tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73853591346545737012024-03-13T21:25:36.949-07:00Drew ShefmanA place to record non-technical, non-kid related ideasdShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-78346979549086971352020-03-22T11:00:00.000-07:002020-03-23T11:41:39.089-07:00Home School Resources during Social Distancing - 4th and 7th grade<span style="font-size: large;">4th grade HISD resources: </span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">Go to <a href="http://www.houstonisd.org/">www.houstonisd.org</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">Click on “Power Up Hub” under main banner.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">Username (where it says someone@example.com): student\s# (This is their student identification number that they use to log in to the computer at school. The ‘s’ must be included after the backslash.) Password: birthdate (mmddyyyy)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">Click on “Digital Resources” at the top.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">Click “Log in with Active Directory”.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">All / Aggregates</span><br />
<ul></ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;">
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<li><a href="http://www.openculture.com/free_k-12_educational_resources"><span style="font-size: large;">http://www.openculture.com/free_k-12_educational_resources</span></a></li>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;">
<br />
<br />
<br />
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="http://edhleper.com/">http://edhleper.com</a></span></li>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Elective</span><span style="font-size: large;"> / Build / Make / Cook</span><br />
<ul>
<li><a href="https://classroommagazines.scholastic.com/support/learnathome.html"><span style="font-size: large;">https://classroommagazines.scholastic.com/support/learnathome.html</span></a></li>
<li><a href="https://thekidshouldseethis.com/"><span style="font-size: large;">https://thekidshouldseethis.com/</span></a></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Science</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://lhh.tutor.com/">https://lhh.tutor.com/</a> (we have a login)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/">https://www.khanacademy.org/</a> (we have a login)</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Math</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://lhh.tutor.com/">https://lhh.tutor.com/</a> (we have a login)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/">https://www.khanacademy.org/</a> (we have a login)</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Reading</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.readworks.org/">www.readworks.org</a> (required by Curry, we have a login)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">https://lhh.tutor.com/ (we have a login)</span></li>
<li></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.readworks.org/books/passages#!q:/g:20/t:/f:0/pt:/features:/">https://www.readworks.org/books/passages#!q:/g:20/t:/f:0/pt:/features:/</a> (recommended by Curry)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.k12reader.com/subject/reading-skills/reading-comprehension/4th-grade-reading-comprehension-worksheets/">https://www.k12reader.com/subject/reading-skills/reading-comprehension/4th-grade-reading-comprehension-worksheets/</a> (recommended by Curry)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;">Lang Arts</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.theteacherscorner.net/daily-writing-prompts">https://www.theteacherscorner.net/daily-writing-prompts</a> (Recommended by Curry)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://lhh.tutor.com/">https://lhh.tutor.com/</a> (we have a login)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/">https://www.khanacademy.org/</a> (we have a login)</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Art</span><br />
<span id="goog_2013190226"></span><span id="goog_2013190227"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><br />
<span id="goog_2013190229"></span><span id="goog_2013190230"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.free-online-art-classes.com/artlessonvideos.html">https://www.free-online-art-classes.com/artlessonvideos.html</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.jerrysartarama.com/free-art-instruction-videos/art-education/home-art-studio">https://www.jerrysartarama.com/free-art-instruction-videos/art-education/home-art-studio</a></span></li>
<li><a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/75809/12-world-class-museums-you-can-visit-online"><span style="font-size: large;">https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/75809/12-world-class-museums-you-can-visit-online</span></a></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">PE</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">Grokker (have an account)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">Sworkit (have an account)</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Current Events</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://newsforkids.net/"><span style="font-size: large;">http://newsforkids.net</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">History / Social Science</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://lhh.tutor.com/">https://lhh.tutor.com/</a> (we have a login)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/">https://www.khanacademy.org/</a> (we have a login)</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Foreign Language</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">Duolingo (I think we have an account)</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-40624886371866901582012-08-08T09:16:00.002-07:002012-08-21T14:36:12.003-07:00If I Have to Tell You One More Time.... Book QuotesIf I Have to Tell You One More Time....<br />
Amy McCreedy<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Empowerment Paradigm</li>
<ul>
<li>Can't control others, but can control themselves and environment</li>
</ul>
<li>Control the environment</li>
<ul>
<li>Kids (and adults) need a private space, that others are allowed only by invitation</li>
<li>It addition, common spaces need to be allocated</li>
<li>House Rules</li>
<ul>
<li>When I choose to play in a common area, I am choosing to invite my siblings to play with me. If I want to play alone, I can play in my room / private space</li>
<li>When I choose to leave my things in a common area, I am sharing them with my siblings. If I don't want my siblings to play with them, I need to keep them in my room / private space</li>
<li>Play fighting is allowed only by mutual consent. In the case of this rule, you'll need to develop some family-recognized word or phrase that everyone must respect, such as "Stop now", to put an immediate end to the roughhousing when one child is done (or getting hurt). Role play this several times with each child. </li>
</ul>
</ul>
<li>Decide what you will do</li>
<ul>
<li>Emphasize that there is no argument or fight without two participants</li>
<li>Each person has the choice to stay and fight or ignore and walk away</li>
<li>Role play respectful "open hand" requests versus taking back</li>
</ul>
<li>All in the Same Boat</li>
<ul>
<li>Unilateral consequence that affects all</li>
<li>A flight between siblings ALWAYS CONSTITUTES MISBEHAVIOR</li>
<li>Remain calm and indifferent to the the two sides of the argument</li>
<li>Do not pass judgement or declare a right / wrong</li>
<li>Refuse to listen to whining - deliver the consequence if a resolution can't be made and walk away</li>
</ul>
<li>Family Meetings</li>
<ul>
<li>Ground Rules</li>
<ul>
<li>Commit to the meeting weekly</li>
<li>Don't bring a problem unless you come prepared with 1 or 2 possible solutions</li>
<li>Decisions require consensus, not a vote</li>
<li>Live with decisions for a week</li>
<li>Everyone has a job</li>
<li>Remember the fun</li>
</ul>
<li>Pitfalls</li>
<ul>
<li>Tackling too much too soon</li>
<li>Parents take over</li>
<li>Too many agenda items</li>
<li>Straying too far agenda</li>
<li>Too much business, not enough fun</li>
<li>One person dominates the discussion</li>
<li>It turns into a gripe session</li>
<li>Going to long</li>
<li>Parents solve all of the problems</li>
<li>Families only meet when there is a problem</li>
</ul>
</ul>
</ul>
dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-83673166044960688272012-07-18T19:09:00.003-07:002012-07-18T19:09:44.120-07:00Understanding Sibling Rivalry - Book QuotesUnderstanding Sibling Rivalry: The Brazelton Way<br />
Berry Brazelton, Joshua Sparrow<br />
<br />
Here are some quotes and passages from the book that I want to record:<br />
<br />
To an active older child, you might say "You could have hurt him, I doubt that you'd feel good about that." To a quiet but provocative younger one: "Your teasing made her angry. That may be why she got after you." And to both: "You need to take care of this yourselves. But until you can stop hurting each other, I'll have to stop you. Let me know when you feel ready to play together again -- without clobbering each other!"<br />
<br />
<br />
To the older child, a parent might say, "I know it's tough to have your little brother interfering all the time, but you can tell her to stop, or take your toys into your room and shut the door. You don't have to hit." To the younger child, a parent might say, "I know you want to play with her <i>so</i> badly. But when she tells you she won't, you're going to have to learn to listen.<br />
<br />
"Fairness does not mean the same thing for everyone, but the right thing for each of you. Fairness means doing what I have to do to help each of you learn your lesson. If you learn quickly, I don't need to use time outs or punishments." Fairness means the same rules, but may not mean the same discipline for each child.dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-22374323309572463032012-06-22T13:00:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:05:28.056-07:00Dance Competitions of yesteryearSo when I was in college, I wrote emails home about my dance competitions. For the most part, my mom is the only one who read them. I've been wanting to post them, for what it is worth to my friends and fellow competitors of the time.<br />
<br />
Hopefully it provides some nostalgia or entertainment.<br />
<br />
Please note, that this contains personal references, opinions, and other information. Also recognize that these were written 15+ years ago. Disclaimers apply.dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-9770592248341643452012-06-22T11:30:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:27:23.963-07:00Harvard Competition - Feb 1994<br />
This weekend was AWESOME, as in any off campus weekend with the ballroom family!!!! okay... the whole story:<br />
Background:<br />
Pat & Pam - dancing over a year<br />
Me & Tonya - dancing about 5 months<br />
Angie & Bill - dancing about 2 weeks :)<br />
<br />
Fri: Inhaled my lunch so that we could leave be noon. Left at 12:15 - not bad group dynamics..if I do say so myself. The way down was lots of little small talk and sleeping. It was a gorgeous sunset! It was great we were travling uphill from aoubt 5 to 7. The sun just never set. It stayed about halfway down for about 1/2 and hour. And with all the hills and snow. It was beautiful. It was also really neat to see the rivers frozen over with snow on them. The whole drive took us a little longer then 11.5 hours. Pat got a speeding ticket about 10 minutes into New York. He was going 80 in a 55, but the cop gave him 70... He was kinda bummed about it the whole trip. It was his first ticket. The cop was funny though. He said, "What if this car rolled at this speed, what would your buddies look like if that happened. That's why we carry snow shovels...so we can scrape people like you off the ground". It was hard to keep from laughing. Ate at burger King on the way there.<br />
<br />
Boston has got to be the worst place to drive. People just park wherever they want. Next to a curb...in the street. wherever...This makes the roads extremely narrow. Not that this slows anybody down. People are passing each other inches apart going 30. Pedestrians.. they just go when ever they want. Red light, green light, middle of the street, if cars are going at them. Tehy don't care. SO we get to MIT, that is where Pat's friend, melissa, and Steve Hardt are. We had to pass their dorm like 4 times because of all the damn one way streets. It took us about 40 minutes after the inital pass to get there.<br />
<br />
We met up with Melissa first,b/c Steve wasn't there. She was really cool. MIT is a very open place. They have co-ed bathrooms. Then we went one floor up to look at the Elvis Shrine that they had set up. About 7 people were smoking dope in the hallway. They weren't even trying to hide it... there was a big ol' bong there. So after that, I taught one of Melissa's friends to Waltz. Then we went over to Steve's. He was watching Beavis & butthead, of course. We got ready for bed and slept on the floor. I'd forgotten how uncomfortable that was. I was using my nice nylon jacket as a pillow. That was a mistake. Nylon is loud when moved! Everytime I moved, I woke up. Plus, I was sleeping next to Steve's bed... he had one of those fake hands sking out from it. Well sometime in the night, my jacket came untucked and was touching the hand. Everytime Steve moved, it would rub the jacket and I'd wake up. Now you are probably saying well way didn't you just move the jacket. Well I w as tired and having a hard time falling asleep, the less movement I made the more likely I was to sleep. Plus, Angie kept kicking me in the head. We were sleeping in a 2 by 2 kinda arrangement. Now in the morning, Steve's alarm is REALLY LOUD. Bill was the closest to the alarm, but it took him a while to figure that out. Then we are yelling at him directions about how to turn the alarm off. We all dress up and head toward the comp.<br />
<br />
It was so funny when we got there. We didn't know where the ballroom was, so we asked people. Nobody knew. People don't even know there own campus. So, we get there. It is in this BEAUtiful hall.. Just what I expected Harvard to be. Stained glass windows and ancient portraits of no-name people. The floor however was also ancient. It had lots of holes and ruts and stuff. Pam nearly had a heart attack after seeing the floor. Then to "help" matters, they added sprinkled wax on the floor because it was too slick. It is going to take us so long to get that shit out of our shoes. We danced swing,foxtrot, waltz, chacha,jive. We won 4th (out of four) on international foxtrot. But even more impressive was we made it to semifinals in American Foxtrot. Funniest thing is that I still dislike the fox trot. My Latin outfit fits great. My tux needs a little work. I've grown in the chest and shrunk in the waist. If there was a dance that I had to cross my arms, I would have been screwed. And my pants were so annoyingly lose. Needless to say that dancing only a couple of times, then sitting through student syllabus, adult syllabus, senior open rounds... it got to be a very long day. Besides that I'd barely eaten anything. I had a bagel for breakfast at 7:45. Then we had peanut butter and jelly (just one) for lunch. With that much food, I'd didn't even know that I'd eaten. I can totally see Pam as a mother. Just hte way she made the PB&J . She laid out two rows of 6 peices of bread. On one of the rows was a long spread of peanut butter. On the other, a long spread of jelly. Then with lighting fast blackjack-dealer hands she put the peices together. I don't know... it looked very Momish.<br />
<br />
We met this incredible lady there. Her name is Kay Teague. She is the collegiate ballroom network coordinator. She is the nicest lady. Other then all the official stuff, she gets adults to donate there outgrown or old clothing, then she will give them to college kids. It was the neatest thing. We were sitting there talking, she looks at Angie's feet and notices that she doesn't have dance shoes on. She asks "what size do you wear?" Angie said 6.5. Kay Teague (everyone calls her this, first and last name... I don't know way...kinda like micheal J Fox) said Perfect, and took off the shoes that she was wearing. She told Angie that if she wore them today... they were hers. These were almost $120 shoes. Taht was SO cool!<br />
<br />
Pat and Pam got a 7th,6th,6th, and 3rd. So they did very well also. I can see Pat doing this all his life. He probably won;t go pro, but I can totally see him charming the lady's at a dance. He is very smooth, and has great presence on the floor. I can just see him in the future at some very snazzy place just waltz from one girl to another. IT also helps that the girls think that he is VERY cute.<br />
<br />
We left the comp during the team dances b/c we were all so exhausted. We missed out on the fun dances like the polka, hustle, and merengue. but those were after the team and that was like another 1.5 hours just sitting there. We were BEAT, so we left. So I changed back into my Latin outfit ( from my non-fitting tux) to go to dinner. We went to Atlantic Seafood bar or something like that. It was very good. But also very annoying. Here I am STARVING. So I order a fairly big meal, which I promptly inhale. The others order moderate meals and then they get full about 1/2 through. Like I can't eat another bite full. I'm like I could order about 4 more entree's without a problem at all. But oh well... I was still very tired at dinner but everyone else (esp Pam) was very hyper.... Now i'm not sure... This is just my hypothesis, but I think it was the clothes that I was wearing. B/c when I got back I changed into my normal clothes, and shortly afterwards I became hyper again. My Latin outfit is so dark. Ject black shirt, belt, pants, socks, dance shoes ( well not at the resturant, but still) The only colored part was the silver belt buckle. When I put on my bright green shirt and my blue jeans, I had just as much energy as Pam. Now pam, wasn't just filled with energy, she was leaking...<br />
<br />
So after dinner, I called Harvard Smart people. I could only get in touch with Scott Greenburg (was going out with Bethany). Steve, Scott, us six, and 5 of Angie's harvard friends tried going clubbing. One club wouldn't let us in b/c we were wering tennis shoes, and the other had over an hour wait. So we just ended up riding the T around (that's there public transportation thingy). After that we walked along the frozen river and took a walking tour of MIT. Then we skipped down this "infinite hallway at MIT" after that got a bite to eat at the 24 hour coffee house and then we pretty much went to our separate rooms. This time I used the air mattress as a pillow for three people.... much better.<br />
<br />
Left this morning about 7:30 and arrived here about 7:30, with two stops for food.<br />
<br />
But we had such great bonding on this trip. Pam is such a character. She<br />
is so blunt. We are driving back, and she says "I've got to piss so bad,<br />
that if we don't stop NOW, we are going to have some serious odor<br />
problems in this car." She and Pat and Bill were just heavily, joking<br />
flirting the whole time. Like htey would seductivly lick their lips, or<br />
she would suck the donut sugar off thier fingers. It was very amusing to<br />
watch, actually kidna fun to participate in also. Pat and Pam started<br />
Vwaltzing in the middle of the cafe to whatever song was playing in the<br />
background. In the car, bill and Angie took turns at sleeping on each<br />
other's lap. We would skip or sing or dance in the streets. At one point<br />
in time, we were swinging to a song that we were singing as well. A<br />
couple of cops passed us and gave us the funniest looks. Pam and Tanya<br />
did a chinese fire drill at one of the stoplights (that is where you get<br />
out and run around the car to switch seats with another person at red<br />
lights) Bill and Angie were trying to do lifts, Pat said that is not the<br />
way to get the girl off the ground... upon which Pam jumped up and<br />
wrapped her legs around his waist, then they proceded to do a very<br />
lambadaish kidna dance. This was in the middle of the street so you<br />
know. It was just so much fun!!!!!<br />
<br />
I'm kinda disappointed in my SMART friends. They knew I was coming for a<br />
while, but still none of them were around Sat night.<br />
<br />
I had SOSOOOSOSOSOOO MUCH FUN! There is no way that I'll be able to work<br />
tonight at all. No desire....engery is fading fast.dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-64633264170345909172012-06-22T11:00:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:27:05.142-07:00Carnegie Mellon Competition - Feb 1994<br />
This weekend was a lot of fun. Exhausting and painful.... but a lot of fun. I haven't been this exhausted since orientation.<br />
<br />
Fri<br />
I started practicing at about 4:30. But Tanya didn't show up so that made it a little hard to practice. Then we started setting up around 6. It was kinda like orientation, but not as fun. It was like orientation in that we were moving and setting up chairs and tables. See for orientation, we would unstack the chairs and push them really hard across the floor to their final desination where somebody else would put them in their proper place. They didn't happen to like that on Fri. Plus the people in charge were VERY stressed. Several things were going wrong. Like the variable speed tape deck we were supposed to have, never got bought and several things like that. Then around 9, I went to the other room where we were throwing a welcome party. No one showed up till about 10. So I just practiced. At the party we had total of 4 people. Talk about happening! Then we danced a little in the ballroom after the decorations were set. Oh... a couple came in from Illinios. The girl was dancing several dances with a friend of hers who goes to Pitt, so we were trying to set up the guy with a girl to dance these dances with. One of the competitors was a girl from Chatham, who I'm pretty good friends with. We called up her roomate, who I'm also good friends with, and persuaded her that she wanted to compete. So she came down and practiced a little with him. I went to bed that night by about 1. This was the 4th time this year that I've gone to bed before Chad.<br />
