I spent the bulk of my Saturday withstanding torture, making a mad dash up a communication tower with hordes of Bad Guys trying to stop me, and then rappelling down that same communication tower with a Hind helicopter shooting at me.

Of course, during that last exercise my grip ran out and I fell to my death. That’s when I gave up on my game of Metal Gear Solid.

That evening was the final ballroom dance of the term. The dance’s theme was a formal affair, which meant I got to pull my slacks and white dress shirt from my closet. That’s when I discovered that my shirt had a moth hole (or had caught on something? I’m not sure)—and getting dressed got progressively more painful from there. See, my dad hated/hates getting dressed up; I inherited that trait from him. Anything more formal than jeans and a polo shirt, and odds are I will gripe while putting it on.

Instead of being on time for the dance (which would have been a first for me […]), I was an hour late. Grar.

Fortunately, the dance was worth it. I got to waltz, cha-cha, hustle, west-coast swing, night-club two-step, and lindy hop with a variety of people, and had fun chatting with many more. (To show off: I can also dance salsa, merengue, foxtrot, rhumba, and american tango. To not show off: I’m rather rusty at and/or have few moves for many of those dances.)

Jay was ecstatic about being accepted into grad school; Tiffany (college-Tiffany, to avoid confusion) was enjoying her brief respite from the pharmacy graduate program; Connor figured out I was sneaking up on him when I laughed at something amusing that occurred nearby. Connie talked me into going into open position during a cha-cha (meaning that the lead and follow have absolutely no connection, and so are dancing both by themselves and with each other—and I’m generally no good at dancing by myself), which was only notable because I didn’t screw it up royally. A-young—I’m probably butchering the spelling of her name—tolerated my confused attempts to fuse West Coast into Lindy hop. Other than that, I did reasonably well throughout the evening. Reasonably.

After the dance, I joined a subset* of my dance friends in a late-night trip to Shari’s. (Little did I know that Shari’s is actually a hot after-dance hangout.) We wound up torturing our poor waiter by ordering fifteen-thousand milkshakes—after ordering, we saw him carrying a tub of ice cream towards the shake machine. I ordered a strawberry milkshake; Ashley (sitting beside me) decided that sounded good, and followed suit. Later, Ashley ordered french toast; I then decided that sounded good, and did the same—to the amusement of the others. (Turns out that they give you a good deal of french toast; next time we’d be better off splitting one order.)

[*Connor was greatly amused by my use of the term subset in a similar context, and commented that I was such the math graduate. I still contend that it’s the best word I could have used.]

People were mostly tired, so conversation was rather light. The boy scouts of the group—Jay, Scott, Nihal (or however you spell a name that phonetically sounds like “Knee-Hall”), and two others whose names I haven’t quite caught—serenaded the rest of us—Anne, a gal I don’t know, Ashley, and myself—with old campfire songs. Their singing made it sound more like drunkards singing drinking songs, which was probably even more amusing.