The Adventures of Recalcitrant Toy

...but I shouldn't.

I am in SO much pain right now, and it's all my fault. I should have known that doing aerials would make it worse. Yep, it sucks.

And it was amazing and awesome and absolutely cool and fun and boy am I tired and sore and sleepy and I have to get up early tomorrow and bring a calvinthedeeple for acupuncture and we will hope it helps the poor boy. So there :-)

Something I ate yesterday really did a number on my allergies and caused the insane itching type stuff that causes you to scratch yourself while semi conscious. I hate that. I should have just taken benedryl immediately which would have taken care of everything and helped me sleep but Noooooo....I just took more zyrtec. Not the brightest thing in the world.

Woke up this morning realizing my arms are sore. Why? Spotting and attempting to hold myself up in ariels class. Nothing like using muscles you're not used to in order to remind you that you're out of shape and really oughta work on that upper body strength. Why yes, this IS a good idea :-).

I did an experiment on myself yesterday to see if I could perhaps lessen the symptoms of my gut wrenching inability to breathe thing. I decided to try doubling up on my GERD medication and adding antacid before class. First class it didn't work so great because I kept getting dizzy (well gee, it was SPINS...heh heh). Second class was good. Dance was VERY good. I even danced many times with that massive bundle of energy badmagic and was ONLY a bit out of breath! That was very encouraging and made me quite happy. I will try the same for today's classes, and tomorrow's classes and the dance afterwards. It may even help me for my job interview :-).

For all you swing dancers who REALLY want to learn something, Glen Echo tomorrow night. World Lindy Hop Champions teaching the class. Walk ins encouraged. Then a dance afterwards. They are fabulous teachers.

Oh my! It's JUNE already!!!!

Wow...I spent most of last night wide awake and itching everywhere. I didn't get to sleep until about 6 am and am feeling like eating brainzzzzzz. It has to be insane histamines beating the hell out of me. I swear by my Zyrtec, but it is indeed possible that I need something more, at least temporarily. Course, that would put me to sleep and I can't do that cuz there's happy fun dance class tonight. W00t!

Yesterday was quite pleasant. The amazing dogpooh made a magnificent fish dish that I'm hoping he describes in more detail. The sauce....the fish....mouth orgasms. Then he brought amazing apple strudel with ice cream and I was a sugar mess. It was a night for that it seemed as the exsmof brought chocolate and lemon cheesecake and orange cheesecake squares to the tango, after which Marc conjured a homemade apple pie, but by that time I was so sugared out I declined, but watching everyone's reactions indicated it was wonderful.

Oh yes, the tango.... I was in far too good a mood to pretend to be filled with the appropriate pain and angst to truly be one with the dance :-). And it was hard to keep a straight face when exsmof and crack each other up so often, but despite being a heretic, I had a great time. The lesson was wonderful. I forget what the woman's name was who taught it, but she was appropriately dressed in black with heels, had proper angst levels, a great Argentinean accent, and taught a good class. It was great to get in the extra practice, as my one tango class beforehand had left me confused about that "cross" thing and it's really hard to just "let go" and follow your partner when everyone is just learning and your feet end up more tangled than the hank of yarn that has become modern art on my coffee table :-). However, exsmof is a wonderful lead for the confused, and Marc gave me tips on ochos and how not to look as if I was falling over. I really enjoy tango but realize I have a LOT to learn.

Perhaps most happy was that I could dance much beginner tango without being tired, without having that stupid inability to breathe thing, and could still do cartwheels afterwards. Joy!

Today I will try to find somewhere reasonably priced that will shave 3 of the puffs for me, will continue putting out that resume, and will take it easy until dance class tonight. Maybe I'll do some knitting.

My T1 went down very early Saturday morning. Although Verizon is supposed to dispatch within an hour, since they were busy installing FIOS in places OTHER than my house, we weren't back up until about 6pm, which was just enough time for me to say "gee, we're back up" before having to go to Flying Feet's Hangar Dance at Leesburg airport.

The dance was much fun, with a good band, various leads (some good, some amusing), much fun dancing with exsmof, much talking with la_penguinita and her mom, and best of all....airplane geeking.

I want a rotary engine when I grow up :-)

Much pilot geeking to be had, everyone having many opinions about the current airspace situation around DC. There was also photography geeking, as one person had a very old and very cool Leica rangefinder. He had snuck a digital into his pocket though to take those instant gratification pictures we all crave :-).

So today I go to more dancing, and also try to do a bit more knitting. Knit knit knit. But first I must wake up.

*Sigh* I'd become used to showing up at least once a week and learning from cool and nifty people. Now I'll have to find another place and some other cool and nifty people. Seems they stop teaching classes in December because some crazy people actually find it's too COLD to have class in the unheated ballroom. Wimps!

It's been an interesting 7 months or so trying to learn how to move those weight bearing objects wear bad shoes. Through it all, I've met some great people, had a LOT of fun, and plan to keep doing this until I physically can't anymore.

So here's to the crazy Glen Echo crew. See y'all next year.

