Where's the sun?

As a warning, this post is just going to be random tidbits from this past week so it's only going to be partially organized.

It has been snowing almost non-stop for the past 3-4 days. As a result of which 1) classes on Friday were actually delayed for an hour or so (not that it mattered to me in any way) and 2) our standard/smooth coach decided not to come to Ithaca this weekend.

Given the amount of snow on the ground, it was very tempting to have snowball fights. I think I ended up starting two or three of them in the past few days.

On Friday, we decided to dig a friend's car out of the snow so he can drive it home and so he can take me grocery shopping :-) There were three of us: Brenton, Ali, and I. Of the three of us, Ali was the only one who managed to reach someone with a shovel. As he went off to get it, Brenton and I decided to try to dig out the car with our hands (Brenton doing most of the work since he had gloves). By the time Ali got back, we had pretty much dug out the car.

Yesterday, there were many people around campus building snowmen. Today, most of them have toppled over...

On my route to and from campus, there was a portion of the sidewalk that was not shoveled and was pretty slushy. As I was walking home today after practice, there was a guy walking up that aforesaid section. The same time that I decided to walk on the road so as to avoid it, the guy did too to let me pass.

Some terminology for those not familiar with ballroom:
There are 4 different categories of dance: Standard, Latin, Smooth and Rhythm. The first two are International styles and the latter two American styles. Each category has 5 different dances with the exception of smooth in that there are 4.
In collegiate comps, the levels are newcomers, bronze, silver, gold, (novice), prechamp, and champ.

Because we were expecting our coach to come for the weekend, the Cornell ballroom team had large rooms reserved. My partner and I decided that we would take advantage of the space. Three-quarter of the way into our quickstep routine, I ended up on the floor. This is actually the second time that something like this happened to me. The first time, I fell on my butt when my shoe got caught in my dress during a competition a few years ago. I think people stared at me for the rest of the round to make sure that I didn't fall again... Today, I ended up flat on my back when my shoe got caught again, this time on my pants. It actually wasn't too bad as my partner try to mitigate the fall after realizing that it was inevitable.

Continuing on the ballroom theme, last weekend was the Binghamton competition, which is about an hour away from Ithaca. My partner and I competed in both prechamp standard and smooth. It was pretty nerve wrecking for a few reasons(I think it showed a little on the floor...): 1) the last time I competed in smooth was two or three years ago and it was in silver, 2) it was my first time competing in prechamp, 3) I was afraid of messing up because I was still getting used to the routine (which I did) and 4) there were only 2 couples in smooth and three in standard. Next time shouldn't be as bad since most of these reasons are now invalid.