Step dancing

My gym rotates athletic classes each month. One month it will be BOSU. Then kick boxing. Then Pilate's.

My favorite is the step dance class that a woman named Amy teaches, and December was its month. I like it for three reasons: 1. It is never the same. 2. She kicks our butts. 3. It is sort of like dancing.

Sort of. Actually, it's really more like jumping up and down while spastically waving your arms around. That happens to be really good exercise.

I was thinking about it the other day in class, as we all did the "V-step" and "grapevine" and "over the top!": I would never want anyone besides the 21 women doing this crazy stuff along with me to see me doing it. (Yes, women, because, while it is open to men, a man wouldn't be caught dead doing this unless he had no idea what he was getting into. There have been a few to accidentally wander in. It only happens once.) In our class, the higher you kick your leg off to the side while on top of this narrow bench and the more you wave your arms in different directions while doing it, the better.

It is really fun.

Amy starts out with basic parts and puts them together until you end up doing a "routine." I put that in quotes, because it reminds me more of what my sister and I did as children when we had had too much sugar.

And yet, I'm sad it's over.

Lessons learned: Maybe we still need to jump around and flail our arms as adults too.

The illusive $2.34 modern novelty

It seems like such a small thing, but I think washing lettuce is sort of annoying. Either you end up with watered down dressing or you dry it with a paper towel, which doesn't seem healthy to me. The solution is really simple. There are these magic little devices called salad spinners that do all the work.

They are actually really cheap.

I have put a salad spinner on my Christmas and Birthday lists for the past couple of years, to no avail. It was never anything so important for me to make the trip to buy myself. And those times I was at the store already, it was never so pressing that I remembered to get one.

Until last week. I finally found one. It was a whole $2.34. Proud of myself for remembering, put it in my cart with a bunch of other stuff like toothpaste and contact solution and chocolate covered cherries for my dad (it's one of those things we get him every Christmas).

It wasn't until a couple days ago I realized that I must have left the salad spinner at the checkstand. It is no where to be found. And I am back to waving my lettuce around after washing it like a bird in a puddle.

Lessons learned: Maybe I'm not meant to own a salad spinner.

Merry Christmas

Christmas came really fast this year. For the first time since I've lived in California, I stayed home. My mom came down to visit, and we hung out and did normal Christmas stuff. It was the close of a string of work pot lucks and Christmas parties that have been fun but make me want to never see fudge and chocolates again.

I was rooting for a white Christmas, which I partially got. It snowed in the high country at least, and poured in town so hard I was envisioning people boating down our main street as I woke up on Christmas morning. Mom gave me a new pair of snowshoes, which I am itching to go try out.

It was perfect weather for rum and egg nog.

Lessons learned: I'm ready for a salad and a gym session.

Quick trip

The danger of instant messenger is that you can make impulsive agreements without really thinking them through. But that can also be the beauty of it.

I was online when I saw one of best friends from high school, Anna, was there as well from her home in Portland. I had a three day weekend coming up, and so did she. By the end of the conversation, I was looking up plane tickets.

So I flew up to Portland a couple of days later, just in time for a snow storm to roll in and blanket the city in a sheet of ice. That didn't stop us. Actually it egged us on. We visited outdoor markets, ate like we were starving, tasted local beers, went snowshoeing and browsed through book stores.



As usual Anna and I picked up right where we left off. I also got a chance to meet her fiance, who is all the right combination of good traits she deserves. I wish we could have weekends like that more often. If nothing else, it's a good chance to brush up our old inside jokes.

Lesson learned: I am missing my bathtub picture of RC, Kort, Anna and I following one of the cake fights we had during Anna's birthday parties in high school.

Groggy

It's been awhile, my friends. I'm not even sure what happened to December. I feel like I slept through it, and I'm just waking up a little groggy. I barely remembered my password to log into Blogger.

I won't lie, it's been a hard month and I haven't felt like writing. But it's almost over, and the New Year is coming, so I will have a chance to make new resolutions and devise new plans. I'm hoping 2009 will be a healthier, more-financially stable, less dramatic year for me than 2008, but we will see. One can wish. And pray.


Lessons learned: There is a threshold at which defeat stops being artistically inspiring.

New couch

There is sour cream and cranberry juice in my fridge with expiration dates before Halloween in my fridge.

There are two laundry baskets full of clean clothes on my floor.

There is sheet music all over my piano.

But I just want to lay on my new couch and watch Scrubs reruns.

Lessons learned: I need to get off this couch before a monster grows out of my fridge and eats me.