<br />
Sat.<br />
I woke up at 6:30 to be at the ballroom by 7:30. When I got to skibo... all the doors were Locked. so that was annoying standing outside in the cold waiting for a janitor type person to let me in. The we inflated ballons for 2 hours. Can I tell you how much that hurts your fingers. So many ballons. Plus my shoes have treds... so I'm trying to hold the extra balloons by stepping on the string.... I lost so many balloons... (Oh... I just want to say that if this letter is incoherent that is b/c I've had LOTS of EXERCISE and LITTLE SLEEP... but I'm getting to that). Oh, Pat told me Fri night that the place that he took my latin outfit to get cleaned, closed before he could get there Fri, and was closed on Sat. It wasn't a problem... I just wore a white shirt nad tux pants. So after the balloons, a changed into the tux. I wanted to wear the suspendeders b/c the tux was loose in Harvard. Unfortunately there were no attachment buttons, so the the suspenderes got pinned to the pants. I was lucky, the ballroom was cold, so I was able to comfortablly wear the jacket to (well at least until I started dancing when I got hot) There were not all that many people there. A couple from Illinios and about 6 people from Ohio state. We had a BUNCH of people... I'm not sure how many from CMU. The first thing that I danced was Rookie/vet smooth. I danced it with Julie, one of the team members. We got 3rd in Waltz,4th in American Foxtrot. Then I danced beginner with Tanya. We got 5th Quickstep, 3rd Am Fox, 2nd Int Waltz, 3rd Int Fox. My smooths felt AWESOME. There is just one thing that I was not happy with.... My smile. I concentrating so hard on everything else... the smile was the last thing on my mind. People actually told me that I looked mean. Me?!... look mean?! The only bad thing about the way that the comp was set up was that you danced in spurts. And if you happen to make it to finals these spurts were really long. Like you would do all initial smooth, then semi-finalists, then finalists... right in a row. By the end you are REAL tired. It wasn't as bad in smooth... but after latin... whooo.<br />
<br />
Then for latin... I felt totally off the whole time. For Rookie/Vet, I had Julie count for me just to make sure I got the beat :) We got 7th. Then Tanya and I got 2nd in Cha,jive,and rumba and 3rd in swing and samba. It was funny.. at one of the times I was talking with Pam... she goes. Drew, We REALLY need to work on your samba. Well I only had one lesson. It was still funny though. The rest of the comp was okay. The girl from Illini was fun to watch. She is an awesome dancer. Then we went to dinner. It was two cmu'ers, two illini, and teh whole ohio state team. We wanted to go to spagetti warehouse, but noone really know the way to get there, then we wanted to go to gullifty's, but they had a thirty minute wait. We ended going to Boston Chicken, a fast food chicken place. We had initially taken two cars, but we decided that it would be easier to leave one of them at Gullifty's. So we plied 9 people in a suburban. That was interesting. Then we came back. I changed into my "semi-formal" clothes. Which when I got there I found that it wasn't semi fomral enough. So I went back to change again. (BTW, if there are a lot of spelling errors in this section, it is b/c I'm slouched way down, eyes closed typing this). The dance party afterwards was fun!. There were actually more girls there then guys. That as cool. I was wearing the pumpkin long sleeve shirt thing. There was a girl there that had a blouse the exavt same color. It freaked everyone out when we danced together. It took me a while, she was kinda shy, and I had to ask her several times. She first gave me an excuse that the song was too slow (Rumba). I came back for a quickstep (she was eating). I finally caught her on a cha. She had fun. Then I caught her again on the rumba. The Open comp was AMAZING!!!! Esp the couple that competed Latin. HOLY COW! The quickstep couple was really good too! then we had a salsa comp. That was neat to watch. We also played musical merengue chairs. I didn't ven get close to winning, but it is very fun to watch people merengue cheat. Like when it was down to one chair and 3 couples. One couple came over the back of the chair,straddling the seat and merengueing. It was very funny to watch. The best part of the night though was whne they played a little bit of country. I two stepped with PAm. That was AWESOME b/c I hadn't done it in so long. But I definately have to learn something new, b/c I was bored with it again like the second time I double turned Pam.<br />
<br />
After the partyt was over, the ballroom was stripped down SO FAST. It took like 5 hours to set it up and 1/2 hour to take down. Then, Tamara, one of the REALLY good ballroom dancer grad students was having a party. So I tagged along with Pat and Pam and Carol to go to the party. That 3was really neat. I never been to a grad student party. I met lots of grads and danced more. There was also LOTS of liquor. Pam of course got watsed. She is so funny when she is drunk. She and Danny (another Dancer) did body shots of tequila. Like put the salt on your neck and the lemon (or lime or whatever that fruit thing is) in your mouth. Then we danced and I talked a lot to Mech E grads. Val, our dance teacher, was there and drunk. You know how I said that she was kinda stand offish and not really helpful as a teacher.... well she is more more talkative drunk. She asked me if what I have is alepicia. So I said yes, and then she asked me since when. and I told her since 5. But since she was drunk she asked me the same querstion about every 4 minutes b/c she didn't remember. It was funny. I left there around 3:45 and went to bed around 4:30. <br />
<br />
I woke up sun at 8:30 for the 9:30 workshops. The workshops were really cool. Tamara was threre, but she was kinda hungover (big surprise there) she said that Pam & PAt were alseep on her floor. The first workshop we worked on was the jive. I don't think I've been shown the proper way to juve before, I was just alwats told that it was a fast swing. Kinda but not quite. It has a lot more up and down then side to side. Then the next workshop of on smooth. Alot about backwards steps, like in the waltz turns and stuff. I was instructed on a way to totally improve my waltz. It seems that I was leading with my feet instead of my body. So I'll have to start working on that. The next workshop was Disco & West Coast. That was cool. =Disco is a lot of fun. We didn't get through that much West Coast though.<br />
Just the basic. But we did lots of fun stuff for fisco. Then I learned Salsa and merengue. Boy my hips are going to be sore!!!! The last workshop was C&W and line dancing. That was okay. I learned to continous turns for two step.... but I don't really think that it was a function of the workshop... but from the fact that I'm a better dancer. I couldn't do the line dances b/c it hurt my ankle too much. I can't remember if I told you in this letter that I hurt my ankle. I'm not sure when, but at some time in the competition, I did something really funky to my ankle. It is the lower inner half of my left leg that really hurts. Especially for any side kidna streches. The things that hurt most are grapevines (line dance), latin crosses (cha & rhumba) and occasionally going up on my toes in Waltz. I don't notice it a whole lot when I'm dancing, usless I really catch it wrong. I notice most while walking. But especially when I stand up after sitting for a while. I'm going to Health Services tomorrow.<br />
<br />
Then I took about 1.5 hour nap, and spent most of the rest of the day walking REALLY slowly between my dorm and the eating place. Then tonight we went to metropol, a normal dance club. It was fun to people watch, but It verified the fact that I don't like club dancing. The music really sucked and it was PAINFULLY load. The only really neat part was that for some reason a lot of CMU people were there .... I knew like 1/2 the dance floor. I don't see how anybody could meet anybody there . Even if you were a good "non-music" dancer and you were sexy. Noone cold tell. You cant hear a word a person shouting in your ear is saying. And most of the lights are off, except for the occasional stobe light. One of the cool things was that Tanya showed up there. I thought the was pretty weird... neat but weird.<br />
<br />
Oh... Another funny thing. When Pam is cold and she runs....she looks just like Ozone running. The way she shakes her hear when she runns looks exactly like Oz.I found it amuzing.<br />
<br />
Well I think that this letter is long enough. Let me know if I left anything out.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-90824984038333913482012-06-22T10:30:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:26:53.152-07:00New York University Competition - Mar 1994<br />
Hiya!<br />
<br />
Comparing this weekend to all of the other comps, I would probably put it last in terms of fun.... But looking at it alone, it was ALOT of fun!<br />
<br />
General infomation: The Group Dynamics of the trip really sucked<br />
<br />
Main cast (ie stayed together through the end)<br />
Danny "Mapman" Carlson, aka "Pappa Smurf"<br />
Susan<br />
Karen<br />
John<br />
Pam<br />
Liz<br />
Sam<br />
Pete<br />
Me<br />
<br />
Extras (ie came and went throughout the trip)<br />
Fei<br />
Ajay<br />
Johanna<br />
Dave<br />
Lena<br />
<br />
Okay... Fri. We were planning on leaving at 5. We were ready by 5:30, but then Karen forgot something at her apartment and had to run back. Stupidly Dave, who was traveling in an independent car, drove her back to her apartment. This was stupid, b/c the people traveling in dave's car had planned on leaving at 3, they could have taken off at 5:00 if Dave didn't leave. Of course Fri, was freezing cold, so I ended up bringing my thick jacket... The rest of the weekend would have been served real well with my thin one. In my car was Danny, Susan, John, and Karen. We had two other cars with us, Liz, Pam, Sam, Pete and Fei & two of her friends who were traveling with us. We fell asleep for the first 1.5, while Liz's car was singing and goofing off. Then we stopped to eat at Big Boy's or something like that. After that we played cards until dark, then we told each other secrets/ stories. That night we stayed in Allentown at Fei's house.<br />
<br />
This was lots of fun.. it seems that almost every night we segregated into grad and undergrad. The undergrad consisted of me,Pam,Liz,Sam,Pete, & Fei (but she slept in her own bed). We were all on the floor in the living room, while the grads were in another room. We were being really giggly and having fun... We played a drunk game (we were all sober) but it was funny. One person whould say... "Wanna buy a duck?" The next person would say "A What?". The first would say "A Duck."<br />
"A What?"<br />
"A Duck."<br />
"Does it quack?"<br />
"Of course it quacks"<br />
Then the second person would ask the next person "Wanna buy a duck". The third says "A What?", the second says "A what?", the first says "A duck" ... etc<br />
It was funny... Then Pam steamrolled us. Fei had left to drop off her friends, who lived in AllenTown. When she came back, her dad said something to her in Chinese, which we interpretted that it was time for us to go to bed. Later, just found out it was just "how was the drive" kinda stuff... But we went to bed anyways... It was really hard sleeping that night... I had the raft blown up to much and it was REALLY noisy. In the morning we had a group back massage b/c everyone was sore. We took showers and went to the grocery store to pick up muffins for breakfast. Pam & Fei & Sam went to Kmart to get socks for Sam (he forgot to pack them) and contact stuff for Karen (Who either forgot or ran out). Then when we got back, we waited until Karen was finished repacking till we left (Beginning of a theme). We left about 2 hours laters then we had initially planned.<br />
<br />
We drove to the hotel in New Jersey, checked in and segregated again. Two rooms, 6/4 split. The 6th undergrad was Fei who was staying with us and going back home after the comp.<br />
<br />
After spending 1.5 hours in traffic entering NY, we spent the night at the comp watching the championship and open stuff. We also saw a demo from Tony & Melanie somebody... I think that they are National Latin Champions. They were of course awesome!! Their last dance was something that they made up..... My was it sexy... Total foreplay dance. When I get a girlfriend, I definately think that that is a dance to try to learn. VERY SEXY.... After the dance, Liz turns to me and says and awe-inspired "DAMN".<br />
<br />
Then we went back to the hotel... Almost everone took showers that night b/c we were waking up by six the next morning. Fei & I were on the floor, while the others were in the two beds (that's the undergrad room that I'm talking about). We were about a 1/2 hour late leaving b/c Karen kept saying just 5 more minutes of sleep. Continuation of the theme. Luckily, there was no traffic (who in their right mind would be awake at 7:30 sun!) and we got to the comp in time to register and warm up... Actually we were the first ones there. and had to help set up a little. :)<br />
<br />
The competition was huge... 200 competitors and the floor was always extremely crowed. Also there were normally 2 or 3 dances per heat. And most of the time I didn't know at least one of them. So I spent most of the morning learning the dances I didn't know. ie American Tango & rumba. Lena, my partner was about 1/2 hour late, and we ended up missing the first two heats which I think were Am Waltz, foxtrot,tango, and int waltz & quickstep. We placed 5th in Int Foxtrot and Tango. Which I found extremely funny. Int Foxtrot is very hard and I've never formally learned tango, just tips from people here and there. I think that there were about 10 couples, but I'm not sure. Then we sat for a while and danced again in the novice catagory. My smooths were off, I wasn't hitting any of them, I was however hitting alot of the smooth dancers. VERY CROWDED floor. They didn't have a lunch break, so during some of the gold stuff I took off to have pizza downstairs... Then we watched the kid competition. They had ages 3-teen competing. There is one factory...er I mean school in Brooklynn called the Kaiser Dance Academy that just mass produced ballroom dancers. They were all incredibly good! But the cutest couple was this 3 year old couple cha-ing. After that we danced the latin stuff. During the american Rumba... I kept switching. Everytime I would come out of a fan, I'd switch back to international and it would take a measure or two for me to switch back. Very amusing. All the latins felt good, except we only placed in samba and jive. Which I totally don't understand. I suck at samba ( at least I thought so) and my jive is not all that wonderful. But we got 5th there too, I think that there were 14 couples. Then for the latin novice, we were so tired that we totally didn't care anymore and did everything that we learned... It didn't matter if we knew it well or that it was a gold step (we were only dancing bronze). It was fun. The day as a whole was very tireing. They hardly had any general dances b/c they were trying to get through so many heats (50 or so). So I slept a little there.<br />
<br />
After the competetion Pam took off with Andrew and Min (team members, will get to them later) to go meet up with her boyfriend in Princeton. Speaking of boyfriends... Karen and John i think hooked up right before the trip. They were so nausiating.... Just hanging all over each other the whole time.<br />
<br />
We went back to the hotel to shower and change and then head out for the night. I thought that that was really lame. If we are going out to dance, why bother showering. Then we ate at a pretty crappy steak house and went dancing at the continental club. This club plays live swing music. It was really neat. Just going out and trying all the jitterbug stuff that I learned...er forgot at SSQQ. It was pretty cool. Then after that we drove through times square and headed back to the motel.<br />
<br />
Mon we took the subway from Jersey to NY. The sub dropped us off at 33rd and 5th Avenue. We walked up 5th toward central park, b/c several of us wanted to go there. Oh did I mention that it was raining a little. We stopped to look at Grand Central station and dropped off John & Karen who went to China town. We stopped in a couple of stores and looked around and stuff. We ate lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, then continued on to central park. We walked all the way across central park, then went to the guggenheim museum. I persoanlly thought the museum was excessively boring, but the architecture was really cool. BTW the Guggenhiem is located at 90th and 5th. We caught the subway back and waited 20 minutes for john and karen (no surprise at this point). I was never able to get in touch with Tejas, primarily b/c the hotel was in another area code and it would have cost $3 to call him. I called him from the Hard Rock and left a message sayign I was sorry, I never got to see him.<br />
<br />
Then we headed to Princeton, where Andrew and Min were. Min lives there, Andrew is her boyfriend.... So we stayed there. We watched the tape of the competition since andrew taped it, and waited for dinner. Andrew didn't realize that the dinner he was preparing took like 3 hours to make. We didn't eat until 11 which really screwed up doing anything that night. After dinner, I ran to princeton (abou;20 minutes) away to try to see Bethany, but she was already asleeep an wasn't planning on answering hte door. So we came back and went ot sleep. The next morning the van was planning to leave at 7, but liz was planning on leaving whenever they woke up. So I had the van drop me off at Princeton at abnout 7:30 b/c it was just about 5 minutes out of there way. I saw Bethany for about an hour before her 9 o'clock class. We went to breakfast together and talked and stuff. It was really cool that it worked out that I got to see her. I walked her to her class, and then as I was leaving I was looking at the people passing me... You'll never guess who I saw. Stormy Chamberlain. Does the name sound familiar? She was in YSP! It was so cool!!!!! So we talked for a couple of minutes as we walked to her 9 o'clock class. Then on the way back from that I ran into Manoj, who was from the SMART program, except that he lived in Houston, and we hardly ever saw him. So I walked him to his class. It was so cool. It felt just like CMU I could hardly walk two feet without running into somebody that I knew!!! It was SO cool.<br />
<br />
After that I stood around waiting until Liz came to pick me up. She said that they were possibly going to try to be there at 9:30, but that depends on when they wake up... at 10:30 I called them and they said that they were just finishing up there showers... They finally picked me up at 11:30 and we took off from there. I didn't mind waiting though... I knew that It was going to happen. I was just happy I got to see Bethany and it was a totaly bonus to see Stormy and Manoj. I did find out that my thick winter jacket is not wonderful when it gets soaking wet. Down does not dry fast. The car ride back seemed excessively long. Probablly b/c I hadn't gotten anymore then 4 hours sleep each night, and sleeping on the floor doesn't help.<br />
<br />
I fell asleep last night at 9... fully clothed. I woke up at 2:30 this morning brushed my teeth and went to the bathroom and went back to sleep until 9 this morning.<br />
<br />
I think that about covers it for the weekend. Although I'm sure that I left out some stuff.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-57963934774894116082012-06-22T10:00:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:26:35.797-07:00Indiana University- Sept 1994<br />
This comp was so much fun. But first the key players:<br />
<br />
Me and Liz<br />
Pat and Pam<br />
Ajay and Johanna<br />
Fei and Andrew<br />
Danny and new Fei<br />
<br />
We (Liz,pat,pam) left here at about 7:15 or so on Sat... and drove to Indiana. At one of the gas stations that we stoped at... it was bery funny - they had an intercom set up to teh pumps and the guy with the worst hick accent would tell everybody that they'd have to prepay... The way he said "alright" was VERY funny. Doesn't really do it justice to type but i'd spell it like "ahite"...<br />
And you know how I was telling you about the bed situation. Well it appears that since we we undergrads - and kinda have this reputation of being a little hyper and staying up all night on comps (who me? :) that everyone decided to give us our own room. That plus the fact that we didn't hit Indiana till about 1 am.. So liz and I DID end up sleeping together as well as Pat & Pam (of course). That was interesting. We barely slept at all... I think I've figured it out. There are two things that limit me when I've been in bed with someone else (the ever so many times that I've slept w/ people). One is that I have to be on my back.. I just can't sleep in any other position. And two - I am very sensistive to touch... sights and sound I can sleep though.. .but not touch. And the bed that we were in was of course a single. It was fun even though I slept oh maybe 1.5-2 hours total. but hey that is okay. The best part was the teamwork/partnership/ lead - follow taht evolved from this. Sinec the bed was so small - anytime the other person moved you had to readjust your position accordingly.<br />
