Spring is Here : )

Another week seems to go by so fast. The past few days have been a whirlwind of fun activities and Pesach preparations.

My mom's birthday brunch on Sunday was wonderful. It was the immediate family and some close family friends. We went to a beautiful restaurant at the Grounds for Sculpture, a beautiful park in Hamilton, NJ. The restaurant has many side rooms with beautiful paintings and a few sculptures to look at. Unfortunately (for me), the restaurant isn't kosher so I kind of cheated a bit : ( I had some salad, a little bit of fruit, and the salmon dish. Dessert has always been such a weakness for me, that is my one indulgence. It's not a good day unless I have a little chocolate.

I went to an interesting lecture on Tues. night, it was a womens' lecture from Holly Pavlov, the head of Shearim, the seminary I studied at over the summer. This lecture will be referred to in a future post. This month, I signed up for a weekly lecture over the phone from a rabbi in Israel, the lectures focus on how you can use the holidays as tools for personal growth. Again, another blog post will be devoted to this.

I've also been exploring new dance classes; last night I took a jazz/funk class at a popular dance studio on the west side. It was an open class, meaning the class is appropriate for all levels. In this specific case, I have to disagree. This class is not meant for beginners. I knew when we were doing warmups that I would be in trouble, and I am not a beginner. So, we were learning a routine and I was lost from the beginning. That is not a feeling I'm used to, I normally get dance routines pretty quickly. Maybe the fact that we were dancing with hats threw me off a bit. I am not used to dancing with props and it does make learning the routine harder, at least it did for me. Looking back, I really should have just tried to learn the routine without the hat and then when I knew the routine better, I would insert the hat in. In my opinion, the hats were pretty lame but when I heard the song we were dancing to, it made sense. I will say it is a Michael Jackson song that was very popular in the late 80s...think about it, an MJ song where a hat played a prominent part in the video.

One thing the instructor said was that you needed attitude in order to do the routine well. Attitude is one thing I have in abundance so I knew that as long as I had the attitude, I would be okay. This instructor is teaching again on Sunday afternoon so I might try it out again. I think you should always give something at least two tries before you decide whether or not to quit.

On a frivolous note, this season of American Idol sucks compared to previous seasons. Thanks to You Tube, I've been watching older performances of AI and am reminded of how good other seasons were and how much this season stinks.

Sanjaya Malakar provided an unintentionally hillarious performance this week of "You Really Got Me"; after watching it 2-3 times I have to say it is funny each time. You find something new to laugh at each time. For the past 2 mornings, I've been watching his performance for a much needed dose of laughter to start off my day.

Thanks to message boards, I also watched John Steven's performance of "Crocodile Rock" from Season 3, and that is also hysterical. Ryan Starr's rendition of "You Really Got Me" and "Last Dance" are also hillarious. I don't know what is more funny, her singing or her outfits. I also got to re-watch her singing "Frim Fram Sauce", when she was on Surreal Life she was painting herself as a rocker and I was thinking "Rockers don't sing 'Frim Fram Sauce'...there was this one verse how she's singing about wanting Frim Fram Sauce with blah blah blah on the side, if anyone can fill in the blank, that would be fabulous.

When you think of hillarious American Idol performances, you have to think of William Hung. After 3 years, I can tell you that I still laugh when I see him perform She Bangs. It is messed up when he gets a record deal and people who have been performing for years and are genuinely talented don't get deals but we all know that we live in an imperfect world. So this is my new morning routine, watching a few funny performances on American Idol off of You Tube. There is nothing better than starting the day off with laughter.