Personal Wellness Day

Today, I did something I rarely would ever do. I called in sick, and I'm not.

After this past weekend, and indeed the whole period from Thanksgiving on, Danny and I have NOT been taking care of our personal needs...we've been letting this remodeling suck everything out of us. The fatigue poisons have been taking their toll.

So, today, I'm going to just relax and do all this huge amount of paperwork that's sitting on my desk at home. Sometime last March or so, Danny had to reformat this harddrive, and things that I THOUGHT were backed up, weren't. I lost all my TurboTax files from last year's taxes and I'll have to hand-enter it all again. A bother, since I have so much depreciable property that I have to make sure is matched up again.

I'm a bit stressed that the Square Dance Center annual meeting is the 22nd and I'll have to get THOSE books in order, too. January is crush month for ASDC, since it's membership renewals up the wazoo. It'll be an interesting mix of members coming up. The president is retiring this year, and I'm suspecting either Kris or Joey will be the new ASDC prez.

We're going to Phoenix Friday morning for a long square dance weekend, and before that, we have to haul all that furniture that's now sitting in the lower patio up and around the house to the front for Goodwill on Thursday. I'm looking forward to a warmer weekend than it would be here, although this 'heat wave' and prolonged surprise drought we're in the thick of it a bit worrying. Any day now, I suspect the 60ish weather to cause a false spring...in early January!

Saturday and Sunday we spent the best part of the day sanding the floors...we finally finished the sanding process till we were almost satisfied with it about 11am Sunday, took the sander back to HD (our 8th trip in a week), super-vacuumed and rubbed the floor down with mineral spirits, and started the staining to 'select' (re: mismatched tiles) parquet. This is all an experiment, since we're trying to get the two different styles of parquet to match...I have my doubts. By 4:45 we gave that up to dry, readied ourselves to visit Lawrence and Scott. I'm not sure we're going to get to anymore work downstairs until after Phoenix.

That visit was actually a lot of fun, although I was a bit worried about Danny's allergies to their Australian(?) Ridgeback. Talk about a licker! The other two dogs are toy poodles, getting well up in age. This games night was actually also with Lawrence's sister, her husband and their two delightfully personable teen daughters. I had never played "The Great Dalmudi" before, and it was actually a lot of fun, being so fast moving. Everyone wore hats appropriate to their stations, had sign cards for where you were in the game, had to bow to rules of the royaly, and laughter was all around (the wine helped that a bit).

Got a nice surprise on Sunday morning. Vancouver is booking me for their November 2008 flyin...it's a been a long time since I've been in BC-land. This year's calling schedule is filling in nicely, with about a dozen events that I'll be active in. Still with it!

Back to the bookwork!

Personal Wellness Day

Today, I did something I rarely would ever do. I called in sick, and I'm not.

After this past weekend, and indeed the whole period from Thanksgiving on, Danny and I have NOT been taking care of our personal needs...we've been letting this remodeling suck everything out of us. The fatigue poisons have been taking their toll.

So, today, I'm going to just relax and do all this huge amount of paperwork that's sitting on my desk at home. Sometime last March or so, Danny had to reformat this harddrive, and things that I THOUGHT were backed up, weren't. I lost all my TurboTax files from last year's taxes and I'll have to hand-enter it all again. A bother, since I have so much depreciable property that I have to make sure is matched up again.

I'm a bit stressed that the Square Dance Center annual meeting is the 22nd and I'll have to get THOSE books in order, too. January is crush month for ASDC, since it's membership renewals up the wazoo. It'll be an interesting mix of members coming up. The president is retiring this year, and I'm suspecting either Kris or Joey will be the new ASDC prez.

We're going to Phoenix Friday morning for a long square dance weekend, and before that, we have to haul all that furniture that's now sitting in the lower patio up and around the house to the front for Goodwill on Thursday. I'm looking forward to a warmer weekend than it would be here, although this 'heat wave' and prolonged surprise drought we're in the thick of it a bit worrying. Any day now, I suspect the 60ish weather to cause a false spring...in early January!

Saturday and Sunday we spent the best part of the day sanding the floors...we finally finished the sanding process till we were almost satisfied with it about 11am Sunday, took the sander back to HD (our 8th trip in a week), super-vacuumed and rubbed the floor down with mineral spirits, and started the staining to 'select' (re: mismatched tiles) parquet. This is all an experiment, since we're trying to get the two different styles of parquet to match...I have my doubts. By 4:45 we gave that up to dry, readied ourselves to visit Lawrence and Scott. I'm not sure we're going to get to anymore work downstairs until after Phoenix.

