Goodness me, the end of January already?  Well, since my last post, I have been requested to talk about myself (how dull), so let's see what's the haps.  Not a whole lot, Christian and Jenny came back for another workshop weekend, which was quite productive.  I think I only skipped one class, the beginning lindy (should probably know that by now), and I took a private with them, so I think I learned plenty with them.  They taught the Tranky Doo routine, more STL Shag (awesome!), how to practice alone, and we fixed my swingout (again); staying low, keeping my arm a little less extended, and hooking my triples in front of the swivels.

Yes, I speak dancer.

Christian and Jenny are just lovely people to hang with.  I hauled them back to Troy's for my lesson, and later went to dinner with them, as well as Eric and Ben.  That was good times, plus barbecue was nom.  I think I'm getting pretty good at this dancing thing, and I'm quite looking forward to Heartland.  I'd love to be in the Miss Heartland contest, but I'm not too confident in my entry.  We'll see.  It'll be fun either way.

I've also been given a more active role in Jitterbugs now being the Volunteer coordinator.  I think Nate and Christy are okay with how I do things, I have no idea what the volunteers think, but no one's complained yet.  We shall see on that one too.  It's not as scary as I thought it would be.

Work is still kind of just work.  I had my evaluation, I did fine.  People think I should've been rated higher, but honestly, I have a better job now, I'm getting paid better, people are satisfied with my work, I really have no complaints.  They're eventually going to move my desk, and eventually I'm going to have walls, and there will be new duties and responsibilities, but no one's in a huge rush.  Oh, and I get to meet with my scary vice president on Valentine's Day, joy of joys.  Hopefully I won't take anything she says personally.  I'm trying to rise above that if I can, but it's a work in progress.

Someone did mention the other night how girls didn't know anything about swingouts, which did get harshly under my skin, and I did want to punch him.  But I didn't and he wound up apologizing, as he should have.  You shouldn't generalize about people like that, and he has no right to do so, because that would imply he dances with all the girls, and I don't like dancing with him because he acts like a creep.  And I know what's going on in a swingout.  Twit.

But anyway...

Last weekend there was dancing, practicing my Christian and Jenny advice, getting cranky because I was hungry, ice skating in some very chilly weather, and late night shenanigans.  It was fun, but next year, I will eat in advance and wear much warmer clothing.  But it was a good cause, and the Thriller Dance on ice was impressive, and watching Dena, Clint, Adam, and Eric do the Shiver skate was pretty fun.  They are braver than I, and probably have better circulation.  Boy, I was cold towards the end.  We went to Village Inn post skate and warmed up, and then I went home and wisely took muscle relaxers before sacking out.

Saturday I went to the zoo with Cecily, and despite it being January, it was a pretty nice day outside.  It was a pretty cool zoo, and I'll have to go back when it's not under construction to see the rest, and when Cecily and I haven't been up till 4 the night before, but the parts I did see were great.  I was a little shocked at the open water features in the Kingdoms of the Night exhibit (hello, open pool of water in the dark?  Safety hazard!) and the animals that were allowed to wander (lots of birds, the ducks were cute though), and how many tigers the zoo has (and the stoner jaguar, what the what?).  We saw the desert, the swamps, the big cats, the primates, and the jungles.  We ate lunch in the cafe that overlooks the jungle and watched the white handed gibbons play.  We also discovered why tapirs are not normally viewed standing up (it's like a fifth leg!).  But we had plenty of giggles.  I liked the orangutans and the wallabies a lot.  We also saw an aardvark and an armadillo, and more than enough snakes (eek), and some really big fish.  With an f, not a ph.

After the zoo we went over to Adam's for a viewing of Sherlock Series two.  I only got to watch the first episode, but it was pretty epic.  They are almost too clever for their own good, but I had a blast.  Then I headed over to Matt and Vivian's for their appetizer partay, which was fun AND I cooked something for it.  Spinach artichoke dip, not bad if I say so myself.  Which is good, because I have plenty o' leftovers.  The crab rangoon won, but even I have to agree with that.  Plus lots of hors d'oeuvres apparently come covered in bacon.  That's all right with me too.  There were further shenanigans plus THE BABY!  She's so cute, she can hold her head up now.  I got to hold her a little while, and then got shafted because Lisa didn't get to hold the baby because she'd been sick all this time, so therefore she got the baby the rest of the time.  Whatever.  I got to hold her when she was six days old.  I managed to make it home not long after midnight, and then slept till noon the next day.

Sunday I had many goals, but no energy, so I did laundry and gassed up my car, and left it at that.  My weekends have been quite activity filled lately, and I think that the end of January 2012 may be shaping up better than the beginning of January 2012.  We'll see.  Less than six hours left.

