Dancing the night away

Last night, I ate some superb Middle Eastern/Indian food at Ararat, then went dancing at a relatively new Brazilian club called Casa Brasil. Both are really close to where I live, and I'd never been to either.

I've never been much of a dancer. I had the common experience of stiff backed, back-and-forth, slow dancing in middle and high school, which mixed with headbanging as grunge gained popularity in the early '90's, and morphed into the white guy shuffle in college. I never cared much for it unless I was at least slightly tipsy, since that gave me the courage to ask women to dance or just sidle up next to them and hope for the best.

But last night was very fun. A young lady invited me to meet her there for the weekly live Brazilian band playing on the back patio, and we learned to samba, although she already had some experience. We started off simply watching other dancers, then got some amusing instruction from an older gentleman who kept interrupting us to improve our form. He couldn't take the hint once we got the hang of it, so we retreated to the back of the dance floor for a while.

I knew dancing could be pretty strenuous exercise from past experience, so I expected to be sore today, but so far so good. Unlike the time in Dallas, when I could barely walk the day after some drunken dancing at a bar, accompanied by my buddy L. You know you're out of shape when....