Shall we dance?

So after some *serious* persuasion from Jen & my MIL (because they thought I would enjoy watching it), I sat down to watch the US release of Shall We Dance? last weekend. Even though I did hear that the Japanese version was infinitely & superiorly better in nearly every regard. Even though Richard Gere, who I have dubbed, "wuss man" plays the leading male role. Even though my ballroom dancing days have gone way of the dodo.

I'm somewhat embarassed to say that that movie moved me emotionally more than I would have thought. "No, honey, those weren't tears you saw me wipe from my eyes. My contacts were bothering me." "But you don't wear contacts, honey." Oops. Busted.

In my defense, I don't think it was the ballroom dancing that moved me the most, although it did elicit some *very* fond memories of my ballroom dancing days while I was at UT. I was emotionally stricken with the relationship of John Clark and his wife, played by Susan Sarandon. Don't ask me to explain it - I just thought their relationship at the end of the movie was very sweet.

While watching the competiton portion of the movie, I thought back on my first and only ballroom dance competition. I had only been dancing for about four months, I believe, although I was dancing on the order of 4-5x a week between the PE classes offered at UT, taking lessons with the UT Ballroom Dance Club, and going out to ballroom dance studios over the weekend. Someone mentioned that UT was hosting a ballroom dance competition near the end of the semester and asked if I was interested. I said that I was, and they paired me up with another novice woman named Heather(?). I found out that she had been taking some private lessons as well, so my work was definitely cut out for me! We ended up practicing together on weekends in addition to dancing with each other as much as we could during the club. Ah Heather, you're the one who gave me my first ride EVER in a convertible.

Come the day of the dance, I was pretty nervous but excited. We had entered in all the dances I knew (waltz, foxtrot, east coast swing, rumba, and tango.) To make a long story short, not only did we qualify for the finals in the novice division for ALL of those dances, we placed anywhere from 4th through 6th place out of over a dozen couples in each event! Considering that we had only been dancing together barely a month, and that both of us had less than half a year of experience, going up against people who had been dancing a year or more, we did awesome! At some point, there was a team competition, and I remember dancing in that event with a way more experienced woman from our club, and we ended up taking first place in that event! So for all of my efforts, I did come away with a 1st place ribbon.

At one point during the competition, I remember seeing my PE teacher there with some of my classmates. They were PRETTY surprised to see me competing! I guess they didn't realize I had been doing some dancing "on the side." Heh. I remember hearing them say, "isn't that Cliff from our class? Wow! Look at him go! Go number 34!!!" You know all the goofy shouting out of numbers during competitions to cheer on your favorite couples? A la Strictly Ballroom? That is not some goofy made-up thing. It really happens.

So while I have since hung up my dance shoes, after seeing Shall We Dance?, Jen & I are committed to finding a ballroom dance studio sometime after the baby is born. I'm fortunate that she took some ballroom dance at BYU, also known as the "granddaddy of ballroom" (well, that's my moniker anyway).

*****

My other recent obsession has been trying to acquire fencing equipment off Ebay. Jen mentioned a while back that she wished there was something for some of the older boys to learn while attending the Homeschool Zone, a group of homeschoolers that meet twice a week for various activities. That got me thinking about my fencing days while at UT, and the fact that I was a teaching assistant for almost two years. Could I actually teach fencing to kids? I still had my teaching manual & notes. I still have my own equipment. The more I thought about it, the more confident I thought I could pull it off. The only limiting factor was obtaining enough equipment for the kids to use. So I hit Ebay and started monitoring auctions for fencing equipment.

So far, I've managed to procure two masks, and trying to stay patient for fencing foils. The problem with the foils is that people keep bidding more than I want to pay, and more than the initial "buy it now" price! Go figure. But it looks like I may be able to start a 6-week class with around 4 kids and charge enough to offset my equipment costs. If this turns out to be a success, I may consider teaching fencing here at our local community center as well. We'll see.

*****

And since I'm such a good guy, I'll leave y'all with this funny video:

Geeky white boy lip-syncing to Dragostea din Tei

And after you see it, you KNOW you want more, so here's the original:

Original Dragostea din Tei

or Original linked to RealPlayer

Just so you're warned, I am not responsible for any ill-effects resulting from having that song stuck in your head all day. ;)

Cliff in action!

Some photos of moi from the Arkansas Closed '05:

A is for Ariel, B is for Braden, C is for...?

...possibly Caleb? That is, IF we have a boy. We are still in the process of picking out a boy's name that we both agree on. So far Jen likes Caleb, Andrew, Nathan, and Ethan. I'm not totally against any of those names - there's just not any boy's name I *really* like. Plus I'd really like to stick to our tradition of naming our children after relatives.