Then Sun morning. We ate a skimpy breakfast (as usual) and went to the comp. This Place was GORGEROUS!!! it was at the top of the embassy suites hotel. The floor was huge and perfect... no pot holes, very soft wood, just the right speed. The only thing was that it was circular.... not ellipsoidal - circular... that made it a little hard to do things that you do to get out of corners and things that you do an the long and short end of the floor.<br />
We danced everything - American/ International. This was such a trip = we know almost no american so we were making it up as we went. So of course we got 3rd in American Waltz/Foxtrot (I guess we faked it pretty well). We also got 3rd in International Rumba/Cha-cha. There were about 7 couples in each of these (just so you know it is not thrid out of third.) Another cool thing is that we got the double reverse spin in waltz while we were competing. we had never actually tried it in waltz, but we had never gotten it in quickstep. But we were bored - so we tried it during one of the heats and got it... that was a cool feeling.<br />
Lets see... on the way back... liz got tired of driving so we moved to the backseat to become mutal pillows (I was/am extremely tired by this time). So the coolest thing about this trip is that Liz and I have become much closer friends. That's cool. Some good bonding going on there.<br />
Sorry, that this letter is not longer or more in depth. But it is really late, I've had a really long day, and I still have other stuff to do (which is not going to happend tonight)<br />
<div>
<br /></div>dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-92196393501251928622012-06-22T09:30:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:26:24.619-07:00Catholic University of America Competition - Nov 1994<br />
Catholic University of America (CUA) competition<br />
Nov 4 - 6th 1994<br />
<br />
Key people:<br />
Liz Atkinson<br />
Stephanie Behrens<br />
Tom Gilbert<br />
Pam Klepal<br />
Pat Walsh<br />
Jessica Messer<br />
Michael Posner<br />
Mom (Liz'z mother)<br />
<br />
General award info (in case I forget to mention it later);<br />
The + is in case anybody jumped in and was not in the program<br />
6th American Rumba - Beginner - 25+ couples<br />
6th American Rumba - Intermediate - 15+ couples<br />
7th American Cha - Intermediate - 11+ couples<br />
2nd West Coast Swing - 4+ couples<br />
4th Hustle - 10+ couples<br />
8th Intl Tango - Intermediate - 8+ couples<br />
4th American Foxtrot- Beginner - 20+ couples<br />
6th American Foxtrot -Intermediate - 10+ couples<br />
2nd Intl Rumba - Beginner - 14+ couples<br />
4th Intl Cha - Beginner - 15+ couples<br />
3rd Intl Samba - Beginner - 13+ couples<br />
6th Intl Rumba - Rookie/Vet w/ Stephanie - packed floor<br />
<br />
CMU placed 2nd in American Team Comp<br />
CMU placed 2nd in Intl Team Comp (3rd cha for us)<br />
<br />
General Background info on the comp:<br />
34 people went<br />
Lots of newcomers<br />
In Washington, D.C.<br />
<br />
OKay... now that that is out of the way- lets get started... I'll just begin with the car ride. We planned on leaving around 2:30 and ended up leaving around 3. The people in the car were me,Liz, Tom, and Stephanie. See Liz and I had a conversation about a week before about who should ride in our car. Because we had already decided that Pam and Pat, and Liz and I would stay at her mom's place in Virginia. Since both Pam and Liz drove, we wanted to make sure that the people who were staying with us could be as crazy and zany as the 4 of us... so we were trying to choose our car well. We knew that Jessica (this is the jessica that was in Houston) and her partner, Mike, would go with Pat and Pam because there is an extremly strong friendship there already. Liz and I decided that we definately wanted newcomers with us just to meet and bond with more people and to hook them a little bit more. We decided on Tom and Stephanie b/c we thought that they would fit in with the rest of us the best. We were not disappointed. They fit in perfect!<br />
Stephanie fell asleep relatively quickly, so Tom, Liz and I talked for a while. When Stephanie woke up is when the fun and the bonding started. I'm not sure how it all started, but during the remaing course of the trip, she would pat my head or we'd make faces at each other. At one point we all ganged up on her for a tickle. And we teased Liz a little.. The start of a GREAT weekend. We went to Liz's house to drop our stuff off and relax for a littlre bit.<br />
We met Liz's mom who we just called Mom for the entire time and talked for a bit. Then we went to the general dancing/ mingling thing that was going on. They also put on a couple of demo's.... WOW! One of the jives had just an amazing set of aerials. Just amazing. Aerial after aerial....I'm sure that the girl had no clue where she was. The dancing was fun... nothing memorable, but just fun. I met a dancer from CUA who is also from Houston and we talked a little bit. It was here at the general dancing that we met up with the other 25 people. We got everything settled and arranged for the next day and then we (Liz's car + Pam's car) returned to Liz's. We talked for a little while and eventually ended up going to sleep at around 2:30 or so. In terms of sleeping arrangements, Pam and Pat slept together in a bed, Jessica slept in a bed b/c of her bad back. Liz and Stephanie slept on the floor upstairs, and Tom, Mike, and I slept on the floor downstairs. We thought that we didn't want to shock the newcomers so soon by having everyone sleep together. See if Liz and I slept together and Pat and Pam slept together... that kinda ment that everyone slept together. I gave Pam my watch to wake up to (kinda been tradition since Illinois) and we were to wake up at 5:30 - in order to have time to get ready and get there by 8:00<br />
So while the girls were putting their faces on, the guys were complaining about the lack of sleep. We had the usual competition breakfast of one or two bagels and maybe a muffin.... and we left for the comp. Mom accompanied us to cheer, take pictures, and supply food. Yeah! Go Mom! :)<br />
The comp was set up as follows : American Rythym, Intl Standard, lunch, American Standard, Intl Latin, dinner, Team comps, social. In each section there was newcomer, beginner,rookie/vet, intermediate, and adult. We had signed up to dance as much as possible because it gets really boring otherwise. This plan kinda backfired. See, as you know, we only learn international style. We know maybe the basic and one move in the american style dances.... we signed up for them just to dance. You dance once - get eliminated, be happy. Well we didn't get eliminated. In almost every dance American or International we made it to semifinals or finals. So we ended up dancing Beginner, Rookie/Vet, and intermediate with all the callbacks. So I think that I figured out that I competitively danced for about 9.5 - 10 hours total for the day. It was awesome.<br />
It was so funny, my only lesson in American rumba was a 10 minutes lesson with Mike (who has taken lots of American, but no intl) on Wed. He showed me the basic, the hand to hand, and the underarm turn. This was the first dance - that is all that we did.. the basic, hand-to-hand, and the underarm turn. We made all callbacks and got 6th in BOTH beginner and intermediate. INTERMEDIATE - where people having been dancing this thing for YEARS! I was floored - I didn't understand why until the next day at the workshops. We learned at the workshops a lot about what the judges look for. And that's where we cleaned up for the whole time.... we had the style. We had the attitude, the look, the overall prescence of good dancers. I concentrated lots on my hips and my arms on the cross overs.... Also in terms of the whole day I NEVER looked at the floor, be it in promenade or fan or any of the other times I normally do. I was always looking at Liz or the audience.<br />
Since we were out on the floor so much, and since we aways had a smile (I did a very good job in this deparment) we made a lot of fans. Aside from the very loud CMU cheering section, we had fans at every corner of the room. As we would circle the room in the Smooths, everyone was cheering for us as we went by. Sounds of "GO 27" filled the room.... this is not an exaggeration. Since I have a hard time in smiling in the smooths, I focused on audience members as I was dancing... this made it much easier to smile. I would always try to pinpoint who was cheering for me, but I had a really hard time finding them in the crowd. But it was so AWESOME!!!! IT gives you so much energy and makes your dancing so much better when you have fans.<br />
We started off a little poorly in Intl Smooth, but I fixed that after about 5 dances... I was having a problem keeping my frame.... I was trying to avoid traffic more with my left hand than with my right. Oh and traffic was definately a BIG problem. The floor was rather small - about 2-3 waltz turns long and 1 waltz turn wide. That with 20+ people.... quite a challenge.<br />
I think what also helped get us some fans was the West Coast. There were only 4 or 5 couples out there. And according to my teammates, we should have taken first. I also believe that we were the best looking couple out there. I'll come back to this when I talk about Sun... b/c I found out why we didn't get first.<br />
But here is the most interesting part..... I don't know if you've gathered this or not, but the Latin's are my favorite dances. Intl Latin was the last event of the day... We danced Beginner and Rookie/vet... but we could not bring ourselves to dance intermediate. We were just so exhausted that we couldn't do it.... and we were extremely content with that decision. I'll pause here and let the impact of that settle.....We were not ABLE to dance our favorite dances, and we were HAPPY that we didn't.<br />
Then we broke for dinner. We had about an hour for dinner before the team matches... this was a nightmare. We were making a trip to Wendy's and somehow ended up taking about 15 orders for food... let me reprase this - I ended up taking about 15 orders for food. Pam, Pat, Jessica, and I went to Wendy's to get food for everyone. What a nightmare. We spent about an 45 minutes there trying to get this ordered. Please note, that it took us about 1/2 hour to get all the orders and money from everyone, ten minutes to get to Wendy's.... so we were about an hour late returning.... All that we missed was the awards, which we had Liz pick up for us. (We got more energy back after eating, so that we could continue to dance) But we got back from Wendy's right as the team matches were starting. The team matches are a set of four couples who dance one dance and the total score for those 4 couples determine if your team placement. We had enough people for 4 teams. That was awesome. We mixed the teams fairly well with one person per team who could take up any slack if the others didn't know the dances. But we did have one super team composed of Me & Liz, Pat & PAm, Danny & (someone, I don't remember right now), and Andrew & Fei (Our best couple all around). Liz and I danced Am Rumba, and Intl Cha. The best thing was Pat and Pam's Jive and swing... they got so into it. They had SO much fun while they were dancing. Can we say glowing? They were just fun to watch. So we ended up getting 2nd in Americna and Intl. The funny thing is that NOONE knows American very well. And to do this against 10 other colleges (I'm not sure how many teams/ college).<br />
One a side note, and as a completely random thought. The towel was the best gift EVER. I used it continously. It helped SOOOOOOOOOOOO much. It saved me from being completely and totally soaked and disgustingly wet. I was damp but not drenched... the towel on the otherhand was soaked clear through. It is late Monday and it is still a little wet. It was GREAT! thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.<br />
Then there was a general dancing. That was so much fun. I danced with everyone from CMU who I hadn't danced with yet.... then I went to dance with people from other schools. This was the best. I went to the corners where I had heard people cheering for me. I stood there and said really loudly "Who here cheered for me?" Then when somebody acknowledge this I asked them to dance. What a GREAT line. I loved it. Also one of the newcomers on our team... named Jee Sun.... is such a great follower. We polkaed and swung together.... she is such a delight to dance with. She didn't have a clue what I was doing, but she followed it beautifully. Oh there was also a contest for who could do the best straight-legged cha. You couldn't bend your knees at all... then they made it so that you couldn't smile, and then they had the girl lead the guy. It was very amuzing<br />
Anyways... after the social dancing, and after we got kicked out of the ballroom for being too loud - we hung out in the parking lot for a little bit. We somehow ended up doing a 4 person Cha cha.... The way we did this was have someone on your shoulders and someone on your partners shoulders.... that was highly amuzing. Then when we finally departed - we went to go get some ice cream. And then we CRASHED really hard. I was a little disappointed, b/c I thought that Pat & Pam and Liz & I would switch and I'd get to sleep with Liz, but she was sore and her back hurt, so she ended up sleeping on the floor. Oh well.<br />
Then on Sun... there were 4 workshops taught by Dan Calloway. Dan Calloway! This is when he went over dress, posture, and other things that the judges look for (all those reasons why we won American). Well at the insistance of some of my friends who thought I should have come in first in West coast, I asked him what he thought of it (he was a judge). He said it was a very good WCS, and I had a good style and a good lead, but that my posture for it was bad. Crushing blow, kinda. It was a great compliment - but guess what is going to be absolutley totally fixed in me now :).<br />
Anyways... he also covered latin motion and stong movements in smooth. I learned TONS!... I also bought a couple of dance books from him that describe all the steps (kinda like the manual for dancing).<br />
We drove home talking about the comp and remembering... but we were all REALLY tired. When we got back, I was ready to fall asleep by 7:30.... No I was falling asleep by 7:30. I unfortunately didn't completely reach my goal of being completly finished before I left. I had 5 questiosn to answer that on a normal night would take me 45 minutes, but b/c I was so tired, took me 5 hours. I even took a nap from 11pm to 1 am b/c I couldn't stay awake. The funniest thing though... sometime when I was either just about to fall asleep or just about to wake up... sometime when I was "awake" but dreaming... kinda like I was dreaming but I was able to direct where the dream was heading... I dreamed that I was sleeping in American style, when I normally sleep international style, but I had confidence that I was sleeping in American style properly. (I'm not joking about this one) :)<br />
Anyways... this weekend annihilated all the homework,tests, meetings, and all that other shit for the last month. It was absolutely worth it. And b/c of this weekend I told liz "Let's go to England"... so I am going to England. B/c I'm anticipating that england will be at least 4 or 5 times better then this weekend (is that even possible?!). If that is the case then 4 or 5 times more shit can be annihilated. The best thing would be for the shit to remain constant and for England to be 4 or 5 times better... Then we are left floating. Yeah!<br />
One final thing... please refer back to the list of goals that I had set at the the beginning of last week. Look at what it says for this weekend. Look at what I accomplished... Decompression, fun at social dances, top three places with 2 dances with Liz - one being rumba, 2nd in WCS, not getting frustrated, retain everything from the workshop... the only thing I didn't get was top three places in rookie/vet and the not having ANY homework Sunday night.<br />
<br />
Hope that is descriptive enough.<br />
} { <br />
`-\-`'-/-'<br />
/> <\ <br />
~~ ~~ <br />
SWING-ON<br />
<div>
<br /></div>dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-82898071237135510612012-06-22T09:00:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:26:10.866-07:00Ohio State University - Feb 1995<br />
This weekend at OSU was SO much fun... Totally one of the best dance weekends... I know that I say this about almost all of them... but this one really was AWESOME!<br />
<br />
<br />
First the basics:<br />
Key People<br />
Liz - my partner,<br />
Pam & Pat - good friends<br />
Tom & Jee Sun- other members of our car<br />
Natalie (CUA team member) - good friend<br />
<br />
Awards:<br />
3rd American Swing syllabus with Natalie<br />
3rd Hustle with Liz<br />
CMU GOT 1st INTERNATIONAL TEAM } WE ROCKED!!!!!!!!<br />
CMU GOT 2nd AMERICAN TEAM }<br />
<br />
The Story:<br />
We left on Friday about 6... I think we had about 6 cars going - we had 19 people go altogether... Nothing too terribly exicting on the way down... Jee Sun fell asleep and we teased Tom that he has this effect on all his dance partners b/c the same thing happened on the way to CUA. In Ohio we were supposed to meet everyone at one of the OSU team member's houses - which on the directions was dubbed the hospitality house. The directions were not all that clear... Things like turn onto waldeck, take an immediate right down an unmarked alley. When this alley dead ends the hospitality house is right in front of you. We totally couldn't find this dead ended alley - and so we asked some random person if he knew wehre the hospitality house was. The guy had no clue and rightfully so - b/c it wasn't officially called that - they were just using that name for our comp. So that was amuzing. Then once we got there we had a great time telling stories and lots of laughing and a great way to start a comp weekend.<br />
Then our host came to pick us up... Our hostess was the nicest lady... she had mattresses for everyone and already had the table set for breakfast the next morning. She was just incredibly nice. Liz and I slept on this air mattress type of thing... That was interesting. It was kinda like sleeping in the hammock.... we both kinda ended up in the center of the mattress.... And trying to roll over was nearly impossible. I slept fine, but Liz had a very difficult time going to bed.<br />
The morning of the comp we did the normal things.. had a decent breakfast (okay so that was abnormal).... But this time Liz put some makeup on me. Mascara and whatever is user to draw in eyebrows.... And for shits and giggles (Liz term) she added a Charlie Brown curl which everybody got a kick out of (we didn't leave it though :).<br />
The ballroom was enormous. There was a full length ballroom, tables all around it, and a full length ballroom side practice area in the same room. It was AWESOME! We did a quick and dirty tailoring job on the tails to make them look good. This included useing a black rubber band hooked around the lower buttons, and a couple of well positioned saftey pins. I danced Rookie/Vet w/ Angie and we got called back several times. Which was really cool. The Liz and I had some great dances... I reached my goal, BTW... The goal of dancing EVERY dance well... I would rate almost all of the dances at an 8.... Whereas normally Cha and Rumba are 10, Samba/jive 7, smooth 4 - this time almost everything was an 8... Which means that the Cha and Rumba were not as strong as they have been in the past - but that is okay. We did fairly well on the smooths and some of the moves have never felt better. We even got called back in waltz/foxtrot!?.<br />
Latins were just painful. We got called back in both rumba/cha and samba/jive (two dance heats) with almost no break in between. We literally could not breath at the end on the second jive. We are actually kinda glad that we didn't make finals because I don't think that we could have end danced it. Oh, I danced American Swing w/ Natalie b/c Liz was dancing it with an old friend... We somehow managed to get third - which is really strange b/c I don't consider swing to be one of my stronger dances. For Latins, I wore Pat's latin shirt instead of mine b/c mine is so big now.... And to make it look better and make sure it sayed in place we pinned the shirt to both my underwear and pants. Now I say we b/c Liz did all the pinning.... That was interesting. We were standing right off the side of the dance floor with my pants undone and Liz's hands way inside of them trying to pin the shirt at the right length so that I could still raise my arms. That was quite amuzing.<br />
After that we were supposed to have a fun dance competition, which included hustle,merengue,and WCS. But since we were running late we went right into team match. The fun dances were done immediately the team match - which kinda upset Liz b/c she has a special west coast costume that she wanted to wear. Instead she ended up wearing what she wore for team dances - which is a very latin lavendar leotard which just screams "look at my crotch". Not something to do a WCS in :) ... but we did anyways... Anyways for team match - we danced Am Rumba and Intl Cha. In the rumba - we did a couple of saultry dips that we had come up with about 20 minutes earlier (team matches are open). And in the Cha we started amost immediately with our new "supergold move" - I think I told you about this one. Anyways - we kicked some serious butt! It was GREAT!. Beating CUA, and coming in first - what a rush. And now we have definately established a friendly rivalry between CMU and CUA. It seems that since I was good friends with Natalie, and Pat was mild friends with her - that it opened a whole doorway between our schools. I made two more friends over there, Liz and Natalie's partner totally bonded, and It seemed like both teams were just long time friends.<br />
