Vail "Vacation" Part I

Well this isn't going to be exactly what you're probably expecting, and not exactly what I'd like to be writing for this initial Vail "Vacation" post, but just bear with me... I'm foreseeing a few Vail posts...

But to just sum things up in a sentence or two, Vail went much better than I anticipated. The very hot Saturday before we left I, following the instructions of the cute med student that sat in on my doctor's appointment, made an enormous vat of very beefy beef broth, and actually packed two thermoses of it in my suitcase. The first year we went to Vail I took a blender... this year it was beef broth. But hey, doctors orders, right? I also had my prescription iron pills and ate my daily serving of red meat. Take that anemia! And praise the Lord I started feeling better on Friday, with our two shows on Saturday and Sunday... just in the nick of time.

Like I said before in Adventures in D.C. Part I company tours are always fun... or maybe funny is a better word to use. You put together a bunch of people prone to the dramatical in close quarters for almost a week and, well, things get interesting. Let's just say it would make an amazing reality TV show. But I'll go into that a little more in the next instillation - complete with photos.

Well I owe a big shout out to all of those people out there who were praying for me while I was dancing in the thin Vail air. It was hard. It was very hard. But I did. And it wasn't terrible. Once Serenade was over on Saturday I couldn't quite let down, but I could let out a huge sigh of relief.
The bane of performing Serenade Russian girls are definitely the four consecutive double-pirouettes we have to do near the end of the ballet, just when you're utterly exhausted. And if double-pirouetting four times in a row weren't enough to make you absolutely dizzy, you have blue-tulled ballerinas piquéing in front of and behind you. This feat was made more challenging in Vail not only by the very bright and disorienting lights, but also by my somewhat blurry vision - a result of oxygen deprivation. They weren't my best - by the fourth one I could barely see, but what I could make out was that I most definitely wasn't behind Brittany anymore... Oops. But I did them and I even left room for the girls to piqué between us. So I'll take it. In my book that one gets marked as a success.

And guess what? I came back to Seattle with a follow-up doctor's appointment on Tuesday and received some pleasantly surprising news. No Anemia! In fact my iron levels were looking great. So it looks like my sudden illness had more to do with a thyroid medication dosage issue than my vegetarian-via-laziness diet. Well at least that's what we're hoping for... If not I guess I'll get to see the cute med student again, and would that be so bad? Naw...

But enough with the jokes... So for those of you who didn't make it up to the beautiful Rocky Mountains here's a little clip of one of the numbers I danced. Hopefully it won't be that hard to figure out which one I am.

Your feature presentation is brought to you by the Vail International Dance Festival via some YouTube action. Enjoy!