’t stop the Internet from selling it to Rob to give me as a birthday present.

So I watched the last three episodes of Season 1.

That finale, by the way, was the only one to have a Top 2 Girl routine that didn’t suck. What’s that about? The Top 2 Guy routine is always killer, and Top 2 girls always a bit of a buzz-kill. Donyelle/Heidi Broadway, Lacey/Sabra Fox Dance (not to be confused with the Fox Trot), Katee/Courtney Broadway (hmm, another Broadway) and Natalli/Allie a-Go-Go.

But Melody and Ashle’s Mia Michaels piece was damn good.

I wonder if the lackluster girl routine has anything to do with girls not tending to win the competition. Excepting Sabra.

I don’t have a vote in Canada, but I’d be happy to see any of the Final 4 win. I don’t think Natalli is very likely to take it, although she does have that je ne sais quoi. I think Allie also is unlikely because of the aforementioned gender bias.

Nico and Miles remind me of Twitch and Joshua, in a Canadian white guy kind of way. Nico was the really popular one at the start of the season … but “untrained” B-boy Miles excelled in every style and came from behind … Unlike Twitch, however, Nico does not seem to have lost any thunder in the final weeks.

Oh, oh! What I really wanted to comment on is the damn love fest behind the judge’s table. Why must Jean-Marc Genereaux profess his love to every dancer after every performance? It’s embarrassing. Is it a Quebecois thing?

Pilgrims and Canadians

I know I’m probably supposed to write something about Thanksgiving, but I’d rather talk about So You Think You Can Dance Canada. That’s right, I’ve got dual dance citizenship.

I forgot I got the Canadian channel that runs SYTYCDC, so I missed the first few episodes. Interestingly, I wasn’t really that into it at first. Maybe because I hadn’t gotten to know the dancers yet. They use many of the same choreographers and judges as the U.S. version, so how could I not get completely wrapped up in it?

I don’t remember what the turning point was, but I can say that I’ve watched the Natalli/Vincent contemporary piece about 400 times since last week.

Let me back up to say that I have been obsessed with SYTYCD since the first season, when I blogged about it only a little. For some reason, I didn’t think anyone I knew was watching it. Back when I worked in a newsroom where people talked about such things, everyone talked about American Idol, Project Runway, Top Model… but I never heard any mention of SYTYCD. Imagine my surprise to learn that some of my readers…family members, even (see you at Thanksgiving tomorrow, guys!), were watching.

So I’m pretty sure there’s only one person reading this (Hi, Chelsea!) who cares what I think about tonight’s SYTYCDC … but when I’m posting things like the following on her Facebook wall, it makes me realize that I need a larger forum:

I would have said Izaak screwed Arassay … and maybe he did because people were worried about him, so they voted for him, assuming Arassay and Vincent would be safe. Silly Canadians. That would never happen in the U.S. (Ahem! Kherington and Comfort. Will and Mark.)

That reminds me of a joke made on The Soup about dancers having the weirdest spelled names, ever. Seriously. I’m talking to you, Season 2 Jaymz (cus you know that’s not how his parents spelled it.)

Thoughts on tonight’s performances: Loving Nico and Natalli as a couple (rockin’ quick step); Continued to be impressed with Allie’s solos: an actual ballerina, en pointe, way cool; and oh. my. god. who are these dancers working out with because I’ve never seen such washboard abs. (And I used to go to a class at Crunch LA called Washboard Abs.) I’m not even talking about Nico and Miles, although, wow. But Lisa and Natalli? Hello!

Oh, and Leah Miller? So not Cat Deeley.

The castle in my backyard

Construction has begun on Rob’s dream: a backyard building where he can practice martial arts. I have a vague fantasy that I’ll be able to park my car in the garage when all is said and done, but who knows, he may decide that the kettlebell collection needs to stay where it is.

It’s a stressful thing, home construction. I’m in a weird place where I don’t actually have any opinion about what goes on inside the building (please don’t ask me how many electrical outlets and where they should go), but I’ll be damned if the roof is going to be “gray” instead of “stone.”


I’m excited though, to see the frame start to take shape. It makes me want to follow through with some of the improvements I’ve been meaning to do. My last effort at home decor was painting 3 of 4 walls in the kitchen a lemon yellow that Rob hates. I meant to do all 4 walls, but I got tired, and thought I’d save the last wall for another day. Then I decided it would be too much of a pain to paint around the sliding glass door and underneath the kitchen cabinets, so I left the last wall white.

That was President’s Day, I think. For some reason, I schedule painting for days when I’m home but Rob has to work. The green tea library walls were done last Veteran’s Day…the merlot foyer over Thanksgiving and the lemon kitchen on President’s Day. Might have been Martin Luther King Day.

