The Weekend

This last one was among the best of my Albany weekends. My reasons are as follows:

0. I had the house to myself! The Porters were celebrating their 40th anniversary with a weekend trip to Canada, so I was left to hold down the fort.

1. Swing dancing Friday night -- I haven't gone dancing since I've been in Albany. I found out that they only have dances once a month, on the first Friday. So I donned my dancing shoes and headed downtown. There was a live band, and to put it mildly, the dance was an awesomely fantastic time. I don't think I've EVER had so much fun swing dancing before. I was worried I'd be a bit rusty, but it all came back after the first dance. I often worry that I'm not very good, but a lot of the leads I danced with seemed to really enjoy dancing with me. Two of the best dancers there asked me to dance THREE times (each!) and another guy (who also danced with me three times) kept telling me how wonderful I was to dance with, and he was delighted when I said that I lived around here (meaning, I'd be back next month...and believe me, I will!!). I danced a lot, I was completely exhausted by the time I got home. But it was the most dancing fun I've had in a long time.

2. Major workout Saturday morning -- I had a great cardio workout and went to a weights class (that's Body Pump, for you fellow Golds Gym-ers) and it felt great! Yay gym!

3. Saturday afternoon in Albany -- My friend Nathan showed me the Capital Plaza downtown; we went to the top of the Corning Tower (tallest building in Albany), and walked down to the river. Turns out downtown Albany does have some nice spots. Next Saturday we're going to the Tulip Festival in Washington Park.

4. I made my first pot roast -- Sister Porter invited people over for dinner Sunday afternoon before plans were made for them to be out of town. So I played hostess, including making the pot roast. She gave me a lesson Friday morning, and set everything out for me.* (Even the whisk in saucepan on the stove!) She really does think of everything.

And it actually turned out pretty well (even the gravy!) and people seemed happy eating it. (Sorry, didn't manage to take a picture of the finished product and the happy people eating it.)

5. CES Fireside Sunday night -- Elder Bednar. Need I say more? I think not. (But I will.) There was a mingle beforehand...here we are "candidly" socializing. Holly and I were probably having a discussion about Freaks and Geeks. I had lent her the DVDs** at church that day, and when I saw her at the fireside (a few hours later), she come up to me and said, "Oh my gosh! I am in love with this show. I've already watched a couple episodes." Yay! Another convert! :)

6. New shoes -- Saturday night I realized that a Kohls gift card that I had expired that day. So with half an hour left before they closed, I ran over to Kohls and looked around. I ended up buying these shoes. At first I thought they were kind of ridiculous, but kind of awesome. (Now I just think they're totally awesome.) I was debating them in the store, wondering if they were too bold. As I was putting them back in the box (still unsure as to whether or not I should get them), a woman who was nearby while I was trying them on said, "I like those shoes." I said, "Me too! But I don't know if they're too bold." She said: "Oh no! They're great. You should buy them." I bought them. I also bought a long necklace that matched pretty well. I wore these shoes with the outfit in the above picture. (I wish they'd gotten the shoes in that picture!)

7. Maybe less fun, but I actually got my grading done. Yay end of semester projects and papers! (Such a big stack of grading!) Monday I gave my final, so I'm done teaching and now 100% thesis. (Well, after I turn grades in.)

8. Barefoot Ultimate -- Okay, so Monday night isn't the weekend, but for FHE on Monday night, the group from church played Ultimate again! It wasn't raining this time, like last time, and a few of us took our shoes off to play. I was a bit cautious about the no shoes idea at first, but it was great! My feet were filthy by the end, and it was so fun! (And I even survived crashing into my teammate Dan as we both went for the frisbee, an incident that ended with us tangled up on the ground.) (My friend Cathy took a picture of my feet, but I don't have it yet. Otherwise I would have posted it here. Oh well.)

The greatness of the weekend will be hard to top. Of course, this next weekend has a good shot. Tulip Festival Saturday, then I'm taking the train to NYC to spend Sunday and Monday with my sisters Sue and Julia! (They're flying out from SLC along with one of Sue's friends.) (But no shuttle launch in Florida on Tuesday that week...sad. I canceled my plane ticket to Orlando because NASA moved the launch up one day. Boo!)



