Elly arrived safely in Okinawa. She sent us an email from her cell phone which my sister-in-law got for her.

We sent Elly to Okinawa for ballet. By the time we settled down here and were able to discover that most of the better students auditioned for professional ballet company summer schools, the auditions were long over. So we decided to send her back to the studio(Japanese) in Okinawa where she has studied all these years. Its here home away from home, if not her home. Even when we lived in Okinawa, the only thing she did at home was sleep really. She was either at school, or at ballet.

She'll be spending the summer in Okinawa. She is staying at the teachers house and will be studying during the day with the teachers two daughters and some professional dancers from Mongolia. Then at night with the normal ballet classes. Well, at least until summer vacation which doesn't start in Japan until late July.

Good luck and work hard, Elly. But enjoy your stay with your friends too!

Yesterday, Elly emailed me some pics she took with her cell phone:

To me, that is just a good picture. Of course I know that she went to the beach, but didn't have a swimming suit so they were only wading. The picture I really liked though was this one:

Okay, I am definitely not the artistic type, but to me that second picture is artistic. And it was taken by a 14 year old with a cell phone. Those of you whom have a better sense/understanding of "art" and/or photography, whaddya think?

So far I have gotten 5 pics, which you can see here. Hopefully will be getitng more.

Update: Re-added pics and fixed link to gallery as they moved...

On the 13th, Elly went scuba diving. While the main purpose of Elly going to Okinawa was to study Ballet, Okinawa is really home for her. So it was also a chance to see friends, most of whom are in her ballet classes anyway. As long as she was there for the summer though, I thought it would be a good idea to have her go scuba diving. So I contacted a friend of mine who owns a dive shop there.

After many emails, etc., mostly trying to convince Elly to take the time to go diving, my friend was kind enough to take Elly and a friend out. See the pictures below. Man, I'd have loved to join them!

A couple of weeks ago, Elly got to go scuba diving. I am sooo jealous

Well, its Firday. And believe it or not, I am actually posting before a whole week has gone by since my last post...just barely.

Probably the biggest news was that Elly came back on the 21st, and we celebrated her 15th birthday on Wednesday. We got to see my Mom twice this last week, as she came over on Sunday to check email since her cable interenet was apparently taking a day off...it came back on later. We called my brother George, who is the Executive Director at New Jersey Future, for his birthday. We saw here again for dinner on Elly's birthday. We'll see her again tomorrow and Sunday as well.

We'll get to see Mom again tomorrow when we have dinner at her house. My uncle Sherman, former professor of Shakespeare at Princeton, Rochester and Wesleyan, is in town with his wife, Anne a professor at University of Pennsylvania. Anne has some events to attend here in Cleveland, so Sherman is bowing out of the social events to come have dinner with us. Sherman was a Professor at Wesleyan while I was there and I like to think we got close. Regardless of what Sherman thinks, he is one of my favorite people. Well, actually so is Anne and the rest of their family.

Anyway, will see Mom again on Sunday and probably Monday. Ken has his first soccer games with the U14 Travel Team for the Mayfield Soccer Club. Of course, all three of Mom's sons played soccer, partially influenced by her father who played for the Glasgow Rangers, and then emigrated to the U.S. to play for the Bethlehem Steel Soccer club. So Mom likes soccer and must be pleased to be able to one of her grandkids play. Of course, my brother Dan's kids all play. In fact, they are currently in the UK for his daughter's games. I am not clear on the details but it appears that her soccer club is off playing some UK teams, so they took the whole family. Nice. Anyway, Mom is coming to see Ken's games so we'll see her again.

One of the nice things about being back in the U.S. is the chance to see family alot more than we did than when we were in Japan. Heck, even the phone calls are more often since its substantially cheaper. In fact, my sister Harriet called Elly to wish her a happy birthday.

Other than than, I spent the week playing around with a bunch of systems. Drupal, civicrm, sugarcrm, etc. I installed XOOPS, played around with OSPI's new website, and set up a survey for a customer using phpESP. Pretty much dead easy to set up a survey using phpesp. I dropped in a whole bunch of modules for Plone, testing out new features and functions for a new site I am planning. As part of that, I added ATGoogleMaps and added a map here at neohawk. I intend to start adding more markers over time. I have been having an ongoing, online discussion with Takanori Susuki as he gets ready to develop 0.6 of ATGoogleMaps.

Last night, I finally was able to get a jabber server up and running. I had one in Okinawa, but it went away in the move back to the U.S. I was having problems with jabber 1.4.3, and jabberd2, so I went with eJabberd(drupal site by the way). Unfortunately I have not yet successfully implemented the gateways to MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ and IRC. I will get there though.The nice thing about ejabberd is it supports virtual domains so I can use the same server for my various domains. Iishf your interested, try registering with jabber.neohawk.org using your jabber client. Or if you already have a jabber account somewhere you can try adding robataka@jabber.neohawk.org to you buddy list. If you do add an account, please realize it may not be permanent as I continue to finalize configuration and adding plugins to it. I will try not to delete anybody who does register though, just no promises.

