And this weekend? I’m hanging out with my lindy hopping crew. A group of twenty two (TWENTY TWO!!?) of us are renting out a huge log cabin in Leavenworth.

Ah, December. Full of rain and snow and win.

Leavenworth, WA during the holidays (picture from Leavenworth.org)

Saturday morning I sort of randomly went canoeing with Kevin, a fellow BrightKite beta user who I ran into last week at Indy. I had a great time and have never seen more turtles, check this out:

Crazy, eh? I love exploring the area via canoe, in fact I think the highlight of our morning paddling adventure was attempting to find a way through the reeds. It was pretty hilarious, especially when the going got tough and we nearly tried walking across some not-so-stable marshy “land” that turned out to be not so much “land” as a floating mass of vegetation.

Later on Saturday, I spent time with the girls at Gasworks Park for Elise’s bachelorette and went to a spa with Melissa for her birthday, so it was a very relaxing day. Saturday night Danielle and I went to the Ladytron concert, which was a blast, albeit a bit smelly in the mosh pit. I got some great pictures, so it was worth enduring. :-)

Sunday was our once-a-month family day, during which my nuclear family hangs out together. I always look forward to this, and Sunday was no exception. We enjoyed lunch at my place and a beautiful day at Woodland Park Zoo, but mostly we just enjoyed each other’s company.

Sunday night the usual crew and I went swing dancing, and the DJ was playing some rockabilly stuff that was rather jumping. Kevin dropped in as well and proved to be a really fun swing lead. But, we all had to get up early, for the next morning the crew and I (plus Bryan and Dustin) went hiking. We tried the Snow Lake trail off exit 52 on I-90 for a while, but as it was named appropriately we soon found things to be very, very cold and wet. We abandoned that trail and took the Rattlesnake Ledge trail – one of my favourites – and went further on it than I have before. Rattlesnake has some absolutely stunning views. I have to mention that the entire weekend had nothing but beautiful weather.

Weekends like this just make you love life. I feel really lucky.

Oh, and this is not related to last weekend, but I’m really excited about it, so it’s going in the blog anyway: I just got a call from Big Brothers/Big Sisters. It looks like they have matched me with a “little”; I’m really excited. I’ll be meeting her and her mother on the 10th. She’s 7 years old, and I’ve been told very bright and friendly. I’ve know what it’s like to be a real-life big sister, but Harmony is only a year and a half younger than me. We’re so close in age, it’s great – we’re best friends. But I’m a little nervous about how to be a mentor and friend to one so much younger than me. My excitement outweighs my nervousness though, I’m really looking forward to meeting and getting to know her.

Fist, an unordered list of random things I enjoy:

• Hanging out with good friends
• Meeting new people
• Exercise that’s cleverly disguised as fun
• Big band music from the 30s and 40s
• Being goofy and silly and people finding that cool
• Feeling like a rockstar, if only for one song
• Figuring something new out and then perfecting it
• Covering up the “oh-no-tomorrow-is-Monday” dread

Add all these things together, mix thoroughly, and *BAM!* you have swing dancing. How much do I love dancing? Well, I bicycled about ten miles on Friday, hiked almost as many miles on Saturday, and went canoing on Sunday – my body was basically ready to mutiny on me, but I just couldn’t stay away from dancing at the Century Ballroom tonight. Even when my legs are ready to fall off, I start swing dancing and forget it all, I could dance for hours.

Another bonus: it’s physically impossible to be sad while swing dancing or even shortly thereafter. At least, that is, until you accidentally drive over a little white mouse on Denny Avenue on the way home. Oh, that made me so, so bummed.

But I digress – dancing is awesome. One of the things I love is that the crew that I go with is equally enthralled with dancing and we’re always trying to figure out new and interesting looking moves. We’ll work on a technique until we nail it, and then integrate it into our dance “vocabulary” for the future. We’re all getting better together. We also usually have an even ratio of gals to guys, meaning we all get to dance every song, and everyone has their own style. Tonight we even did a bit of a “do-si-do” during which the whole group of us would simultaneously change partners several times during one song. It was a blast. We took some great shots tonight, once the guys upload them I’ll be sure to add to this post.

I think it goes without saying (but people always follow up that phrase by stating the obvious, and who am I to break societal norms?) that I highly recommend swing dancing. Special emphasis on the Lindy Hop, which is like all the awesomeness of swing dancing plus the coolness of ten ninjas. If you’d like to give it a go, I’d recommend just running a Google search for “swing dance” plus the name of your town and you’re likely to come up with a lot of options (assuming you live in someplace mildly entertaining). Swing has a huge following all over the United States.