Dancing Under the Stars, fantasy f’d
Last night Ali had her first performance in front of a live audience. She was performing at the Naples tree lighting ceremony. I left work early so I would have time to let Nicki out and feed her and then shoot right back out to pick up mom to go downtown. They close off third street for the event.
Mom had heard there could be upward of 25,000 people down there so I was concerned about the parking. We parked in a school parking lot 5 or 6 blocks away from the main festivities. We figured it was far enough away that we could get out of the area without major problems. Ali said she would be performing around 6:15. It was five till six when we were walking so I sort of made a beeline to the street where she said she would be.
We turned the corner and saw the stage. We spotted Ali among the various dancers. She was happy to see us. I brought my video camera with to tape the performance. Ali said she was nervous but excited. She said they would be performing after the tree was lit up. I hadn’t eaten anything so since we had a few minutes to kill I walked up and grabbed myself a couple hot dogs, a bag of peanut M&M’s and a diet Pepsi, a nutritional waste dump, oh well. There seemed to be some glitch in the tree lighting, we heard stuff coming over the PA that sounded like they were counting down to light it up but nothing happened. Then a few minutes later the tree was on with no announcement. They also turned on the “snow” machines that were attached to some of the light posts. These devices basically spit out soapy foam that sort of looks like snow, especially at night time.
Well the dance performance started. Ali was in the 6th group to perform. We got to watch mostly little girls perform in the preliminary routines. It was very cute to see the excitement on the little girls faces as they performed in front of a crowd of a couple hundred people. Then it was time for Ali and her group of adult ballet class to perform. Ali had a huge smile on her face throughout the entire routine. She did great. You could tell how much she was enjoying herself and I was proud of her for getting out there and doing it. The routine lasted two or three minutes.
After she was done, Mom and I went up and congratulated Ali on her performance. She was very excited. I told her she did great and I was proud of her. Ali had to run back to the studio to help the girls get changed for the next performance. Ali did a total of three “shows”. Mom and I stayed for the second one as well. During the second show I concentrated on shooting the entire stage so the other women could see their performance. Ali did equally well on her second performance. My boss and a co-worker also came down to the event and got to see Ali perform which was cool.
We again congratulated Ali for doing so well and then made our way back to the truck. I dropped mom off at home and grabbed the meatloaf and mashed potatoes she made for me. Mom is now wavering on our Thanksgiving plans. Originally we were going to go to her place for Thanksgiving but then she indicated last night that maybe we should just have it at our place. I guess we need to decide kind of soon.
I plan on ripping the video from the performance and hopefully get it up on youtube.
After a super hot start to my fantasy football season, I have been really struggling recently. I can’t seem to catch much luck. The other week I had two players yet to play on a Monday night and they only had to score 12 or 13 points between them to snag me a win. Instead they score a shitty 5 and I lose. This week I had a strong performance and by last night I was ahead by 18 points. My opponent had two players playing in the Monday night game, Greg Jennings and a kicker. Well I wake up this morning and check the score, I lost by two points, 111-109. I closed the browser window in disgust. At this point I just need to make sure I get to the play offs and then hope the pieces fall into place. I’m not quite sure if fantasy football is more fun or frustrating for me.