Ouch.

I'll say this for Lion Dancing, it has a way of making you rather brutally aware of every single muscle in your body.

We probably put in a total of about thirteen hours of lion dancing this weekend. Thirteen hours. That's a long time to be dancing under what amounts to a gigantic blanket. Actually, it went very well. I enjoyed it enormously, and I have a really good partner for the dance. We've got a solid level of communication going on between us.

She was a huge livesaver yesterday, and I'm not at all certain that I mean that figuratively. We were dancing around a mall. Lots of fun, stopping at stores all over; doin' a little dance, grabbin' a hunk of lettuce, taking our paycheck; etc, etc. etc.

My partner and I had just completed five consecutive dances (which doesn't sound like much, but trust me, it takes a lot out of you); three of which required me to lift her onto my shoulders. Suffice it to say, we were both rather tired. Nobody was coming in to spell us off, and it was getting to the point where I thought my back was going to be permanently fixed at a 90 degree angle from my legs. So, someone comes in to replace my partner, and at this point, I'm dying. We do two more stores; my partner's replacement is all fresh and energetic, and here I am just trying to keep myself upright. We do another store during which I'm pretty sure I heard my lower back screaming in protest.

So, my Lion Dance partner (God bless her) shows up after only the briefest of breaks to let me out of the tail, while I'm wondering if she's gonna have to physically pull me out of the lion tail and roll me out of the way. It very nearly got to that point.

She managed to get her butt out of the lion a little farther down, but I cannot emphasize how much I needed that one break.

All in all, this weekend went well. About eight hours of lion Dancing on Saturday, another five-ish on Sunday. I think I lost about 30 lbs in the last 48 hours, and it ain't even over yet.

We have another dance on the 18th, which includes some rather nicely-done Kung Fu demos.... well, hopefully nicely done. The first demo we did turned out quite nicely, so I can't complain there.

If all goes well, we'll give a hell of a show on Friday.