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Saturday's Mainstream Class
This past Saturday was a little busier than my usual, but it was very nearly a perfect day nonetheless.
I got out of bed around 9 AM. This is utterly early for me on a weekend: I prefer to sleep until the crack of noon, catching up on the accumulated sleep deficit of the prior week. Getting up this early was itself a minor miracle as I had stupidly set my alarm to go off at 9 PM instead of 9 AM. The more I think of it, the more I see this as a user interface failure... I've done this so many times that it would be worthwhile to have some sort of built-in safeguard to prevent this kind of error. Anyway....
By 10 AM, I was on the road into the NW side of DC to get my hair cut at my preferred barber shop. They used to be two blocks south of my office so I walked down there at the end of my afternoon shifts in prior years but since my transfer to middle-of-bloody-nowhere northern Maryland, it's less convenient. I had to wait only 10 minutes before Luigi had me in the chair; the entire buzz operation took only another 10 minutes. With a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up some snacks for the square dance class and to the CVS to pick up a prescription for Kent, I was home by 11:30 AM. Mission Status: Success.
By 12:15 PM, we were on the road to Baltimore. Traffic was rather heavy on I95 northbound but we arrived with a few minutes to spare for the 1 PM class. The last few students were trickling in as we were setting up. We have eight new dancers and another ten angels so we had two squares dancing continuously with a couple of spares. I opened the first block, reviewing definitions and about half of the calls from last week; after a few minutes' break, Kent reviewed the balance of the review.
Over the next couple of hours, we went through the additional seven new calls Dayle had asked us to teach, as well as two extras which were on the optional list if time allowed. We allocated the final block of 45 minutes or so to drill & practice on all of the calls to date, to field any additional questions and iron out any issues perceived by the new dancers, our angels or ourselves.
This is a sharp bunch of new members: We had allocated a fairly large block of time for review as they were drinking from the fire hydrant last week, and we had two dancers with us this time who were unable to attend last week so it was entirely new to them. They easily handled every variation we gave them. There were only two minor items which needed a little additional practice: turning in the correction during 'square thru' and girls turning in the right direction for the 'circle to a line' finale. After a few run-throughs of those calls, everyone had them down cleanly.
After dancing wrapped up at 5 PM, Kent & I joined Dave R. for dinner at The Stables before heading home. Dayle called while we were on the road during a break in his calling in Philadelphia to ask how things went; I think he was pleasantly surprised how well our class had gone. I've yet to write up a more detailed report for him, but I'll probably borrow liberally from this LJ report. :-)
We spent the balance of the evening mostly sitting around home. I should have done laundry, but instead we watched some cheesy made-for-lowbrow-TV movies on the SciFi channel, then Dr. Who on PBS until 2 AM. We'll write off last night's laziness as a periodic indulgence and reward for good work done earlier in the day.
I got out of bed around 9 AM. This is utterly early for me on a weekend: I prefer to sleep until the crack of noon, catching up on the accumulated sleep deficit of the prior week. Getting up this early was itself a minor miracle as I had stupidly set my alarm to go off at 9 PM instead of 9 AM. The more I think of it, the more I see this as a user interface failure... I've done this so many times that it would be worthwhile to have some sort of built-in safeguard to prevent this kind of error. Anyway....
By 10 AM, I was on the road into the NW side of DC to get my hair cut at my preferred barber shop. They used to be two blocks south of my office so I walked down there at the end of my afternoon shifts in prior years but since my transfer to middle-of-bloody-nowhere northern Maryland, it's less convenient. I had to wait only 10 minutes before Luigi had me in the chair; the entire buzz operation took only another 10 minutes. With a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up some snacks for the square dance class and to the CVS to pick up a prescription for Kent, I was home by 11:30 AM. Mission Status: Success.
By 12:15 PM, we were on the road to Baltimore. Traffic was rather heavy on I95 northbound but we arrived with a few minutes to spare for the 1 PM class. The last few students were trickling in as we were setting up. We have eight new dancers and another ten angels so we had two squares dancing continuously with a couple of spares. I opened the first block, reviewing definitions and about half of the calls from last week; after a few minutes' break, Kent reviewed the balance of the review.
Over the next couple of hours, we went through the additional seven new calls Dayle had asked us to teach, as well as two extras which were on the optional list if time allowed. We allocated the final block of 45 minutes or so to drill & practice on all of the calls to date, to field any additional questions and iron out any issues perceived by the new dancers, our angels or ourselves.
This is a sharp bunch of new members: We had allocated a fairly large block of time for review as they were drinking from the fire hydrant last week, and we had two dancers with us this time who were unable to attend last week so it was entirely new to them. They easily handled every variation we gave them. There were only two minor items which needed a little additional practice: turning in the correction during 'square thru' and girls turning in the right direction for the 'circle to a line' finale. After a few run-throughs of those calls, everyone had them down cleanly.
After dancing wrapped up at 5 PM, Kent & I joined Dave R. for dinner at The Stables before heading home. Dayle called while we were on the road during a break in his calling in Philadelphia to ask how things went; I think he was pleasantly surprised how well our class had gone. I've yet to write up a more detailed report for him, but I'll probably borrow liberally from this LJ report. :-)
We spent the balance of the evening mostly sitting around home. I should have done laundry, but instead we watched some cheesy made-for-lowbrow-TV movies on the SciFi channel, then Dr. Who on PBS until 2 AM. We'll write off last night's laziness as a periodic indulgence and reward for good work done earlier in the day.