Full House

Dances:  Waltz, Quickstep
Part:  Lead
Workout:  Arm and back at the gym.
Number of Broken Washing Machines Dealt With Today:  1

Since the conception of our 24 Hour Fitness ballroom practice program, our membership has more than doubled!  It was a full house today with Shaoshu, Patrick, and Caroline, bringing our total to 5.  Now if only John Stamos and Bob Saget could join us.  Throw in the Olsen twins too.  I love practicing around others.  For some reason it helps keep me more focused.  Hopefully our numbers keep growing!

Today was Monday, which meant the typical arm and back workout.  I ended up having to go the gym early on in the day due to a washing machine incident earlier this morning.  But it ended up being a good move since I was able to help out my parents in the evening and arrived at practice more rested than normal.

I should mention that we started another phase of my initiative to create the ultimate ballroom dance music collection.  Since we have been using the large and ever-growing library, we've started to make an effort to rate the songs as we dance to them.  Obviously our favorites were the first to be rated.  That meant that we had to try out new songs in order to see how good they were.  As expected, most of them have scored a three (out of five) since they are for lack of a better word: average.  However some of them have managed to surprise us at how great/awful they are.  If we keep this up, over time we should be able to rank most of the songs.

Quickstep was our poison of choice this evening.  Our last short side has kind of eluded us for some time now.  Mainly because we always run out of room when we get to it.  Sarah apparently couldn't handle the mystery anymore and put her foot down so we worked on the section.  Not too bad.  A few shaping issues here and there but overall it's an easy side.  One thing that I finally did bring up today was what I like to call "Sarah-In-The-Box".  Whenever I put Sarah in a situation where she shapes up and left, such as in a Hover in waltz, she tends to shape a little at first, then all of sudden just springs into the rest of it, not unlike a Jack-In-The-Box.  I'm not quite sure what's causing that to happen.  Either she's just overzealous, or perhaps I'm doing some to trigger that response.  If I use my track record as a gauge, I'm sure it's my fault.  Good news is, after I explained it to Sarah, she fixed it.  I just don't want her fabricating a response if I'm leading something wrong.  Our quickstep was interspersed with waltz which is feeling better.  We're still breaking a good sweat doing it (more so than I would like), but it's smooth.  One thing I need to keep reminding myself of, is the fact that I need to BREATHE during my dances.  One would think that with all my years of experience as a breather, I wouldn't need to think about it.  I swear, dance takes everything you do day-to-day naturally and makes you suck at it.  Alas.