Blizzard, dancing and love

The blizzard has come and gone, and was far less damaging than predicted. The worst part, as usual, is the pile of snow at the end of the drive from the city plowing the street. That one was about 3 1/2 to 4 feet high. It's hard to see, but I took this while standing in the street and looking back at my house. Hopefully you can see the pile at the end of the drive.

The drifts were bad, but my snow blower worked right through it and I didn't throw my back out. Then I gave my neighbor the blower to do the rest of his drive and then shipped it down the street to another friend who did her drive and another neighbors. The last neighbor is a Redskin fan, so he is always welcome to whatever I have, got to take care of family. The city of West Des Moines, as usual, did a fantastic job clearing the streets and the Des Moines plows had the Interstate clear down to the concrete. Like I said in my last post, Iowan's know how to take care of snow and this storm was the proof.

I know you want to hear about my dancing, so I thought I would give you a quick update on that. We have moved from the foxtrot to east coast swing. I have to say, I thought I was going to suck at this, and as usual, I was right. Really got mt feet on backwards and struggling to just not spin Marcy into a wall or run into another couple. I think I will be able to get good enough at least to dance at our friends wedding, but hopefully everyone will be drunk before I get out there and they will think I'm doing it right. I am enjoying it, but the teachers don't get my sense of humor. There were several times when I made a joke and Marcy laughed, but they did not, just stared at me, or worse. Example. We were working on the guy turning during the east coast swing. When you do this, the guy brings his hand up over his head, but close to your head, so the guy teacher said that you should give yourself a Mohawk and rub your hand across your hair. He said this several times, then looked at me and grinned and apologized, seeing as how I have zero hair. I was laughing, but said I was starting to get offended by his comments. If you know me, you know I'm always cracking jokes, so I was kidding. The lady teacher apologized for his comment. Really? I'm supposed to think he was intentionally being mean? Marcy and I were still laughing and now even more, but the lady just apologized again. The couple are a bit odd. Nice, but odd.

And finally, I have been overwhelmed with praise and kind words from my blog readers. Here are a few quotes:

"Love it! You should publish!"
"My favorite blog! It will always make you laugh!!"
"Whoever gets on first when you post gets to read it out loud.... we fight for it :)"

OK, so all of those quotes are from family, that doesn't diminish their power does it? Maybe it does, they are from family after all. The day after Marcy posted my blog address on her Facebook page and these quotes were made, I received this comment to a post I made August 17, 2007.

"What a great web log. I spend hours on the net reading blogs, about tons of various subjects. I have to first of all give praise to whoever created your theme and second of all to you for writing what i can only describe as an fabulous article. I honestly believe there is a skill to writing articles that only very few posses and honestly you got it. The combining of demonstrative and upper-class content is by all odds super rare with the astronomic amount of blogs on the cyberspace."

Now I don't know if this is one of you screwing with me, or if there is actually a non family member who liked what I wrote. I hope nobody is screwing with me, because that actually felt good to read. I know I'm not a writer, and when I go back and read my stuff, I'm amazed at my grammar errors and broken statements. I don't know how you guys follow some of my thought strings, perhaps you can't and just don't tell me. The odd thing was this comment was from a post in 2007. Did I hit my peak way back then, but every post since is crap. Ouch. Regardless, I think I'll have to start a "Review" section of the blog. And the funny thing about the Facebook post was, after she posted it, my daily hits on my site went from a normal day of 5 to 8 hits, to 32 hits in one day. Wow, I was able to offend or bore 6 times as many people in one day. That's got to be a record.