Anyways, after the team match we had the fun dances... so Liz had to Hustle,Merengue, and WCS in "The Purple Crotch Thing". We were going totally crazy during these dances. I mean we had just taken FIRST and we were wired. B/c of that we both were doing some cool, sexy, improvisional stuff, in these dances. We got third in Hustle - which is really kinda bizzare b/c I don't particularly care for the dance....We made it to the finals in merengue - that was fun... we did a lot of sexy stuff there in Merenegue. Then in WCS we got 2nd place (unofficially)... Our score was the second highest, but there was a three way tie for first that had to be broken - so we didn't place at all.... That was a TOTAL shock... My mouth literally fell open when we didn't place.<br />
Then we had a little bit of general dancing.... Which was fun but it was little difficult b/c we were already very tired. And of course we hung around until the bitter end. We exchanged local phone numbers with Maryland and CUA b/c some of us wanted to go out that night. We got back to our crash space - I depinned myself from my latin outfit and got ready to go out. Now at this point in time - my body, esp my legs were very much in the mood to sit at a nice relaxed bar and talk to people for a while. The club that we ended up going to was a dance club - so we ended up dancing more. Liz and I were the only ones who went - but we met up with Natalie, her partner, one of her teammates, and a guy from OSU. We had a really good time. If I would have been able to move and dance well it would have been even better. But I got closer to Natalie and Lisa, Liz and Natalie's partner totally bonded. And we ended up having a really good time. We got back to the crash space around 3:30-4:00. Kay Teague and Bob, the people who M/C and scrutineered the comp were also staying in the same crash space. They were up when we got in - so we ended up talking to them for about 1.5 hours.<br />
Then trying to go to bed was a nightmare.... at least for me. By this time - my back through my toes were throbing and in pain.... I could not for the life of me lie on the floor. I was so restless. I could only stay in one position for about 2 minutes before It hurt too much. So I ended sleeping sitting up until I became sufficiently asleep to be able to return to the floor. Overall I got about 45 minutes sleep total. On the drive back we talked alot about the events of the comp and other fun things.<br />
It was definately a very fun, very successful weekend.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-63146477795066464402012-06-22T08:30:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:25:58.225-07:00Cleveland Competition Mar 1995<br />
Hello!!!!! This weekend was AWESOME!!!!!!!<br />
<br />
OKay first some background.... Over Thanksgiving, Pat and Jessica were looking for places to dance in Cleveland. They ran across the Springville Ballroom... They danced there two days and were really well received by everyone there. They became really good friends with the owners and the owners totally fell in love with them. They invited the entire team (actually it was the whole club, but we only extended the invitation to the team) to come use their ballroom. So that brings us up to now....<br />
<br />
We were planning on going there this past weekend. Now what we knew going there was that They were going to give us dinner on Fri and Sat, they were going to let us (and us alone) use their ballroom for 4 hours in the afternoon. They were going to give us 2 hrs of free lessons, and they invited us to their evening social dances. All of this was in exchange for 2 20 minute demonstrations from the formation team...<br />
<br />
(BTW I got roped into the demo team b/c I was in it over the summer and knew some of the routines) So the demos that we did were<br />
Jive - 5 couples including me<br />
Tango - solo<br />
Cha - 6 couples including me<br />
Quickstep - Pat & Pam Solo<br />
Waltz - Andrew & Fei Solo<br />
Tx Two Step - 6 couples including me<br />
Rumba - Pat & Pam<br />
Foxtrot - Andrew & Fei<br />
V Waltz - 5 couples (not me)<br />
Paso - Solo<br />
West Coast - Liz and my solo<br />
Samba - 5 couples (not me)<br />
Polka - everybody<br />
<br />
Some quick background comments -then we'll start on the story... The owners were AWESOME!!!! They were very giving (this will be explained later).... The audience and crowd on Fri was mostly elderly singles/widows(ers) in the 60+ range.... The audience on Fri was mostly couples starting in the 40+ range - and they also invited some High School students who have been taking lessons there. Needless to say - they played a lot (biggest understatement I've ever made) of Foxtrots. The ballroom is one of the original ballrooms from the big band era - and is one of the few left. It just celebrated it's 70th anniversity. It still has its orginial floor.<br />
<br />
Okay, so we left on friday around 3 (2hr drive)... This was annoying. It was a two day trip and I had three pieces of luggage. I had a suitcase that really didn't hold much more then my sleeping bag (we were crashing on Jessica's floor - she lives there) and a couple of changes of underware and a t-shirt. I had my hanging bag which had my costumes, and I had my dance bag with my shoes, some of our CD's for our practice times... I had like 7 outfits, 3 pair of shoes, and 5 BELTS!!!!! I was going to be gone for 2 days.... Very annoying.<br />
So we got there just as they were serving dinner.... It was very good. It was very similar to the Grannymama effect - I said I'd like a little bit of whatever... They said okay and only gave me 4 whopping servings of the food. It is okay though - it was very good. We then changed for the party (it was a semi-formal kinda place).. then at the party it was the most boring dancing I've ever done... about 12 foxtrots,1 swing, 8 more foxtrots, 1 cha,1 rumba, 1 samba (this was their latin set) and then 12-15 more foxtrots. Then at intermission we gave our demos.<br />
Just so you know - everybody was changing in the coat room.... this was because usaully we had about 30 seconds to change between songs and this was the only closed place that was immediately off the floor. The lady in the coat room was having the time of her life. All the guys and girls were changing - she said that she hadn't had that much fun in two years. It was difficult chaning because it was very crowded in there. Oh final note - the floor was VERY SLICK which cuased several problems while performing/dancing.<br />
The Jive didn't go too bad - my partner (not Liz) was incredibly nervous and had basically locked every muscle in her body. We did fine - and I don't really think anybody could tell - but she was rigid.<br />
Did a quick change for the Cha... It went okay. Then I changed for the Twostep.... I screwed up the twostep royally... See I hadn't ever finished learning the whole thing and it definately showed.<br />
Then during the west coast... I got really nervous - I mean not only was this a solo - This was OUR dance. Liz and I have a fairly sexy entrance - (hell the whole dance is incredibly sexy....Lets just say we were a little worried about giving some of the people there heart attacks)... And we start at separate sides and kinda walk towards each other.... While we were waiting to start.... I told her that I was really nervous... When she looked at me before we started - I showed her that my heart was really beating..... She sent PAt over to comfort me.... it was amuzing..... Anyways - for our entrance.... I didn't realize the the room was quite as large as it was.... So when I was walking towards her - I realized that I wasn't going to get to her at the proper time and I could speed up and run towards b/c that would totally break the sexy image. So we started off wrong....Liz was sliding and neither of us were doing any of the styling that we do to make our dance look really good... Then the last set (out of three) of the song - total brain fart - completely forgot the rest of the routine. So I made up stuff and fortunately hit the dip at the end...<br />
Just overall - all of the demos were not wonderful... I don't think anybody was very happy with them or with the day in general... I know that I was VERY excited going there - and dancing nothing but slow foxtrots (except for our demos) did not help dispell this energy.<br />
So that night we all went out to a club... That was a lot of fun... Even though it was a bounce around kind a place - It was really fun to be there with all my friends. We went back to Jessica's - ate some of her food and crashed really hard.<br />
Sun - Sun was Incredible....We went to the lessons... We learned some gold American Foxtrot - so we could actually do something fun when they play 40 billion foxtrots that night. The we learned some really cool American Rumba - This was specifically for Liz and I b/c we compete in A Rumba. Then we went to the mall to grab a quick bite and spent the next 2 hours just dancing in an empty ballroom... We also practiced our routines and fixed all the mistakes and stuff. The owners had some left over towels and mugs with their logo on it - so they gave everyone one of these<br />
Then they fed us dinner again.... This time they had made a cake that said "Welcome CMUBDC" (Carnegie Mellon University Ballroom Dance Club).... This is the Amazing part.... During dinner, they called me, Pat, and Cindy, the demo team coordinator to the front - Mr. Chef, one of the owners - made a small speech -the jist of which was that he was going to give us money.... I was just in awe - I felt so loved... And while he was talking I was thinking like maybe $500 or so.... In his speech he said that this were for the people going to England.... The check was for $3000.... Then, to top that off - he gave ANOTHER $3000 to the club to be used anyway that we see fit. God - talk about WARM FUZZIES - Almost all of us were in tears.... Big hug time I was hugging everyone - the owners the team - everyone.... And what I found out was that part of that money was to go to Andrew and Fei to go to England - b/c they were not able to go b/c they didn't have enough money.... That means that we now have a FULL TEAM going to England. These people are just so amazing....<br />
That night during the dancing - they had invited high school students to come - hoping that we would be inspiration for them -etc.... So that was fun to dance with all of them.....<br />
Our demos that night were awesome!!!! I mean everyone was on such a high..... And this time our demos were worth $6000.... And they were. Everyone did great!!!! Liz and I got all the styling in and we were definately incredible sexy this time. It was just awesome.... Before our last demo - we made a public thank you to them and gave the owners flowers and a card that we all signed... Then do you know what - They gave us a plaque... These people just didn't stop..<br />
IT was so incredible.... We danced for the rest of the night.... Then we all returned to Jessica's and talked and laughed till the wee hours of the morning....<br />
<br />
What an incredible weekend.... Wow .... That is all that I can say..... Wow!!!!<br />
<div>
<br /></div>dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-82852882521671054092012-06-22T08:00:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:25:30.479-07:00Carnegie Mellon Comp - Mar 1995<br />
Why hello.... I know that it has been forever since I talked to you.... But God have I been busy. I tell you as much as I remember.<br />
<br />
I think that I'll start with Wed. Don't remember classes.... In Ballroom that night all that we did was organize things for the comp.<br />
<br />
On thurs.... remember that test that I told you I made a very large collection of stupid mistakes.... Well, I barely passed that test - I got a 62.<br />
<br />
I spent all of Thur night finishing my problem set and stayed up till about 5 working on the program.<br />
<br />
Friday was just bad<br />
When the chicken went off at 7 that morning... Matt happen to already by up at the computer- I think I mumbled in my semi-sleep state to turn it off, which he did. I got a phone call at about 9:55 - 1.5 hours into my first class... So I bolted from bed to class. This prod however is one of those that if the hmwk is not in in the first 5 minutes - then he doesn't accept it... I went to work for a little bit and then spent the rest of the time working on the program. The program took me all night to finish.... So I didn't sleep at all before Sat. That was bad for the comp - very bad.<br />
<br />
I went over to Liz's at about 6:15 (almost immediately after we finished the printing at Kinko's)... I helped her pack, and then she put makeup on me. Things like shadow, mascara, and she added some eyebrows.<br />
<br />
We got to the place that we were dancing at at around 7:05 to set up and such. We started dancing at 9...<br />
<br />
I danced rookie/vet with Jee Sun and Stephanie. We had lots of fun and I danced very well - didn't place though.<br />
<br />
The smooths were weird... I danced them well, but it was strange... Every dance Liz said my arm was too low on her back... but it felt like my arm was above my sholder. I think that this might be a result of the the tails. And then for some reason, either fighting with the tails, the lack of sleep, the lack of practice - whatever - my right arm was totally tense.... It is even sore today. We got called back for almost everything - even made it to finals in Int Foxtrot and Tango - I have no clue where this one came from.<br />
<br />
After that things just were weire... During latin - we danced awesome... Everything felt really good. We didn't even get called back!? I don't understand.<br />
<br />
Then during the fun dances (salsa, WCS, and hustle)... we made it to finals in all three. Didn't place in any of them. Got dead last in WCS...This was such a shock b/c everybody said that ours was the best.... When I talked to one of the judges today in the workshops about it... he said that we were off time in the finals and that is why we lost it.<br />
<br />
By this time... I was definately in teh comotose state. If you looked into my eyes, you could see that there was nobody home. This was really bad b/c team matches were next. And there was nothing that I could do get myself there.... I was out of adrenaline and energy... I managed to pull off some magic trick during team matches b/c we kicked some serious ASS!!!! CMU came in FIRST in BOTH AMERICAN and INTERNATIONAL styles. Go CMU!!!!<br />
<br />
Then we had a couple of demos and onto general dancing... by about 10:15... I was useless... It was at the point where if I stoped moving - I'd fall alseep. So I told Liz and Pat that I was going to take a nap and to wake me in 30 minutes.... So I fell alseep on the floor in the hallway. It was funny though. I woke up to find several notes from the team members on my stomach....<br />
<br />
After I painfully helped clean up. We went over to Pam's to just hang out... I fell asleep there almost immediately... We didn't stay there long b/c everybody was exhausted... when we left.... I was so tired that my eyes were tearing just b/c they were open. It wasn't like they were moist - I was full out crying. I thought that that was pretty scary.<br />
<br />
Today we had 5 workshops that we attended. They started at 9:30 - so I only got 5 hrs... makingin me really tired today. Tehy were awesome workshops though. I learned some new tango and an awesome Cha sequence... Learned what Judges look for, some Intl Fox technique and samba technique..<br />
<br />
I spent the rest of the day w/ Liz - helping her pack for her conference in Las Vegas. I went to the airport with her and then drove her car back. She lent it to me for the week.<br />
<br />
Anyways.... I think that I'm going to go to bed<br />
<div>
<br /></div>dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-61692338164611452772012-06-22T07:30:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:25:20.797-07:00Indianapolis Comp - Mar 1995<br />
Okay this thing starts last fri.<br />
<br />
On Friday, Pat and Pam left for Springvale to visit. This was the place that donated the money for us. So she left me in charge to organize things for Sat. I mean who is driving with whom, getting the correct number of cars, and getting everything there and back. This was quite interesting. See originally, Mike P,Tom, myself, and Pam were supposed to drive. Pam and Pat were going to Cleveland in their car. My car was only supposed to have 1 other person b/c we Liz was flying into Indianapolis from her job conference in Vegas. I was to take one person to keep me awake, then Liz and I and her luggage would travel back. Tom and Mike were supposed to take the other 8. By the time that Pam was leaving - Tom was nowhere to be found and Mike was being indecisive about if he wanted to go or not. So we talked Danny into driving, and I gave everything that I had to take to Pam. It was going to work in just these two cars. Then later that night, Tom returned and said that he was able to drive, which made Danny happy b/c he didn't think that his car could make it. Then out of the middle of nowhere an adult couple from the club said that they were interested in going... so they drove to - so space really wasn't a prob. It was jsut very hectic.<br />
The drive down was not bad, except for about 1.5 hr traffic delay b/c of construction. I was talking to Pete the whole time. He is so much fun to talk to. So we had a good time driving down. We got there about .5 hour after the social dancing on Sat had started. The social dancing was fun. Saw a lot of old friends and met alot more people going to England. CUA people were there - This means Natalie and Tomas and others. So that was fun, we danced alot. I'm not sure if I told you or not, but there is alot of potential between Natalie and I. So it was after the social that the real fun started.<br />
We all were staying at Bob Blankmanship's house. He was one of the coordinators of the comp and the boyfriend to Kay Teague, who is a principle organizer for England. We are good friends with him. So at his house were, Me,Liz,Pat,Pam,Pete and Michelle from CMU and Natalie,Tomas,Tony,and Kara from CUA. Also as background info - there is a lot of interested between Liz and Tomas. Tomas is Natalie's partner. One of the best things about Bob's house is that he has an 8 person hot tub.This was a ton of fun. We ended up playing a drinking game called "I never" (I had a coke). The basis of this game is that you say "I never ...." and whoever has done whatever - they have to drink. Sortof a more sophisticated game of true or dare. And let's just say that there were no holds barred. The questions ranged from "I never did illicit drugs" to "I never had sex in public" to "I've never been interested in people in this hot tub" (BTW you could say false negatives, as long as you drank afterwards). Needless to say, I found out a lot about this group. It definately made for solid friendships. Oh, also the entire time in the tub - Natalie sat in my lap and Tomas sat in Liz's - this was cool. So after the hot tub, I got a short kiss from Natalie. It was an awesome kiss, just really short. Liz got a much longer kiss from Tomas though.<br />
Bakground flashback: The previous week, the week that Liz was gone - I had come to the realization that I loved Liz. And I planned on telling her on the 7 hr car ride on the way back while we were alone. But after some of the things that were said in the hot tub and after the kiss. I was incredibly confused. Confused about what I wanted to do with Natalie, Liz, and how both of them felt towards me, and just a ton of other things. Since I had spent at least 2 hours in the hot tub, and since I needed to think.... I went outside on the porch (it was about 45 degrees out - so it felt good). Liz came out a little later to tell me what happened between her and Tomas. OH, just so you know - that was not why I was confused. Our whole relationship is set up around flirting with other people. I don't have a problem with her and someone else - and she feels the same towards me. But, she did see that I was upset and asked what was wrong.<br />
I told her that I it was really long, and would work perfectlly for a 7 hour car ride. And at this point, I was so consumed by so many different emotions - that I started to cry. So at this, she asked again. I told her that it was a totally mental vomit and that it probably was not a good time to start. She asked for just a hint of what was going on. And at this point, I could really not hold it in much longer - I'd been thinking about it all week. So I told her that I loved her. She paused for a second - then gave me a big hug. We spent most of the rest of the night sitting outside talking about this (me crying - I just couldn't help it). We talked about things like how I realized this, some of the explainations for my actions over the past month, even the approach I was going to use to tell her in the car. It was a very open and honest talk...(Now b/c this is as much for my record as to inform you - I'm not going to hold back). I'm not sure if I told you what happened between us back in Sept, but it was along similar lines - but the roles reveresed. There was two parts to what we talked about - they are related but can be separated. So we talked about the fact that I loved her and was REALLY going to miss her when she left. I also told her that I wanted her to be my first. Just so you know - Liz is VERY experienced (lots just say that she drank a lot in the tub). So we talked about that for a while too. We were outside for about 2-3 hours. Needless to say - we got very cold... but we were not in a state to deal with people and there were still people up inside. When we did finally go inside about 4:30am, I went to to hot tub to try to regain feeling in my toes. Kay was still up and saw me (I had been crying almost the whole time). (Don't worry I'll mention this later). So then Liz slept in my arms, but I couldn't sleep - not that we were getting much anyways. We had to wake up by 6 to get ready for the comp.<br />
