As performed by my feet.

This song is inaudible to the universe at large, it plays only in my head in the illusory body I experience there.

The song is the song of Plantar Fasciitis.

It's a terrible song, I don't recommend it.

I have periodic insomnia.  About once a month, sleep will not come.  My brain is not racing.  Physical ailments are minimal and don’t usually keep me awake.  Sometimes, it happens before a calm day and I can sleep it off with no problems except the glare from the wife for sleeping the day away.  Other times, it’s pure hell going through a day on an hour or two of sleep.  Today is one of those days.

Today's canoe ride on the Grand was the perfect length: including a little detour to the one side with a little lake and a beaver dam, we spent 2.5 hours kayaking from Breslau to Freeport.  It did rain on us at the end of the trip, but only a mild amount.

We'd originally scheduled the 4-hr trip (which starts 10 km further up the river); I think that would have been a feasible length if we'd been able to stop and enjoy a picnic, but in this weather, it wouldn't have worked.

I can't believe I've lived in K/W for 13 years and never done this.  It's only $60, including taxes, for two people.

The closest we can ever get to someone is before we've been born.

Everything after that is kind of a letdown, at least from a physical contact perspective. 

I hear it's playing soon in Philly.  I'd love to go see it. I've seen the movie version with Malkovich as Tom and Karen Allen as Laura.

I doubt the special effects will be as good.

I've been a big reader for many years, but my reading pace has slowed down a lot in the last couple of years.  Two or three years ago I managed to do a Goodreads challenge where I read 100 books in the year, partly in response to the year before that where I'd spent three entire weeks slogging my way through Steven Erikson's Toll The Hounds.  I managed it, yes, but it was little grueling, forcing myself to a hard page quota so I could spend no more then three days on a book.  Mostly fiction, neglecting the nonfiction I also enjoy, and tending to also avoid thicker books that would take longer.  After that I slacked off more--and started reading longer books again--so the goals have gotten harder to attain.  I've also been doing more rereading, and since I imported large chunks of my reading history into Goodreads it's harder for it to count those.  (If you want up-to-the-day, or at least week, updates on what I'm reading, you can always follow me on Goodreads...)

For fiction, I recently finished Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars, last of the Aurora Award nominees for the year; I may actually vote this year, though I haven't decided for sure yet.  I'm a little disillusioned with awards right now--why, I won't even nominate my friends' books any more.  I've been rereading David Gerrold's War Against The Chtorr, and recently continued into a reread of his Dingilliad series with Jumping Off The Planet; it's not clear to me if it's really a related series, despite some overlapping references, but I thought I'd do it anyway, since he's going to be a guest at Pure Speculation this year.  I'm also reading Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series to Simon (in the middle of Memory), and The Wheel of Time to Luke (most of the way through Lord of Chaos).  I just finished Kelley Armstrong's Stolen, sequel to Bitten (which was on TV this year, but I didn't watch it past the first episode), which was okay, and am about to start on Adrienne Kress's teen-steampunk The Friday Society; not sure if I'll like that one, because the books of hers that I've read and enjoyed before are more middle-grade, but I'll give it a try.

For nonfiction, I've got a few, on various burners.  Some time ago I started Eleanor of Aquitaine And The Four Kings, and I haven't given up on it yet, but I don't pick it up often; the prose is a little bit old-fashioned, though the book's only from the mid-twentieth century, so I suppose I should call it "affected".  But my recent Crusader Kings II playing has lent it some appeal.  I'm also working my through a book of lists from the Uncle John's Bathroom Institute people, which isn't holding my interest as much of some such books have done in the past.  More recently, I picked up A.J. Jacobs's Drop Dead Healthy; on the one hand, I tend to like his stuff, but this one I bought remaindered, and admittedly it may not be his best.  He's trying to make himself healthier, in a year, and looking at a lot of ways to do so, of varying degrees of wackiness; while it is occasionally entertaining and/or informative, so far it just reminds me how little I've come to trust anybody saying anything about what will make you more or less healthy.  While I was at When Words Collide last weekend I was intrigued by someone mentioning the book What If The Earth Had Two Moons?, and, because we live in the future, put in a library request for it while sitting at the panel; it came in yesterday, and I just started reading it.  Meanwhile, in the wings, I have Of Dice And Men, a history of Dungeons & Dragons, which I'm going to let wait until at least I've finished one of the others.