I also think my life would be much improved if I kicked every morning off playing "The Circle of Life and "Sister Suffragette".  Thank you, Disney on Pandora.

So to continue September's adventures, and pick up where my livejournal left off, I'll give it a go right here and see how this new blog suits me.  As you'll remember, I left off with the end of Cowtown.

I took the Monday off to recoup which is perfectly necessary after the totally exhilarating dance weekend (balboa!  Vintage gloves!  Corn!), and then I made the fatal mistake of going back to work for two days before I went off to see my princesses in New Mexico.  Apparently in my absence, my coworkers mistakenly did a lot of bad things to my accounts.  So I got to spend a couple days stressing over that and cleaning up the mess, but to be fair, they helped out a lot.  I think I was more annoyed by the jerkwads who don't do anything at all.  Whatever, more about that later.  Despite the panic attack that was work, I left it all behind me for PrincessCon Southwest!  The convening of the four kingdoms in the mysterious land of Santa Fe!  Okay, it wasn't quite that royal, but it certainly was awesome.  I was psyched because I was meeting Heather and Terry in Dallas for the final flight to meet Hana in Albuquerque.  I also prefer flying Southwest because it's cheaper (at least in luggage terms, gaz) but American was quite nice.  And though we didn't sit next to each other on the plane, it was awesome to land together and find Hana.

It was about an hour's drive from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, which was easily filled with sightseeing the glorious New Mexican terrain, silly photos from the backseat, and of course, a princess singalong.  There's really no other way to go.  We got to Hana's parents' house (which is flipping AMAZING), and relaxed for a bit after our various plane rides, got out the crafting supplies, examined our new crowns.  Can't be princesses without crowns, duh.  I must say, the crown of Her Serene Royal Highness Princess Mayapple (aka me) is perfect.  We all wandered around for a little bit with our crowns on, and we also agreed to wear our PrincessCon t-shirts together while we went out to lunch.  More than a few people asked about it, and we really had no shame in talking about it.  They were awesome t-shirts.

Hana took us to downtown Santa Fe for some much needed sustenance.  I even ate the beans.  Then we wandered around the little area.  It's very picturesque, not too hot, lots of stuff to look at.  We made our first stop on the Chocolate Trail (yes, it exists, no, it is not a metaphor for something), at a very cute little shop.  We took lots of photographic evidence.  We meandered until we thought the meter was going to run out and hit our next stop on the trail.  This place specialized in authentic drinking chocolate from the ancient cultures, which was interesting to begin with, I mean, drinking the drinks that the Aztecs, sounds like a great idea?  Oh, boy.  So we each picked out one, with plans to try each others, Heather got the Colonial style, I chose the Parisian brew that was the pick of Marie Antoinette, Terry chose the Aztec warrior chocolate, and Hana got the chili pepper hot chocolate.  I mean, they all sounded reasonable, interesting, mine was supposed to have orange water in it.  Sure, I'll go with it.  Wow, they were bad, I mean, really really bad.  Heather's was fairly bitter, mine tasted chalky, Terry's was okay, but Hana's took the cake.  It did not taste like chocolate, it tasted like oil with chili pepper in it and burned everyone's throat.  We all agreed that stop was a fail.  In retrospect, the peach raspberry pie should've been my choice.

Anyway, we moved on to stop number three, praying for redemption, and it was a cute little place with not much to it, but it did have some lovely looking treats and a fun 50's fridge, and we all ate our chocolate out front and took more fun pictures.  We were starting to get a little sugar buzzed, but we made it to our last stop, a particular delight called Chuck's Nuts.  How could we resist?  We decided to get a box of treats for later.  And take our picture in front of the sign.  Princesses rule.

Back at Hana's house we had dinner with her parents, took a little more rest since we did walk a bit.  As a note, Hana's mom has A LOT of stuffed animals.  It's quite interesting.  We sat and talked girl stuff, looked at pictures from last year's PrincessCon, and watched the video.  We are pretty hilarious.  And after a certain point we ate our truffles, and then went out to sit in the hot tub.  This was a good and smart decision.  What was not a good and smart decision was not prepping the hot tub before we went outside in our bikinis.  It was probably about 50 degrees, but once we were in the hot tub, it was awesome.  We could see all the stars in the sky because it's so clear and there's very little light pollution, and we could all relax and chat more.

And after a nice long soak (we probably spent an hour and a half out there, possibly more), we decided to spend every night in the hot tub, and hit the sack.  For Friday held Princess craft time!