I went to a class at The Crucible called 'Demystifying the LED'. It's a two-class intro workshop to making light displays with Light Emitting Diodes. I was signed up for it as part of my volunteer benefit, but I was a total *something* and just flat missed the first class. So there's another session of the class happening soon, and the guy I worked with pulled some strings and so I'm kinda going to the class backwards, taking class two of session one and then class one of session two.

So I kinda didn't quite know what was going on for some of the stuff and I was playing mental catch-up, because a lot of the stuff was laden with words and diagrams I hadn't seen since high school physics. There's a good deal of nuts-and-bolts electricality. I've never been a big gadgetry person, but I can see why it's so exciting. It's really a turn on to just make shit and tool around with it till it works. That's the cool thing about kinetic sculpture. Part of what's beautiful about it is how it's made to function. We got to look at some excellent examples of what you can do with LED's, some of which were from a sculpture called the Lily Pond that was at Burning Man. It was also really interesting to hear what the other students were thinking to do with their newfound skills. There was one guy who was going to put all sorts of LED's on a bike, and someone who had quite the light garden out in her front yard. *Sigh* I know I am where I belong.

So I walked out of class utterly high and sparking, just like, a whole new area of my brain sprang to life. Oh man. Nothing quite like it.

And then I strongarmed Alex into going out with me and my friend Jena for her 21st birthday. I went swing dancing for the first time in ages, and it was a blast. Technically, I guess I know how to swing, it's just that I've never done it often enough to get really good at it. But sometimes, sometimes the night begins with a dance that just puts your whole self in there, and it's like you never want to stop doing it, despite the awkward moments that come with little experience, there's the rush of 'getting it', the extra goodness that comes when you can finally relax into it and just be there with your partner. Like there's the really exciting aerobic stuff and there's the lilts where you're just moving together.

That was what tonight was like. Oh man. I met this guy named Lucky and we set ourselves up to go swing on Saturday. This is awesome. This may just get me into stride. That good old 1, 2, 3-and-4 stride. And some of that 1-and 2-and rock-step.

1:58 a.m. 2003-07-23