So on sunday, My body wasn't too happy. My contacts were killing me from the tears and the lack of sleep. We ended up oversleeping and woke up 30 minutes before the comp started. The comp itself was the most disorganized, confusing thing I've ever been to. The went in a totally random order for the heats, we had to enter by one side of the floor where you couldn't even hear if your number was called or not. There were just a ton of things to make the comp disorganized. Liz and I danced incredibly well though. We got 3rd in Waltz/Quickstep, 3rd in Foxtrot/Tango, 4th in Samba/Jive and 5th in Cha/Rumba. CMU placed 3rd in team matches though. So overall we danced very well.<br />
Then on the way back, things didn't quite work out as planned and we had two other people in our car. That was okay, b/c I had already had the talk with Liz. It was funny, on the way back all 4 cars got pulled over for speeding and we weren't even caravaning. I was driving too... I didn't get a ticket - b/c it was a nice cop. It was funny though - he gave me a breathalizer. I found that amuzing..I talked with Pete alot on the way back while Liz slept.<br />
<br />
Anyways... That was most of it.<br />
I'll fill in the rest of the week later<br />
<div>
<br /></div>dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-76583868724320414692012-06-22T07:00:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:25:12.691-07:00England Danceport: Mar 1995<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I skipped most of my classes on Wed. I did go to aerobics however, b/c I figured that some movement before I whole day of sitting would be helpful. I finished 90% of my packing before the evening. Then Liz, Pam, and I went lsat minute shopping.... bought things liks sequens and glitter for our Disco costumes. That night, was a tough night.... This was the first time that I had ever seen Liz cry. She had her heart broken by someone that she had fallen in love with. I went over to her place to console her and to help her pack. I ended up working on glueing glitter and rhinestones to the 70Õs dresses that we bought. It was a lot of fun, total regression. This of course took the whole night. We left early Thurs. We flew into JFK airport for a 3 hr layover. The girls worked on sewing their dresses, while we just kinda hung out. On the flight to England, I slept most of the way. And for some reason, Liz was being incredibly cold to me. She didnÕt even want to be around me.<br />
<br />
Fri, The first day in England.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So we arrive at the Heathrow airport and spend tons of time in customs. We then wait in the airport collecting people for a couple of hours. I went to go meet the group of people from NYU while we were waiting. This was part b/c I wanted to and part b/c it was really difficult being around Liz when she was being so cold to me. It is always fun meeting people, especially ballroom type people. So we all load onto the bus, for the 3 hr drive to Osmington Bay. I, of course, slept most of the way. We stopped at a tiny shopping center for a bathroom break and a quick bite for lunch. The place that we ate at was called WimpyÕs (and it lived up to its name).<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The place that we were staying was literally on a cliff overlooking the ocean. A beautiful place - Just incredible. We got dropped off at the reception desk and unloaded our luggage and picked up our info packets. We took our a quick look a the map and grabbed our luggage and started heading towards our room.... This was incredibly stupid. I mean my two bags checked in at 50 and 30 lbs respectively. Not something that you want to carry when you donÕt know where you are going. So we dropped our bags and sent Pat off to find where the rooms were. Pat was asleep all the way into the camp and didnÕt realize that the place overlooked the water. He was looking at the numbers to the rooms at the top of the hill and turned around to continue his search. Pat was totally out of sight, but we hear this ÒHOLY SHITÓ coming from him. (Actually, I think the whole cmap could have heard him). Pat had just turned around and saw the amazing view that was there. The reason that IÕm mentioning it, is b/c it became one of those repeated phrases for the trip. We dropped off the luggage in the room and then sat and relaxed on the Òholy shitÓ hill for about 1.5 hours.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The rooms (ours at least) were a nice size. Liz and I stayed together. There was nothing exceedingly special about the rooms.... except for the fact the ceiling and floor were not parallel. We went to dinner that night, and ran into our first of a long line of british meals. Very bland. Fish and vegetables. Very little carbohydrates. And they are very unused to people drinking water.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>According to the schedule, there apparently was a social dance that night. I really donÕt have any memory of that. After the social (according to the schedule) we went to the disco/pub.<br />
<br />
Saturday<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>B/c I set the alarm wrong, we woke up late. Breakfast is served between 8:45 and 9:15. We woke up at 9:00 as Pat & Pam knocked on our door. The breakfast was a little weird. The scrambled eggs tasted funny, and the sasuage was sheep. Very interesting texture. Our first class was a Jive techinque class. The instructor was incredibly funny. And he was a very good teacher. It turns out that my Jive is totally wrong and I have to relearn the entire dance. The next lesson, we went to an Advanced jive class. The instructor for this was very bouncy and had a very strong English accent. After this lesson, we practiced for our Disco routine. After that we took an advanced Cha lesson. Then a samba technique class. I got a lot more from the technique classes then the step classes. Most of the steps were open. We prefer syllabus stuff b/c that is the level that we compete at. Then we practiced the disco routine a little before dinner. We rushed through dinner in order to get ready for the competitions that night.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The competitions were fairly annoying. Most of the events were open. This ment that you really could not compete at your own level. Most of the british had routines and it was difficult competing against that. Plus they were set on getting through their routines and would plough into you if you were in there way. Needless to say, there was a lot of running into people during this week. If I remember correctly, this first day was a bad smooth day, but a good latin day.... Oh, just so you know - I never made it to finals in any event throughout the entire week.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Later that night, we worked on the Disco more... Then that night we tried to create the disco ball. We wanted something that could be used agian, so were were going to glue all thr mirrors to pantyhose. This didnÕt work for several reasons, but it was very amuzing experimenting with it. It was a lot of fun for Pat, Pam, and Liz.<br />
<br />
Sunday:<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We woke for breakfast on time today... We took advanced waltz and samba classes. I was lost in them. We had adternoon and evening competitions today... I really donÕt remember anything special about them. That evening we also had the cabaret team matches. We had decided to attach the sequens to my head w/ just vasaline. So I put lots of vasaline on my head and Liz applied the mirrors. Once the mirrors were on, I couldnÕt turn my head or smile b/c it would mess up the mirrors. That made things really difficult. We put a plastic bag over my head and I wore my team jacket with the hood up. See the whole point of this was to go for a massive shock value - especially to the people who knew me. The routine was performed to the disco version of BeethovenÕs 5th. We arranged to have the house lights off when we started... There were 3 couples dancing and then me being the disco ball and one person with my also shinging lights on my head. Me and mike were concealed under tablecloths as we entered the floor. It was an awesome effect. It was great to hear the audience reaction when they 1) relized who I was supposed to be and 2) realized who I was. It was especially fun that night at the bar afterwards when I got to talk to everyone about it. I got a lot of great comments about it. It was also neat, b/c my head ended up being incredibly smooth after having all of that vasline on it. That night I spent a lot of time with Natalie. We left the disco together and walked around for a while. She showed me her room (much smaller then mine) and we went back to my room for a while (her roomate was a little busy). While there, she got a full dose of how wacky we all are. B/c about 5 minutes after we got there Liz came in and then Pat and Pam came in. It was just silly. Then I walked her back to her room and we kissed for a little. That was cool.<br />
<br />
Monday:<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We slept in a little b/c there was little going on in the morning. We attended a really cool West Coast class that afternoon though. There was a west coast competition that night... We didnÕt do to well in it b/c we were competeing it and not dancing it. The fact that we didnÕt make it didnÕt bother me all that much. But the fact that it really disappointed Liz really hurt. I ended up sitting alone on the Òholy shitÓ hill for most of that evening. I eventually wandered to the disco, but I didnÕt really feel like dancing. Although this is amuzing... After the place closed, we and a few other people were left. I asked Liz if she wanted to practice American Rumba for the team matches the next day. We practiced a little, and decided that we needed another cool move in the routine. So we asked one of our friends who was still around. This guy is the coach for the Maryland team. So he gave us a neat move.... which we then proceded to practice. While we were practicing, Liz happed to hit my face. Now for the comp, she had put on really long fingernails. After hitting my the side of my head she had felt a nail come off, I put my hand over the side of my head, b/c she did have long nails on and it hurt. My ear really hurt and when I went to feel if it was okay, I discovered her nail inside my ear. When Liz saw me pull the nail out of my ear, she almost peed. We were rolling on the floor laughing for nearly an hour. It was VERY amuzing.<br />
<br />
Tuesday:<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The classes that we took Tues were American Tango, Advanced Quickstep, Cha Technique, and Advanced West Coast. Although we had woken up late again this morning and dashed to breakfast.... so after breakfast - Liz went back to the room to finish up her morning things.... She fell asleep as she was waiting for her nails to dry. So she missed the first two classes. It was funny though. She woke up with her hand stuck to her pants - while she was sleeping she moved her wet hand to her leg and it stuck there. The Cha class was great. He showed us something that Liz didnÕt know. She said that what he was saying was really difficult. I said deal - Personal Victory. There is really nothing to this story from an outsiderÕs point of view. But this made my day.... I was tickled by it the whole day. Then they had a tea dance, which we got dressed for. They played mostly smooth stuff which was really annoying. We had the American team match that night.... We did really well, but (as we found out the next day) mistakenly did not call us back for our Rumba. That was really disappointing. That night at the disco, we ended up in a massage chain. I choose a great spot in front of Liz (did you know that she is a trained massuse), but she was receiving a great massage from a very good looking incredible dancer - so my massage was rather weak. The girl I was massaging, was wearing a tight sequened dress (she hadnÕt changed since the comp) and said it would probably be easier if I unzipped the dress. So Liz, and the others behind me were giving me a hard time about that (it was fun though).... And she, being the front of the line, massaged my feet. Then Kim, a friend that I had made at Indiana, told Meredith (the girl I was massaging) that she could really screw up her massage by offer a full back rub for me. I of course immediately jumped at teh chance. I laid down on the floor and Kim gave me a GREAT backrub. Awww it felt so AWESOME!!!!!<br />
<br />
Wednesday:<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We had a private with the guy who was teaching all of the technique classes. He was so awesome. He worked on Rumba technique with us. Taught both Liz and I alot. Although, that afternoon during competition, we tried applying what we learned to the rumba. Liz eneded up hyperextending her hip and was unable to dance/walk the rest of the night. This was really dissappointing for several reasons. We were dancing (not competiting, finally, but dancing) very well and could have placed. She also missed out on a lot of the socializing/flirting after the comps that night b/c she was not up to it. So that really sucked. I spent the night flirting though. That was very fun. After the music was over - I ended up finishing the massage for Meredith. I didnÕt go to sleep until 5 or so.<br />
<br />
Thursday:<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We woke up really early to pack. I did the packing for both Liz and I b/c she was still unable to bear weight on her leg. We ended up cutting it really close though. We got to the airport at 1:30 and the plane left at 2. And they said that they didnÕt have a seat for us on the plane. It ended up that they bumped us into a higher class for the seating... This was great. There was TONS of leg room and the seats were very wide. It was Great! We had to wheel Liz through the airport though, b/c she was still unable to walk. When we finally got back here, we went out for a solid American dinner of steak. It was really good. I was so exhausted though. I came home and slept for 13 hours.<br />
<br />
Other things/events/people....<br />
<br />
Chris from OSU.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Chris is a friend from several competitions ago. She is awesome, and an incredible flirt. The first day at the camp, I saw on a map that there was a computer cluster. I was going to check it out - and I invited her along. Liz and Ted (guy from OSU) jokingly called us geeks. So as we walked away arm and arm, she put her hand on my butt and we both slyly glanced back at them. That was fun. She lived two doors down from us, so we saw her alot. Later that week, as I was standing outside my room... she came over to me and started pushed down on my shoulders. Not getting the desired result she started hitting the back of my knees to try to get me to bend down. When I finally caught on, she licked my head. I said if that is what she wanted to do, all she had to do was ask... So she did.... I stood at the bottom of the stairs, and she at the top and she slowly licked my head this time. That was VERY fun. I can honestly say that IÕve never had my head licked before. She is just a lot of fun.<br />
<br />
Liz:<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Things didnÕt go as well between Liz and I, as I had hoped. I wasnÕt expecting a lot, especially because of what happened to her the day we left, but I excepted us to become better friends. Although I got the feeling, especially towards the end, that she was just tolerating being around me. I donÕt know, she is very hard to figure out. Plus she goes through rapid cycles. One minute she will be really warm to me and things will be going great, the next she will be ice cold to me and wonÕt even talk to me. Our interaction over the week definately contributed to the bad part of the trip... I really wish that we had gotten along better.... not that we didnÕt get along. But it wasnÕt like we were together.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Overall, the trip was really good and really bad, but definatly very memorable. If there is any more, IÕll add it later.dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-92021857468811393692012-06-22T06:30:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:25:03.450-07:00Connecticut State Games Comp: July 1995<br />
Conneticut State Games<br />
July 23, 1995<br />
<br />
People involved:<br />
Me & Liz<br />
Mike & Jessica<br />
Sam & Mickey<br />
Craig & Vivian<br />
Serge<br />
<br />
Awards:<br />
3rd Int Cha S/G<br />
2nd Int Samba S/G<br />
3rd Int Jive S/G<br />
2nd Int Cha Open<br />
2nd Int Rumba Open<br />
1st Int Samba Open<br />
2nd Am Cha Br<br />
2nd Am Rumba Br<br />
3rd Am Swing Br<br />
3rd Am Mambo Br<br />
3rd Am Rumba S/G<br />
3rd Am Swing S/G<br />
2nd Am Mambo S/G<br />
2nd Am Cha Open<br />
2nd Am Rumba Open<br />
2nd Am Mambo Open<br />
3rd Int Rumba S/G<br />
2nd Int Foxtrot Open<br />
2nd Int Quickstep Open<br />
1st Int Vwaltz Open<br />
1st Int Tango Open<br />
1st Int Waltz Open<br />
2nd Int Fox/Tango S/G<br />
3rd Int W/Qs S/G<br />
1st Int Vwaltz Br<br />
2nd Int Fox/Tango Br<br />
2nd Int W/Qs Br<br />
1st Am Vwaltz Br<br />
1st Am Vwaltz Open<br />
3 Bronze medals - I've lost what they were all for though.<br />
5 Silver Medals<br />
1 Gold Medal<br />
<br />
So we started driving on Sat around noon. We took two cars - mine as the people car and Mikey's as the luggage car. We unfortunately took this really slow road and we got stuck behind this incredible slow driver for about 1/2 hour or more. The drive wasn't bad...I had all of my good driving tapes with me. I drove for .5 the way and Liz drove the other half. We listened to a great song from Micheal. This guy was singing about the three most important things in life, not sex, drugs, and rock&roll - but music, sex, and cookies. It was such an awesome song. VERY appropriate. There was one part in the song when he was descriping a woman that he had met, put on some nice music, broke out the oreos, but the he said that she turned cold. And so he said "Two out of three ain't bad" (Trust me there is a point).... So later in the drive, we were talking about the song again. And Liz sang the music,sex,and cookies part.... I turned to her, looked her square in the eye, and said "eh, two out of three ain't bad" - It took her a couple of seconds to read the full meaning into that - then she was laughing really hard for the next 20 minutes. I think that this song is going to be my theme song.<br />
<br />
We finally got to Viv's house, which is in NY, about an 1.5 hours away from the comp. Her parents were awesome! The cooked us a BBQ w/ hamburgers and steaks and such. It was great! It was too bad that my stomach was upsetting me and I couldn't really eat much. We ended up going to bed fairly soon after dinner so that we could wake up insanely early to do makeup and to leave. The comp was held in a gymnasium of a local collage. No A/C and an incredible slow floor... Double turns were out of the question and American spins were excedingly difficult. But the music was AWESOME....<br />
<br />
We started with Latin - which is SO wrong. We did very poorly for us... it is b/c we like latin... So that kinda sucked. Our routines were okay, but we were nervous (at least I was) so we didn't do all that well... It was so hot too... I was completely drenched. There was one time when we were all ready to do Rumba, and it was supposed to be a Samba. So liz kinda did this travelling rythym bounce which reminded me a lot of (this is totally rude) but it reminded me a lot of what Ozone looks like when she is wiping her butt ... you know the squatting and moving forward.... Liz didn't actually look like that - but that was the imagery that I was having. But I think that it was that one that we placed first in - how ironic. We totally faked our way through American style though.<br />
<br />
We did really well in Smooth. First place vwaltzing across the floor. ALthough there was one time in tango when I went to lead a swivel and b/c we were both so wet w/ sweat - my hand slipped off her back and it ended up being a totally missed lead. They played one 5 minute vwaltz... it was kinda fun. Since once you got your momentum going, you could actually concentrate on the other aspects... like standing up straighter, smiling, fixing hand position, and stop turnning my head. See it is really hard - I naturally spot - but that also means in something like vwaltz, my head crosses onto her side often.... So I actually stopped spotting. Whoa Dizzy.<br />
<br />
There was a reporter there who's angle on the his story was how hot it was. So he was desparately trying to get a picture of us toweling off. So I gave him a shot of my drying off my head similar to a person drying there butt/back off. It was kinda amuzing.<br />
<br />
