Contra!

I have been saying lately that I need to get more active. I'm not generally all that worried about losing weight, as long as I stay reasonably healthy - and I had been in the past, but recently I could tell that I was not. I suspect my lack of activity was contributing to my recent bad bout of depression. Now that I'm getting out of that, I want to get more exercise in my life. That's a lot harder than it sounds, with two small children and a tight budget.

Well, I've wanted for ages to get back to contra dancing. I've done it with friends in Atlanta when visiting there, but never here - because it's allllll the way over east of downtown Dallas. Well, I realized they were doing it this weekend, and I really wanted to go, so I sent a begging email to sandy_tyras and she agreed to come watch the kids for a few hours, and selenite and I went.

It was great. Nice friendly people, good music. We got there a bit late, and had to leave early - I actually only ended up dancing two contra dances and half a waltz with selenite, but it's a good start. He hasn't done contra dance in something like 3 or 4 years? Or maybe more? But nonetheless he did very well. I feel good, energetic, exercised! And it's a kind of exercise I like doing, I enjoy the movement and the music and the patterns are wonderful and make me feel so good. I don't *mind* that I get all hot and sweaty, and there are very few forms of exercise that's true for.

We really need to do more of this. Seriously, this is going to increase my lifespan. I need this.

One thing that will help is that they're changing locations - someone actually bought an old theater and they're turning it into a dance hall, with a sprung wood floor!!!. It should be done by early July. It's also about 25 minutes closer to us, they say. This will help a lot.

But we are going to need babysitters. I told sandy_tyras to think about what could we do for her to make it worth her time to do this for us more, and maybe we can find other people who can babysit too. I really need that. And hey, maybe other people would like to come dancing, too.

(Note for those who haven't done it - contra is a lot of fun, and honestly, I think a lot less intimidating than most forms of dance. You don't have to make up some sort of dancing and hope you look cool, like in clubbing - it's more like programming code dance, there's a set pattern to follow, which they walk you through to start, then keep calling with the music.)

Update: Here is the website for the dance organization