I also signed up for Marvel Unlimited a little over a year ago; it's a service that lets me read any of the comics that Marvel Comics has made available online.  It's far from a complete collection--newer comics only come out a year after their physical release, though that doesn't bother me because I'm not reading anything new; it's more the middle-range stuff that I'd want to look for, like the Defenders.  What I've ended up doing, though, after looking at a few scattered issues here and there, is starting from the beginning, with Fantastic Four #1 in 1962, and reading from there.  It's taking me a while--I'm only up to early 1967 right now--but I'm enjoying it, especially now that we have a tablet to read them on.  It was physically possible for me to read them on my iPod, but it was far from convenient or easy, and the tablet is working much better for me.  "Spider-Man" and "Fantastic Four" are already really good, and "Thor", "Avengers" and "Doctor Strange" are not bad; "X-Men" is not too hot, though, but then I'm a big Claremont-era fan.  As for the others--"Daredevil", "Iron Man", "Captain America", "Hulk", "Nick Fury", "Sub-mariner"--I was never too much into them, and they're only passable.  A lot of them are still into half-issues right now, so maybe it's the shorter-length stories, and "Daredevil" was never really my thing anyway.  I do look forward to the stage where Stan Lee relaxes his stranglehold on the writing credits, though...not that Roy Thomas has been a big boon to "X-Men" so far.  Hopefully they'll have filled in some of the gaps before I get up to the point where I'd notice them.  (I confess I'm skipping "Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos", as well as any western titles, or "Modeling With Millie"...)

I've been dancing salsa since 2006. For as long as I've been dancing, salsa and its cultural siblings bachata and merengue have been the steps in the clubs. Swing is cool, but you can't go out to a club and just find people doing it; I missed that particular revival.

For the first time in my personal experience– and keep in mind I'm only eight years old as a dancer– a new step is pushing onto the floor. And it's not a latin step. It's from Angola.

I first saw kizomba here in the states a couple years back. And I thought, "this is not gonna catch on until we 'fix' it for us Americans. Because it's too close and too sensual, and that kind of thing weirds us out unless we know exactly what the rules are. And it's also really creative and places a super-high premium on the guy's ability to lead effectively with his body. Maybe once they water it down and make it safe it'll catch on."

Now kizomba is catching on. Last night I took a couple hours of beginner kizomba class and tried out easy steps with a roomful of friends from the salsa community. Good times, and everybody was a lot cooler with the intimacy of the dance than I had unfairly expected. The popularity of bachata, a similarly close latin style, probably helps.

But the real surprise is what I found when I started searching youtube for "kizomba angola." And even more so when I searched for "kizomba luanda." (Luanda is the capital of Angola.)

It turns out a lot of the kizomba songs people dance to in Angola are... peppy and cheerful. And not everybody dances "all up ins" with their partner, either. I'm watching leads who can steer very effectively and sensually with just a forearm. And punctuate the dance with closer contact, not maintain it all the time.

All that "you have to be chest to chest or you're doing it wrong" stuff? That's coming from us!

Serves me right. I gotta remember to check my assumptions at the door of the club.

I feel I should post every day now. So an not to squander my precious gift.

Depends heavily on what day it is and how I feel.   Many of my favorite "songs" are actually instrumental music.  One day it will be the Allegretto Scherzando from the 8th symphony by Beethoven.  The next day I'll be rockin' out to something from 1973 played by a long haired hippie freak.  Sometimes it's the Promenade from the JAWS soundtrack.