Five hours of 16th Century Italian court dancing is painful.  Feet are sore, knees are stiff, I am tired.  However, it was still good, as I got to practice dances I'm pretty familar with, try to get down that one that I'm not, and also learned a new one.  For anyone who cares, here is the breakdown:

Court dances I know
Bella Giolosa
Castellana
Pavane
So Ben Mi Ch'a Ben Tempo (new dance)

Court dances I kind of know
Contrapasso (did not practice this one today)
Spagnoletta (this one always screws me up for some reason)

The one dance that ladymalai and I wanted to learn today - Gloria d'Amore - was not taught.  We want to dance this one at our wedding reception, so we need to figure out who can teach it to us between now and May 26th (which is only 40 days away).

Also found out that there are only going to be three full-time yeomen this year, and one part-time yeoman.  The fourth full-time yeoman fell through, as he's apparently joining the Army.  That would be not that big a deal if it wasn't the fact that it was Glaive Boy who is joining the Army.  Seems a recipe for disaster to me.  Anyway, it's going to make giving yeomen days' off a little more tricky, depending on how much the part-timer is there (which probably will not be that often).  Once again, going to be an interesting season.

Happy birthday, tiredmama!

Happy Birthday purplepyro911!  May your day be full of happiness, joy, and stress-free (which is impossible with a wedding only about 4 weeks away).

Just so you don't get too comfy with your relative safety here in the United States...here's a story from CNN.com:

VIRGINIA BEACH, Virginia (AP) -- Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday that God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would cause a "mass killing" late in 2007.

"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

"The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."

Robertson said God told him about the impending tragedy during a recent prayer retreat.

God also said, he claims, that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

Robertson suggested in January 2006 that God punished then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a stroke for ceding Israeli-controlled land to the Palestinians.

The broadcaster predicted in January 2004 that President Bush would easily win re-election.

Bush won 51 percent of the vote that fall, beating Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

In 2005, Robertson predicted that Bush would have victory after victory in his second term. He said Social Security reform proposals would be approved and Bush would nominate conservative judges to federal courts.

Lawmakers confirmed Bush's 2005 nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. But the president's Social Security initiative was stalled.

"I have a relatively good track record," he said. "Sometimes I miss."

In May, Robertson said God told him that storms and possibly a tsunami were to crash into America's coastline in 2006.

Even though the U.S. was not hit with a tsunami, Robertson on Tuesday cited last spring's heavy rains and flooding in New England as partly fulfilling the prediction.

After getting the run-around from Cingular for a couple weeks, we finally got the magical unlock code for ladymalai's phone.  Tried it out, and it seems to have worked just fine (don't have a SIM card from a different network to verify).  We're not going to use it with U.S. Cellular, but might try to sell it at work and see if someone would give us $50 for a good, unlocked cell phone.

Happy Birthday, lifeonwry!  See you in a few hours to tell you that for a third time.

To quote the late Gerald Ford, "Our long national nightmare is over."  Now, while that might be a tad melodramatic, it appears that our long cellular nightmare is over.  Yesterday, we signed up for T-Mobile and check it out around the apartment, and it was crap.  Same problem we had with Cingular: almost no reception in the apartment.  And now, I have figured out why.

With the help of an amazingly cool website, I determined that there is bubkis when it comes to cell towers around Oak Creek.  The only one I could find within a couple miles was U.S. Cellular.  So, when ladymalai got home, we headed to the mall, returned our T-Mobile stuff, and then popped over to the U.S. Cellular store.

The only downside to going with U.S. Cellular is that they do not have any smartphones, which I really, really wanted.  However, reliable service is more important than a PDA phone, so we signed up for it.  So far, we're getting excellent coverage.  In the apartment we are both at either 3 or 4 bars (out of 5), where we had 1 or occasionally 2 for Cingular and T-Mobile.  Tomorrow, we're going to pop over to some places that have typically been black holes of reception for us and compare.  Also, ladymalai is heading up to her parents in North Central Wisconsin, so we'll see if she gets signal up there (an even bigger black hole than Oak Creek).  Assuming everything checks out, next Sunday we will get our cell number transferred over to U.S. Cellular and be fully operational (we have temp numbers for the next 9 days).

And we did pick up some more "trendy" phones: I got the (red) Motorola Razr, and ladymalai got the Motorola Krzr.

Now, to learn the new features and transfer all the numbers over from my old phone.

Happy birthday, me_actor_ug!  I'm sure you're having a great birthday getting ready to go to England.

R.I.P. Gerald Ford

Fucking Cingular.

ladymalai and I are switching off Cingular as soon as our contract has expired on January 6th.  Last Saturday, I called customer support to request the unlock key for one of our phones (ladymalai wants to use the same phone when we switch).  Now, keep in mind that we purchased this phone out-right back on January 15, 2006 for $265.00.  It was not a part of any deal, sale, or bargain because we signed up for a two-year contract...nope, we bought it and it's ours.

Today, I got the email from the people at Cingular who dole out the precious unlock codes:

A request has been received for the subsidy unlock code for [your phone].  In order to process the request for the subsidy unlock code, the account balance and pending early termination fee will need to be paid in order for the subsidy unlock code to be released.

Yep, even though we bought the phone ourselves.  Even though we're still going to honor the last of our contract.  Even though if the phone gets unlocked, it would still work fine on the Cingular network.  Nope, even with all those factors, they still want to charge us the early termination fee ($150 per line) to unlock the phone.  What kind of bullshit is this?  It doesn't even make sense...if I want to unlock the only cell phone I have and use it on the T-Mobile network instead of Cingular, why the hell does Cingular care as long as I'm paying my monthly bill?

Congress stepped in once and forced the cellular providers to allow telephone numbers go with the customers, and I can't wait for them to step in and fix this phone lock bullshit, because it's ridiculous.

On the bright side, if I had any lingering doubts about switching from Cingular, I sure don't now.