Up next is repainting the peeling eave along the side of the house. Last weekend, Rob’s parents helped me pressure-wash the old paint off with a portable little contraption that I later broke by clogging it with mud. While we were at it, our friend/subcontractor doing the site prep stopped by and said, “Oh, if I’d known you were doing that I would have brought my giant gas-powered something-or-other that would take care of it in two seconds.”

Man, if I’d only thought to ask!

Other projects in mind are staining our little front porch and hanging bamboo shades in the front windows… but the priority might be repairing the little rusted holes in the gutters.

Empathy

My therapeutic massages were leaving me with aching neck tendons, so I gave those up after ten sessions. I couldn’t even get an appointment for physical therapy for another couple of weeks, and by the time of my appointment, I wasn’t really in all that much pain.

Hadn’t been having headaches at all, really. But my neck still hurt, and my shoulders were tighter than they used to be. Probably there aren’t any kettlebell workouts in my future. What I really needed was some exercises to loosen my shoulders and strengthen the area between my shoulder blades. I would say “the muscles between my shoulder blades,” but apparently I don’t have any! There’s just space. Winged shoulder blades and space.

I don’t much like the exercises I’m supposed to do. It’s very hard to do them without straining the parts of my body I’m supposed to be relaxing.

Here’s the funny thing: The massage therapists seemed very astonished at how tight my shoulders and neck were. Like, to a surprising degree. It’s not possible that I am the tightest-shouldered person they’d ever worked on, and yet, I kept hearing, “Wow, you’re really tight here.” Not in an offhand observational way, either, but as if I were a cancer patient and they were saying, “Now, that is one huge tumor.”

The physical therapists, who you’d think would be perfect specimens since they know so much about the human body, are less confounded by me. One of them confided that she too lacks any sort of muscular connectivity between her shoulder blades. She was the first to inform me that this sort of mutation even existed and that I had it.

Another therapist said that she also has excessively tight upper trapezius muscles. “Like bricks,” she said, tapping the mounds between her shoulders and neck. And when she demonstrated a stretch, she noted that it had been a long time since she’d done it herself, and she really needed it.

I was thinking after my next appointment that I wouldn’t schedule any more, and just do the exercises they’ve already shown me until I see improvement (at which point, of course, I will stop doing the exercises altogether).

But I don’t know, maybe I’ll go for a little while longer. They really understand me.

Is this line secure?

Back in the day, paper records were considered to be the reliable, permanent thing, right? I’m sure there was a time when sending someone an email felt riskier than sending it in the regular mail…or even sending a fax.

If they have the paper in hand, I know they’ve got it. This email thing? I don’t know where it goes, or if it even got to the person. There’s no permanent record.

But for some reason, I consider email more private and effective than regular mail or the fax. It targets a specific person, right? I have no control over who opens the mailbox or checks the fax machine.

I’m trying to get a partial refund for the leg of our American Airlines flight to India that was canceled in April. The Seattle to Chicago part. A lot of flights were canceled that week for inspections, and you can imagine how disconcerting it would have been to miss our Chicago to Delhi flight. Because I am prophetic, and also an Alaska Airlines frequent flier and credit card user … the night before, I booked us on another flight for $5.

Nevertheless, I think we’re entitled to something back for that canceled flight. Without getting into the whole customer service thing, let me just say that I was unsuccessful in getting my refund on the phone or the internet. I was told I had to submit my request in writing. By mail or fax.

So there’s this paper that’s out there somewhere, I don’t know if anyone’s read it, or whose desk it is stacked on. If it went through a computer, it’d be in a queue somewhere, and at some point, someone would have to deal with it, right?

I’m having these thoughts when my boss tells me he’s going to fax me my annual evaluation for me to sign and send back to him. OMG, fax? Like, just anyone could pick it up off the machine? (Nevermind that I’m the only one here). Still, that means it’s been printed out and someone other than my boss is actually putting those papers through a machine. It’s so exposed.

And about this time, I discover an old email I wrote at a previous job, venting about an old-school secretary, recently returned from retirement, who flipped out when I couldn’t produce the paper record of a leave request.

An email would be acceptable, I was told:

This serves in lieu of the old leave slips we used to use. It becomes part of our permanent payroll records, along with a new report. Print a copy for your records. Everyone needs to keep a copy of what they asked for and his approval. Then if there are any questions later, they have the information they need to support their claim.

I had vented:

Upon learning that we don’t use leave slips anymore, Secretary is now trying to “come up” with another way to do it. See, they used to give leave slips to Boss and Boss would sign them and Secretary would make a copy on yellow paper for the employee’s records. (Must be yellow paper) But absent that policy… she’s going to make everyone print out the e-mail so Secretary can make a bunch of copies so everyone has records of everything on paper. That they have to put somewhere and remember where it is should they ever need it. Because that makes a lot more sense than looking it up on the computer!!

