Quick list of thanks

My swing buddies (Sloan, Ellis, and Robert).  And of course, our lovely friend and Rum Bar bartender, Zack.  Those blues dances that are completely magic.  Coffee.  My new friend at work, Stephan.  The unbelievably wonderful west coast swing community.  Going to Baltimore Fall Blues Summit.  Being able to go home to my family pretty much whenever.  Working at a company full of truly wonderful people.  Having my weekly dances to always look forward to.  Adding to my fledgling circle of swing dancer friends.  Wawa.  Seeing people with dogs on the sidewalk.  My favorite cafés to hang out in.  Jimmy John's deliciousness.  Sleeping in on Saturday.  Discovering new beers I like.  Keeping in touch with David.  Discovering fusion dancing.  Meeting people from out of town who want to get to know me more.  Having a bit of "me time" in the morning bus ride.  Boots.  That I found a place to live in Philly with near-zero stress.  That I got a job to start right after I graduated.  A comfortable bed.  Visiting my brother at his college down in South Carolina.  Learning PHP and Drupal.  NK happy hours.  Music, in so many kinds and ways.

Being so happy, and often - sometimes I can't completely take it in.

George Michael

Back in high school, I used to listen all the time to a smooth jazz radio station, CD101.9.  The station has since been reformatted to a rock station (figures) which was pretty sad to hear.  (See the section about halfway down the page.)  That station got me through so much of my high school homework and falling asleep at night and I knew nearly every song that was played on it.  Interestingly enough, Wikipedia just informed me that it's sort of revived in an "HD2" format, whatever that means.  And there is an online broadcast of it, on this random Boomer Radio site.

I don't know why, but the song Careless Whisper came to mind tonight.  I've heard it many times on that radio station, but looked up the music video for the first time just now.



I didn't even know that George Michael is his name, but this guy was totally not how I pictured him when hearing the song.  What a strikingly beautiful man.  Beautiful voice too...  And given the recent explosion of dance experience in my life, I like that he holds a dance with someone he loves as this special in the song.

Danced 6 nights in a row

I have to say that having a night of dancing to look forward to most nights of the week is an excellent life morale booster.  It's a fulfilling answer to the question of "what will I do tonight?" - so much better than always going home to likely nothing more than being lazy and poking around on the Internet for several hours.  And it is a guarantee of having people to interact with (literally, given that these are partner dances); while I do talk online often, I really think it is a critical necessity for mental/emotional health to see and interact with other people.  (I think of how miserable it was during some final exams periods -- after sleeping late, I'd wake up and panic about how much study time I had lost due to said sleeping-in and thus immediately dive into studying, and hours later I had to escape and actually speak with someone.)  Eventually, if you keep showing up at the same dances on a weekly basis, people will recognize you and you'll start chatting in between dancing.  And the dance communities, I'm finding, are full of wonderful people.

On that note, here was my awesome week of dancing (not that every week isn't also awesome! haha):

Monday, as always: Powerhouse Blues.  All blues.  So much love.

Tuesday, as always: LaB.  Lindy and blues; the swing dance I've been going to longest.

Wednesday: Westie Wednesday.  West coast swing night at the Atrium.  I might just have to add this to my for-sure weekly schedule. :)

Thursday: Jetlag.  Night of DJ'd remixed world music at L'Etage.  I guess this is fusion dancing?  SO much fun.  I will be making every effort to attend this every month.

Friday: West coast swing dance held at Master Jay's studio in Center City.  Not much space there and a pole-dancing pole fell over mid-dance, but it was a fun little night.

Saturday: Baltimore Fall Blues Summit.  Thanks to Ben (my carpool driver), I got to go dance blues all night long with some truly fantastic leads.  What a wonderful wonderful night.  It was the night of the switch over to normal time so we had an extra hour, though maybe it didn't matter because by a certain time almost everyone was tired.  We got back at...7am new time?  (My photos are up on Facebook!)