Summer Storms

So JoNY and OwnerGuy worked a bit on a Fox Trot routine to the song I picked. The song is basically about a lady who is over a guy and we’re going to play that up a bit. She’ll enter walking away from me and I’m supposed to chase after her begging for one more chance. She agrees and we start dancing.

The ending is up for grabs. Shall we have a happy ending? I think we were both leaning towards no even though I do love my happy endings. From a show point of view, I think it will work better if we finish and I think I’ve won her back and she stalks off leaving me dejected in the middle of the floor. Yeah, I think that will work.

The choreography is still in development so no notes yet. I now have to think of how I should chase after her in the beginning. It should be fun. I think I can sell it.

Group class was hustle which is OK. Actually, I should be clear that there are very few dances I’ve met that I don’t enjoy doing. The problem is that the more you try to do, the harder it is to remember them all and you end up almost starting over on each lesson. Hustle wouldn’t be bad because they play enough of them at parties that I’d get to practice. That was the problem with things like Quickstep or Peabody or the country dances. They were great but they don’t play those songs at parties so the only practice I was getting was lessons and that wasn’t enough for them to truly stick.

Maybe I could pick hustle back up. I think JoNY would like it. But my other issue with hustle is it kind of feels like a dance that shouldn’t have any rules. And I kind of like to be lazy man and just stand in the middle and let the lady do all kinds of spins. They seem to enjoy that. If you learn it for real, you’ve got to deal with timing and footwork and all that kind of stuff. So I’m still a firm maybe.

One part of the hustle required giving the lady an outside turn and then continuing to turn her so you end up in a sweetheart position. Here’s the thing about turns in hustle – they are easy to over lead. Most guys seem to think they need to be cranking the lady through the turns so they are all arms. The reality is that most of these kind of happen on their own. You initiate and suggest and guide and the lady really does the work. So I was dancing with one of the ladies last night and she thanked me for not taking her shoulder off with the lead. I think she was exaggerating since her shoulder was still attached but it was more of a comparison to the guy she was just dancing with.

Again, not saying I’m perfect because I’m far from it. But I do have a certain skill set from years of doing this.

I stayed for a couple of dances at party but was fighting a nasty headache and my achy knees so I called it a night early.

I don’t know about where you live but, for us, August is basically the mirror image of February. It is still summer and still hot most of the time, but you can get those first hints of fall. (February is winter but you will start to see the first hints of spring – in case my “mirror image” wasn’t clear) I suppose people who hate summer must view July like I view January. Not that I understand how anyone could hate summer but to each his own.

Fall and spring are where we get the war of the air masses. The warm stuff from the south fighting with the cool stuff from the north. That always messes with my head and last night we had a particularly strong front come through so my head was pounding. So we had storms last night but today is cooler although it is still summer so it is going to reach into the lower 80’s. But that’s why I had to cash it in early last night.

I’ve decided that I really love the drive to the gym in the morning. I’m going the opposite way of traffic so even though there are still lots of people fighting to get to work on time, my route is pretty clear. I see the backup in the other lane and I wonder how many people are driving to a job they hate. I think that way now.

Still trying to slowly work back into some shoulder stuff outside of the exercises the therapist gave me. Keeping the weight low and stopping if something doesn’t feel right. Now the shoulder just kind of feels “dead” but that’s better than being in pain.

So that’s how my morning started. Now off to do some other things.