Ariel is named for Jen's dad, Braden is named for Jen's mom, and if we have a girl, her name will be Alison, named after my mom. So that pretty much leaves my dad, but it's hard to do a variation of 'Ned' other than Ed, or Edward (which I don't like). Actually, in retrospect, I just realized recently that if we spelled Braden's name backwards, it would be Ned(arb)! But I can't claim that we did that on purpose.

So we're still thinking....any suggestions?

Yet another trophy! :)

Nearly 11 hours after I left home this morning, I'm finally home after spending a long, FUN day at the 2005 Arkansas Closed Table Tennis tournament. With exception to my last match (which I lost), I played very well - and basically beat the people I should have, and put a good showing to the people who were MUCH better than me. The fruit of my efforts? A 1st place trophy in the U-1200 rated event. :) As far as my rating goes, it probably won't change a whole lot, but that's better than losing rating points, right?

The most fun I had was being able to hang out with Co-worker buddy for most of the day, as he came out to play in his first tournament. And he even took home a first place trophy in the U-800 rated event! Congrats man!!

The birthing class on Thursday night was very worthwhile - sure learned a lot about the physiology of giving birth and the philosophy of the midwives as far as home births are concerned. It really set my mind more at ease with the whole having a baby at home thing. :D

Now what I wouldn't give for a foot massage as my feet are *extremely* sore from me being on my feet for almost the entire day. I think I'm going to go kick up my heels and let these tootsies cool off.

Another fun day planned tomorrow w/the Super Bowl in store!

My new speaker stands!

More once I get the entertainment center straightened up & then you'll get to see them in all their glory!

It's the little things...

Can I tell you what a JOY it is to get a prime directive from The Boss telling me to drop whatever it is I'm working on & to assemble a couple of computers? After sitting almost all day in front of my computer yesterday, my boss told me and Co-worker Buddy to "get busy" putting together a couple of computers that were needed desperately in our Baton Rouge office.

Yessir. On the double, sir. You don't have to pull my arm, sir.

Whereas 15 minutes seem to drag by when I'm working on flood mapping, the two hours it took to assemble the computers went by lickety split.

There's nothing like ripping the pull-tab off of a brand-new, retail, Pentium-4 3.6GHz processor, I tell ya! I just LOVE the smell of circuitry in the afternoon.

Yep, it doesn't take much to make me happy. Just give me a computer case, a box full of computer parts, hand me a screwdriver, and I'll be entertained for a little while.

Off with a bang!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

That's the sound of the new year starting off for me. We're now twenty-six, err.., twenty-seven days into '05 and I must admit January has shaped up very nicely so far.

Productivity at work has been at an all time high.

Jen graduated from The Andrews School and got her certficate of graduation for Medical Transcription. Even better, she was hired by Transolutions a few short weeks after graduating, and is now working part-time from home!

Co-worker buddy & I swept our opponents during our last league match, going 5-0 in singles and our doubles match.

Using some of my Christmas money (thanks to my in-laws & Mom & Dad!), I have some Sanus Steel Foundations speaker stands on order and they should be arriving on Friday.

I have weekly birthing classes to look forward to starting tomorrow! Jen is at 31 weeks, leaving only two short months to get ready for the baby. And no, we don't know if we're having a boy or a girl. Already having one of each, we thought we'd let this one be a surprise! Only this time, if all goes as planned, we'll be having a home birth, assisted by a midwife from Birth Works Midwifery Services.

I also have the Arkansas Closed Table Tennis tournament to look forward to on Sat. February 5th.

The Kiddos had a wonderful Christmas having been surprised beyond all expectations with the new Gamecube. We've been enjoying that as a family as well!

I must conclude by saying that shopping malls are evil, horrible places. Either I'm getting old or I'm getting even more antisocial because after having to go to the mall over the weekend for Jen to exchange some maternity clothes, I couldn't care less if I didn't set foot in a mall ever again. I felt severely uncomfortable, and felt like any minute I was going to run screaming out into the parking lot. Mostly I felt like I didn't *belong*. It was a very foreign, strange world to me. I felt like I was surrounded by people I had *nothing* in common with - mostly punks. Or at least that's how 80% of the people acted. Sure there were other families like ours, but we were definitely in the minority. Ugh. I don't have a problem going to Target or Best Buy or Walmart. But the mall literally scares me.

This year has also seen a revival in movies - that is, watching all the "blockbuster" hits of '04 that I refused to see/missed in the theater and chose to wait until they came out on video. In no particular order:

Garden State
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Troy
I, Robot
The Bourne Supremacy
The Village
Dodgeball
Spiderman 2
Napoleon Dynamite
The Terminal
Taking Lives

Busy busy busy. That's me. That's good, right?