The Decibel War

Dances:  Foxtrot, Waltz, Quickstep
Part:  Lead
Workout:  Chest and shoulders at the gym.
Happy Hour:  McCormick & Schmick's - Cheeseburger
Amount of Data Downloaded/Uploaded in 30 Days:  250gb/1tb

Boy was I running behind today!  I usually try to get to the gym a little before 7pm which gives me roughly an hour to stretch and workout before we start practice at 8pm.  Today I arrived at around 7:20 which meant I had to work fast.  I took 5 minutes to stretch, then jumped on the elliptical for 5 minutes to get my heart rate up.  After that I did my fastest workout to date.  I managed to do the entire thing in 15 minutes.  That's 3 sets of 10 reps over 6 exercises (180 reps) split between chest and shoulders in just 900 seconds (that's 5 seconds per rep which includes rest time and getting water in between each exercise).  The last 15 minutes I spent on abs.  Needless to say, I was burnt afterwards, but felt great.  Also recovered just in time for practice so I wasn't dead.

Now why was I late?  Well recently I've been accumulating ballroom dance music of all kinds.  It's been a long time goal of mine to create the ultimate dance music collection.  That means not only having a great and varied song selection, but also making sure all the songs are tagged properly including: name, artist, album, tempo, dance type, track number, and album art.  Doing this makes choosing music a breeze.  I simply type in the dance I want to do and it lists all the songs I have for that dance.  I can then sort it by tempo, name, album, etc.  I got a little carried away this morning and just couldn't stop working on it.  I added over 1,100 songs to my archive today alone.  So that made me leave the house a tad bit too late.  But I know this sacrifice will be worth it in the long run.  I only have to organize it once.

Practice began with a full house today.  Patrick was there as well as Shaoshu, the bikini girls were already strutting around, and these punk kids who were trying to break dance were also in there.  As usual, I patched into the sound system and started up some music at a low volume.  The next thing I know, the kids (who had this little sound dock for iPods) had turned their music WAAAAY up.  *sigh*  After putting up with it for about 10 minutes (hoping they'd be considerate and lower the volume once the song ended) I decided being passive wasn't going to solve anything going to get us anywhere.  So I went back over and just cranked up a tango which easily drowned them out.  I think they kind of got the hint as they left soon after.  Now I don't mind sharing music at all, but SHARING is the key concept there as well as just general courtesy.

Other than the music war, practice was great.  The metronomic waltz and foxtrot continued to make progress and we started quickstep today as well!  That one is tough dancing super slow since we're so used to normal tempos where you can just fall over everywhere and get away with it.  But give it a few more days and I think we'll have it under control.  Our waltz is already feeling A LOT better with just one day under our belt.  Despite a few hiccups, including Sarah yelling out "I'm having a hard time getting between your legs!", we're on balance, more controlled, and smoother across the board.  I can't wait to see what it's like at the end of June.