"Last night my woman
 Made me so awfully mad
 Last night my woman
 Made me so awfully mad
 I shoulda cooled on off
 'Cause things really turned out bad"
    Indigo Swing, Red Light

Another rainy weekend.

Last night went OK. The band was great, but there was no dance floor, Lisa didn't have shoes she could really dance in, and she was ready to call it a night after the first set. Boo. Next time I'm just inviting my teammates.

It was good to see her. We had a good time at dinner, and found some really great stuff at Half-Priced Books up in the U-District. I found Billy Joel's Storm Front and Indigo Swing's Red Light for $2.98 each. Crazy.

Oh, and she's moving in with her boyfriend. Suprisingly I'm not all that upset by this news. You can grow accustomed to almost anything in the space of a year.

Went out to the Library this afternoon looking like shit and I didn't run into any fabulous women. Perhaps my theory needs tuning.

"That kind of touch, electricity of love
 That certain kind of grace
 That you love because you become someone else
 In an instant"
    Fleetwood Mac, Say You Will

Well I survived my first week as a full member of ECS. We practice for three hours a night twice a week. That plus the other classes I'm taking adds up to... well, a lot of time spent dancing. I used to wonder what people meant when they refered to Lindy Hop as Lindy Crack. I think I understand now.

Its a lot of fun. We work on general technique for things like arials (read: throwing women around) and jazz, and then on specific choreography. This is all in preparation for a show that will happen in June. I can't say I'm to excited about performing in front of people, but for what I'm learning its definitly worth it.

However, our first practice definitly made me feel old. I'm not the oldest person on the team. I'm probably right in the middle of the age range, but man... one of the pieces we're learning has a lot of CRAZY hip-hop moves like jumps, flips, and this wild self-drop call the breakdown. I've been sore for the last three days! Granted I hadn't been all that physically active in recent months, but ugh!

And life goes on. Work has ramped up in intensity, but its mostly happy work, I'm slowly working on negotiating a first date with the girl from the donut stand, and tomorrow I get to see one of my favorite local bands performing as their country cousins (The Shitkickers). They play some very dancable music so I'm dragging along the only dancer I could talk into going with me... Lisa. Should be fun, but send me your best Don't-do-or-say-anything-stupid vibes.

"I saw my be-bop baby
 At the union hall
 She could dance all night
 And shake the paint off the wall"
    The Hooters, And We Danced

Good news! Ted and I both made Emerald City Swing! Got the call on Saturday along with an invite to a blues party that night. I was sick so I didn't dance & wound up leaving early, but just picture this: dancers are usually pretty attractive people. The theme of the party was "Feat for the Senses" so everyone was wearing velvet, silk, pleather, etc. Now take all these attractive people in their hot clothes and have them dancing to some truly lacivious blues. Sound hot? You have no idea... First practice is tonight. I'm so pumped.

Learned an important lesson this weekend: The crappier you look when you leave your home the more likely you are to run into someone you'd like to look good for.

Case and point: I was cleaning my place early Saturday afternoon and I decided to make a quick trip down to the market for some robot doughnuts. I haven't showered or shaved, and I'm wearing the crappiest clothes I own.

While I'm in line for doughnuts I feel something bump my knees. Turns out to be a dog. A dog on a leash, and that leash is being held by the girl I just started talking to online. Doh.

Now, I don't much look like my picture so I'm guessing she doesn't recognize me. So I'm torn between my desire to introduce myself and the fact that I look like ten pounds of poo in a five pound sack. In the end I decide to just say hi to the dog (cause they love you when you smell) and go my merry way.

The moral of this story is to always look your worst. Heck, I be if I rolled in manure before I left my front door I'd be surrounded by supermodels.

Oh, and check this out: Happy Fun Toy.

"And I don't care how they spell things on the internet
 A'when you email me you spell the whole word out
 And I don't care if your cell phone has a camera in it."
    Strong Bad

This has been a tough week, but its absolutely flown by. Work is killing me and I'm just getting over one of the worst sore throats of my life.

On the upside... I had the second half of the ECS auditions today and I think they went pretty well. I'm seriously psyched about the prospect of being on the team. Especially since Ted tried out with me. I've never really done any kind of performance work before, and the thought still kind of scares the crap out of me.

Oh well... nothing I can do till they call me on Sunday.

"Y'all don't want to hear me
 You just wanna dance"
    Outkast, Hey Ya

Every now and then its fun to imagine what it would be like to have a conversation with yourself from one year ago.