After smooths, Liz was unable to change b/c the arm things were definately not coming off while she was so wet...So we went to go sit out in the car for a while. She however could not close the door b/c of her dress... So she decided just to get comfortable. She put her feet up on the dash.. The next thing that I hear is (oooh, OOOOOH ) - very sexual sounding crys... Well with her feet up on the dash - the air was able to go right down her legs. I think that she really liked that.<br />
<br />
So we changed and prepared to go... I talked to Ingrid for a while. Ingrid was the girl I met in the Carribean over Xmas and who is a ballroom dancer living in CT. So it was really cool that she was there. I drove the 1.5 hours back to Viv's - I was exhausted when I got back. I was SO tired. Serge drove and Liz was copilot. Jessica - who was very worried b/c she still had several hours of work to do before going to work the next day and was having a very hard time sleeping... I told her that I've been told I make a comfy pillow. So she ended up falling asleep on me. So about 1.5 hours later I wake up and find that we are on the side of a very crowded NY freeway. Liz tells me that Michael's tapes - which happen to be sitting on the back bumper of the other car in our caravan - just bounced off (Mike is VERY attached to his tapes)... So so said that she was going to try to collect them. Now having just woken up - I was not thinking clearly... I tell her that she should at least take someone with her. About a minute after she and Craig left.... it hit me what was going on and I told Jess - that I no longer felt comfortable. Liz and Craig were dodging traffic to recover tapes and we lost the other truck... when they finally returned w/ 1 tape.... we then proceeded to try to catch up with the others. I couldn't go back to sleep b/c I was still not comfortable w/ the fact that we lost the other car. I also couldn't sleep b/c there is something developing between Serge and Liz and having them both together made me a little uneasy as well... After about 1.5 hours - we all were watching every truck closely to see if we could find our friends. We past this one rest station where we see the truck and our friends standing by the side of the freeway. Liz and I both yell out there they are (same with the people by the side of the road).... Unfortunatly, while doing this - I happened to throw Jessica almost completely off me... And she had just fallen asleep too.<br />
<br />
The rest of the drive back was painful. It was really long and tiring. Just like every other Sunday comp that we have ever done.dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-5237520826794785142012-06-22T06:00:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:24:48.710-07:00PA State Games: Aug 1995<br />
Pennsylvania State Games 8/6/95<br />
<br />
Key Players:<br />
Drew & Liz<br />
Mike and Mickey<br />
Pete & Liz<br />
Sergey<br />
Mom Akinson<br />
<br />
Awards<br />
1st Am F/Sw Br (4 couples)<br />
3rd AM F/Sw S (4)<br />
1st Am R/C Br (4)<br />
1st Am R/C S (4)<br />
1st Int R/C G (5)<br />
1st Int Sa/J G (5)<br />
1st Int R/C/Sa Pre-Champ (2) :)<br />
1st Int F/T S (4)<br />
1st Int Vw (4)<br />
2nd Int W/Qs (2)<br />
1st Int F/T (2)<br />
2ns Int Vw (4)<br />
<br />
This comp was really weird. We were dancing on tile in a cafeteria and the comp was really small. I think that there were only 15 couples and 5 were from CMU. The comp started at noon - again very weird and they had demo's before hand.<br />
<br />
Some high school students put on a cute little demo - done mostly to the strictly ballroom soundtrack. It was kinda amuzing.... they did a mambo and everybody in the routine was off time.<br />
<br />
Then on the spur of the moment, Liz and I decided to do our west coast routine. (Liz always carries her tape w/ her) so we walked through it once and then performed it. It was actually really helpful to do this b/c It was one big bundle of nerves, then it was over and we were able to relax the rest of the time. It was actually one of our best performances of WCS yet. But you know what.... I'm definately your son... I messed up royally on part of the routine.... and I had this huge grin on my face. It was kinda funny...<br />
<br />
We started the day w/ Am smooth. Nothing much exciting there. Actually really boring, b/c we don't know any american stuff. American rhythm was okay... again we don't know anything. Makes it kinda hard. Didn't even really sweat.<br />
<br />
During one of the breaks I danced a samba with Pam. Pam described it as a pudding samba.... b/c it felt like you were doing a samba in pudding... that then lead to the discussion that the music really sucked. It sounded like you were listening to lite fm - ballroom style. At one point (during a general dance) I had to walk off the floor... I'm sorry - I cannot dance a cha to "hello mutta, hello fatha" (you know the camp song).<br />
<br />
We did fairly well at international... We were a little nervous during the latins.... but hey that is okay. The part that we are REALLY pleased with the the 1st pre-champ. Yes, we were only dancing against one other couple (actually a couple from the big space), but it was real competition. Liz said that she saw one of the judges look at us, look at them and shake her head b/c she couldn't decide. That is just SO COOL!<br />
<br />
Our smooths felt pretty good. Although I was having a hard time judging distance - either that or the floor was just an awkward size.... Let's just say I used the ENTIRE dance floor.... we saw close up shots of the walls often. Esp in Vwaltz. And I quickstepped myself into a corner a couple of times too... In the Gold section though, I was totally out to win. I wasn't competitive enough to make me dance bad, but boy to I want to beat Sergey.( He was dancing w/ fei).... Although it is a little hard to win, when your partner is rooting for the other couple to win, grrrr.<br />
<br />
It was also really strange, we got a certificate of participation - not even any ribbons. I thought that was kidna wrong.<br />
<br />
The drive back was kinda funny. We tried to go to a steak restuarant the<br />
Liz remembered (She had been in that area a couple of times before)...<br />
but the place wasn't there - so we spent about an extra 30 minutes<br />
trying to find a suitable substitute... you know, once we were all set<br />
on having steak, we really couldn't settle for Wendy's :)... So we all<br />
ate steak (and got a free salad and sundaw b/c the guy messed up.<br />
<br />
As we exited towards the turnpike, Michael didn't follow us. We thought<br />
that he was just dazing.... so we waited by the turnpike entrance for <br />
about 30 minutes. He never came back so we went to the next rest area <br />
and waited there for another 15. No show. Apparently, somewhere along<br />
the way, he started following the wrong car. This car was heading<br />
towards Mcdonalds and he and Mickey were going crazy - saying that we<br />
had just eaten and why didn't we go to the bathroom there.... but then<br />
they noticed the license plate- "Oh, that's not Liz" :) So they went<br />
back their own way.<br />
<br />
I was a complete vegetable the whole trip. Liz drove for about two hours<br />
and Sergey drove the rest. I offered to drive for a little (I figured I<br />
was good for maybe 45 minutes - music dependant), so that she could <br />
snuggle with Sergey (this is me being friendly and considerate, dispite<br />
myself)... But she could tell that I was really in no condition to <br />
drive.dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-76403361969529913022012-06-22T05:30:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:24:35.715-07:00Indianapolis Comp: 1995<br />
You know.... there is just something in the indianapolis air that makes the Indy trip unique everytime.<br />
<br />
Key people<br />
Drew & Liz<br />
Pat & Pam<br />
Danny<br />
Kim Innman<br />
<br />
Other people who went<br />
Michelle (from CUA)<br />
Tom & Stephannie<br />
Mike P and Angie<br />
Laura & Will<br />
Fei & Sergei<br />
<br />
Awards / Places<br />
3rd Int Latin Prechamp (4 dance)<br />
3rd Am W/F Open<br />
2nd Mambo open<br />
2nd Am Rhythm PreChamp (5 dance)<br />
4th Int W/Qs<br />
4th Int T<br />
1st Team Match<br />
<br />
I found out Thurs night that I would be going to Indy the next day. Liz calls me sounding all cute and stuff and doesn't actually say it - she let's me do that... but we ended up going to Indy. It was so much fun. Definately worth the trip. So it ended up that Liz started driving. All of us had work to do... and get this - We actually worked in the car. Granted it was only about 30-45 minutes tops... but that was enough for me to get all my reading done. Pat & Pam had a very nice wrestling match in the backseat of the Van...<br />
<br />
Then Pat drove the rest of the way. Liz and I moved to the back to go to sleep. And Wrestle alittle bit. Danny said that he couldn't believe that he had to ride the whole time with these 2 crazy couples. We slept a little and choreographed a Jive routine and added some stuff to our Cha. During the drive there... well things got interesting again. I spent most of the time sleeping on Liz... At one point during the trip... I looked up at her - and the next thing that I know we were kissing. That was REALLY cool. Completely out of the dark. But hey - I'm not going to complain.<br />
<br />
There was a social that night. Liz and I being completly tired didn't really dance all out. We practiced our Jive routine a little (the one we made up in the car, and walked through once, when we filled up for gas) All of us (see above list) stayed at Kim's. She was the one that was organizing the comp. We met her last time and became good friends with her. Liz and I slept on the floor in Kim's bedroom... The floor is VERY uncomfortable. I think I lost a lot of the padding that I used to have that made the floor more bearable. Liz and I kissed a little more and then we went to bed. Well it turns out, that Liz ended up with a hicky (whoops :) )... I fairly good sized one two (oh well)... So she had to put on extra make-up to cover it up. That was amuzing... So now that EVERYBODY knew....Not that I'm complaining.<br />
<br />
Funny Side note: Kim has a 3 yr old son (staying at Grandma's while we were there) and her house is very tailored for that fact. So for us to take a shower... well we pretty much had to gag the fish that was on the tub faucet so that we could get to the little switch that would turn on the shower. Then when the shower was done, and the little switch fell, the fish would all of a sudden upchuck water. Very Amuzing!!<br />
<br />
Sat, we started with Int Latin. That is so wrong. You just can't move your hips that much the first thing in the morning. We did okay... not wonderful b/c it was first thing. And we really like Latin so of course we didn't do well in it. Pat and Pam who are total smooth dancers... of course walloped us in Latin. BTW our Jive routine is rather difficult at tempo. We discovered this on the floor. For our Am F and Am W all that we did was the only move that we know, which we learned one week earlier in the new Am comp class that the club offers.<br />
<br />
Of course, you know with a two day comp... there just isn't enough time to schedule lunch. So when we had a brief moment we ran out to the car and had a small tailgate party with PB&J sandwiches and a handfull of chips. A hardy meal for all day dancing I'd say.<br />
<br />
That evening we went to a workshop put on by Shirly Johnson (of Bill Sparks and Shirly Johnson fame)... she was one of the judges. She did an advanced bolero and mambo workshop. Now bolero, I know from nothing... But it was a really cool routine, and It happended to stick... And we happened to compete in it the next day... but I'll get there. I don't remember any of the mambo because I was so tired and ravenously hungry by this point in time.<br />
<br />
All of us ate at some Pizza place. And we were all very well behaved group of people at this restuarant (yeah - right). It was rather amuzing. No one had eaten or drank much during the day. We order like 4 or 5 pitchers of (Diet Coke, Coke, Lemonade, Water, Beer, and maybe one or two others)... They were empty before the waitress made the second trip (ie she brought out 4 of them and was going back to get the last 1 or 2 and all the others were gone) Kinda amuzing. Then somehow the question came up asking how many people that you had kissed (good wet ones). So we all went around and told. Then Pam complained that if we had counted since school she'd be at zero. Then Liz said that she would be too.... And several people promptly dissagreed with her and pointed to her neck... Her response was, "Oh - I thought we were counting new people".... Kinda amuzing.<br />
<br />
Gaged the fish again (ie took a shower), then went to sleep on the futon. Pat and Pam switch with us. So we got a semi comfy bed to sleep on. Everyone that night was complaining about " I can't believe we have to do this SHIT all over again". So again we woke up early and competed Am Rythm first. Hips and mornings are still a no no. We did okay. We got second in Mambo... which is really funny... Since I salsa dance I have a really hard time in mambo. Salsa breaks on the 3 and mambo on the 2... Liz was counting for me the entire time... and we really didn't do much more then basics. Then we did the 5 dance pre champ, am rhythm. This is Rumba,cha,bolero,mambo, swing. The rumba we did our team match american rumba routine, cha was our normal open routine, bolero was the stuff we learned at the workshop the day before, mambo was basics again, and swing was our jive routine (which is much easier to swing tempo). We ended up getting second in almost all of the dances.... Bolero?!! What's up with that. I don't even know the basic, I asked what the timing was minutes before we competed in it... I jsut don't understand..<br />
<br />
Then Int smooths were kinda exciting (not)... For some reason they ran our heats first... Then they ran everyone elses. Well during this time, We were all exhausted and Pam, Pat, and I fell asleep in the chairs. Liz was drousy but fighting it. The next thing I know... they were calling us back for some of the dances. There was no warning or any indication that we were going to be dancing... It was literally wake up and get on the floor and dance. As we were walking out to the floor I said, loud enough for the front table to hear "thanks for the warning" I was kinda annoyed.<br />
<br />
The funny thing was that we beat Pat & Pam in all of the smooth. We are totally a latin couple. So I think that we should switch. We should practice smooth and they should practice latin. maybe then we'd actually win the ones we care about more.<br />
<br />
On the way back, I ended up sleeping almost the entire way because I was sniffiling/sneezing pretty bad and I needed to rest. That night when we got back, we totally crashed. But the really cool thing about this night was that Liz actually initiated some of the cuddling... that has never happened before. That was really cool!<br />
<br />
I basically slept through most of Monday. I woke up, went to class, slept in class, came home, took a 4 hr nap, woke up, went to comp class, ate dinner, slept the rest of the night. So basically I missed Monday, which has totally thrown my entire schedule out of kilter.<br />
<br />
Oh well....<br />
<br />
I'll talk to ya later<br />
Cheerio!<br />
Drew<br />
<div>
<br /></div>dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-69049635874137647722012-06-22T05:00:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:24:15.788-07:00Delaware Comp: Sept 1995<br />
Key Players:<br />
CMU:<br />
Drew & Liz<br />
Delaware:<br />
Kim & Kyle<br />
Meridith & Trey<br />
Kelly<br />
Carrie<br />
Pat<br />
<br />
Awards:<br />
4th Am W<br />
3rd Am F<br />
2nd Am Vw<br />
3rd Int W<br />
4th Int Qs<br />
1st Int T<br />
3rd Int F<br />
1st Am C<br />
4th Am Sw<br />
1st Am Mambo<br />
1st Int R<br />
1st Int Sa<br />
2nd Int C<br />
2nd Int J<br />
2nd Int Pre-champ Latin (C,R,Sa)<br />
<br />
Fri:<br />
Friday was such a hectic day. I woke up early to pick up Sam and Karen (people who were riding in my car on the way down)... B/c they were going to be coming right from campus and I didn't want to delay us. Then I went to try to pick up Liz's shoes, but they weren't ready. I went to Pat's to pick up some stuff... The I went to a meeting. In this meeting, I basically found out that the club is screwed next semester in terms of space. The music dept has taken over the drill deck and there is barely any place for us to dance now. This one is going to be a tricky one. Then I went to class (Biophyiscs).... This was fun. We had started a new topic-a topic on which I happened to do a research paper on in high school - a topic in which the professor also happens to be doing his research on. I got him talking on a tangent for 25 minutes. It was great... he didn't get to cover what he wanted to cover and so we didn't get any homework. Total bonus!!! Then I booked it home, packed and left.<br />
<br />
The drive down was okay... Sam is fun to talk to in the car. BTW we were driving to Reading PA, to give a demo at the studio that Tom danced in over the summer. It would have been a fine drive, but there was an 8 car pile up accident, that kept us stopped on the freeway for about an hour. The studio was really cool... It had an ENORMOUS disco ball, really cool artwork, and a great floor. We did our demos, they weren't our best - but the audience still liked them. It was really funny, in the two-step, Liz totally lost her skirt in the last sequence of the routine. She covered it well though (she was wearing a leotard). Unfortunatly - Liz was sick all weekend. That sucked. She had a small fever and sniffles from hell.<br />
<br />
We left for delaware that night, down this windy, twisty, dark back roads. It was SO GREAT to see my Delaware friends again. Wow did I have fun this weekend. I think that only about 20% of my time this weekend was spent without my arms around someone. It was SO awesome! So we got there around 12:30 or so... we spent a little bit of time trying to figure out where everyone was going to sleep. We ended up sleeping at Carrie's / Kim's which was totally cool. Kim stayed with her boyfriend/partner so as to free up a bed. That was nice, but it would have been really cool to have them both there. Anyways, we all ended up having a bed to sleep on. That was great! Carrie, Liz and I stayed up fairly late hanging out and talking.<br />
<br />
Sat:<br />
This was a no costume comp... so that basically ment that they ran everything together. We didn't even have time to change clothes. We danced very well. We placed in everything that we danced. Our waltz felt the smoothest that it ever has. Our tango, felt the most staccato and very tango. It was great! And there should be a lot of pictures of us as well. This comp was a high school, and pre-teen one as well... Those kids are to damn good. There was one couple....wow... they did this syncopation in Jive.. their feet just disappeared. There was this one high school guy that was a total stud. Liz was totally drooling over this guy. Although she never did work up the nerve to ask him to dance. Then we went out to dinner at Friendly's. That was fun... nothing notable- just fun.<br />
<br />
That night there was a social for the people who remained around. This was great. They had all sorts of fun dances. Things like the reverse role tango, the silly samba (handshake hold only), the rightous rumba (how many times you could say oh god, or other religious things), the runchy rumba... It was a lot of fun. Afterwards, we helped clean up and then we went over to Kyle's apartment to watch a movie.<br />
<br />
We watched Airplane, but everyone passed out before the plane even took off the ground. Liz was sleeping on me, but she said that I was too hot (esp w/ her fever)... so I moved to the floor so that she could lie down. The only floor space though was a narrow space between the couch and coffee table. It was rather uncomfortable....I'm such a nice guy. After the movie, we came back to Carrie's to crash.<br />
<br />
Sun:<br />
We woke for the workshops. Tehy were really well done. I can't really describe what we learned, but there was some very cool points made. But we were SO sore and tired sunday. We could barley move. We went to Bennigan's for Brunch. We ended up spending 3.5 hrs there just hanging out. It was great. We talked about all sorts of things, mostly related to dancing and our clubs and stuff... but it was so great.<br />
<br />
Driving back was fun. Danny and I talked the entire time. It didn't even seem like a long trip at all. We drove through Amish country... that was kinda cool. At least at first. I was getting a little annoyed at all the buggy's and blind corners that I couldn't pass them on though.<br />
<br />
Oh, I forgot to mention... one of the kids (an 8 yr old). Came up to us and said that we were really good dancers. The look in his eyes was a total "Wow- I got to talk to you, you are my idol" kinda look. It was cool.<br />
<br />
Dude, I love the Delaware team. They are all so much fun.<br />
<br />
Cheerio!<br />
DrewdShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-77281870581447901322012-06-22T04:30:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:24:04.184-07:00Maryland: Oct 1995<br />
Awards:<br />
1st Am Team<br />
1st Int Team<br />
5th WCS<br />
6th R/V Int Q w/ Julia<br />
5th Int W/Q<br />
4th Int F/T<br />
5th R/V Int Cha w/ Julia<br />
6th Int Sa/J<br />
2nd R/V Am Swing w/ Yoo Jin<br />
6th Am Open Sw<br />
<br />
Fri:<br />