* Lest you think I made the gravy from the brown gravy mix there, let me set the record straight. She set that out in case I (a) messed up making it from scratch; or (b) ran out and needed to make more quickly.
** We traded off. I let her borrow my beloved Freaks and Geeks DVDs and she lent me her prized Arrested Development DVDs. It's like we're holding each other's stuff hostage, so we'll be sure to get them back.

Austin to Phoenix to Tucson (via DFW)

Yesterday was travel day. I made it safely to Tucson, though I felt like there was a flurry of excitement to get me here. That's mostly how I seem to operate, as much as I try not to. Long story short, I slept in a bit in the morning, went running, had to run some errands before leaving, and then had about 15 minutes to pack. (Yeah, I guess I didn't actually pack the night before...) I felt kind of frazzled as I was running around, especially since I barely knew what I was putting in my suitcase. But I made it to the airport (Andrew and Margie are the best! Thanks!), and checked in at the kiosk with 2 minutes to spare before the drop-dead-30-minutes-before deadline. Whew. Of course, then my flight was delayed about 40 minutes, but that's beside the point. (Maybe I could have at least showered....)

I had a layover at DFW (though it was nonexistent since my flight was late), and then slept almost the entire flight to PHX. I arrived, got my bags, and rental car. Sometime on the shuttle to the rental car lot I realized that the folder of itineraries/maps/directions to everything that I had so meticulously printed off earlier in the week were not with me, and probably sitting on my bed still. I will ask Michelle to bring them when she comes out. (Hopefully this isn't the first she's hearing about that.) But the fortunate thing is, we live in the electronic age and you actually don't need any of that stuff to get get on a plane, rent a car, and check into a hotel. (As long as you have reservations, of course.) But I was still really, really annoyed with myself for forgetting them. Alas.

I was able to get my rental car, although the process seemed more hassle-filled than normal. Normally it's a breeze. But for some reason the Enterprise people in PHX wanted my credit card (even though it was direct billed; they never ask me for that in TUS), my email, TWO phone numbers, and on and on. Then they didn't even have a car ready for me. The guy was like, "Uh...well, you can wait a few minutes for a car to be ready or we can just put you in this mini SUV at no extra charge." I said I'd wait, given the price of gas and poor gas mileage of SUVs. He said the Jeep Liberty he had for me only got 2-3 mpg less than a car. Well, I decided to take it, mostly to just get on my way. But I'm keeping track so I can calculate my fuel economy when I fill it up next week.

Anyway, off to Tucson I went. The drive was about an hour and a half. I was still feeling a bit frenzied at this point, so I tried to use the drive to help me relax. It sort of worked. Eh. Well, I arrived at my hotel, checked in with no problems, ran to the Target nearby to buy a few things I'd forgotten. In the same shopping center as the Target I discovered an In-n-Out restaurant! This is exciting because In-n-Out is yummy, and I had no idea they had them in Tucson. Mental note to self.

I had to wait around a little longer to meet up with a post doc from University of Arizona to get my key to the Observatory. (Kurtis and I had arranged for her to pick it up for me since the office would be closed when I arrived.) Once I got that, I got ready to go dance. Yay!

Despite the best efforts of the construction mess that is downtown Tucson right now, I made it to the dance. (And I'm realizing I sort of know this city; I'm not an expert, but managed to create a detour for myself that worked.) The dance was at a senior center, and there were people of all ages there. And they had a live band and the music was good.

How was the dance? It was pretty good. There weren't a ton of people there, but enough that I felt like I danced a sufficient number of dances. There was one older guy that asked me to dance about 10 times. But I really didn't mind because he was really fun to dance with. (And not creepy or anything.) And usually after every dance he'd ask me if he was being too "rough" (as in flinging me around too much). I said no, and then he'd say something about how he "just really loved those big swing outs." It was really cute, actually. I know a couple people from the Tucson scene, but none of them were there, sadly enough. Next time, hopefully!

Following the dance (which ended at 11:00), I went to ... dun dun! ... In-n-Out for dinner. Yay! (I'd barely eaten anything all day!) This is me enjoying my dinner, post-dance, back in my hotel room.


This morning (Sunday) I made it to 9:00am church, which might sound surprising given I went to sleep at about 2:00am. But I didn't sleep very well post-5am, so getting up wasn't too much of a problem. The building was really close to my hotel which made it nice. The talks were all about the Proclamation on the Family, and I'll spare the details of the high councilman's talk in which he kept saying things that probably offended half the ward. Alas. But I did find this display on the bulletin board:


I refrain from commenting.

