Where the Red Queen reigns!

It was a weekend of fabulous dancing.

Friday Night Waltz was extremely crowded, perhaps owing to the news that after next month FNW West has to change locations. Alas, I'll miss the YWCA; I hope the event can stay in my own backyard. The best lesson was the beginner's class where we worked on the Salty Dog Rag for the first time in a year. I love that dance!

Saturday night was the first time I've ever attended PEERS. Donna really wanted me to go and I'm glad I did, because it was a fabulous evening. The place was even more crowded than FNW, so crowded that there was barely any room to dance. The theme of the dance was Return of the King, so I wore my RenFaire duds. The evening finally saw the debut of the absolutely amazingly fabulous cloak that monicat and striga made for me a year ago, and I'm really happy I finally got a chance to wear the beautiful garment in public.

Another great aspect of the ball was the music, performed by Brazen Hussey (aka The Band Formerly Known As Annwn). I was pleased that they played so many tunes that were dancable -- gazillions of waltzes, and many polkas, reels, etc. Half way through the evening they played "The Red Queen" and all four of us old-hand Annwn groupies flocked up to the stage to sing and act along, just like the old days. Ahhhhh, I miss Annwn.........

The Stanford Interview

I had my Stanford interview this morning. Wow, what a meat grinder! The man who interviewed me was redlining his interview engine as he had a lot of work to do in a very short amount of time. He also had a great poker face, so I have no idea how I did. Unlike my Google interview I was able to connect with him, both at the beginning and the end of the interview. But the body of it was hard. There was a period of 15 minutes where he asked a series of rapid fire questions and I had 60 seconds to respond to each of them. I felt like I did at least OK, but I wasn't sure if I'd demonstrated to him just what I could do.

I did get that chance to demonstrate that to him at the end, where he said he only could spare another minute or two, but did I have any questions? I said sure, I have lots of questions, but I'm not sure you have time to answer them. Like, what exact tools do you use, how many programs do you stream per week, how big is the online staff, do you encode live or do you transfer from tape, what's the turnaround time on any given lecture? He seemed impressed; apparently I'd asked all the right questions. He gave me a brief answer and an apology that he couldn't spend any more time with me as he had to call some guy in Boston and interview him next.

I'll know probably tomorrow if I made it to the second round. If I did, they'll haul me back in mid-week to go up before an interview panel. Three people will be chosen for the second round; hopefully I've got an advantage over that guy from Boston who'll have to fly out here on something like 1 day's notice to make the second round.

I'll let y'all know how it goes just as soon as I know.