That visit was actually a lot of fun, although I was a bit worried about Danny's allergies to their Australian(?) Ridgeback. Talk about a licker! The other two dogs are toy poodles, getting well up in age. This games night was actually also with Lawrence's sister, her husband and their two delightfully personable teen daughters. I had never played "The Great Dalmudi" before, and it was actually a lot of fun, being so fast moving. Everyone wore hats appropriate to their stations, had sign cards for where you were in the game, had to bow to rules of the royaly, and laughter was all around (the wine helped that a bit).

Got a nice surprise on Sunday morning. Vancouver is booking me for their November 2008 flyin...it's a been a long time since I've been in BC-land. This year's calling schedule is filling in nicely, with about a dozen events that I'll be active in. Still with it!

Back to the bookwork!

Fun with the Wilde Bunch

Different is better. It really is.

Tonight we started our one-hour C1 workshops with several experienced Advanced Wilde Bunchers and a number of dancers from Kris' Thursday night Advanced club, as well as the C1 angels who really wanted to workshop from the beginning. We had 17 dancers, and workshopped four calls and intro-ed the Block concept...there was a bit of brain-death toward the end of the hour, but I didn't push it much, really. I chose Mike Jacobs teaching order, since it seemed pretty kind...it's been years since I taught a C1 class, and some of the groupings I tried early on, I've dumped. We'll see how this shakes out. I don't have Kris' nifty C1 Notes she created years ago...don't even remember if I have a copy of that any more. I'd rather encourage the serious dancers to buy Vic Ceder or another good caller's definition books.

Then on to the regular club-class dancing at 7 with the WB. I had invited my old friend Scott Amspoker (also a Thursday C/W addict) to come back for lessons. Unfortunately, the club isn't STARTING new dancer lessons yet, so I ended up in FOUR tips workshopping over 25 calls through Mainstream for him, including the Thars, Recycle, Spin the Top and Scoot Back. He did REALLY well, and is itching to come back...he had been to one lesson before. Amazing, since the night was geared to getting the new Mainstream folks closer to speed for Phoenix this weekend. He'll be another Geo Jedlicka I can see. I knew he would be.

Calling 3 1/4 hours with barely a break is quite invigorating, really!

I got a lot accomplished on my well-day today. Am about ready to tackle my taxes now, and am well on the way to getting the ASDC books cleaned up for presentation on the 22nd.

Danny got our new JVC home theatre system delivered today, but we won't be setting it up until we can get the downstairs floors stained and sealed...probably over the course of a week!

Fun with the Wilde Bunch

Different is better. It really is.

Tonight we started our one-hour C1 workshops with several experienced Advanced Wilde Bunchers and a number of dancers from Kris' Thursday night Advanced club, as well as the C1 angels who really wanted to workshop from the beginning. We had 17 dancers, and workshopped four calls and intro-ed the Block concept...there was a bit of brain-death toward the end of the hour, but I didn't push it much, really. I chose Mike Jacobs teaching order, since it seemed pretty kind...it's been years since I taught a C1 class, and some of the groupings I tried early on, I've dumped. We'll see how this shakes out. I don't have Kris' nifty C1 Notes she created years ago...don't even remember if I have a copy of that any more. I'd rather encourage the serious dancers to buy Vic Ceder or another good caller's definition books.

Then on to the regular club-class dancing at 7 with the WB. I had invited my old friend Scott Amspoker (also a Thursday C/W addict) to come back for lessons. Unfortunately, the club isn't STARTING new dancer lessons yet, so I ended up in FOUR tips workshopping over 25 calls through Mainstream for him, including the Thars, Recycle, Spin the Top and Scoot Back. He did REALLY well, and is itching to come back...he had been to one lesson before. Amazing, since the night was geared to getting the new Mainstream folks closer to speed for Phoenix this weekend. He'll be another Geo Jedlicka I can see. I knew he would be.

Calling 3 1/4 hours with barely a break is quite invigorating, really!

I got a lot accomplished on my well-day today. Am about ready to tackle my taxes now, and am well on the way to getting the ASDC books cleaned up for presentation on the 22nd.

Danny got our new JVC home theatre system delivered today, but we won't be setting it up until we can get the downstairs floors stained and sealed...probably over the course of a week!