One year ago I was still dating Lisa, but things were starting to come undone. I was stressed at work and knew there was trouble ahead. I was also considering trying out for a local dance troupe called Emerald City Swing. They were in desparate need to leads so I was a shoe in.

However, they practiced two nights a week at the Seattle Center (where the Space Needle is) which was a half hour away from where I lived, and Lisa felt that if I did that she'd never see me anymore. So because of the commute and the most important girl in my life I decided not to go through with it.

Its a year later and there was a HUGE dance at the Century tonight. I guess with so many people having tomorrow off they all decided to dance. I had a great time, and I also picked up a flyer for this years ECS tryouts. One of their members saw me reading it, asked me to dance, and then made me promise to come to the tryouts.

Currently I'm single and I live a ten minute walk from where they practice.

What the hell.

"Never fall in love with a woman who sells herself. It always ends BAD!"
    The Narcoleptic Argentinian, Moulin Rouge

I read a news item today that two twelve year-old girls were expelled from a Montreal middles school for charging boys $5.00 to watch them kiss each other. I think expelling them was a really bad idea. What type of work do you suppose they'll get into without a high school education after THAT particular experience?

And now for something completly different...

Why do umbrella's break so fast? I fell like I have to buy a new umbrella ever two years because the stupid things just fall apart. It doesn't matter if you buy a nice umbrella or a tiny little telescoping one. They all break in two years. Living in a place like Seattle makes this especially annoying.

One of girls I saw during my dating bender at the end of last year showed up at The Century last night. She keeps dropping none-too-subtle hints that we should go out again soon. She's a nice, cute, smart, and friendly girl whom I have absolutly no interest in. None. Funny how rarely the feeling is mutual, yes?

"Well I found myself a picture that would fit in the folds
 Of my wallet and it stayed pretty good.
 Still amazed I didn't lose it on the roof of my place
 When I was drunk and I was thinking of you."
    Ryan Adams, New York, New York

Went to a new dance venue with Brian tonight. Apprently there's salsa on Tuesday nights at the Wilsonian ballroom in the U-district.

It was a good time, but I did have a bit of a surprise when I walked in to the lobby for the first time. There was a ticket booth window with a bunch of dancing flyers and some framed photos of dance events.

One photo was of two of the swing instructors I've taken a few workshops from. In the photo the instructors are in the center of the photo in the middle distance while two couples are dancing in the forground. The closer of the two couples looked kind of familiar. The girl was no one I could remember, which is kind of embarassing because the guy was me.

"This I admit
 Taste so good,
 Hard to believe an end to it
 Smell touch feel
 How could this rhythm ever quit
 Bags packed on a plane
 Hopefully to heaven."
    Dave Matthew's Band, Warehouse

So I got some good news along with the daily crop of junk mail: I don't have AIDS.

I applied for this life insurance thingy (read: tax shelter) and one of the requirements for the application was to have a bunch of lab work run on a blood sample. I requested they send me a copy when they got the results and it came today. No HIV, no hepatitis, no cocaine, no surprises.

Now, I had no reason to think I might have had any of these diseases, but it is somewhat comforting to have confirmation of the fact. You know?

The only disease I probably should be worried about is Mad Cow, but as I proved again this weekend my love of Dick's Cheeseburgers still exceeds my fear of evil proteins.

"God... I hope he pulls through, but I'll never like dick."
    Mary Cheney, Human Shield

So this has been a fun weekend. Won $80.00 playing blackjack Friday night, and tonight we've had all kinds of fun.

The plan was to go out to dinner and then to see some theater. Dinner was a little Indian place on Captol Hill with Ted, Jeremy, and Heidi. Following that Ted and I headed for the urban wasteland that is northern downtown Seattle to find the 14/48 Theater festival.

We came to the right intersection (among a see of dark looking warehouses with not a car on the road) and saw a theater entrance. The door was locked, but a guy dress like a 20's gangster opened the door and asked us for the password. After some brilliant negotiating by Ted (that included suggesting that a 'large bottle of fuck you' might be the password) we went it.

We'll it was a theater, but there didn't seem to be any sort of acting going on. There was a band playing on stage and a lot of very attractive twentysomethings all dressed in 20s costumes mingling around. There was also a bar so we got a drink. Oddly we didn't have to pay for our drinks.

So we went in and mingled and quickly learned that this was NOT the 14/48 festival, but rather a combined 30th birthday party for three girls. Go figure.

Just as Ted and I were planning to leave the band announce that they were going to have a Charleston dance competition (hey it was a 20s party). Seeing that there wasn't a single dancer in the room Ted and I danced together. However, since there wasn't really much interest in dancing all it accomplished was to convince everone in the room that Ted and I were gay. So on that note we left.

