chezmax

I was in the comments of a UK-based YouTuber that I'm not that familiar with yet but does interesting things, and I came across one that said (paraphrased, because it's gone now):

I recently learned that this person is a Reform UK supporter. As a Nigerian immigrant I can't support someone like this and I urge you not to either.

At first, my reaction was "hmm, does this really affect my enjoyment of a guy doing ludicrous trekking things in England" (like crossing London north to south while staying off roads in a single day).

Then I thought a little more, and I did seriously wonder if I could enjoy the work of someone willing to embrace a political view I find xenophobic, shortsighted, and intellectually lazy.

My third and concluding thought is that in the absence of any corroborating evidence (and I certainly didn't get that vibe from the content), perhaps this is just some yute trolling for lols.

But... if I did somehow get confirmation, I probably would give up on this guy. Although it's also worth thinking about the lengths that so many YouTubers I follow are exceptionally judicious about being completely apolitical.

Yesterday, I was eating one of the last peaches of the season when I misjudged the size of the stone and accidentally bit into it. At first it felt like a little sliver of something was caught between my teeth, but I quickly discovered that, no, my 21 incisor (that is, upper left) had cracked.

This is less upsetting than it might appear at first because that tooth is, of course, already fake, a veneer built on what's left of my long-broken chomper. These things don't last forever.

My first reaction was to call the dentist's office, because the sooner I could get this fixed the better, and it turns out the soonest was "the next day" (i.e., today as of writing). The process was much like last time: grind away a little old stuff to create a bonding surface, build it up, grind it down.

The new one feels almost like nothing at all, which I think is always the goal. While I had that triangular void it was uncomfortable on the lips and tongue, whereas now that it's replaced it's like it was always there. There are subtle differences, of course, that will take a day or two to get used to, but not hugely noticeable.

I was, however, warned that if it fails again it's likely to be time to replace the veneer with a crown. So that's probably inevitable, but if this one lasts as long as the predecessor did, that's about 23 years from now, and who knows what advances in dental technology we'll see by then. Maybe the magic tooth-regrowing technology will have been developed in the interim.

My old fiddle teacher invited me out to visit her in the Annapolis Valley for an Irish set dancing weekend. So I cashed in some Aeroplan points (and $100 to cover airport fees) and went.

Set dancing shares a lineage with contra dancing that runs in part back to the quadrille (it's a bit complicated, not least of all because both nearly died and were revived in the late 20th century), but I have to say that between them set dancing makes contra look like something for babies. The basic component moves are almost the same, but set dancing has more of them and combines them in a more complicated fashion.

(On the other hand, while it's true that in contra you can get away with walking all the steps, there's also an emphasis on spinning and flow that lets even intermediate dancers start to look smooth and fancy. My biggest frustration over the weekend were partners who wouldn't use the full 8, wanting to be poised 1 or 2 beats early for the next thing. But I digress.)

The weekend was taught by Pat Murphy, who literally wrote the book on set dancing. An incredibly gentle man with a classic Tipperary accent and a solid teacher. Workshops during the day when he teaches sets with more detail, and then ceilis at night where there is less handholding. My impression is that there's a vague expectation that the dancers will know complete sets by heart upon just hearing the name, but I can't keep those in my head once the set ends. Personally, I lean on the fact that I know almost all the component steps and the caller to keep up, and there were a couple of dances during ceilis that could have used a little more calling.

Aside from hesitant partners, the worst thing about the weekend was getting accidentally tripped Saturday morning by someone from a neighbouring set who lost track of things. I would have been OK but the floor was slick with talc that some people put on the bottom of their leather-soled shoes to slide even better. Me, I just danced in Blundstones, and I lost purchase after stumbling twice. I landed on the left side of my butt and seem to have gotten away with only a minor bruise.

All in a nice visit: J and her now-fiancé M (a farrier by trade) have a cozy apartment with a comfy guest room, and the east end of the Annapolis Valley is not really that foreign of terrain: it's actually quite a lot like Ontario around the escarpment (if you overlook the Bay of Fundy).

Do I have much more to say about it? Not really. I didn't open my laptop once (although the iPad got a workout) and it was a good break of a weekend.