Wherein I gush about dancing

A one-time (barring overwhelming demand) waltz variations class was offered this term at OSU. It’s been a bit over five years since I’ve taken a dance class, so I figured what the heck and you should pay for experiences, not things and whatever else I could tell myself to justify the cost, and signed up.

The thing about taking a credit of classes, these days, is that there are comparatively huge fixed costs involved—and those get halved, per-credit, if you take a second credit. So I also signed up for west coast swing II—a course I had taken at the end of my college career, which was both appropriate and far too early in my west coast swing experience to be wholly useful.

Thus my Tuesday and Thursday nights this month (and next) have been shot. Wednesday night is still, of course, the weekly dance practice… and suddenly the middle of my week is packed. With awesome.

After a little-too-sweaty first week, I determined that I should exercise after I danced. I’ve also been trying to make notes about the various moves I learn (Marin tells me that this is very much something I would do), immediately after class, because I have a terrible memory for physical motions—not just dance, but sports in general—until I do something a few gajillion times. End result: I’ve been exercising around the midnight hour in the middle of each week (witness the awful timestamp of this post). This has thrown pretty much everything else in my life out of whack.

It’s been worth it, though. Five years of casual dancing with no instruction has made me a sloppy dancer, and now I’ve been getting called on it. My waltz and west coast are cleaner than they were before, and (get this) I can spin the other way when waltzing now.

I’ve only been spinning in one direction for ten years, now.

Even better is that my plantar fasciitis, which had benched me for the latter half of 2009, appears to have finally cleared up. (Knock on wood.) The first two weeks were a bit dicey—I was icing my foot every evening, hoping that it wasn’t going to give out—but the last two weeks have been the most pain-free my foot has been in ages.

Barry and Meredith are in my waltz class. Poor Sarah is in both waltz and west coast, which means she sees me three nights a week. That’s fun for me, but maybe not so much for her.

Work’s been me staring at my computer screen in anguish as I attempt to redesign a website; I now have an idea where I want to take it—I just have to finish the job. Like, say, tomorrow. (Er, today.)

This week Apple announced the iPad, of course. (I still wish they had gone with “Canvas” instead.) Andy, Farm, Webb and I gathered in a virtual huddle over email to enjoy the revelations; at the end, pretty much the only response was Andy’s “well, it’s cheaper than I expected.” (Save yourself some time and just read Steven Frank’s commentary on the iPad; I wish I had some sort of brilliant insight like that every once in a while.) I have some PDFs—and maybe (oh) some Kenichi manga—that the iPad might make pleasant to read… beyond that, though, I’m rather underwhelmed so far.

Brian came down and visited last weekend, and he, Nate, and I wound up watching the Higurashi Rei OVA and the first five episodes of Saki. Saki is mahjong anime crossed with light lesbian romance, and is pretty darn entertaining. I had previously informed Andy about who my favorite Saki character was, prior to watching any of the show.

Andy’s response? Gratz on picking the worst Saki character.

After actually watching the show, I can safely say that my runner-up favorite character is the mahjong club president who plays everyone like pawns.

Project Shinji-Dog III is slated to occur this weekend. We have yet to see if anyone (beyond Nate, Brian, and me) will attend, though—I still wonder if it’s been too short a time (only a year!) since the last Shinji-Dog.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

powered by wordpress