Portland Juggling Festival, 2010

The annual festival has come and gone. It was a good weekend. I took a lot of workshops, and did some great progress. Also, it was great to have my friends Marcus and Tim in town for the weekend. The shows were good, and I got to see a few friends at the show.

I took some 3 ball, 4 ball and 5 ball workshops, and a clubs back-cross workshop. I made good progress on my 4 ball tricks, and finally got the 3 ball shower going. 5 balls is still eluding me beyond 6 or 7 catches. I also got my first few successful club back-crosses. I didn't do a lot of passing.

I was a volunteer again, Gym Coordinator and Late Night Czar. We also tried something new this year to try to get more people who wanted to learn in a 'learning corner'.

The Friday Night 'renegade' show was pretty cool some of the acts were:

• Juggling 2 balls in one hand while making a balloon animal in the other
• A bit on how Cannibalism will save the environment
• A juggling act to the song 'Pour some sugar on me'
• Juggling on a giraffe unicycle
• 3 ball contact juggling
• Two person club passing with 3 clubs, lots of switching out and swapping
• A great street juggler act

There were over 20 bits at the renegade show, and most of them were entertaining.

The public show was great, too. My friends Jamie and Joe showed up, as they have in the past. Whitten showed up with his kids, and they thoroughly enjoyed the show. It was great to see the kids enjoy themselves so much.

A few of the acts from the public show that I thought were really great:

• An acrobat / contortionist did a great routine, ending with shooting a bow and arrow with her feet. Accurately.
  
• A bounce juggling act combined with beat-boxing.
• The headliner act, Justin, did 7 clubs, all back-crosses, plus a lot of other great stuff.

Some web resources I found on the web:
A Picsaweb Gallery
7 Ball Endurance
Another PJF goer's blog posting

R.I.P. Grendel

Grendel was our Cairn Terrier that was given 3 weeks to live. 2 years ago. If you don't remember, here's the post:
http://jghostman.blogspot.com/2008/07/grendels-pain.html

Anyway, he had liver failure that was causing his skin to slough off, and it was ugly and sad. We ended up changing his food (and in fact, all of the dogs) to a home cooked diet. Meran calls it doggy stew. Grendel made a fast recovery, and lived on.

His whole life, we joked his name should have been Eyor, not Grendel. He was not a scary monster at all, just the complete opposite. He was always the sick one, it was at least a year after we first got him that we found out that he had a urinal tract infection, and had probably had it for the year (or before) we had him.

Here's some photos of his better days.

Grendel in the back, he had some red in his coat.

Close up of 'hang dog'

Leaning tower of Grendel

Trying to get some sleep.

Well, that's it. We loved him, and we know a lot of folks enjoyed him. We're glad he is finally pain free...