I also spent some time following this thread over at BFD. My gut reaction was much along the lines of Jim Kenny's reaction - partnering with Starbuck is a good marketing move, but when I actually read the article I saw the same thing another commenter pointed out. It is only being rolled out to ten Starbucks in the Cleveland area. My initial assumption was that it was a national campaign, hence I liked the idea. But only 10 locations in Cleveland? Hell, I even checked out starbucks.com's press release pages and there was nada, nothing. Of course, I have no problems with them partnering with Starbucks or anyone else for that matter. I would also imagine that with the cleveland.com article,BFD discussion etc., I would assume that CMOA will also eventually partner with local coffee shops. What I'd rather see though is a nationwide agreement, hell even Internationally. Wouldn't it be great to have my friends in Okinawa see a CMOA poster in the Mihama Starbucks.

The other thread I'll be watching with interest is this one. But I gotta say, BFD seems to have gotten even more active over the last couple of months. Maybe its is problems with my memory, but there seems to be alot more animated discussions going on over than I remember. And I particularly like the new tech postings by Douglas Carver. Kind of replaces Henry Gomez's Tech Link blog.

Wow, I was just going to do a quick post and look at what drivel it turned into.....

Tickets for the Cleveland School of Dance's(CSD) performance of The Nutcracker go on sale tomorrow at the CSD office. The performance is on December 16th, at 7:30 pm, and on December 17th, at 1:30 pm. It will be held at the Solon High School Auditorium. I have added event information here and here.

Elly has been cast as Maria, or Clara, for this year's performance. This is Elly's second time in the role, as she played it three years ago in Okinawa. However, two years ago it was not a production of the Nutcracker, but rather a just a part of a recital. This time around it is a "full production", so we are particularly excited to see it.

Both Arisa and I have been "banned" from trying to peak at rehearsals. Elly wants us to be suprised and enjoy the show. In fact, Elly snapped at Mom since she tried to break the rules when she picked Elly up yesterday. Of course, Elly just wants us to be suprised, and she seems to think it'll be a good show. Which is a suprising comment from Elly since she tends to understate or be reticent about being postive about things. At least until its over. Which is a good thing I guess.

Tickets are $20 for Adults and $10 for children under 12. The NeoHAWK family will be there both days, so hopefully we'll see you there!

As some of you may be aware, Elly has the role of Maria/Clara in the Cleveland School of Dance's performance of the Nutcracker. We had a full cast and parents meeting yesterday at which we were informed that the venue for the performance was moved from Solon High School to....drum roll please....the Allen Theatre at Playhouse Square.

Please note, that if you have already purchased or reserved tickets for the performance, you will need to contact the Cleveland School of Dance's office to exchange tickets. For those who have yet to buy tickets, the Cleveland School of Dance can no longer sell you tickets. You will need to purchase the tickets at the Playhouse Square box office.

Also note, that due to the Cincinatti Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker at the Allen Theatre, ticket for CSD's Little Nutcracker won't go on sale until Tuesday December 11th.

I have updated the Events information for the December 16th and December 17th performances. I have also added a gmarker for the Playhouse Square Center on the NEO Map.

Recently it has been that time of the year that aspiring ballet dancers audition for summer programs. Last Friday, Elly participated at the only audition being held in Cleveland this year. The School of American Ballet came to the Cleveland School of Dance studios to hold an audition for their summer program. You can see some pictures over at Cleveland.com, and there were pics on the front page of the Plain Dealer on Saturday(I didn't see that until my Mom gave me hers).

Elly did not think she did well, or rather that many other better dancers participated, and the fact that she was stuck in the corner near the piano hurt her ability to move. She is fairly confident that she won't be selected. It is hard to know since parents weren't allowed to view the audition, and I am sure the competition was tough. People came from as far away as Syracuse, NY, and Michigan to audition. Plus all the dancers from around Ohio as well as the Cleveland School of Dance. Something like 60 to 80 dancers auditioned. And this is just one of about twenty audtions SAB holds around the country.

Saturday, Elly heads off to Pittsburgh to audition for the American Ballet Theatre's audition. Elly danced with the American Ballet Theatre's production of Le Corsair in March of 2006 at Playhouse Square. If I recall correctly, that was the last performance of the Ballet Series that has since been cancelled.

It was nice having the audition in Cleveland, as every other company does not hold one in Cleveland. The two main locations near NEO are Pittsburgh or Columbus.

Elly, this is for you. I saw your first two posts, here and here and thought you would get a kick out of this post over at Darwin PR/