Pajama Party

OwnerGuy and Z took the usual crew of competitors to a Big Dance Event so the studio was left in the hands of the staff. Thursday night was a party night so they turned it into a pajama party with people supposed to wear sleepwear. I chose to wear a t-shirt which was close enough to the theme because I wasn’t going to wear what I usually wear and going out to get something special for a party seemed a bit silly. JoNY and the new girl did put on onesies and there were others who got into the theme as well.

But it rained a lot last night and I think that kept the attendance down. None of the ladies who dance higher Bronze or Silver were there so most of the ladies were newcomers. More guys than ladies so I danced a few times but then decided to skip out early when the instructors decided it was line dance time. This happens from time to time as well. To add extra fun to a party, they’ll break out a line dance or two. When done right, line dances can be fun. When it is two or three people who know what they are doing and a whole crowd of people stumbling through, well, it takes on a different look.

I was talking with another couple before the party. They didn’t stay but he was asking why I hadn’t accompanied the crew. Its a money thing. I can justify the cost of the lessons and the Showcases but it gets really hard for me when these events are probably 5-6X the cost of a Showcase without even really considering travel. Given my new non-employed status, I think it becomes even harder to justify that level of cost given that I don’t put in the effort to really be a factor at these things. But if I’m never going to do one of these again, then it begs the question as to whether I need to continue with the nine dances I’m doing since those are the competitive ones or if I should change it up a bit and drop a few.

Coming back to the lesson – I kind of took yesterday in reverse chronological order. We worked on the Viennese Waltz for the entire time. With Z and OwnerGuy and most of the advanced students gone, there was more room on the floor so JoNY took advantage of it. We did have to dodge two other couples but it was easier than trying to dodge 4 couples and a group class which is sometimes what it has been like. So we ran around the floor for the 45 minutes – guess it was a cardio night. The new stuff seems to work better and we worked specifically on looping the thing and I think we got that to work as well. One thing that continues to be a small problem for me is that there is one place where I come out of a spin and I’m suppose to cut in front of her so I’m backing line of dance and then we go right into some natural turns. I found that I was hesitating a bit waiting for her and that was getting us behind the music. This is one of those places where I need to dance my dance and trust that she’ll catch up to me. Sometimes, I do too much work waiting for her when that’s not my job.

Oh and I had x-rays on Wednesday which confirmed that I have arthritis in both thumbs. The weird thing is that the X-ray says it is in a joint down by the wrist but I feel it farther up the thumbs. They call it mild which my doctor interpreted as good news. But I’ve still lost certain functionality so I’d hate to know what severe is like. I guess having caught it early enough we can go into some exercises to try and protect the joints as long as possible. So he also suggested some occupational therapy (when it is the hands, they call it occupational therapy as opposed to physical therapy). The first visit was just an overall assessment of where the pain is and a check of grip and pinch strength. I got one exercise to start with and she’ll add more over time. As near as I can understand, the goal is to work on the space between the thumb and the other fingers to keep that strong and flexible because the joint damage sometimes causes people to keep their thumbs close to their fingers and then you start to have other problems. Also have a soft splint to wear when I’m doing things that irritate it. Which includes typing this here blog and I just realized I didn’t have it on so a little pause to get that taken care of.

One last little note on work. So the guy did send an email to the same group of people in response to mine to say that he was told by my people how they would have handled the files. Which again means that the line about not knowing why it wasn’t dealt with was totally unnecessary. Anywho, he asked another question about why we do something a certain way. When you do a certain study many times over the course of many years, you learn and evolve and change certain things. We don’t always do a good job of capturing the history or logic and I think this is an issue for more than just our company. A lot of things are stored in people’s memory and not really anywhere else. Lose the people and you lose a lot of legacy information.

Oh and he’s complaining a lot about the amount of work he’s got. I do actually feel bad for him because it wasn’t his decision to cast my department loose and fold it all into one, smaller group. Guess the people who made that decision didn’t really understand all that we did but that’s also common for downsizings. The people left behind tend to pick up a lot more work than anyone planned on because the planning tools usually are incomplete and full of bad data.

We are hoping to get a break in the rain to get out and see some more flowers. There is a place in town where they’ve planted a boatload of bulbs and the tulips should be at peak right now. The forecast is dicey – periods of rain and colder so we’ll see if we get a chance to get out. Other than that, not much else planned for this weekend.