We are hitting the road (from Tucson) Tuesday for a two week vacation in Big D. My dw (dear wife) grew up in Dallas, and I personally lived there about 15 years. Whenever I leave the house on errands, I always prefer to accomplish two or more things and this trip is no exception. The primary purpose is to go to the Rethinking Education conference. But we are also going to hit the 2004 Southwest Regional Swing Dance Competition on Friday night. (Unfortunately, both conferences are the same weekend.)
DW and I are now into Swing dance competition after getting a small taste of it several weeks ago. It’s called “Jack and Jill”. In a Jack and Jill contest, the guys names go into a hat and the girls go up one at a time and select a random guy. They then dance and are judged. Since west coast swing is an entirely lead/follow type of dance, it shouldn’t matter who you dance with. We both competed (paired with different people) two weeks ago, and I won first and dw won third in the novice division. This experience hooked us, so we’ll be doing this again in Dallas.
The rethinking education conference is the conference where we both first learned (in 2000) about “unschooling” and were convinced it was the path we wanted to follow with our kids. We’re both looking forward to this because the sessions are chock full of useful information.
In a total non sequitur, I snapped this photo in our back yard about 4 days ago. It was walking right next to our pool. Newbies to Tucson are usually instructed to avoid rattlesnakes and gila monsters. This is a gila monster (pronounced “he la”.) I can just picture someone laying by our pool in the backyard with one of these stepping on their towel. Or me, nude and lounging in the hot tub at night with one of these coming up from behind and grabbing me by the neck. Once they bite, they don’t let go. You typically have to go to the hospital to get them removed.
Time to get packing!
Leave a Reply