Strathmore, Posture, and Tango, Oh Yeah

You are correct, H&C does fill a very special niche in the blogosphere. I'm sure the world needs more off-the-cuff ramblings.

So, I'm bringing two ongoing blog subjects up here: posture and Tango lessons. I was chugging along, leading my partners just fine during classes, but my back started hurting after the first dance and steadily a little worse over the night. My teachers gave me some posture advice that completely changed the way I approached everything, and all of a sudden I can't lead effectively. I don't give clear signals with my chest because now it's all supposed to move as one unit with my whole torso, which I'm not at all used to. I used to lean way forward with my chest apparently. Now the whole body structure is shot: leg movements get all screwed up, my partner doesn't know what I'm doing, I trip over her feet...it's a mess and I'm back to frustration phase.

I'm walking around trying to implement the changes that they told me about posture when I go about my everyday business. I realized that I can't change them all at once, so I settled on one: standing with my weight tending toward the balls of my feet. I figure that's a more fundamental approach. Usually I completely forget about it then remember and stand that way for about three seconds while the metro is pulling up in front of me. Hey, it's a start.

Last night gf, gf's coworker, and I went to a performance at the strathmore. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. They started out with a performance of the overture to The Thieving Magpie, then a musical interpretation of Poe's works written by the conductor, then some symphony written by some Finnish guy. The culmination of the Poe stuff was the Raven performed by some guy that looked just like John Astin. I kept saying that every time I saw him, annoying my viewing partner. Eventually I looked at the program, and sure enough it was indeed John Astin. How cool! None of us particularly liked his reading, unfortunately. I personally didn't like any of the five readers. Though I don't like dramatic readings in general.

The highlight of the night for me was watching the conductor during the Finnish symphony. I've never watched a conductor for any extended length of time before, and it's quite a treat. He got into quite a groove up there.

I just took a peek at the H&C site and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a Districted posting archive that said "Cream with a friend." !!! What's going on over there? It was short for "...Voting: Ice Cream..." Yeah, kind of a disappointment.