Tap dancing week three. Well, I'm struggling. The teacher has a mind for "knowing" connections between different dance moves, but if you add a different move after one we've been working on, even if it's the same move we did earlier in the dance, I need to work through how to get into that position from the new move. We were doing "suzie q's" after a series of "shorty georges" and the suddenly she did this thing where she was tapping the toe of her (left then right) shoe behind her (right then left) foot, and, well, you can just forget it. A suzie Q is kind of like a grapevine so I can nearly handle it but I'm still just wretched. During the part where we were practicing with a partner, I just couldn't do a thing. It was pathetic.

However, after stumbling through this for forty-five minutes, the teacher put on "Anything Goes" and had us start doing a routine using shuffle steps that, without having been taught the step, I was just kind of able to make my foot do. I stepped over to the side of people who were "advanced beginners" (as they'd taken the absolute beginners class in the fall I missed out on) and kept up pretty darned well. The good music made all of the difference - suddenly it was lights on, big smiles, and I was going for it and having fun. The teacher said this was going to be performed at the summer extravagansa and that she could already see us in our little sailor hats ... and suddenly I was thinking about taking the next quarter. We'll see.

Meanwhile I got J to come with me to swing dancing last night, which I thought he would enjoy - not must physical activity but a chance to get the brain engaged in a very different way from work. And what do you know, he did have a good time, and he seemed to enjoy having a chance to dance with a bunch of other ladies (there were about forty women in the room and 34 or so men). And, I thought, he was looking pretty good, and when we danced together at the end, he actually had managed to get the turn-your-partner-around-then-catch-her-back better than all of the other guys I had been dancing with. I like swing dancing; it gets your brain going, the connection is fun, and it's great to hang out with people who are really just there to dance, not to drink or pick people up. Hopefully he'll keep coming as it's a good night out and it's only in Balham so very close to home.

Anyway, was in a good mood yesterday overall, and am going to swim at the gym near work today over lunch. I think all of the activity is really helping to keep the winter blues away.