Somewhere in this spinning vortex of dynamic chaos there was a time period referred to as a weekend. I will try to remember what lovely fun occurred over this period of time.....

Saturday: Went to a dance at Glen Echo sponsored by our excellent friends at Flying Feet where a strange but large band played strange but old songs with a strange but really boring announcer who interrupted the flow by babbling in a put on radio voice about the next song. Despite his prattling, we had a lovely time, and I danced a LOT for which I am paying today. Cha CHING.

As I was attempting to measure the increase in stamina hopefully achieved by all this stuff, I came up with a "unit of energy" called a "covert." A covert = one dance. There were some with whom I danced Saturday whose dancing left me with half a covert. Others, like badmagic weighs in at two coverts. (Note this is not weight but volume). leiacat said that lonebear should be the two coverts and badmagic should be two point five coverts, but I have to experiment with this to be certain of the conversion factor. Occasionally we would see a vortex spinning across the floor, much like the cartoon Tasmanian Devil. That was vvalkyri. I think we had time to wave as it spun too rapidly for this old creature to catch.

After the dance, we assisted in tear down, which was fun despite the "evil yellow string" that took 20 minutes of work from both myself and vvalkyri to untangle so we could get a light string down. We shall blame exsmof as it was all his fault anyway.

Sunday: Went dancing again and noticed that after many days of dancing intensely (having achieved a string of 5 coverts the night before...w00t) that my legs don't appreciate this terribly much, so they ceased to cooperate with me during waltzes. It is quite possible that is because I am doing them wrong. leiacat says it is likely because my shoulders aren't square to the leader, making pivoting an issue and putting more pressure on one leg than the other. Given that I am walking in circles today, that is likely so. Ouchie.

After the dance we went to Platos where there were some very strange games going on, one with a deck of zombie cards, and one with many plastic pyramid shaped objects and a die that gave directions on what to do with the pyramids. (And it is VERY FRUSTRATING to have my grammar corrected by exsmof while writing this, so excuse me while I throttle him.....ok..back now...no wait, now he is complaining that he wasn't throttled enough....brb....). We also witnessed a very disturbing sight of vvalkyri sensuously slurping jelly from the little plastic containers on the table. I shudder to think of that kind of sugar rush. Upon a repeat performance, vvalkyri decided strawberry was better than grape. Who am I to argue?

Monday: Took the puter to MicroCenter to be fixed. *sigh* Spilled water on the keyboard yesterday and now the "h" key no workie. I am sad. Hopefully they will fix it properly and cheaply, else I may have to throttle THEM too. What a day. dogpooh asked exsmof whether he has any shirts that are any color but white. *snicker* Good question. exsmof claims to, but I can't recall any, being tired and all that stuff.

And so today I may or may not make dance class as just about everything below the waist hurts. That's what I get for pushing myself I guess. *waaaaa* Not sure what else is going on today..... we shall see if I am up to doing much. *yawn*

Anyone got any experience doing these sorts of things? A certain calvinthedeeple is complaining that he gets really cold during the winter not having fur and all, and his wife and girlfriend and son are also rather chilly. I figured I could make stuff for them to size, and likely cheaper than buying them, and given the abuse they put on such things perhaps do several at once to last through the winter.

Believe it or not, I can do rudimentary knit/perl patterns, and can do relatively simple crochet patterns.

If anyone has any ideas, please to let me know. calvinthedeeple thanks you in advance.

Oh dear...I didn't realize that exsmof disliked being tickled to the extent that he would lead me into one of those "sit down" end "ta da" type things, yet NOT have a knee there for me to sit ON. You see, exsmof expertly put out his left knee to support the buttocks of the Toy, yet sat her down on his right. *SPLAT* went the Toy. *OUCH* went the butt. *SNICKER* went a few onlookers.

Glen Echo was lots of fun, and I tried harder to deal with the coordination between dancing and breathing. At one point I actually danced THREE DANCES IN A ROW!!!! My stamina may improve greatly as more actual air reaches my lungs.

Happy fun on a Saturday night. W00t.

Last night it was dancing at the Dulles Hilton with exsmof knowing we'd run into my pal Margy the crazy pilot lady who works at the Air and Space museum. I was pretty happy to actually make it almost through til the end of the dance at midnight. If I had more "wind power" I'd be able to practice more and actually get a lot better, but as it is, I'm improving slowly and doing what I can. The difficulty is in my trying to feel comfortable and let my brain just "go" and follow. As usual, exsmof threw in things I'd never seen, things I'd screwed up in class, and those damn echo kicks. *ARGH* (Yeah, ok lonebear I know, I know :-)) But I suppose that every dance I go to I feel a bit more comfortable, so there you go. I haven't even really been dancing a year now so I should lay off the insecurity already and "shuddup and dance" but it's difficult when you're an overachieving pain in the butt.

So anyway, dancing was great fun despite my wussiness, and we danced maybe every 2nd or third one with me resting between. I will continue attempting to build my stamina. After dancing was the mandatory babbling most of the night and falling asleep at strange times of the morning.

W00t!