Apropos of nothing, does your Blogger dashboard give you the option of typing in Hindi, or is this a souvenir setting from blogging in India?

Situation: Lunch

I have a weird food issue. Frequently, I don’t know what I want to eat and nothing sounds good.

At work, this manifests itself in my not eating anything at all until the problem becomes not only figuring out what I want to eat, but also getting to a place that serves it to me fast enough that I don’t collapse from starvation.

It was once suggested that I automate the process. Just have the same thing every day. Except the same thing doesn’t sound good every day. I had a spell when packaged fat free tuna salad on crackers was the best thing since sliced bread … and now it totally grosses me out.

I ate at the food co-op deli 2-4 times a week for months and now when I go there, nothing appeals to me.

Lately, I’m liking Japanese food. Teriyaki and sushi, depending on the day. I’ve discovered a conveyor belt sushi bar that is superfast and cheap by sushi standards. It’s a real sushi bar though; I can’t eat grocery store sushi anymore, not even from Trader Joe’s, because the rice and seaweed is so rubbery.

I’m almost too embarrassed to go there more than twice a week. You’d think there would be a lot of people who pop in, sit down, grab a few plates from the conveyor belt, eat and leave. But I feel weird when it takes me less than 5 minutes to eat my lunch. Like I need to linger over tea or something.

This restaurant is awesome though, it also has a regular teriyaki menu AND hibachis where the chef prepares the food at the table. Makes me wish, not for the first time, that I didn’t always eat lunch alone.

Otherwise, I swear there are more teriyaki joints than there are Starbucks around here. How in the world do they all stay in business? Have other people figured out, like I have, that the California rolls are best at Tokyo Stop, and the salmon teriyaki is better at Jackpot Teriyaki, but Best Teriyaki is where to go when time is of the essence?

I am calm. And assertive. Calm. And assertive.

As the weather is turning, the dog park has become less fun. Also, I got the cold shoulder a few weeks ago from a couple with a boxer, with whom Isis had played before, but on this day they didn’t seem to care for Isis’ aggressive play tactics (unusually so, for her) and left. And there was no one else there.

Our yard has gotten smaller, as construction has begun on Rob’s 2,100-square-foot dream, and the Dog Whisperer says I should be walking her at least twice a day anyway … so I busted out the prong collar and we hit the streets.

The plan is to wake up and walk at 7 a.m. I’ve found success with setting out dog-walking clothes the night before, and just throwing them on, instead of showering and getting ready for work and before walking her. (Some days I’ve even walked her after work, too!)

Isis already has figured out that when my phone alarm goes off at 7 that a walk is in store, because she rests her head on the bed and whines at me if I try to hit snooze and go back to sleep.

She’s doing pretty well. She doesn’t pull on the leash too badly, and she only lunges and barks at some of the passing bicycles. I’ve been giving her B+ most of the time, with a few C’s when she’s had an outburst. But she hasn’t faced any real challenges yet. I can’t give her an A- until she successfully passes another dog without barking at it.

I was scared to get back on the walking program because I’d been seeing a woman walking a perfectly behaved husky like clockwork at 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., and a man around the same times with two large, mellow rottweilers. I shudder to think of how it would go down if we passed either of them. I’d have to cross to the other side of the street, even where there’s no sidewalk, and I’m still not sure she could manage to keep walking without barking and lunging like the vicious attack dog she isn’t, but was sort of bred to be.

I have to confess that I take extreme pleasure in seeing other dog owners having a worse time than me. On the way to dinner on my birthday, we saw a woman in a crosswalk with a shepherdy looking dog wearing a little rain jacket. The dog was leaping in the air as the woman tried to cross the street. It grabbed the leash in its mouth and dragged the woman to the curb.

The other day I saw a guy with a dog on a green leash. The green leash is a dead giveaway that the dog attends a certain obedience school that makes and sells particularly strong green leashes. Isis and I may have flunked the class twice, but we still use the leash. The guy had a German shorthair or something, and all I saw as I drove past was a lot of frustrated leash-jerking and a forced sit.

Ha ha ha. Other people have worse-behaved dogs than I do.

I haven’t gotten her a Halloween costume this year, but here she is in her sporty Halloween bandana (Thanks, Aunt Louise!)


I don’t know why she looks so depressed when I try to take her picture all dressed up. Here she is in action. With, of all things, a nasty disintegrating soccer ball.

