Thanksgiving

Oh man, I love thanksgiving. It's like the ultimate in foodie holidays. This year it was mostly done by me with some help from the sisters. Our menu included:

Appetizers (always eaten around 1:00) -

-Toasted baguette slices with goat cheese and balsamic tart cherries
-Veggie platter
-Deviled eggs
-Brie wrapped in phyllo dough with jam
-Stuffed dates

Dinner -

-Turkey (which I vowed not to overcook, and succeeded!)
-Homemade apple cider gravy
-Roasted sweet potatoes
-Roasted brussels sprouts
-Green bean casserole (which I personally despise, but other people like it)
-Onion and celery stuffing with raisins and walnuts
-Cranberry mousse (a dessert from the 50's made with lots of jell-o and cool whip. It's delicious, I don't care what anyone says. And somehow even though it's a dessert we always eat it with dinner.. though I'm totally not complaining)

Dessert -

Pumpkin cheesecake (i.e. the best thing ever)



In between preparing and eating all of this goodness we played lots of board games and watched movies. Good holiday in my book.

Maybe I can actually make a difference.

Last Wednesday was my last week of teaching at RPI for the semester. Usually by that point in time, we'd probably have 5-10 students left in lindy 1 and lucky if we still had a lindy 2 class going.

At the start of the semester I tried to be optimistic and even threw in a different set up, starting with them off with some easy solo jazz steps (thanks Jesse and Mike!), which I continued to do throughout the semester.

Now, I don't credit myself to being the best teacher ever, but I can definitely see when people are struggling. A month or two in is when I started to see the frustrated faces of the kids trying to get their swing outs, that's when I knew it was time to switch gears and say to hell with swing outs for a couple weeks. That's when I broke out my super fun and silly classes, guaranteed to get some laughs and make people feel like it's ok to be a little less serious. For me that means mess around, mini dip, and some easy styling. I don't know whether these classes are more for me or the students, but it makes me so excited to see them having fun.

When I was teaching the girls their first swivel, I was talking about how I think of it as the opposite of a "model walk". So for the hell of it, we did model walks up and down the floor. The boys even got a kick out of it while they were having their pow wow in the corner. I love having them do ridiculous things. Hahaha, I should never have this much power. ;)

To my surprise, come October into November will still had a good 30-40 kids for lindy 1. So for the last week we threw a party for them after class. During this time we had elections for all of the club officers, and they gave their speeches telling everyone why to vote for them. It made me ecstatic to see people who had just joined that semester so enthusiastic and telling everyone that swing club was their favorite club.

Afterwards we all hung out, ate pizza and danced. I can't even begin to say how proud I am of every single one of them, they've all come such a long way and are SO excited about it. It makes me proud to teach them. :) We even had a special performance by the lindy 2 class, who are getting so good! I love teaching those guys.


I had a lot of people come up and thank me before they left, and when I asked them if I'd see them next semester, I think the general response was, "Psssh, of course!"


:)

Late Night Thoughts.

Up late, thinking about where I want my life to go.

I've recently been trying to figure out what part of baking I want to go into. The four main categories would probably be:

Cake Decorating - "Pros" - Normalish job hours, lot of room for creativity. "Cons" - Extremely competitive, you have to extremely good at what you do to get anywhere, and you have to have major artistic talent. I've pretty much written this one off considering I have pretty much zero artistic talent. Can't draw for beans.

Artisan Bread Baking - "Pros" - It's bread. Who doesn't love bread? It's simple, beautiful art. Yet extremely complex, which makes it a very interesting challenge. Something about it seems magical. "Cons" - Hours. Getting up at 2am and going to work. Pretty much killing having a normal life. That means if I wanted to go dancing, I'd have to dance, leave early and go to work. Which might work out extremely well, I haven't quite decided. Also, I might get bored. I don't like routines so much, and baking bread is very routine. Same thing, day after day. Despite those things, this one is high on my list.

Plated Desserts - "Pros" - Somewhat flexible hours, a lot of room for creativity. "Cons" - very complex.. which is either good or bad depending on who you're talking to. Up to you to keep up with the latest culinary trends. For me, all that creativity and trendiness might wear me out eventually. Very time and labor intensive.

Everything that goes under the "Bakery" umbrella, which usually includes some form of bread, plus danish, cookies, pies, etc.. "Pros" - ... "Cons" - Way too much going on. Crazy hours. I've seen the effects of what this setting does to people. It makes them crazy. I hate making cookies, pies and danish in large quantities. I think I would for sure go insane. This is at the bottom of my list, if you hadn't already noticed.


As you can see, I've thought about each one of these in detail. These aren't even all of my options, just the main categories I could come up with. Top of my list: Artisan bread. I'd really love to go into a "just" bread bakery and see what it's all about. It's on my long list of things to do.


Yup, I think about this stuff a lot.

Parts of my life.

Can't say how fantastic is was to go to Rochester last weekend. It's really become my second home with all of the wonderful people and dancing. I even got to perform my super fun routine with Jesse, just having choreographed half of it that day. Good times. It will be better for Lindy Focus, I promise.
As always, Steven and Virginie continue to inspire every year, always leaving me wanting more. And that band was totally kick ass. My god. The best I've heard in a really really long time. I'm pretty much music in love with them.

On a different note, with the exception of last Tuesday, I've pretty much been boycotting Tuesday practices for a couple reason. Tuesday is really my only night where I'm not obligated to do something, so it's nice to be lazy and go to bed early so I'm not exhausted at my 8am class on Wednesday. The other and probably more prominent reason is that the scene doesn't inspire me anymore. The people, the music, the general feel of the scene. Now, you can call me a snob, I really don't care, but before you do, let it be known there is no one my level in Albany. Most people think they have it bad when they have a group of five or ten people to have great dances with. Well you don't. Because I have no one.
This isn't meant to insult people in Albany because some of you are good and trying to get better, I've been there and respect that. But the fact still remains that there's no one to push my dancing. So if you don't see me out, you know why.

Now, this is a subject I don't talk about very much, if at all. In my regular day to day life, I'm pretty much stressed out all of the time. Another reason why S&V was great, I wasn't stressed out because I don't think about stressful things when I'm having fun.
The main reason being that my parents (second) divorce trial is in a week and stepping into my house at the current time is emotionally draining, I usually can't relax and I'm pretty on edge. If it wasn't for school, I probably wouldn't still be here. But on the upside of this, something, if good or bad, will happen in a week, hopefully making my life better. So if you see me looking tired and stressed, that's probably why.

Life happens, we deal with it.

<3