Cinderella!
Max's dance school did their biennial production over Memorial Day weekend, his first venture into serious show business. Of course it wasn't all smooth sailing. One week before the show, just days before the full-scale rehearsals, Max injured his knee on some rocks at school. It was bad enough that he wouldn't put much weight on his leg, which made tap dancing kind of questionable. Of course it was over a weekend, so the only place to get an x-ray was our emergency room.

Turns out it was just a bruise, though the orthopedist wasn't sanguine about his chances of actually dancing by the end of the week. Max was pretty good-humored about all the waiting, both at the emergency room (hours and hours) and the orthopedist.

As it turns out, the bruised knee healed up before the full-scale rehearsals, but it did make the pre-show photography sessions a bit nervous. Here's Max at the solo pictures, waiting in line and being posed by Miss Suen.

And here's Miss Suen posing the whole chicken-and-bee crew for the group shot. Yeah, they're cute.

We weren't allowed to take pictures at the performance itself, but I took a lot of pictures (still, no flash allowed) at the first full run-through. This is the big moment in the farmyard, to the tune of the "Chicken Reel":

	Left: Max, coming on stage at the end of a line of chickens, with Cinderella looking on. Below Left: Max dancing next to their demonstrator/instructor, who's playing the mouse Jacques Below: Max does the end-of-routine flourish.

Here's the final bow: it's a big crowd up there, and Max was loving it. What they didn't tell the kids was that at the actual performances they audience would be invited to come up and greet the dancers, resulting in a wave of humanity rushing the stage.... a little overwhelming for the little ones.

	Left: the actual bow, done very properly. Below: Max gave me a great smile as they left the stage. He's lovin' show biz.

Here are some other pictures from the rehearsal: elegant bridesmaids, Cinderella and her horses, very cute fairies and exceptionally cute mice.

One of the big questions we had about how Max would do had to do with the several hours of waiting backstage with his group. He did OK at the rehearsals, even the one where parents weren't allowed, but the performances were much later, going well beyond his normal bedtime. He had a blast. The "den mother" supervising group parents brought all kinds of games, crafts and stuff.

The performances went very well -- the last few rehearasals really did tighten things up considerably: here's Miss Suen at final bow

We gave Max a lei on the second night: look at that smile! On the first night he got a rose from his teacher. Also, much to our surprise, a lot of the kids in his class brought "congratulations" gifts -- mostly candy in some form or another. On the right is Max -- about to fall over with exhaustion -- with the complete collection of commemorative snacks, flora and one star wand.

He's ready to do it again. By the second night, he was wishing there were more performances. There will be another abbreviated version in the fall, for schools, but it's not sure yet whether the chickens and bees will be part of it.  ¶ Friday, June 08, 2007 0 comments

  Water cameras? An experiment in progress. A while back I had an epiphany: my old Fuji camera isn't worth the cost of two disposable water cameras and development. So if I can take underwater pictures with it in a sealed bag, I can save money and have some fun.

The results have been.... mixed. The first time I used a sandwich bag and a quart freezer bag, on the theory that it would fit better and offer better protection. But the results are too cloudy to be really worth it. Here's some action shots:

And here's some nature shots. There was a serious stormcloud heading our way that day:

This was, I'm sorry to say, the best of the pictures I got that day. One bright spot, though: the bagging worked perfectly in terms of waterproofing. So, the next time I tried using two sandwich bags, to cut down on the plastic clouding. This time there was a little leakage into the outer bag, and it clearly affected the picture quality (and made me nervous about experimenting with a single layer). Still, an improvement.
First, the wonderfully dramatic anemones, and some very fuzzy looking small fish:
So much for the underwater close-ups. Here's some medium-distance shots. The coral's underwater, a few feet away. The mussels were out of the water, macro shot.

Next, some outdoor pictures. It was a very, very low tide that day, by the way: normally we can't even get to the spot that I'm standing on outside the sea wall, and most of that sand is water.

Finally, some of the all-important family shots.

The leakage into the outer bag is causing a lot of the blurring here. I've gotten a lot better about remembering to pull the bag so that it's tight over the lens.

So, if this is going to work, I need bags that won't leak. Or just one bag that really won't leak.  ¶ Tuesday, June 05, 2007 2 comments