I got checked out of my hotel, and then drove 10 miles out of my way to get chicken friend chicken and biscuits and gravy from Cracker Barrel. I saw it on my way down and couldn't stop thinking about it. :) I probably would have gone last night if I didn't have to wait to get my key.

Then up the mountain. Here I am and here I will be for the next 3 nights.

No Go Dance

I must admit that right now I feel a little bit annoyed. It's been too long since I've been swing dancing and I wanted to go a few times this week. There were two in Austin this weekend...the regular Thursday night at the Fed and the 4th Friday night dance. Additionally, I'm lucky enough to be in Tucson Saturday night when there's a dance. (Though it looks like the few dancers I know in Tucson won't be there. Oh well.)

Thursday night I planned to go to the gym (running and swimming were the plan), then hit the dance. I had a good run, but then realized the pool was closed (it closed at 9:00, I finished running at 9:10), so I ran some more. By the time I finished, I'd run about 6 miles in total and decided that rather than go dance at 10:00pm, I wanted more to go home and eat dinner. So that's what I did.

So Friday night (tonight) I was really looking forward to dancing. I got home from a long swim and made dinner that ended up taking way to long to cook. But the dance went until 12:30, so it was okay that I was getting there at 10:30. I thought it was at Uptown Dance, but when I got there and saw that what few people were there were leaving, I figured I might have messed up. I asked the guy that was standing there (said his name was David) (who, by the way, gave me a nice compliment in saying that I he would have guessed I was a Lindy hopper when he asked what kind of dancing I did), and he said there wasn't a swing dance there tonight. He said it might be at Go Dance which was about 5 minutes away.

As soon as he said that, I realized that did sound pretty familiar. I should have read the website closer. I've never been to Go Dance, but he said it was down by the mall, which I had a vague idea where that was. (With a memory jog in directions from my new friend David.) So I drove down there...and drove around and around and around and around. There was the mall, but I had no I had no idea where Go Dance was. I looked in all the strip malls, drove around the actual mall, and couldn't see it anywhere. Grr.

This is the paragraph that makes this post more than just a late night complain-fest. :) Did you know that you can text Google the name of a business and it will text you back the address? Yes, it's true! I've heard about this, but never tried it. I decided this was a great time to try it out. Here's what you do: send a text to "GOOGL" (like "Google" without the E). That is...46645. In the message part, type the business and your city. For example, I text'd "Go Dance Austin TX." Within a minute, I had a text message with the address: 2525 West Anderson Lane. Yay!

So now that I had an address, I could tackle the problem more effectively. Well, the really annoying thing was that Go Dance (or "No Go Dance," as I'm calling it tonight) was in the mall, and I'd already driven right past it at least twice! I just missed it. No wonder, since there was little more than a banner printed on someone's computer hanging in the window. Oh well, I was just glad I made it.

It was actually in the mall, though I could see the studio from the door. There weren't that many people, but enough. But the door was locked!! Gah! I guess the mall was closed. No one was there to open it. Oh man...it's like there was a conspiracy against me tonight. I decided to just go home.

But I did laundry in preparation for my trip to Arizona that starts tomorrow. Let's just hope that I'm able to make it to the dance in Tucson tomorrow night! And that it's a good time. We will see... (Stay tuned.)

The real winner tonight? Google. Yay Google.

Swingin' at the Youth Dance

Several weeks ago I "volunteered" to be a counselor for the stake (i.e., church) youth conference. Don't ask, I'd rather not talk about it. But someone posted some picture on Facebook, so I wanted to post about one I was in. (Many thanks to Christopher for posting the pictures!)

The Youth Conference was Friday evening through Sunday morning, and Saturday evening they had a dance. This weekend-long event was held the weekend before some major deadlines I had, so I spent most of the dance in another room, furiously working on my laptop. But I did bust away from work long enough to request some swing, and find Cameron to dance with. It was so much fun! This is us dancing.

I've been taking Lindy Hop classes for a bit over a year now, and it's very fun. Problem is, when I go to church dances, no one really knows how to do it. (They don't play that much swing anyway, so I guess it all evens out -- but DJ Rodd is good to play one when I request it.) The day I discovered that Cameron knew how to Lindy Hop was very exciting. Now I steal him for a dance whenever I can. And he's a good sport about it. :) I have lots of fun dancing with him. Thanks Cameron!