Dance Little Sisters Dance

Yesterday was the annual 'International Dance Festival' at the girls' school, where each grade level performs a dance from a different country. We were there with all our electronic gear: Rigel with the video camera, me with my digital camera and camera phone as backup because God forbid we should miss even a millisecond of our children's life being recorded! Rigel hates having to videotape - he always wonders why we can't just live in the moment and enjoy the occasion without having to see it through a viewfinder. My answer to this is, no way would I be able to enjoy the moment, let alone LIVE, when I would be too distraught over the fact that their actions weren't being recorded for all posterity.

I always spend a good chunk of time the night before an event making sure all my life-recording devices are all in working order; the digital camera disk is cleared and the battery is charged. Then I expend a great deal of energy nagging Rigel, asking him frequently and repeatedly if the video battery has enough juice and if there is enough tape in the camera. He tries to ignore me for as long as he can, but then I remind him how fun it is to watch the videos of the girls when they were little, and without the tapes I would be compelled to relive those times by having another baby. This usually gets him flying into action, getting the batteries charged and the camera bag fully packed at warp speed.

It's always hard trying to elbow your way through the crowd to get a good vantage point to photograph from. Rigel is tall, so he's able to shoot over everyone's heads and get a pretty decent view, but I always end up having to elbow some parents out of the way and wrestling someone's grandma to the ground to take her spot. This time I only had to scratch out two people's eyes to get a good vantage point, and I had my camera, zoom lens fully extended and pointed right at the spot I figured the girls would be so I could pop off a series of shots for that scrapbook I'll never make.

But what's this? I've only taken one shot and it's already telling me 'Memory Full.' This can't be - I spent half my night prepping the camera and emptying the disk! I figured it must be jammed, so I started examining the camera, trying to re-set it, the whole time they danced on, doing a very good job, I'm sure, but I DIDN'T SEE IT BECAUSE I WAS TRYING TO FIX THE DAMN CAMERA.

What we discovered when we got home was that SOMEONE (probably one of those old ladies I stepped on) had changed the camera setting from 'Photo' to 'Movie' so it had actually taken a short movie instead of a still, and used up all the memory. It's a good thing Rigel has both the girls' performances on tape so I can actually see them, because by the time I got done making the following masterpiece, cursing at the camera and then smashing it with my bare hands, Kiyomi's dance was completely over:

   
        Click here to watch captivating video

I am grateful for the impressive view I got of the underside of the pavilion roof, and I think the end shot of the lady's pretty white sweater is hot stuff. Don't tell ME I'm not living in the moment.

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