In my car was Julia, Brian, and Tom A (Uggh...social reject). We left at around noon to get to DC in time for our private w/ Ron Bennent. The drive was okay. Julia and I talked the whole time. The private was AWESOME!!! We worked on Jive. Whoa - Jive overload. Our intro looks really sharp now, but the rest of our routine still looks crappy. It was a totally worthwhile lesson. Then we went to the social that Maryland was having.<br />
<br />
We got there when they were teaching basic hustle and west coast. So we sat out and got settled and gathered our arriving team. Then when the instructor was showing them a step, she called from the center of the floor for me to get out there to help her demonstrate. I had no idea who she was or what she was even teaching... but I went out anyways. It was really funny. Appearently she knew of me from other comps and knew that I could lead whatever she was doing.<br />
<br />
The social was fun. Danced around alot... practiced the new jive with Liz. It was really cool. There were 10 people staying at Liz's house that night. Which is actually less then we expected. Liz was planning on 14. But that was cool. We had Kim and Kyle from Delaware stay with us as well. Liz was a little pissed at one of the cars that stayed with us. They had basically arrived in DC around midnight, walked into Liz's house and crashed.. didn't tell mom that they were there or even who they were. This pissed Liz off alot.<br />
<br />
We stayed out that night till about 1:30 or so. When we got back Liz and I stayed up with Mom while Liz did her toes and eyelashes and stuff. That night for whatever reason, Liz was wired.... so she read before going to bed, I completely passed out. This worked out really well... I was able to fall asleep with my arm around her while she read, and I didn't keep her awake, and then when she was ready to fall asleep - I already was... so I was able to hold her all night. That was really cool.<br />
<br />
The comp was okay. But the way that they had it scheduled you really didn't get much of a break. At our level, we were dancing syllabus, intercolligiate, and open-to-all... these were run consecutively. And making it to finals for most of the rounds was death. We must have been dancing for a solid hr without breaks. Very difficult. You know there is something just wrong about cheering when you don't make call backs because it gives you time to breath.<br />
<br />
Pat and Pam were both in a really pissy mood the morning of the comp. Both of them totally jumped down my throat when I talked to them. Just mentioning it for memory sake<br />
<br />
Oh, one of the funny things that happened was during rookie/vet. I was dancing International style with Julia. We did fine an all... but we really didn't have all that much flight. When I got Liz for our heats... I think I must have covered the long side in 2 steps of waltz. It was a big readjustment. Kinda amuzing....<br />
<br />
Here is something you'll like... you remember asshole announcer from DC comp? Well he was one of the judges. Not to worry though... he liked us. Actually it makes sense. I remember Kay saying that he really needed to see what a college comp was like and why normal rules don't apply to us.<br />
<br />
Smooths went incredible well - other then being incredibly tired. And all of newcomers did really great. In everything. Latins on the other hand - didn't go so well... For whatever reason we didn't make call backs in R/C and this really upset Liz. So with Liz really upset, a become flustered and it took us almost 5 heats to regain ourselves. That kinda sucked.... and the effects of dancing a solid hour in latin is so much greater then the effects of a solid hour in smooth.<br />
<br />
I danced with Kim for intercolligieates. The events were Waltz and Swing. For the swing, we were both exhausted from dancing so much. They played a really slow swing for the comp...so we decided to west coast to it - thinking that we would get eliminated that way. Wrong... we stood out and all the judges called us back. Foiled again.<br />
<br />
The team matches were GREAT. We did Cha and Rumba as usual... but this was the most intense cha ever. This dance had to have been the all time biggest rush I've ever received while dancing in my life. The song that they played was Love Potion... jsut a great song in general. But not only is if a high energy song... but I know it VERY well.... our demo is even choerographed to it. Anyways... the song has a really long intro (if you want to hear it call my answering machine)... So whe n hte song started, the people in the club who recognized it and recognized it's relationship to us... gave a big holler. We stood poised for the entire intro.... you could totally feel the tension mount. It is like a 6 measure intro. Everyone else on the floor was already dancing. And Liz even said to me to go ahead and start. But we waited for the intro to end. The intro ends very abruptly and the high energy part kicks in almost immediately. We start right on cue, right at the beginning of the music. The entire CMU team yells. It is like an explosion.... you could just feel EVERY eye in the entire place turn to us. It was such an eye catcher.... just because we weren't moving and everyone else in the place was. And with the scream from CMU.... what a rush. Wow. WOW! what a feeling.<br />
<br />
We ended up taking third in Cha team match -which is understandable given the competition, and first in Am Rumba team match -which is weird....The comp was a lot of fun. And I think that all of our newcomers really enjoyed themselves. Did I mention that we had 54 people go to this comp. It was great. We took up and entire side of the ballroom.<br />
<br />
Let's see... Sat night we putzed around the ballroom for a while. We<br />
went out for some drinks that night... because Pam really NEEDED a beer.<br />
We tried going to a resturant/bar type place, b/c we had a lot of people<br />
under 21 with us. But we couldn't find any at that time (1am) so we<br />
dropped off the under people at a pizza place and we went next door to<br />
the bar to hang for about 1/2 hour. Then we were all really hungry (you<br />
know we ALWAYS eat so well during a comp) - and we went to a incredible<br />
bad diner for dinner. We ended up leaving there by about 3 or 3:30...<br />
<br />
Sun:<br />
We went to the workshops. For the most part they were useless. VERY<br />
beginner. Like Mambo basics and Waltz basics. Except the Argentine Tango - that was AWESOME! IT was really funny. In the first workshop - "The discussion of the competition". The judge was saying that she really enjoyed judging this comp b/c so much of our personalities came through. After she said this, Tom (our socially challenged team mate) said "maybe that is why I did so bad, I have a miserable personality." Liz lost it. She covered her face with her hair and was bent over laughing for about 10 minutes. I think that it is really funny and sad too. He knows that about himself....and he hasn't changed it.....<br />
<br />
The Argentine Tango was so great thouhg. It is so much fun. The guy (the<br />
awesome one from the day before) taught like 5 moves., plus a lot of<br />
technique too. It is such a great sensual dance... it would be perfect<br />
for dance-a-thons. The frame for it is the girls arm totally around the<br />
guys neck, pretty much on the guys left sholder blade... faces are<br />
together - actually cheeks are in contact. IT is all very lazy, but with<br />
very strong definate leads.<br />
<br />
I ended up leaving DC around 5. The drive back was really painful, both<br />
in terms of how tired I was (did you know I have a very loud bed, I<br />
could hear it calling my name 3 hrs away :) ). The other reason why the<br />
drive was painful was that Tom was in the car. See it wasn't bad on the<br />
way down (I drove him down too)... b/c Julia and I talked the entire<br />
time, mostly about non-ballroom stuff (yes - it is possible :) ) and Tom<br />
really couldn't participate. But on the way back most of the talk was<br />
about the competition - and so he could participate in that. And I don't<br />
know how much you actually got to know Danny, but he is just full of<br />
useless information.... Don't get me wrong - he is a lot of fun to be<br />
around, but he can go on forever telling you things that you could care<br />
less about. Well he and Tom fed off each other. Tom would ask a question<br />
of make a comment, DAnny would answer or correct him and that would keep<br />
Tom talking. It was all very annoying. <br />
<br />
When I got home I totally crashed. I did good on Monday - except for my<br />
classes... I couldn't stay awake at all... but outside class - no<br />
problem.<br />
Oh well... have to actually start thinking about school now... at least<br />
for a month. Well..... I'll see what I can do about thinking about<br />
dancing a little sooner then that. Like tomorrow :) :) :)<br />
<br />
Anyways....<br />
<br />
I've gotta run<br />
Talk to ya soon!<br />
Cheerio!<br />
Drew<br />
<div>
<br /></div>dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-31655413962201838242012-06-22T04:00:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:23:52.805-07:00Catholic University Comp: November 1995<br />
Key players<br />
Liz, Mom<br />
Kim, Kyle<br />
Mickey, Danny<br />
<br />
Awards:<br />
None<br />
<br />
Fri:<br />
We left around noon... I had Danny, Mikey, Bryce, and Brian in my car. DAnny brought his CD player which was cool and we listened to George Carlin for the first couple of hours. I was so excited to get there... I couldn't wait to see Liz and all of my other friends from other schools. The social that night was a lot of fun. Practiced with liz lots, danced around lots. I a samba with Lisa. Lisa, you might rember from ohio comp... she is natalie's friend... we went to the nightclub together at OSU. Well she is one of the top couples right now in the collegiate circuit... that was fun. Samba even... one of the hardest to lead and follow... on a crowded dance floor. Then I danced with Natalie... who I haven't danced with since DC comp. She said "Damn, I feel good"... that is such a great thing to hear. We left the social and went right to bed.... b/c the comp was starting earlier then usual becasue there were over 300 competitors.<br />
<br />
The competition had been moved from where it was last year to the gym. The area of the gym that we were on happened to have a rubberized floor. I thought it was going to be really tough to move on it. But the only thing that was excessively hard was heel drags in smooths. But boy could you get flight.... you could totally push off from the floor and not have to worry about slipping. You should have seen our vwaltz... a long side in 2.5 turns. We were cruising. The floor also made the tango very staccato.<br />
<br />
The comp was really bad. There were too many competitors, very deep cuts, and poor judging. All of CMU and Delaware top dancers got totally screwed. The judges didn't move at all and clustered at one corner of the floor, once you danced by them you could of walked the rest of the way around and they wouldn't have been able to tell... Plus I didn't think too highly of the judges either. Liz and I barely made any callbacks. We didn't even make first cuts in R/C. It was just too easy to get missed. The cuts were like bring back 30 out of 70... IT was just insane. Out of everyone that I talked too... it didn't seem like anybody was having fun.<br />
<br />
The fun part of the comp though was during team matches... tango to be specific. The power went out... This was such a great bonding experience. People started singing tango to let the people finish their routines. You know... dah dant da da da, da-da-da-da-da. Then Boston U broke out singing Cumbia (sp), Day-o, and Zombie Jamboree. Some people danced to the light of flashlights while others just made shadow puppets on the walls. While we were waiting for power to come back on we held our awards ceremony. Since there was no power... everyone had to stay quiet. When somebody one and they would cheer - they would get a resounding "SHHHH".<br />
It was amuzing. We waited for about an hour and determined that we were not able to resume the comp. So we had to try to gather our stuff in the dark... that was fun. You had to try to remember where you through everything. I think we got all that I we had though.<br />
<br />
Then when we went to load the car... we discovered that we were in a fairly good sized snow storm... It had already built up an inch or more. Of course that morning it was in the 60's so all of us were in our measly ballroom jackets. Wow was it cold. Since we had barely danced (no callbacks - we were all still in the mood to do something). And since we had had such a bad day... some of us were in the mood to drink. So we went to a resturant bar. This made me very uncomfortable... we had a 4 car caravan in the snow. Liz was driving/leading... I'm very confident of Liz's driving ability in the snow... but I was still very uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
We ended up going to benigans. the people there were Liz and I, Kim and Kyle (Delaware friends), Pat and Anna (from Houston/Brown), Pam and Andy (new boyfriend), Anne (Andy's partner and all around fun person), Mickey, and Pete. Basically it was a major bitch session about the comp. A little discussion about cabarets. It was kinda funny... Liz had left her wallet at home and didn't have her ID. So I had to order a drink for her, and she had to be sneaky about drinking it. It was kinda amuzing.<br />
<br />
Then we went back to Liz's.... Pam and Pat were staying at Anne's so we didn't get to see them much... That night we forced Kim and Kyle to stay up and talk with us for a little while on Mom's bed... then we all crashed pretty hard.<br />
<br />
Sunday:<br />
Sunday morning we had to wake up really early to attend an intercolligiate meeting. WE discussed what works and doesn't work in our various clubs. I presented my inter-collegiate social idea. And everybody loved it. They also suggested that we form an IC committee to just discuss problems and other issues. It was a really good meeting. Then at the end of it. Liz and I performed our Open Rumba routine, b/c since the comp was cut short - we never got a chance to perform it. We've only practiced it for two weeks now. Then we forced Kim and Kyle to perform their new open paso routine, b/c they to didn't get a chance to perform it. We then took an advanced vwaltz class - that was just awesome. In the next wkshop - Adv Am Latin... we really didn't like the instructor - so Me and Liz and Kim and Kyle and Mickey. We had a really good bonding time.<br />
<br />
After that we went to California Pizza for dinner... this place specializes in non-traditional pizza. It was a lot of fun. The five of us all ordered different pizza's and completely shared. Everyone got a piece of every pizza. It was so great. Passing pizza, trading pizza, taking a bite and passing it on. Very cool.. you were basically full before you even touched your own remaining pieces.<br />
<br />
On leaving, I gave everyone a hug... including Kyle - which I think really surprized him. Kim said that he doesn't hug guys at all... But I don't think he really had a choice. I don't even think he knew what hit him.<br />
<br />
The way back was FUN! I slept for the first half (Danny drove), but the second half.. .we laughed the entire way back. I couldn't even tell you what we talked about, but we were in tears for the entire two hours... Then after dropping everyone off - I Drove back toy parking garage where I let Mikey park her car in my spot. We ended up talking and laughing for another two hours in the garage. My cheeks and stomach were so sore Mon. It was a really good time. It is too bad that the comp sucked so much... otherwise it would have been a really great weekend.<br />
<br />
Now I'm just completely swamped with work... which I really should get back to.<br />
<br />
I'll talk to ya later.<br />
Cheerio!<br />
Drew<br />
<div>
<br /></div>dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-28396675586496920352012-06-22T03:30:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:23:41.250-07:00Florida Dancesport: Jan 1996<br />
Awards:<br />
3rd Am R/C<br />
3rd Am Team<br />
3rd Caberet (Charleston)<br />
<br />
New Year's Day<br />
The drive down was fairly easy. It took us about 20 hrs to get to Clearwater. listened to all kinds of music. Mike Kajane was in our car, so we ended up listening to African music for a couple of hours that was pretty neat. Hours after we arrived we had a workshop... Advanced American Rhythm w/ Dan Calloway. This was 4 hours of solid hip movement... It was such a awesome workshop... It had put me in a totally latin mood for several days. I was hitting lunches and moving my hips for several days afterwards. There was a social dance that night. That was fun...I had a great time socializing and meeting people. It was a lot of fun flirting. I have some new friends from UT, Las Vegas, and NYU.<br />
<br />
2nd Day:<br />
Liz was not feeling well that morning, so she slept in. I went to a Latin workshop and learned really cool latin technique. That evening we had a private lesson with delaware's coach. He has some really cool metaphors. He said that we dance like Drew and Liz and we shouldn't. We should dance like Hernando and Lolita. He also said the samba was like a jungle cat in the forest. You can see the strength, but it is not being used. It was really a cool lesson. There were not very many things for us to compete it that night...<br />
<br />
3rd Day:<br />
Liz was still not feeling well. She felt so bad that she went to the doctor. Appearently she is very skillful and managed to get her entire head infected. She had an ear,sinus, and throat infection. Isn't that impressive? I took another latin workshop while she was at the hospital - learned some cool samba and jive stuff. Since liz was feeling so bad we didn't compete at all that day. BTW, a day was typically 8:30-12:30 Workshops, 1:30-6:00 Comps, 7:00-midnight Comps. Everyday.....<br />
<br />
The next day:<br />
Liz slept in again. I went to an AMAZING workshop. This was taught be Richard Diaz, 3 time latin champ.... and I found out that he was trained as a Mech E! Instant Idol. He could explain things very anaylically - It was great! We competed in 1.5 latin events that evening, but that was all that Liz was up for.We also performed all of our Caberet's... wow were they fun! I had a balst in all of them. The Charelston made call backs.<br />
<br />
Friday:<br />
Friday was the US college Championships. Liz was feeling pretty good today. We competed in all Rhythm, Latin, and Standard. We did pretty good all things considered. We ended up getting 3rd in American team match. Not bad.... Everybody loved the dress... Absolutely everyone was commenting on it. Even Kay Teague said it was a BEAUTIFUL dress. You done good, Mom. All the dancing on Friday kinda did her in though and she felt miserable the next day.<br />
<br />
A went to a standard workshop this morning b/c I wasn't in the mood for latin any more. We didn't compete much b/c she wasn't up to it... but we did do the Charelston finals. We got third. That was so cool. I'm really glad that that worked out.<br />
<br />
Sunday, we both slept in. There was nothing for us to compete in in the afternood, and then we went to the social that night. Liz was still feeling crappy so she didn't get a chance to dance much at the social. These intercollegiate things don't treat her well. She missed the last day social in England too, b/c of her hip. I had a great time though.<br />
<br />
We ended up bumming around monday and resting. We decided not to drive back b/c of the snow. We left late tues evening so that we would drive through Florida and other non snow areas at night and hit the bad stuff during the day. We planned it perfectly. The drive back was not bad at all. To kill time from hotel checkout until evening departure... we went to the beach and then we ate at Ninfas... Yes we found a ninfas (parrot and all) in Fl.<br />
<br />
Liz slept the whole way back... and most of today too. She will probablly stay here until she is well enough to return to DC.<br />
<br />
Sorry that this wasn't very descriptive of the trip. but not a whole lot of descriptive stuff happened. I had fun and I learned alot... I think it was oaky for liz too... she said that the trip was worthwile for her as well. I wasn't as social as I could have been b/c I was looking out for Liz a lot. But it was still a lot of fun.<br />
<br />
Oh well... gotta run!<br />
Cheerio!<br />
Drew<br />
<div>
<br /></div>dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-64969756501365391702012-06-22T03:00:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:23:28.012-07:00Case Western University Comp: Feb 1996<br />
Case Western Reserve 2/19/96<br />
<br />
Awards:<br />
1st R/V W w/ Sari<br />
7th R/V F w/ Smita<br />
2nd Intercollegiate W w/ Sandra (OSU)<br />
4th R/V T w/ Marika<br />
3rd R/V C w/ Annie<br />
1st R/V R w/ Katherine<br />
4th Int W/Q syllabus<br />
4th Int F/T syllabus<br />
4th Am C/R syllabus<br />
4th Int C/R syllabus<br />
5th Int S/J syllabus<br />
6th Int C/R/S/J Open 4-dance<br />
2nd Am C/R/Sw/M Open 4-dance :) :) :) :)<br />
<br />
This was such an AWESOME weekend! Everything went well<br />
<br />
Fri:<br />
The ride down was kinda fun. The people in my car was Brain Surkan, Natasha, Sergey, and Fei. Brain is a potential president for next year. He is kinda funny... he will see something that amuzes him and laugh out loud really loud. I spent most of the trip trying to see what he was laughing so hard at. Then Fei is such an AWESOME person... Fei and I get along so well... we have the same contact styles... we are both active touchers and continually moving and all sorts of great stuff. I really enjoy Fei's company.<br />
<br />
