Things are cooking!

So Evelyn and I had a cooking date today. It was so much fun! Yeah, I actually pulled a recipe off of the Internet and then Ev and I went to the store, picked up the ingredients and a movie, and went to my place to cook! Ok, so when I say my place, I mean my parents place. I've been taking care of it while they're in Hawaii. Of course, the downside to this is that I have NO clue where anything in the house is! It took us FOREVER to actually prepare everything, because we were searching for everything! It took 5 minutes to find the vegtable oil, 10 minutes to find sugar! Actually, we found brown sugar, I believe, but actual white sugar was only found in the form of sugar cubes...which made them fun to measure (4 looks kinda like a tablespoon...). It's also kinda strange to toss sugar cubes in with the chicken (it's fine, they'll dissolve. They will, uh, they aren't dissolving? Dissolve, damn you! They aren't, uh, well, oh, ok. Finally). But everything turned out well in the end. Actually, it's recipe to add to the list, since it was in fact quite good.

Now, the movie, in contrast, was in fact quite bad. If you haven't seen Raising Helen, consider yourself lucky. Heh, well, ok, it's not quite that bad. It did have some cute parts to it, and it was fun to laugh over how cheesy some of the dialogue was.

Halloween party part 2

And on to the next party! This time it's the U of C dance at Our Lady of Grace Church. Yep, this was a fun time too! Evelyn wasn't there, but there were a lot of my friends around, so that was good =). I actually spent a bunch of time introducing people, since it seems I must have been doing a rather poor job of that lately. Sandi and I got the chance to put on a performance for the dance, which was pretty cool (even if I had to be convinced of it). Van and Michelle came after us and put on a stellar performance, as always. Vince was laughing that it was the "Debian Show" since both Van and I work for Debian. Pictures to follow!

Halloween party part 1

Ahh, the weekend. A time to finally relax after a long week at the office. Well, except for this week. It's halloween! So Evelyn and I went to the Halloween party at Rundle tonight, which was great! Actually, we started out at the Metropolitan grill on 17th ave with a fabulous supper. I totally recommend going there if you haven't been before. After that, we went to the dance. Evelyn made me wear this crazy Alladin costume, which was, well, maybe I'll just post a picture. Of course, I only had "most" of the costume, so people really had no clue what I was supposed to be. Oh well, it was fun, and Evelyn had her revenge on me =).

the lessons begin again

So we had our first (well, second) lesson with Diana today! She's amazing...my head hurts from trying to absorb all the information that we get. It's just great. Of course, now Sandi and I are having a hell of a time trying to incorporate everything we learned and still manage to keep up to the music! That's so sad....hopefully we can figure it all out before the competition next week!

The Look

Sandi in full makeup

Michelle, Sandi, and I

Vien and I, the famous "Self Portrait"

Chirlene and I

Our Second Gold, soon after

Our First Gold!

Ready for competition

The Thrill of Victory!

We Won! Ok, I just had to get that out. So, yeah, Sandi and I just had our first dance competition. We were competing in both Newcomer and Bronze Latin, and we actually won gold in both categories! I still can't quite comprehend it! And to think that we were debating on if we were even good enough to bother competing in Bronze at all! So, it pretty much goes without saying that this has been a pretty good day for both Sandi and I. Hehe, I feel like I should start thanking people, except then this would sound like a speech, and I don't want to do that (thanks Mom and Dad!).

Now Sandi and I have a nice, 2-3 day break before we have to start working towards our next competition, which is 2 weeks from now. I plan to go see Evelyn tomorrow, then take a nice break from dancing by...uh, well, I'll probably go to the level 1 dance class on Monday, and I'm definitely going to teach my Latin class on Tuesday, followed of course by dancing in my level 3 class right after that (6-8 and 8-10 respectively). Yep! So after that nice long break from dancing, I'm hoping that we can arrange to have a dance lesson as early as Wednesday! What a break! Wow, what will I do with myself? With Martin gone, however, we're still wondering what to do for a new teacher. Van suggested we try to get Diana, and Vince suggested Dany and Eric if not. So we'll try to get Diana, Dany, or Eric in that order. I hope we can get Diana!

Don't worry, everybody. Pictures are soon to follow. I don't know what we have in terms of us actually dancing, but we definitely have pictures of the dance competition in general. I just have to get them off of my friend Vien.

So Sandi and I had our first practice at the Studio. Well, no, our first Competitor practice at the Studio. I thought that it would be horribly intimidating, but it turned out to be a lot of fun! There is just so much competitive energy around the place, that you can't help but get caught up in everything. So that was good. However, what wasn't so good is that we found out that Diana and Martin, the owners of the Studio, have separated. They are married and dance partners, as well as being arguably the best teachers in Calgary. Diana is going to be taking all the responsibilities of the Studio, and Martin is going back to Montreal. He was there at the practice today, and everyone was crowding around him to wish him off. Most people were crying; it was a very sad scene. Martin happens to be our dance teacher, so we've gotten to know him over the last couple months. He is a great guy and definitely will be missed.

Another fun day for the Fire Hall

So I had my dance class today. TA'ing went well, and then my level 3 class afterwards was fun! Even despite having it end rather prematurely due to the fire alarm going off! But such is life; we only missed the last 15 minutes so it wasn't too bad.

Well, Sandi and I got to put on a performance after all! We managed to perform our Bronze cha cha routine in front of our Latin class. I'm really glad that we got at least a little bit of a chance to dance in front of people...before heading out onto the dance floor on Saturday. In case someone doesn't know, Sandi and I are competing in our first ever dance competition this Saturday! Whoa, scary, I know! Should be really great, though. I'm definitely looking forward to it! I'm going to need to see how many people I can drag there, since I'm going to need all the support I can get!!

Welcome to my Blog!

Blogging under the influence

Well, I've finally gone and done it. I've created a blog. If anyone is wondering, the influence I'm blogging under is the subtle influence of everyone around me getting their own blogs. So here I am! We'll see how it goes; only time will tell how much use I'll get out of this thing.