Ballerina Power

After looking at yesterday's post and my calendar, I think I've figured out one big reason why introverts tend to have just a few close friends. If you've got several close friends who aren't also close friends with each other or else don't necessarily have the same interests or schedule as each other, then your calendar fills up quickly even if you only get together with each friend a couple of times a month. If you had a lot of friends, you'd never have free time. Between activities for all the groups I'm in and the few close friends I have that I do things with outside groups, I'm generally booked solid most weekends.

Today is going to mostly be a quiet day at home (I do have to make a post office trip) because I might have overdone it yesterday. I spent the morning with my brother, spent the afternoon geocaching, then had choir rehearsal at night.

I discovered while geocaching that ballet really pays off. I hadn't done this degree of tromping around in the woods, going down steep hills and generally climbing up, over, down or through things in years, and it was so much easier this time, in spite of me being quite a bit older, because my legs are so strong now. There were a few times when I was inching sideways across the steep slope of a river channel purely by the power of my thigh muscles, and the balance I've gained from dance helped keep me in place so I didn't fall into the river. My inner thighs are a bit sore this morning, but I'm not in the kind of pain I'd expect to be in from that amount of exertion. The book I'm currently working on has a ballerina heroine, and I make use of the physical abilities being a top-level dancer gives her -- she's strong, flexible and fast -- and now I can tell that I'm pretty much on-target with that, since I can see the difference it makes for me even at my level. Seriously, you don't want to mess with a ballerina. She may look delicate, but she's probably stronger than a lot of pro athletes.

This geocaching thing is a blast. For me, it's mostly an excuse to go tromping through the woods, getting way off the beaten path. Finding the caches is secondary, though it is fun to find something like this:

That was the first clue in a multi-stage treasure hunt that led to me doing all that crazy climbing around on the steep sides of a river channel (which turned out to be entirely unnecessary, but it was still fun). There were a lot of thorny vines in the woods, so my hands are all scratched up (note to self: gloves!) and look even worse because I put that liquid bandage stuff on the scratches, so I now look slightly leprous.

To recover from my exertions, I will spend the day working on my book with the kick-ass ballerina.