The social dance that night was fun... Liz and I got to practice a little bit. Nothing special though. Then we went to stay at Jessica's house (good friend of Pat and Pam). Her parents are such AWESOME hosts. They make this great cinnimon cake. The other really cool thing is that we have a coach now. Jim Page, our American instructor, travelled with us to this comp... he even stayed was us at Jessica's - that was SO cool. We all ended up watching the lion king the night before the comp. That was a little unusual - but it was very fun.<br />
<br />
Sat:<br />
We danced so well... Everyone who beat us was supposed to, but there was nobody that we think that we ar ebetter then that beat us. Everything felt great. But the comp was set up so that you danced constantly... It was set up so that it went 1st round - callbacks - callbacks - callbacks - finals for all for dances. So you ended up dancing for a solid hour! Then if you throw in rookie/vets and intercollegiate. I think at one point in time I dance for a solid 2 hours. - That is competitive/showy dancing. And the comp went really slow - they were still on smooths at 3pm. This was 1/4 of the comp - and it was supposed toend at 8pm. yeah right - we got out of there at 1:15. But we danced really really well... It all felt great. At the end - the open stuff... I was so tired... I had hit my phyiscal limits about 3 hrs earlier. But I kept on dancing. I was so tired at the end that I couldn't even raise my other arm. It was fun though... we have so much crowd appeal. Everybody loves watching us dance... And the judges were very friendly this time, they would smile at you when you made eye contact. That is great!<br />
<br />
Totally died Sat night.<br />
<br />
Sun:<br />
We woke up and went to have a good breakfast. Then we went to the workshops taught by the smiling judges. It was great. Really fixed our frame. It was just to bad that my legs totally didn't want to work at all... every time that I would go up on my toes my legs would almost totally collapse on me. It was so tiring. It was a really good workshop though. Lots of personal attention. The drive back was okay. Stopped to have lunch at Max and Erma's... Came home and slept alittle bit. Then we watched a movie... and went to bed fairly early. I think I'm going to go to bed soon now... I'm still exhausted.<br />
<br />
So I'll talk to ya later.<br />
Cheerio!<br />
DrewdShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-48548907145215491632012-06-22T02:30:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:23:11.097-07:00Ohio State University Comp: Mar 1996<br />
Ohio State Comp 3/2/96<br />
<br />
Awards:<br />
3rd R/V Waltz w/ Sari<br />
3rd Am W/F w/ Chris<br />
3rd Am Tango w/ Chris<br />
3rd Int Vwaltz w/ Chris<br />
5th WCS w/ Pam<br />
5th Am Rumba w/ Chris<br />
6th Int Sa/J w/ Chris<br />
6th Merengue w/ Chris<br />
6th Int W/Q w/ Chris<br />
6th Am Cha w/ Chris<br />
6th R/V Fox w/ Sari<br />
<br />
<br />
Background info: This was the first comp in a 1.5 years that I did not dance<br />
with Liz. Liz was unable to take off from work two weekends in a row and<br />
CMU's comp is next week. I ended up competing with Chris Jelen, a friend from<br />
the OSU team - who has been around forever (something like 6 years<br />
competeing) but is now partnerless and hasn't danced since England.<br />
<br />
Friday:<br />
The drive down was a ton of fun. In my car was Danny, Angie, Michael, and<br />
Annie.... I was really glad to have Danny in my car, b/c I was in a very<br />
talkative mood on Friday. And with Danny you can definately keep a<br />
conversation going.... it is not usually all that interesting (Danny is great<br />
at useless information). We stopped at this huge mall in Wheeling... and they<br />
happened to have one of those photo booths right near the entrance that we<br />
walked in. So all 5 of us crammed into the booth... the lens was very small<br />
on the camera and we all squashed in to only get 1/2 of our faces in the<br />
picture - It was a lot of fun. While we were eating at the mall - somehow we<br />
got on the topic of imitating each other.... that was a ton of fun... I did<br />
some of Michael, Angie, Mikey, and Danny (they had already seen all of my Pat<br />
imitations). Danny did a couple of me that were particularly funny. In Ohio,<br />
we were all supposed to meet up at the "hospitality house" to get together<br />
with our repsective hosts... Well the directions to the house were not very<br />
good... but luckily we had Mapman (Danny) with us and using his superhuman<br />
navigational skills quickly identified the problem and directed us to the<br />
hospitality house without a problem.<br />
<br />
Chris came over rather quickly and Danny, Angie, and I went back to her place<br />
to crash. She is so much fun.... very random. She gave us a tour of her<br />
apartment and would say thinigs like "her is my kitchen... oh and here is the<br />
plate I chipped a year ago... and her is my bookshelf and the book I just<br />
finsihed reading.... oh and here is the picture my brother made for me 3<br />
years ago." It was very random... but still fun. We all talked until 1 or so<br />
then went to bed.<br />
<br />
Sat:<br />
Nothing really special happened in the morning.. I fed bobby pins to chris as<br />
she tried to do her hair...The comp was organized very weird... It was a 2<br />
day comp but they didn't have as many people as they thought that they were<br />
going to. It just seemed like there was a lot of down time....It was<br />
especailly boring because there was only 6 advanced couples there... That<br />
ment that everything that we danced was a final. So on Sat, outside of<br />
rookie/vet we only got do dance about 4 times. We danced<br />
smooth,rhyhtm,standard - Latin was on Sunday....That was just so wrong<br />
switching back and forth between the stlyes like that. It was kinda fun -<br />
chris and I ended up faking most of all the Americans b/c I know so little<br />
and she forgot so much. The social that night was fun. I wasn't in a<br />
particularly social mood.. I hung out more then I danced. It was still fun -<br />
I did a couple of 2 people dances. and I led Pat and Danny some. Did a great<br />
2-step w/ Pam. That night we talked for about 3 hours. I ended up giving<br />
Angie a back massage for about an hour or so.. That was fun - I haven't given<br />
a massage in a really long time.<br />
<br />
Sun:<br />
Having a 2 day comp is just so wrong. Trying to get your hips moving -<br />
especailly on day two is very wrong. We did okay on Sunday. I'm so much more<br />
confident in International and it showed too.. Chris even mentioned it. It<br />
was cool - I got a lot of compliments on my lead. The A team won both styles<br />
by one point. By sunday - all the other schools had left - so it was just OSU<br />
and CMU. It was very bizzare being on B team. It gives a completely different<br />
outlook. on things. We left soon after that. I had Danny and Angie drive home<br />
b/c I was heading to D/c that night.... I finished with the drive to DC and<br />
that is where we are now....<br />
<br />
I think that Chris really enjoyed dancing again. I'm really glad that I got a<br />
chance to compete with her.<br />
<br />
Cheerio!<br />
DrewdShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-73968854910450399222012-06-22T02:00:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:23:00.566-07:00Carnegie Mellon Comp: Mar 1996<br />
CMU competition 96 , March 9th/96<br />
<br />
Awards:<br />
4th Int C/R Open<br />
4th Int S/J Open<br />
4th Am Sw Open<br />
4th R/V Waltz w/ Stephannie Sicard<br />
3rd Am C/R Open<br />
3rd Am Vw Syllabus<br />
3rd Am W/F Syllabus<br />
3rd Int W/Q Syllabus<br />
2nd Int F/T Syllabus<br />
2nd Am Mambo Open<br />
1st Int VW Syllabus<br />
<br />
Fri:<br />
We had our social dance in the gym. It was not the best space but it seemed to go well. It got crowded really fast though. Liz showed me a new ending to our samba routine. It is a really cool new ending. I even was able to encorporate it this weekend. We had some fun mixers tonight as well... we did an all female quickstep and an all male Samba. Pat and I had never danced samba together - we would have done better but he kept getting confused and turned the wrong way. Then we had a raunchy rumba contest. Whoa! Ballroom dancers are so great! We are talking just short of taking all of their clothes off. Some of the activities during R_rumba including, untucking shirts / taking them off the guys. Taking of the guy;s belt/tie and using it in a provactive manner... and lots of other things... The best part had to have been that 2 of the "judges" members of our team - actually "old farts" on our team.... happened to be rather conservative. It was great watching their reaction.<br />
<br />
Kim and Kyle arrived right as we were leaving the gym - It was a good thing... I was getting kinda worried about them. We all went back to my place and hung out and talked till about 2:30 or so. We had decided that we would bother Derek least if he slept in the bed room and we all slept on the floor in the living room...So I brought out my mattress and Kim and Kyle appropriately arranged the soaf cushions. We all ended up sleeping togehter. That was cool. Didn't get much sleep though.<br />
<br />
Sat:<br />
The morning started off long... Playing full songs and slow judging. But that was okay. Smooth and Standard felt okay. I have no idea where the 1st in vwaltz came from...I can only think that the judges stopped looking at us after the first lap, b/c after that we definately looked really bad. Tango felt awesome though. Liz was going really far back on the reverse cortes and it just felt GREAT!..That was the morning... and since we were dancing open - we didn't dance again until that night like aruond 9:30 - 10... IT was very cool to be able to wear real people clothes for most of the comp. We danced all of our latins fairly well... Except international Rumba. Liz was totally going off on her own - didn't even need me there at all. It was pretty fun though b/c there were a lot of spectators that I knew there. Team matches went great! Our American Rumba was the sexiest it has EVER felt. IT was so cool!<br />
<br />
Unfortunately we were not able to finish team matches (or the rest of the comp for that matter). Appearently there was a miscommunication about the time that we had to be out of the building. We thought it was midnight and they thought it was 11. We tried doing some last minute negotiation w/ the owner, but he said "I'll be there in 20 minutes, I'm turning off the power ana calling 911 - click" So we ruslted everything up and got everyone out of the place in 20 minutes. It was very impressive. Sad that it had to happen, but very impressive non the less. So the judges didn't have time to finish judging the last round - so we couldn't really have a winner from the team matches.<br />
<br />
Afterwards we all went over to Pat's. It was a really cool spontaneous party. We had CMU, georgetown, Delaware, Maryland, and a handfull of other people there. I wasn't feeling well at this point. I think I was really dehydrated from the day and all the dust that was in the ballroom. If I would have eaten ANYTHING I would have vomitted. So I didn't have as much fun at the party as I could have. We came back and I had a really hard time sleeping b/c I still wasn't feeling well.<br />
<br />
Sun:<br />
We woke up a little early to go have a real breakfast. I still wasn't feeling well at this point. I thought I was. I tried a little bit of food at breakfast and promptly threw up into my cup. I've have never wanted to crawl away into a cave so bad in my life. But appearently I really impressed everyone (Kim, Kyle, Liz) because I had perfect aim... none spilled out of the cup and they didn't even really notice. All that they saw was a cup. Still INCREDIBLY embrasssing. But I felt instantly better.<br />
<br />
We then attended some workshops. The first one was an advanced foxtrot move. It was really cool. Involves a lunge and lots of swaying and stuff. The second workshop was a latin technique workshop - it seemed to be tailored just for us. The instructor covered absolutely everything that Liz and I are currently working on. It was very helpful... All that I can say is that I'm haunted by footspeed. That is my biggest problem right now. My feet don't move fast enough. Basically I'm doing "OneTwoThreeFour" instead of "One Two Three Four" (did you get that - It is a REALLY hard thing to describe in email). After that we ended up practicing and hanging out in the hallway for a really long time.<br />
<br />
Then Pat, Pam, Liz, Danny, Mikey all went out to eat. I was FINALLY able to. We stayed and talked there for a long time. After that, Liz decided to stay the night and leave really early that morning. We hadn't moved the mattress back so we ended up sleeping on the floor agian. The coolest thing, was that however we ended up was the most comfortable sleeping position that we have found yet! That was so neat. We fell asleep at around 9pm<br />
<br />
We woke up at 3:30 so she could leave. After that I went back to sleep until 9am. I wasn't even tired on Monday unlike usual comps.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7385359134654573701.post-62298111723391751242012-06-22T01:30:00.000-07:002012-06-22T11:22:47.780-07:00Cornell Comp: Mar 1996<br />
Cornell 3/28/96<br />
<br />
Awards<br />
5th Argentine Tango<br />
5th Advanced international F/T<br />
2nd Intermediate Int VW<br />
2nd Advanced Int VW<br />
1st Intermediate Am W/F<br />
1st Intermediate Int F/T<br />
1st Intermediate Int W/Q<br />
<br />
Key non-CMU people<br />
Kim, Kyle - Delaware friends<br />
Charlie, Leslie - Liz's Brother, and Sister-in-law<br />
<br />
<br />
Outline of events to be filled in later:<br />
<br />
Thurs:<br />
<br />
We went to Maryland's competition team practice on Thurs... we being Liz, Pat and Pam, and Annie and Andy. It was very weird - we actually practiced smooth as well as latin while we were there. We NEVER practice smooth. It was also really amuzing because we are really loud and have a lot of fun when we practice... Maryland doesn't. We got lots of strange looks from them. Afterwards we were hungry so we went to McDonalds for a quick bite. A couple of drunk students came in, saw our jackets and asked us about ballroom. So we ended up doing a swing and tango in McDonalds. Then one of the drunk guys thinking he could dance grabed Pam and danced with her (very poorly).<br />
<br />
Fri:<br />
Pat had to leave at 7 because he had an interview at Cornell at 2. So we all got up and helped them pack the car and said bye to them...A very amuzing thing happened while cleaning out Liz's car. Parked right next to her was a huge moving truck. It had backed into the space... well while Liz and Pam were cleaning out Liz's car - the driver started the truck. He just happened to be situated perfectly so that his exhaust blew right into Liz's car. I felt so sorry for Pat and Pam ( the passengers of Liz's car)... It must have taken forever to get that smell out. Liz had to wash her jacket right then to get rid of the smell.. I thought the whole thing was very amuzing. Liz and I then went back to bed until we left at noon with Annie and Andy. <br />
<br />
So we arrived in Ithaca and headed to the spot that we were going to meet Pat and Pam... All of a sudden a car honks at us (I thought that we were going to slow and they were pissed)... It turns out to be Kim and Kyle who just happen to be there then... we were supposed to call them when we got there. But this was just amazing. We went to a local pizza place for dinner. The wait happen to be about 45 minutes or so. Since it was a little chilly out - all 10 of us stood in the space in between the two doors. We were there for like 40 minutes. It was so much fun. We made fun of one guy standing inside whose monotone voice we heard ever time we opened the door. We would start up conversations with whoever was just passing through. Pat and Pam held the doors open for people. Pam would drop subtle messages to people as they passed through. She would say things like roaches in the food... etc... I think standing in the doorway might have been the most fun part of the trip.<br />
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We went to the social dance that night. It was pretty lame. Fairly bad music and a really small space. There were a couple of unique demos like Lindy hop, and Argentine Tango, but other then that it wasn't great. We left early to drive 2 hours to stay with Charile - Liz's brother. It wasn't a bad drive that night... We got there about midnight. BTW it was Pam, Liz and I staying at Charlies. Pat opted to stay closer w/ Cornell people because he was comp coordinator and needed to be around.<br />
<br />
That night was very fun. Charlie lives at the end of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in a small house. All three of us slept on the pull out sofa. That was kinda fun... the sofa wasn't the most comfortable thing, but it was definatley fun to sleep with 2 women. It is sort of nice to be a huge heat source when the house is kept very cold. :) :) :) :) :)<br />
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Sat:<br />
<br />
We drove 2 hours back Sat morning. It wasn't a bad drive again. Last summer I made a "morning of competition" tape. A tape to get you bouncing and moving while driving to the comp. We determined that the crash space should be either under 30 minutes or over 1:45 away. I put all the best songs first... so after 30 minutes the tape is not as interesting, but if you have a drive over 1.5 hours, then it has returned to the beginning and you get the good part right before you get to the comp.<br />
<br />
We kicked butt in Standards. Just look at the ribbons that we got. Latins, we didn't even make Semi's... This thoughly confused us. I still have no idea how that happened.<br />
<br />
The whole comp I was not in a very social mood... I talked mostly to Liz or to Kim and Kyle. But that's okay. Liz and I had a GREAT time in the fun dances... We totally went out there and hammed it up. I danced with Liz and Kim for the merengue and we even convinced Charlie and Leslie to compete during the polka. Leslie (sister-in-law) even got a ribbon dancing with Pat. Pat and Pam danced there interpretation of the Lindy Hop - which we now interpret as the Orangutan dance. It was just a lot of fun goofing off.<br />
<br />
Then since the comp finished on time, we were in the mood to go out to eat. We had asked this one supposed Cornell competitor where to go for food and drinks. This was a nice wild goose chase. One place was closed, the other was completely crowed. We ended up finding our way to a diner and we filled 5 booths. It was utter mayhem. The seats were really funky - fold up airplane like seats.<br />
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The Drive back to Charlies that night was INSANE. We left the diner around 3am. I was driving. Not many thoughts in my head other then the constant reminder that I was driving and shouldn't fall asleep. I also remember driving along and seeing a light change to red. I remember thinking that this ment something different then normal, but I could seem to remember what. Don't worry - Liz was awake and reminded me to stop. The worst part I was almost in a really bad accident a little bit later. All the lights on this country road are blinking yellow my direction and blinking red the other. Well the guy appearently didn't think anybody would be on these old country roads at 4 in the morning and went ahead and pulled out. I'm glad I have good breaks and was alert enough to hit them. No damage done, except the entire contents of the back seats slid up under my feet. Also I was really lucky that Pat and Pam following behind us were a good distance away and also had time to stop... Needless to say - I didn't have a problem staying awake after that. Actually I started to get tired again towards the end of the trip. I ended up pulling to the side of the road to have Liz take over about 20 feet from the Road that leads to Charlies. It was kinda amuzing.<br />
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<br />
That night at Charlies, Pat and Pam slept in the bed and Liz and I on the floor. Since the previous night was so cold, Charlie lit a fire in the furnace. Wow did it get hot in that place. In the middle of the night Pam left the bed to sleep in the hallway by the door to cool off... Pat woke up and could have sworn that he had fallen asleep inside the furnace. It was definatly uncomfortably hot. Amuzing - but hot.<br />
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Sun:<br />
Then in the morning, Charlie made AWESOME pancakes. He is such a good cook. He made a ton of them too... I ended up taking a nap while the girls were getting organized to leave. Then we went outside for a GORGEOUS day. We played with Charlie's goat (yes, Charlie owns a goat) - watching him eat the tree, stand on the bench, try to stand on the car, and chase Charlie for a jog.<br />
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Then Pat and I said bye to our partners who were headed back to DC... We took off for the burgh. The drive back was nothing spectacular. Pat and I talked a little bit, but not nearly as much as we normally do. We both kinda decided that we were burned out on competing and leaving every weekend. We also caught each other up on our spring breaks.<br />
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That night I made homemade pizza at Pat's... We even rolled the rough and everything. It was kinda a fun waste of time.<br />
<br />dShefmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13536061718008158529noreply@blogger.com0