What was I thinking?

My Sexy American Girlfriend has an empty nest, and I do not. At times this can create some frustration as we don't spend enough time together doing "couple things." In an effort to think out of the box, Jud suggested we take a dance class.


Yes, gentle reader, you are probably screaming at the monitor "What are you doing? One of your favorite phrases from years past is that you believe 'Hell has a dance floor.'" I know. You will also recall that instead of seeing a red flag and taking a pause, Jud jams down on the accelerator and unfastens his seatbelt.


The class was billed as a Novice level West Coast Swing. We showed up a few minutes and watched a class finishing up. The instructor was young, but seemed sweet and friendly. Soon it was our time, and the class had 5 couples and the instructor and her partner, who, due to the lack of men, was another young lady.

We started learning the first few steps, and my SAGF and I were laughing and cutting up as we tried to learn and keep up. After about 10 minutes of fumbling around they announced we were to switch partners. What the hell? I signed up to learn something with my special lady friend. I wanted us to laugh and have fun. My mood quickly changed, as they tried to teach new steps on top of the ones I had already not learned. And then we switched partners again and again.

All of my partners and it seemed all of the other people in the class seemed to have some grasp of the basic moves and they were more interested in learning how they were combined and ordered for this particular dance.

Jud lasted 45 minutes out of 60, which isn't bad. I was fine sitting and watching, but I was done. I felt embarrassed - humiliated even - and abandoned. The SAGF has witnessed my introvert's social anxiety on three other occasions over the past 3 years, but this was one of the worst.

I can almost laugh about it now, but not really.

Oddities in the Office

Jud was in the break room the other morning fixing a hot mug of bad coffee from some Keurig kind of device that company supplies ( I appreciate the gesture and the fact that the coffee is free. That doesn't make it taste any better). A colleague came in turned on the hot water tap in the sink full blast. Then she walked away to fill up this 1/2 gallon pitcher with ice from our industrial ice maker. Then she shook her pitcher to "settle" the ice, and put some more into it. Then she put hot water over the ice.


For a moment I thought perhaps she making some tea or other beverage using some arcane process learned from a monk high in the Appalachians, but no. When another bystander asked what she was doing, she replied "I don't like my ice water too cold."