If you like ballroom dance at all, I highly recommend this relaxed, fun, and affordable event. Put it on your calendar for next year. It looks like New Year’s Eve is on a Saturday in 2011, the championship could be before the Gala Ball on Thursday – Saturday, or after Sunday through Monday.

I hope you all rang in the new year with similar joy and fun. Happy new year!

For those who cannot see the embedding:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbZnkyjqaBo

Enrique De Fazio & Guillermo De Fazio are amazing, and fun!

I wasted a few hours fighting with horribly written Windows software to update our old Garmin StreetPilot 2620 GPS with new maps and more pre-programmed waypoints. The GPS is great, but the PC interface is crap.

We then headed over to the JW Marriott in DC to attend New Year’s Eve Gala at Yuletide Ball with friends. Ann and Dan brought Prosecco which we matched to our own. Montelliana Extra Dry (Montello E Colli Asolani) is fabulous as a dry palate cleanser before dinner.

The gala was a lot of fun, and we got to see many friends we’ve not seen in some time. Squeezed in loads of dancing and saw the current world 10 dance champions Gherman Mustuc and Iveta Lukosiute do some pretty amazing routines.

New Year’s Day we snagged a bite at the Starbucks in the hotel and headed over to the National Aquarium ($7 each) and saw perhaps 140 small and large aquariums with fish, corals, eels, turtles, frogs, newts, and even a couple of crocodiles.

We chased that with lunch and then a lengthy visit to the lovely new Sant Ocean Hall exhibit at the Natural History Museum, which is splendid, and I am still stunned by one high-tech gadget display of a globe with a projector inside suspended by three wires from the ceiling running a educational program about the many important functions the ocean serves our planet; while people watched the globe-screen images from all sides… really amazing… I want a globe like that; wow!

It was called Global Ocean Systems, and apparently there are four shows it is programmed to run. We scored a copy of the museum’s own Ocean book, gorgeous, informative, short article loaded for easy reading in short bursts.

Les Halles is closed, which is sad.

Had fun dancing with Michele, though I had problems with Mambo again. The Ballroom Studio students did well overall.

Woke up Friday to discover the room bill under our door, and they’d charged us $7.70 each for two bottles of tea that had been precariously balanced on a vending plate with sensors under it; the bottles toppled off when I closed a drawer in the bureau that the plate was on top of and we never drank the over priced tea. It’s pretty bad when you lease a room for convenience and comfort and it’s booby trapped with extortion devices. The hotel quickly removed the charges for that.

I bought a new latin shirt from Julio & Julio, and learned that they will be at a few Arthur Murray events this year.

I love being busy “doin’ good works” (as Jayne would say) but I also like having time to keep up with the aquarium, visit friends, attend Buddhist meetings and attempt to maintain the garden. Friday, Erci and I visited a new dance studio, the Fred Astaire studio on Lee Highway, and we got an incredibly warm welcome though the traffic was a monster. Part of the traffic snarl was because of exceptionally pretty warm, moist fog in the area.

Saturday we both fought headaches all day, and I made the run up to the La Belle Compagnie meeting at Rob and Sam’s home where they fed us royally and living history planning was done. This morning we finally got to a Soka Gakkai Buddhist discussion meeting and did some much needed grocery shopping together for the first time in ages, then I did some gardening while she got her nails done.

Erci has finished her business law class and has only two more 6 week classes to finish her MBA, and I finally see light at the end of the long dark tunnel of MBA widower status… yippea!!! I think I will have to take her on a drunken, debauched, dance cruise someplace warm where you can wear almost nothing and drinks have little umbrellas in them… anyone want to come along?

The cats have been very cute and affectionate lately, it is very nice. There is the smell of beef stew permeating the house, and excellent music on the stereo (“Aux Cyclades ƒlectronique” by Bertrand Burgalat) and life is very, very good. I am very grateful.

Could not find Johnny Cash’s “Man in Black” on Ruckus, so I am listening to The Doors to get my beatnik mind on.

It is raining heavily which helps a lot, perhaps I can recite some poetry later.

Who comes up with these costume party ideas anyway?

Drunken ribeye and Malbec were an awesome way to end the evening talking to dancers and Eve about her upcoming trip to Japan. Mentioned to her the trip we did in 2005, documented here in detail.

Sunday we spent skimming leaves out of the pool, raking leaves out of the heater/air-conditioner mechanicals, and doing yard work preparing for the changing seasons, then ran a few errands we needed to get done. We curled up to catch up a little on TrueBlood episodes.

http://gallery.mac.com/scottdavidnolan#100087

I guess I did not realize how important this hobby has become to my happiness. Erci and I started taking lessons at the Arthur Murray studio back in May, 1996. We have not stopped since, and we continue to enjoy it immensely. We dance several places regularly, and we simply love to dance.

At times it has been painful (plantar fasciitis for me; knee, hip, and foot injuries for her). Often it has been frustrating trying to learn something new and not getting it for weeks or sometimes (rarely) even months. It is an expensive hobby the way we do it (costumes, lessons, shoes, events), but it is probably the last thing we’d give up. It is that much fun… it mixes physical, mental, social, and music interests. It just does not get much better than dance.

My favorites change from year to year, but samba and west coast swing are most consistently and frequently my favorite dances. For over a year I have also really loved foxtrot, quickstep, and rumba; but before that it was swing and cha-cha. I used to hate club swing and hustle, but I am finally learning the hustle step correctly and it makes even that dance much more fun. Mambo and salsa have been the biggest challenges for me, I simply can’t identify which beat is the one on many popular mambo and salsa tunes (I can clearly hear beats, but which is which is my problem). An excellent DVD explaining mambo clave beats has helped enormously… I figure I can find the 2 about 35% of the time now instead of 10% of the time… but that still leaves a lot of good salsa music out for me…

I believe that regular dance helps prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease because it makes your brain exercise socially, mentally, and physically all at once. Dancing as probably helped prevent my getting much fatter than I already am. I have certainly met many fantastic people from many walks of life while dancing and at dance events. It is fun being able to dress up once in a while for an event (how many guys my age own their own tuxedo with tails?).