Ruminations on the Circus

A few weeks ago, I went to the circus with RickReed&Brian.

Rick was very proud of the fact that he had gotten us $65 seats for $15 from work. Rick is very frugal and loves good deals.

Anyway, what I realized as soon as the circus started is that I'm not good at going to the circus. For one thing, there was always so much going on all the time that it was hard to decide what to watch ever.

For another thing, people in the circus do really intense tricks, like ride standing up on the backs of horses, which I was okay enough to take a picture of:

Or riding upside-down UNDER THE HORSE which is running really fast and would easily CRUSH THEIR HEADS if something went wrong and was way too stressful for me to watch, much less take a picture of.

It didn't help that one of the lions in the Big Cats act was really grumpy, but the lion tamer made her do tricks anyway:

And at one point she decided to let him know just about much she did not want to be doing tricks right now, thank you very much, and chased after him. (It looked like real lion crankiness, but I will grant the possibility that it was a trick intended to heighten the drama of the show. But I'm pretty sure she just wasn't feeling like doing tricks.)

Pretty much the whole first half of the show my entire body was tense from watching people throw themselve under animals, play with cats that really shouldn't be played with, suspend themselves on the points of spears, and do tricks while suspended BY THEIR HAIR!

Ugh! That just looks painful! Oddly, I was much more okay with tricks that were reliant on human skill and didn't involve suspending yourself on painful things. For example, I was pretty okay with this guy throwing himself through a sword-laden ring of fire

Well, at least more okay with that than I was about the two dudes who bent a steel bar by each putting and end of it on their sternum. And the acrobatic acts didn't phase me terribly either

And I liked the elephants

What most struck me about the circus, though, was how very circus-like it was. Like, every movie cliche you've seen about the circus was in the circus, and it got me pondering the lack of innovation in circusry and made me wonder about the history of the circus and how it got locked in its current form. (If anyone knows a good book about the history of the circus, I'd love a recommendation.) I feel like I probably never need to go to the circus again, because I've seen a circus and it was exactly like I expected a circus to be, but the traveling circus used to be like The Event that people waited for year after year. Which I guess meant that it had to maintain a certain level of familiarity, but I imagine that there also had to be quite a bit of innovation going on to keep people coming back to see what would be there this year. So what crushed circus innovation? And, is there a way to revive it?

I also spent a great deal of time wondering how one ends up as a circus performer these days? Like, for real, how does one become the girls dancing in plastic bubbles suspended from the ceiling, and are they passionate about it?

So, aside from the fact that I'm pretty sure I left fingertip shaped bruises on Reed's knees and that I had to spend the rest of the night shaking it out to get rid of built up stress, it was a fun night at the circus! And if you are interested, you can go see more pictures of the show over on SmugMug.

White Wedding

I'm not really sure where the first half of November has gone, but some of it went to a quick trip to Utah for my brother's wedding, which was pretty fun and a nice break from the death by training that's been going on at work. I flew out last week Thursday. And let's talk about this for a minute. Through Thursday of last week Utah had been having absolutely gorgeous weather. And Virginia had been having really, really cold weather. This is what happened starting Friday morning:

It was snowy and cold pretty much the whole time I was in Utah. Wanna know what the weather was like in Virginia while I was in Utah? Gorgeous. Wanna know what the weather was like when I came back? Cold. Cold, cold, cold. I swear Winter is messing with me.

ANYWAY, so I went to Utah for my brother's wedding. Friday was a lot of getting ready for the wedding, but before that, I stole Loo and we went to visit one of my dear friends who I hadn't seen in years and years. She's got an adorable little family now, and a busy and awesome sounding life, and it was a delight to spend some time with her catching up.

Then Loo and I did a quick spot of shopping during which I somehow got conned into buying more sweaters than I set out too, and we bought the happy couple a sausage and cheese basket, because it seemed somehow appropriate.

On Friday night there was a pizza party for the families, because, well, none of us had ever met Bearded Brother's fiancee before. So we ate and laughed and then we played Two Truths and a Lie and laughed even more. There were a lot of people, because, big families, but it was fun, and Bearded Brother and Fiancee seemed happy.

And then it was the wedding on Saturday. Which was lovely. Here are some pictures.

 

Saturday after the wedding we put my Aunt's house back together and then pretty much just chilled for the rest of the evening, which was really nice after all the work of the wedding. When I get married, I'm going to pay someone else to do all of it. Seriously.

On Sunday I got to spend the whole day with Momma Bear and the kiddos! Their sacrament meeting (worship service) was put on by the children and it was adorable. And then we spent the rest of the day chilling at home. The kids showed off their sweet dance moves and we had yummy food, and caught up on life and stuff and it was super fun. The Bear family is pretty cute:

Getting home on Monday was kind of an ordeal. I spent a lot of time trying to find someone to pick me up from the airport, to no avail, and eventually decided that I would just take a cab, which in the end turned out to be a good choice because I landed about two hours later than anticipated. I'm usually okay with delays because, meh, they happen, but these seemed particularly ordealish, probably because I was rushing from one plane to the next, and so grabbed a really, really disappointing sandwich to eat since I was super hungry and thought I was pressed for time. And also because a good hour of the delay was spent in the airplane on the runway. Nothing worse than that "so close, and yet so far" feeling while being squished in a puddle hopper. But, I made it home and back to more training. Whee!

Anyway, welcome to the family to my brother's new wife. I'll come up with an adorable blog moniker for you eventually!

The Ultimate Road Trip

Did you know that there's a professional ultimate frisbee (ahem, disc) league? There is. It just started this year. You can check out the American Ultimate Disc League's website. Having learned of the existence of such a thing as professional ultimate frisbee from my new friend Joe, I determined that attending a professional ultimate frisbee game was an experience that I was required to have in this life. LUCKILY! I discovered my urgent need to attend a game just a few days before the eastern division championship. So on Saturday after spending some time unpacking my house (a job that is nearly done, finally) I gathered up Joe and Annie and we headed to Philedelphia.

Of course, we had to stop at get philly cheesesteaks. We went to a place called Pat's King of Steaks and it was delicious.

The game was an absolute joy to watch. Seriously. We were rooting for the Philedephia Spinners and they turned in a nearly flawless game. Beautiful passes and good momentum and just superb execution. Which is why they crushed their opponents ending the game with a huge point spread.

And then we had to make the three hour drive home. It was way past my bedtime, which means that words began flowing out of my mouth and I couldn't stop them and now my new friend Joe knows WAY more about me than he ever really wanted to. But mostly it was just a really fun ans awesome thing to do. Maybe we'll have to go next season too.