Yesterday my wife and I, and a
group of our neighbours, started Latin dancing lessons. Our instructor,
Albert Gomez, has won a number of awards and has trained the actors and
actresses in some recent dance movies. He's a patient and incredibly
skilled teacher. It's a lot of fun, and unlike the impression you get
from 'latin ballroom' competitions, isn't that hard, and needn't be
taken that seriously.
It's the perfect cure for the winter blues, and the stress of worrying about this terrible world. And if I can learn (I'm the world's most uncoordinated person), anyone
can. Albert coordinates trips to Latin American countries with several
affiliated studios and dance clubs across North America. If you live in
the Toronto area and are interested in learning more, here's a link to his main Toronto website.
I've had a passion for Latin, and especially Afro-Cuban, music most of
my life, and dancing will give me a chance to learn more about this
music as well. Three groups I just discovered yesterday were Los
Adolescentes, DLG, and La Sonora Carruseles. Anyone else out there a
fan of this kind of music, and if so which artists are your favourites?
Thanks to some help from my brilliant friend in Scotland, Aalia Wayfare at The LeftHander (who previously fixed the gap in the middle column of my permalink pages), the "SEARCH SITE"
bar in the upper right corner of my blog is now working. Instead of
using Google, this bar now uses Feedster's search engine. From the
testing I have done, not only does it pick up all references to
keywords anywhere in my archives, it also updates every day, so you can
even use it to find references on my seven-day home page and category
pages. BTW, Aalia has just ponied up for a Salon Blog.
I'm still hoping that Google will get around to re-crawling all my
pages, which should up my hit count by about 400 hits per day, and help
people who rely on that search engine to find my site. I'd like to
thank these wonderful people for helping me revamp my blog to make it
easier for Google to crawl, and for readers with slow connection speeds
to use: In addition to Aalia (who has also fixed my metatags): fellow
Slogger Philip Vassar at Just Playing, Arve Bersvendsen at Virtuelvis , the blogless Ken Hirsch at No Pundit Intended, and Seth Finkelstein at Infothought, as well as Radio's intrepid Lawrence Lee at Tomalak's Realm. These guys are wonderful, selflessly helpful, and persistent and knowledgeable about all things technical. Thanks, guys!
In the meantime, if you're one of those unhappy with Google's
unpredictable behaviour, you can add a Feedster search bar to your own
site by going here.
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
Thanks to some help from my brilliant friend in Scotland, 
