Okay, now I feel like writing about the ball.

Saturday night, as I've said, was the Washington Spring Ball, and consequently the inaugural appearance of my new ball gown. There were difficulties at the beginning of the evening (it took curiousangel longer than we'd anticipated to lace and hook me into the dress, he not being as practiced as wcg, and then one of the ribbons that held up the overskirt came loose from its mooring in the car on the way over and had to be frantically pinned in place), but once we sailed through the arch of greenery at the ballroom door the evening was radiantly perfect from beginning to end.

Perhaps it's because everyone at a ball is dressed up and given to extra courtesies and flourishes, or perhaps it's simply that a much greater proportion of ball dancers are reasonably skilled and have practiced the scheduled dances, but I've found that certain dances click for me at a ball in a way that they haven't done at practices. I've always loved the Bishop, with its swooping curves and multiple opportunities for flirtation, and Well Hall, which is more in the way of a prolonged romantic interlude with one's own partner. Those dances are delightful at practice, and they were delightful Saturday night.

But Saturday's ball transformed the dance St. Margaret's Hill. It's a dance for six people, arrayed in three couples. Each couple in turn takes the lead for a series of elaborate loops and turns. In practice, it's always struck me as fussy, mannered, and awkward. At the ball, in a set with five other skilled dancers, I suddenly experienced as it can be: not a long flowing chain, like most of my favorite dances, but a cameo ornate and perfect in its minuteness. I moved in mirror balance with my partner, an impossibly elegant young man in a long pale blue waistcoat and breeches matching his pale blue eyes, and knew that we were graceful and beautiful together. And found myself regretting the moment that the "fussy, mannered" dance ended.

And Round About Our Coal Fire, a relatively new dance to me and one that's in a cursedly unusual and difficult 9/8 meter. It's a fast dance, with complicated weaving patterns, and if you lag behind a step it's hard to recover. For half way up the set, I was desperately counting under my breath, barely meeting my partner's eyes in passing. And then suddenly it clicked, and I was moving rapidly in and out of the heys and changes in perfect 9/8 time, and most assuredly dancing with my partner even when the patterns separated us.

From the beginning of the evening to the end, I felt beautiful. Everyone praised Bill for my dress, and rightly so, but the best compliment that I can give him myself is that for once I saw what other people saw without having to struggle. I felt beautiful, and graceful, and elegant, right down to the skin. I felt like a princess.

Well, it's a good thing I'd already made the cheerful post.

curiousangel just called me at the clinic. He heard from the body shop that the insurance adjuster is planning to declare the car totalled. (Um, for non-driving or non-U.S. readers, that means that they won't pay for repairs - they'll give us what they figure is the "actual cash value" of the car before the wreck, instead. Then they get to sell what remains of the car (which should be a fair amount) for parts.)

So now we have to go car shopping. The good news is that I spoke to the credit union carrying our car note, and found that we can buy out the loan for about $1500. So if they pay us the bluebook value, we ought to have a fair amount left over towards the next car. I also discovered, while surfing through sites about Maryland insurance law, that the insurance company is obligated to pay us for sales tax and fees associated with the purchase of another car. I don't know if the equitable settlement amount goes up to compensate for the hassle involved in buying a car - for example, we're likely to have to take some time off work to handle it - but it seems to me that it should.

We need to decide what kind of car we want - I mean, we'll almost certainly be looking for a four-door family sedan, but we don't know if we want to get another Mazda or look for something else. We need to decide if we want to buy a four-year-old car like the one we lost, at $5000 or $6000, or if we want to get a newer car and take out a loan for the balance. My gut instinct is that, given that we hope to apply for a mortgage in the next year or so, it would be wiser to avoid assuming a new loan now... but I'm by no means certain about that.

Grrrr...

[In addition to - or in lieu of - sympathy, all forms of Geek Answer Syndrome are welcome in reply to this post.]