Last night was good. The second level dance class pushed me more so I have arranged with Clement to transfer. It means my classes are now one hour earlier than originally booked for. It pushed me more.

The biggest adjustment is that they use different names for some moves. In-line turn and one-and-a-half-right. Just have to remember what they are according to my previous learning and start associating the new names with the moves.

I am suspecting that the in-line turn is something I have referred to as a crossover turn. The one-and-a-half-right is completely new, but has been nailed by myself. I just need to get it right when partnered.

The female teacher (on Wednesday nights), Laura, complimented my movement. She said I move very nicely but that it would be more consistent if I just remember my frame. Clement reminded me to remember "there is a 4!" and suggested I try to make it so that my weight is forward and on my front foot, rather than backward on my back foot when completing a turn.

Anyway, lots of fun. I finished up by treating myself to a fifteen minute Thai head-and-shoulders massage. Mmmmm. But definitely my next massage is a massage for feel-good-at-time rather than feel-good-later purposes, hehe.

Mmmm, dancing.

So last night was the first class at the the Latin motion dance school I enrolled in. It was actually pretty good. The class was for beginners (my mistake in not clarifying that I wanted to enroll in Salsa 2 not 1). I was relatively impressed at the extent of the moves covered in the beginners class! Although, frame (including where NOT to put your hand on your partner, sheesh lol) and bumping into partner or other couples was still an issue (I want to say "bleah" but they are just beginners, so that would be unfair of me).

Still, before the class started, I discussed with the teacher (Clement) that I had concerns that the Salsa 1 might be too slow for me even taking into account that I have had a year off from dancing. We gave it a shot, and it was a little slow.

We have agreed that I will attend Salsa 2 on Wednesday night and see what the speed there is like for me. I am hopeful that it will be a better match.

It was fun though. And, yes, I did dance on my ankle ... but it didn't hurt at all. And my ankle is dramatically improved since Sunday night and Monday morning.

I'm going out salsa dancing tonight. First time in ages. I will be so rusty. Couldn't convince anyone else to go, so will only know one person there - a friend from Adelaide who moved to Sydney some years back and who invited me to go out with her tonight.

Looking forward to being back in Adelaide for a little while, next week. Plans are to hit the ground running - straight from the airport to coffee with a girlfriend who leaves the next morning to go to Spain! Then Friday (I think, or possibly Monday) will be lunch with an old co-worker from the previous place I worked at. Maybe a dinner at my favourite sushi restaurant with my mum. I'm also hoping to catch up with _flygirl5 for an evening. Saturday I'll be having coffee with Darius before he heads off to Renmark for the weekend. Then Saturday evening - no plans yet, maybe catch up with monggy and go out? Sunday I will catch up with Sarah for coffee in the afternoon, and follow that up with dinner with the family on Sunday night. And a touch-base appointment with Dora on the Monday. Should be good!

Ahhh, home.

So, well - the weekend in review ...

Friday night clubbing. We met our friends in the city, they were running late and hadn't yet eaten so we accompanied them to a Korean bbq restaurant. I ate ox tongue. I am never doing that again. However, I can now say I have actually eaten it.

After this, we went back out onto the street to continue navigating to the night club. My internal compass told me which way to go before the guys had worked out their little map. So I flung my hand out to point in said direction. I should never fling my arms or hands in any which direction. In fact, I should be taken out in a straight jacket so as to avoid doing any damage to innocent bystanders.

Yes, I hit someone in the face with my hand. I was terribly worried that I'd poked them in the eye, but fortunately not. The guy staggered around crying "oh my eye, my eye" to ramp up the theatrics, then peeked through their hands at me and said "Ohhh! Beautiful girl! Is ok!" And then righted themselves and kept on walking.

The club was ok. Full of people dancing to what I think was supposed to be r'n'b, but I have to say I might be stuck in the past with my r'n'b because I hardly recognised or really even liked much of the music that was played. Still we had fun, dragging our partners and friends onto the dance floor before we piked just shortly after midnight. Still, I would like to do it again.

On Saturday I made chocolate mudcake. I think I over cooked it, as it is dried out on the outside. This calls for ckae-shaving (paring back the burnt and dried out bits, and then sealing it in cling wrap to keep the moisture in.

Or a remake.

After making cake and dinner (homemade chicken schnitzel sandwiches, mm - Luke does his with seeded mustard, tomato, and cheese, I do mine with ... tomato sauce - classy, no? hehe) we headed to the cinema and saw Transformers. I had been reluctant to go to what sounded like a boys' toys film ... but after the finish of the film, apologised to Luke because the film had actually been pretty entertaining. Then we went home and watched some OC (my season 4 disc set came in the mail recently, yay).

After disc 4 of season 3, Luke turned to me and said "can we skip forward to the season without Marissa?" You can imagine, I think, my heartfelt and releived agreement with that suggestion. I do like elements of Marissa and her storylines, but she is just so angsty drama-drama-drama and outright stupid about things. And I still cannot believe that the OC ended up being pulled because legions of Marissa worshippers gave it the flick after her character was nixed. Like I said, I like elements of Marissa, but I think she had had such an excess of drama that by season 3 she was dragging the series down. It's such a pity that the series was then canned because I think they had managed admirably to rescue the series after Mischa Barton's departure.

Anyway, on Sunday I went shopping - food and a few other things. Preparations for a dinner I'm having on Tuesday night at my place with a few girls from work. I got food stuffs, and also purchased two new Scanpan pots (one big enough to cook Oscar in ... not that I intend to, lol). I also used a birthday/farewell voucher from miss__scarlet to buy the sweetest little claypots for cooking in and serving in from Wheel & Barrow. I will take a picture of them and see if I can get them online, although my digital camera is broken at the moment. Sigh.

Then I came home and cleaned and watched more OC. Bearing in mind Luke's request from the night before, I skipped straight to disc 1 on season 4, but then he asked me why we were missing such a chunk of the storyline. I reminded him, and he asked how many discs of season 3 were actually left to be watched. I told him 3. He said, we should really be able to manage that, I'm sure. So we watched most of disc 5. Then Luke went out to have a beer with a mate, and I kept cleaning and watching. When Luke came home, I was set to watch another episode, but we got held up finishing up with the cleaning, so I postponed that. I have reached some point on disc 6. Which is unfortunate, because now I am ahead of Luke, and we were watching together. Still, we can just re-watch the ones he missed until he's caught up.

And today, Monday, is work. Hooray! ....