Heaven's A Poppin' Now!!

Frankie Manning died. I am sad. I am at a loss for words to express how much of an impact he had on my life.

Frankie had more charisma, energy and enthusiasm for dancing and for life than anyone I have ever met. He was an amazing man! He danced til the end - at age 94! I love Frankie!!

If you don't know, Frankie Manning was one of the original Lindy Hoppers at the Savoy Ballroom in the 1940's. In the 1980's and 90's he brought the Lindy Hop back, traveling all around the world teaching workshops. You can check him out here in a 1941 movie called Hellzapoppin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTg5V2oA_hY.

Frankie Manning came to Phoenix to teach a weekend workshop every year for the past 12 years or so. It was at Frankie Manning Weekend 1999 where the photo above was taken. It was taken right after Pat proposed to me. Our dance troupes had performed a few routines and in the last routine, in front of 300 people, Pat stopped dancing, got down on his knee and took a ring out of his pocket. Then Frankie took the stage and led us all in the Shim Sham. That old man sure could move!!

Frankie also taught at Swing Camp every year. For seven straight years we went to Catalina Island the first weekend in June. It was an awesome tradition and it was a blast. The instructors would perform at the big Saturday dance. Even in his late 80's Frankie was doing lifts. I'm telling you, that man was the everything!

I miss the swing days. And now I miss Frankie. His infectious laugh and awesome smile will forever be an inspiration to all of us who met him and learned from him.

Keep swinging, Frankie Manning!

Baseball

Baseball, baseball, baseball. Baseball on Saturday, baseball on Sunday. This was a weekend of baseball.

My little intern Tom plays baseball for the Arizona State University Club team. Saturday was their last home game, so the whole marketing department planned to make I Heart Tom shirts and big "GO TOM" signs and utterly embarrass the poor kid with yelling and cheering. Little Intern Tom is happy that all those plans were just big talk. It ended up being just me and Nathalie at the game, no fancy t-shirts, no signs at all. We did yell and cheer though! Especially when Tom hit what ended up being the game-tying run in the 9th: Hurray, Tom!! They ended up winning. Nathalie and I believe it was the good luck vibe we brought to Little Intern Tom.

Oh, and "little" Tom is actually quite tall:
On Sunday, I went to the Diamondbacks game with Pat, Jamie and Christy. NFBF was initially invited but he turned me down because he was already going with all the kids for Little League Day. They sat way up in section 319. We sat way down low in the dugout box area - nice!

Christy and Pat (This picture of Christy cracks me up because she's simultaneously trying to smile and get caramel out of her teeth):
Me and Jamie (no caramel):
I didn't have a caramel apple, but I did have a chocolate chip cookie as big as your head.
Just like with Saturday's game, I brought the good luck vibe. Taking a cue from Little Intern Tom, the Diamondbacks tied the game in the 9th. They ended up winning in the 12th - which was a very significant win. Significant for me anyway. Why? Because Jamie was so convinced that they were going to lose that he said "If the Dbacks come back and win this, I will play soccer again." Hee! Get out your soccer shoes, Jamie! We really need you on Sunday! He actually owes me two leagues - perhaps he shouldn't be so cocky with his baseball knowledge. He also told me that if a runner didn't run, he'd play soccer again. The runner didn't run. So, Jamie, the game time is 8:40 on Thursday. See you there!

Stuff White People Like: Book Clubs

My book club is very WHITE. Who needs diversity anyway? As a matter of fact, we like to celebrate our whiteness with white themed meetings.

Example 1
We just read Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - a dual story about the World's Fair in Chicago and a serial killer. The food theme was Taste of Chicago and the dress theme was white - like a P.Diddy party. And here we are, white as white can be. A bunch of white girls in white. The long browned hair girl who looks kinda Hispanic in this picture? Nope, she's white. But she is Jewish, does that count as diverse?

Oh wait, here's our diversity! A white girl wearing black!

Example 2
A few months ago we read Blindness by Jose Saramago. Everyone in the book goes blind and their blindness is white. We decided that all white food would be appropriate:

Example 3
We put the white in White Trash.

White Trash was the theme for The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. The book is about a race car driver. He's not NASCAR, but car racing is car racing, right? Our white trash food - McDonald's (served in the bag, of course), pizza, wings, Oreos, hot dog corn bread muffins, and stuff made with lard:

While Jagermeister, the ubiquitous white trash beverage staple, was offered, Kiri chose the very white trash combination of wine and oreos. Ew. Classy!

Who is this non-white girl? It's Grace! She was in our book club but ditched us because we were too white.

Just kidding! She moved to California and now cries herself to sleep every night from the emptiness and loneliness she feels since she left our book club.

KM3

Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me was one of the defining albums of our high school years. And because of this and because there were 3 of us, KM3 became the name for my threesome of super-cool high school friends for Saturday's Women's Adventure Race.

Maysoun came from Manhattan and Laura came from Chicago to compete with me. It was a blast spending the day with them and showing them how fun adventure racing is!

I made shirts, though I didn't do a very good job:
The race was held at Saguaro Lake. It included hiking:

and biking:
and rafting:
For poor Laura, it also included puking, but I have no photos of that. She puked on the bike ride and she puked on the lake. Poor girl! We thought perhaps it was morning sickness, but a later test proved that theory to be wrong. I guess the combination of Thai food, Mexican food and a whole lot of heat and sun (of which there hasn't been much of in Chicago lately) were the culprits. But despite feeling like absolute crap, Laura hung in there and did the whole race!

Hey! Do you know what these are:
That's right... SAGUAROS!

Do you know what these are:If you answered SAGUAROS, ding! ding! ding! You are right again!

The race also had some mystery events. On one of our first orienteering treks we had to fill a bag with 40 pounds of sand and bring it back to the transition area. After the mountain biking and hiking portions, we had to walk on plank skis around a cone. This took much concentration!

Later we had to load up a sled with 4 of the sandbags and pull it around the cone and back.
Then we had to take a 5 gallon bucket and fill a 32 gallon garbage can with lake water until the water overflowed. The clue read that you could not displace the water with a non-living thing. Filling up the can:
Displacing water with a living thing:
The rafting section came after this. I took the solo raft and Maysoun and Laura took the double. Perhaps I suck at rafting or perhaps the single raft and the kayak paddle were not compatible equipment, but it was very slow going. Finally, Maysoun tied my raft to hers and she paddled the three of us back to the finish line. What a superstar she is!

And speaking of finish lines, we came in 3rd for our division! We got medals!
This is where I should probably mention that there were only 4 teams in the 3-person division. We were 12th out of 16 overall. Not quite as impressive-sounding as 3rd!! :) I should also probably mention that Christy and Leah beat us by 50 minutes (!) and came in 6th in the 2-person division!

Pardon the Hiatus

I know your life has sucked for the past week without the regular entertaining updates here at A Little Diamond. I apologize for the delay. My high school friends have been in town and we've been quite busy doing things like hanging out and catching up and getting 3rd place in our division in an adventure race.