Wired (mostly wireless, actually)

It was a tech-heavy birthday this year. With a GPS thingy (Thanks, Rob!) — TomTom to many, but I call her Mandy, after the name of the voice I selected — the HD TiVo (Thanks, Dad!) and the PetCam (Thanks, Mom!), I can do anything.

I can watch YouTube videos on my 40-inch TV! The question of course, is why would I, since the resolution is usually too crappy even to watch full-screen on the computer.

The PetCam is particularly exciting. Since we stopped crating Isis after we got back from India (She was loose in the house all day for an entire week, with basically no supervision since Rob was sick in bed, and didn’t get into any trouble), I’ve suspected she spends all her time on the couch staring out the window.

Now I can go to work and watch her all day, asleep with her head hanging off the couch or looking out the window or barking out the window. Wish the PetCam were HD.

Comcastic

Have you ever been in a situation where a customer service person tells you something you know to be wrong? (I know, cable company customer service complaints, how trite.) This frequently happens when speaking to customer service people on the phone, especially when the person whom you’re asking where to find something within a 15-mile radius of your house clearly is not even in the same country as you are.

In that scenario, the solution is of course, to hang up the phone and call the 800 (877, 866, whatever) number again because the odds certainly are against getting the same person twice.

But it happened to me yesterday in the Comcast store. To fully enjoy the benefits of my factory-renewed (aka last year’s model) HD TiVo, I need two CableCARD decoder things. There exists a multi-stream card that can be used in the newest model, which does the same thing as two single-stream cards. But I need two cards in my TiVo. It says so on the Internet.

The lady at the Comcast store told me the multi-stream card does the same thing as two single stream cards. I said, “But I have the TiVo Series 3,” and she said, “Yeah, yeah, that’s what this is for.” Hmm.

My options? Argue with her that no, it won’t work with my model, insist that she give me two cards; or take the card home, activate it, verify it doesn’t work like two cards, and then take it back telling her that I need two cards. Because maybe the Comcast lady knows more than the TiVo website. And certainly she knows more than me.

Because even when I take the card back, she insists that it should work the same as two cards. Never mind that the TiVo itself told me, after I installed the multi-stream card, “To record two programs at once, you need another card,” never mind that I called TiVo and the dude on the phone said my TiVo will read a multi-stream card like a single-stream card, so I need another card.

The lady asks if I’m sure I put it in the right slot. And tells me that I’m lucky they still have some single-stream cards lying around, because they were told they didn’t need them anymore. (Two multi-stream cards would work as well, but whatever.)

A few years ago, I guess it was really hard to get the CableCARD (why it is spelled that way, I do not know) activated, as evidenced by a myriad of message board exasperations. The activation process this morning, even though I didn’t have enough cards, was pretty seamless, so I’m optimistic that it will be similarly easy to install the two cards tonight.

That’s why when the Comcast lady had trouble removing the multi-stream card from my account and asked accusingly if I’d activated it (like, “why would you activate it if it was the wrong card?”), I didn’t scream, “Yes! Because you told me it would work, you idiot!”

Flashy, crowd-pleasing steps

In preparation for So You Think You Can Dance Live this weekend (followed in three weeks by America’s Best Dance Crew Live — I’m not messing around), I’ve been watching dance movies.

From this point forward, all dance movies will be judged against Strictly Ballroom. Why is Strictly Ballroom the greatest dance movie ever? Hard to say. It doesn’t have the best dancing — only one of the stars has serious dance training, and he was a contemporary dancer, not a ballroom dancer. Nor does it have the best screenplay — there are at least five scenes in which Scott chases Fran through backstage corridors, after she runs away with hurt feelings. It doesn’t even have any famous people in it.

What it has going for it is Baz Luhrmann’s quirky direction, and leading man Paul Mercurio’s face. I swear, I could watch close-ups forever of him gazing dreamily, and dreamily conflicted, at Fran. It’s so romantic, and they only kiss, like, twice in the whole movie.

Stop me if this plot sounds familiar: ugly duckling rebels against strict father by dancing with dreamy guy who falls in love with her. Dirty Dancing, right? Except without all the icky abortion, gigolo and daddy’s little girl subplots. Plus, in Dirty Dancing, Jennifer Grey was still pretty cute in the beginning, whereas Strictly Ballroom’s Tara Morice is made to look like such a troll, you don’t even realize she’s the leading lady when the film starts.

Last night I watched Step Up. After thinking, “Hey, it’s that guy from Stop-Loss,” and “Oh, that’s the chick from Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal” (For real. I watched it on Lifetime a few weeks ago), I wasn’t so impressed. Here you have real dancers and a legit choreographer, but I wasn’t particularly moved by the dancing.

They just don’t have the same chemistry as Scott and Fran.