Turns out the 14/48 was happening just accross the street, and its a damn good thing we bought our tickets in advanced because it was a full house.

What is the 14/48? It's a festival where a couple hundred Seattle fringe theater folks come together and write, cast, direct, and perform 14 plays in 48 hours. It starts on Thursday night when a theme is chosen. That night the writers write seven plays, get random actors for casts, and then on Friday put the whole thing together. The plays are then performed twice on Friday night. Then Friday night the process starts over for the Saturday showing.

It was awesome! The theme for the seven plays we saw was 'Daddy Didn't Understand Me'. There was one absolute crap modern play that my aloe plant could have written, one bad V.C. Andrews Flowers in the Attic play, two goofy-but-cute plays full of cheap laughs, two incredibly well acted and well written dramatic pieces, and one freaking hilarious play. Definitly worth the cost of admission.

"I'm going to go embarass myself with Goose"
    Maverick, Top Gun

So Seattle had a snow day on Saturday. Only a few inches, but this is one of those areas that doesn't know what to do with snow.

I made the mistake of going into work in the morning. It took me two hours to get there. I wound up leaving at noon and it took me two and a half hours to get back home.

The upside to the day was that the city was really jumping. People were sledding on every street that runs down the hill from 1st to Western. The most amazing spectical was Queen Anne Ave. This is a very steep road that runs all the way to the top of Queen Anne hill at the north end of the city. People were snowboarding down the street. Hardcode. With jumps and such. Crazy.

"To me, the word 'blog' represents the type of mentality that goes into a weblog; a need to be trendy about something completely unnecessary and over-hyped."

Mmmm... random hatred.

Why I Hate Personal Weblogs

"Is you is or is you ain't my baby?
 The way you're actin' lately makes me doubt
 Yous is still my baby-baby
 Seems my flame in your heart's done gone out"
    Diana Krall, Is You is or is You Ain't My Baby

Well the date went pretty well, but kind of sputtered out towards the end. I still think she's pretty great, but we didn't really see any sparks. I'll try again, but I think she's going to pull a Dr. Jill on me. Oh well...

Got a great start on Resolution 3 tonight. I'm a little nervous about going back into work tomorrw. I'm well rested and ready to kick ass, but... well let's just say that the work we're about to start is as exciting as it is scary. To me anyway.

Here goes nothing.

"Who's been drinking bootleg hooch
 and listening to the Jazz?"
    DaVinci's Notebook, Ballad of The Sneak

Life imitates art.

So the whole time I was home I've been reading the short stories of Raymond Chandler. Every single one is about the adventures of some private eye in L.A. just after the repeal of prohibition. Almost every story includes at least one scene in some seedy jazz club with a tough-talking leggy redhead girl ("dame" to be more exact).

In honor of this celebrated literary tradition I am taking a tough-talking leggy redheaded girl to a jazz club tonight.

I should also mention that these encounters are almost always followed by the hero being forced into a car at gunpoint by two hired thugs and after some witty banter with a crime boss the private eye gets knocked out and framed for murder.

Thank god I'm not a hero or a private eye.

"You'll have to excuse me I'm not at my best
 I've been gone for a week; I've been drunk since I left
 And these so called vacations will soon be my death
 I'm so sick from the drink I need home for a rest
 Take me home..."
    Great Big Sea, Home for a Rest

I'm writing this from Philadelphia on Alissa's laptop and I'm going to be posting it shortly using her wireless LAN. Ain't technology grand?

So the family appears to be doing well. Dad's a better golfer than me, mom's a good sport when it comes to my friends and scrabble, and Guido's not relying on our parents for laundry anymore. Time marches on.

Wrapped up the year at a party where I didn't really know anyone, but it was alright. Alissa's boy made our collective night by taking us to the Drexel Observatory and showing us cool stuff in the telescope like the rings of Saturn and craters on the moon. Very cool.

After doing a lot of thinking I've decided that 2003 did not break the chain after all. 'The Chain' is the streak I have going where every year since 1997 has been the best year of my life. 2003 got off to a rocky start, but in the end it was definitly better than any that have come before for me. The highlights:

• Moving Downtown
• Owning my own home
• Shipping Office 2003
• Hef-K's Wedding
• Cindy
• Reno

1. Play more volleyball (I've already joined a league)
2. Work is MY bitch and not vise versa
3. Dance at least twice a week
4. Wind up on a tropical beach at some point