Tuesday, September 30, 2003

HONOR ROLL!
Not me! Allie! That means that she gets to come out dancing one school night a week with me!

Of course, I didn't find out about honor roll until I was already at dance & she didn't get to take advantage of it right away.

Congrats on honor roll!

Friday, September 26, 2003

Extension, Compression & Boiler Plates, Oh My!
Mario Robeau Jr. is absolutely amazing. He makes west coast swing seem so simple.

You've got 7 basic things & you just stick stuff in the middle to get "complex" moves. Your connection is always extension or compression. You can get 28 different moves with one variation between the boiler plates & distance traveled.

Such a complex dance made so simple.

Like, holy shit.

Thursday, September 25, 2003

F-O-U-R-T-E-E-N! (14)
HAPPYBIRTHDAYTOMYSISTERALLIE!

I got a non comical card for once. "Blah blah blah, celebrate your terrific-ness..." - but I added (on the dance floor) --> & put $6 in the back of the card.

A: Six bucks?
K: What's that for?
A: For dance?
K: For when?
A: Tonight?!
K: We're leaving in 12 minutes, unless you want to stay home & play with your new stereo instead...

And off we went to the Arlington Elks. We birthday jammed Allie to Jewel's Intuition & she totally rocked the house. She did cool stuff to all the bump bump bump's in the song & did an awesome job following everyone. She even danced with Anne & Lynne where Anne led the both of them at the same time.

My sister is wicked cool AND 14! :-D

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Crazy Baby Shower Action!
Well, not really crazy, but there was a baby shower. It was for Lisa, from work, who I work on Women in Technology with. It was an okay evening. I was by far the youngest & didn't know too many people.

When we arrived at her house, she was upstairs sleeping. We got to be really quiet & decorate her dining room. She was wicked surprised & kept being such throughout the evening. There were a bunch of snacks, good lasagna, silly games & A TON of presents. It took a good 2+ hours to open everything. The only thing they didn't get was Vaseline, baby laundry detergent & a laundry bag to prevent infant socks from getting eaten in the wash.

It was a long night, but Lisa had an awesome evening. Oh yeah, her house is amazing...

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Annoyed & tired turned into an overall good night.
I got to dance around 5:45 like I was supposed to for the NESD dance team. The ride from work to Arlington Elks was horrible. I had apparently gotten lucky the week before with the traffic ordeal. Annoyed.

NESD dance team practice starts & Bill starts reviewing, in detail, the same stuff we worked on the week before. More annoyed. Then people ask questions about stuff Bill had been explaining for the previous 10 minutes or stuff totally unrelated to the routine that had been mentioned before. Even more annoyed. At the end of practice, we barely got 8 beats past where we ended the week before. So annoyed that I got tired.

I ate my turkey dinner (yum) & had a drink with Wendy. I didn't so much want to do the group lesson & took a nap on the couch-like thing in the bathroom. It ended up being a good thing that I took a nap.

The dance starts. Brian, Macy & Willow showed up (yay fun people) & I had some neat dances. Marc came & I had a handful of great dances with him. DJ Jon played some great music. I think that & all the cool dances I had made the night good in the end.

Monday, September 22, 2003

I didn't remember how awesome nothing was.
I did absolutely nothing productive after work. Stina went to see a Red Sox game, so I didn't get to hang out with her & got to do nothing. I screwed around online & checked my online e-mail accounts. THAT WAS ALL I DID. It was so great.

Sunday, September 21, 2003

Though exhausted, quite informative.
Both day & night - it was awesome. Jordan & Tatiana during the day, Anne at night.

THE DAY:
J&T's workshops were cool. For some of them, I expected them to cover more than they got to (especially FBI), but I guess I can't have everything. The best part of those workshops was the critique session. I got to dance with Slick Mike for his critique & Brian for mine. Slick Mike was a great warmup, smooth song. I'd expected a not as smooth song for my critique since it was used for a couple critiques, but in the end, I was glad I got the smooth song.

Smooth songs make it so I can control my crazy dancing. I had good contrast of keeping quiet unless I wanted to bring something out in the music. Even though J&T said they were going to critique basics (not musical interpretation), Tatiana said she loved my musical interpretation (Jordan agreed) & repeated what I had done that she liked. Then they got to what I need to work on. Jordan was going to go first, but he lost his thought so Tatiana went first. She stole his critique. Between the two of them, it wasn't anything I hadn't heard before: take smaller steps & push off the back foot instead of gripping the ground ahead of me and pulling.

THE NIGHT:
I was pretty exhausted from the day; I probably should have gone home, but I decided to dance some more. I tried to go from the workshops to Ivanna's house for dinner, but it took a lot longer to get on the road than expected. We ended up meeting at Saugus Elks 'cause she had a private scheduled with Bill. She was absolutely wonderful & brought me the dinner she'd cooked & some wine (that I didn't like). The food was great & we ended up talking for quite a while about a bunch of random stuff. It was quite a while 'cause Bill didn't show up until a lot later on.

With being exhausted & a lot of my favorite dancers not being there, I thought it was going to be a waste of a night. Luckily, I got talking with Anne about my dancing. I danced with her to show her my anchors from Hazel&Tybaldt, Sarah Vann Drake & Robert Cordoba. She couldn't believe that I could just whip them out on command. When I'd talked to her & Jen Lyons previously, she thought I was confused about all the information I'd been getting from everyone. No longer did she think that; now she thinks that I need to find my dance.

I was running real high on life after talking with Anne, but I was feeling rather tired & wasn't having any spectacular dances. Just as I had been thinking of leaving, a bunch of my favorite dancers showed up. I ended up staying until normal ending time to keep on dancing. I slept rather well that night & was quite satisfied with the weekend.

Sunday, September 14, 2003

Ever wish you could rewind life?
I had been trying to leave dance 'cause I wanted to go before I got too tired. I started talking to Anne ('cause I'd finally gotten to dance with her) about where I should go with my dancing. Jen Lyons also came over for the conversation. They decided that I wasn't allowed to take any more privates without knowing what I wanted to work on. If I don't know what I want, I'll just get more basics that are different.

Now, I know there's more to work on beyond basics (I'm not nearly as good as the big dogs), but I didn't know what that was - I'm too new to the dance still. They tag teamed saying what things I should work on, and I thought it made sense.

Near the end of the night, I was finally close to leaving & David asked why I was still there - I'd said goodbye to him quite a while before. My response was that people wouldn't shut up. I didn't mean for it to come across that negatively, especially in front of Jen, 'cause I really liked my talk with Anne & Jen. I just hope she didn't take it as badly as I presented it.

I wish I could have hit rewind & not used shut up in that conversation & shown that I appreciated what they told me.