Dancing! And, well, more Dancing!

The West Side Story workshop was fun. From the first second to the last (I didn't want to go home). Slightly harder than I expected, it was straight into it, no mucking around, but thankfully I picked it up. The routines gave my whole body a good workout, but the aches that I was expecting the next day never came. Fantastic!
I'm definitely going to be taking more classes, and if you're in London you can check out what's on offer here.

So onto Friday night, and time for one of my favourite nights out in London, EQ Live. A chance to see newish acts in a fantastic bar with a great atmosphere. I grabbed a group of friends and headed over to Bar Music Hall last night to see what was on offer. As usual, the evening didn't disappoint, all the acts were fab, but it was the Red Blooded Women who had the whole crowd packing out the floor (they sure know how to work it). Amazing as ever, and I now have some new music ideas to listen to, thanks to Raj again for making it all happen. And because I was utterly sensible, I am hangover free and happily kicking off my weekend with a fantastic Full English brekkie. Life is Good.

Tonight, Tonight, it all began tonight

It's been well over a year since I did an actual proper dance class. There was a whole period in the middle where I went to the gym, but sadly it had no dance of any sort. Now I've moved office again and there's a dance place just a few minutes around the corner.

I seem to have a problem with restarting things gently (I always have - last time I did a step class I couldn't walk properly for about a week), and so tonight, I am off to a 2 hour workshop, themed around West Side Story. This is one of my favourite films of all time. It's taught by someone who was actually in the show in the West End. Can't really get much better than that unless Arlene came along to teach it. And I'm sure if that happened I'd be crying a couple of minutes in.

Thankfully, Frame sells itself as exercise whilst having fun. Phew and thank goodness for that, I am a little bit scared as I tend to get with new places. Sadly, I'm no longer a spring chicken and I'm one hip operation down, so getting down to the floor and up again can be somewhat challenging. But whatever, I just feel pretty unfit and I'd be happy to do something I love and have some fun.

I shall report back on how it goes!

February check-in

It's funny really, isn't it, how something which seems small and insignificant can balloon into something much bigger.

I'm trying to think back to what I would do with my free time roughly a year ago. I think that the answer is not much. Probably play a few computer games, watch some TV, go for walks, that sort of thing.

Less than a year ago, I was re-introduced to Green Day. Not that I didn't like them before, but the only song I really remembered was Basket Case. I guess I must have liked them way back then though, because I remember very vividly that I was sitting in the spare room of my parents house on the computer listening to it, spinning around on the office chair, with my dad telling me to turn the volume down.

I've been back and listened to their recent stuff (I'm pretty addicted now). It made me realise there's a heap of music that I'd not even considered. So, point one, more music. This in turn led to more gigs. Rob and I over the last year must have gone to at least 20 gigs or concerts, a huge amount more than in previous years. We've tried some favourites, we've also been to ones that were hosted by the Electroqueer blog that I found early last year. They mainly host new artists, so this is interesting and the gigs have been incredible so far.

We went to the Green Day Art Of Rock project which was on at the same time as the gigs at the O2. I loved the art so much, I went and looked up the artists. I discovered that I really really like stencil art. So I'm going and taking a bunch of my friends to the Eelus show in London at the end of Feb. and I've also decided to try some simple stencilling for myself. Thanks to Ed Roth of Stencil 1, there are books which help me to have a go.




On top of that, I've also started up my stitching again. The penguins are complete. The Iris is a quarter done. I've joined a photography group so that I can try some modelling. The results from the first shoot were promising, but gave me ideas of things I need to work on. The experience was incredible fun.

I wonder what I used to do with my free time - compared to how things are now, it seems like I used to do nothing but waste it.

Pick up a Penguin

Only a week late of my deadline (lets face it, after this amount of time an extra week is hardly going to make the difference), I have finally finished cross stitching 22 little penguins. I thought the day would never come. But spurred on by the prospect of a new project to continue after this one, plus the boots I would buy myself once I had finished, I managed to complete them last night. Hooray!

Below you can find one of them, but if you want to see the full set, please take a look here.