This past weekend the
Flying Cloud went down to
Asheville, North Carolina to dance at the
Biltmore Estate. We did a half-hour set every hour for five hours, both Saturday and Sunday. Quite exhausting, and the sun was brutally hot; although, luckily, the air was cool.
The set was mid 19th Century social ballroom dancing, and contained the following eight dances :
- Polonaise
- Russian Mazurka Quadrille
- Old Folks Quadrille
- Scotch Reel
- a solo dance : either the Moganblatter Waltz or the Holubieca
- French Quadrille
- 5/4 Waltz
- Bohemian National Polka
It's a six hour drive, and both directions we left around 9 or 10 in the evening, so Amelia would sleep through it. The traffic was very light at that hour, as one might guess, but the mist was rather thick at times. Ruth Anne managed to nap on and off, and between books on tape and several cans of Sobe Adrenaline Rush the drive wasn't too bad.
When we got home in the wee hours of Monday morning, by new 30 Gigabyte iPod was waiting on my doorstep. A delightful little machine if ever there was one. I had a fraction of my CD collection ripped into iTunes as 160 Mb mp3 files, so just for the heck of it, I'm ripping or re-ripping everything as 128 Mb AAC files. As of this instant, I have 4006 songs adding up to 8.9 days of music and 13.02 Gigabytes.
The ability to keep contacts and calendars in the iPod has already proven itself useful. So I effectively get a free Palm Pilot with my iPod (or perhaps a free MP3 player with my Palm Pilot).