dancing for exercise

At some point in grad school, I started dancing for exercise. I would go into the basement of my dorm, which had a dance room with a wooden floor and mirrors. I would go there at 3am, so that nobody was awake, so nobody would accidentally walk in and see me. It was so embarrassing that it was hard even to watch myself in the mirrors. But eventually I got over it, and it became a very enjoyable way to exercise. To date, this is the only form of exercise I've been able to keep-up -- everything else I've tried has been too boring. Though I have had some success with listening to music on an elliptical machine, and walking in time to the music.

Anyway, I want to keep track of my dancing/exercise because I haven't been doing it often enough, and keeping track here seems to be a good way.. so:

- Wed July 4 : 30 minutes (notes: usually I just improve for myself. This time, I spent some time imagining dancing with a partner. This was pretty helpful, I felt like I could improvise more freely than when I actually dance with my instructor. I discovered that what I've been missing is allowing for more simple and controlled moves, and really feeling the music with my partner.. I'm excited to keep practicing like this in preparation for my next lesson.)

- Thu July 5 : 30 minutes (notes: pretty good -- I feel like I refined some of the things I did yesterday, though I'm a bit worried about how to create new stuff. Maybe I need to listen to dramatically different songs -- I do feel like different beats spawn different ideas in my head of how to dance to them, and a lot of the music I've been listening to has essentially the same beat)

- Fri Jul 6 : 30 minutes (notes: still good -- I listened to Lana Del Rey, and that seemed to have a different beat, and I think I came up with something different for that.. so exploring different beats seems good.)

- Sat Jul 8 : 30 minutes (notes: I had wanted to practice particular songs for tomorrow, but the 30 minutes went by so quickly.)

juggling

I'm trying to learn how to juggle 5 balls. Actually, I've been trying to learn for a really long time. since High School. maybe even Junior High.

Maybe by tracking my progress here, I can get further. The plan is to update this post when I practice. I'll be recording a number. This number is the number of times that my right hand throws a ball in a juggling attempt. Actually, it will be the maximum over all my attempts during the practice session.

June 25, 2012 - 7 times (twice in a row)
June 28, 2012 - 17 times
June 29, 2012 - 8 times

July 2, 2012 - 13 times
July 3, 2012 - 9 times
July 4, 2012 - 18 times
July 5, 2012 - 15 times

Dec 27, 2012 - 21 times