Third Time's the Charm

So, yeah. I started Harry Potter 6 again. Eric C. loaned me the audio book version, though, so I get to "read" it that way now. There's still an important clue that I vaguely remembered and wanted to verify, though somehow I missed it entirely on my second (admittedly fast) reading. It's neat to hear Jim Dale reading it, too. He won an award of some sort for his reading of book 5, with something like 134 separate character voices in it. Neat. He does do a good job at that, though I'd say he could use a bit more pitch variation when it comes to the female characters and the kids. Ginny in particular seems to have a surprisingly deep voice for a 15 year old girl. Oh well. It's fun.

Salsa vs. Lindy

Well, my plan for Steppin' Out was to start the beginning salsa series next Wednesday. Unfortunately, when I checked on it last night, I found that the schedule changed from what's on the website, and the beginning class is now at 6:00. Ugh. I could make it there if I wanted to (since I've been working on a slightly earlier schedule recently anyway) but there's no way I'd want to wait around for two hours afterwards for the 9:00 swing dance. And I do want to be able to do both a class and a dance, especially as long as it's the same price either way. So now I'm thinking I'll take the intermediate lindy hop class at 7:00 instead. That will be fun, too, though probably less "good for me" than a beginning salsa class. But it's just 4 weeks, so I can see how I like it and then decide what to do after that.

Steppin' Out

I'd been hearing about Steppin' Out, a relatively new dance venue in Sunnyvale, for a while, and I finally got around to checking it out last night. Wednesday nights are Lindy Hop nights, though they've got lots of other dances all through the week. I might consider doing West Coast Swing on Mondays, especially since it's Richard Kear who's teaching. There's also Hustle on Tuesdays and Salsa some other time, both of which I should take some actual lessons in eventually. Lindy Hop is what I've most had a hankering for recently, though. Too bad it's on Wednesdays, since that makes for a very long day after work and library. Still, I liked it a lot there, in spite of a somewhat small crowd. I might make that my swing outlet for a while, instead of Swing Central, though I'd have to reschedule my library nights if I wanted to take lessons. There's just too much for me to balance with dance these days. I haven't been feeling like devoting more than one or two evenings a week to dancing, and in that time I'm torn between doing things I'm comfortable with and just having fun, or taking lessons in things I don't know so much (like Hustle or Salsa, which wouldn't be as fun, at least not for a while). Plus, with whatever I choose, I have to consider conflicts with things like library volunteer nights and Irish sessions nights. Argh. But, as always, better too many choices than too few.

Finished

I'm in a bit of a daze now. Time to figure out what to do with my life for the next couple years before book 7 comes out. Wow, though. That was a doozy.

Halfway

Antonia and I just reached the halfway point in the new Harry Potter book. (We're reading it out loud to each other, otherwise it would probably be finished by now.) We managed to get our copy not too long after midnight last night, then stayed up until nearly 4 AM reading it. Then about 3.5 hours of sleep and starting again. Now a few hours of napping and then back to the book. (Well, a few hours of napping for me, but a short nap and some running for Antonia, so she doesn't go entirely without training this weekend.)

So as not to be too spoiler-y, I will restrict my comments to the following: (1) I'm liking Harry a lot more than I did in the last book, (2) chapter 14 was awesome, (3) Justin will be glad that more of the kids are getting clues finally, and (4) I never knew how much the phrase "gum disease" could make me laugh.