I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes

Pro tip: Crossposting from Dreamwidth requires different syntax for LJ user links. But it works, it works!

Anyway.

Ten achievements of 2011: ( 2011 was the year I... )

Ten goals for 2012:

1. Finally replace the Treo 680 with an Android phone
It's coming to be necessary for my professional cred as a web/social media maven.

2. Go contra dancing at least once per calendar month
This represents a sixfold increase over 2011, when I went a total of twice.

3. Establish a habit of walking home from work at least once a week
When I was unemployed on vacation for 2 months, I was walking miles every day and it was great.

4. Implement new website for Ramaz
A professional goal, not a personal one, but then the professional is personal, as they say.

5. Host a Shabbat dinner
With lots of singing. In NYC. Who wants to come?

6. Take (and post) more pictures
Documenting my experience of the city. You see things differently with a camera in your hand.

7. Get net worth up over $100,000
90% of this is locked up in retirement savings, as it should be, but still. It's reachable.

8. Join the Frontstage side of the Blue Hill Troupe
Hoping that next year's shows will be of more interest to me than Utopia. We'll find out this spring!

9. Establish a partnership with the shared goal of having a family
Let's acknowledge that there are lots of possible (and many mutually exclusive) subgoals under this, the exact combination of which will vary highly depending on the chain of circumstances, so I'm not really ready to unpack all of them right now. But I'm naming the intention.

10. Complete a draft of a novel
In some ways this goal feels the farthest away... and reaches the farthest back, since I wanted to Be A Writer from the time I could hold a pencil.

I got a Zipcar to go to today's wedding (Methuen this afternoon and Medford tonight), so if anyone needs a ride from Cambridge/Somerville, let me know by noon. :-) E-mail should work, or call me if you like. My home phone number (no, I have no cell) is listed, or here.

I meant to make this offer earlier, but I am lame. Fortunately, though, not too lame to obtain a car. You don't even have to split the cost with me, since I'm getting it regardless.

In the meantime, I am off to shul.

Contra dancing tonight!! woohoo!!!!

After several months of "We really must go dancing sometime," tenore and I went last night to Downtown Swing at Ned Devine's (at Faneuil Hall). I was only slightly underenthusiastic due to never having learned any West Coast Swing before, but we made sure to go in time for the very beginner lesson at 6:30. And stayed (mostly on our feet) until almost 10:15.

And OMG, was it fun! It's a while since I learned any completely new dance, and spent long enough at it in one sitting to start feeling like I was getting the hang of it. (Nor had I done any serious partner dancing since, well, since jonathanjo.) I'd almost forgotten just how exhilarating it is for me. Insofar as I made any New Year's resolutions this year, "do more dancing" was high on the mental list, but this seems to be the first I've actually gone. Note to self: Do more dancing. I swear I tell myself every week I'm going to try to make it to contras, either MIT or VFW... and then (just because the option is always there) there always seems to be something more immediate going on. If I would just make it a point to go, it would probably do more for me than any other three hours in my week.

The interesting thing is -- I was noticing while we were working the basic steps in the early part of the evening -- not every minute of the process is at the "whee!" level of fun and enjoyment... but I do find all of it completely absorbing, and completely satisfying. Oddly, this observation reminded me of the first time I read The Mists of Avalon, the summer after seventh grade when my awesome humanities teacher lent it to me. When I brought it back to her in the fall, she asked "Did you like it?", and I seem to recall saying that I hadn't so much consciously liked it as been completely drawn into it. Which of course meant I *had* liked it, not that I didn't; but there was something more fundamental to it than simple aesthetic enjoyment. I didn't know how to express the distinction. I apparently still don't. Is there a term for this? Apart from "flow state"?

Didn't get over to contra dancing at MIT tonight, as I had hoped. oh well... maybe at the VFW soon; this Thursday is out (rehearsal) but the following one could conceivably work (ooh, and I'm taking that Friday off to go to Albacon; that could be a plan).

Anyway. The reason I didn't go was partly that I had house stuff I've been wanting to do, and partly that I'm not feeling all that well (could just be attributable to tiredness) and thought I might as well not both exhaust myself and infect others if I *am* harboring anything. So instead, changed the sheets, cooked some actual dinner, did laundry, bought groceries, sorted deposit bottles and took some back, pulled a box of books off the shelf to donate to skreeky (not that it made any visible dent).

Next: put laundry away, drink tea, pay bills, floss, try to fix the halogen lamp, and, I think, early to bed (tomorrow being early-to-rise). Some other time: my Rosh Hashanah musings. And, as usual, the dishes.

Made potato kugel to take to cthulhia's. Everyone raved about it, yay; I think the rosemary was a good addition. I hadn't been to cthulhia's house before, and apart from being a beautiful space, it is infused everywhere with cool and interesting things -- like a peek into the interior of cthulhia's mind. It was a very enjoyable morning (er, afternoon) and I was pleased to have been included. Jonathan-my-jo was also there; I hope I didn't monopolize him too much, but it was really nice to see him too. He tried to get gosling and ceo to buy Teal House, which would be very entertaining :-)

Jonathan dropped me off afterwards at the Porter Square T, where I ran a couple of errands first and bumped into rikchik and marymary. I smiled and said hello; he smiled and said hello; she gave a small smile and turned her face away. Heh. If I'm to see them any more often again, I must start plotting more active ways of killing her with kindness. Not because I'd hope for it to make any difference, just because I'd find it so entertaining to watch it making no difference.

Came home, bought groceries, made dinner-and-tentative-movie plans with navrins. Ended up cooking at home and then we went out to see Chicago at the Boston Common. Wow! navrins had nits to pick, of course, and I could see the validity of some of his complaints, but I enjoyed it no less wholeheartedly for that. I couldn't help it -- I was dancing all the way out the theater. It made me want to put on fishnets and start singing in smoky nightclubs. I saw a community theater production of this show back home YEARS ago, and I don't remember being impressed by it so much, but I got a kick out of this version all right.

Then Brian said "Isn't MTG scheduled to do Chicago sometime soon?" and I checked this morning and indeed, it's their upcoming spring show. Gaah! I fear I may need to try out for this... even if it comes to mean dissing MITG&SP's Utopia, Ltd. (Comments about the relative suckitude of Utopia as a show may be taken as made.) It'd be fun to do something with more serious dancing and a different vocal style.

Meanwhile, I also reminded myself that there's an ongoing modern dance class at the Green St. Studios in Central Square (I took the beginner series a couple years back with my friend Joy), and I'm seriously thinking I should go back. Dance! Contra dancing is one kind of sheer joy, but I think it'd push me in a good direction to work on something with more technique to it. To see just what I can do.

Sometimes I think a major reason Jonathan groks me so well is that he's a dancer at heart too.