Flash Mob Dance Video Finally Up!

We are excited to announce that Sarah's cousin, Emily, has completed the choreography for the special flash mob dance for Sarah's Bat Mitzvah!  (Sorry it took us a while to post this! We had some snafus getting the videos to upload to YouTube!)

Below we have posted the links to three videos with instructions on the dance.  We invite everyone who wishes to bookmark these videos to learn the dance. 

In addition, we will be hosting some practices over the summer for Sarah's friends and family to come and learn the dance together with Sarah and cousin Emily.  We will post information about the practice dates, for those in the area.  

Even if you can't come for lessons, you can check out the video and learn it on your own.  We will be adding a few more videos to help you learn the whole thing.  There will be a special cue devised to alert people that the dance is starting, and we will be explaining how the Flash Mob dance will start in a later post. 

Thank you for joining our Flash Mob fun!  Please put a comment here, if you are learning it and want to be alerted about our special practice sessions with Cousin Emily!



  VIDEO 1: Click this link to go to the first video showing the whole Flash Mob Dance:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJAvHCmJ7HM&feature=youtu.be

 

 


VIDEO 2:  Click this link to go to the second video showing the Flash Mob Dance in slow-motion:  http://youtu.be/93n1jklbLjE







 VIDEO 3:  Click this link to go to the third video showing the Flash Mob Dance from behind:  http://youtu.be/m7rmaLz0YV4

We hope you will choose to participate in our flash mob! 

Celebrating Raja's Birthday

Taking a break from Bat Mitzvah preparations to celebrate Raja's birthday at a Giants game.  It was a wild and fun game! An umpire who ruled on a catch for the third out was overruled, so both teams had to the return to the field for one more out and the players automatically advanced a base, giving the Giants their 4th run.  Best of all, we had Raja with us.  Also, the Giants won and there were three girls sitting behind us with mustaches, who got onto the TV, so we might be there too.  Raja got a big birthday cake that was enough to serve everyone sitting near us, as well! 

Australian Cousins Visited Us Early

We are honored and delighted that most all of our family will be coming west for Sarah's Bat Mitzvah.  We are sad, however, that such a trip is not possible for many of our international relatives, who won't be able to make it.  We welcome anyone who can't make it, to send your messages to Sarah through this blog.  You can make a comment under this post, if you like.

You can also come visit us another time.  We are happy to host any and all friends and family who can't be here in August on another date.  Here is a photo of some of our Australian cousins, Shelley, Michael, Jonathan and Anna Cohen, who came to see us on their way to a medical conference on the east coast.

Here is a photo of them with Sarah, when we took them to see Upright Grand at TheatreWorks!  It was a really good show that we all enjoyed!

Sadly, they have already gone but it was a wonderful visit and it felt good to be able to devote undivided attention to them, since we haven't seen them in quite a while!

Electronic Version Now Available

Sarah had a strong preference for sending out printed invitations. She looked through a wide selection of options and styles and found one that she loved—so that's what we did!  Even though we've spent years building our email address lists and have not put the same level of attention to updating our snail-mail address lists.  We were thrilled to get out quite a lot of printed invitations but we still had many friends and some family members internationally that we did not have updated addresses for.  Then, we started to get some invitations returned!  Some of our addresses were too old!

So, we decided to revert to Plan B for some of our invitees: we created a comparable electronic version of our invitation.  We are happy to have such a great electronic design to send out, to faithfully represent the style and feel of the invitations that Sarah selected. (Oh, the pleasures of having Adobe competence!)  Here it is!

Antique Atherton Gazebo Going UP!

We are excited to have found what we think will be a very special and lovely solution to late afternoon sun during our ceremony.  Months ago, we learned about an antique Atherton gazebo, formerly gracing the estate of Don Lucas (Sr.), one of the earliest VCs, that was being offered on freecycle.  It had been cut up and stored for a long time and was in pretty bad condition.  The person who had had it no longer wanted it taking up space in her yard.  Here is how it looked when we moved the pieces into approximate places to get a sense of what it would look reconstructed, before we got it.

We were able to collect up all of the pieces, truck them down to San Jose them to be cleaned up, sand-blasted and powder coated.  Now they look like new.  We even found a great metal craftsman to reconstruct the pieces.  The only problem was that we did not know how the pieces fit together!  It seemed like it would be a fairly straight-forward thing to figure that out.  Eight angled pieces, each with two arms, 16 arms to the octagon, four large posts with caps distributed around the octagon, one center cap.  No problem, right?   

Turns out, we tried and tried and could not figure it out.  It was not making sense!  So, we tried a lot of different possibilities.  Playing around with viewing all of the newly painted pieces out on the lawn again, and moving them around into different locations.  We compared the cut edges. We measured lengths.  We analyzed the supporting structure.  None of that worked.  Finally, with the date for installation approaching, we had to turn to an expert to help us: a mathematical expert!  We turned, of course, to Jonathan, Sarah's Dad, to provide the geometric calculations that would allow us to figure out the real shape.  It wasn't easy even from a mathematical approach.  We kept getting weird solutions that, because the angles, combined with the support post locations did not add up.  None of the likely solutions seemed right.  But finally, math might conquered logic and we found the solution, which was this:

The post legs all went on one side!  Turns out that there are ten additional small post legs that we need to add—for which there are attachments that we did not focus on before (so that's what those little widgets are!)  Hooray!  A design that makes sense!

We are still waiting to erect this structure over the part of our lawn where the ceremony will be.  We still don't know exactly how it will look or how well it will serve to protect our guests from sun but we are looking forward to finding out and surprising you with the results.  We hope it will be worth all of the time and effort!